Smash! Grab. Identify. Ooooo pretty colors! Smash! Click click click click. Health potion. Click click click click. 4am.

This is not a review. More of an ode, really.

I played Baldur’s Gate. Like most, I played it years ago. I don’t remember it much other than that it was really good. I don’t think I finished it, for whatever reason, but I remember liking it a lot. I later played Icewind Dale 2 (not made by BioWare). I liked that one as well, can’t remember if I finished it either. Later on, I played Neverwinter Nights. That was also really good. My point though, is not that I’ve spent less time than most playing BioWare games. My point is that if you’ve played any of these games I just mentioned, you’ve pretty much already played Dragon Age. Only with not as good graphics. However, Dragon Age is really the culmination of years of making the same game over and over, with each iteration being just a bit better than the last one as they learn more and fix things they did wrong the last time.

Not that BioWare’s games are bad at all. On the other hand, every single one of them is quite remarkable. The voice acting is leaps and bounds better than 95% of the games out there. The writing is fantastic, and the worlds are just that much more believable because of these elements. The fact that everything just meshes so well, makes you really believe you’re there. Sure it may be “just” a game, but it’s a game that feels like it could exist in some fantastical alternate reality somewhere. It’s just that good. Your party members have their own agendas, back stories, and opinions. What you do over the course of the game will piss them off, endear them to you, and everything in between. Much has been discussed about the romance options in the game; mostly those discussions revolve around whether or not it’s right that there should be romance in a video game. I say who cares? It’s so well done, it feels completely natural. Sure, the gifts system is a bit contrived, but the fact that some gifts will influence party members more dramatically, depending on the gift, makes it feel like part of the world you’re inhabiting.

Then there’s the combat. I played Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic and although I liked the idea of a party-based RPG, in reality, I always felt like it was very lacking somehow. Having played a fair share of real-time combat RPGs, my party standing around waiting for their ‘turn’ to attack just felt… well, stupid. I never really felt like I was controlling them very much or that those actions really made much of a difference. On top of that, especially in NWN, the combat just didn’t feel very visceral. Lots of watching your party stand there watching the opponents watch you, with the occasional swipe of a sword/axe/whatnot. That is not how combat feels in Dragon Age. It’s incredibly fun to just pause the game on occasion in the middle of frenetic combat, to see if you can catch a gout of blood in mid-spurt as your tank impales a Darkspawn on his sword. It’s fantastic, fun, and importantly – easy to control.

The control aspect is something I’ve not noticed in many reviews. Lots of these types of games devolve down to a huge amount of micromanagement. Many gamers would think of this as a great thing. You get to tweak each party member’s stats, armor, clothing, weapons loadout, hair color, nose size, conversation options, alignment, personality, etc etc etc. You get the idea. These games are about having the ability to create your party from scratch, playing it exactly how you want. That’s still eminently present in Dragon Age. However, unlike in most other games of this type that I’ve played, Dragon Age is simple as cake when it comes to management. You can do it all yourself or let the game do it for you. Whichever way you choose, it’s a blast.

I’ve not finished it yet, but I must say… this is truly an RPG for the ages. I’m intrigued to see how they can improve it for the next installment. And on that note, after this, I’m playing Mass Effect. I do loves me my sci-fi… and if it’s anywhere near as good as Dragon Age, well I can’t wait.

Of the four games listed above, I’ve played Two Worlds the most out of all of them. Now, that’s completely unfair to Torchlight, I know: I only got it yesterday evening and have only had time enough to log maybe an hour, wandering the mines beneath the title village.

But I’ve had Risen for at least two weeks and Oblivion (on my 360) for far longer than that. So why am I playing Two Worlds so much? It all boils down to the ways that Two Worlds is similar to Torchlight, and dissimilar to the other two games. And in my opinion, in this case, dissimilar = vastly superior. Yeah, so Two Worlds is … unpolished. That’s true. And many would argue the voiceovers to be the work of masochists, intent on forcing you into ripping off both of your own ears, in the style of Van Gogh. And that would sort of also be true. I say ’sort of’, because if you listen to/play the game long enough, it becomes one of those so truly bad, it’s good sorta things. And I mean TRULY bad. But I really do laugh at the ridiculous things your character says, and the reaches to which the NPCs attempt to stretch the believability of their blacksmith’s tragic flaws. It’s ridiculous, but it’s fun. Hey, when I’m in a cave surrounded by a huge group of grinning skeletons that are all intent on turning me into paste, and my character says “hmmm… looks like my in-laws.” in this awesome gravelly deadpan, I can’t help but laugh.

