Smalltalk with James Robertson

I've been playing Dragon Age 2 on both on both my Mac and the XBox - and I have to say, it's been easier on the Mac. Why?

In DAO, you could run a lot of the combats as a button mashing exercise. In DA2, right through Act 2, you really need to run things more tactically. On the Mac (or PC), that's far easier. You can have each character target a specific enemy much, much more easily. Either way though, I'm enjoying the game quite a bit.

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There's a Dragon Age game for Facebook that's launching

After grabbing the FIOS powered bandwidth at my sister's house, I got Dragon Age 2 downloaded and installed. I started playing last night, and ended up staying up later than I should have. The game is gorgeous - it looks so much better than DAO.

Now, I don't have a lot iof thoughts on gameplay yet - I've only just gotten past the "one year later" in Kirkwall part, when you start to see the quests that are more related to the main game plot.

I decided to play a mage - I like mages, and it seemed like a fun way to get started with some of the updates. The spell progression system is organized differently, but was easy enough to get into. Playing a mage seems more fun in this game - I'm not sure I can really put my finger on it, but it just feels like there's more going on, even when I'm just using the basic staff power. Maybe it's the updated animations; in any event, it's pretty fun. I'll get further with it on my flight home, and then I'll start playing on the XBox this weekend - I think I'll try a Rogue there, just to do something different.

I'm not sure when Michael and I will launch the new DA2 oriented podcast - it might be next week, since we'll both be at Smalltalk Solutions :)

I paused my DA2 download this morning, because it was proceeding way too slowly - at the rate it was going, it might have finished before I check out on Thursday.As it happens, I'm heading to my sister's house for dinner this evening, and my plan is to take advantage of their broadband to finish the job.  I'll be able to play the game on my flight home this week :)

Well, it looks like I'll get to play DA2 before I have more time with the XBox:

My connection speed in the hotel isn't speedy, but I should have the game when I get back from work tomorrow :)

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How can you tell that you really, really like a game? When you come up with yet another role playing rationale for a character, and start the umpteebth playthrough in search of the last few achievement points :) Dragon Age 2 can't come soon enough :)

I just realized that I'll be in Texas when Dragon Age 2 ships. Looks like my daughter gets the first crack at it around here :)

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I just played through the Dragon Age 2 demo, and wow - it looks pretty cool. The combat system looks a lot like the one BioWare used in Mass Effect 2, which is great - that game was really good. I can't wait until March 8th!

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Spotted in Engadget:

You know all of that time you've been wasting on Angry Birds HD? Looks like your flying friends may have company when it comes time to, um... kill time, as Markus Persson has confirmed to Gamasutra that an iOS port is "in the works." That means that an official Minecraft build will soon pop up in Apple's App Store, with iPhone and iPad versions hinted at. Aron Neiminen, a new recruit to the Mojang team, is responsible for the port, and if all goes well, it'll be let loose later in the year. Persson also confirmed that the iOS version won't receive every update that the original browser / download versions get, but that it'll be "granted features that make sense for the touchscreen platform." Raise your hand below if you're giddy beyond control.

After reading through the forums, I was sure this was never going to happen, but there it is. IMHO, it makes too much sense for it not to happen :)