Mass Effect 2 came out last Tuesday and I find myself a week later having completed a full play through, clocking in at 37 hours. As I try to think of how to describe the experience a few things come to mind... deep immersion, outstanding audio and visuals, and the best dialogue sequences I've seen in a game to date.

Immersion: There are a number of different elements that work together in ME2 that almost seamlessly draw you into the game. Storytelling, voice work, and visuals all combine to make you feel like you are in Shepard's boots deciding the fate of the universe yourself. The end result is that while being drawn in the game it eventually becomes a story about you. I have a feeling that Bioware worked very hard at this aspect of the game and I believe they pulled it off as close to perfect as current gaming technology allows.

Audio and Visuals:  I should start off by saying that ME2 by far has the best voice work in any video game I've played yet. NPC personalities shine mainly due to the great voice casting and performances. An additional bonus is that any NPC in ME2 that was in the original is being voiced by the same actor. This is another area that I think Bioware worked very hard on and they definitely hit their mark. The spacey ambient techno tracks throughout the game add nice flourishes of personality and the driving battle music draws you right into the action.

ME2 has really awesome visuals. Levels designs and environments are supremely detailed and there are points where you just have to stop and admire the incredibly high level of talent that went into creating this game. Character models have awesome detail and Shepard's textures and facial expressions are particularly well done. I should note that Bioware specifically worked on facial expressions and eye movements for this game and it really payed off.

Dialogue: The writing for the character dialogue throughout the game is very well done and Bioware's implementation of their conversation system makes it shine. ME2 is ultimately a story about you and your crew members with a small framework of the main plot built around it. They did an excellent job developing the backstories of your potential crew members and how you eventually handle them is completely up to you. If five different people you know play this game I'd bet that everyone one of them makes five different sets of choices and the story would end differently for each one of them.

I'll cut off my thoughts on ME2 here. The game tailors itself to each individual so it is hard to talk about it other then in broad terms. Almost all gamers should find ME2 accessible since Bioware worked hard on streamlining the RPG elements of the game to make it a sleeker experience overall. The best thing about the game is that if you don't take the story seriously and blow past the recommendations it throws your way you will find yourself disappointed in the end and wishing you had done things differently, just like in real life.

I can't do a full review on this game because honestly I couldn't bring myself to actually finish it. I'll just give some general thoughts and impressions of the game.

Borderlands is an FPS/RPG hybrid released by Gearbox Software on 10/20/2009 and has been released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.  It can basically be described as a sci-fi version of Diablo. You kills lots of enemies and pick up lots of loot off the ground. There is an MMO style quest system in the game that basically points you to the general areas you are supposed to be at and the story progresses as the main quest line is completed. The main quest story is pretty generic but the humor found throughout the dialouge and characters in the game do just enough to keep the story from falling flat on it's face.

One of the main selling points of the game when it was being released was the huge amount of items that can be found. 100,000+, a million, a bazillion... I think I saw all of those numbers thrown around. I suppose this technically is true, but only if you count a shotgun with a +11% damage modifier as being a different item then a shotgun with a +12% damage modifier. There are basically 8 different types of guns, shotguns, pistols, revolers, etc. Each base weapon type can have a number of different modifiers from a common pool and from that you magically get hundreds of thousands of weapons and nearly limitless tactical options (very active imagination required). Gearbox greatly exaggerated this feature of the game. I assume they were trying to tickle the fancies of all those old Diablo 2 veterans out there to help push units.

The game world is set in wide open barren areas with the occasional dungeon or town here and there. The drab colors and empty landscapes do little help the game. The drab environments combined with the pseudo MMO style quest system makes the single player game play like an MMO with no one else logged in. You keep expecting to see other people running around questing but you never do. To me this makes the game world feel very empty and not much fun to trudge through.

The lone point of this game that felt well done was the co-op gameplay. The game instantly becomes much more enjoyable when you have someone else to share it with. That ties in with the "empty MMO" feeling that I thought the game was saturated in. When you have a buddy to play with the game lights up. I did find however that the public online play on Xbox Live was pretty much useless. If you log in to a public game there are generally 3 other people running around doing random tasks and not working together as a group, basically an MMO with only 4 people logged in. When you have a friend(s) actively playing with you online or locally the game really picks up since you can start delving into things like team tactics.

If you have people at home that you can play with or good friends online to play the game together with then I do actually recommend this game. If you are planning on playing this as a single player game then I'd have to say stay away and spend your money on one of the many other quality titles that have come out over the last year.

I'll post the IGN review here. They fall into the trap about talking about the merits of the loot system, but they do get it right about the multiplayer:

Xbox Live is a great platform for online console gaming but there is one problem that consistently rears it's ugly head every time I attempt to play a game's multiplayer feature: other people.

This may seem like a bit of a paradox to some. Why would I even bother to play a game online if I lost a little faith in humanity every time I loaded up a multiplayer game? This is because many A+ quality games are mainly designed to be played with other people. For example, Left 4 Dead 2 is a triumph of the co-op shooter genre but due to the common denominator of the general Xbox Live populace being so dreadfully low it makes it next to impossible for a normal person to enjoy.

