In honor of my wife‘s birthday today, here’s a bit from one of my favorite posts of hers. We’re taking care of some errands and going out at least for dinner tonight, thanks to a generous gift card to our favorite restaurant. Guess what it is. Go on, guess.
Enjoy this little taste of an opinionated game review peppered with swearing.
Look at that title. I just summed up everything I’m about to say and I don’t even have to say it. I could stand back, look proud of myself and just let the title speak for itself.
However, I’m not. I suspect I will have hundreds of fanboys raging all over the place here if I were to, so I’ll qualify what I just said with some experiences.
For most of the fights worth a damn I used Liara and Alenko, actually.
As I said, the game itself was really good, but I feel I should qualify that too: it was really good when I was playing a Soldier. When I first started up the game, I figured I’d probably play a Soldier because I’m boring and like killing things, but after looking at the classes I figured I’d go for something I don’t usually play, and chose the mage Adept. The combat controls were confusing at first (the game arbitrarily has different movement controls for combat and non-combat), especially since you can’t zoom out, so despite it being third person I still got that “no peripheral vision” feeling that comes with first person shooters. Anyway, I quickly discovered that you can’t keybind more than one ability — despite never using the D-pad for anything the entire game — so if you want to play something that relies as much on abilities as it does on shooting things, and you’re not playing on the PC, you’d better like pausing combat. A lot.
After dealing with the flow-breaking pausing, or just ignoring it and shooting things for the entire first mission, I finally said “fuck this” and re-rolled. Maybe it’s because I could dump all my points in assault rifles since I knew I wasn’t going to use anything else, maybe it was because I’d gotten the hang of the way combat worked, but I immediately had much more fun with the Soldier and went on with the game. I did get a couple abilities throughout the game (well, “a couple” isn’t accurate, I had almost as many as Liara by the end) but most of the time I forgot they existed and just shot things till one of us died. The only ones I ever really took advantage of were my party resurrect and the one that reset all my abilities so I could use the resurrect again. These two got used a lot, too, because the entire party liked to huddle around me, and if I was behind cover, instead of going off to find their own cover nearby, they’d stand in the open near me and get killed. Despite this, the way the fights are set up I was grateful to have party members, especially later on when Kaidan and Liara both got Lift.
Lift is awesome.
As for the non-combat parts… Well. I often found it stupid that one charm speech would cause people to rethink their entire diabolical plan/career choice/life, but I guess it’s better than requiring five conversation trees of the exact same thing. There was also one thing that bothered me with the reporter coming to talk to you sidequest… I knew it was the Renegade option to tell her to fuck off, and I was going for a Paragon, but I chose it anyway because I’d previously promised Emily Wong, another reporter and recurring quest NPC, that she would be the first to get an exclusive interview. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to remember this promise because it never comes up again and everyone acts like you’re an ass for not doing the interview, and there’s no way to tell people I refused in order to keep my promise to Wong (thereby doing the right thing). Why make things like that a dialogue option at all if you’re going to assume the player will completely forget about them?
Other than hiccups like that, I really enjoyed the dialogue parts. I’m one of those OCD types who will get as much information out of an NPC as possible, which often led to spending ridiculous amounts of time chatting, though. Rarely in a game am I so eager to get back to the action after spending time in town as I was in Mass Effect.
I mentioned I’m playing Mass Effect again. In addition to highlighting just how uninteresting my hobbies can be, the experience allows me to more finely compare and contrast certain aspects of both games. The combat is the first and most likely target for such a comparison, as it’s one of the biggest problems people have with the second game outside of the scanning mechanic and the lack of exposed skin during the “romantic interludes.”
