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Dragon Age Origins: First Impressions
12.22.09 11:43 AM Filed in: News
First and foremost - this is the by far the best hardcore game I've played yet on Mac. If you like Bioware games, you'll find this a very playable version of the bestseller.
The game is 9 gigs to download, and takes up 17 when installed. It took 8 hours to download from Direct2Drive! Installation was easy, though the ridiculous EA account requirement took some fiddling. I had to enter in both my keys for the game and the bonus content, and I was off.
The graphics are a slight downgrade from my Xbox 360, at least on my Macbook Pro 17. At first I thought I'd left my laptop in battery conservation mode, because my framerate for the main game was shorting out. When I exited, I disappointedly saw that it was already in full performance mode. Time machine backups also cause a slight hiccup in the default mode, medium graphics and medium textures at 1080 resolution. After playing with the settings, I found that the game ran fine with low graphics and medium textures. I haven't hit any of the very large scale battles, but would guess they would overwhelm the engine.
Still - in the low graphics mode, it's quite playable. I found the experience much more tactical than the Xbox 360 version, though slower paced. They are not kidding when they say the origin story significantly affects your playthrough. There was a noble I beat in a mission during my first playthrough as a mage. In my second playthrough as a rouge noble, I am finding out how he betrayed and murdered my family. Even if you've played it on another console, there is plenty of game here.
I plan to install this on both my Revision C Macbook Air, and my iMac 27 inch i7 to test the performance. I'll give a further report of impressions here later.
Still - in the low graphics mode, it's quite playable. I found the experience much more tactical than the Xbox 360 version, though slower paced. They are not kidding when they say the origin story significantly affects your playthrough. There was a noble I beat in a mission during my first playthrough as a mage. In my second playthrough as a rouge noble, I am finding out how he betrayed and murdered my family. Even if you've played it on another console, there is plenty of game here.
I plan to install this on both my Revision C Macbook Air, and my iMac 27 inch i7 to test the performance. I'll give a further report of impressions here later.