And that is why I love this game. That and a buncha other stuff I’ll get into in a minute.

You see, Oblivion and especially Risen just don’t have that kind of sense of humor. Oblivion to me feels like every city or building or cave I go into is populated by little cardboard cutout popups that are all voiced by about 3 people. I know I’m not the only one to have noticed this. Yeah, I know it’s big and deep and all sorts of vast and stuff, but I don’t really care. I don’t really feel I’m exploring different places in Oblivion. I feel like I’m exploring randomized world generator, which is quite a feat, considering I don’t think it’s really randomized. Or generated. I play for a while and get so overwhelmed by how big and imposing… and boring it all is, I quit. I really try to like the game, honest I do. And I can see all the things that people get giggly about. I just can’t play it.

So how come not Risen? Well, I like Risen. For the most part. And until I started playing Two Worlds a lot, I was really getting into Risen. It does some really awesome things. Most notably, the feeling of adventure you get when exploring; this feels like a real world, with dangerous creatures and dangerous people. And those people feel real, with their different motivations and alliances. The graphics make the different areas in the world especially evocative, with the fog and the various sounds. The first time I wandered through the swamp, I was on the edge of my chair, sure something would jump out at me at any second. And it did. Awesome. It’s a beautifully realized world, with a very definitive sense of progression. So what’s not to like? Hm. For me, I find the difficulty punishing. I know it’s supposed to be punishing. But for my dollars, I really don’t want to rely on the Quickload key so much. Yeah, I know I’m weak. I get it. But you know something? Dying that much isn’t fun. I know I can run away. I know I can go do more quests and level up and train up and stuff and then come back to fight whatever’s killing me so much. But that’s not fun or heroic. That’s grindy. And sure, it may be a bit more real, but I don’t buy games for realism, I buy them to have fun. And smacking F9 in frustration 14 times an hour just doesn’t cut it.

I know others will say they like the difficulty and that I’m wrong here, and fair enough. I recognize that it’s a deliberate choice by PB to make it this difficult. And I also get the reasoning; with difficulty comes a massive sense of achievement when you overcome that obstacle. I chalk it up to simply not being my kind of fun. Other than that, I have other nitpicks about Risen: I’m not fond of having to learn how to do every little thing from a Trainer in town before I can do it. Yeah, it adds to their character and progression and all, but sometimes I just wanna be able to do it, you know? Give me a panel and let me distribute my points. Don’t make me jump through 14 hoops of trekking back to town, wandering around, finally finding the trainer, doing their introductory quest, coming back, finally opening up their training dialog, only to find I don’t have enough cash to bump that skill as much as I wanted. That just makes me mad. Once again, I know why they did it, I just don’t like it. So maybe Risen’s not for me. I’m going to keep playing it for sure, just not right at the moment.

At the moment I’m absorbed by Two Worlds. It seems to me that TW is a blend of Oblivion, Gothic, and Diablo. An RPG love child. Or lust child, if you prefer. In my opinion, if you go into playing TW knowing that this was the goal – and that it’s not just a blatant Oblivion knockoff – then you’ll like it a helluva lot better. That’s because TW does everything it can to just keep you playing, hour after hour. Don’t like to quickload? No problem, you don’t have to. Death doesn’t damage you in the least, except for the minor inconvenience of running back to wherever it was you died. Don’t like to have to save your game all the time, “just in case”? The game does it for you, every few minutes. Want a seamless world, populated by tons of NPCs, gigantic nasty monsters, and most importantly tons and tons of loot? Yep, it’s all here. Most importantly the tons and tons of loot. This is the open world RPG for Diablo-aholics. And on top of that, it does loot even better than the famed Diablo 2, in my opinion. This is where TW is very similar to Torchlight (and this is as far as I go in comparing the two, at least for now); this isn’t really a deep, complex, morally ambiguous RPG (although I’d argue that it certainly has those elements as well if you dig that sorta thing) – this is an Action RPG in an open world. Make no bones about it, this game is all about stealing every little thing that isn’t nailed down. Hell, there’s even a hidden mission where you can open the gates of a city so that it’s destroyed by an invading Orc army…. which you do solely so that you can loot every single NPC and house in the city afterwards. That is nine kinds of awesome right there.

