Dragon Age II Items

If you sign up for the BioWare/Dragon Age newsletter, BioWare will give you codes for two DLC items in Dragon Age II, the Staff of Parthalan and Hindsight, a magical belt. You need to have a BSN or EA account.

To get the Staff, click here and sign-up for the newsletter. They'll mail you a code but it's taking a month for some reason.

To get Hindsight, click here, click Get Your DAII Penny Arcade Belt, and sign up to the newsletter *again*. This item will automatically appear in your game promotions.

Comments: I signed up and immediately was sent 2 DA II newsletters + EA newletter. Others have not gotten any newsletters. I don't know why they didn't automatically add the Staff of Parthalan to your promotions. I guess Hindsight is 20/20?

The Hindsight belt promotion shows for the X-Box 360 and PC, but not the PS3. That does make me wonder if they're having problems with PS3 accounts.

BioWare Loot

It occurred to me while writing my Fallout: New Vegas review that BioWare sent my current video card. I won it in the community event they had in April, but it seems like something a game review should mention, yes?

Sadly, though I've only had it for five months, light grays have started to turn pink. Whites, blues, reds, yellows, blacks – fine. Light gray? Slightly pink. It's an ATI Radeon HD 5770.

Blog Update

You might have noticed, but I went incognito in the spring and have just resurfaced like a terrible sea creature rising from the irradiated depths to devour the scrumptious inhabitants of New Tokyo.

If you see this as a good thing, thank
1) swirlwind, a woman at the BSN who was kind enough to say she would like to read a review of New Vegas from me,
2) Monster Import, which I devoured an entire can of while I wrote the review, and
3) The Myst Series soundtrack.

It’s the snowy season, which means LSN spends most of her time huddled under snowy tarps in the forest or running across ice covered lakes. It’s also the New Year despite the fact that it’s the DEAD OF WINTER, and it doesn’t feel as though anything new has begun at all. This is because about two-thousand years ago, the Roman consul assumed their position in January, then the eleventh month. The Romans originally celebrated New Year in the spring and that makes far more sense to me, but I’m not a Roman consul so my opinion on the matter is meaningless.

The best part about the New Year is sitting down and budgeting my expenses for the coming year. When it comes to video games, I like to think of this as listing all the cool stuff I look forward to getting this year! (It doesn’t work so good for utility, rent, and car insurance. )

My list so far looks like this:

January –
Mass Effect 2
Divinity 2: Ego Draconis

February –
BioShock 2
Splinter Cell: Conviction

March –
Assassin’s Creed 2

May –
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Spring –
Alpha Protocol

Unknown –
Arcania: A Gothic Tale
Fallout: New Vegas
Star Craft II: Wings of Liberty
Star Wars: The Old Republic
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm


Mass Effect 2 is coming about twenty days! I just finished a paragon FemShep run to import into the game. I don’t know if I should do another run and try to get to level 60, or if I should dust off Splinter Cell: Double Agent and finish it.

What cool games are you looking forward to playing this year?

Three pages of games I have on my computer, many of which I end up deleting. Read only if you find the minutia of another’s playlist of bizarre interest. Tomorrow I detail the games coming out that I look forward to.

After deleting the Batman demo from my system today, I realized had icons for 12 games, plus Steam and the NWN Toolset on my desktop.

I went through and deleted a few:
Diablo II – Just can’t enjoy it like I used to. Please implement a regular save system in Diablo III Blizzard
Fallout 3 – Didn’t finish the main story line, but explored a ton of the wasteland.
Mirror’s Edge
Mist III
Oblivion – Only played a little. It’s uninteresting when compared to FO3.
Overlord 2

I checked in my games directory and then deleted them more. When you uninstall a game, it will inevitably leaves files and folders on your computer despite any insistence that yes, you want it ALL gone.

Leaving me with the following on my desktop:

BioShock – I’m a wimp when it comes to scary games, so haven’t been able to finish it.
Dead Space – See above
Dreamfall – Could never get it to work on Window’s Vista
Left4Dead – Play frequently, but suck
Monkey Island (the Secret of) – Was playing and enjoying right before I had my tooth pulled
Mass Effect – This game is the reason I have a new computer. My old one couldn’t play it so I attempted to overclock it, caused it to break down a few times, and so decided to get a new comp. I want to do one more complete play through before ME 2 comes out.
World of Warcraft – Play frequently.

