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Disc World 2 (PC)
by Tolteca
What happens when you mix up a flat disc-shaped world held up by four elephants on the back of a giant turtle, Eric Idle's voice and some gorgeous old school cartoon graphics and a terrifically fun script?
A great computer game.
Based on the world explored in Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books this game starts ... when Death - the guy with the cloak, scythe, a grand-daughter named Susan and a rather adorable horse - goes missing and people who die, well, just carry on.
Enter our Hero. Rincewind - not the brightest alum of the Unseen University and delightfully voiced by our former Python, Mr Idle.
It is Rincewind's and so your task to track down the missing Big D and set the world to right - or as right as the Discworld gets. To do this you have to talk to other characters in the game, explore the environments you find yourself in and above all, solve fiendishly fun puzzles.
To do all this, all you need to do is engage your brain - especially the lateral thinking part - and point and click at any and all characters and objects you come across. Then you get engrossed for hours trying to solve the varying puzzles you come across and laughing at some great jokes.
This is a puzzle game which can be enjoyed by anyone who likes this genre of game. You do not have to be a Discworld fan to enjoy it. While I love Sir Terry's team-up with Neil Gaiman in Good Omens, I am not a Discworld fan but I do love this game. Of course, if you are a fan of the Diswcorld series you will get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing the City Guard, the Unseen University, Binky the Horse and co.
The animation of everything is beautiful. Old school 2D and very dated but beautiful.
The game is an old one and the game specifications reflect this. It was built for Windows 95, so will work on a very low powered modern windows computer.
I bought mine at £29.99 when it came out and still play it occasionally. Finding it now will be a case of trawling Amazon marketplace and ebay for good deals. The prices there vary enormously, but if you can snag it for £2.99 you will be doing very well and be getting a great old school puzzle game.
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Baldur's Gate 2 II - Shadows Of Amn & Throne of Bhaal Double Pack (PC)
by Tolteca
This game is a sequel to the original Baldur's Gate - though you do not need to have played the original to get a huge amount of enjoyment from this computer game.
Like the original, it is a role playing game. You create a character from a variety of species and skill sets all with their own strengths and weaknesses. You can ... play either sex and this will determine which game characters your character can have a romance with. You get a choice of Evil, Neutral or Good morals along with how flexible and predictable your character is. All of this and how you and the group of characters you will pick up and discard during the game behave will determine how you are treated by other characters within the game - and how likely you are to be attacked on sight.
This game is a Dungeons and Dragons world and you do get to take on dragons during the course of the gameplay. You do not need to worry if you never played with the really big dice and are a Dungeons and Dragons virgin to play the game. I never played D&D but was engrossed by this game.
All that you need to know about what spells you and/or the non-player characters you use as part of the group you adventure with is explained in the very informative games manual and you will soon pick up the principles and be improving the characters armour and weaponry and teaching them spells so they will always know them. This makes your character and the one's you play the game with stronger so you and they can take on tougher and more challenging monsters, opponents and scenarios.
But this is not just a dungeon bash. As an incredibly long game this would get really dull no matter how badass the sword you just won is or the how hardcore the dragon-skin armour you earned after an incredibly tough fight is. What sets Baldur's Gate II and the expansion pack apart from other role playing game is the story.
The story is engrossing, twisty, turny and complex and is well complemented by the voice acting. The inter-relationships between the characters in the game shift and follow differing paths according to your choices and both story and relationships go to really interesting places.
While you do get to kill lots of kobolds, ghouls, wizzards and so on this is not a gore-fest. Gibs do not fly across the screen. The graphics are not grisly nor is this a first person shooter.
What is it is one of, if not the best, role playing games there has ever been.
One which will run on mid-powered pcs and does not need a fast internet connection to let you kill a dragon.
Which will set you back an incredibly reasonable £7.61 at Amazon. As it will give you weeks of gameplay, that is superb value.
Run, do not walk. Hack, slash and spell your way to hours and hours of engrossing gameplay.
