The original Mass Effect followed the tradition of BioWare’s quality in all their games.  After developing some games based on other pre-existing franchises, BioWare has branched out to create their own new intellectual properties.  Mass Effect was an amazing title with a fantastic sci-fi story / background, solid RPG mechanics, and equally as solid tactical third person action gameplay.  It easily went down as one of the best games in recent history within the RPG genre, however, despite BioWare’s pedigree not all was perfect.

Mass Effect suffered from a weak inventory system, which had a cap of 150 items.  While carrying around 150 pieces of armor, weapons, and upgrades normally wouldn’t pose an issue in some games, the issue was that most of it was crap, and you picked up a lot of crap frequently.  You’d go back to a safe ‘hub’ in the game to sell off all your wares, winding up with a large amount of money.  But then there wasn’t anything to purchase with it, since you found the ‘must have’ items for your squad in the field anyway (about 2% – 5% of the junk you find).  Then the process repeats over again where you quickly filled up to 150 items, sold most of them off — keeping the actual decent 2% of them — and then back off to the field to repeat.  Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of depth there, and by the end of the game you were a millionaire without anything to show for it.  Equally as bad were the ’side quests’ and exploration that were aside from the main quest.  There was a fair amount of planets and locations you could explore from your ship, but in most cases those planets were just empty placeholders that had a brief description.  Some planets you could ’scan’ to survey them for trinkets that had relevance to another side quest, or minerals you wouldn’t do anything with.  In some additional instances you could in fact land on the planet to explore, or perform a side quest, but every planet was exactly the same; barren, with maybe one mine or outpost, and every single mine and outpost looked exactly the same as the last.  Exploration was done with the M35 Mako infantry vehicle that had it’s own clunky, and at times frustrating, controls.  The main quests were the stand out in the original game, by far.

That said, despite these and some other more minor issues, Mass Effect was an absolutely fantastic game.  With a sequel to such a strong game — one with issues — you would expect the developers would listen to the gaming community’s complaints about the first game and address it in the second game.  Some developers do seem work in a bubble, and technically we — the consumers — aren’t owed anything per se, but did BioWare listen to the gamers, and come back with an even better title in Mass Effect 2?  The answer is a resounding: YES!  If they weren’t listening to the gamers, then they sure as hell saw the same flaws we did in the first game.  They’ve absolutely come back and blown away all expectations with a more focused title that improves on nearly all aspects of the original game.

Presentation

As with Mass Effect, and BioWare’s other titles, their presentation only gets stronger with Mass Effect 2.  The menus, HUD, and the rest of the interface in the game are top notch.  Also improved (read: gone) are the annoying elevator rides, and sluggish transitions from the original in-between scenes.  There are still load screens of course, but I’d prefer them to some of the other transitions of the original game (not to mention elevator rides in the first game glitching out with a frozen squad stuck in them).

One great new feature the developers added into the game is the ability to import save games from Mass Effect into Mass Effect 2.  This brings along your character’s appearance, Paragon / Renegade status, resources (higher level and money result in larger starting bonus for Shepard in ME2), and most importantly: decisions made in the first game.  This results in a highly personalized experience unlike a lot of other games out there.

No real complaints or additional detailed observations here beyond the obvious, when you’re playing you get a feel of not only playing an A+ premium title, and an improved game overall.

Story

One of the main things the original Mass Effect is known for is establishing a great sci-fi feel, and mythos that served as the background to the events in the game.  Mass Effect 2 picks up directly where Mass Effect left off, and within the first 10 minutes of the game completely blows you away with it’s setup of the story in this chapter of the Mass Effect trilogy.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to talk about specifics without spoiling a fantastic story, but let’s say that it is even better than the first game.  This is especially commendable given that this is the middle chapter in a trilogy, and middle chapters always have a tougher time standing out in a lot of situations (sans Empire Strikes Back).

