FUNside

This is a review on Mass Effect 2 from the notes I took live blogging it while I was playing the game – proudly stating for 50 hours straight…

Remember trying to get relatives excited about video games only to get frustrated that they couldn’t see beyond the bleak graphics? Well, this game sets the record straight – even your grandma can gaze over it like any other space opera

So you start off this game fresh or with an imported character from the first game (on the now so-called trilogy). To be honest I can’t see how you can play this game straight away. The references to the first game are too many – name dropping, events, relationships – basically if you haven’t played the first game you’re screwed. Remember the big revelation with the Prothean? Who are the Protheans you ask?! Exactly!!

Most notable new aspects of the story are the Illusive man, technically your boss, whose voice reminded me Charlie (the boss of Charlie’s Angels). The ship has an AI called EDI – which doesn’t seem to do much more than participating in the cinematic dialogues. Don’t know how much thought when into the shape of the AI, and I’m considering maybe it’s all intentional, but the first thing I though was “it’s like talking to a vagina” (yes that’s what the title refers to – you’re welcome). But even that fun fact becomes old when in-game all it does is tell you which part of the ship you are in, over and over again. And you have no rover(!) this time around. You always land on a shuttle. I’m surprised no one is feeling the loss. I for one missed the free rides on the planet surface. Although admittedly that did have it’s own set of issues…

General observation on the gameplay – you should really treat the game as a cinematic experience so you can appreciate it for what it is. It’s not one of those games that you have to click on everything to find all the secrets – if you play it that way you will just get annoyed from all the things you can’t do. So, talking people in the background are just background, objects are only there as props. The things you can do are usually highlighted and that’s straight forward enough not to mess around with stuff.

On the game mechanics, navigating through the galaxy is just FUNNY. Your spaceship is like a micro machine and it’s hilarious how you can loose your landing spot due to inertia!! But mining planets was boring – period. The battling system makes you feel capable without doing much – dare I say, it’s like Call of Duty without the migraine? It was interesting how facing the different alien races truly changed the combat experience as you had a uniquely different environment to use/navigate through and the use of a different weapon load to achieve maximum damage. To break the tension, there are only two types of hacking games, which is good and bad, familiar yet repetitive. The spacebar seems to be the magic button – you can do all sorts of things depending where you’re standing. That’s (surprisingly) elegant, like the one button logic of Apple.

There is also the upgrade and skill improvement portion of the game. For me personally all this is yawning so I just left it to auto level up. Not to be cynical but I’m under the impression there is not much difference in playing the game , whatever class you choose or skills you advance – a few different forces or weapons don’t make that much of a difference and in the end you could land with the same weapon set whatever path you choose. That’s just my perception though.

I wouldn’t dare to badmouth the game on it’s dialogues, but I feel they are (still) glitchy to me – the “conversation” follows a certain path, which means in some cases you might need to repeat dialogue just to get the options you want and in others you are forbidden to ask something if you choose something else – seems like old school Lucasarts adventure logic – dunno why they advertise it as a high point for the cinematic experience – guess it’s one of those “brand new you’re retro” moments.

There is significant dialogue with underlying messages, the screenplay is truly up to par. “Illium is a wonderful world, for those who can afford it”. And fine humor as well. Most memorable funny line: “Does living in a higher altitude make you feel more intelligent??”. As well known, romance is a main aspect of the game – flirting with a bunch of women was fun but I’m sure the sexual frustration was a common side-effect. Above all, the breakthrough here is that the 3D models expressed convincing emotions! For those who know, that scene with Miranda and her sister was a true soap opera moment.

Visually the game is stunning. I am a sci-fi buff but this can be considered the epitome of how current virtual reality simulates life in space. On a side-note, I noticed a dark fade around the edges of the screen – is that meant to make the game look more “realistic”, like mimicking eyesight? I REALLY enjoyed the atmosphere – I didn’t want to stop the game cause I didn’t want to leave the world. And there is much more to see in the sequel. You don’t get to free roam the Citadel again but there are many other space stations and surface cities.I’m overall impressed by the art of the game although I must say I noticed some of the less treated level design was put as hidden missions you may or may not discover through planet surface scanning – well played Bioware

Oh, and a real world entrepreneur should create the Aftetlife club EXACTLY as it is – with those ugly faced aliens serving the place – it would be perfect…

My strategy in the game was simple: try to be nice to everyone and take all the side missions you are offered – like a proper boyscout My theory is that there are in fact only two versions of the game, the really good and the really bad outcome and all the other variations of the story are simply cutdowns from one or the other side due to your shortcomings. I chose the boyscout way to see all the good content even if I missed on some badass content – I just couldn’t stand the negative energy to get there… IMO the outline of the game is too simple – you are set with a spaceship off to build your team and to face the enemy you need resources which you gather from different planets. And when you do all the necessary upgrades you face the bad guys and that’s it.

