This is a short one, just a little thought: 
 
I don't like it when they (movies/games/other) do the whole "the evil we said was beaten has impossibly returned" because it always feels funky (though not everything that used that excuse turned out bad or anything. i.e. evil dead and so on). 
So from what i've seen in the trailer for Dead Space 2, I would love to see something like "Issac Clark is safe, only he's crazy and OH MY GOD MONSTERS... BAM BAM BAM" 
 
BUT ! 
the big bad evil is gone. Issac is just insane and he's been shooting regular people through the game. 
 
I haven't played Dead Space, so a probable loop hole might be there and be o.k. 
 
I'm no doctor, so what the hell do i know ?

Hello internet people, 
 
I've been playing mainly 4 games lately, all '09 games for some reason.
 

Borderlands !

Dirt 2 !

Assassin's Creed 2 !

The Beatles: Rock Band

Bought Civilization V about a week and some ago. Loaded it up and hit "quick-play" and here I am, a settler and a warrior in an unknown land. First Washington, then New York and Philadelphia, all the while fending off barbarians and dealing with two city states. Soon, I learn that we three are on a continent of our own. Pleased, knowing that I wouldn't have to deal with any civilization trying to do something stupid, I focused America on culture, science and sea fearing. Building costal cities and eventually conquering one of the city states that was positioned on a critical choke point. 
 
With ocean crossing ships, came the knowledge that  Napoleon was a skip over a small canal on a continent to the east. Being cautious, I decline opening my borders to him and decide to explore his mass of land. Soon I learn that France is sharing its borders with India on a fairly large continent. Of course, they are not so pleased with each other and continually ask me to aid one of them. Not wanting to pull hostility towards my quiet land, America remains neutral. I order my ships to sail further east, finding the Egyptians and Siam sharing a massive continent, the 3rd and final on our little plant. The most comforting thought in this excursion, is that America probably has the largest fleet in the world which, hopefully, will prevent the need of a large land armies to protect my country. Leaving my coastal cities building more ships and expanding my fleet, and my inland cities building wonders, buildings and improvments instead of soldiers. 
   
Knowing that on my small continent, I will forever be restrained in resources both luxury and stratigic, I decide that to further America I must invade the french, which will be the easiest target seeing as they have multiple coast cities and their army will be spread wide after conquering the small nation of India. I build up some more ships and a few minutemen, because obviously, you can't conquer without a land unit. My ships set sail, parting my fleet to attack three cities at once, Two on the south and one in the north.  Napoleon, one of the great generals, doesn't believe my lies and amasses forces in the south. Keeping my invading forces to the north a little behind makes him believe the south is the only front and I get to pummle three cities with bombarding ships, weakening thier defences and keeping the french army wounded. The stage is set for an invasion and American minutemen land on the beaches and conquer one city to the south, and one to the north. Sadly, my intelligence was not up to date with the armies that  Napoleon has built, and he takes back his southern coast, but not long after realizes that his northen city is lost, begs for peace. Offering gold, resources and payments in the negotiations. 
 
Peace remains for a long while, but it is no surprise to see the French building forces that will one day try to take the city back. unfourtunatly, my borders on the french lines do not stretch wide and I have little room to plant defending forces. Things look bad on the political stage, as the world leaders view my actions as hostile (well... they were) and it becomes harder to sign trade agreements and research pacts. So I focus on my America, building schools, libraries and universities to educate my people and make America known as a leader in technology and science. 
But this endeavor doesn't really succeed. In the past, I wasn't focusing on it and it seems like America is always a step behind Siam. So if I can't be remembered for scientific achievments or being culturally magnificent, America will be remembered as an all around civilization. Spreading wide on the land, being strong and smart while also developing culturally. 
This means conquering Egypt. 
  
Egypt only has three cities, all three on this penninsula, meaning that using my fleet will make conquering them an easy task. I send my fleet and ready some invading forces, only this time I know Egypt barely has any armies. Everything is in place, I begin my attack and... France Attacks ! In my foolishness, I forget about  Napoleon and he tries to take back his city. I resist for a while, but eventually lose the city, pulling my ships back to avoid losing them as well. In Egypt on the other hand, America has great success as we devour the small civilization. From here, I think to myself, i'll be able to keep hold of these cities and grow my civilization enough to edge out Siam when the book is closed. 
Siam has other ideas... 
 