Outside of the excellent main storyline itself, some of the standouts here with the story telling approach BioWare took this time is that there is a sense of urgency throughout the whole game.  It’s widely known throughout the game that you are putting together a team for a suicide mission, and you must prepare yourself as well as possible before proceeding to the end of the game.  If you don’t, you and your squad will die.  Even more urgent, is that deaths during the final portions of the game are permanent, and will directly affect Mass Effect 3 with these characters not being available for play.  This sense of personalization and urgency is absolutely amazing, and few games have been able to pull this off, if ever.  Knowing that your Shepard can permanently die drives you to do as much as you can throughout the game to prepare yourself, so this is a great example of a great story supporting great gameplay.

Also fantastic this time is the side quests, and their related stories; especially as it relates to your team mates.  Side quests are still not incredibly important to the main story, but they do give you some background and have more relevance / impact than in the first game by far.  Mass Effect also did go into the personal lives of your team mates, but this game takes it even further with the loyalty side quest missions, in depth character stories, scripting, and more.  Needless to say, this level of polish is rare in gaming.

My only minor complaint here is while your decisions in the game have a large effect on how the events in the game take place, the Paragon / Renegade system (covered in gameplay) — as in the first Mass Effect — do not exactly have a large part changing the core events of the game.  They simply serve as a means to open up dialog options which ultimately lead you to the same goal, albeit with a different in-game character performance presentation.  Hard to complain about this level of greatness, especially given that there are such solid vocal performances to back up the story, but it would have been nice to have the Paragon / Renegade system impact the story a bit more.

Graphics

The graphics in Mass Effect 2 are stunning.  Continuing the great aesthetic look brought to us in Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 is also powered by a better version of the amazing Unreal Engine 3.  Largely, the same design elements are here from the first game, but they are just better in this game.  Environments are gorgeous, graphics effects are top notch, and the textures / artwork are very impressive throughout.

Perhaps the largest area you will notice an improvement in is the character models.  Yes, Mass Effect had GREAT looking models, but this game will blow you away.  All of the characters (sans a customized or female Shepard) are absolutely mind blowingly detailed, and all characters (including the customized and female Shepards) have many more facial animations than in the first game.  This results in a deeper level of immersion during the conversation pieces, especially when combined with the dynamic camera angles during conversations.  One of the best character models I have ever seen in any video game belongs to Mass Effect 2’s Miranda  Lawson.  Modeled after real life actress Yvonne Strahovski, it’s an incredible technological achievement to see her brought to life with real-time graphics.

With the Unreal Engine 3.5 — arguably one of the best engines available right now — you’re talking about a game that looks incredible, but more importantly, runs incredible on a lot of systems, even without bleeding edge hardware.  It’s really fantastic that the level of detail you’re seeing in this game is possible, at such high frame rates.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Apple held their latest media event yesterday for the launch of their new pseudo tablet device, the Apple iPad.  I think it’s a bit telling that before the event actually took place there was more hype around the fact that people were expecting an iPhone ‘4′ announcement, and / or AT&T exclusivity expiration, but that’s another story…

In any event Apple did indeed finally reveal their long hinted at tablet device.  So now that the details are out, what’s the consensus?  Sure, just like every other Apple device launch event, the fan-boys and technologists gather at the Church of Jobs, kneel at his pews, and wait to behold the second coming of any Apple ‘Jesus’ Device 2.0.  Personally, I am completely unimpressed with the device, and there are a lot of people around the internet (Apple fan-boys and otherwise) that feel the same way.

Despite of what I think about Apple, along their ridiculous software and related policies, I will say one thing about them: they make gorgeous hardware.  I cannot — nor will not — deny this arguable fact; not to mention they make a great MP3 player (albeit bound to atrocious iTunes software).  They have a design aesthetic unlike most major hardware manufacturers in the industry.  So, as it relates to the iPad, I don’t have an issue with the hardware per se (outside of two points mentioned below) so much as I have an issue with their software decisions.

I’m sure you’ve all seen plenty of coverage around the launch, and are already privy to all the features of the iPad.  So, I’ll go straight into my discrepancies with this product:

Operating System – ok seriously Apple, seriously??  Maybe asking for Mac OSX would be a bit much, granted, but what about at least a ‘lite’ version of OSX?  No, instead we get a glorified version of the iPod Touch OS with a new skin slapped onto it to make it appear as if it is all that different from their mobile OS.  This is an absolute joke.  Sure, I can run iPod Touch / iPhone apps and blow them up to 2X their native resolution.  Wonderful!  But really, who gives a shit?  If I’m buying something larger than an iPhone I want it to absolutely blow it away in terms of functionality, not just have a super large screen and an app to draw with my fingers.  This was an absolutely terrible let down.

