Mass Effect was a really long awaited game for me, I really enjoyed the KoToR series (yes, both of them even though The Sith Lord’s story was a little lacking I still enjoyed the game) and couldn’t wait to see what bioware would do with this.

I’d describe the game as a weird cross between KoToR and Gears of War, such that it’s a third person shooter almost to the exact same degree as Gears with a few differences such as the cover system. That particular system works a lot better in GoW than in Mass Effect because it seems more responsive and generally ‘smarter’ in Gears where the cover button is the button ‘A’, whereas if I recall correctly (I hardly ever use the cover function in Mass Effect because of how bad it is) it’s a thumbstick click.

Mass Effect does however add a whole bunch of additional gameplay mechanics that are very RPG-esque, true to Bioware’s image. Leveling your character and party up, and using special abilities to increase individual characters or your entire party to gain an advantage against multiple enemies is what sets it apart from a game like Gears of War…

There aren’t as many abilities as there was in KoToR, which is a little dissappointing. But if there were as many it would make the game a lot more complicated and less casual gamer-friendly and more like a DnD game than Bioware may have intended. However, the DnDness of KoToR is very well the likely reason a lot of people enjoyed it to the degree they did and as such I think it was a mistake for Bioware to alter their method of game creating. I’m in no means upset by the way this game turned out, I’ve played it through at least 4 times, and enjoyed each time immensely and I’m happy they’re not sticking to a single type of game, but I believe if the game was more like DnD than it is, it could have come out to be a better game.

However, having more DnD in it would also be tough because it would begin to negate the novelty of the third-person shooter part. Since in DnD you have a chance-to-hit, you would begin negating the players ability to aim their weapon if you incorporated this, and of course when you alter one aspect of DnD many other things need to be changed to make sure it stays balanced. And speaking of balance, one of my largest beefs with the game is that it’s completely opposite to Oblivion’s default level to creature difficulty ratio. And for those who don’t know about that, when you level up in Oblivion monsters start to become impossible to defeat and I mean impossible (Mods have been made to counteract this, but back when they didn’t exist it was horrific). In turn, when you get to around level 30 (out of 60 max) MoB’s become outrageously easy to take down, even without a party.

Which brings me to the next topic, the party. Unlike KoToR you do not have the ability to take direct control of the 3 characters in your party, but rather you always directly control the protagonist Mr/Ms Shepherd and indirectly control your party members, as a commander would. Ie: Move there! Shoot There! Use X ability on Y enemy! etc. And they’re rather terrible at it also. They have some party settings which influence their AI’s ability to judge whether to use an ability or not, and its simply just best to leave it on the setting which says for them to use it up as soon as the battle starts. Especially since in the later levels you’ll hardly even need them, but its always nice to have free shots while enemies are floating happily around a room in an inspired ragdoll motion. If they at least attempted moving or firing back (a la Psi-Ops) it would make it that much more realistic, and maybe a little harder?

And with regard to abilities, I don’t like the way they implemented an anti-spam tactic. It penalizes Biotics (Mages for you DnD folk) so much, since their weapon specialization is non-existant they need to wait behind cover while their abilities recharge before doing anything again. And I’m not talking about a 2-3 second recharge, some abilities have 90 seconds to wait! Staple offensive abilities are at least 20-30 seconds wait, and that just isn’t acceptable in a combat situation. Despite how long some of the disabling abilities may last the recharge times on the abilities need to be rebalanced, even if solely for the biotic class since it’s pretty much the only way for them to hurt something. Also, like KoToR you have the ability to be good or evil depending on your speech and actions, however… Unlike KoToR this doesn’t affect your abilities at all, in face besides what you do in the game it doesn’t affect anything besides maybe a little bit how you look. There are multiple endings available for good and bad but it’s brought up by a final decision that isn’t swayed by the rest of the game, so you can live your entire life as the universes nicest angel and then take the evil ending and vice versa. And I do wish that in Mass Effect 2 they add more changes to how the game is played depending on how evil/good you are.

