Tigranes

Next is the Undead Sassan Replica. I don't think I SS'd her much before, because she's pretty much your standard ARGH KILL YOU, but she kept cropping up trying to stop us killing Laiken. Sidenote: this game has the best battle cries. Every single one of them are different and they're all about squeezing you through demons' intestines or something. Our dear old autistic dragon friend, still looking like a 12 year old in plate mail. Laiken himself appears, too. I'm not SS'ing the battles themselves because, well, single-enemy fights tend to last about 4 seconds for Manny. We rush them, then use Thousand Strikes (which makes your character slash them really fast with +% damage). Usually I only have trouble when I"m completely swarmed, against archers (due to our low DEX = low ranged resistance), or disabling spells such as Polymorph. I can't believe I never showed me getting turned into a ladybug, but I think usually I was too busy trying not to die. Finally there is Ba'al: The Remix. As usual, not as tough as the original. And at last we reach our long presaged destination. We are in Ygerna's memory of her own execution, by The Divine, the great hero now presumed dead (is he your hero from the first game, or something?) and Gandalf. The fight is quick, very quick, and I missed SS'iing it. I was just going to reload to get some fight shots when... Eternity? That doesn't sound good. We learn that Talana, the Dragon Knight who gave us our powers right at the start and sent us on our quest to revive Ygerna, was in fact a manifestation of Ygerna herself: trapped in death, she was trying to find a vessel powerful enough so that, manipulated, it could help her return to life and join Damian. The Divine tells us that both he and I are now trapped in this pocket dimension, powerless to stop Ygerna and Damian. That be the happy couple. Awwww. Can you feel the love? No? OK, maybe now you can feel the love, as they destroy their opposition into tiny crisp packet sized debris. So, that is the end of the main game of Divinity II, before the story picks up where we left off in the expansion pack, Flames of Vengeance. I understand that a lot of people felt shafted by the "You Lose" ending - personally, I didn't think it was very well done, but I didn't mind too much, either. Probably because this is such a silly game that I just enjoy the silliness and don't really care about the world itself, which, as far as I can see in Div II, is boring as all hell. The story would have been terribly boring if the dialogue was all serious. I also love the fact that they were brave enough to go with the You Lose ending. That said, I think it was really poorly done, because everything happens in the ending cutscene. Everybody, including Gandalf, is completely fooled. I don't think you need cliche ominous moment of DUN DUN DUN, but it would have helped if you were able to explore the idea that there is some doubt as to whether the revival of Ygerna is a good idea / that it would work. The DIvine also explains at the end that Damian was trying to stop you because he though tyou were going to kill her - again that could have done with some exploration in the 17 times he shows up to threaten you throughout the game. That said, Div II was a really enjoyable game, and in the remastered Dragon Knight Saga version, the adventures of Manny are far from over. So here we go straight to the xpack, Flames of Vengeance.

(Isn't Arnold the guy way back in Broken Valley? Did I miss something again? ) We arrive in Aleroth, the Healer City, traditionally protected by ze Champions. It's a bright and cheery place, reknowned for their yearly pumpkin festival. Temperatures range from 5C to 20C; the population is predominantly white anglo-saxon, and contains one of the largest concentration of insane people throughout the world of Rivellon. One should also watch out for periodic zombie/demon invasions that can catch the hapless visitor off guard. Having arrived at Aleroth for the very final MacGuffin we find it pretty much gutted by demons. And of course, our old boss is here 'helping out'. Just like you told your subordinates to kill me then chickened out, eh? She rats us out to the Champions and wants us captured. I like this guy's style. He's also got a totally spiffy hat. Boss gets her panties in a knot about it, and eventually, the Champions are forced to imprison her. In response to the town's great vote of confidence in us, we totally ignore the demons, the villagers protesting, and go straight to see Gandalf and grab the macguffin. (Actually, there are no sidequests available here and most of the city is sealed off.) Dumbledore, I don't think "a dimension full of hellish demons" was a great place to safekeep something in the first place. Just so you know. We beat up some mooks and close the rifts to hell. At this point, we are just too powerful, even though we surely missed some nice loot as our first run. On our Hard difficulty, the early game was pleasantly brutal, the mid game occasionally challenging, but at this point Manny is a whirling whirlwind of doomy doom. Part of it is that we've decided to keep Myrthos, one of the best 1h swords in the game, instead of returning it to Hermosa, our skills trainer, as part of the quest. Again, it's nice that Div2 makes quest macguffins actually tempting items to keep most of the time. All macguffins gathered, we open up the Hall of Echoes. It's climactic confrontation time! The place is full of dreary architecture and the occasional dragon combat. The primary challenge comes in the form of an arena, where ghosts of foes vanquished will return to try and take us down. I suppose that's one way to recycle voice actors. First up are our Dragon Slayer buddies. Hey guys, your boss is still kicking it up there, refusing to fight me.

