As this cold im coming down with is slowly taking me over more and more I managed to finish Dragon Age.  
Somehow I can´t get myself to write a review but I still feel that somehow this blog entry will be about the same lenght as one. 
 
The story wrapped up waaay to quickly and the sense of epicness and a long journey that was present in the golden age of Baldurs Gate is left out. The game lingers a bit much on political intrigue and not enough on going on an actual journey, Lord of the Rings style. I draw this comparison since the game feels alot like Tolkiens masterpiece when it comes to storytelling and overarcing theme. 
I also thought that the world felt extremely static. Walking past the same vendors saying the same thing over and over and walking through the capital of the land with only a handful of people inhabiting it.  
I guess this is a product of modern games. The technical difficulties with populating a world with enough people is probably harder than one assumes when playing a game like this. But more background noise and enviromental sounds wouldnt have hurted it either even if the stuff that actually is there sounds sweet. 
The world also completely lacks any kind of day/night cycle and most importantly weather. Theres some snowfall in one particular area and some rain in one single cutscene but there was abviously not alot of work put into making the world feel as alive as possible.  
 
Graphics lack detail and polish, at least from the perspective I´m coming from. The 360 version dosent look very good. The environments seriously lack detail and both foliage and textures really dosent do anything to help the cause. 
The rest of the graphics are very uneven. Some characters look like they´re from an Xbox 1 game while some looks really sharp. Some clothing and armor have textures more muddy than my new high res Steam version of Quake while some looks superb.  
Character faces looks good overall but feels a bit stale in some situations that would benefit from waay more dramatic expressions and it seems like almost all people of the same gender shares bodies. Theres a male and a female version of every piece of clothing in the land and when someone wears it their body morphs to look exacly like everyone else of the same gender wearing those same clothes. Its 1 body with different heads. 
These are a minor issues in the grand scheme of things but its so painfully obvious where corners where cut to allow the game to find its way to stores. Corners are cut in pretty much every aspect of the visual presentation even down to sometimes glaring glitches, framerate hickups, artifacts in prerendered cutscenes and goofy looking body animations. 
Walking through a "forest" that consists of a path with muddy textures and 4 trees, 1 piece of low res grass and a painfully "backdrop" looking sky while enduring wierd animations, bad looking models and a controlscheme that allows for no precision at all at times are things you cant ignore forever in such a long game. 
 
BioWare suceeded with the audio all the way tho. Voiceacting is probably the best of the year after Uncharted 2 (they even share a voiceactor between the games) and the music is dynamic and well written even if it lacks any kind of memorable and/or emotional tunes. 
They also deserve praise for the choices you get to make throughout the game. The things you can do are mindblowing. There are so many paths to take through so many messed up situations and its never as easy as good and evil. You encounter situations where theres simply different points to view them. People have different opinions and different ways of viewing the world. Its never easy to choose a side and I often found myself thinking heavily on even the smallest of decisions and even regretting things I made earlier in the campaign. 
Its roleplaying at its finest. You get to tailor who you want to be and how the world sees you like no other RPG in recent memory. You get to choose how you want to act and what you want to do, not the developers. I even managed to bend some stuff in totally crazy ways to double cross several people and even fool myself out of a reward in the end. 
 
Its amazing what you get to do through the power of dialogue trees (even if the conversations drag a bit in some cases) in BioWares latest and thats really the lasting impression the game left on me. 
I feel like the game misses ALOT of opportunities that could have made it way more memorable and I also feel like the game could have embraced the mature rating even more. The game feels like its still censoring itself at certain points where it wouldnt have felt awkward or disgusting to let it go all the way. 
I never feel enveloped in the world itself and I feel like some things could have used some more dev time when it comes to the presentation (even on the PC wich I´ve played some of aswell) but somehow, after about 30 hours with 1 DLC completed (casual difficulty, a decent number of sidequests not completed), I want to do it all again and see how I will affect those around me if I decide to behave differently and make different decisions. 
I feel really bad about some of the stuff I did this time around and it eventually robbed me of several party members that I really wanted to get to know better. I also managed to rob myself of any kind of romance in the game. 
So i´ll probably jump in for another round of this one, tho maybe not right away. 
 