Combat in the first Mass Effect is, like the inventory system, ripe territory for micromanagement. Every character has a variety of powers that are mostly on separate cooldown periods. To effectively survive combat encounters with minimal expenditure of medi-gel or grenades, especially on higher difficulty levels, using the radial menu to pause the game, look around and target party members’ powers on specific enemies is every bit as important as making sure your guns have the right load-out. It’s a combat system that rewards preparation and planning. If you know there will be a ton of geth in a particular hotspot, load up on anti-synthetic ammo and be sure to have at least one tech specialist in your party to ruin the geth’s day by destroying their shields. Areas of rachni, thorian creepers or other organic hazards will require different ammo and a wider array of powers. And if you want a real challenge, try fighting without biotics. The ability to take an assailant off the ground with your brain or slam them against the wall as a killing blow are things you’re likely to miss when a geth Destroyer is coming straight for you.
Mass Effect 2‘s combat is a bit more straight-forward and faster paced, as I’ve mentioned. Like other third-person shooters, most notably Gears of War, just about every where you go in the Terminus Systems you’ll find plenty of chest-high walls. You survived a lot longer in the first game when shooting from cover, but you were also spending half your time in the radial menu. The sequel seems to want to limit the amount of power-picking, so while you do have more places to map powers (a definite improvement), you have fewer powers from which to choose. Shepard can have up to six, seven if you count Unity, while members of your party won’t ever have more than three. Sure, there’s less to keep track of, meaning you’ll be moving through combat a bit more rapidly and it adds to the overall action-oriented feel of the game. But I can’t help but feel that something’s been lost.
I’m not saying one method of combat is superior to the other. They both work, they’re both fun and neither feels completely out of place. To be honest, the only major difference is that combat in the first feels more like an RPG while the second is more shooter-oriented. Yahtzee accurately points out that gameplay is still ‘flailing about’ trying to strike the right balance, and the first two games lean just a bit too much in one direction or another. Again, this is not a complaint, merely an observation. I hope that BioWare keeps trying to find that balance for Mass Effect 3 and doesn’t turn it into Gears of War: Spectre Edition.
I’m taking a cue from Ye Olde Magick Speaking Beardface and just putting down some words about life in general at this point. I only have one real creative work in progress at the moment, which is more than enough considering everything that’s going on.
“Who’re you calling a program, program?”*
Right, first things first. The day job is keeping the roof over our heads (until we move to a new one in a couple months) and food in the pantry. I’m moving positions, shifting away from phone-answering bug-squishing troubleshooting to code-chomping cart-rolling Flash-AAHHHH-“savior of the universe”ing programming. It’s not a promotion, mind you, more of a lateral, semi-upwards shift in responsibilities and protocol. Still, it’s in improvement. I have a few things to square away in my current workload before the move is official, but it’s forward motion. By focusing on PHP, SQL and my already pretty extensive Flash skills, and leaving the ever-shifting environments of up-front client relations behind, I think I’ll not only become far more valuable to the company, but also start enjoying work a bit more overall.
The Project Marches On
I’m trying to crack open the manuscript for the Project and drop a few words in every day. Sometimes it’s more than a thousand, or even two or three. Others I’m lucky to get a couple dozen in there. But any motion is forward motion, and I’m trying to keep my spirits up. I know where I’m going with this plot, and I’m aware that some places might be a bit slower than others. If my setting had ninjas, I’d have them attack any time I was in doubt about what to have happen next. Ninjas are always cool.
“Did we just threaten someone with zombie rape?”
Tonight’s another session of the awesome Iron Kingdoms game being run by my wife. Our team (myself, David Hill and his lovely wife Filamena) have sort of become a steampunk version of Burn Notice. Dave’s noble never kills unless he has to, Mena’s gun mage is on the lookout for the next opportunity, and my rifleman sees violence as a direct solution to most enemy encounters. …Which pretty much makes me the Fiona.
Property of BioWare
I’m playing through Mass Effect again. Call me boring or easy to please if you like, but I have achievements to get, a whole other gender to experience (since Shepard can be either male or female) and situations to set up for future games. Once I get where I want in the first game, I’ll be playing the second again. And I also have things I want to do with Dragon Age, as well. Again, this probably points to me being dull, but in retrospect I feel this is a better way to spend my time than playing Star Trek Online for the time being. That and BioWare isn’t charging me $15 a month just to play their games.