Comparing DAO combat to IWD2 is an insult, given the creativity behind many of the combat situations in IWD2. That game had a lot of combat but it wasn't filler after filler. DAO was always meant to be a more 'complete' experience.

The major difference is that Dragon Age was always designed from the start to allow tactical squad combat, involving lots of pausing, AI routine setups, etc. if need be. DS3 was designed from the start as a one-character game where the pace is a lot faster, you're doing a lot more clicking with your one character, and there's a lot of jumping and rolling going around. It's not really a question of making it easy to switch between characters, its a quetion of the game as a whole. Sort of like how it wouldn't make sense to have made Diablo II party-based. You can't jump and roll and push forward non-stop smashing things apart and hotkeying everything while having a 4-man party, that's why Dragon Age has a much slower pace where you can leave a character just swinging his sword slowly against a darkspawn for 10 seconds and he'll be alright. Choo choo, you missed the sarcasm train.

I don't mind ugly cutscenes at all, I just think the combination of video-game-standard voice acting, hilariously cheesy lines and DA's slightly-renfairy-fantasy look all combine for a cringeworthy experience (which, conversely, is why all the sex scenes look so funny). That was alright, but after a few minutes we have: Woman to Darkspawn: YOU WILL NOT HAVE HIIIIIM! *slash* Woman to Man: THEY WILL NOT HAVE YOUUU!

I left out a lot of going back and forth and beating down hundreds of mooks in the Orobas Fjords. I've just started the expansion pack part, Flames of Vengeance, and it is so, so much better - big town with lots of quests and lots of wacky things happening.

Well, that's pretty much guaranteed. It was OK in DAO, I could just laugh at it and move on. Depends on how many cutscenes they chuck at you, less the better.

Meh. We know reviews are mostly rubbish, it'd be silly to believe them now. I'll wait for the demo.

Can you say, IWD III in Onyx? That said, I think it's much more probable the new project is just wheel of time.

Specimen B: Megalomania and inquenchable thirst for evil. Specimen C: Fills dungeon with lava, complains it's too cold. Specimen D: The Great D.E.S.E.X. Having cleaned them all out, Manny the Restorer of Sanity visits one final cave - containing the demon lord, Ba'al, the holder of MacGuffin 92. This is one of the toughest fights in the game - the first few times I died within 3-4 seconds without knowing what or why. Ba'al is ably complemented by a variety of demon mooks and packs a punch himself both melee and in the distance. You can see 4 potions quaffed in the top right - with our alchemist in the battle tower, potions are now a staple of difficult fights. They can raise your attributes by as much as 30 at a time - consider that you only get 4 points to spend each level up. Our general tactic doesn't differ too much - jump around like hell, fireball groups, rush in and Thousand Strikes on Ba'al when we can. Luckily, we outfitted our Creature with Fatality level 9 - the skill which lets you instantly kill enemies when their health is low (I think for l9 Fatality, something like 25%). Ba'al cops it. One last point of interest before we approach the end; in the destroyed remains of Broken Valley, atop a tall tower, we find none other than Doctor Needleman. Yes, the guy wearing the giant mechanical hat to protect against mindreads before. It seems that he has lost his hat in the uproar, and with it his sanity. Obviously, the correct course of action is to mindread him, learn his secrets, and then go pillage his secret storage for loot. Not even his clever trick of hiding a key behind some barrels will deter Manny, Raider of Storage Rooms. ------------------- And with that, we are ready for our final update, where we reach the troubled city of Aleroth, find the final macguffin, then journey to the Hall of Echoes. Our goal is to revive Ygerna, Damian's lover, thus breaking the Soul Forge and destroying Damian. Join Manny, Finder of MacGuffins, in our exciting conclusion tomorrow! Four-digit donations are welcome.

