Per the title, I'm 25 hours into Dragon Age thanks to a weekend play marathon, which is the most gaming I've put into a short period of time since my WoW days. I always reserve judgement on a game like this until I at least finish the main storyline, but just about everythingc I've done so far points to this ranking up with the best RPGs I have ever played.

High points:

Party Members: A lot of the cast are familiar RPG archetypes. Morrigan is the chaotic, cynical wizard (Edwin from BGII), Shale is the artifical construct with little regard for biological life (HK-47 from KOTOR), Leliana is the devout goody-goody (any cleric from any RPG), etc, but each character has a developed backstory, mountains of dialogue, and can actually keep you interested. Some like Leliana and Alistar can get on your nerves awfully quick, but it's entertaining having one of the boring characters tag along with someone like Shale or Morrigan just to give the more evil people someone to pick on. Most Bioware RPGs have a history of interparty dialogue, but Dragon Age's volume of party member chatter is simply staggering. There's so much of it and it's so frequent that Oghen was making wisecracks about my romance after having joined the party only five minutes prior. Perhaps that means there's too much, but it certainly keeps things lively traversing through the deep dungeons.

Graphics: I saw the game getting knocked in a few reviews because of the graphics, but I have to say I'm impressed by the overall presentation. Sure, it's not as pretty as the FPS superstars, but the world design is gorgeous, and small touches like the killing blows (as in the screenshot above) really give everything an extra level of shine.

Choices: They're everywhere. Every major questline has at least two or three different paths to take, and while I haven't seen them all through, it certainly appears that they will significantly alter the way the game plays out depending on which path you take. The replay factor is simply daunting.

Humor: Coming off their last title, Mass Effect, which I though was extremely lacking in the humor department, Dragon Age has almost pulled a complete 180 in that humor is everywhere in the game, and in different types. I almost think there's too much humor, but the game can get serious in a hurry when needed. I've laughed a lot so far at the dialogue and it has made my experience much more enjoyable.

Low Points:

Boring Enemies: BGII is my favorite game of all time in large part because Jon Irenicus was an amazing villian. What makes a great villian for me is one who stays in your mind constantly no matter what you're doing, who looks to impede your efforts or toss a little mocking taunt whenever they get the chance. In Dragon Age, the big baddy, the "Archdemon," is little more than a spectre. Sure I've seen a couple cutscenes of him a couple times and he attacked my camp with some pathetically weak henchman, but I don't know who he is or what he wants besides to eradicate all life. How boring can you get? Every boss I run into in a dungeon comes as a surprise. I ran into a giant fleshbeast deep under the dwarven city and had no idea who it was or what it was doing more than two minutes prior to running into it. So far I only have one viewable enemy in Logaihn, and two invisible enemies in Arl Howe and the Archdemon. Where's the fun in just killing a bunch of nobodies?

Looooonnggg dungeons: Some of these dungeons are massive, too massive for my liking. The dwarf questline alone goes on for eight hours thanks to traversing a set of four nearly indentical dungeons. Two would've done the same job and been far less repetitive. So far I am not impressed with the pacing of the game as there are far too many long tunnels and random rooms put in place to do nothing more than lengthen the game. The same can be said of the random encounters during travelling. I have been waylaid by enemies and must defend myself more times than I care to count at this point.

Overall the positive have far outweighed the negatives, and I don't think I'm even at the halfway mark. If the negatives pick themselves up and the bad guys shape up this could turn out to be one of the best RPGs ever. I remain strongly optimistic.

For me, a new Bioware game is akin to a new book from a favorite author or a new album from a favorite band. They're a cause for celebration and will no doubt seek to dominate my game time for the weeks and hopefully months immediately after it's release.

I've started my initial playthrough as a human fighter, and after the first three hours everything seems off to a good start. The Origin story for the all the hype it got was shorter than I expected it to be, and as a result felt very rushed. There was plenty of talking, exposition, death, yelling, and more death all in the name of making up an excuse for the (hopefully) epic the story to come, but it was all squeezed together as you feel pushed along through every relevant character one after another.

Immediately after the Origin story I've noticed one big thing: Dragon Age is hard, in a way I haven't seen from Bioware in a long time. Having blown through their most recent efforts like Mass Effect, KOTOR, and Jade Empire on normal difficulty with few problems, I was surprised to find myself getting my butt kicked in the very first dungeon by a horde of darkspawn. Granted, the party you're initially given isn't what I consider a very balanced composition, but it was still surprising to have to adapt to the tactical nature of the game right from the get-go.