Not long after taking Egypt, Siam attack my newly taken cities and all my forces are just no enough to withstand the huge land and air units storming the land. So instead of trying to keep my new land, I decide to make Siam pay. I'll take over thier eastern shore with the large naval fleet America still has in those waters, together with some B17 bombers to help weaken the coast cities to a point where it will be easy to just march into the city. All this, while Siam has it's forces to the west of the land. Taking over the first two is easy, but takes time because this was not planned before hand. From there, I move my bombers over the small ocean and begin bombarding 3 more cities with air strikes and naval cannons. I take two more cities before I see the mass of armies that Siam still had closing in and tell Siam I'd rather end the conflict here than have more bloodshed. They agree and "peace" is present again. 
 
Now, seeing the end near, I see that just trying to be memorable won't be enough, I pour all my resources into researching space exploration. Building each part of the space ship as fast as I can, but alas... 
 
2050 AD comes and I have all but one piece of the space ship ready. The book is closed and America will never be remembered as the greatest civilization ever formed. Instead, it will be remembered as those who are always a step behind Siam and their king.

 Alrighty… at some point during playing ME2, I decided I want to do this, so here goes… 

First of all, a disclaimer: I finished DA:O before playing ME2, both on the same PC, and both on the default difficulty level.

Graphics

 Traversing the universe of ME2, you'll visit spaceships, colonies, harsh desert planets, lush jungle areas, box filled warehouses and so on. All look amazing with very high details and a very "alive" feeling. In Ferelden, you'll visit… well, Ferelden. Because the world of DA:O feels consistent, its locations don't differ much. You'll see some settlements, some mountains, and a shitload of trees. Sadly, having Denerim being a fairly large place costs by having less detail and effects. Having a numerous levels of the magi circle means you'll re-use some graphics and so on. Not that ME2 doesn't have huge places, but for some reason they felt smaller.

 Dragon Age - 0, Mass Effect - 1

Controls

This category is actually just here to tell you that both games control awesome. The two games have completely different controls that are impossible to compare. One is an old school RPG control scheme with hotbars, character indicators and so on. The other is a modern day 3 person shooter. Both handle great, either shooting Geth in the face, or pausing to tell Alistair to slice that Darkspawn Emissary up. 

Gameplay

It’s no surprise what you are getting in terms of gameplay with these games. One is a 3rd person shooter with some running around and flying through the galaxy and shooting probes at planets to mine them. Oh, and hacking minigames.

The other is an old school RPG. You talk to a whole bunch to people, you explore caves and dungeons, you pick up loot and you pause the game a lot when in combat. Yes, you can do the combat in real time, but I think you only take away from the game when playing like that.

I'm giving this round to the age of dragons, because that mining stuff was boring and I enjoy pausing and giving orders to my crew.

 Dragons - 2, Effects - 2

Story

 Don't worry, no spoilers here…

With DA:O, you get the framework of a classic, dark fantasy. But the interesting world bioware built, combined with well defined characters and interactions results in a great story that takes that framework and turns it into a deep game that really sucks you in.

With ME2, you get the framework of a classic, sci-fi action movie. But the interesting world bioware built, combined with well defined characters and interactions results in a great story that takes that framework and turns it into a deep game that really sucks you in.

I know. I did that on purpose. Both games use brilliant story and storytelling to keep you interested. Dragon Age tells the story of your character as it becomes a grey warden and its quest to stop the blight and off the archdemon. Mass Effect continues the story of your Shepard as he (or she) fight a new threat to humanity. 

Audio

You get really good actors in both games, so hearing Alistair argue with Morrigan sounds really believable and balanced. The ambient sounds in the world are pretty good too, with battle-cries, fireballs exploding and drunk dwarves drinking ale. But if I hear "Enchantments" one more time…

Mass Effect really delivers in this area in my opinion. The dialog is delivered well, everything is beeping and booping as all sci-fi themes do, and a lot of little touches like the hiss in the way Volus speak or the sharpness in the way Salarians talk. Besides the character stuff, the world sounds right, even for a world I'll probably never see for myself, I know that  the guns give out that metallic pings, biotic powers have that "whoosh" to them and so on. 

Dialog Trees

Bioware knows how to do dialog trees. Simple as that. The choices are there and the results aren't directly known. Dragon Age uses the classic "pick a line of dialog" way, while Mass Effect continues with its dialog wheel from ME1 that only gives the general direction of what Shepard is about to say, and not word for word stuff.

