Everyone Expects the Dragon Age Inquisition!

After picking up the PS4 I felt a bit underwhelmed by my available options for gaming.  There were some solid downloadable titles to play, and I'll get to them later, but right now I'd like to talking about Dragon Age: Inquisition.  I spoke about Origins oh, ages ago, and I didn't really feel that DAII was worth my time after being bored by its demo.  But there was a lot of positive buzz about Inquisition, and from what I'd read the gameplay returned to the original.  This game has sooo much going on that it's going to be difficult to keep this review flowing as I'd like, so I'll do my best to not jump around.

As usual I spent way too much time creating my character, and eventually just gave up making him look like anything in particular and just went with a standard elf rogue.  I was very tempted to go with a mage but understood from what I'd read that the mages weren't quite as pigeonholed as in the first game, so I wouldn't have to saddle myself to the class I never really enjoyed playing.

You start the game in a standard Bioware tutorial level that establishes that you're about to have all the responsibility in the world for no reason other than you were in the right place at the right time, and your hand glows.  Actual qualifications be damned.  You'll be given a base of operations and a bunch of companions that range from reliable and useful to Cassandra Pentaghast.  You're not technically in charge to begin with but then they decide you are after some heroic story progression.

Just like before you get rogues, mages, and warriors.  For the most part your warriors and rogues will specialize in one style of combat, and throw some points into their support tree.  Mages can be a lot more versatile, or can heavily specialize in one area.  After a certain level every character will have access to their sub-specializations that technically have no bearing on their current skill tree.  The PC is the only one who gets to pick their sub specialness, and I found that the sub specializations are more entertaining in description than they are in practice.

GAMEPLAY

The game is mainly driven from the War Table.  Your advisers hang out around the table and you direct missions that you'll eventually handle or they'll just do whilst you're gallivanting about and trying to get various NPCs to show you their wobbly bits and such.

Around this table you've got a handful of advisers, each of them have a special area of use, espionage, military, and political, and for the most part you can tell them to handle any mission you find on the table that isn't a map.  Each one will offer a solution that leans on their mad skills, and have different results, however I'm not certain that any of these has much more to do with missions than the flavor text.  The time you have to wait for your adviser to be ready to act again is different for each mission, and this will largely dictate who you pick to do each job.

As your Inquisition gains notoriety you'll gain access to special perks that are offered by each adviser as well.  The perks involve lots of different aspects of the game, but I found them to be ill weighted. Some will give you a small amount of crafting materials that are completely inconsequential (seriously, you can run around and find them EASY), others will let you carry more potions (a good thing), and yet others will just open up dialog options when talking to everyone you meet.

From the war table you can deploy yourself to about a dozen large areas you can explore and fulfill dozens of missions each.  Most of these are just fetch or kill quests, so you have to entertain yourself with the decisions you make while on the main missions, and by doing waaaay too much armor and weapon crafting and modification.  I spent a lot of time modifying my armor, only to realize it's rare that you'll ever need to min/max your kit (e.g.,dragon hunting), and so you just pick what you like and go about slaughtering whatever you find.

Getting around without fast traveling is done by your legs.  Run, kill, fetch, run, kill, fetch..  The landscape looks great, but after a while you stop noticing because you're just hitting the button that scans the area and highlights whatever hedge or rock you can throw in your backpack.  You're almost afraid of running off to whatever your current errand is for fear you might not have the materials you need for some potion or armor.  The problem is that progression is scaled in such a way that your gear gets better so slowly that you just ignore it until things start getting tough, then you notice you've got enough stuff to outfit yourself with good stuff again.

Just like in Origins you can queue up actions and assign behaviors, only this time the tactical nature of the beast is just part of the game, rather than a reward, you can let your team do their thing or go into a tactical overview and assign everyone their next action, hit play, and then assign the next action when it's time.  Magic and Energy are harder to read and understand, there are no numbers on the HUD, so you just need to know what percent of it you're going to be using.  It automagically regenerates in combat, and each skill has its own cool down.  The skill trees grant new active and passive combat and magic abilities to fry and impale your enemies and make it easier to use the skills.  I won't dig into the tree too much, there's a pretty good variety of things you can do, and nothing unexpected or of note.

PLAYING THE GAME
There were some fun NPCs and then there was Cassandra, Cole, and Vivienne.  I only used Cassandra when I didn't have a better fighter on hand.  Cole and Vivienne never made it on my team and I only interacted with them because they were there, and there might be some goodies if you complete their plotlines.  Most of the story line was well written and intricate, however there are times where Bioware sidesteps their writing to get all flashy about saying how much they love the civil rights movement.  I only mention it because many of these plot lines aren't written in very well and it feels like the dialog isn't there for the game, but for PR.

