This excellent UFC Undisputed 2010
Category: Xbox 360
This Week’s Videogame Releases
There’s nothing interesting coming out for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, or Nintendo DS this week. Thankfully, the PlayStation Portable has a pair of releases to end Q1 2010. Japanese RPG fans will want to keep an eye on Mimana: Iyar Chronicle
Are any of you buying new games this week?
Microsoft Confirms April 6 USB Drive Support for Xbox 360
As I mentioned last week, the fine peeps at Joystiq did some sleuthing and discovered that the Microsoft Xbox 360 will be supporting USB memory in the near future. Microsoft marketing guy Major Nelson confirmed the feature, which is set to hit on April 6, 2010. The good Major highly recommends solid state memory over spinning optical drives. Here are a few other points from his post:
- You can have 2 devices connected to the console at a time, enabling up to 32GB of simultaneous storage.
- The system won’t just configure the device once it is connected to the console. You’ll need to head to the memory area in system settings, select your USB Device, and choose from Configure Now (Format and Configure the Full Device), or Customize (you can choose how much memory you want configured for Xbox360 from the free space on the device.)
My 120GB Elite still has plenty of room and I don’t see myself filling it up any time soon. Non-gaming media goes to my PS3 — you know, a system that uses standard hard drives. For gamers with smaller hard drives, I can see how this will be a useful and most welcomed solution.
Any of you anxious to plug some USB flash drives into your Xbox 360?
Today’s Poll: Final Fantasy XIII vs. Heavy Rain
Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII and Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain are two of the most polarizing games released in years. FFXIII is a drastic departure from the traditional JRPG style of the series and fans are torn over the gameplay style. It’s definitely different, but the production values are insanely good (minus Reona Rewis). Heavy Rain also has gamers split. Some can’t stand its gameplay style, while others view it as a landmark in interactive storytelling.
Today I wanted to see which game is more polarizing to you. Make your choice in the poll and explain your answer in the comments section if you have time.
[poll id=”32″]
Binary Thoughts (Not a Review!) on Dragon Age: Origins Awakening
As many of you know, I’ve been playing the Dragon Age: Origins Awakening expansion pack for the last week…sometimes at the expense of sleep. Most Dragon Age fans will love it, but newcomers should stick to the original. While I had loads of fun playing it and enjoyed it so much that I decided to give it a second run instead of getting back to Final Fantasy XIII, it definitely had some issues. Using Augustine’s binary system, here are some thoughts (not a review!) on Dragon Age: Origins Awakening.
Good: That characters are fantastic. Oghren steals the show with some outstanding humor. I also enjoyed what Anders, Justice, Nathaniel, and Sigrun brought to the table from a storytelling perspective. The only character I didn’t care for was Velanna. She trumped Morrigan in the “angry magic bitch” department, but didn’t possess any of her sultry charm. For the most part, the writing and voice acting behind the companion characters was extremely well done.
Bad: There are no romances for you to enjoy in the game! Courting Leliana and Morrigan was so much fun in the original Dragon Age. If you’re into bisexual elf assassins or bastard nobles, you could get with Zevran or Alistair. I was extremely disappointed that there are no romances available in Awakening. Perhaps “taming” Velanna would have made her more interesting.
Good: The new specializations, skills, and talents are fun to play around with. While I didn’t think much of keeper and legionnaire scout specializations, the rest were pretty fun and useful. As for skills, being able to craft runes is pretty cool and I like that there were some quests that required rune crafting/potion making. All in all, the expansion added plenty of great ways to expand your characters. Oh yeah, the new “flicker” talent for rogues is totally boss.
Good: The “Manual of Focus” item is a godsend. At the end of Dragon Age, I was just picking skills and talents I didn’t really want because I maxed out on all the ones I needed. With a bunch of new ways to develop your character, being able to totally redo all of your specs is just awesome. It lets you correct any mistakes you made while leveling up or totally change your character’s focus. It’s perfect for players that started the game haphazardly assigning skill points and talents, but really got into the system later and regretted their leveling decisions.
