A Guy, a Game, and a Blog

Mass Effect 2: Initial Impressions

2010-01-27T21:14:00.000-06:00

I've had a little time to delve into Bioware's latest video game that released this past Tuesday. I have to say that I am extremely pleased. The game has definitely been given a visual upgrade. Gone are all the texture pop-ins that I complained about from the first game. The inventory system has been revamped, as in, completely dropped from the game! In its place is an upgrade system that requires you to either buy or research upgrades for your team's weapons and armor. This is a much better replacement to the massive amount of loot garnered from enemies and boxes from the original Mass Effect that clogged up your inventory and made it difficult to find the best items amidst all the crap that was lying around.

The cutscenes are much more enjoyable this time around. You can tell that Bioware has learned a lot about composition in the years since Mass Effect 1. The opening scenes are some of the best I've seen in a video game and set the tone for the rest of the game.

The combat system has been revamped as well. Now multiple powers can be mapped to the controller for quick use during combat. Your abilities also recharge much faster. When you use an ability, all of your abilities go through a cooldown period before you can use another ability. It is slightly annoying that using one ability blocks your use of your other abilities, but this new combat mechanic lets you use abilities much more quickly. Your weapons now require ammunition, which keeps you from going gun-crazy. My problem with this mechanic has been that running out of ammunition in a battle is a frequent occurrence. You can upgrade your characters to carry more ammo, but it is still a little annoying.

After I've played more I'll post more thoughts. However, I know already that this game is worth the money if you are interested in it.

Beaten By a Girl

2010-01-20T11:37:00.000-06:00

     In the early days of video games, the primary players were boys. To an extent, that's still true, though more and more females are playing video games everyday. However, it's still common for the insult "You just got beaten by a girl" to be thrown around the video game world. This insult probably has its roots in physical sports where traditional society thinks that a boy should be able to beat a girl at any physical competition, and if the boy loses then he is obviously some kind of pansy wuss who wears My Little Pony panties.

     This mindset transferred itself into the video game realm because boys still had some kind of mindset that girls are genetically incapable of being good at a video game. Guys, let me tell you this is not true. If you are beating a girl at a video game it's probably because she's letting you so that you will feel good about yourself. Now where this insult used to be hurled from one guy to another, you're more likely going to hear it being hurled from a victorious female to a slightly despondent male player. On one occasion while playing on Xbox Live my team was utterly decimated by an all female team. After their victory, the ladies hurled the insults such as "Now get into the kitchen and fix me a sammich!" followed by "And change my tire while you're at it!"

     Now of course I have no problem with female gamers. Several of my best Xbox Live friends are females who would sooner snipe you in your face than fix you a sandwich. I'm saying all of this to lead into this fact: I have been beaten by a girl. And not just any girl, but by my lovely wife (AKA, the Paper Toss Goddess).

     If you are unfamiliar with Paper Toss, it is an iPhone game where your goal is to toss wadded up sheets of paper into a trash bin. Sound easy? Well it's not!!! There is a devilish desktop fan that thwarts your efforts with variable wind speed and direction. If you've ever wondered how the field goal kicker who is trying to make the 40-yard field goal so his team can win the game feels, then download this game.

     Your score is based on how many consecutive wads of paper you can toss into the trash bin. As you can see in the screenshot, my best efforts have earned me a respectable 28. My wife's score? 88. I cannot wrap my puny male brain around how she was able to attain this score. It boggles my senses.

     So I'm writing this to concede defeat, honey. I can't beat your score. It's 4th down and all my field goal kicks are falling short. You will forever have the title of Paper Toss Champion in our home.

I have been beaten by a girl. But it's ok. I'm proud of her.

Mass Effect Revisited

2010-01-19T10:12:00.004-06:00

     So here we are a week out from the release of Mass Effect 2, one of the most highly anticipated games of 2010. I've been replaying its predecessor lately in anticipation of this sequel. I've always had a strange relationship with Mass Effect. While I've always felt it was a good game, I felt it fell short in several areas. I'm really hoping that Bioware has taken time to refine these areas during Mass Effect 2's development.

     Here I present my wish list of problems for Bioware to fix:
   1. Texture pop-ins. These things were SO annoying! It was painful to watch cutscene after cutscene where the characters and backgrounds were being rendered during the cutscene. This gave the game a terribly unpolished look.
     2. Inventory management. Mass Effect had none.
     3. The Mako. Getting to drive a tank around unexplored planets and running over enemy combatants should have been fun. Sadly it was not.
     4. Secondary missions were copy and pasted. To my recollection there were about 4 environments that secondary missions took place in: a cargo freighter, an underground cave, an underground bunker, and a large gray building. These environments were repeated over and over again. Each time the only changes were to the layouts of crates, machinery, and rocks inside the environment. This just screamed laziness on the part of the developers.
     5. Short main quest. The primary missions of the game could be completed in a day. A day. The secondary missions extend that playtime, but come on! A day? Really?