To round things up its not fair to compare it to Baldurs Gate. It was a different time back then. Games where made with less impact on economy and with less man hours. We were all much younger and played games in a completely different mindset than we do now. You cant compare the mindset and the way games were back then to how they are now. 
Dragon Age stands as an RPG of today even if its made in a very BioWare-like way. As such I couldnt help but change the way I looked at the game as I played it. I went in wanting to enjoy it like I enjoyed BG2 back when I was a youngster but lets face it, thats impossible. 
 
Hmm, I might end up posting some version of this as a review after all.  
If you stuck around all the way down to these lines, thanks for reading and feel free to comment!

Oh man, this goat is flipping out. Also, the dude playing is flipping out even worse! Funniest video evah?! 
     

So I´ve played alot of DJ Hero since I got it and I think I´m starting to getting the hang of Hard now and might try an Expert song soon. There are a suprising amount of really superb mixes in the game and I find myself really getting into them when I play. The award for best mixes in the game has to go to Scratch Perverts tho. I was really thinking that I liked Daft Punk the best or some of the DJ Shadow mixes but man, these guys knows how to work a turntable. Their remixes are by far the hardest ones in the game but man are they equally awesome to play.  
I find myself trying to get better and better on their insanely hard songs and there´s one in particular that is just so awesome I keep creating 1 song setlists with only this one on it and trying to perfect it. Its called Beats and Pieces and its basically just scratching hell. Your right wrist gets so tired after a while it hurts but its so damn fun to try and beat that madness scratching. The tempo of the song also ratches up as you play it and the first time it goes into its highest BPM I laughed because it was so awesome.  Jeff Gerstmann himself is at the top of my friendslist right now with a rank of 264 or something like that. I want to see how he managed to do that.
Another one of their songs called "Groundhog" also taunts you as you play it. Telling you that you cant challenge the Scratch Perverts. Its another completely awesome and hard mix that cranks up in difficuly as you play. 
These guys really wipes the floor with the other big names in the games as far as madness on a turntable goes. 
Take a look for your selves and gawk at the prowess that is Scratch Perverts  
  

   
  

  

I´m just randomly going to spill some thoughts on this game now that it is finished. I want to bring up points that might not be the overall opinion and as such I´m prepared for flaming. This is also why I have chosen to not write a review on the game. The only thing it would bring me is a lower recommendation ratio on my reviews. Its sad that it works that way but thats how it is.   
This text will probably sound pretty negative but thats because these are the points I want to bring up. Uncharted 2 is a fantastic game and a game I will probably play through again but me sitting here squirting awesome-sauce on the screen would not make for an interesting text.
 
For me the game is all about the production values. They are so insanely through the roof that they become the best part of the game. The overall presentation is quite mindblowing at spots. Its also all about the great characters and the interaction between them. Sound quality is also way up from the first game with much better SOUNDING weapons unlike the pea shooters in U1.

Its great to see these fantastic locations that all feel very dynamic and lively. Environments in general might actually be..yes.. THE best looking ever. On the other hand this is a very easy thing to say when you get your hands on a good looking, hyped up AAA release. If I were to instantly go back and compare to something like Gears of War 2 the difference might not be that mindblowing. Better,yes, but not mindblowing. With lighting and weathereffects seen in few other games though history tho, I always wanted to see the next locale and the next cutscene. Theres also some very intense cinematic moments stuffed in there that isnt as heavy on gameplay and that are scripted in such a way that you think you are going to die but you manage to get out of it in the last second. Its a great trick that brings the rollercoaster-value up even higher.  But all these things also hide the flaws very well.
 