When playing a Bioware game, I expect to laugh once inawhile, and I was glad to find myself laughing out loud at multiple points during the game's opening, thanks to a couple of very snarky response choices in the conversations that I found impossible to resist choosing.

Summary: A good start, and I really hope the game builds on the hastily constructed exposition. There are already a ton of great opportunities for plot twists down the line, and I hope some of them actually happen. Provided I stay challenged, engaged, and laugh once inawhile, Dragon Age should be at the level expected of another Bioware classic.

Picking up Saint's Row 2 for $7.50 during last week's Steam sale was a no brainer decision for me. Critically acclaimed on the consoles, yet maligned on PC as the victim of yet another bad port job, the game actually is playable thanks to the patches that were released quickly after the game's release and it doesn't deserve the overwhelming negative stigma the pc version has. Granted just for kicks I played version 1.0 prior to patching, and did indeed find the game to be nearly completely unplayable.

I'm quite late to the party on playing this title so anything I say is retreading the million other comments available on the title, but after spending a few days to power through the storyline I was left with an enjoyable experience. I love game designers who have a very clear idea of what they're aiming for in a title and hit it perfectly, which is something Saint's Row 2 does. It doesn't try to be serious, and as a result benefits because you never have to worry about reality setting in. The only point of the game is to have fun, and indeed fun can be had living out the ultimate gangster fantasy in the comfort of your living room.

Unfortunately once I finished the main storyline, I found it impossible to boot up Saint's Row 2 to do any of the additional side missions past those that I was required to do to get to the ending, and I had to ask myself why I had no desire to continue playing past the sub-60% completion rate I had so far achieved.

I came to the conclusion that I simply had no motivation to continue playing the game. The big baddie was toast; I had destroyed the rival gangs, and anything else I did simply felt like licking the plate after a delicious meal. Sure, it might have been somewhat enjoyable but it also disrupted my memory of the delicious meal I had just consumed.

This is my issue with sandbox games, and why I've never seemed to take a great liking to them despite their popularity since GTA3 burst onto the scene what now seems like ages ago. In these titles you have two options: do the main story quest, or get diverted into countless side quests which lead to rewards like more cash and items that can help you with the main quest, but in the end are rarely necessary. Saint's Row 2 required you to do some of these side quests due to the respect system, but it was lax enough that all I had to do was power through the two sets of easy Fight Club missions in an hour or so to build up enough respect to get me through nearly the entire campaign without any further diversions.

The remaining diversions like racing, poop spraying, and carjacking simply didn't interest me in the same way the story missions did. If I wanted to race, I'd much rather load up a game in which the sole focus is racing, and as a result get a much better experience. Why settle for squirrely physics and limited car options when I can get much better street racing from Burnout or Need for Speed? Why should I play Zombie Uprising when I can play one of the countless better action titles in this world? Why choose to compromise your gaming experience with a less impressive experience simply because the game designer threw it in there? Is the racing in Saint's Row 2 really more fun or at least comparable to that of Burnout: Paradise?

I understand the completionist argument, those who don't just beat their games but instead pound them mercilessly, who explore every dark corner, who get every single achievement point, but in my long experience of playing games those people are in the minority. I've fallen victim to this times before but it was in a situation where I think the sandbox argument is valid: MMO's. In a MMO you're playing in a continuously evolving world, where what you do today can help you be better in the future. As a result, doing side quests and the same dungeons over and over has a purpose to them, even though they may be boring and monotonous.

The name of the game is freedom, and it looks to me like game designers have this crazy idea that everybody craves it above all other aspects of a game. I wrote a long time ago during the dark age of the silent protagonist, when Half-Life, FEAR, and it's countless knockoffs spawned an unending stream of boring player characters, either because game designers were too lazy to actually give these individuals a personality, or the far more defendable argument that they didn't want to restrict how two different players experienced a game. I was infinitely relieved to see Saint's Row 2 have full voice over for the protagonist, and even though it was a pretty stale protagonist there was at least some semblance of life in the person you made, which is a lot more than some games can say.

Maybe I'm just getting old and my imagination doesn't work as well as it used to, but when I play a game I want to be entertained, not forced to always fill in the missing pieces to complete my experience. Give me an exciting protagonist (or even better, an exciting cast), wonderful story, and ten hours of gameplay that can't be beat any day over forty hours of aimless wandering through another sandbox city.

Boy, that sounded like a good plug for Uncharted 2.