No Flash – yes, everyone has security discrepancies with Flash, but let’s face it: it’s a web standard.  This continues Apple’s now long running tradition of not having Flash on their mobile devices, but what’s the point of having a nice big 9″ LCD screen to browse the web with, when I’m missing a huge chunk of the content due to not having Flash?  ‘Good move’ there guys.

No Multi-tasking – I know this kind of ties into the OS, but it’s so bad it deserves it’s own mention.  If this is supposed to be a tablet computer of sorts, can’t all modern — even portable — computers multi-task now-a-days?  That’s not too much to ask, is it?  Oh wait, I apologize, I forgot we were dealing with the Apple’s fabulous iPhone OS here.

AT&T Data Plan – you would think that Apple would start to distance themselves at least a bit from AT&T considering future events (read: iPhone exclusivity loss), but the decision to partner with them again on a data plan just for the iPad is just nuts.  As it stands AT&T is the only partner right now if you want mobile data usage, using one of two pre-paid AT&T plans.  $14.99 a month for 250 MB of data, or $29.99 a month for unlimited data, which mind you isn’t unlimited (capped at 5 GB).  All this along with being stuck with ‘more bars in more places‘.  Le sigh…

Software Keyboard – now this one I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t for one small detail.  I’d want to lay this thing down flat to type on a keyboard, considering it’s a 9″ LCD and I am not a giant.  But the problem is since the back bezel is curved when you lay it down on a surface it rocks slightly, depending on the surface you’re using.  This was a poor choice, and rather than sticking to their ‘everything is curved’ aesthetic they should have make it completely flat.

No Stylus Pen (by default) – that’s right folks, you have to use your fingers.  Sure, that’s not so bad, and there’s multi-touch and all that crap, but what about that fancy drawing app they showed off?  Sure I may want to doodle with my fingers, but what about someone actually wanting to draw something serious, write a letter, or provide an electronic signature of sorts?  There are already mentions of there being a 3rd party stylus being available later on, but if it’s not a native Apple product then I’d be concerned about running a stylus across the gorgeous 9″ LCD.

I’ll leave this by saying that this product continues to show off Apple’s existing ignorance when it comes to software, and now (just a bit) in terms of their decisions with hardware design.  Yes, it is a very pretty device, and it should come in handy for something, but it fails spectacularly in very key areas, way too far to be considered a serious must have device.  Regardless of what I say the fan-boys really won’t care, and this will still be touted as a ‘netbook killer’, or ‘touch pad PC replacement’, but I don’t think there is any denying the deficiencies in this product.

Apple, you’re doing it wrong:

With the release of Version 4 to the stable channel Google has brought a good amount of fixes and improvements, but the main feature to be talked about here is extensions.  While the bleeding edge dev channel users have had this for about a month or so now, hitting the stable channel means that extensions are going ‘prime time’ for all users.  I feel a bit silly using the term prime time to describe that Google Chrome just released the extensions system to all of it’s users now with the stable channel, given the fact that in just a few weeks time there are already over 1,800 extensions as of the time of this writing.

Before I go on, I must mention that Firefox just had it’s 3.6 release.  I myself am an avid user of Firefox, and have been for a while now.  The Firefox 3.6 release is yet another solid Firefox build, with speed improvements, feature enhancements, etc.  Despite all the greatness, one big remaining issue I have with Firefox — and to be fair, most other browsers — is how it’s designed.  What I mean by that is despite the under the hood enhancements, and most importantly (IMO) tabbed browsing, today’s modern web browsers really haven’t evolved as fast as the web has.  The web has changed drastically in the past 12 years or so since going mainstream, but how much have our browsers changed with the web?

