BioWare

Dragon Age II Check-In: Week 1

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

One of my great video game shames is never really getting into the Dragon Age series. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I loved lots of BioWare’s other games. Mass Effect might be the most important franchise of the previous generation of games, and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic might be my absolute favorite original Xbox game. But for some reason, Dragon Age just never grabbed me. I started to correct that last year when I played through the first game and wrote about my time with the game.Well, I’m doing that again with the second game. Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 9 FINALE

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Would you believe I beat Dragon Age: Origins all the way back in May? I beat it in time to get this episode up on schedule. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be hard to get yourself to write something, even when you want to. And then you find yourself months later, overtired and not feeling well, but really wanting to finish it up so you can move on to the next thing. So that’s what’s happening. At this point, I barely remember what happened, and when you combine that with the other things I mentioned, you end up with something that probably will be barely coherent. But here we go anyway. One last time, let’s go over a couple numbers. Ivan Ooze finished the game at level 19. and I played about 28 hours. Continue reading →

Microsoft Knocked Their E3 Press Conference Out Of The Park

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

The last few years haven’t been very kind to the Xbox brand. The Xbox One started its life with a bad reputation, due to plans for “always online” style DRM that despite never actually happening, cost them a lot of their fans. Then you have the fact that the PS4 was more powerful, cheaper, and had a much more diverse line of exclusives. Then Microsoft cancels one of their big exclusives, Scalebound, while others seem to just kind of disappear. As one of the few people who genuinely prefers Xbox consoles to their PlayStation counterparts, it’s been very hard to watch. So, I’m happy to report that this year’s Microsoft E3 Press Conference was phenomenal.  Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 8

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

We’re getting really close to the end of Dragon Age: Origins. This week features a lot of pretty crazy things. There’s a daring prison escape, the crowning of a new ruler, and we learn that we can’t keep fooling around with two women without it catching up to us. But, before we get to all that, we need to go over some numbers. I’ve played for just under 26 hours and Ivan Ooze is currently level 17. Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 7

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Once again, it’s time to check in on my progress in Dragon Age: Origins. Last week, I had decided to help Lord Harrowmont become the new dwarven king. To help get people to join his cause, he sent me to Dust Town to deal with the Carta, a criminal syndicate run by a dwarf named Jarvia. So, how did that end up? Well, before we get to that, we need to talk some numbers. My current play time is about 22 hours and Ivan Ooze is currently level 16. Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 5

~ Andrew Lokken ~ 1 Comment

Did you know it’s been over a month since I posted the previous installment of this series? Well, it’s finally back. If you read yesterday’s Circling Forward post, you know that I actually did the play session for this post way back when it originally was supposed to be written. As a result, none of what I’m about to write is fresh in my mind. This is going to be a very rough blog post and will almost certainly contain several inaccuracies. I also expect it’ll end up being pretty short, because if I can’t remember the details, what am I going to write about? But, if all goes according to plan, things will be back to normal next week. Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 4

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

No amount of weird animations or clunky controls will prevent me from continuing to play through Dragon Age: Origins, even though I’m having much less fun with this one than previous Check-In games. Despite that, I made some serious progress this week. But as always, before we get into all that, let’s talk about some numbers. My current play time is just under 14 hours and Ivan Ooze’s level is 11. Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 3

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Once again, it’s time to see what I’ve done in Dragon Age: Origins this week. I’m not going to lie, this was easily the worst week I’ve had with the game. We’ll get into the specifics in just a little bit, but this week features stuff that was so bad, I don’t think that it was a product of the game aging poorly. On the plus side, it’s my understanding that this particular section was disliked even when the game first came out. But, before we talk about that, we have to talk about numbers. I have currently played the game for just under 10 hours and Ivan Ooze is level 10. Continue reading →

Dragon Age: Origins Check-In Week 2

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Finding time to play long, demanding games when you’re also working a full time job and trying to keep up on other things is surprisingly difficult. But that’s what this series is, and that’s what I’m going to keep doing. As of right now, my current play time in Dragon Age: Origins is 6 hours and 55 minutes, and my main character is level 8. If you read the previous week’s entry, you know that I kind of screwed up and forgot to write down my time and level before starting week 2’s play session, so I don’t know how much actual time was spent this week.  Continue reading →