'Dragon Age: Awakening' review: More of the same... in a good way

It has been a while since I last reviewed a game (Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing at the beginning of the month) and I was beginning to think I’d never have time to finish one ever again. However, today I completed Dragon Age: Awakening on 360 after around fifteen hours of gameplay. Awakening is an expansion to last year’s Dragon Age: Origins, an RPG by BioWare (who also made Mass Effect 2 which I reviewed back in February). Last November I played Origins on 360 even though it is (apparently) the worst version of the game (Eurogamer rated the 360 version a ‘6’ and the PC version an ‘8’). This is because my PC is pretty rubbish and wouldn’t have been able to run the game at all. The PS3 version is supposed to be a little better than it’s 360 counterpart (at least graphically) but that version came out about two weeks later and I wanted the game at launch. Anyway, that’s why I’m reviewing the 360 version of this expansion.



Awakening is probably the best console-based expansion I have ever played. Whilst the two downloadable Grand Theft Auto IV “episodes” were of great quality and length, most the downloadable content (DLC) offered on XBLA and PSN has been disappointing so far, with even highly-rated games like Fallout 3 failing to deliver the goods when it comes to expansions. Indeed BioWare themselves have been pretty sloppy with DLC up to now. They only released two (very short and overpriced) expansions to the original Mass Effect and the two previous pieces of DLC released for Dragon Age prior to Awakening (Warden’s Keep and Return to Ostagar) have hardly set the world on fire. But where Awakening is different is that it adds a lot of content: side-quests, items, companions, a whole new map of locations and, most importantly, it offers a continuation of the main Dragon Age story and allows you to up the level of your original character (to level 35 from 20).

As well as providing a lot of new content, Awakening also improves on the basic gameplay of the original. It is less glitchy, it looks a bit better than the original and the difficulty is balanced far better. In Origins I had to turn the diffculty down to “easy” during some boss fights, which otherwise seemed impossible. However, the “normal” setting on Awakening is much more playable whilst still providing a decent challenge. Where the game falls down a little bit is that, although I was continuing my character from Origins, there are precious few references to characters and plot elements from the first game. Awakening (bar a few small exceptions) doesn’t reference decisions the player has made in its predecessor, unlike Mass Effect 2. But this is hardly the point: Awakening is so much better than what we have seen so far from DLC that it is quite exciting and sets the bar considerably higher for future BioWare DLC releases (hopefully a Mass Effect 2 equivalent).



Dragon Age also continues to be the only video game that I have ever come across where social class and personal politics play a part in decision making (at least outside of something like Tropico). Quite often the decisions do seem morally grey compared to a lot of other RPG games and characters who are basically "good guys" are often dimissive of lower class people or of certain races (Elves are almost always considered as a lower caste of slaves, for example). In Origins one of the main things to consider when creating your character is which social class they are from, and this does tend to change how people react to you. I probably shouldn't stress it too much, because this element of the game could stand to be fleshed out a bit more in the future, but it is interesting that Dragon Age covers some of that ground.

Of course, all this extra content comes at a price (literally) and Awakening is £29.99 (at retail on a disc for 360/PC or as a download on 360/PC/PS3), but fans of Origins should not be put off by the price tag: Awakening is the first good piece of DLC BioWare have ever released and it is worth the money. Especially as it sets up ideas and characters which are almost certain to be part of the games sequel next year.

Dragon Age: Awakening is available now and is rated an '18' by the BBFC. Interesting that the BBFC has given Dragon Age a higher age certificate than the ultra-sweary, ultra-violent 'Kick-Ass' (which I reviewed recently on my Film blog).

"I haven't had time to play any games"

I have always completed a new game within a week of buying it (obviously, depending on the length), with most games requiring only a couple of long sessions in order to play them to the end. So, I have always been perplexed by people claiming they haven't had time to play through the last few games they have bought with some of my friends having upopened games they bought a couple of years ago sitting at home. I have never understood this... that is, until now.

You may recall, a few weeks ago, that I failed to put more than one hour into Final Fantasy XIII because (now that I'm no longer a full-time student) I haven't had the time to play very many games myself. I am currently playing Dragon Age: Awakening on the 360 and, a week into its release, I am six hours in. I'm sure that seems like a lot of time to people less anti-social than me, but as someone who would have polished off Awakening within a few days normally, it really feels that I am playing it in bite size chunks.

Now I understand why it is that most people don't finish half the games they buy. In recent times I have always rather tended to feel that, considering they cost around £40, video games are too short (some games take little more than six hours to complete). But maybe the reverse is true and games are too long and maybe something that takes six hours to best is perfectly pitched to provide a full experience to people who don’t want to devote their life to a game. Now that I work two jobs and have a few evenings a week where I am at home (and need to spend some of those catching up on episodes of 'Mad Men', making/eating dinner and talking to my girlfriend) I can't see myself getting through games like I used to. When will I complete Awakening in order to post a review? When will I get round to God of War 3? When will I put some hours into Perfect Dark XBLA (which has been out for a couple of weeks now, and I have barely touched it)?

Of course, if I spent less time writing about games then I would probably be able to play a little bit more each week...

Damn you Natal! I think this rules me out...

The big announcements of last year (in gaming terms) were two different solutions for competing with Nintendo on the motion sensing/”casual gamer” front, with PlayStation Move (for PS3, obviously) and Project Natal (developed for the 360 and shown in the video above). Both are interesting, but Natal is potentially revolutionary. There have been some early reports which are fairly sceptical about whether or not it can really live up to a lot of Microsoft’s claims, but whether or not it does, it is an exciting new idea to play games without holding any kind of controller at all.

However, I have just read a report on Natal from TechFlash which suggests that you need a pretty big living room to use the damn thing. They write:
“To be precise, you'll want to clear an area extending at least 4 meters (a little more than 13 feet) away from the television. That's the back edge of the space to be taken into account by the Natal sensors. In terms of width and height, the field of vision naturally expands as it moves from the Natal device to that back edge, ending up a little more than 4 meters wide and 2.7 meters high (about 8 feet, 10 inches).”

Now I have a pretty big living room and I don’t know if I can clear this much space. Kotaku made the good point that Natal may not be usable in most Japanese homes (although I suppose none of those have an Xbox in anyway) and I’m not sure UK homes will fare much better. The video above shows huge American living rooms with loads of clear space to play around in.

It is still early days; with Natal not out until the end of the year. Hopefully this information is not completely solid. Of course, many Natal videos have shown people standing in front of the TV and interacting with it up close, so maybe people are worrying over nothing and these spacial measurements are just the amount of space Natal can register. However, if it is people are going to have to think carefully about whether they can fit Natal in their homes at all.

Update I spoke to the head of a Brighton-based developer this afternoon (who I probably shouldn't name, because it was just an informal chat and not an interview!) and he said that although his studio have Natal development kits to play with, they won't be making any games for it. This, he said, is due to the fact that Natal is too laggy and you have to sacrifice graphics in order to make it work. He said that if this were not the case he would want to integrate Natal features (head-tracking was the example he gave) into future games, but that as things stand he believes Natal (and Move) will be limited to first party support and cheap, Wii-style shovelware (probably provided by Ubisoft and probably called things like "Family Avatar Summer Sports Games").

Is Natal going to be D.O.A later this year? Wii Motionplus has already shown how an optional motion add-on can be ignored by developers (Red Steel 2, out this Friday, is only the second game, since it came out last June, to require it). I still await both Natal and Move with interest, but I am not getting my hopes up for anything too radical.

Update 2! According to IGN, Microsoft have already moved to play down this thing about the amount of room you need to use Natal, here is the article.