So how come the loot here is so freaking spectacular? Well… that’s cause the devs realized how useless most loot is until you get to higher levels. The typical grind to get higher so that you can get better stuff. What they did is make all the loot that is the same STACKABLE. So if you have 4 Craptastic Forks of the Lemur, you can stack them all on top of each other to make yourself an UBER Craptastic Fork of the Lemur. It’s so effective, you might even stick with one of these modified lower-level weapons for a huge chunk of the game, by upgrading it. The crazy thing is, because you can keep upgrading things, it makes you loot everything and everybody even more. There are no nooks or crannies that can go overlooked. Trust me on this, you will become a klepto in this game. And it’s beautiful.

Not stopping there, the same thing goes for magic, which works on a card-based system. Got 3 Fireball cards? Awesome, cause now you’ve got one bigass fireball you can kill stuff with. On top of that, you get boosters that pump up whichever spell you apply them to. They can do everything from speeding up your spells to making them cost less or do more damage. It’s seriously awesome… all in the name of allowing you to cause more destruction. Which is all in the name of more sweet loot.

I could talk about a bunch of other things I love, like the immediate distribution of skill points when you level up. Or the skill points you get when you complete Achievements – ie: killing 100 groms. Or the fact that everything is marked simply on your map, from quest objectives to caves you find. Or that there’s teleports for quick travel all around the world. Or the cauldron in your inventory that lets you save recipes of awesome potions you’ve made, for easy recreating. Perhaps you’d like to hear about the time it started raining and my dude went, “hmmm. I’m wet.” Or how he occasionally says “I’m ALIVE!” after I get resurrected at a shrine.

It’s just ridiculous. And awesome. Can’t wait for the even more ridiculously named Two Worlds 2. You’d think they might have thought to just call it ‘The Second World’. But that would have been… well, what you might have expected. And it’s not nearly ridiculous enough.

This device is (imo) fascinating. Discovered just over 100 years ago in the wreck of a Roman ship that had looted Greek cities in the first century BC, it is, a calendar/seasons/moon/eclipse calculator. Machine-thingy. The staggering bit is that it is made up of a complex array of gears that surpasses pretty much any technology seen for another millennium. Or more. And to top that off, they’re still learning new things about it as they use modern imaging equipment to peer into the depths of the remnants of the device.

Since I am scientifically incapable of imparting the full impact of the amazingosity of this device, I’ve embedded a vid below wherein very smart people do exactly that.

Plus, go buy Decoding the Heavens. It will give your bookshelf all kinds of mass market appeal as well as make you look smart.

~~ tumbleweed blows by ~~

Lately, I’ve been caught up in well, lots of other stuff. I’m still playing some games, but no MMOs. More specifically, I’m working more on my side business as a wedding photographer, so the main app I’m focused on is Lightroom. Other than that, other things of note…

• I ended up buying Trine but haven’t really played it all that much yet. Yet being the operative word there. I will, make no mistake.
• I’ve been reading a lot, making my way through the Dresden Files books, which are great. I’m halfway through the 5th book, but as a weird quirk, actually read book 10 first.
• I got a new laptop (12″ Dell Vostro) which is no gaming PC to be sure, but I’m hoping it’ll handle some light-duty gaming
• I got an ebook reader for my birthday which is really cool. Sony prs-505 as up in Canada, we can choose the Sony or … the Sony. Still, it’s slick and I like it verrmuch.