Underneath this surface is a game that I still can´t enjoy to its fullest. Naughty-Dog have improved alot over U1 but man, they have ways to go before they can be counted amongst action titans such as Epic Games.  
I found myself often thinking about Gears of War 2 when playing U2. When I was thrown into another arena based battle I couldnt help but think about how much more well paced and designed they feel in a game like Gears 2. The flow of combat still feels a bit off in Uncharted. I can´t really put my finger on it but they feel a bit to chaotic and I often find myself dying from stuff I didnt even know were there. 
A.I behaviours might be smart (except when they throw grenades on themselves over and over) but I dont think they are FUN. The smartest A.I arent always the most fun to fight and considering what you go through over the course of the game I wouldnt blame them for making it even more unrealistic. 
I think I prefer third person shooting in a bit more structured form than in U2. It dosent have to be corridors, it just have to feel a bit less random both in arenadesign and enemybehaviours. 
I´m going to guess that many people playing through Uncharted 2 havent played Gears of War 2 and with that they lose a bit of perspective. I think that the Single Player campaign of Gears 2 is very comparable in terms of cinematic quality, rollercoaster moments and epic scenes. But without the frustration of the combat. 
You also die way to quickly on Normal in U2. You constantly have to be on the move to be more random than the A.I but in doing so you die all the time from trying to run from one point of cover to the next. Sometimes just sticking your head up will get you killed from something way past your line of sight. I constantly feel lucky when surviving a long encounter and thats not how I want to feel when playing a game through on Normal.
Its a bit sloppy and since Epic Games pretty much brought this style of combat into the current generation they also created the bar for it. Sadly it was very high even at Gears 1.  
 
Leveldesign is also very confusing at times. This was a problem I had in U1 and its still there. In several spots I find myself just having to wait for the hint button to

appear just so I can see where I´m supposed to go. The flow of the gameplay is broken up by this confusion and combined with the battles it ends up being a bit too exhausing on my mind. Part of it is because of the detailed environments but part of it is also failure in the leveldesign.  
A bit of a smaller thing that also was a thorn in my side was the whole weapong thing. There are so many weapons in the game..sooo many and they always get dropped ALL over the place. This often results in confusion in the heat of the battle. You need a new weapon so you go to pick it up only to find that there are so many things cluttered on the ground around the weapon you want that you end up either dead or with the wrong gun in your hand. This means you have to take cover again with the wrong weapon and then run up there again to start cycling through dropping your weapons with triangle until you get what you want. This is still annoying after a battle when you run around the area looking for ammo. Before you know it you have thrown your equipped weapon instead of picking up more ammo for it. Drives me up a wall !
There´s also alot of nitpicking to be done here on stuff like Drake jumping to his death even tho I clearly wasnt jumping that way and glitching the cover just enough to fall over a ledge. But stuff like that and stuff like choppy animations in certain situations arent really things that get in the way of the game. 
 

The thing is tho that Naughty-Dog succeeded so well in the presentation of the game that I am willing to put up with all this to see it through. The atmosphere, enviroments, characters and dialogue are so very well produced that one can´t help but fall in love with the game. Alot of work has been put into pacing in both gameplay and enviroments to create a very caried campaign that feels like a grand adventure by the time you are done. 
This game have some of the best voiceacting, character interactions, graphics, sound and pure rollercoaster feeling of the year and thats why its good. Its not because of combat or traversal. Its because of the cinematic quality of the experience. Because man, there are so many WOW-moments in this game where you cant believe you just did that. 
That is why you need to play through the game. The gameplay isnt all bad but that is not the reason I´ll play this game through again before the year it over. 
 
With that said I welcome any and all discussion on the subject. If you can argue against me in an adult manner I will welcome you and listen to what you have to say. Because that is fun. Mature discussion over a game is something very satisfying. On the other hand, if you are reading this and feeling uncontrollable anger I recommend that you just leave. I am not claiming to be right on any of this (hell I am willing to accept that I´m just mentally unable to enjoy the style of combat that this game offers), its just my perspective and I feel I really, more than ever, need to make this clear here.

I was going to post a blog about my new Tournament Arcade stick but I can´t find the camera so instead, I´m going to place my vote on Sidney in the "Hottest Bayonetta" contest collab between SEGA and Maxim. You should do the same! 
http://www.maxim.com/gaming/articles/84545/choose-hottest-bayonetta.html