And then there’s this stuff.
Taxes, bills, finding a new apartment that doesn’t suck, getting cats to a vet sometime in the near future… being a grown up sure is fun, isn’t it?
*If you know this reference you officially rock my socks.
(NOTE: May contain minor spoilers. Readers be ye warned!)
Subtitled THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL. (Right, Harbinger?)
Here we are, at last. I know quitea fewpeople have already played and reviewed this game. Some are even playing it again. I actually went back to the original game to start a new playthrough to span both games, and while I know there will be some repetition in dialog and encounters, the story’s solid enough to withstand repeated playthroughs. That’s more than you can say for a lot of games out there today. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Mass Effect 2 opens with a shocking curbstomp battle between Commander Shepard’s intrepid vessel, the Normandy, and a mysterious attacker that can see the plucky ship despite its stealth systems and blasts through its defense systems like they weren’t there. Shepard manages to get his crew to safety before he’s blown out to space and dies. The pro-human semi-terrorist “by-any-means-necessary” organization Cerberus scrapes Shepard off of the nearby planet’s surface and spends two years resurrecting him. The Reapers, extragalactic Big Bads introduced in the first Mass Effect, are still a major threat despite the government’s denial of their existence. They’re not helping humanity in the disappearance of their colonies, either, so Cerberus turns to the reconstructed Shepard to undertake a suicide mission through an unexplored mass relay to uncover the source of the abductions and send back more information on the Reapers. Because who better to send on a mission where everybody’s likely to die than someone who’s been dead already?
Stuff I Didn’t Like
We got this instead of a vehicle. I hope you’re all happy.
Wait. Shepard dies? He wasn’t in a coma or suspended animation and presumed dead by the galaxy at large? I found that to be a little far-fetched. Sure, technology in the future depicted by Mass Effect is pretty advanced, and being rebuilt by Cerberus explains why you can implement so many cybernetic upgrades to Shepard as the game goes on, but the whole resurrection angle pushes the limits of believability. Shepard doesn’t really seem that bothered by it, either – there’s no crisis of faith or any real rumination on what thoughts are evoked by the experience of coming back from the dead. Even the more spiritual team members don’t think to ask, which would have been a good opportunity for the player to do a little role-playing in choosing to start a deep theological conversation, or give a Renegade-oriented “None of your damn business” response.
Oh, and the story problems don’t end there. We do learn more about the Reapers, as to what motivates them and why they do what they do, but it still doesn’t explain why it wasn’t explained to us previously. Did Sovereign go for a stream of verbal crap in the style of Matrix: Reloaded‘s Architect just to mess with human heads, or was it embarrassed that the motivations of its supremely powerful machine-race were so basic and organic-like that it needed an extra layer of obfuscation? Or had the writers not figured it out yet themselves at that point? Maybe they had but they wanted to keep us guessing. Don’t get me wrong, the writing in this game isn’t bad, not by a long shot. More on that later.
The only other major insurmountable problem I had beyond the story issues was the scanning mini-game. I touched on it previously and it appears that my initial assessment was on the money. Here it is again to save you some time:
Some of the complaints about the Mako sections of the first game were their length and tedium. Scanning in the sequel takes just as long and… is just as tedious. Another Mako complaint is, obviously, it’s handling. So if scanning is meant to be an improvement over the Mako, the controls should handle smoothly and be a delightful diversion from ducking for cover like we’re playing Gears of War, right? Sorry, that’s not the case here. The reticle moves slowly over the surface of a world when you’re scanning, and unless you want to risk missing a particularly rich pocket of Element Zero, you need to drag it across every square mile of the planet’s surface.
Now one thing the scanning mini-game does well is convey the feeling that one is in space. And I don’t mean it hearkens to Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. No, it hearkens more to 2001: A Space Odyssey or video recordings of NASA operations. That is to say that it’s lengthy, quiet, procedural and really rather dull.