Other notables on the con side – there seems to be little to no renewable content. Visit a place after a dosen missions and the same people are still standing there, with nothing new to say, the merchant lists of available items to buy are still the same. There are also real software glitches to consider. Basically, you will have to turn autosaving on – it is indeed a lifesaver as the game crashes too often (at least my pc version). To add to that, I had more than one incidents where I would just get stuck on top of objects as I swept beside them.

But all those can be easily overlooked. I had short breaks during my game (for food and whatnot) and honestly I couldn’t wait to return back to my crew. Admittedly this hasn’t happened to me for a long time and it can only be a positive indication that I was playing a pretty damn good game.

In short, Mass Effect 2 is bigger, better and more badass – a well done sequel. When the end credits rolled I wanted to stand up and clap like you do in a public viewing to show my appreciation – that’s how engaging it was.

No this is not a sexually charged post – just a live-blog post recording of my impressions from the latest Wolfenstein (2009).

But to justify the title, is the character you are playing seriously called BJ in the game? How did Blaskovich end up being BJ for short?… Anyway, it was funny hearing it, it was funny thinking about it and it was funny writing it so I thought I should make the title cheekier than usual because of it.

On to the actual facts…

Firstly about the level design. The upper city and in general all open world conflicts felt like playing a game of call of duty (but that also had monsters). As soon as you get to the underground base though it was a totally different sensation. The epitome came with one of the latest levels, the castle Wolfenstein itself, which certainly didn’t disappoint – stood up to its name nicely. That’s when I felt that the game really got back to its roots and followed the tradition of the Wolfenstein franchise. To explain myself: walking in narrow corridors with nazis poping out of every corner. That was the original game idea, right? So the game gradually become from something alienating to something familiar.

Gameplay-wise, It was a good decision not to include health packs in the game and follow the next-gen tradition (started by halo?) where the player’s health re-generates when covered and only dies when taken too much damage at one go. Another “enhancement” is that there doesn’t seem to be any saving option – every checkpoint is saved to memory as a saving point automatically and you can simply load that. Checkpoints are frequent and the manual saving option won’t be missed. Towards the end of the game though where you have to complete whole sections or even a big boss fight without dying can be a bit challenging and annoying.

Many people have made negative remarks about the veil, the metaphysical dimension of the world, and they are right that it makes everything look saturated and wash-up but for me it triggered something else, a retro feel layered on top of the level with blunt backgrounds and neon-glowing enemies – it almost looks to me like the developers were trying to simulate an old 8-bit game. The veil made me relate this game to the original game even more. One the other hand, I feel that they could have done more with the veil. Other games like Silent Hill have really focused on the alternate dimension and have created a unique feast For the eyes of the players – this game only offers a green shader with some holes in the walls and floating bugs like blimps that release energy (what are those things anyway?)

The sound effects are as accurate as possible – with the sound of the machine guns clearly stealing the show. Very ardady and gamer-friendly But the technology they “invented” for the game, with metal containers, bars and force fields looks like it has come out straight from half-life 2

The story was OK but after the middle it was all “blah blah blah” for me – just not original enough to keep me interested. On the contrary I clearly remember that “Return to castle Wolfenstein” had an escalating plot that kept me griped on my keyboard. To be honest, it took me a while to realize that this Wolfenstein explores the greater region and eventually concludes to castle Wolfenstein, familiar from the previous games in the series. And who was that girl you were supposed to save – she played too much of a small role in the game to even care about her.

Overall, it was never too dark – never too horrific – it didn’t even reach the thriller levels of a slasher flick – everything looked nice but “safe”. I enjoyed it but only like I enjoy any other blockbuster game – it will certainly not haunt me in my dreams.

I spent large part of my weekend playing Need For Speed: Undercover.

NFS games have been around for many years and it’s nice to see this addition returning to some older ideas that made the franchise popular instead of insisting on the false path of its recent history (I’m looking at you Pro Street).

Remember the good old days when “NFS Underground” introduced the open world layout for the races and “NFS Most Wanted” introduced the chasing element by the police? Well all this has returned in a big way.

Featuring a HUGE city you will never get bored to drive in with many different sceneries and probably the best designed city roads for any NFS game. The creators built upon their previous experience and have included many cool and realistically presented effects – most notable being the smoke effects of course. The graphics are siply superb.