Exhibit A: Manny and The Dragon Slayers. In this piece, the artist achieves, in his typical laconic style, a seemingly lackadaisical but carefully arranged juxtaposition of the humorous troupe, the embattled Manny and the oblivious worshipper. By positioning the latter in the foreground, this piece offers a searing commentary on the futility of ambition and the blindness of man. Ink on canvas, available in poster form for 249.99. After the battle to remember for the ages, we continue mopping up the Orobas Fjords. We finally encounter the craziest of crazies, Bellegar, who sets upon us a moral test of sorts - think the good/evil test in Hell of BG2:SOA. Only, Bellegar tells us that the dilemma of these people are real. First dilemma: do you let a robber rob the robbed, or do you helped the robbed not be robbed? We stop the robbery and so the robber cannot rob the robbed who is no longer to be robbed. The dilemmas branch out after your first choice - you can keep pushing for the 'good' route or try and steer back to 'bad'. Here we help the cone-hatted hobo by giving him a small amount of our power, so he can survive the war and return home. We also give this dying man a little of our energy so he can last until his son can come to see him. Sadly, the sacrifice required is rather small at this stage of the game, a common flaw in many such dilemmas. Bellegar rewards us with some nice loot, and then shoots off once again. Now all that remains for us, both in terms of sidequests and the main quest MacGuffins, are the Flying Fortresses of the Black Ring. This part really wore me down - definitely the point at which, with 80% of the game done, it starts falling downhill. Even at a blind run missing a lot of things, our character is pretty damn powerful by now with gold running out our arses, but essentially we're presented with several flying forts equipped with dozens of towers for our dragon form to shoot down - then when we land, even more Black Ring / demon / skeleton mooks to smash through. Later on I was getting 0 xp for them. So let's blaze through this. First we taken down the towers/etc (which isn't even necessarily, since when you're in human form they can't get you). Then we choose a good spot to land, so that we can check where the enemies are before dropping down. Then we chop them all up. Most areas inside the flying fortresses look like this. Pretty nice, but also lags like hell for me. These are the homes of the Black Ring lieutenants... ...who complete the Crazy Census of the World, Manny Davidson, 2011. Specimen A: thinks Manny is a plant.

Gentlemen, we are not far from the end. This is the penultimate update before the end of the original game, after which the expansion pack remains. Forward, Manny, Forward! You will get your paycheck as soon as our hedge funds make a return. Amongst the cliffs of the Orobas Fjords, there lies yet another settlement, and another population of primarily insane people. Apparently a Dragon Knight named Orobas was defeated by Dragon Slayers, and sealed himself in underground; to free him, the blood of another dragon and a couple of Macguffins are required. So, how long has he been in there? A few decades. Should have thought of the fact that there aren't any dragons around now, I guess. The key Macguffin to grab is a sacred chalice held by the Dragon Slayers in their no-dragon zone. Manny discovers his favoured method of entry. We trade Macguffin A for Macguffin B in a heartwarming episode of barter. He actually says all that out loud. I salute you voice actor Now we shall meet Orobas, the Dragon Knight, trapped underneath but now free! ...apparently dragons need to eat, too. But Manny's quest was not in vain, oh no. In the depths of the cave lies a comely damsel in distress, awaiting a great hero to open her up and plunge into her depths. All we needed to do was a couple of memory riddles. If only they were all that easy. Back outside, we tell the dragon worshippers that Orobas is dead, and they decide to worship Manny instead. Which is nice, except for a marked lack of tangible benefits for being praised by a bunch of moronic hobos. We also have to deal with a team of wannabe dragon slayers. Look out, they have chreographed group battle stance moves!

I get an Uncharted feel from the second screenshot, which is disturbingly bright and cheerful and carefully composed to remind you of beach volleyball. I find it hard to believe these screens are untouched, but in terms of general direction good to see they're continuing the tropical / Spanish colony feel.

True, I forgot about that. And I suppose it also serves as a nice tutorial, though there were way too many darkspawn for my taste (since you won't keep the party / items / XP etc from that part, would you? So no motivation)

It was less tactical, but it was in a similar mold. I think DA2 combat can potentially be similar to DA1 with the exception of castrated camera, hard to tell from looking at videos of people. Really hoping the recent demo vid was on Easy/Easiest though, because each darkspawn hit seemed to do less than 1% of full HP and that one girl could beat 5 of them and the Ogre by herself popping a couple of health pots. Why even bother playing?

Well if you go down that route you really have to abandon "Next BG" combat altogether. I'm really looking to TW2 / DS3 to provide that style, though, it'd be nice to have one franchise out there really sticking with tactical squad combat. And it seems like after all that, DA2 might well be.

*pumps fist*

He means Fallout 3, which also had a boatload of bugs.

King of Limbs first impressions: As I expected there's nothing really new going on here, it's exactly what you got from Radiohead & Yorke's live performances over the last couple of years - the oppressive airyness, wailing, pseudo-elec drumbeats. That's not bad, but generally I prefer it when they at least fill up their sound a bit more (probably why I liked HTTT). Didn't really interest me until Little by Little, Lotus Flower seems nice, Codex is boring for now - it ain't no Pyramid Song. But then I thought Kid A/Amnesiac were complete trash for a couple of years, so we'll see. Got to say Radiohead interests me less as time goes by, though, in terms of new output.

Oh boy. I didn't think there was a way to make me feel bad about downloading the demo. Maybe I can torrent it or osmething.

Don't care about stupid one-upmanship, TW was pretty good and TW2 looks awesome, and that's what really matters.

Risen 2 will be one of the few non-Obsidian games that would get an instant preorder from me. Salivating.