Stuff I Liked
“Gosh, I hope you weren’t fond of your face, buddy.” *ZAP*
Let’s move on to better news. The other major complaint about the first Mass Effect was the inventory system, which stuffed your interstellar backpack with a plethora of ultimately useless junk that you then needed to sell one at a time to the nearest vendor. BioWare tossed that stuff into the Mako when they shoved it out the airlock, and the system of managing equipment in the sequel is extremely streamlined. Rather than switching weapons, you upgrade the models available to your team members. While these upgrades must be purchased with resources gathered by the aforementioned scanning malarkey, you won’t be thinking about that tedious stuff as your new Normandy takes you from one gunfight to the next.
Speaking of fights, the combat system in Mass Effect 2 is also somewhat streamlined. You can map more powers for easy use, you don’t have quite as many to manage, squad commands are broken a bit more easily and fights are bit faster-paced. The measures of protection on your foes, as well as their scale, can vary from encounter to encounter which can lead to breaking up the monotony of the cover-based shooting. The multiple map buttons mean you can address a particular enemy’s defensive measure at a moment’s notice, provided you don’t just pound them into submission with a stream of mass-accelerated death or your favorite physics-altering biotic ability.
Like the previous game, this one is rendered very well, with the environments and technology providing a great sense of immersion. The voice-acting, for the most part, also draws the player into the experience, as they travel from one exotic locale to the next to recruit members for Shepard’s suicide mission. And being able to customize your armor’s look was a nice touch, along with the fish tank & Space Hamster you could add to your cabin on the Normandy.
Stuff I Loved
Thane: “Shepard, what is this ‘DeviantArt’ site you sent me?” Shepard: *whistles innocently*
BioWare might be a little shaky in the story department, but one of their strengths is their characters. Mass Effect 2 gives us a diverse, interesting and well-written cast, from the penitent and quiet assassin Thane to Subject Zero, who uses aggression and profanity to conceal a deeply wounded soul. The conversations Shepard has with these individuals give the game a surprising amount of depth for what could easily have been a Gears of War clone with a few RPG elements. While this might come as no surprise to long-time fans of BioWare’s games, the purchase of the company by EA could have caused some concern. However, as much as EA might mess with other aspects of a game – DLC or DMA or some other acronyms – it appears they’re leaving the story alone, and thank the Enkindlers for that.
Being able to import your Shepard from the first game gives the experience a fantastic sense of cohesion and immersion as well. It’s surprising the amount of continuity exists between the two games, from the outcome of major events to minor encounters you frankly might have forgotten about in the intervening years. Returning characters are a welcome sight, even when they’re hated foes and especially when they’re beloved party members. There’s a real sense that time has passed since the end of the first game, and every life you touched then, even in passing, has been changed because of your influence for better or for worse.
The last thing that really made this game enjoyable for me was the changes to the conversation system. It’s been said that quick-time events should be an integral part of gameplay and not thrown in arbitrarily. The Paragon/Renegade interrupts are not mandatory for you to finish a conversation, but setting one off not only flows well with the conversation but often yields pretty spectacular results. On top of that, conversations in general flow more naturally, with characters moving as they speak, camera angles changing dynamically during conversations and subjects reaching far beyond the usual “What did you think of the last mission?” or “Do you think I look cute in this armor?” fare.
Spoiler
“I believe the organic saying is: ‘BOOM. Headshot.'”
Bottom Line: Are you a fan of the first Mass Effect? Buy this game. Do you like sci-fi shooting action? Buy this game. Looking for a relatively decent story with solid, well-rounded characters? Buy this game. Got a void in your life that only a Space Hamster can fill? Buy this game. Have I made it clear yet? No? Go buy Mass Effect 2. It’s well worth the money, the time and the frustration of the scanning mechanic. Hell, I plan on playing it again, not once, but at least twice. I mean, we’ve established previously that I’m pretty damn dull, but at least something like this is more exciting than Star Trek Online:
All that blood means this game is totally dark and edgy. Totally.