Imagine yourself (a grown adult) playing a game with a room full of nasally 14 year olds that feel to need to describe every action they are performing (I'm climbing down this ladder now guys!), trash talking 20 year olds that spew forth a stream of expletives in response to every source of stimuli in the game, and that one guy that plays the game 10 hours a day and is so much better then everyone else that it is almost pointless to play. That is what joining a public game on Xbox Live is like. Fun? No, not for me.

I believe the reason that Xbox Live is home to the dregs of gaming society is simple: accessibility. All someone essentially has to do is go to Walmart, buy an Xbox, go home and plug it in to their internet and they are online. It is the most popular console on the market in terms of playing games online and technology has advanced to the point where almost everyone has high speed internet in their home. The high price of Playstation 3 has been a barrier keeping out many gamers and the price and technical aspects of maintaining and upgrading a PC prevents many people that aren't tech savvy from gaming on that platform.

There is an interesting article in the January edition of Game Informer where Marc Whitten (the GM of Xbox Live) is being interviewed. The interviewer (Matt Helgeson) asks "This is more of a cultural issue, but there can be a nastiness in the community on Xbox Live... Is there anything you can do to alleviate that?" Marc Whitten's response is essentially "I'd like to get better about telling you that you're walking into a bar and not the zoo." This makes sense to me and I'd love for them to persue that line of thought.

When an adult wants to relax or have fun they don't go out to Chuck E. Cheese or a college student lounge. They find people their own age to hang out with or go to a bar or a restaurant or something of that nature. To a kid McDonald's is the height of culture and Chuck E. Cheese is their Mecca. They would get kicked out on sight at a bar. A college kid hangs out in dorm rooms or lounges or parking lots and aren't quite adults but not kids any more.

Gaming has become a mainstream norm and the business of video games is now bigger then both the movie industry and the music industry. Modern Warfare 2 just eclipsed 1 billion dollars in sales. I think it is time for the game industry to upgrade their moderation department. There are enough people playing games now that it makes sense to break them into different groups rather then clump everyone together in hopes that enough people are available to fill games. Breaking people into different age groups online should be getting serious consideration from game developers out there, especially for Xbox Live.

On a platform like Xbox Live you should be presented with the option of playing with people in your own age group or playing with anyone else that doesn't care about their age group. The age groups should look something like this:

• Children up to 12 years old
• 13-18
• 18-25
• 25-35
• 35-55
• 55+
  

This would also help enforce game ratings by making certain games available only to their respective age groups (children could only play E rated games for example). Again if you choose to you could ignore the age group settings and be put into a pool of people that don't care who they play with. You could also play with anyone on your friends list or anyone you invite to your game at any time you wish.

I'm not sure if a change that big could be worked into the current version of Live but it should be something that developers are looking at for the future in the next generation of consoles. In my opinion it would be a drastic improvement over the current service they are providing.

There seems to be a lot of interesting news coming out of the gaming industry today so I'll recap the choice tidbits:

Star Trek Online's February 2nd release date is rapidly approaching and Cryptic has released another trailer promoting their MMO. In case anyone is interested they will be running an open beta from January 12th to the 26th.





Bioware has come out of nowhere and announced that they will be releasing a $40 downloadable expansion for Dragon Age. The new expansion will be titled "Awakening" and will feature new lands to explore, new skills/abilities/specializations, the ability to respec your character (getting your skill/stat/ability points back and redistribute them), as well as 5 new potential party members. At this point I'm not really sure what I think of this move since it seems way to early to release a DLC of this scope. If this content was ready so close to the release of Dragon Age then it should have been included in the original game. Bioware has already been criticized for the optional DLC they had available at the launch of the game, but this may be the straw that breaks the camel's back for some. I think I'll probably be one of the suckers buying into it though......




An 8-bit remake of the original Left 4 Dead has been released and it seems that the poor chap's site has already been suspended for exceeding bandwidth o_O If you are interested in trying it out check FileShack for the file.




 One final piece of news is that we will probably be seeing our first official looks at Fallout: New Vegas here in the coming month.

Bioware has recently released new videos discussing Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect 2. The Star Wars video is a continuation of their "Developer Dispatch" series and talks about what went into designing the two dark side force user classes in their upcoming MMO. The Mass Effect 2 videos are trailers taking a look at Thane and Grunt, two new characters in the soon to be released RPG.


Star Wars: The Old Republic






Mass Effect 2

To keep the holiday spirit thing going I thought it would be useful for people to find games as cheaply as possible for themselves or as gifts. Cheap Ass Gamer is a site that keeps track of all of the latest deals on videogames and posts them on their site on a constant basis. If you know of a specific game you want to buy just go to the site and type it in the search and you'll be given the cheapest places to buy it.

If you are interested Ars Technica recently did an interview with the founder of the site here. He gives some tips on how to buy games on the cheap, so it is worth a read.