Granted, completely redefining the web browser experience is much easier said than done, and I certainly do not claim to have any idea on how to do it.  That said, what can be refined a bit easier is the browsing experience on the back end.  As this relates to the browser design I mentioned, web pages now are more complex than ever before, and we have web applications to boot.  Combine a dozen of these or so into a browser split into a dozen tabs, but still bound to just one executable process running in the background, you can have a recipe for disaster.  If one of these web apps or complex pages stalls your browser, then it starts to impact your whole browsing experience by slowing you down, or worst of all, crashing the entire browser and all it’s subsequent opened pages.  As for my personal experiences this still occurs to this day, under Firefox 3.6, and it frustrates me to no end.

This brings us back to Chrome.  Chrome splits each tab into it’s own process in the background, which while leading to higher memory usage overall (which isn’t a problem on modern systems), results in much faster overall performance, especially when coupled with the powerful webkit web rendering engine.  For all the love I have for Mozilla, I have to say I absolutely love this methodology of browser design, at least on the back end.  If one complex web application decides to stop working, then you can just deal with that one web app / tab, and not have to worry about loosing your session, or restarting your whole session over again.

Recently, although I’ve been pleased with the Firefox 3.6 beta releases, but frustrated with the overall back end design, I’ve been trying Google Chrome as my primary browser.  This is especially true once the extensions first hit the dev channel late last year.  I’ve installed about 15 extensions, trying to replicate as much functionality as I can that I had in Firefox.  Although there are some great extensions, because Chrome is so new, and the extensions themselves were just released, I don’t feel that it is currently possible to ‘extend’ Chrome to the extent that Firefox can be through it’s own addon system.  That said, it certainly is comparable to at least the core functionality of what some other browsers have through native, or extensible features.

I will say that the browsing experience is fantastic.  The browser starts up fast, renders pages fast, and does nearly everything faster than any other browser on the market currently.  Of course there are various benchmarks and articles that prove this through numbers, bar graphs, etc., but actually experiencing this first hand really leaves the impression of using a superior piece of software.

However, sadly not all in the ‘Kingdom of Chrome’ is sunshine and rainbows.  Outside of the extensions themselves needing a bit more understandable maturity, and the Chrome API itself that could be loosened up a bit more for developers (not allowing devs to change or extend the core browser tabs is a perfect example), there is one deal breaking bug that has prevented me from making the change to Chrome as my primary browser.

I am still trying to understand the root cause of this issue completely, but basically it starts with clearing your cache.  I’m the type of guy that clears my internet cache after every browsing session, usually automatically on browser close.  Now, doing this in Chrome results in strange behavior where upon relaunching the browser multiple extensions both loose their settings, and act as if it was the ‘first run’, meaning I get bombarded with pages welcoming me to the extension and explaining the functionality.  After further digging it appears that this happens specifically when the cookies are cleared, meaning that at least some of the extensions are storing their settings within the browsers cache.  Now, this does not appear to the fault of developers, but rather a deficiency in the browser itself that needs to be addressed.  Luckily, this is a known issue, and an issue that appears to be on the docket to be fixed for “Mstone-5″, which I am assuming is Chrome 5 (technical details on this can be found here).

With all of this said, regardless of this deal breaker bug, and the additions that are needed in the Chrome API for developers, I think everyone can agree that the progress the browser has made in a relatively short amount of time late last year once Chrome 4 builds had extensions is amazing.  1,800 extensions in a few weeks.  That is a sign that this is not only a great browsing platform, but the developer community is also willing to embrace Chrome.  I’m sure that things will only get better for Chrome as long as Google continues to work on the areas that the browser still needs to grow in — of which I have no doubt they will — and by 2011 we may be very well saying this was the year of Chrome.

I’ve been looking forward to this game for a while now, and this trailer does a real good job whetting our appetites.  Can’t wait for this one!

