Game Review: Dragonage

Dragonage is a new RTS/RPG hybrid by BioWar games, famous inventors of Belter’s Gate and other Dungeons In Dragons video games. This is their first foray into recording games for the X-Boxer and Player Station 3, and it shows. The entire affair is marred by amateurish presentation more fitting for a late night sword & sorcery schlockfest than the CD-ROM multimedia interactive movie it was intended to be.

NOTE: I AM REVIEWING THIS GAME ON MY IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER. IT HAS AN INTEL PROCESSOR AND A HARD DRIVE. RAM: YES. IT IS WATER COOLED BECAUSE I LIKE TO OVERCOOK MY CHIPS.

Let’s start with the graphics. I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure they’re at least 128 bit (maybe even 200). The problem is that they look closer to 96 bit, which really shows the series’ Atari Jaguar roots. Whatever, they’re passable, even if all of the character models look like muppets half burned up in a grease fire. It’s hard to believe this is FMV. Supposedly they used the same high tech imaging process as Moral Combat, but I just don’t see it. (Before you think I’m just not familiar with the technology, know that I used to play MC2 at the roller rink eight hours a day while my mom was at work. Sometimes sixteen hours if she had to pull a double shift because one of the other girls was at the clinic. I still know all of the fatalities, animalities, babalities, and bestialities. Do not question what I know.)

The sound in this game is great, even though sometimes it doesn’t fit. For instance, when your main character casts a magic incarnation, he sometimes calls out “SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS” which is kind of unusual. Female characters sometimes just make fart noises when given commands, and while it’s pretty damn funny it’s also just unnecessary. By and large, however, the swords sound just like swords and the magic spells sound just like they do in real life. My only real serious complaint is the narrator, who doesn’t sound like Mako at all.

UPDATE: the narrator is NOT Mako. Mako died in 1999.

The plot is a meandering mess. It starts out in this magical kingdom called Floralden, full of elfs and gnomes, and there’s some kind of war going on. It appears that betrayal is afoot, and things will never be the same. Basically it’s the same plot as Lord of the Ring: Return of the Jedi. I’m not strictly complaining, but I expected something more original.

You can choose from among three character classes: Swordman, Mana Wizard, and some kind of ninja guy. You can be a guy or a girl, but there’s really no reason to pick a girl due to the crippling stat penalties. To make matters worse male characters get +10 to hit girls, and every time you give a girl an order there’s a 25% chance that she’ll fall down and become stunned. Also their faces all look like they’re about to cry and you can’t change them.

Anyway, I really couldn’t follow the plot. You start out by meeting this guy named Gary Warren and he hires you to help him stop this disease called the Bloat. The Bloat is spreading all over the world and creating all of these ugly monsters called Darth Spawn. This is silly because Darth Spawn was the bad guy in the third Star War movie, I’m almost sure. Martin Sheen played him. You can check IMDB on this. Whatever.

The plot progresses along typical lines: go here, kill some rat lords, gain experience until you have enough X Points to buy a new firebrain spell. Occasionally you are required to participate in a rhythm minigame where you have to type out the lyrics to the Dragonage theme song. This wouldn’t be so bad except that it happens at every area transition and load screen. You open a door so your character can go to the bathroom because his Bladder stat is full, and you get “Dra-GONE-age! DRA-gone-age! Hearts of fi-re, love’s in-side her, Dra-gone-AGE!” It’s like they did it just to pad out the game. Right before you have to swap to the second disc it plays a variant version with extended guitar and bass solos. The guitar stuff sounds like AC/DC, so I didn’t really mind, but it didn’t jive with the whole Crimean War/Moorish occupation steampunk setting.

Near the end of the game you finally confront the evil Dragonage, who wants to rule the world because the love of her life—the Tempeler—left her for a Witch of the World. Before you can fight her, though, you are teleported to the underground land of Fate, where you discover the game’s dark secret:

All of the characters are patients in a mental hospital in the real world. The events of the game are just a dramatized version of their group therapy sessions, ending in a climax where the characters overcome their mental problems and move on with their lives. It’s something of an anticlimax, but it actually kind of works. When they all hug at the end is especially touching.[/SPOILER]

There are four alternate endings, but two of them are the same only with the characters in different period costumes (American western and Edwardian), and one of them has the characters starting a rock band called—guess what—Dragonage! I won’t spoil the final and best ending, but you can go back up a paragraph and read it again if you want.

