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| | Publisher: BioWare  Genre: Adventure & RPG | | | Min OS X: 10.4 |
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Requirements: Mac OS X: 10.6.2 | CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor | RAM: 2 GB | Hard Disk: 3.5 GB | Graphics: ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 | Requires Dragon Age: OriginsReview: It's always hard to follow a great act, whether it be Penn and Teller or Fallout 3. What invariably happens is that what comes after is compared to what came before, and the actual quality of the offering is ignored. Generally, the newer editions in a series fall more on the ignored side of the equation when the original achieves reasonably good ratings. Dragon Age: Origins from TransGaming and Bioware won Game of the Year. So, can Awakening stand as an expansion beyond expectations, or is it an addition that has been outshone by the game that came before?In this case, it has definitely been outshone. While Dragon Age: Origins offered a large party of possibilities with numerous romance options for men and women, Awakening offers only one of the original cast, greatly diminished options for even a mild romance, and a very basic character growth arc for each hero. While Origins offered multiple player backgrounds and story origins, plot twists that truly surprised you the first time through, and an extremely lengthy experience, Awakening offers merely a single player background, plot twists you can see a mile away, and a relatively short campaign. In addition, the events of the first game hardly impact those of the second when you import a character from Origins. Aside from the skills and stats of your character, all of which you can respec, there doesn't really seem to be much of a difference between importing a character and starting one fresh. You'll always arrive as a Grey Warden, you'll always arrive to battle for your keep, and the peasants and nobles will always pester you in the same way. The lack of altered story arcs greatly cut down on the replayability that was one of the major strong points for Origins. This extends into the late-game as well, as there are only one or two major choices throughout the expansion, and those only affect the last hour or two of the game. Not to mention that one of them can be ignored entirely if you've made your keep an impregnable fortress and made all your fellow heroes extremely happy. Not that you'll want that choice to exist, of course, as nobody likes seeing people die. What also makes these decisions much less compelling than those found in Origins is the fact that you always know for a fact that they'll have an impact. Part of the joy of the main game is that you may make a decision you thought was no big deal and it ends up changing your entire experience for the rest of the game. It really made you think about what you were saying, which doesn't really occur so much in Awakening. Thankfully, the sounds, music, and graphics are all just as good as they've always been. The voice actors all fit their roles excellently, with plenty of burps, groans, and wisecracks to go around, the music fits the atmosphere of each area you enter as you slaughter darkspawn and rogues alike, and each model still looks absolutely amazing even on medium. Most people will never get to see the game at a much higher level, though, as a strong machine will start to slow in the more detailed zones. This occurs even on low quality in some areas, so don't expect to be able to crank things up to highest quality without a beast of a machine.
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