Zero Punctuation: Dragon Age: Origins

[MasterMayhem117]

Wow, I'm significantly less excited to play Dragon Age now.. However, still pretty damn excited..

I did however play the Stonking Great Game winner, and my only gripe is that ever so often the mouse locked up and studdered like a virgin girl on the day the troops come home. Ba dum tish. Wait that isn't right, ahem, like a virgin girl when it finally comes down to it and the panties come off. See also, prom after party.

 

[Vierran]

I am enjoying the game and this review made me giggle so good job once again.

 

[J-Alfred]

Y'know, I could have been first. I really could have. But I'm not. Why? Because I watched the FUCKING video first so my comments could have some actual depth to them. And with that out of the way...

This review is actually just in time. Recently I let slip to my roommates that I had never played Mass Effect, which caused both of them to jump up and down, screeching and flinging poo like chimpanzees, all of which boiled down to...

"OMG PLAY MASS EFFECT NOW ITS TEH 1337 EPIC WIN YAAAY!!!"

So, to avoid getting a facefull of fanboy crap I reluctantly started playing the game and found it lacking. Lacking in gameplay, lacking in excitement, and, surprisingly for a game with so much dialogue, lacking in depth. Now that Bioware's made this game, I knew it would only be a matter of time before they came to my room screeching out

"OMG PLAY DRAGON AGE et cetera et cetera"

Now I can safely say that I will rather take their fanboy doodoo to the face as opposed to playing through the game. And it's not because I think the game is bad, or that I think it's dull, or anything like that.

It's the whole '25 hour bit' that turns me off of it.

Great review, Yahtzee, and thank you. And just so you know, if I knew how to code Flash, there would have been a Yahtzee game called Destroy All Quick Time Events.

Now, how about some MW2? I'm sure you need a new FPS to recover your manliness after a big RPG.

 

[MGlBlaze]

I find it incredibly petty how people seem to believe that posting as soon as possible is special; it MIGHT be special if, *GASP* they actually posted something USEFUL rather than just posting a few words that relate to nothing before even watching or reading the material in question.

On-topic;
I found this quite funny; especially the announcement of the winners to the Stonking Great Game Contest.

Also, it's nice to see you enjoying it, even if it is somewhat generic. I do agree with the whole humans thing though; some people are okay, but good luck finding many of them compared to all the other ignorant, inconsiderate and hypocritical douche bags that fill me with so much contempt.

 

[hamster mk 4]

In my defense, the tower defense genera is less saturated than the platform jumper genera, and mine was the only tower defense style game entered in the contest. I briefly considered doing a platform jumper as well, but I figured every one else would make platform jumpers and I was right.

 

[b4betty]

even if someone made a game where instead of elves shooting bows and arrows and talking to trees you had maroon skinned kangaroo people that live in treetop castles and shoot acid balls through their plastic nerf guns some1 you would still probably think of them like this "oh so they are this universe's version of elves" just like the Asari were in Mass Effect or the bunny ppl are in Final Fatasy, yes its all been used a gizillion times over but it works, and this game works especially well. And ofc the radial menu isnt a problem cause the only real version of the game is on the PC where there are none. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES, GO PC(dieing gaming platform flame rant over...). Great review as ever keep it up.

 

[Ixal]

Maybe its my inner fanboy speaking, but after having played through Dragon Age I don't really see that many similarities between it what what Yathzee describes.

Sure, it has elves humans and dwarves but they are hardly like anything Tolkin had.
Elves are mostly former slaves living in ghettos and dwarves are living in a stalinistic caste system (taking the greatest prick award in this game) and humans are, well humans.

And while there is some generic evil on the border the main plot is more about the inner power struggle of the country.
He also didn't mention anything about the companions which are really interesting (but involve a lot of talking and yes, there is a lot of text. But imo thats good).

The combat isn't really like Mass Effect either. Ok, maybe it is on the consoles, but on PC it is more like NWN.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

And yet we are blessed with another great review courtesy of Yahtzee. Unfortunately I can't provide any constructive criticism, as I can't really see any flaws with it. Well done.

Now I'm off to find the contest-winning game.

