dragons age casual gaming

You know that feeling you get when you just have to go into Game Settings and switch yourself from Normal to Casual? It's not a fun feeling, because you feel like your leveling down. That's because you are. You're admitting to yourself that you're no longer a serious gamer. You're just a casual gamer. You are a gamer who can't take full power damage.

That hurts.

But what Dragons Age: Origins taught me a few weeks ago is that if it's between not finishing the game or just admitting to yourself that you can't handle full damage, then take the hit in pride and dial it down a level.

I'm glad I did, because of all the games I have played, Dragons Age: Origins is one of the most satisfying. They don't cheat you out of anything, and they also don't cheat you out of dealing with the "real life" ingame consquences of the choices you made. I'll admit it, my mage should not have gone down the Morrigan path. I knew it all along, I had the opportunity to pursue Leliana, and I didn't. And then in the end I had to live with that choice. Not satisfying, but real.

Everything else was completely satisfying. The story lines were all resolved, the characters were developed, and in the end I was just so glad to have completed it. How many hours did I clock on that game? Well, considering that I waited until the Broodmother to switch over to Casual mode, it took me about 90 hours to finish the game.

The best thing about it is that I'm not done yet. I still have about 8 DLC's to complete, because I bought the Ultimate Edition.

So if anyone ever blinks at you and asks how you could possibly spend $300 on a console (ok $400, since I upgraded my hard drive to 320gb) and $60 per game, just show them how much entertainment you get from just one of those $60 games.  At 90 hours, I've paid 66 cents a day for an hour of entertainment. A bargain, I assure you. Add to that fact that the really good games are RPG's, IMO, and I firmly believe that more imagination goes into playing an RPG than any tv show or movie out there.

tl;dr
Dragons Age Origins is the shit! go get it plus all of its expansions and DLC.