Courtesy of Destructoid:

If you strip the movie’s elements apart (performances, directing, etc.) it wasn’t actually bad (except for that evil Tobey McGuire dance scene… *shivers*), but the sum of it’s parts was much greater than the whole.  Regardless of the over saturation, and regardless of whether you like the character or not, it was a bad move to include Venom in this movie, especially as weakly as they portrayed him.  I, along with many other people, are convinced this is the fault of Sony Pictures for wanting to see a maximum return in their investment, at the cost of the movie’s overall quality.  After Spider-Man 3 — although I would have preferred a trilogy only — I felt that Sam should do Spider-Man 4 to come back from what was Spider-Man 3… but only one slight problem: SONY PICTURES.

With Spider-Man 4 in development since 2007, and the actors signing back on to reprise their roles with Raimi’s involvement, production was slated to start this year for a 2011 release.  Reports started to arise that there was some sort of hold up with the studio, and then details finally came out that Raimi (once again) was having a disagreement with the studio in regards to villain selection, and story.  Raimi wanted either The Vulture, and / or The Lizard to be the focal villains in the movie, but the studio felt they weren’t interesting enough to draw in big crowds (they probably wanted Carnage instead).

Word was released today from Sony that production on Spider-Man 4 has been scrapped, and Raimi will no longer be involved with the project.  Instead, Sony Pictures plans on doing a reboot of the series with a whole new cast and crew, for release summer 2012; an absolutely absurd idea if you ask me.  In my opinion, this conflict is not the fault of Raimi, nor was Spider-Man 3’s artistic failure his fault either.  It’s the fault of Sony Pictures for sacrificing cinematic quality for monetary quantity.  It does bum me out a bit that the series will go down like this, much like the X-Men Trilogy at Fox, but I’d rather them scrap it now than add salt to the wound by botching up Spider-Man 4.  They shouldn’t be doing a reboot so soon either, but that’s another story.

Raimi is now left to pick up a new project, which as many people know was supposed to be the Warcraft movie after Spider-Man 4 was wrapped.  No one is sure if he’ll take on that project now (I hope he does!), or pick up another project, but the right thing was done here in making sure that money wasn’t the driving factor in the movie, as was with Spider-Man 3.  Here’s looking forward to Warcraft: The Movie!

Read More: Sam Raimi may not be doing SPIDER-MAN 4 next… but you know what that means…

Background

The Google Android mobile OS is both an extremely powerful and very flexible platform for a variety of smartphones.  For the past few months I have been using the Android platform via the Motorola Droid on Verizon’s network carrying Android 2.0, and overall I’ve been very pleased since my switch over from Apple, and their iPhone products.  However, with Android the power and flexibility comes at a bit of a cost.

Part of the advantages of the Android platform is in it’s ability to multitask, and the variety of software that can be installed due to Google’s fairly open Market for applications.  But, with the multitasking arises a problem: a lot of the applications  you install, which are admittedly great, can wind up running both in the background, and / or loading during your phone’s start-up automatically.  This results in your phone quickly becoming bloated with background processes that can not only slow down the operation of your phone, but also drain it’s battery faster.  This is very similar to a desktop PC, where you should watch what you install on the PC, and what runs in the background.

This is the caveat.  There are a lot of users that don’t want this level of complexity with what some may consider to be simply a ‘phone’.  This is why — in my opinion — the Android platform caters more towards ‘techies’, or power users.  Users that want a simpler experience, and don’t care about multitasking, should just stick to something like the iPhone if they’re looking for a smartphone / media phone hybrid.  That said, for those that have a bit of patience, and are willing to master the platform, Android is the one to go for.

I wanted to put together a guide with my personal experiences so far in tackling the problem of memory management, and what tools I’ve found to be useful.

Watch What You Install

First and foremost: while there are a lot of useful applications available on the Android Market you should still be reserved when installing a ton of applications on your device.  Even the best applications available on the Android Market can automatically set themselves to either run on your phone’s start-up, and / or run when certain conditions are met (i.e. network access changes).  Sadly, there were some amazing apps that were so obtrusive in this sense that I’ve had to uninstall them altogether, or switch to alternatives (yes, I want complete control on what is running).

After you’ve chosen your applications, and install them, use the menu button on your Android device and get to know the app.  Specifically, a lot of applications have configuration options or preferences available from the menu button, and you may find that these applications have their auto start preferences right there so you can manage them directly.  Also, related to the configuration of these apps, you should also keep an eye on the notifications these applications offer.  Along with having a dozen apps running in the background you can also have a dozen apps spouting out constant notifications as well from your home screen notification tray, most of which you might not even care about.