The one thing that they really got right this time though was the soundtrack. At first I thought it was just another club mix with some repetitive songs but I was wrong. The songs ties around the action so nice that there were many times that I caught myself shaking my head during the races. At some cases I got so caught up by the music that it wasn’t even about avoiding cars – it was about driving with rhythm. Like a guitar hero piece where play the game with rhythm, this was the same expereince for me but in a driving game. A road hero so to speak….

Preview the addictive soundtrack below:

As for the rest of the game, the story is trivial and the babes might be the only good thing about the cut scenes (minus the acting) but it all adds to the cinematic experience. I didn’t like that there is no GPS for driving to the events – you just instantly start one race after the other. As much as that direction arrow was hated (not keeping a constant route), it did make driving to the races a more realistic experience.

But all this is insignificant…. Great music and graphics. That’s all I wanted to say. Works for me

Oh my… Fallout 3. Where to start with this one and how can I be something more than a negative creep… And with good reason if I might add, if you consider all the hype that has been going on for this game. I’ve heard people say “it’s the best game ever!”, “it will knock the socks off Far Cry 2″ and “a sure buy – with 100 hours of gameplay guaranteed”….

Having experience with the previous two games of the series, which were a completely different implementation of the same concept (isometric sprite-based RPG, for those interested 1, 2) and seeing the direction the developers were taking for the new game (first person in a real time 3d environment) I knew I had to be cautious and wait to see for my own eyes how this “mutation” is going to work out.

Unfortunately my fears were confirmed.

After watching a few hours on Justin.TV I was glad I didn’t go as far as purchasing it myself to test it out (and obviously will not be doing that now). Hmm, do you ask why? Let’s dismiss some of the major arguments:

• The destroyed environments look cool. They look crap cool I’d say. Everything looks the same, grainy and broken, and disorientation is frequent.
• The characters are life-like. Nah, more like avatars from an online world. And to top it off they lack any kind of intelligence. There are also robots in the game and they seem more realistic than the people simply because this mechanical behavior is more acceptable from machines. And to top that off twice the pre-recorded dialogues where done by some BAD actors. Bad acting, just bad.
• Cool retro style interface. Only the soviet military would appreciate this interface. And If you want to do it “console style” don’t drop the mascot on the side that removes any believability from the menu screen and just leaves the ugliness for us to “enjoy”.
• Turn-based gameplay done in real time. Oh man, is this for laughs or what? Once you confront an enemy all you need to do is freeze the game, program your move and then sit back and watch a cinematic sequence you can’t control. Yes, you’re done – you just eliminated the threat, and it didn’t even hit you. Hmm, yes this is even better than imagining your fights in Might and Magic. Barely…just that.

Shall I go on? I was astonished to find most of the common quirks older games usually have.

• The camera is off. In many occasions you can’t see the action. Someone might be talking to you and he is partly covered. And control of this sort is highly unlikable.
• Polygons are colliding-overlapping. It’s not unusual to see a character pass through another character, stand partly inside a wall etc.
• Animations are not natural. Just as an example I’ll mention that the player does not stop running when hitting a surface he can’t walk – come on.
• Repetition (of everything). Do the same 5 moves 100 times an hour and you will pray the game does not last 100 hours. What’s the point of extended gameplay if it’s going to be if it’s going to be painfully boring?
• No freedom. It looks like an open world, it tries to be an open world but it’s not an open world. You can’t do naturally all the things you want to do and I find the RPG elements to be less than helpful on this matter.

Awful, awful awful. To keep the retrospect from the game, play this if you want to see how a 50′s game developer would create a futuristic game about a post-apocalyptic world.

Fallout 3 falls out in my book.

I’m always keen to blog about games that have a unique approach in their presentation and are aiming to provide the user with an experience rather than a stress reliever.

When I first came across Flow (as a Japanese release) it seemed mysterious, dreamy and out of this world. I’m pretty sure this was the intended image the creators wanted the game to project. After playing it all the way through though I can say it’s pretty straight forward – a unique but simple game.

Here you can see an extended walkthrough of the game, which includes almost everything you will do with the game:

I certainly don’t want to start negative comments but having an 8 min vid summing up the whole experience is pretty embarrassing. The game does VERY WELL what it’s title is, setting up a floating universe but other than that its a stale environment where nothing really changes throughout the game… You will get to control half a dozen cell-sized “creatures” which you can size up to a multi-cell form by eating other creatures – and that’s it. So, gameplay-wise don’t expect too much.

To be honest games like these are ment to be this way. Having real challenges and a morphing scenario my alienate a group of people that simply want one easily to absorb experience. And people of older ages, that will most likely play this game, don’t have much time to get immersed in a real full-blown universe…

I loved paying this game right before I went to bed because it was calming and I didn’t have to strain myself to complete achievements. It was a doorway to dreamland (for real) and for that I will always keep it dear to my heart

Read other reviews of this game