 

[TimeLord]

I had no idea what Dragon Age was before this review, now I know and know not to get it. Thanks Yahtzee!

"Resume Credits!"

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Amusingly enough, this is one of the few ZP reviews that I agree with 100%. Dragon Age is good, but it's also extremely generic.

 

[Ickabod]

If you buy it, get the PC version.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

If Mass Effect hated you for not spending several hours in the Codex, then Dragon Age will kill your family and desecrate their corpses if you don't.

Sadly enough, they actually use the codex more in Dragon Age since you have to learn some of your quest info in there. I rather liked it. *hides before shunned*

THOUGH IN MY DEFENSE I DID NOT READ ALL OF THEM!!! *flees*

Game is awesome, on my second playthrough and have about four more planned out. And I still manage to have sex in real life. XD

 

[sgtshock]

I thought I was the only one tired to death of the generic fantasy setting. It'd be much more interesting, IMO, if they had an alternate history take on fantasy, like if real magic was discovered in the historical middle ages instead of another generic fantasy setting. Instead of fighting more generic orcs and playing pretend politics, you could fling fireballs at the French and explore a neat alternate timeline.

Good review, though. Still on the fence on whether or not to get DA:O, guess it depends on how much free time I have in the coming weeks, and how quickly I bore of Left 4 Dead 2.

 

[randommaster]

I turn my back for a few minutes and suddenly there are two pages of comments.

Whoooo, the contest was mentioned!

 

[Ixal]

By the way, your Origin in DA gets important again near the end.

Very good. Was considering getting this and now the similarities to mass effect have piqued my interest.

In Mass Effect your own character talks when you decide what to say during conversations, but i have heard that in this game your character just stays still and never says anything and that is something i HATE since it takes all of the immersion out of the game in my opinion and makes my character feel empty and hollow. One of the reasons for why i loved Mass Effect so much is that my character actually says shit and has some personality.

Thats hardly possible to do in Dragon Age. In Mass Effect you had very limited character creation options and thus it was able to make 2 default voices for your character. In DA you would need quite a lot of voices to cover all combinations.

 

[Blackadder51]

In my defense, the tower defense genera is less saturated than the platform jumper genera, and mine was the only tower defense style game entered in the contest. I briefly considered doing a platform jumper as well, but I figured every one else would make platform jumpers and I was right.

If your the guy that made the defense game can i ask a question?

(well i am anyway)

What decided to do the weird resource thing, and to make your guys fade out after a while and was the boss level the last one?

BTW i liked you game better then the guy that got 1st

 

[Richard Kain]

I am mildly offended that the game contest winners were tacked on in the middle of the credits, like some afterthought. I was also upset that Yahtzee seemed to put even less effort into reviewing the contest titles than he usually applys towards the weekly show. I'm not saying that the contest winners should have gotten a full 5 minute episode, but I was expecting something a little more insightful. I wrote more meaningful reviews of those games in their comments threads, and it took me no more than half an hour each. I thinks its a little lazy to devote so little time or effort when the participants devoted considerably more time and effort on their entries.

I'm also mildly offended that my game didn't place, but that is another issue, and probably shouldn't be discussed here.

I liked the Dragon Age Origins review, especially the part about bored Arnold. (I'm a sucker for Conan references)

 

[Jandau]

I was hoping that Yahtzee would skip Dragon Age since I like the game so much it hurts a little when someone says bad things about it and I was pretty sure he wouldn't like the game by default. However, I confess I am quite suprised that he seems to like it enough to sink more than a full days worth of time (and counting) into it. I guess he has some taste after all (as was indicated by his dislike of Dead Space and Oblivion)...

 

[Caliostro]

Ah, so I wasn't the only one that thought "Dragon Age" implied Dragon was a new material... Dragon swords... Dragon armors... Dragon farm tools...

STOP SAYING FIRST! YOU DON'T NEED TO SAY IT! WE CAN SEE YOU ARE!

You'll come across like less of an hypocrite if you actually watch the video before commenting on how great the video was.

 

[Carnagath]

Really good one, laughed a lot at "is this the age where everything is made of dragons".