Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Ones to Watch - May 2012

Spring is in full swing, and with it comes some really decent launches, as well as one that's going to be more the memorable.  Let's dive in and see what's going on this May!

Tera Online - PC - 5/1/12


Tera is Atari's latest MMO attempt with EnMasse Entertainment and Bluehole Studio, and promises MMO combat outside of a point and click interface where positioning matters.  With two big MMO's out right now, Tera has its work cut out for them, and Atari hasn't been very successful in the non free to play MMO market.  The interesting quirk to combat makes it one to keep an eye on, though.


Max Payne 3 - Multi Platform - 5/15/12


Max Payne came out back in 2001 to critical acclaim.  It was the first game to do Matrix's bullet time in any kind of fashion that was well done and entertaining.  It's gritty noir style and comic book layout told a tragic story, and not one person who has played the game will forget following trails of blood to the tune of a crying baby.  So when I see a bald, aging Max hidingbehind cover, and the colorful cover painted here, I worry a bit.  Ok, I worry a lot.  Rockstar isn't one to disappoint, though, and I'm really curious to see how they're taking Max into the latest generation of game. 


Diablo 3 - PC - 5/15/12


Diablo 3 is the Big One for May.  Blizzard has been teasing fans with this game for several years now and we're just a couple short weeks until release.  Blizzard is one of my top game companies, due to their attention to detail, replayability, and quality of product they put out.  This is the one to beat, everyone.  If it falls flat, Torchlight 2 is close to being released, but really, are we expecting anything but greatness here?

That's it, those are the Ones to Watch for May in the world of video gaming.  Keep checking back with us to see what we're looking forward to at E3, and Gencon!


Saturday, April 14, 2012

Mass Effect 3 - Review


Most of this will be old news, as the entire internet has already been up in arms about the endings to Mass Effect 3, but I wanted to make sure to give my take on the situation after finishing it off about a week ago.

Mass Effect 2 was one of the best games made for this generation of consoles, so Bioware had a lot to live up to in creating this title.  I believe that for the most part they succeeded in telling an "against all odds and hope" story, but fail miserably in a few key components.

First, when starting the game and attempting to import my character from ME1 and ME2, the game was not able to import the character graphics.  So I had lost the face of my Commander Shepard.  This was disappointing, but not horribly detrimental to the game.

R.I.P. Commander Creepy Face
So after adjusting to the shock of having a new Shepard, I forged through the game with a key point of curiosity in my mind.  When I had played the demo, Wrex and Mordin were rescuing a Krogan female.  Well, in my games, both of those characters had died.  So I wanted to see how they would fit it into the story.  I'm happy to say that they moved forward without missing a beat.  The substituted characters felt right and I wouldn't have questioned them being there had I not played the demo.

The rest of the single player game was pretty great.  Stories made sense, I actively tried to seek out every possible side quest and mission item, I was driven by the game to amass as large and destructive of a force as I could, and it made me want to keep playing.  This is the sign of the great writing, game play, and storytelling that Bioware is known for.

The fights were epic, especially towards the end
As I neared the end, however, I noticed that my fleet was only going to be attacking at half power.  Puzzled by this, I did some spoiler free searching online to see why.  As it turns out, you can only bring your single player fleet up to full force by either playing multi-player, or interacting regularly with EA's mobile apps.  This is BS.  Tacked on multi-player that has a direct consequence in how your single player campaign ends is bad form.  Additionally, the readiness rating degrades over time, and has reduced impact the higher you get up, so let's say you brought it up to 70% and didn't play multi-player for a week, it would drop to somewhere in the neighborhood of 63%.

BS, BS, and more BS
Alright, so by this point I've taken my non-ME1 or ME2 Commander Shepard, went through an amazing single player experience, was forced into Multi-Player (which was ok, but nothing to write home about), downloaded an app to help keep degradation in check, and is on the way to the final epic ending.  The culmination of three games of build up and background lore.

**SPOILER ALERT**  - The following paragraphs are spoilers for the game's horrible ending, and have been written in black text, highlight to read.

I don't think in any of my game reviews have I spoken directly about how an ending happened, but I wanted to add my voice to this.  The ending is terrible.  My squad of Ashley and Liara had made their way through the battle field and launched missiles to destroy a Reaper guarding a teleport type lift into the now Reaper controller Citadel.  As we advance, another Reaper fires a massive laser into the group, scorching everything, and leaving Shepard to limp his way on board with a pistol.  Here's strike number one, a squad based game has just destroyed your squad.

As you get on board, you discover another person made it, Anderson, who was making the push with you.  You reunite on board the Citadel, and meet with the Illusive Man.  There is no explanation for how he was able to get in there by himself when a small military company led by the two greatest soldiers the universe had ever known couldn't get in without massive casualties.  Strike 2.

After a bit, the Citadel shows itself to Shepard as an image of a child that only he has seen through the entire game, once getting blown up in the beginning, and then several times in his nightmares.  This has opened up lots of discussion as to whether or not the child was real in the beginning, or if the Citadel was somehow taking his mind and forming something he could understand and just so happened to pick what was haunting him.  We then get to hear from the child that potentially everything that we did in three games might not matter, because we can either destroy all machines (thus killing anybody who relies on machines to live), control all machines, or create a magical new DNA that integrates machines and living beings.  For the record, I went with magical, or "green" as it's being referred to.

The universe then turns into a color, and chases after the Normandy, which for some reason is going through a mass relay at the time instead of fighting in the skies.  Joker eventually lands the ship on a new world, and somehow everybody is smiling and happy about it, not knowing exactly what it is that just happened.  Shepard is dead, but miraculously Ashley comes out of the ship just fine.  This is interesting because Ashley was blasted by a giant Reaper laser back on Earth.  Strike WTF.

**END SPOILER**

There's a lot more that Bioware could have done to wrap up this story better, and the one (yes, one) that was offered to us was just inconsistent with the rest of the game series.  They've since promised to go back and rework the ending, but it took an internet mob to make them realize that we weren't happy with how things were going here.

So, the final word.  Should you play Mass Effect 3?  Yes.  Should Bioware and EA change how the game works so you don't have to play multi-player to get the full benefit of single player?  YES.  Does the ending need to be changed?  Maybe, maybe not, but it really needs to be polished to the quality that we've grown to expect from Bioware.