Was a bit bored so saw the vids. I don't care too much about voice acting since I think they're pretty bad 95% of the time and I wouldn't like them to waste even more resources on it. Very intrigued about how the storytelling stuff turns out, so that's a plus, but cutscenes still look like B-movie ren con people with scripts pieced together from other B-movies. Hard to get a good grasp on combat as the vid guy just sits there and mashes buttons, but I hope he's playing on Easy because he sits there slashing against 5 darkspawn or something in the first battle with the family, for instance, and loses about 1% health. Doesn't seem too arcadey, more fluid animations and such is always nice, but closer camera sucks. Menu/UI is clean and crisp, and the response / usability / etc generally seems great too, as you expect from a Bio game. If it's still possible to play the game using pause and controlling the whole party, and the highest difficulty is still something of a challenge, might be fun enough, but can't tell from this.

We return to the goblin leader, triumphant. Unfortunately, he's learnt the Second Law of Capitalism: if you don't have to pay, don't. The leader is surrounded by a dozen or so goblins and this makes the battle quite a challenge. We use our usual charm, summon up our Creature, then jump around like a maniac lobbing fireballs, using rush attack to close down on enemies with low HP. At this point the XP gain for kills is enormous, but after a couple of levels it quickly declines - XP is scaled a la 3ed D&D, though enemies are not. The leader flees the cave once all his minions are dead, then uses his wings to try and flee. Look, I'd understand you doing that if you hadn't seen me destroy your entire valley as a Dragon an hour ago, but that was pretty stupid, wasn't it? And so, short-term memory loss dooms the greatest goblin lord in the Orobas Fjords. Finally, we return to High Hall to mop up. In one last quest, the villagers tell me that their well seems to be blocked or some such and needs investigation. Of course, then their 'well' turns out to be a labyrinthine multi-level cave full of demons and lava, and finally, a magic glowing ball. We blame the MGB, really. The little birdy tells us that he's been taking human sacrificies from the village for quite a while now. You know, there were soldiers here a few days ago fighting the troll infestation, and they couldn't take care of this? Inefficient governments are the worst Zagan turned out to require over a dozen reloads. In contrast to all other dragon battles so far, this one is inside a cave, and thus you keep running into corners and walls a lot. You must handle two nest towers that keep spawning little wyverns as well as the powerful Zagan - and obviously, with the lava, we're playing at 5fps trying to dodge multiple projectiles. It was pretty hopeless until we discovered that there's an alcove up the top we can flee to, land on our feet, and chill. We are rewarded with some nice loot - loot is randomised mostly in Div2, though there are pretty strict limits on how good/bad an item you get. We return to the villagers with the news that their 'well' is now unplugged. You're about to find that plumbing is very, very expensive, woman. I don't know what these malachite gems are for, but everyone keeps saying they're valuable. Like a good capitalist we are, we trade our righteous anger for some solid assets. ------------------------------------------------ We will need one more update to get through various places in the Fjords, then begin heading towards the conclusion of the main game, I think. Stay tuned!

We can't mindread a zillions-old dragon, silly. But reading powerful NPCs such as this one often gives us skill points, as levelling up becomes harder and harder. And so the dragon gives us the required macguffin. Next up is the Red Goblin Tribe - another quest from the Champions, if you remember. But approaching their valley we meet a barrage of flaming rocks. Try dodging them at 6fps.. Everything you see there are structures to be burnt down. Right-clicking gives your dragon a quick burst of speed, which I only discovered here; very handy for going in, burning up, then getting out. Our carpet bombing is soon complete, and appears to have impressed the goblins. Their fiersome leader requests Manny's presence. He looks like several zombies grafted together using second hand S&M accoutrements, but speaks with the wisdom of a true Capitalist. We are suitably impressed, and agree to double-cross our Champion questgiver, poisoning him with a fake, envenomed head. I figure that the Champions seem to be cahoots with Damian anyway... In the cave, we also meet a kindred of our great nemesis, the Magic Glowing Ball. This one attempts to fool us by claiming he is 'Groth the Storyteller'. A likely story, Magic Glowing Ball. I know your kind. He claims that he needs a human who can speak goblinese so the orally transmitted goblinese tales can be written down. I told him to do it himself, but the lazy bastard kept saying he had no arms. Highly unusual as it is, we might as well help the MGB before destroying him. We found our man in the form of Gwyn back at High Hall, a man who believes he is a goblin. He even had goblinoid huts and decorations where we found him, you can spot the goblin war drum behind him here. One wonders how he learnt goblinese and acquired all these items, though... We also take the time to follow up on that double-crossing business. The venomous head hurks the Champion. He draws his last breath and collapses to the floor, even as the golden question mark fades away along with his soul. His quest shall never be fulfilled. About time someone realised Manny's greatest talent.