Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Quinn does, as he forgets to add the more tag to the post.
Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.
And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD or Blu-ray releases.
This review was submitted by Quinn Schwab. If you’ve played Dragon Age: Origins, or just want to ask Quinn more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360)
BioWare are well known for creating RPG masterpieces and Dragon Age: Origins is no exception. It’s clearly similar to KotOR and Jade Empire, but with slightly more action-based combat and more complex character building.
Loved
Bloody mess: The combat is more interesting than KotOR where everything was too clean and there only seemed to be a few animations for everyone. Dragon Age has much more varied visuals as well as some lovely screams of pain and effort that you hear during battle, and who doesn’t love to see the blood still on their faces during cut-scenes?
Presentation: Dragon Age isn’t the best looking game, but it is good, and it stays good throughout the entire game. The voice acting is terrific and the sound effects are good and varied enough that I never noticed repeated or irritating sounds. Some of the music is really quite impressive, giving the game (and anything you are doing at the time) a very epic feel.
It’s personal: The story in Dragon Age is, in one word, epic. The characters have all got clearly identifiable personalities and I couldn’t help but find myself caring about most of them. You actually feel bad when your party members disapprove of something you choose to do.
Hated
White elves can’t jump: There are invisible walls jutting out from nowhere, shallow puddles you can’t walk through, ledges you can’t walk up, but you can stand on if you use the ramp. I don’t mind if there’s no jump button in a game, but design the levels so I don’t need one. But I played the game for 12 hours straight without these problems really bugging me.
I finished the game in about 35 hours on normal difficulty, and that’s far from 100% complete. This game is the perfect style of RPG; complex skill trees, lots of choices, no button mashing, epic story and many hours worth of gameplay. Everyone should pick this one up.
Reviewed by: Quinn Schwab
You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 300 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.
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