Bad: From what I understand, the dagger/dexterity issue has not been fixed, even though I was told it would be when I saw the game at GDC. Thankfully, my rogues (Raymond and Keebler) are cunning based, but it’s still annoying that this longstanding problem persists.
Bad: The expansion pack is full of bugs. In my first run in Awakening, I encountered more bugs and glitches than in all five of my original DS playthroughs. Some of the bugs are pretty bad — certain quests disappearing, armor not appearing properly, etc.
Good: Sir Pounce-a-lot!
Bad: No Sandal (Enchantment!).
Good: Managing Vigil’s Keep adds a new layer to the game. Deciding on what part of the land to defend and settling domestic disputes brought something new to the DA experience. The cool part is that if you’re not into tasks like that, you can let your seneschal take care of them.
Good: There are some nice cameos by Alistair, Wynne, Herren, and Wade.
Bad: There were not enough cameos. I especially missed Leliana and Shale. It would have been nice to have seen them again.
Bad: Aside from items from the Return to Ostagar DLC, you can’t use DLC items in Awakening. That just sucks. I really wanted to import stuff like blood dragon armor, the Helm of Honnleath, etc.
Even though this expansion pack has some warts, I still loved it. While I was impressed with the originality, graphics, music, and storytelling in Heavy Rain, I enjoyed my time with Dragon Age: Origins Awakening more. If any of you are playing it or considering picking it up, I’d love to hear what you think!
Dragon Age: Origins Awakening Character Grades + Gift Guide
This article on Dragon Age: Origins Awakening contains spoilers on Anders, Justice, Mhairi, Nathaniel, Oghren, Sigrun, and Velanna. You’ve been warned, now let’s get to it! I’m just about done with my second run on this fine Dragon Age expansion pack. In case you’ve been wondering about the new characters, here’s a quick write-up on each of them (and Oghren too!), along with the gifts they like. I’ve graded them based on how useful they were to my party and how much I enjoyed their dialogue. Your mileage may vary depending on your play style and personal tastes.
Oghren: Everyone’s favorite angry, drunken dwarf returns in Awakening and he’s better than ever! Players that are looking for a DPS (damage per second) warrior will love Oghren. He’s built for dealing heavy damage with a two-handed weapon. The writing and voice acting behind Oghren is more powerful than anything he could do with a sword, axe, or hammer. He provides brilliant comic relief no matter who’s in your party. Whether he’s trading barbs with Anders, hitting on Sigrun, or questioning Justice on the sex drive of a spirit inhabiting a decaying body, his lines are hilarious. In my first run, my party didn’t need a DPS warrior, but Oghren’s lines were so good that he stayed with me for most of my adventure.
Items for Oghren: Any alcoholic beverage (duh) and the toy horse.
Grade: Oghren steals the show with his dialogue and he’s great at doling out heavy damage. B
Anders: You would think that an apostate with wise-ass tendencies wouldn’t survive very long in Ferelden, yet Anders has made a record-breaking seven escapes from Circle of Magi and appears in fine health when you fist encounter him. Anders is a great healer that can provide buffs or offense depending on how you level him up. He has the abilities of Wynne matched with an Alistair-like personality. While his dialogue isn’t quite as funny as Oghren’s, Anders is no slouch in the humor department — particularly if you give him a pet cat (which he promptly names Sir Pounce-a-lot). I loved Anders conversations with Justice. The spirit thinks Anders has an obligation to help fellow apostates, while Anders feels that he has an obligation to not get killed.
Items for Anders: Kitten, bell collar, gold earring, scarf, book on phylacteries, and silver bracers.
Grade: Anders provides an outstanding blend of skills and entertainment. A
Nathaniel: Remember that prick Arl Rendon Howe from Origins? Well, here’s his son! Nathaniel went to Amaranthine to get revenge on the grey warden that killed his father, but had a change of heart. The good news is that you can recruit him and his lethal bow skills to the grey warden cause. In terms of gameplay, he’s just like Leliana — outstanding with a bow and useful for chests/traps. Although he learns that his father was a devious prick and warms up to you, he still has all the annoying personality traits you’d expect from someone with noble blood. His exchanges with Sigrun are particularly interesting; the contrast between a noble human and a casteless dwarf are pretty cool.