On a final note here, try to install just one application for a particular role — such as a Twitter client — to prevent ‘double notifications’, or unnecessary resource consumption on your Android device.

Using a Task Manager

One of the first things to do once you start using your Android smartphone is to install a Task Manager.  These applications will allow you to both monitor what applications are running in the background, and kill any unwanted processes.  Some of these may even carry additional functionality, such as the ability to uninstall applications easily, or looking at core Android system processes (although in a lot of cases I wouldn’t mess with these).

While these Task Managers alone won’t stop applications from starting themselves back up again (covered below), it is an excellent way to get an idea of what applications are running in the background constantly.   Even more importantly, they will also allow you to kill any unwanted apps from running in the background on a on-demand basis, most commonly when you are ready to put the phone down for an extender period of time (at work, school, driving, etc.), so that your battery doesn’t get eaten up.

Luckily, there are plenty of Task Managers available on the Android Market to cover this need.  While there are several available, my current favorite is simply called ProcessManager.  This application includes all the functionality mentioned above, along with the ability to manage some start-up applications (not all), and a neat widget you can put on your Android Home Screen to quickly see what is running in the background, or kill apps en masse.  As mentioned, there are some other great apps too like Advanced Task Manager that are available, so I would encourage everyone to check out the selection for themselves before making a decision.

ProcessManager Screenshots:

ProcessManager Install (QR Code for Bar Scanners):

Manage Applications Starting Automatically

Once you have a set of applications installed you may find that after familiarizing yourself with their functionality you may not see any ‘load on boot’ options, or something similar.  Despite this, if you install a good Task Manager you may find various applications running in the background eating your memory, and draining your battery life.

This is where running a 3rd party application comes into play to manage both your start-up applications, and applications that run when certain conditions are met on the phone.  However, currently managing your start-up applications is a bit limited, in the sense that there aren’t many applications to do this, and you have to root your phone in order to get access to the full listing of applications that load automatically in the background.  Personally, I’d rather see this functionality be part of the default Android OS (similar to msconfig in Windows), but that’s neither here nor there at this point, since it isn’t included.

To root your Android 2.0 device, please see the following:

• How To Jailbreak Motorola Droid to Enable Root and Super User Access

• Original Post on Alldroid.org

After your phone is rooted the main application I would recommend at this time is called Autostarts, and it is available on the Android Market for about $1 USD.  This application will not only allow you to manage ‘on start-up’ applications, but also applications that start when specific conditions are met on the phone, digging deeper than the other applications on the Market that have this type of functionality.

Updated 02/02/10: Previously there was a ‘bug’ with this application on the Android 2.0 platform (Moto Droid) that causes the app to soft hang when disabling an application.  Recently, the developer has released a newer version with some bug fixes, and states in the application that the issue can be worked around by enabling USB Debugging in the Application > Development options within your phone settings.

Autostarts Screenshot:

Autostarts Install (QR Code for Bar Scanners):

In Conclusion

As originally mentioned, this may all seem like a lot of work for just a ‘phone’.  However, today’s smartphones are different animals altogether, and the line in-between a full blown computer and portable computing devices is becoming increasingly blurred as the technology advances.  The bottom line is it all boils down to what your needs are.

Personally, the Android platform fits practically any need I could have ever wanted in a personal smartphone up to this point, and the Android OS is absolutely fantastic.  Granted, this is subjective, and micromanaging a phone might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for power users I feel that it can be an extremely valuable tool in your daily life, when managed properly.

Finally, this is not about completely locking down your phone and turning it into some sort of application concentration camp.  This is about giving you control on what you want running in the background.  With the flexibility and multitasking Android OS affords you it’s one of the caveats of the platform, but one where the ends justify the means with application management.

It’s a great game and definitely worth even three times this price, so don’t pass up this offer if you’re interested in this game.  There is also a demo you can check out too before you commit.

Link: Torchlight