March 2011

Dragon Age 2
Submitted Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 5:29:30 PM by Klaitu

You know, I find it refreshing that after Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakening they decided to go with Dragon Age 2. It's really hard to keep track of what stuff goes in what order when you start doing Title: Subtitle.

DA2 is a vast improvement over the original in terms of gameplay mechanics, but what it gained in gameplay, it lost in setting. Instead of a vast countryside to explore, you're locked into a city and surrounding areas.

I applaud the effort to make a fantasy RPG in an urban setting, but the trouble is that there are perhaps 5 interiors that are used throughout the whole game. Every house has the same design. Every dockyard has the same design. Every sewer has the same design.. even every cave, they're all the same map. It's the same sort of thing we saw in Mass Effect, but heightened to an incredible degree. There are perhaps 25 different maps for the whole entire game.. which means you're going to be in familiar places even when you're in "new" places.

The story here is decent, this time focusing more on character developments than a "save the world" kind of plot. A lot of people have complained about the story, but it's not worse than the original, it's just a different emphasis. The characters are all well developed, and I found the story satisfying.

Soundtrack here is less stellar than the original, hands down.

All in all, it's really quite good.

Overall Score: 7 of 10
Quality Rating: 2 of 5
Buy it!



Battle for LA
Submitted Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 5:13:00 PM by Klaitu

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. From the trailer and the marketing, I expected it to be Independence Day on the ground, but alas.. it was not. It was, in fact, much better than that.

Battle for LA is about a group of Marines who are fighting off alien invaders in Los Angeles. It's gritty and pretty realistic.

The best way I can describe it is if you take Black Hawk Down, remove all the preaching from it, and then throw in some aliens.. that's pretty much the movie. The aliens in the film are not explained at all, they're just used as an enemy. The aliens use bullets. It's much more of a war movie than an alien movie, and that's what makes it interesting.

Overall Score: 7 of 10