Now let’s get to the real meat of Dragonage: the characters. By and large BioWar really outdid themselves giving the characters unique personalities and back stories. I have to question some of the creative decisions, however. One of the characters, a female Mana Wizard named Morrissey, spends the entire game completely topless. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with this except for two things: First, the nipples on the character model are badly misaligned (also they are more brown than pink—brown nipples are gross). Second, they never explain how a female can become a Mana Wizard despite starting with half of the Intelligence of a male character. To be fair, however, she isn’t very good at her class and spends most of the game making meals and sewing things for the boys. She is basically comic relief, and several plot sequences require your character to console her after she is reduced to tears by your constant teasing about her lisp.

Other characters include Alice, a knight (and a man, by the way—I really think they mixed up a lot of the character names and just never got around to correcting them), and Steve, a black man. Later on there’s a pair of morbidly obese twins who join your party, but I never used them except in the pie eating contest. World 4, Level 5 takes place in a sumo wrestling contest, but you don’t meet the twins until Word 6—another example of BioWar’s slapdash approach to this game.

One problem character is this elfish assassin who joins your party. His character is openly gay (ASS-ASS-IN… get it?) and spends most of his time mincing about the screen in leather straps. He also hits on your character all the time, and since I made my guy to look a lot like me this made me feel really uncomfortable. It was made worse by the fact that when I first met him I thought he was a girl, so I chose lots of romantic dialogue options. If you aren’t careful BioWar will trick you into a depraved homosexual relationship that you can’t escape without uninstalling then reinstalling the game. Just another part of the gay agenda, I guess. It’d be nice if there were just one game that didn’t involve rampant gay sex between men.

Oh, did I mention the rampant gay sex? After you start a romance with the elf there is an obligatory interactive sex scene, complete with graphic penetration. If you try to skip it, it just starts playing really loud techno music. There’s an option to plug in a rumble-capable gamepad during these sequences, but I don’t know why you would want to.

These sequences are absolutely disgusting and I had to watch each of them three or four times before I could believe what I was seeing. They take the form of a minigame, and, in fact, replace the theme song minigame on every loading screen afterward. The mechanic is simple: just tap the spacebar to coordinate with the characters’ pelvis thrusts. If you fail the characters get this disappointed look on their faces, and it’s really disheartening. A help popup encourages you to use your own penis to tap the spacebar for maximum interactivity. At first I balked, but it really does make the sequences a lot easier. Later in the game the two of you run away to the neighboring kingdom of Quar, where gay marriage is legalized as part of the plot (there’s that agenda again). While there they learn some exotic new positions which are integrated into the minigame. Unfortunately they require so much tapping that you’re likely to inadvertently have an orgasm before the sequences are complete.

You can avoid the relationship with the elf, if you can, and instead pursue one with the comically large-breasted Morrissey. Unfortunately, the heterosexual sex scenes are far less graphic than the homosexual ones, and Morrissey’s weird nipples make it hard to maintain an erection for extended tapping. I can’t wait until someone puts out a mod to give her normal nipples.

Now, there’s no multiplayer but there is split-screen co-op, which is a mixed blessing because the game forces one player to be the gay elf. In that mode the minigames require both players to tap different parts of the keyboard, so…

All in all it’s a solidly average game. It doesn’t have the depth of Masterfect or the charm of Jade Umpire, or the powerhouse Dungeon In Dragons license (though there is a surprise cameo by Drizzt Do’Urden, it occurs during one of the previously mentioned minigames). BioWar clearly intends Dragonage to be the beginning of a new franchise, but after what I’ve seen in this game I’m not sure I want to go along for the ride. Still, projected advances in teledildonics over the next few years make the prospect of a Dragonage sequel simultaneously terrifying and irresistible.

So, if you’re a fan of this sort of thing (and there’s nothing wrong with it if you are), give Dragonage a try. Otherwise you might be better served by pre-ordering Modern Warfront 2: Called to Duty at your local Gamestop or EB Games—that way you are guaranteed a copy on release day, unless they happen to somehow run out and you have to go to Best Buy where they have, like, 500 on the shelf.

I give it 2 Thai Ladyboys out of 5.

Those two. Specifically.