     Still, even with these complaints I have been enjoying playing Mass Effect again and I'm really looking forward to its sequel. From videos I have seen Bioware seems to have acknowledged some of its predecessor's problems (2 game discs FTW!!). Videos of combat look much more intense and the biotic powers actually appear to be powerful, whereas in Mass Effect only the Throw and Lift abilities looked like they did any damage. For example:

     I'll be sure to post my impressions next week after I've had some time to play and digest Bioware's latest game in the series. If you want to see more visit www.masseffect.com for Bioware's official page for the game.

Halo: Evolutions

2010-01-18T14:46:00.000-06:00

Last night I finished reading Halo: Evolutions, Essential Tales of the Halo Universe (Tor). This is the latest entry in the successful series of novels based on the Halo video game series. However, unlike its predecessors, Evolutions is a collection of short stories by a variety of authors, including Halo novel veterans Eric Nylund and Tobias S. Buckell. This gives the collection a variety of flavors, like a seven-layer cake (see what I did there, Bungie?). Each story has its own distinct flavor and contributes to the richness of the book as a whole.

As someone who has read all of the Halo novels released thus far, I couldn’t resist Evolutions, and I have to say that I am not disappointed. While Evolutions doesn’t bring much to the overall Halo mythology in the ways that The Fall of Reach, Ghosts of Onyx, and Contact Harvest did, it is able to deliver engaging stories without getting bogged down by canonical fidelity.

As I said, Evolutions doesn’t expand much on the Halo mythology, so if this is why you’re reading the book then you will find very little to satisfy you. These readers will most likely be most interested in the story “Human Weakness,” which covers Cortana’s experience aboard the Gravemind-controlled High Charity. If tales such as this are what you are looking for I would also suggest reading “Headhunters” and “The Return.”

Evolutions is a strong entry in the series that holds its own against the more canon-focused novels. It delivers engaging stories that are easily digested like a good short story should be. I don't think any fans of the previous Halo novels will be disappointed with this entry in the series.

Custom Map/Gametype: Vertigo

2008-04-21T20:53:00.003-05:00

So I've finally gotten my first Forge map to a state that I'm ready for people to download it and play it. It's called Vertigo and it's meant for King of the Hill matches. I've taken a canvas of Standoff and constructed a floating platform high above the ground. This is where the Hill is located. The only way to reach the Hill is to take one of the six Man Cannons that have been placed around the map. It's a very simple map that is meant more for chaotic and fun gameplay than competitive play. Here is the link, Vertigo.

So far I've created 2 gametypes for it: Hammers and Lasers. In both gametypes, players have 110% speed and damage resistance. In Hammers, all players start with a Gravity Hammer with infinite ammo. In Lasers, all players start with Spartan Lasers and Swords, both with the regular starting ammo. Here is the link for those, Hammers, Swords.

If you play it and want to tell me what kind of tweaks it needs please feel free to comment. Feel free to adjust the rules as you see fit as well. And if can put a film of your session(s) on your fileshare and recommend it to TheArtistSwayze so I can see for myself that would be great as well. Hope you have fun, and here are some screenshots:

Screenshots From Halo 3's Living Dead Playlist

2008-04-14T21:55:00.002-05:00

So this past weekend Halo 3 had a Living Dead playlist that was strictly Infection games. I floated around in one film and took some screenshots. So here they are, hopefully with some more to come this week if I'm not too busy playing Blackout.

He never saw it coming.

I swear these zombies are about to start doing the Thriller dance.

I don't have a caption for this one, I just liked the shot.

A Classic Video

2008-03-13T19:54:00.002-05:00

If you haven't seen Digital Ph33r's "Master Chief Sucks at Halo" video (where have you been?) here's your chance to see it for the first time, or see it for the twentieth. Oh, and it's probably NSFW.

Be an Iron Chef

2008-03-11T20:47:00.002-05:00

It seems that an Iron Chef game will be coming to Wii and DS this summer. This reeks of those leftovers that you thought you ate but really got pushed to the back of the fridge. Expect a lot of cheese, and I don't mean as the "secret ingredient."

Check out the full story here.