The story is mediocre to good, I won’t go into too much detail because I do my best not to spoil a game in these reviews. But I usually prefer a twist that involves the protagonist in some way rather than just the antagonist, ( ie: Luke I am your father! ) and even though the story was really well written and made into the game in a flawless manor, it’s just a personal preference of mine to have a twist that changes how you feel about the character you’re playing, rather than the character you’re fighting against. And I prefer it even moreso when they make you want to hunt the antagonist even more out of hate or anger rather than feeling sympathy for them.

Onto the game detail: Graphics are amazing, but I find that having the “Movie Grain” on can be a little annoying at times, but without can give way to seeing some bad anti-aliasing issues. Sound is mediocre, there was nothing impressive about it since most Sci-Fi noises have already been done before, and done well. The noises were done well, but again nothing impressive. And the voice acting was better than mediocre but not great. Hearing and recognizing Seth Green right at the beginning was probably the highlight of the voices.

I actually hesitated buying this game for the console as I had no idea how the controls would be done for it. I have always played GTA games on the PC, and always have I required the mouse and keyboard to play it effectively. But they’ve done an AMAZING job with the 360 controller, they probably have done well with the PS3 controllers also but I can’t comment on that. The amount of features they packed in with the sensitivities of the triggers is amazing, and you can do pretty much anything you could in the pc all within fingers reach.

I’m surprised I talked myself into writing this so early, I’ve not come close to finishing this yet but there’s a lot of things I’d like to talk about. I may append it later, but I’m comfortable with what I can talk about.

The story mode seems to be rather full featured, although you don’t have many options with regard to who you can do missions for at the time you have enough to switch it up if you feel like a different environment.

My roommate asked me to compare it to Assassin’s Creed, although simply with a “Is it better than” question. I couldn’t answer him at the time, and I’m still not able to. Since I’m not someone who usually claims that X is better than Y, I take a stand on pros and cons and don’t do the evaluation myself. The story of GTA is a lot easier on the head to play through with regards to what you have to do. In both games you need to repeat tasks over and over. In AC it was eavesdropping, pick-pocketing, and interrogation, these were compulsory in forwarding the plot and it was the same for each killing. In GTA you also have limited goals in a mission such as car-jacking, deliveries (of whatever), and killing. GTA delivers these so much better simply because it offers multiple ways of accomplishing the goals. In AC, all the options were pretty much EXACTLY the same actions just with a different model on the other end. Whereas if we look at the options in GTA you have multiple ways of doing each, and that is where the fun lies.

I’ve not had any luck comparing to multiplayer yet, so there’s not much to say except that it looks awesome on paper. The free roam modes and gametypes look like they’d be great fun if they worked. I’ll update when I get some information on how well it plays.

Rockstar have also added a more lifelike element to the game, where you can actually have a “pleasure” life aswell as your business life. Such as having a girlfriend whom you can take out on dates and help you waste time, or, once you reach an acceptable social status with some of your employers you can take them out for drinks, to strip bars, to shoot some pool or play darts. They will even call you about it from time to time, and best not to turn them down unless you’re really busy since you can lose social status with them also. Another addition is a reward system with certain employers. Each employer has an ability which you unlock after a certain while, like a taxi service or gun purchases, and all you need to do is phone them up and ask for it. You can also get small little side-jobs that increase your standing with them (read: grinding faction ^_^) but somehow are still relatively interesting from some employers.

Police are still relatively dumb. Although it would be hard to emulate them correctly in such an environment, since there isn’t a “Drive at the speed limit” button. Although they do chase other people on occasion now, I never see what they did to warrant being chased, but I’ll often see some bloke just running with a cop chasing him. They can get pretty anal though, simply tapping them sometimes will get you a rating, although it’s a lot easier to lose it can often interfere with missions.

Speaking of losing your rating, they’ve actually implemented a system where you can visually see how your evasion is going (I haven’t played anything after GTA 3, so forgive me if this was added in one of the intermediary games). When a cop spots you, a sphere with radius depending on your wanted level (higher levels = bigger radius) appears on your map with you at the center. When the cop loses site of you, the circle stops moving with you, and once you leave the area you only need wait a few seconds and your rating will leave. As you may have guessed, if a cop sees you at any points your “search area” will be recentered.

