Hi all! Haven't blogged in a long time, so I thought I'd write one this weekend. I'm going to cover a few games today (no reviews though), namely Dragon Age: Origins, Need for Speed: Shift, and a little bit of Risen.

Let's start things off with some Dragon Age: Origins impressions:

There's something terribly wrong with RPGs. Why is it that everything must be solved through violence? And not just any sort of violence, but the 'crawl 3 hours through a frickin dungeon and kill a truckload of generic enemies' type of violence. Well, this is exactly what's wrong with Dragon Age: Origins. Some parts are purely combat-centered and mind-numbingly boring. Mind you, the combat system is quite pleasant, but they went overboard with the encounters on a few occasions (take 10-15 generic packs of darkspawn and place 'em every 50 meters on a generic dungeon map and voila! level is done!).

And what a shame that is, because the rest of the game is actually impressive. Yes, IMPRESSIVE! You have a nice combat system that actually works well and is well balanced, generally solid writing and characters, mostly interesting gameworld (with some consistency issues), choices and consequences ( !!! ), and a very polished feel overall. So it's puzzling why there's so much combat. It's like cooking a fine dish of spaghetti bolognesi, then p*ssing all over it. Makes me a sad panda just thinking about it.

Alright, let's move on to some Need for Speed: Shift impressions:

I bought this game right about when it came out but I wasn't able to play it much because of a crash to desktop. Well, after two patches, the game runs nicely and I am able to enjoy it. Shift builds on NFS ProStreet (check my review of that game) and takes the series further into 'racing sim' territory. It's still not quite there, arcade elements still exist, but Shift mixes them much better with race sim elements than ProStreet ever did. And the addition of the cockpit camera is pure genious. It feels incredible and the sensation of speed is superb from this perspective. Seriously, tell me this isn't cool! The career mode is a bit too generous with cash rewards, which makes it a little easy, but the actual racing is challenging. Basically, I recommend this game to anyone into racing games.

Finally, a short update on that Risen review: it's in the works. But I want to play through about half of it once more because there's content you miss depending on faction choice. I want to see how the Inquisition side plays. Plus, the game is just plain fun.

So yeah, that's about it for today. Cheers!

Today was another pickup mission! Another one of the students doing their MS in SIUE (where my bro studies) had come to Hyderabad just the other day, and guess what? My brother sent things via her! Yeah, that's pretty common anyways, people send things for their parents/relatives back in India via friends leaving to India! So what were those things? Where was the pickup point? Read on!

Oh yeah, that's "Reeft Punk" btw.. my avatar when I ride on the bike The helmet with no Visor gives the cool, winged helmet feel to it, and the shades block the dust completely (there is a LOT of dust in HYD, eyes get destroyed). Oh and always have my iPod on whenever riding

*The Destination!

The destination was also quite far away this time! (it's like a mandatory condition that the friend's house should be really far away) Luckily it was not as far away as the previous one, and this time it was on the opposite side of the city. The complete path is on the Highway!! That's the best part of it, finally got a chance to ride on the Highway (for a long distance) Enjoyed the ride a lot I must say.. but don't get too joyful! Things can get really dangerous. Good thing it was not very deep into the highway, else ultra super fast trucks would have started zooming by.

The house I had to go to was in Chanda Nagar and there were many other nagars inside ChandaNagar, it was a confusing mess! I was going on a straight path and then it split into three. Let's just say that I roamed 3Kms ("gullies" and all), for 15 minutes of every path. AND the last one was the right place Ofcourse, it always has to be the last place! (stupid Murphy and his law)

*The Package!

So I finally reached the house, (ofcourse with a lot of assist over the phone from Pratibha didi ) and there I was greeted to THIS chunk of awesomeness! Just look at towering package! I put everything into my bag, and also gave the things that I prepared for my brother.. made a complete DVD (along with labels and Covers) Took me around 3 months to edit the 3hr + Video (along with handpicked BGM etc ) And another DVD with all the pictures taken when he was not here. I also gave the 1 GB DDr ram that I had lying around here, with no use at all.

Then Sat there for a while talked a bit with Pratibha didi, got to know a few things about how they all saw my bro After talking for about an hour or so (and after eating 2 Ferrero Rochers! ) I started the return journey. It's getting dark very soon now a days, was pretty dark by 6PM itself! Reached home in under an hour and was ready to...

*Layeth the SmakethDown!

I guess I already told you all about how my brother is a deal finder and always tries to get things for... not the standard price Lemme write down the things with their price and how he got them for that much! Ok, without further ado, here are the things!

