Crave

As what one might call mainstream consumers of interactive entertainment, we're quick to snicker at anything too concerned with elves and dragons, or any kind of stat-juggling role-playing game. That said, we've always had a soft spot for epic, story-driven games such as Oblivion and Fallout 3, which use the trapping of the RPG format to build a fully realized virtual world.

This year's entry in the epic RPG/adventure game category is Dragon Age: Origins, released Tuesday. After getting an early preview during this year's Game Developer's Conference, we were surprisingly hooked and eager to see more. Having now played a preview build of the game for the past six weeks, we can safely say it's one of the year's best, alongside Batman: Arkham Asylum and The Beatles: Rock Band.

More surprisingly, it's a rare example of a game that calls out for a high-powered PC rig. While Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are available, this is one of the few high-profile games in 2009 designed and built for PC gamers and then ported to home consoles, rather than the other way around. While it keeps the same storyline, characters, and locations--along with a redesigned menu system for gamepads and lower-resolution TV screens--we judged the PC version to be superior, with better graphics, a more flexible camera, and the ability to easily pause the action for some strategic planning.

In our initial preview back in March, we felt the heart of the game--a sprawling big-budget action/adventure in the style of the Lord of the Rings movies--was buried under tired ideas about how to best sell a game of the sword-and-sorcery genre. There was plenty of talk about party management, the history of various fictional kingdoms, and most frightening, a "prequel novel" explaining the game's backstory.

Fortunately, EA has gone into the home stretch emphasizing the massive battle scenes, PG-13 love triangles, and--of course--the occasional fight with a giant dragon.

While the major beats of the game remain the same, we were impressed that the choice of race (human, elf, or dwarf), profession (fighter, mage, or rogue), and even social status (noble or commoner) determines which of six opening chapters you play through--potentially making the first two-to-three hours of the game different each time, depending on the character you design.

To be sure, entering the world of Dragon Age is no small commitment for casual gamers. There's a ton of dialog, pages and pages of onscreen text to read (a throwback to early computer RPGs that feels in need of an update), and a fair amount hacky scriptwriting involving every cliche in the fantasy genre. The voice actors generally do a fine job, but too often are stuck delivering lines from a Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movie.

Still, even non-RPG types like ourselves were able to get the hand of it quickly, and thanks to expert pacing, interspacing exploration and interaction with plenty of combat, the hours seemed to fly by. We suggest putting any lingering anti-RPG bias aside and taking the very impressive Dragon Age: Origins for a spin; and for PC gamers, it's practically a must-play.

Scott Stein offers a concurring opinion:

Games like Dragon Age: Origins are instantly unappealing to me. There's a seemingly generic fantasy setting and the sense that this is some pre-existing game in a franchise that I'm unaware of and will therefore feel confused by.

Thankfully, Bioware seems well aware of my apprehensions and held my hand from the very get-go. Picking a character and backstory developed into an unfolding of the story that felt organic, and explained everything as if setting up exposition for a good movie. So few games do this, and I appreciated that you could also pick your starting point for the story, changing many elements by doing so.

Did it win me over? In a way, yes. It's still a huge tip of the hat to classic swords-and-sorcery gaming (I prefer RPGs closer to Phantasy Star in setting), but it's made with the care of a Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies. Pretend you've never played one of these games before, then give it a try.

Screenshots: Dragon Age: Origins

There are always a number of ways to get out of sticky situations. In the action role-playing-game Alpha Protocol, you must decide the best course of action. From Sega, developed by Obsidian, Alpha Protocol is set to be released later this year for Xbox 360, PS3, and the PC.

(Credit: Crave Asia)

Yes, you read it right. The new game called Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes is for the iPod, not the iPhone. In this role-playing game, you are the protagonist Ziggy who goes on a quest to save his brother from the evil Mechanical Militia. Along the way, warriors created from the songs in your iPod can be summoned to fight your battles.

According to Square Enix's press release, the game is controlled by the click wheel (what else is there, anyway?) and is said to be as easy as selecting music. It's slated for release today at the iTunes Store at $4.99 per download and can be played on the iPod Nano with video, iPod Classic, and fifth-generation iPod.

(Source: Crave Asia)

Not all games need a computer or a video game system. Long ago, before the Internet and broadband and (one assumes) wheels and indoor plumbing, gamers played games on tables. Card games, role-playing games, and strategy games were all played with pens, paper, cards, dice, and figurines. Plenty of gamer geeks still play those games today. I count myself as one of them.

(Credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Wizards of the Coast owns Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, respectively the largest tabletop RPG and collectible card game franchises ever. WotC recently announced the strangely named Gleemax, a social site focused specifically on the pen/paper/dice/card gamer crowd. Gleemax will bring together tabletop gamers of all stripes with game reviews, game blogs, friend lists, local event calendars, and other handy services. You'll be able to hunt for players/hosts for various role-playing, card, and miniature strategy games, and even find out if any game stores nearby are hosting tournaments or campaigns.