I’m at the beginning phase of doing some writing. More specifically, I’m doing research for a book I’m hopefully going to be writing this fall/winter. God knows how long it’ll take me or even if it will get done, but I’m going to give it the old college try.

Other thoughts…

• Spiderman: Web of Shadows is WAY better than I had read, either in reviews or online. Yes, it’s goofy and has bad voiceacting and is repetitive. But it’s also DAMN fun. I like it – go pick it up now that it’s bargain priced.
• Half Life 2 rocks, but imo Minerva, the free single-player mod rocks x2. Ees awesome.

That is all.

Since everyone else is doing it, I figured I would as well. There’s a Trine demo out! Why should you care? Well, this is a 2.5D physics-based platformer made by the cool guys who did the Shadowgrounds games which I thought were awesome and really should be made for XBLA. (hint, hint)

Anyway, about the Trine demo… get it here. It’s going to be out for the PC on July 3rd, shortly afterwards on PSN, and XBLA at an as-yet-undetermined future date. Check it out in action below.

Preview from Joystiq for PSN here…

http://www.mp3toys.net

$19.95 USD, 28 day trial available

Overview

So, MP3Toys? I know what you’re likely thinking – I’ve never heard of it. I wouldn’t blame you for that in the least – I suspect not many people have. Just in case you’re also confused about what it is, it’s an audio player for Windows. The difference between MP3Toys and other players, like iTunes, Winamp, MediaMonkey, Songbird, Media Center, aTunes, etc is that it doesn’t divert into the realm of podcasts, video, downloadable music, online radio, and so on. It tries to do one thing and do it well – play your mp3 tracks and do it attractively. For those of you wondering, yes it also plays other formats:  from their website … it “Plays MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC and M4A files”.

If you do end up buying the full version, like in many shareware programs, you get all future updates for free, but you also get a full-fledged mp3 tag editor. Not a bad deal for $20.

Features

So what makes mp3toys so great? You’ve got to be wondering this. Why do I use it instead of the above-linked programs?? Well, I have used all of the above for a time and discounted each of them for various reasons, which I will very briefly outline below. I’m not trying to flame any of those programs – they’re all very good in their own ways, but they didn’t quite work for me.

What I was looking for specifically was this:

• a music player that was lightweight on resources
• had popup tray notifications
• connected to last.fm for artist info and/or lyrics sources for song lyrics
• easy to update album art
• intuitive and easy to use

That’s the basics of it. Why I didn’t stick with the other programs?

• iTunes – simply it is WAY too heavy on resources. 85 MB when running is completely unacceptable (imo). No artist info/lyrics. Have to connect to the Apple store to get album art??? (booooo)
• Songbird – still too unpolished, slow, and like iTunes, wayyy too heavy on resources. They’re getting there though. Album art seems to be an afterthought.
• Media Monkey – just too complicated for its own good. Feature overload.
• JR Media Center – Has a case of the crashies on occasioin – too many features I don’t need or want (videos/photos). No internet connectivity.
• WinAmp – too long since an update. Needs a complete overhaul, interface-wise. They’ve been kludging addons and features into it for ages now.
• aTunes – Good, and nearly there. A few more releases and I’ll check this out again. I’ve never been fond of Java-based programs.

MP3Toys pretty much fulfills all of my wants, in one neat little package. In addition, there’s a bunch of features that it adds that I didn’t even know I wanted:

• minimize to tray
• album art tray thumbnail
• tray icon playlist navigation (on right-click context menu)
• played albums and playlist history
• auto-updating ‘popular’ albums, based on # of plays

All these features are implemented well and are polished. On top of that, when it’s minimized to the tray, as you can see, it takes between 10 and 25 MBs of memory at any given time. Not bad.

Screenshots

Screenshots are really the best way to show off this program. What it does best is not just play music, but show off your music at the same time. Album art is integrated throughout the program, so that you’re not just browsing lists of music, but mostly your album covers. This is as slick and very effective way of navigating your collection.