I’ve ragged a bit on the length of Dragon Age: Origins as well as the infamous memory leak that completely devoured at least an entire day of my life. But how did I feel about the game overall? How does its writing compare to Mass Effect or even its spiritual ancestor, Baldur’s Gate? Read on, and find out.
Dragon Age is a fantasy setting based in the world of Thedas. Origins introduces us to this world through the nation of Ferelden, which is facing the threat of invasion by twisted creatures known as darkspawn. The only force with the knowledge and experience capable of ending this threat, before it becomes a full-blown contagion of violence and destruction called a Blight, is the elite order of the Gray Wardens. It is this order your character will be invited to join after you get to know the race and/or class you select at the opening of the game.
Stuff I Didn’t Like
“A little club soda will get those blood spatters out of your dress, sir.”
The game’s intent of being a ‘dark’ fantasy is apparently the reason even the briefest of melee encounters will see you and the members of your party spattered in blood. It’s as if Jackson Pollock runs from one member to the other armed with a brush dipped in red paint, giggling with childlike glee. Having this happen in the wake of a bloody close-up kill would work a lot better than having these people constantly covered in gore. It actually becomes kind of hilarious if you try to talk one of your party members after a fight. They will casually talk with you and even joke, without bothering to even wipe the blood out of their eyes. I know it’s foolish to expect complete realism in a fantasy setting, but this always struck me as a bit off.
There’s a lot of loading that happens in this game, at least in the PC version. Especially when playing for longer than an hour or two, due to the aforementioned memory leak. I started seeing the slowly spinning tribal-influenced loading graphic in my sleep.
The Codex of the game is very dry. I’ve started to get used to sparing glances at posted information or an overheard conversation dumping a ream of text into my journal, but in Mass Effect there was some narration on the major entries that helped convey some interesting and world-building information. Now, while Dragon Age’s Codex isn’t essential as most of the background and world-building happens in the course of conversation with others, but the fact remains that the full text presented in-game can be difficult to sift through. Browsing a wiki for the information outside of the game is more informative and interesting.
Quests in fantasy games can often feel a little contrived. Stationary NPCs, especially those who are reputed to be powerful or fearsome, often give tasks to the players that they could easily accomplish themselves if not for some plot-imposed restriction. And in the course of your travels, it’s easy to begin to lose sight of your motivation as you try to hurdle one obstacle after another in what should be a straightforward affair. The two biggest culprits in this area are the tower of the Circle of Magi, and the Deep Roads extending from the dwarven city of Orzammar. Unlike the optional side quests posted on various boards around Ferelden, these areas contain sequences that require you to move from one map to another in what I assume was an attempt to give the game scope but really just felt like they were trying to make a long game even longer. Now, as I said I’ve already had a gripe about the game’s length, but having finished the game it did feel like a sweeping epic which is something I’ll discuss more in a bit. But the Deep Roads in particular just felt overly tedious. When I finally reached Caridin at the end of the Roads, I half expected the big guy to take me through an exchange that’d go something like this:
“YOU WILL GO TO THE WAYOVERTHERE MOUNTAINS, TO THE VERY PEAK OF MOUNT NOOBDEATH, AND BRING ME THE TEN HAMMERS OF AWESOMENESS TO PROPERLY DISPOSE OF THE ANVIL OF THE VOID.”
“Is the anvil bolted down?”
“…WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?”
“Well, if isn’t bolted to the stone, why don’t we all pick it up and heave the thing into the molten lava flowing below us? Hell, even if it is bolted down, I’m a mage, Oghren’s a mighty beer-drinking dwarf, Alistair’s pretty badass when he stops whining and snarking, and both you and Shale are immortal super-strong golems. Why don’t we eliminate the bolts, THEN hurl it into the lava? That’d do the job nicely, right?”