The graphics and sounds are pretty good, and as usual the radio amuses me. Some silly commercials about selling babies on the internet and other antics provide that comic relief in what seems like a really serious game. Although it could use some more amusing chatter from pedestrians and drivers, but I could just be missing the lines.

Been waiting a while for this ever since I got my hands on the original. The original lacked a few things that we enjoy here at school, the most notable being a decent Co-op mode. Vegas 1′s Co-op mode was very much like a multi-player terrorist hunt, where you and your friends would go around area to area and shoot guys. Sounds decent, and it was, but Rainbow Six’s selling point for me was it’s planning and squad combat. Which, in multi-player terrorist hunts (Co-op story mode) it was non-existant, and there was no voice chat built-in therefore communicating with your squad members either means a 3rd party voice chat application or … typing. And there was no actual “story” in story-mode while doing Co-op either.

Vegas 2 has improved everything, having it’s own Gears of War-like Co-op where the 2nd player takes position as a squad mate and the primary player still has complete control over the other two teammates. The 2nd player can see and hear all the signals given, so can either go along with the other two squad-mates or talk via the built-in voice chat(!) and decide on a different course of action. The second player can also tag enemies for primary and secondary targeting by the NPC squad mates upon entering a room, which helps in making the second player feel much less useless. Only problem is that the new Co-op only supports two players. Non-story mode Co-op can do up to 4.

The visuals and weapons are great, creating a very authentic feel to the game. Ubisoft have generally done very well with all their Tom Clancy stuff since they obtained Red Storm and their attention to detail is quite amazing also. My roommate is very interested in guns (don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on him) and there’s rarely a gun fighting game where I don’t hear some kind of “omg they’re doing it wrong” or something of the sort. But from Ubisoft I’ve never heard any complaining (with him, that’s a good thing) and we both got addicted to this game overnight.

It’s unlocking system can be a little.. tedious.. Like MMORPG tedious. For me, who likes taking single silenced shots to kill people, filling up the marksman line to 15 in the first night was relatively simple. But filling up Assault and CQB is much tougher, considering what you need to do for these I’d be surprised if anyone filled up either of these before their marksman line. For assault, you need to either shoot people through something, or blow them up. You can also shoot turret gunners and shielded (with a tactical shield) enemies but those are rare in story mode and completely missing from Terrorist hunts altogether. And for CQB you either need to blind fire kill people, which is close to impossible unless they are 3-5 ft away, or kill them within 5 ft (close range kill) to get points. And since these goals are a lot more work than simply getting headshots and long-range kills, my Assault and CBQ levels are still around 400-500, while my marksman is in excess of 1400. After ever second level you unlock a new gun related to the line you unlocked it from.. Marksman leads to sniper and some assault rifles, Assault leads to some pistols, shotguns, light machine guns and assault rifles, and CQB gives you submachine guns and light machine guns. And every alternate second level, you get a few thousand experience points (depending on which level you just got, higher levels give you more XP) which are put towards your rank. Ranking up gives you new camo colours and clothes. It’s not a bad system, it makes me want to play it more but I wish it was more adaptive to your playstyle rather than just being static values for how you get points.

Character customization is really good too. It’s not as in-depth as say.. Mass Effect but there are still some wide varieties of characters one can make. You can unlock new clothes and camo colours as you Rank up in the game which colour your character and armor. Armor is optional, and doesn’t seem to make a big difference at all to your actual character. It may alter your movement and protection, but not enough to stop yourself from looking cool by not having a chest armor piece.

Graphics and audio are great. One minor bug (if you can even call it that) is that on most guns, the sound between a single shot and multiple shot are different. So when you switch to full-auto and fire a single shot, it sounds different than when you’d be in single shot mode. And would often let you believe you fired off 2 or 3 rounds in that burst, even if it was only one.