Items for Nathaniel: Howe bow, Delilah Howe’s letters, whetstone, locksmith’s tools, and sextant.
Grade: His bow skills are outstanding, but I usually don’t get along with rich people and he made miss Leliana. B
Sigrun: For someone that was born without a caste and ended up in the Legion of the Dead, Sigrun is a pretty perky lady. She has a bright personality, with some surprising deadpan humor thrown in. If you close your eyes, it’s almost like you’re adventuring with Janeane Garofalo. From a gameplay standpoint, her specialization makes her a great strength rogue with good survivability. Personally, I prefer cunning rogues for melee and dexterity rogues for archery. While I didn’t find her too useful in the game, I enjoyed her conversations on class with Nathaniel, watching Oghren hit on her (the payoff is awesome!), and watching her pickpocket Justice.
Items for Sigrun: Spyglass, potted plant, snow globe, warrior’s book, toy chariot, and soap-on-a-rope.
Grade: She’s a sweetheart, but I preferred Nathaniel as my companion rogue. Plus her personal quest is currently glitched on consoles. C+
Velanna: Replacing Morrigan as the party’s “angry magic bitch”, Velanna has that Dalish chip on her shoulder. If you like offensive mages — and they are ridiculously powerful in the game — Velanna is your girl. Although her specialization isn’t great, there are so many other offensive spells that more than make up for it. All that great wizardry aside, I just didn’t dig Velanna. She angrier than Morrigan and not nearly as sultry. When Justice was lecturing her on the wrongness of her actions, I was hoping that he’d just give her a shield bash after the third conversation. Some of you will dig her sharp barbs, but she just didn’t work for me.
Items for Velanna: Elven runestone, elven trinket, carved greenstone, shiny malachite, blank journal, discarded journal, and ornate silver bowl.
Grade: Incredible magic accompanied by an annoying personality? I’ll stick to Anders and Sir Pounce-a-lot, thank you very much. C-
Justice: The most unique playable character in Dragon Age, Justice is a spirit that got pulled into the physical world and placed in the partially decayed body of a dead grey warden. Unfamiliar with how things work in the “real” world, he’s struggles to understand things, but grows to appreciate the beauty in humanity. All that aside, he’s an awesome tank. Whether you prefer dealing damage as a DPS warrior, a backstabbing rogue, or a spell-hurling mage, it’s always good to have a tank to distract enemies and soak up some damage. Justice’s stats and specialization make him perfect for the job. Since his views are so alien, his interaction with the entire party is interesting.
Items for Justice: Elven prayer book, verses of dreams book, lyrium book, lyrium ring, Kristoff’s locket, and Kristoff’s mementos.
Grade: He’s an awesome tank with a background that’s very different from the others. A-
Mhairi: BioWare pulled off a nice swerve by promoting Mhairi on the official Dragon Age web site and during its media tour. The sound of a female tank appealed to some players, while others liked the fact that she’s essentially a grey warden fangirl. Unfortunately for everyone, Mhairi doesn’t survive the “joining” ceremony and dies early in the game. So why am I including her in this article? Well, for the past week the search terms “Dragon Age Mhairi dies” and “Dragon Age Mhairi dead” have been leading to some nice traffic. Maybe her corpse will provide another week of decent hits.
Items for Mhairi: Flowers for her grave.
USB Storage Support Coming to Xbox 360 in 2010
It looks like the Xbox 360 will be getting USB mass storage support in Spring 2010. That’s the story from Joystiq, which obtained some nifty documentation and screenshots that show the console supporting USB storage. Here are some additional details:
According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. “The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.” Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, “consumers are offered two choices: ‘Configure now’ or ‘Customize’.” The “Configure now” option will use “the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB” meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you’re using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage.
It’s great that the Xbox 360 will be supporting standard storage, but it kind of sucks that it’s limited to 16GB. It would have been nice if gamers could buy a standard USB hard drive instead of the proprietary and overpriced units sold by Microsoft. Looking on the bright side of life (always do this), at least overpriced memory units will soon be obsolete, hey?
