Nightly Open Thread
How to customize your Windows 7 login screen
You know I am going to do this to my laptop at some point.
Ten essential Dragon Age 2 mods
And here’s the stunner: most of them are actually useful. Except maybe the one that turns your war hound into a spider. But the utility for creating a custom Dragon Age: Origins savegame without having to replay said (occasionally quite tedious) title? Worthwhile!
Well, I’m glad I’m a Bell customer!
The Canadian telcom giant is the first internet service provider to back out of the whole “usage based billing” concept that has Canadian internet consumers in an uproar.
If this gets released for iPhone, I am officially done.
I’ve always wanted to give EVE Online a try, but have studiously avoided doing so for fear that I’ll get hooked. Currently, they’re only planning to bring the game to Tegra 2-powered tablets and smartphones, which means I’m safe…but if they ever do release an iOS port, there could be trouble.
Mass Effect 2: Arrival launches today!
The final DLC for BioWare’s award-winning sci-fi epic, Mass Effect 2 is now out. Here’s the trailer:
Reapers!
Tonight’s post brought to you by pandas:
Lots and lots of pandas.
It’ll change after the election, mark my words. They just don’t want it to become an election issue.
I really wanted to like Eve, but man is it boring. Playing Eve feels a lot like reading a spreadsheet. I do like reading about it though, and all of the meta-drama it creates.
I’ve been using those (and other) Dragon Age 2 mods on my second playthrough, and they are really breathing new life into the game. I heartily recommend them.
If you’d care to link us to any of those “other” mods, I know for a fact that I’d probably get some good mileage out of them (and I’m sure others would too).
Keep in mind that comments with 2+ links will cause your comment to be held for moderation, so if you’re fine with that, then feel free to make use of the comments form. You can also drop me a line via the contact form; I’ll reply and you can send your list to that email address with much less fear of it getting flagged as the spamz.
Well, instead of linking to a bunch of mods I’ll just link to the extremely helpful place where one can find all of the mods: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/
The mods I’m using are (and you can use the handy search feature at the DA Nexus to find them):
1) Chargen Revamp mod which is featured in the already-linked IGN top mods article. It allows you to make a cooler looking character. In vanilla DA2 you either get to look exactly like the Hawke from the opening cutscene, or you look like a super generic mannequin.
2) Dragon Age II: Level 50 mod. This mod extends the level cap to level 50 and makes level progression quicker. The upside is you get cool characters really quick. Remember that enemies helpfully scale to your level, so at later levels this actually makes the game a little tougher than normal.
3) Fast Action Real Damage – Nightmare Mod. This mod is my absolute favorite. It is in a very early version, and it does need tweaking, but I absolutely love what it does to the gameplay. Basically, this mod makes the game feel like how it looks in the cutscenes. Baddies have a lot lower health, but to balance this they do a lot more damage. Also, as you are playing in Nightmare difficulty you will have to worry about friendly fire in a big way. This mod makes fights very quick, very violent, and eliminates some of the sillier boss fights where the baddy has insane amounts of health and forces you to kite him around for 20 minutes.
If you use the Fast Action Real Damage mod be sure to also use the No Gibbing mod and the No Kiting mod. No Gibbing is there because you will be doing so much damage that without that mod you will end up exploding every baddy you come across (you can still end up gibbing baddies, but only on critical hit kills). No kiting is there because without it you can still kite the bosses, who now with their much reduced health bars will be way too easy.