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Dragon Age: Origins (PC)
by LauraHannan
==Dragon Age: Origins==
===The Story===
The story is set in the fictional realm of Ferelden, a dark, high-fantasy setting. The land is haunted by horrific monsters called the Darkspawn, who plague the underground, and who every so often rise up in what is known as a 'Blight' to wipe out every living thing in the ... land. At the head of every Blight is the Archdemon, a legendary figure rumoured to be the tainted soul of a god. You are a Grey Warden, part of an organisation which exists to stop the Blights, and that is just what you plan to do. Unfortunately a catastrophy kills most of the other Wardens, and when you seek allies to build your army, you find the land torn apart by civil war and political bickering. You must unite the people, one way or another, and end the latest Blight.
It's a great story, and though it's a bit simplistic ('go stop big bad eating everyone'), this simplicity is well compensated by the elements of political intrigue and the relationships between the various races. The writing style is self-aware when it needs to be, making what would be a lot of tired fantasy clichés fresh and interesting. It also turns a lot of RPG stereotypes on their heads; elves are an oppressed slave race, mages are quarantined from the rest of humanity by the church and dwarven ale tastes TERRIBLE.
The 'Origins' part of the title refers to the fact that the player character can choose an origin (in terms of the characters race and class) for their character, such as Dwarven noble rogue or an Elven mage, and each origin has a unique starting level and character story. The origin will also affect interactions with other characters later in the game, as you run into people from your past or are forced to deal with the racism of certain species. It may even limit or extend the options you have for completing missions. I felt it should have impacted the story a little more in the dialogue, as when playing as an elf or mage I never really felt that the NPCs were ever harsh or nasty enough to me, given how feared/hated the two classes are bigged up to be.
===The Gameplay===
The gameplay is very much in the ilk of Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate. You have a wide range of abilities based on your class (mage/warrior/rogue), and you can command your party members in real time, take control of them directly and also pause the game to queue up attacks and strategize. It's solid RPG stuff. Unfortunately the combat overall isn't anything special, bordering on bad. Enemy AI is flat out awful, and there is no variation in their tactics; they'll hoard you with 50 guys and you'll hack and slash and set things on fire till they die. It gets incredibly tedious very quickly. Though there is the potential for strategizing, such as combining spells for greater effect, you'll typically find one set of attacks/spells you like at the beginning of the game and spend the rest of it mindlessly spamming them. Owners of the PC version should check out some of the player made mods aimed at speeding up and improving the combat; they help a little.
Unlike most Bioware games there isn't a recorded morality system. Instead the focus is on your relationship with your party members, and your actual concrete actions. This is a positive feature, as instead of NPCs reacting to you based on some arbitrary number of 'good' or 'evil' points, they will comment and judge you based specifically on the fact that you burned down a village that one time or rescued that twelve year old. Not only that, but certain characters have different views as to the morality of your actions and what might garner the praise of one party member might incur a hissy fit from another. It adds an excellent amount of depth to the game, though it comes with the downside that players may find that certain characters are constantly berating them for their actions and that can get a little annoying (Morrigan, I'm looking at you).
This game avoids a lot of the 'illusion of choice' problems that plague many modern RPGs; where you are occasionally given the choice to kill a kitten or cuddle it, but ultimately it doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things other than giving you a bit more xp or a special item. In Dragon Age, you can be flat out genocidal in places and it'll change things significantly.
===The Characters===
It's a Bioware game. Do I need to say anything? Really though, the characters in this are epic. They are three-dimensional and interesting, each with their own relationship to the plot, own character arc (which the player can influence and twist for good or evil) and even the odd romance thrown in there. There's plenty of side quests linked to their own personal stories to help the player get to know them better, and they will comment on locations and missions you take them on. One of the best parts of this game is listening to them bicker and talk to each other as you wander down some dusty city street. Many conversations are utterly hilarious. I can guarantee that by the end of the game the player will care about a lot of them deeply.
==Conclusion==
A fantastic fantasy RPG, recommended to anyone who is even vaguely interested in role-playing, fantasy, epic tales and the like. The DLC are also highly recommended; they are self-contained, epic little vignettes exploring certain character's back stories or aspects of the main story. There's even an alternate universe DLC where you can play as the darkspawn trying to conquer Ferelden.
It's not perfect, but then nothing really is.
Buy it!
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