You spend hours and hours completing quests and directing the Inquisition around the map, directly involving yourself in a lot of very repetitive missions.  At first I thought this would possibly be broken up by the base-building element the game supposedly has, but it doesn't take long to find that choices made while building said base are inconsequential.  The most useless feature of any game is "cosmetic", and it shines in DA:I.  If I'm supposed to be leading an army, let me lead an army.  It doesn't have to be like the Total War series, but for crying out loud, my choice of whether or not I build an infirmary or sparring ring should mean SOMETHING.  I had a serious problem with the whole 'base building' aspect of this game.  Either make it relevant or just get rid of it.

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Shadow of Mordor Creed

Ubisoft should be embarrassed that most of their games aren't as good as Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.  Set in the world of Middle Earth (did you get that from the title?) you play as a random ranger whose name is relatively unimportant, but for the sake of saying it, his name is Talion.  But seriously, not important.  Because he's a vanilla dude who just HAPPENS to get sorta possessed by the elven (yes, elven, not elfin, read your Tolkien!) spirit of Celebrimbor.  Celebrimbor is most famous for helping craft all the rings, secretly crafting the 3 rings given to the elves, and finally, the One Ring to rule them all.

So while for most people the hype was the one thing that set this game apart from Assassin's Creed, the Nemesis system, for me I was just stoked to get more Middle Earth lore.  I didn't expect a lot, and what I got was great.  Mostly a lot of visualizations on how things happened back on Sauron's day (when he could still deceive people into thinking he was a nice guy), but also some other information.  There are a few grating moments that really got on my nerves, like interacting with Gollum, which makes no sense at all..  And some other plot points that make less sense, but I won't get into them because I don't want to spoil the plot.

Usually I'd go through a bunch of stuff about game mechanics and some plot points, and this time is no exception, but I'm going to glaze over some of it because the game has been out for a while and I beat it ages ago.  I would have glazed anyway, however, as I want to get to what I found the most fun and exciting aspects of the game.

Talion is a ranger who is equipped with a broken sword which functions as a dagger, a regular sword, which functions as a regular sword, and a magic bow that functions as a time slowing sniper rifle.  Oh, and the spirit of an elf lord of old that makes him embarrassingly powerful by the end of the game.  Each of these tools is used to fight orcs and uruks (taller, stronger, and I imagine smellier versions of orcs) and some animals.  Each of the weapons can be equipped with runes harvested from dead captains that you've managed to prune from Sauron's army.  They can add health, very specific damage output (like, when mounted, if you get a headshot, add 7% damage), and some other odd stats.  

As you complete quests you gain experience and can use it to buy new abilities or upgrades to current abilities.  There are two sides of the skill tree.  One side grants ranger abilities, the other wraith abilities.  Ranger abilities are generally centered around combat and wraith abilities are, well, mystical magicy stuff.  It's pretty easy to max out both sides of the skill tree with abilities you find useful, and the rest seem to become filler.  For instance, there is an ability that allows you to throw throwing knives at fleeing enemies for instant kills.  I never used this, however as I write this, I remember a few fleeing captains that could have used knives in the back.

There are tons of quests to do that involve sneaking, direct combat, and ranged challenges.  I really enjoyed the challenges as they were framed, stanzas in the songs written about the wrath of a weapon.  There isn't a lot of emphasis on weapons in Tolkien, however when he chose to name a weapon, that weapon's legacy was nothing short of epic.  There are also hunting (kill x beasts) and alchemy (find x plants) quests and some other fun sidequests.

So let's talk Nemesis.  It's pretty cool.  If you can't finish off a captain and have to run away, that captain becomes stronger.  They gain a level and generally some kind of protection.  They tell their friends about you.  And when you come back for them, they remember what happened the last time.  It's a great system... provided you're not constantly dying.  Like I did.  Constantly.  More so than in Dark Souls.  All the captains knew me and laughed.  It took a long time for me to get the hang of the game, and by the time I got into the grove all the bosses were pushing level 10-15.

When you get around to killing a captain, they'll drop a rune for one of your weapons, then they get replaced by the next random goon who killed you.  What I'm saying here is that I got so much Nemesis that I didn't feel like there was a need for a second, unique playthough.  I had, like, eighteen playthroughs already.