Computer gamers will be able to get in on the action, too. If you're not a fan of tabletop games, you can use WotC's new video game portal to find new independent strategy games and WotC's own online games, like Magic Online and the upcoming Uncivilized: The Goblin web game.

You can check out Gleemax.com for a preview of the site, though it won't really get going until its social networking features get rolled out in August.

One of the biggest games you've never heard of is celebrating its 20th birthday this month. On July 28, 1987, Mike Stephenson released NetHack, a text-based RPG that would become one of the most influential open-source computer games ever coded. While the game itself wasn't new or unique, (it was based off of previous games like Rogue and Hack, that spawned the genre of "Roguelikes"), its development and license makes it an influential part of the annals of gaming history.

NetHack was one of the first games to adopt the open-source General Public License, a software license that lets any user download, distribute, or modify its code, as long as that code remains free and available. Because of this, NetHack has spawned dozens of variants and spin-offs. Amazingly, NetHack remains in development to this day, with Stephenson and his friends still working on it. The current version of NetHack, 3.4.3, was released in 2003, and a new version will be released "when it's ready."

NetHack and other Roguelikes will probably seem strange to most modern gamers. Before polygons and sprites, before bump mapping and pixel shading, before Kratos' scowl and Cloud's hair, we had letters, numbers, and symbols. While graphically enhanced versions are available, NetHack originally used (and still uses) ASCII characters to represent everything. Your character (@) and his pet dog (d) or cat (f) must brave the dark corridors (#) of a massive, randomly-generated dungeon and fight the kobolds (k), bats (B), and leprechauns (l) within to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor ("). These Roguelikes might look like a bunch of letters shuffling around a chalkboard, but it was a pretty darn clever way to put visual, dungeon-crawling action into older hardware. Best of all, if you can read this post, you can be almost certain that your computer (or PDA, or cell phone) can run NetHack.

Aspects of Rogue, Hack, and Nethack can still be found in modern games today, in almost every dungeon-crawling RPG out there. Diablo, the archetypical dungeon crawler, uses huge, randomly generated dungeons, hordes of monsters, and hoards of loot in almost the exact same way as NetHack and its kin.

Puzzle Quest is one of the scariest games I've seen in years. I'm no stranger to game addictions. I've been on and off World of Warcraft three times now (permanently off now; I'm not getting the expansion and don't like raiding), and have been hooked on everything from Oblivion to Zelda. Puzzle Quest offers the kind of nightmarish addictive powers I haven't seen since Tetris DS and Lumines. I have no idea why, but there's just something compelling about shuffling around blocks to get points.

Bejeweled is one of the archetypical puzzle games. Slide around icons until three or more match, and when they disappear and other blocks fall, try to get those to match to produce a point-generating waterfall of disappearing blocks. Almost everyone's played it, whether on a computer or a cell phone. It's simply inexplicably addictive. Puzzle Quest takes that addictiveness and mixes it up with the addictiveness of role-playing games to create a hideous eldrich monster of can't-put-it-downability

A look at GameSpot's reviews of the game will give you an idea of the system: basic Bejeweled gameplay combined with RPG aspects such as levels, stats, spells, monsters, dungeons, and even mounts. Match colored orbs for mana, jewels and coins for experience and money, and skulls to damage your enemy. As you level up through combat, you get more and more skills and higher attributes, letting you take on more formidable foes with deeper strategies. Pretty soon it becomes much more than simple gem-matching. Chipping away at the enemy by matching three skulls simply isn't enough, and you have to start using spells and tactics to set yourself up for massive cascades. Even the battles and quests themselves can vary in complexity. Besides the simple battles mentioned above, devious premade puzzles to capture enemies and mounts, special tile-breaking puzzles to forge items and learn spells, and even timed matches to train mounts add to the game's depth.

Puzzle Quest pretty much ate up my weekend. I simply couldn't put it down. By Sunday night, I was seeing skulls and orbs slide around in my mind. I haven't had game flashbacks so bad since Tetris DS came out. I kept wanting to play one more game, fight one more battle, get one more rune, level up my mount one more time. Finally, I just gave my DS to a friend so I wouldn't be tempted to play it anymore. Granted, I also wanted to read two more Dresden Files novels before the next one, White Night, comes out, but still! I've never done that before, not even with Tetris DS.

It isn't a perfect game. Both the DS and PSP versions have their own share of irritating bugs. The PSP has some loading time hiccups, the DS' touch screen doesn't work quite as smooth as it should, and neither have any sort of online play. But, it will still eat up your time like candy and have you screaming about hit points at 4:00 in the morning. It's handheld crack.

Now to get my DS back. I need to level up...