This is the main interface of the program. I’ve got the settings configured such that the playlist window collapses when the screen is too small to handle it as I find when both are onscreen, it’s a bit too busy. So what are we looking at here… along the bottom is the album browser, currently showing albums alphabetically. You can browse by simply using your mousewheel over this section to peruse your collection. You can also filter your collection in a variety of ways, clicking on the filters above the album art. Hovering your mouse over any one of the thumbnails in the album browser shows 2 images overlaid – one to add that album to the current (topmost) playlist in the playlist history (on the right hand side) and a button that lets you view that albums tracklist, overlaid over the album art thumbnail.

Hover over the thumbnail for about a second, and it will show you the tracklist of that album next to the currently playing album (shown in the large album art on the right – currently, Tim Easton). This also lets you see the other albums that you have of that artist, in this case, Metric. This is a nice quick way to view and browse albums by a certain artist. Notice that some albums in the browser have different icons overlaid on them as well. A heart indicates a popular album that’s been played a lot (filterable by clicking ‘Popular’ above) and an exclamation point indicates a new album (filterable by ‘New’).

Now we’re playing a playlist. On either side of the main window, you can see the History – Albums played on the left and Playlists on the right. Clicking on any one of those will bump them to be the topmost – and current – album or playlist. When you’re playing a playlist, clicking on the ‘+’ on an album (displayed on hover) will add that album to the playlist. On the left side, I’ve clicked on the lyrics button. This overlays the lyrics on the album art. The small music note icons next to the song number in a playlist indicates if lyrics are available for that track.

I’ve now clicked on ‘Artist’. This pulls info from Last.FM and compiles it nicely, including links and a photo of the artist. Right-clicking anywhere in this pane lets me select ‘Show Artist Albums’, which will immediately bring up all albums in my collection from that artist. You can also click on ‘Similar: In Collection’ to quickly filter by similar artists in your collection. In addition, you can click on ‘Similar’ anytime a song is playing to immediately filter by this – you don’t need to do it within the artist pane.

Here’s MP3Toys in my task list, using up around 15MBs. This is very typical usage stats. Sometimes it goes up to around 20MB, but this isn’t typical.

Finally, we’ve got the tray icon. You can see that the icon itself is a thumbnail of the current album playing. You can also see the partially obscured notification window. It shows the song name, the artist, the album, and a thumbnail of the album art. The context menu is self-explanatory.

A very nice feature of this tray icon is that you can quickly pause or resume your music with a single left-click of it at any time.

Conclusion

MP3Toys is a fantastic example of a single developer making a great product. Since it’s been around for a while, it’s polished and intuitive. While not for everyone (no iTunes store, no podcast support, no CD burning until ver3, etc), it is a cheap, well-designed and incredibly stable audio player.

I consider this to be one of the best programs I’ve ever spent $20 on. I use it all day, every day, both at work and home. If you’re even intrigued a little bit, I strongly urge you to download the trial and check it out.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10 stars (9.5)

Please Note…

If you’re put off by the lack of burning support, simply export your playlist to .m3u (easily done via right-click context menu) and then use MP3 CD Doctor Lite (freeware, unaffiliated with MP3Toys) to burn it. Quick and easy.

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about! I’ve recently purchased Sacred 2 for my 360 (have it on PC as well) and thanks to GamersGate’s cheapo weekend (Hooray! – for cheap bastards like me) I got King’s Bounty for $9.99! I’ve been playing both off and on and enjoying them a lot.

I’m finding that KB is quite addictive and very, very polished. I have only found issue so far with a couple things – since the map has so much on it, I find my hero jitters a bit as I move him around… bumping into various things. But that’s not really a big deal. I wish you could auto-resolve battles, especially when you run into the 4th –insert low-level monster here– in a row. That can get kind of dull, but once again, not a game-breaker in the least.

Sacred 2 on the other hand, not so polished. You’d think it would be, considering the number and size of the updates applied to the PC version, but it’s sadly not the case. Still, there’s no comparable action-RPGs on the console (Marvel Ultimate Alliance imo is very diffeerent) so I guess it kinda wins by default. I find the text a bit hard to read on my large-screen 480p TV, but it’s still pretty darn fun.

Check back soon for some reviews on a Photo Organizer app and an MP3 jukebox app… both to appear as ‘Overlooked’ reviews.