An annoying trend that I believe is making it more difficult for gamers is that everyone is now trying to build their own “Steam” system.  For EA Games, I now have to create an account and use their launcher.  This evening I got an email from UbiSoft whom is also introducing their own system.  The problem: Of course these vendors aren’t going to cannibalize their own products and use Steam which makes me, the consumer quite unhappy.  Rather than go to one place to play all my cloud hosted games, I have to go to many.  Not to mention adding even more user names and passwords to my already ridiculously long list.  Why can’t these guys also publish though Steam.  Steam is a proven platform that has been around for many many years and it serves as a great, single place, to house, play and store all my games.

Please can you game publishers stop trying to get into social networking and stick to your core competency: Creating good games?  Can we please stop the mass amounts of user names, passwords, and all the other extremely annoying authentication tactics?  Can’t everyone just interface with a platform that already has a huge subscription base?  Why try to re-create something that has this many gamers on-line nearly all the time:

It’s taken Steam a good number of years to get that number, good luck matching it!  Just use Steam to make my life easier, PLEASE!

After getting home today I quickly purchased the new add-on and got started right away.  I want to first say this add-on was VERY well done!  It felt very well put together, the was no “loose ends” feeling that I got from the Awakening expansion.  A huge congrats to the Dragon Age team on a job extremely well done!

I defended the Archdemon and all my previous allies now lay slain.  You get to meet (and kill) the whole bunch.  I won’t spoil who, but I’m sure you can guess. :)

Well worth the $5.00 price tag, I almost feel bad as I beat the add-on already and I’m sure the Bioware team poured lots of development, testing and QA hours into the add-on and I waltzed right though it.  Though in my case it was quite a challenge because I’m normally the type who prefers to play caster characters, and as a Darkspawn Vanguard you’re NOT a caster.

The cool part of the game is how you “acquire” party members, you basically use an ability to create a “thrall.”  The target of the spell joins your group and your group limit is 4, as per usual.  The add-on took some time to adjust to for me because I play caster type characters, but it was extremely fun!

Thanks Bioware for yet another great add-on to Dragon Age!  I’m excited to see what you have in store for us now.  What a surprise this add-on was, excellent job on the twist factor! :)

Yesterday BioWare announced new downloadable content for Dragon Age called Darkspawn Chronicles.  This time around though you get to play as the Darkspawn rather than as a Warden.  You are to follow the orders from the Archdemon and your mission is to sack Denerim.

The web site puts it best:

“The city of Denerim, jewel of Ferelden, girds itself for war. As a hurlock vanguard, you alone hold the power to make thralls of your fellow darkspawn and drive them into the heat of battle. Heed the archdemon's call--Denerim must burn!”

I’m excited about this content, the evil side of me is patiently awaiting May 18th which is the current date.

I hope this content proves to be a bit better assembled and I hope the ending isn’t quite so blunt which further perpetuate “thrown together” feeling as I mentioned in a previous post here.

As my previous post indicated I’m a huge fan of the Dragon Age franchise from BioWare.  And Awakening was extremely well done but now that I’ve beat it, I have to confess that I am disappointed in the length of the game.More...

Anyone who has been following this blog for a while will likely recall my confession of being addicted to Dragon Age: Origins.  When I learned of this game I picked it up and played it that night.More...