As you can see.. There are 4 PS3 games

· LittleBigPlanet - $39 (Amazon Coupons)

· Resistance 2 Collector's Edition - $59 (Offer in Amazon)

· Heavenly Sword - $19 (Amazon again )

· UT III - $19 ( $21 with tax, Walmart )

And then there are two BD Movies too!

· Hulk Limited Edition - $16

· TDK 2-Disc Special Edition - $10

Both from Columbia house, don't ask me HOW though

What? You thought that was all ? Now have a look here!

The first 3 games are from the buy 2 get 1 free GameStop offer that was up not too long ago. And remaining are form Amazon

· Pikmin 1 - $24.99

· Pikmin 2 - $39.99

· LoZ: TP - $44.99

· No More Heroes - $14.99

· Wario Land : Shake it - $29.95

· Mercury Meltdown : Revolutions - $9.95

Yeah! That's 5 Wii/GC games in there! Can't wait to start playing them all, hehe.. just need Luigi's Mansion, SMS, and Eternal Darkness now

Here is a panoramic shot of everything in one pic! (two pics stitched together)

Huh? It seems Mr.Ephelant seems to have found something.. what's that? AppleSeed : DuesEx Machina DVD and PURE for PC! (for JUST $5! )

So that's it for this pickup mission! Sure was exhausting! Came home, took pics and then posted the blogs, that's all what I did this day.. now off to sleep!

As a Special gift here is another nice shot of the whole of the whole package!

I'm aware this editorial will probably be flushed away by the deluge of "I bot GTA4 lulz" blogs but I'm compelled to post it today nevertheless. I just read a news item about how some bigwig at Crytek has stated future games will not be PC exclusive, like Crysis, but on consoles as well. He blames this on piracy and the fact that console titles sell "4-5 times more". It's telling that this occurs at the time of arguably the year's biggest console release, GTA4, which is claimed will gross more than the box office takings of eight billion movies. I'll skip over the obvious implications for PC gaming, suffice to say the future looks bright for sloppy console ports.

Crysis, and its technical demands, are perhaps partly to blame here. I use that term loosely, for everyone's always whining about graphics and when mind-blowing ones are supplied, they switch to whining about them being unplayable. I personally have held off buying Crysis but that's mainly because I'm on a 6600GT and I prefer to make my toast in the toaster and not in the PC case. So there, I'm to "blame" too. What bothered me was some of the ignorant responses to the news article. One user went so far as to state that when someone blows 700 dollars on PC upgrades, it's annoying to have to pay another 50 to play the game. He even used the word "justified" when referring to piracy. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. This modern mindset of being "owed" something really bothers me. "I deserve this." Why? Because you paid X bucks to a completely different company? If I blow my retirement fund on a [hawt] sports car, I'm not anticipating Shell will let me fill it with gas for free. It's high time people started being responsible about what they deserve and stopped seeing the world as one big vortex centred on themselves.

PC culture is partly to blame. What do you see in countless signatures? The specs of the user's "rig". I'm not one to have a nergasm upon seeing that someone has a quad core cpu, sigs irritate me more than anything, but it's symptomatic of the focus of the pc gaming scene. It's not about your collection, what you're playing, it's what kind of hardware you've shelled out for. Console gamers don't have to put up with that crap because no one's going to bother with: My Rig: Wii.

It's expensive to keep up with the latest gear. But one reason prices can stay that high is because there are enough people who play along and buy all that crap. PS3 was expensive, but too expensive as it wasn't selling, so down came the price tag. Is that possible with PC Hardware? Who knows...

My main point is, if PC gamers are going to (rightfully) complain about their format fading out, they should be doing something about it. It's not enough to harp on about consoles stealing exclusives, nor blame the companies for releasing demanding games. Start doing something more than hitting your favourite torrent sites as soon as the latest game comes out or posting bad reviews of Halo 3.

Try out some older games so that you realize that graphics aren't everything and can accept games on their gameplay merits rather than how good the reflections are.

Stop pirating. It's very simple. I won't judge the reasons, but if you (or your parents) can afford that sort of hardware, you sure can afford a game or two (that deserves it). The only way to save PC gaming is to vote with money on what games should be made. Otherwise, the future is a bleak post-apocalyptic world full of Cooking Mama games and ps3 ports. It's started already. If you think PC games are expensive, then wait for the price to go down. The message'll be "it sold xyz units when the price went down to this." Guess what kind of message downloading and playing it instead sends? You're seeing it all around you.

Support your favourite games. Developers deserve it.