“…YOUR SOLUTION IS NOT EPIC ENOUGH.”
“But it just makes more sense to use what we’ve got here than to wander all the way out and up into the mountains…”
“EPIC SOLUTIONS DO NOT MEAN LOGICAL SOLUTIONS. GET ON WITH THE QUESTING.”
“…”
“THERE’S EPIC GEAR IN IT FOR YOU.”
“Fine, whatever.”
Speaking of Shale, it boggles my mind that one of the best characters in the game is only available via DLC. Shale is interesting, useful, deep and absolutely hysterical, but if you didn’t get the right retail copy or don’t have the $15 necessary to download her, you’re shit outta luck, friend.
Stuff I Liked
This view is why the PC version works very well for me.
Regarding the game’s length, while some of the sequences did feel a bit long in the tooth, the overall arc of the game is like that of Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia, in that we have a sojourn across a foreign land in the name of an epic quest. Seeing the story through to the end, while a frustrating slog at times, is very satisfying. It was like the first time I finally finished all three Lord of the Rings novels. I didn’t really care about Tom Bombadil’s hat or how green the grass is in the Shire, but it was pretty damn awesome to see how everything resolved in the end.
There’s a lot of replay value here. Beyond the different origin stories, there are a lot of choices to make with a given character both in terms of dialog and specialization. No two playthroughs are guaranteed to be the same. In fact, I’ve thought of going back to an earlier save of my mage and tweaking his build just a bit, to make him more of a magic knight and less of an armored healer. Hell, I could change his build entirely and just nuke everything in sight.
The politics and religions of Thedas in general and Ferelden in particular feel three-dimensional. The main NPCs you’ll encounter in your travels also come across as more than cardboard cut-outs, despite their somewhat stiff uncanny valley appearance.
Stuff I Loved
Oghren: “You as sick of runnin’ hither an’ yon for these lazy sodding rutters as I am?”
The speaking characters in your party, while requiring some of BioWare’s trademark micromanagement, are a diverse and well-realized bunch. Shale, as I’ve mentioned, is a stand-out character, and Oghren the dwarf had me rolling pretty much any time he spoke. I mentioned Alistair’s penchant for being whiny and snarky, but for the most part it’s more endearing than annoying. I even found myself warming up to Sten, the extremely stoic Qunari warrior. Another reason I want to play through this game again is to further explore some of the stories behind the party members I didn’t hang out with as often. Your mileage may vary, of course. However, the only reason I imagine someone might not like the character of the Dog is if they just plain hate dogs. Otherwise, I would be very surprised if you played this game and didn’t find yourself wanting a mabari war hound of your own.
It would be easy for this game, billed as a dark fantasy and covered in blood, to focus entirely on combat as a means to resolve all its situations. But there’s diplomacy, puzzle-solving and even some politicing involved as well. Allowing the game’s storylines to expand beyond the combat engine makes it feel less like a straight hack and slash affair and more like an honest-to-whomever role playing game. Solid writing that compliments the action instead of existing solely for the purpose of shepherding us from one combat encounter to the next makes the game more interesting, immersive and fun. Dragon Age: Origins definitely delivers on that score.
There’s a definite feeling that your actions (or inaction in some cases) have long-reaching ramifications in this world. From party members deserting you over a given choice to whole parties of pilgrims getting wiped out in the epilogue because you skipped something, Dragon Age: Origins reminds you that Thedas is much bigger than the microcosm of you and your party. The world is built in this way to such a degree that the Codex feels even more superfluous. Thedas is a rich, deep and rewarding world to explore, and I found myself wanting to spend more time there, darkspawn and ogres notwithstanding.
Bottom Line: If you have any interest in a high fantasy role-playing game that evokes the likes of Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age: Origins is worth the investment of both time and money. Fans of straight-forward hack’n’slashers might be better off buying Torchlight or saving up for the upcoming Diablo III. I plan on playing this plenty in the weeks and months to come, which means that for me, Dragon Age: Origins is a great success.