What do you think of the upcoming USB storage support? Will it be useful? Or is 16GB of storage not enough?
Xbox 360 “Slim” On the Way?
Here’s a hot rumor for you…or perhaps I should say a cool and small rumor — it looks like the Xbox 360 is getting the “slim” treatment. A9VG has posted a photo of what appears to be a newly designed Xbox 360 board that uses new chips and an updated design. Here’s what Kotaku had to say about the board:
The pic above shows the board in question, with the chip part of a rumoured redesign for the Xbox 360 console, testing of which has recently been completed in China. This isn’t simply a new board for the existing hardware, either; it’s reportedly a total redesign of the console. Think the PS3 Slim, only…for an Xbox 360.
My Xbox 360 Elite has been going strong for a little over a year after being replaced once. However, I’m always interested in newer models that use less power and up the reliability. It’s easy to sell a console for a good price on eBay, so making a switch isn’t a big deal to me.
How about you ladies and gents? Would you be interested in a slimmed down Xbox 360?
Coffee Talk #106: Angry Rant on GDC Scoop Deja Vu
Warning: this is going to be one of those “selfish” editions of Coffee Talk. You see, I had a pretty amazing time at GDC. The networking was fantastic — I bumped into hundreds of fantastic developers and great friends. I really enjoyed spending time in my old home city, San Francisco. It was just a wonderful blend of people, places, and circumstances…that was tarnished by two people from VGChartz. Before I get to that, let’s take a trip back to 2005.
Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Manny Pacquiao dominating Joshua Clottey, America screwing over Alex Lambert, or David Beckham missing the World Cup, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
Warning: this is going to be one of those “selfish” editions of Coffee Talk. You see, I had a pretty amazing time at GDC. The networking was fantastic — I bumped into hundreds of fantastic developers and great friends. I really enjoyed spending time in my old home city, San Francisco. It was just a wonderful blend of people, places, and circumstances…that was tarnished by two people from VGChartz. Before I get to that, let’s take a trip back to 2005.
Right around GDC 2005, I posted the biggest story of my career. It was a three-part series on the console that would become the Xbox 360. I was either one of the first people or the first person to reveal features like achievements, gamercards, gamerscores, and gamertags. I worked hard on the story and was very proud of it.
Kotaku’s Brian Crecente totally ripped the third part of the feature. To be completely honest, he was absolutely right to do so. My editor…strongly suggested a third part just to get more page views. I hated writing that fluff after two highly informative pieces. All that aside, I was still annoyed that Crecente dismissed the first two parts of the feature as “some new information”. Some new information?!? Bullsh*t. I revealed a ton of facts and features that were only known by Microsoft and its software partners at the time.
Okay, back to the future (1.21 gigawatts!). The site has been getting great traffic since Friday thanks to a story I wrote about the successor to the Nintendo DS. Yes, I traded my “verbal entertainer” outfit for a journalist’s hat and got some pretty cool results. The story capped off a great week at GDC 2010…or so I thought. I was pissed off to learn that two people from VGChartz wrote negative things about my story, my site, and me on N4G.
First up was public relations manager Brian Zucker who wrote:
Im at GDC 2010 right now and this story is completely false. rpad.tv lost all credibility before it had any.
Yes, a guy with “public relations” in his title actually wrote that unsubstantiated and libelous comment backed up by nothing.
Here’s a follow-up comment from his coworker, community manager and senior editor Nick Pantazis:
This is completely fake. I’m also at GDC, the Nintendo reps here are completely uninvolved with the future of the DS and its development. This is 100% made-up on the spot. Do not support this website with hits.
I guess Pantazis didn’t bother to read the part of the article where I said that none of the information came from Nintendo. Since he asked some rep at Nintendo’s booth about the article and he/she denied it, Pantazis felt it was okay to accuse me of making up the story and tell people not to go to my site.
VGChartz is a popular site and a great resource. It’s annoying that the company allows its employees to make accusations based on idiocy. It’s completely unprofessional. One of my friends said that I should cut these two a break since they’re college kids and I’ve been writing about games since before they hit puberty. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m proud of what I’ve done over the years and I’m not going to let two children from a popular web site piss all over it.