Then I cracked open my LSN/Game folder to find:

Assassin’s Creed – Interesting first part, then you realize the rest of the game is doing that first part repeatedly. (deleted)
Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Tutu - I’ve never finished the first game, and finished the first once despite trying several times to get through it. Thank goodness RPGs have moved away from this gameplay style. Deleted.
Betrayal in Antara/Quest for Glory 5 – want desperately to play and finish them, but BiA doesn’t run correctly in Vista and QfG5 has a game stopping bug. (deleted)
Civilization 4 – One of the best games ever made, IMHO. Jump to Desktop
Devil May Cry 4 – Enjoyable game, but must remember to get gamepad the next time I’m at Fry’s, as the controls are poor with mouse and keyboard.
Thief: Deadly Shadows – Great game. Deserves a jump to desktop.
Titan’s Quest with Immortal Throne - My favorite of the Diablo Clones, but could have used randomize maps. I get tired of playing through the exact same areas. Also, it’s too easy on normal difficulty. (deleted – though now that I think about it, I gave the game disks to Max. I’ll probably never see them again)
Wizardry 8 – So much potential, but the constantly spawning monsters that you can’t avoid and are always scaled to your level annoy me. Also, I’m stuck fighting a group on monstrous rat men that I have to kill for the main quest. I just can’t survive the battle. (deleted)

Not finished!

It’s time for LSN/My Documents. Even though I have a LSN/Games directory that Windows created just for game information, companies love to toss crap in My Documents folder. This is usually saved games or ‘user generated data.’ The thing is that I’m obsessive about keeping the My Documents folder in perfect order since I have tons of stuff in there. Seeing an extra folder spring up annoys me, especially when there’s a Game folder, especially as if I delete or move it my game won’t work, and especially as they don’t always disappear when I uninstall.

BioShock Save Games - I hate you now, BioShock.
BioWare, Mass Effect Data - I hate you now, Mass Effect
Capcom, Devil May Cry 4 - I hate you now, Devil May Cry 4
EA Games, Mirror’s Edge -Delete
Eidos, Batman Arkham Asylum –Delete. Seriously? A demo with no save properties and no ability to change graphic settings needs this folder?
Electronic Arts, Dead Space and the Sims 3 Saves - Deleted Sims 3. I hate you now Dead Space.
Neverwinter Nights 2 - Delete
Thief Deadly Shadows – Hate you

Moving on to LSN/My Documents/My Games, which is a holdover from XP.

Sacred Underworld – Hey, I remember you! I was hoping you’d be Divine Divinity, but you were just the ugly, boring Diablo clone people claim Divine Divinity was. Delete.
Dawn of War 2 – When did I get this game? Maybe this was a demo? I remember playing it. A RTS based on the Warhammer 40K universe, and all you get to play is white, male space marines. What a waste. Deleted. (I have the WH40K Inquisitor PnP RPG though, and wish someone would make a game from that.)
Demigod - A boring, shallow game with an interesting premise. Waste of my money. Deleted.
Diablo II, Overlord 2, Oblivion, Titan Quest - Deleted again.
Dungeon Siege 2 - One of the better Diablo Clones. I liked the follower and pet system. The story wasn’t bad, the gameplay was fun, and I like that it tried out a learn-by-doing system. Hmm. I’ve decided this was better than Titan Quest. Deleted.
Enzai - Japanese H-game (that means interactive pr0n story). Never did get any of the good endings, so my waifish, please-don’t-tell-me-what-age-he-is, and wrongly imprisoned hero always ended up a sex slave in prison or murdered. It occurs to me that Americans would never make an erotic game with 15 ending, the majority of which end up with the guy dead or insane. Deleted.
Far Cry 2 - Enjoyable, open world FPS set in warring African states in which everyone is trying to kill you. Could have been improved immeasurably with a STALKER like faction system, and guard posts that don’t magically replenish no matter how many times you wipe them out. Deleted.
Freelancer - One of the better space pilot/merchant/fighter games. Meaning it tried not to be dreadfully boring. Good story and characters. Deleted.
Galactic Civilization II with Twilight and Dark Avatar - A 4x game in which you control a galactic empire. Good AI, rewards different styles of play, each alien race has its own personality, and okay ‘storyline.’ Move to regular Games folder, put shortcut on desktop. Hope nothing breaks.
Halo 2 - I ought to finish this someday. Moved to regular Game folder.
Beyond Divinity - Not as bad as people who liked the first say it is, but still hampered by a milquetoast story and the dreadful Battleground system. Deleted.
Black and White 2 - Why did I even buy this? I didn’t like the first one. Oh, wait, I liked the animals. I raised my giant leopard into a paragon of goodness. Rainbow trails followed him, he’d irrigate the fields, dance for my villagers, and constantly pick up and snuzzle them too. Moved to regular Game folder.
Sierra: Arcanum, Outpost I and II, Quest for Glory Anthology, and Throne of Darkness - I believe Outpost was the first PC game I ever played. That or the original Prince of Persia. (Moved) I didn’t realize Sierra published Arcanum. It’s okay, but nothing compared to Trokia’s last game: Bloodlines. (deleted). Throne of Darkness was a rather mediocre Diablo clone set in Japan. (deleted) Quest for Glory was an excellent RPG series in the mid-90s. I played the second one, which was texted based, without any manual and never made it to the end. It wasn’t until I got my first computer that I played through the series. (deleted)
Beyond Good and Evil - This is only the save file folder. Another game I gave to Max, never to see again. (deleted)