A Rant

2008-03-02T20:37:00.002-06:00

So after almost a year of using my Motorola Razr cell phone, it finally went kaput. For the past few weeks I've been using my sister-in-law's old Razr and a few days ago, it went kaput as well. So I had no choice but to purchase a new cell phone. I got it in a few days ago and, being the nerd I am, started looking through all of its features and eventually came to the Games. I scroll through the list of games and one word keeps repeating itself: "Demo." What happened to the days when your phone at least came with one full version of a game? I think the last time was Snake. I'm shelling out a lot of cash for your phone, I think the least you could do was give me the full version of Texas Hold 'Em. Boo cell phone companies! Boo!

Advanced Halo Screenshots

2008-03-02T08:46:00.003-06:00

After seeing some pretty cool Halo screenshots here created by El Burritoh at Tied the Leader, I decided to try some of my own. These shots are made of several separate screenshots that were churned through some software to "stitch" them together. While they didn't turn out as well, I think they were a good first attempt. I used the Canon PhotoStitch software that came with my Canon digital camera. For the most part it did a good job, although there are definitely places where you can see where the seams are and where the images didn't quite overlap well. If you want to learn more about this technique, check it out here.

What to do With Old Games?

2008-02-27T12:52:00.002-06:00

Here's a situation that might sound familiar to many gamers: in your prized library of games you've got the games your playing now, the classics you'll never stop playing, and then the games that you never play anymore because you've beaten the entire game or you're just tired of it. So you look at those misfit games, not knowing what to do with them. You could always take them to one of those chain video game stores (you know the ones I'm talking about), but if you do that, you're going to feel like the clerks are laughing at you when you leave with your paltry $20 for the five games you gave them (if you're lucky). A more prudent option would be to sell them on eBay. However is one option that I'd like to tell you about:

Goozex.com . Funny name? Yes. Serious business? Right again! So what this business provides is a way for you to find games that you want to play, and find gamers who want to play the games that you want to get rid of. All games are assigned a point value according to their fair market value based on supply and demand. The more a game is in demand, the more likely it is to have a higher point value. You create a list of all the games that you want to get rid of, and Goozex's system will search for other users who want that game. When there is a match (I think the system uses a "first come, first serve" idea so users who put up the same game for trade before you will be matched before your game gets match, and similarly for the games you want) the system will let you know and you can confirm or reject the trade. Then you simply mail the game to the matched user's address and you will receive the point value for the traded game. So now you take the points that you just earned and find a game that you are interested in that is within your points budget. Now you wait in line until the system matches you and the matched user will send you the game, and the points will be deducted from your budget. Now for each game you receive you are required to pay $1 to Goozex (everyone's gotta make money, right?), though when you sign up you get one free trade (at least I did when I joined). I have received 2 games so far and am waiting in line for a 3rd (one game was just released, one is less than six months old, and the other was released over six months ago). I have sent in 5 games so far (only one was released in the past year). The great thing about this website is that you can still get a good price on older games (at the moment, Gears of War is worth 750 points and most new releases start around 800-900 points). Here is a link if you want to check it out (yes, that is a referral link, meaning if you click through it and sign up I will get rewarded).

Goozex

There was another option I was hoping to tell you about, but a few days before I started writing this, it expired. This article was about donating your games to troops in Iraq, but the contact person in Iraq was leaving at the end of February. Hopefully there will be another opportunity like this that I can tell you about before it ends.

You Like Free Games Right?

2008-02-27T12:49:00.003-06:00

Back in mid January 1up.com released a list of 101 free games for your PC. Personally, I've only checked out Crayon Physics, which is one of the most creative ideas I've seen in awhile for a game. So in case you missed it, here's a link to the article with all the free gaming goodness.

Free Games!

Mass Effect Review

2008-02-26T22:16:00.001-06:00

Mass Effect is the latest RPG offering from Bioware. It sets you in the future where humanity is struggling to find its place among the other species in the galaxy. Meanwhile, Saren, a rogue agent of an above-the-law galactic police force known as the Spectres, threatens to unleash a genocide on the galaxy. You play as Commander Shepherd, the first human to be accepted into the ranks of the Spectres, and through a set of events you have made it your personal quest to stop Saren.