The AI seems pretty smart, they try to flank you if they can find a way but they yell out a bit too much. I mean, some of these terrorists are really skilled, so why wouldn’t they have radio’s or at least a hand signal system? It’s nice that Ubisoft has created such a great AI, that flanks us and works as a team against us… But they shouldn’t need to show us by having the terrorists yell out how devious and complex their plans are to us before they happen. They should just execute them then once they kill you say something like, “Wow, I didn’t think that plan would work.” or “Nice idea to flank them!”. The AI also doesn’t suffer from “It must have been the wind”-syndrome, which Splinter Cell games (at least up to Chaos Theory) had a big problem with. If you didn’t play the Splinter Cell games, most of the AI would dismiss any abnormality in the surrounding area verbally by saying “It must have been the wind” or “It must have been nothing.” despite their accomplice 5 ft away is hunched over in a non-responsive pile of dead. Once enemies hear something out of the ordinary, they come to investigate it and since most of the game takes place in the day or bright lighting, they usually see what made the disturbance rather easily. And usually try to revenge their non-responsive pile of dead accomplices instead of cursing at the wind.

I think that covers pretty much everything. The game is worth trying, I have only played it for the PC but I’m sure the 360 version is great also. If you enjoy FPS’s with squad based combat, like Star Wars: Republic Commando then you’ll just love this game!

I noticed this on digg today, and being such a gaming guy It always amuses me to no end when I come across some really creative way that someone has recreated a game theme from a really unorthodox principle. I have been over worked with exams but I hope to get some stuff up soon..

The campaign in LO-MAC isn’t very interactive, it features a few missions for each of the aircraft (which are rather lacking but I’ll touch on that later) and they are presented to the player in a map screen with waypoints and a description of why the mission is taking place. That’s about it. I personally don’t play the game for it’s single-player, the multiplayer is where I believe the game shines.

Multiplayer is lobby’d through a 3rd-party application called Hyperlobby, it’s a gamespy wannabe in many ways but it seems to be used specifically for Air-Combat games. There are usually between 6 and 15 games going at any one time, but only 3-4 of them ever have a population. Joining is easy and you just select your coalition (team), aircraft, and loadout.. then you’re ready to fly! However, getting into a fight is why I mentioned this game wasn’t for people who enjoy hopping into the action right away. Like real life, fights hardly ever take place over the airport you’re taking off from, usually a few km from where you would start. And sometimes it can take a good 5-10 minutes to actually get into any form of combat.

Combat is usually BVR (Beyond Visual Range) and thusly you rely more on your instruments than your eyes to locate and take down targets. The problem is the same is true for defense, you can’t see people shooting at you but rather just a loud audible beeping which after a while sounds like it’s saying “TURN, Asshole”. Evading missiles is very technical also, I’ll leave that for comments if anyone is interested but I’ll just say it isn’t as simple as turning at the last second.

The last thing I have wrong with the game is that in multiplayer, as your plane explodes most dramatically to everyone else watching you, you jump straight back into a limbo menu without knowing what happened to your plane, and how it became the rough mixture of steel, fire, and smoke that everyone else is laughing at. It’s not much of a deal now that I’m getting better and it happens less, but it confused me when it first happened because I was flying along minding my own business, and *Poof*, I’m at the map screen again. This happened a few times before I realised I was dying (I saw my death messages) and finally started following others into battle instead of wondering in all alone with every mechanism for announcing location blaring loudly.

The graphics are so-so, they aren’t BAD but they could do with some better ground textures. You’ll also want a good joystick for this since flying with the keyboard is not only a bad idea, it’s a silly idea.. a stupid idea.. Just go shoot yourself for even reading about flying a plane with a keyboard.

The Smash Brothers series (finally) came to the Nintendo Wii. First impressions were very mixed however, I found that the graphics and gameplay were very good, but being a great fan of the Melee iteration for the gamecube I felt that the changes turned it away from being a Smash Brothers Game. That slowly changed over time but the lack of any significant meta that existed in Melee (such as wavedashing and crouch cancelling and L-cancelling) kind of threw me off it for a bit.