I mentioned that this game is better than some of the Assassin's Creed games.  That's because you can climb and stealth kill almost everything.  Just like in AC.  The difference is that it's more fun to stalk your prey in Shadow of Mordor.  You get a ton of options while sneaking around to isolate your prey.  If there's a giant swarm of orcs in your way, you might be able to knock a bee hive (they're called Morgul Flies) on them, causing them to flee in terror, and open your way.  There are other possibilities like releasing large predators into an enemy's midst, or just telling one of your dominated subjects to start picking off everyone to cause a commotion.  All while being a stealth game.

I have to say, though, that I really enjoyed Shadow of Mordor.  I liked getting to plan out how I took out Sauron's army.  The game takes on a new level of fun when you can start dominating orcs and forcing them to your side.  It's a lot easier to take out a general when all their bodyguards suddenly join your cause.  I loved the lore.  Loved it.  The lore drove my desire to play more than the gameplay.  Yup.  If you love Tolkien, you should suck the marrow out of this game.

I do have a few pet peeves, though.  The first is that with all the polish in this game, Monolith forgot to give Talion ANY kind of expressions.  He looks at everything with a sort of confused fear.  You clash swords and Talion's expression says "Why am I here? This guy has a SWORD?"

The second peeve isn't gameplay related, but plot.  They just HAD to throw Gollum in there...

It's time to PS4

I moved across the country about six months ago and one part of the deal was I got to pick up one of the latest gen systems to entertain myself.  The choice wasn't too difficult.  Which system had exclusives I wanted to play?  Well, neither, really.  I don't care much about Halo, Fable has always been a bust for me, and while I will likely never again have time enough for hardcore racing games, I was always a fan of Gran Turismo.  I don't give a crap about DVRing or other cable-incorporated features because I don't watch TV, so I decided the things that were most important to me were the specs.

But my XBox 360 did great service to me and my gamer score got pretty high, despite having not owned the original XBox.  There were a lot of great games for that system that I haven't reviewed, and may retro-review in the future, but for now I'm going to talk about the slightly more present.

So the new challenger comes along.  The PS4.  The only other Sony console I owned was a PSOne (the little white one) that I picked up around 2002.  I wanted to play through Einhander, Xenogears, FFIX, and a few other games I had picked up.  I never owned and didn't have much time logged on a PS2 (mostly playing others' xboxes).  And as far as the PS3 went, I've never actually touched one.  My brother bought the original PSP on release day and I played a couple games on that, too.

I ordered the PS4 from Amazon and it came with Little Big Planet 3, and Lego Batman.  I ordered Shadow of Mordor to come with it, which I'd been wanting to play since it was announced.  I wasn't sure what other games I wanted for the system but knew I'd like to get around to GTA5, and eventually Bioware would release another Mass Effect, and I wanted in on that.

Turning on the PS4 wasn't as magical or monumental as I remember the Gamecube startup being (with it's quirky little home OS).  Sony's OS reminded me of the OS that shipped with my brother's PSP.  A bunch of scrolling tiles that do all things you'd like to do.  The built in browser isn't bad, I used it to stream an episode of Downton Abbey that my wife and I missed during the recent season.

The PS4 hardware makes some great looking games. I remember watching the promotional and demo videos over the last year or so and thinking there was no way this thing was any better graphically than the previous generation, but I was wrong.  Things have been stepped up, and that's cool.

The best part of this new console came in the latest update.  You can suspend your games and pop back in exactly where you left off.  It's great.  In the middle of a long battle and have to run to work??  Hold the PS button and enter "Rest Mode".  The game is suspended and when you turn on your system later that day (week, month, year) the same battle is going on.  Admittedly you're probably not in the zone anymore and are going to die a horrible death, but we're talking seconds, not minutes, to get back in the action.  This is, of course, using power the whole time.  And if your power fails at all, your suspend data is vaporized (and your PS4 will not let you forget that you should power it down nicely every time...)

I have two big complaints.  The first is how the OS organizes your apps/games.  Video apps and social apps get their own tile, but games are in a long carousel that doesn't seem to end.  You just keep scrolling until you find whatever it is you want.  Everything is organized by chronologically.  It's very annoying, borderline broken.  Say you've downloaded 50 games from the market.  They're not in alphabetical order, if you haven't played the game for a few months, you're going to be digging for a while.  I hope this gets fixed.

The second big complaint is a twofold complaint regarding the Dual Shock 4. The battery life sucks, and the light bar can't be deactivated.   It can be charged over USB micro, so if you need a mid-game charge, a normal charger will work fine. but still, maybe six hours of power.  For $60 MSRP they should be putting a real battery in these.

All in all I'm glad I made the switch.  It's difficult getting used to not having a gamerscore anymore, but it's a small price to pay.