Mass Effect has a very in-depth character creation utility for this game. You can modify almost every aspect of your character’s facial appearance allowing you to make a dashing hero or someone more akin to the characters from “Deliverance.” You also have the option of deciding your character’s class in combat. If you prefer guns and up-close combat over biotics (Mass Effect’s version of the Force) then you will have training with each of the available weapon types. Or you can focus on biotics and have no training with weapons. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t use weapons, you just won’t be able to upgrade your skills with them or use the scopes on weapons that have them. You can also have your combat focus be on technology, which will give you an advantage over robotic adversaries and allow you to upgrade your computer hacking and decryption skills. Or you can divert your focus into any two of the options, however by doing this you sacrifice the most advanced skills of your chosen focal areas. This allows for great diversity in how you play the game and how your character advances in combat skills.

Bioware has created a very interesting visual library of locations and alien races that will make you think that you’ve walked into an unexplored section of the Star Wars universe. There are several alien species, each with its own history and cultural mythology. There is much to learn on these races that Bioware has painstakingly written. Many of the planets that you can explore, and even ones that you cannot, even have brief histories written about them. Bioware went the extra mile in making a very convincing fictional world.

The gameplay combines RPG elements with 3rd person shooter elements. For each mission you get to choose two characters to be a part of your team. Each of the characters is a different class so you’ve got to decide how to balance their strengths and weaknesses with your own. In combat you can give commands to your teammates to take cover, go on the offensive, etc. (though I never used these commands). You also have the option to micro-manage your teammates use of powers in combat if you wish. However I found that it was just as easy to let them act on their own while I did all the hard work.

Depending on your chosen class, you’ll have options outside of your guns to fight enemies. These are the biotic and tech powers. Each has its own “cooldown” timer so you aren’t able to just run around using “Throw” on each enemy. You’re going to have to balance your guns with these skills. This leads to very interesting combat scenarios. Especially when you factor in the variety of teammate combinations, each battle can play out very differently. The down side to the combat is that it always seemed as if my teammates were not pulling their own weight. They would give minor help, but not enough for me to notice they were there.

During its development, much was made about its revolutionary system for communicating with NPCs. Like previous Bioware games such as the Knights of the Old Republic series, how you chose to respond to other characters and situations would determine how “good” or “evil” you were (or in Mass Effect’s case, Paragon and Renegade). Whereas most RPGs have you choosing responses from a list, Mass Effect gives you a wheel with all of the possible options. You use the control stick to highlight the option you want to choose while the dialogue is being spoken. While the option of choosing how your character responds is very refreshing, it hardly seems innovative. The most innovative parts, however, are the situations where you must make gut-wrenching decisions that come down to life or death situations for many characters in the game. Mass Effect is one of the few games that have ever made choice-making difficult by presenting severe consequences based my decisions.

There are many things to do in Mass Effect. From gambling, to side quests, to romancing. The list of planetary systems that you can explore is long. Each system has at least one planet of which you can explore a small part. Though there is a very long list of side quests to complete, the primary missions are very short. If you focus solely on these missions, you’ll find yourself finishing this game much quicker than expected. The side quests are interesting enough to keep you occupied. They’ll have you going to almost every explorable planet in the game. However, as you complete more side quests, you’ll notice that each of them feels strangely familiar. This is because each side quest recycles the structures that the quests take place in. You’ll eventually be able to look at the outside of the structure and know exactly what the interior looks like, aside from the placement of crates and other objects. Whether this was done because the game was rushed to finish or Bioware just got lazy, I don’t know. But it is a very annoying repetition that seems to say to the player, “We know you’ve seen this building before, but we really don’t care.”

For the most part, the graphics of Mass Effect are among some of the best around in current games. The problem is that during many of the cutscenes and conversations, there is an extremely large amount of texture pop-in. This happens on both the environment geometry and character models. This becomes a very distracting element that one would expect in a PC game being played on a computer that is not quite up to snuff. However, on a console game this is simply unacceptable.

As a concept, Mass Effect sounds like a great game. There is a variety of combat, the game adapts to your choices, and the story is entertaining. However, as a finished product, Mass Effect stumbles. The graphics suffer from severe problems and the story is painfully short. It almost seems as if Bioware was trying to make a teaser game in order to get an audience hooked for when Mass Effect’s planned sequel is released. Mass Effect is not a bad game. The combat is fun and from what I hear the higher difficulty levels are quite challenging. However, for me that’s just not enough to get past its flaws.

Score: 3 out of 5

Welcome!

2008-02-26T22:12:00.002-06:00

Hi! My name is Richard Swayze and I'm an avid gamer. I've decided to write a blog that focuses on my hobby/habit (pick one). I'll be writing reviews for games that I've played recently, writing about my opinions of things in the gaming world, writing on news in the gaming industry, and whatever else I feel is relevant. So I hope you find something you enjoy to read!