The graphics are really pretty, giving a bit of luminosity and glow effects to some of the characters, and for the first time in a long time it wasn’t overdone. And while the graphics still resemble that of a cartoony arcade fighter, it’s still got an “upgraded” feel to it. Making the transition between consoles almost flawless.

Movement in the game is a lot slower than it used to be in melee, two main reasons I’ve noticed are the cause of this: 1) There’s no significant speed increasing meta game yet, so characters move as fast as they are designed to (which is not a bad thing, but sometimes people like playing faster than intended) and 2) You lose your ground velocity when you jump in the air. I noticed the second issue quite readily since I mained Captain Falcon in Melee, and his strength was that he hit relatively hard and moved the fastest in the game. When you ran at full speed then jumped, your velocity in the air would be that which you were running at (relatively realistic). But in Brawl you would not get your velocity tranferred over to your air movement, rather you would slow down drastically if you were a quick character on the ground. This is especially annoying for characters such as Sonic, and Captain Falcon since their ground speed is amazing, but they slow down as soon as they hit the air so you need to run farther and make a judgment call on when to jump that is very very different than melee.

Meta however is not gone forever, as the great folks over at Smashboards have been creating new techniques to make gameplay quicker and all around more fun. Kudos to you guys :)

Here are two links showing the differences in the speed of Brawl compared to Melee:

Melee (C.falcon vs Marth)

Brawl (C.falcon vs Marth)

I kept the characters the same so that all elements except the actual game (It’s also the same map across games) and players are the same. And you can see the difference in speed, but how it still maintains that same level of gameplay with melee.

The online system for Brawl is a little strange also, it gives you another key to remember for your Wii, and then has a Halo-style “Hey.. I want to play a game please!” “Ok, sit here waiting while WE find someone for you to play” feel. You can play specifically with a friend or friends (which is what the code is for) and that works rather well since you can change the game type and other stuff when you start it. The random matchups always have a 2 minute clock game going, keeping track of stock (lives) lost and won (which isn’t a bad game mode, but it’s not the preferred mode by far) then awarding the person with the most points at the end of the two minutes with the victory. Most of them also have items involved which is a big no-no for tournament players since a single (random) item drop can change the match from a 4-1 stock game to a 0-1 stock game easily (Home run bat for example). So items being on can get, and usually does get, rather annoying. They can however be opted out of which a majority of people do anyway. Also, nintendo seems to have a little bit of trouble coding network interactions.. As finding a random match in my residence is next to impossible for the system, yet friend games work fine.. And so does the Halo 3 lobby system on the 360. So I’m not sure why they haven’t gotten it right but it doesn’t seem to work (I’ve only been able to play 1 game in random), not to mention the lack of a Wired port on the wii makes online play frustrating if you didn’t have a wireless router when you bought it.

Character selection is great, albeit a little shorthanded. A few more characters from melee would have been good. Instead of replacing them they could have just carried them across but balanced them more. Such that Mewtwo could have fit perfectly in Lucario’s position without even touching their planned character moveset and design. The new additions are great such as Olimar from Pikmin, Sonic from Sonic The Hedgehog, Snake from Metal Gear Solid, Ike from Fire Emblem, Lucas from Earth Bound and many more. Again, the selected characters they put in the game are great, some people I know (including myself) felt there should be a lot more in the game but we’re content with the selection.

All in All, I love this game and the people I play it with (Go Go CoS etc). Sakurai changed a lot of the things we enjoyed about melee but gave us a great game (after many delays) in return, different enough to incite discussion and discovery of new meta, but not different enough to make us stop loving the Smash Bros. Well Done!

Usually at dinner he would inform my roommate and I about new movies coming out and stuff he’s watched, while my roommate and I would begin conversations about gaming and new gaming releases. More conversation ensued on both topics since we all share relatively the same interests, but we each have our own initiative to research and get information on certain topics that the other doesn’t.

After reading a few posts of his I thought it would be a good idea to try and start my own blog about games, and share my experiences, ideas and suggestions to the gaming community.

Class is over now so I’ll be going to add more to this later tonight :)