Played the Dragon Age 2 demo last night

I was moaning about the fact that there isn’t a demo Dragon Age (1) so I could check if it played well on my new laptop. I haven’t really done much PC gaming in years, but I was tempted to try out Dragon Age. Sadly I can’t try it without paying for it so nothing’s happened on that front.

But Dragon Age II demo was released a few days ago and I downloaded last night. I figure it’d be a good test of my new laptop and I good way to see if I might like the original.

So two things. First it does look like a fun game and it promises a big story to get your teeth into. I like the tactical element, pausing to assign commands, trying to use magic and attacks intelligently, etc. but found the camera control a bit wonky in play, probably due to using the keyboard.

Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii uses the same sort of control, where you can control the camera position independent of your character’s actions. Using a gamepad, the control is very fluid and powerful, allowing you to run around a battle, focusing on the big beast you’re taking down. I didn’t get the same flow while playing DA2 demo at all. I also missed the ability to tilt the camera up or down. Maybe I missed what keys to use to do that.

But I think that’s part of my second thing. My laptop is already lower end of the spec to play DA2 at it’s fullest. I had tone down the resolution, detail, etc. to get it flowing nicely, but even then I miss the smoothness I got with playing MHT on the Wii. To be fair, I didn’t buy my laptop to play games. I bought it to use the internet, write, code, watch videos, carry around, and occasionally use for work. In those departments it works great, it’s not a games laptop. So what did I expect?

Well I’m not going to fork out that much money for a high spec gaming PC or laptop that’s already old within a month. I think that’s what put me off PC games so long ago. The big graphic intensive games require newer and newer PC specs and I stopped playing that game years ago.

So yea, DA2 looks like a fun game I’d probably enjoy. But I probably won’t get it (unless I somehow win an XBox or it comes out on the Wii, both unlikely).

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