While both games do a great job in (usually) giving you all the choices you would want in a RPG conversation, Dragon Age's trees would feel a lot more like role playing while Mass Effect's ones felt "game-e". In more than one place, DA:O put me in a tough situation that can't possibly have a "good" result and left me to choose my path. When faced with these problems during play, I'd often stop and think what my character would say and what were his motivations to pick that option over the others. On the other hand, more often than not, ME2 would put me in a "tough" position, only to give me a "renegade" choice that would usually end in the "best" way.

When faced with that option, knowing that going a certain way in the tree will still feel RP while not having a negative effect, it's hard to turn away from it. 

Dragon effect – 4, Mass Age – 3

The Nit Picking Stage

In ME2, you can do missions for specific party members to gain their loyalty, which flips some doohickey backstage but also unlocks that party members forth ability.

I played my Shepard as a "Get the job done" soldier, and most of these loyalty missions felt out of character to me, but knowing that I'll gain so much for it, I went and did it anyway. All of them. In Dragon Age, side missions and quests didn't feel like that, and they all felt negligible. And I really didn't do much of them.

In Dragon Age, the way relationships grow feels a little odd. Conversations and learning about a character advances it a bit, either for better or for worse, but giving gifts can make someone love you. 

BONUS ROUND

While in DA:O, your character faces difficult decisions, which I made ,lived with, and think all the more highly of DA:O for them. But something happened in Mass Effect that I didn't see coming. Without noticing, my Shepard grew. Now, that's not a euphemism for something dirty. As I said before, I was role playing my Shepard as kind of a hard ass. Which in early stages of the game presented in having sex with Jack, and that felt very "in character". But as the game blazed on I felt more and more connected to my crew. I was going over to talk with Mordin because I wanted to learn more about him. I was visiting Thane to hear more about his past. I was actually enjoying talking to Tali, which resulted in a relationship with her, moments before going on that suicide mission. It all felt "canon" and nothing felt out of character. My Shepard has changed. The crew aboard the Normandy changed him. Now that's not something I've seen happen in a lot of games.

Yes. It's a god damn tie. To be honest, when I started this I thought I'll be giving it to DA:O because at heart, I'm an old school RPG player.  

But what the hell do I know, right ?

WARNING ! THIS IS VERY SPOILERY.... I FUCKING MEAN IT.
 
Something about Dragon Age's story and how things evolve just makes me want to discuss it with others. Yesterday, I faced a decision I could feel in my gut would come back to haunt me whatever choice I make. So here is the story so far:
 

I am about to close the cover on the 25th year of my life, and around the 18th of my gaming life. Ask my friends today and they'll probably all say that I am a console gamer, and they'ed be right. But this wasn't always the case. Even when I had my first console, the Mega-Drive, I was still thinking of myself as a PC gamer. This was mostly because of RPG's. I poured hours and hours into games like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1 and 2 (and yet i love fallout 3...) and the likes. Then things started to change. the genre changed and me with it.  
 
During the late 90's, RPG's became the dungeon cralwer, action heavy, Archer lady / Brooding mage guy / Warrior big dude, and so on, but you still had a skill tree and loot... Don't get me wrong, I played the shit out of Diablo and still enjoy Titan Quest, but for different reasons. Combine that with the way that RTS's all became the same generic stuff (I haven't played any RTS between Starcraft and Company of Heroes...), with my Playstation starting to get really awesome stuff like Metal Gear Solid and TEKKEN 3, my relationship with my PC altered. It was now second bananas to my console. 
 
The reason I am gushing over this, is that I got Dragon Age: Origins and all those old feelings came rushing back. This isn't the first step to going back to being a PC gamer, but seeing the RPG genre rise it's zombifide hand out of it's grave like this is..... fucking awesome. I only played about 4 hours of DA:O and i'm already inlove. This game is sending me back to a time where all i needed was this one game to last me 6 months (and then some with replays) . Add to that the fact that it is now 11 years after Baldur's Gate, which means some serious technological advancments were made, which mean an impossible amount of story lines among other things. 
 
I love that they didn't shy away from making it balls hard. I'm playing on normal and got a wipe 3 hours into the game. Dude.... 
 
I'm just a happy gamer right now, that's all.

this is what happens when you don't let the video buffer far enough.

rock music that is.

Heya all !