When Brian Zucker has entertained and served as many readers as I have, then he can question my credibility. When Nick Pantazis questions all the developers I spoke to about the DS successor, then he can accuse me of making up stories and tell people not to visit my site. Until then, both of them should stop making baseless accusations and shut the hell up.
Binary Preview of Dragon Age: Origins Awakening
I stopped by BioWare’s suite at GDC 2010 to check out Dragon Age: Origins Awakening. Most of you know that Dragon Age was my favorite game of 2009 and I played through that sucker four times. As much as I love the Final Fantasy and Pokemon series, those games will have to take a backseat to this expansion pack. I already know that I’m going to love it, but in the spirit of my friend Augustine’s binary system, here’s a preview of the expansion using two categories: good and bad.
Good: Accompanying Awakening is a title update that will fix several issues with the original game. One of the biggest glitches it will patch is the dreaded dexterity bug in dagger-damage calculation. This bug made dexterity-based rogues far less effective than they should have been.
Bad: Players that went with cunning rogues will be steamed that their carefully crafted thieves will not be able to exploit the dexterity fix out of the box.
Good: Thankfully, the expansion has tomes that will allow you to redistribute character stats and specs. Keebler, my city elf rogue, will be deadlier than ever by the end of the week.
Bad: I don’t care if intelligent, talking darkspawn are supposed to be menacing. They (pictured in the header image) still look like evil raisins to me.
Good: Several characters will make cameo appearances in Awakening. Those of you keeping up with the expansion’s trailers already know that Alistair takes a break from ruling Ferelden to check up on your party.
Bad: Only Oghren returns as a playable character. I understand that new blood needs to be introduced and I’m looking forward to adventuring with the new characters, but I got super attached to Leliana, Shale, and Dog. I’m sure that those of you that worked hard to avoid the Leliana romance glitch will be disappointed that the sexy Orlesian bard will not playable.
Good: Fans of the original game will want to play the expansion at least twice. If you play as your original Dragon Age character, you’re viewed as the hero of Ferelden. People will treat your favorably and there should be some nice perks you can enjoy during Awakening. You can also start from scratch and play as a grey warden from Orlais. Some people will view you as an outsider, remembering the harsh treatment Ferelden received during the Orlesian occupation.
Good: There are loads of new talents and skills to enjoy. Characters will be able to craft their own enchantments (enchantment!). Bow slingers will get to abuse a new area-of-effect attack. As a rogue fan, I saw some outstanding defensive and offensive skills that left me drooling. Realizing that mages were ridiculously powerful in the original, BioWare wanted to beef up the other classes in the expansion.
Good: Enchantments (enchantment!) can be used in armor now!
Good: The dialogue seems well done. The characters had lots of great banter, with Oghren and Anders providing excellent comedy to Mhairi’s straight woman.
Good: Speaking of Mhairi, she was apparently requested by Dragon Age fans. All the tanks in the original were male. Mhairi will show that women can tank with the best of them.
Good: Each class has two new specializations to learn. It’s the same deal as the original; specializations can either be learned from other characters or through tomes.
Good: You have a new base of operations called Vigil’s Keep. No more crappy campsites for you and your party!
Bad: Vigil’s Keep requires some management. You can fortify its defenses or keep the local peasants happy. Sure, you can let your seneschal take care of things, but you really ought to do this yourself. It’s cool that it adds another activity to an already deep game, but it’s bad because it takes time away from killing evil raisins that are threatening the land.
Good: Since you’re the new commander of the grey wardens, you’ll be able to recruit new members to the cause. This includes busting out the right of conscription.
Bad: As you know, becoming a grey warden requires a ceremony that some of your recruits will not survive. I’m not even attached to the new characters in Awakening and I’m already sad that some of them will not make it to the end.
My binary preview is over, but I’ll be writing about the game a ton (not reviewing it!) as I play through it. I’m sure I’m going to have a blast and I hope some of you play it too so that we can chat it up. Is it Tuesday yet?!?