Mass Effect 2

You know a game is successful in what it’s trying to do, that it very quickly tells you, indirectly, that you should go back and play the previous title in the series. That’s what happened to me here… I tried to play Mass Effect over the holidays after picking it up during a steam sales. I played Mass Effect 2 for an hour or so the cinematic value of that introductory chapter was incredible, but it was the nature of the very dramatic intro made it clear that I should have a connection with these characters that I didn’t have. I mentioned a few posts back that I really liked Mass Effect, now that the dust has settled on that, and I have now played through Mass Effect 2, I’d say that the original was ok, but in retrospect, it’s a fraction of the sequel is.

It’s very easy to throw Mass Effect 2 into the traditional BioWare RPG bucket, but more than that it is a third-person “stop and pop” action game, with squad mechanics. It just so happens to be class based, and includes some character skill development based on experience points. It also contains an epic story that can be molded based on the decisions that is made by the player. In my opinion, this is the perfect blend action RPG. The controls on PC were tight, much better than in the original, and it felt like I could either use their pause/command functionality or play it as a straight up action game depending on the situation I was in. The execution here in my mind was flawless, I often found myself getting into some trouble, in those cases I’d pause the battle, scan the field to see whats going on, direct my team in such a way that would get me out of situation my running and gunning had got myself into. I played on the ‘normal’ difficulty, and I found that might have been a bit too easy. I didn’t die much through the course of the journey, and if I did it really was my fault for doing something stupid. I think it felt easier because the ally AI was competent for the most part. They didn’t often run out into the open into a swarm of enemies, sure it happened occasionally, but to the point of being a problem. The weapons and abilities all felt good to use, I played through as an adept, I REALLY enjoyed aiming my biotics so that they’d curve around enemy cover and the ability to control the battle field. I also started with some of the other classes and they all felt unique and powerful in their own way. I’m certain I will be playing through this again taking a different approach, with a different class, and maybe try to not get my crew killed this time…

BioWare did a great job of more or less hiding many of the ‘rpg’ elements from the player. You don’t have complicated decisions to make about ability points that need to be distributed, sure there is still some choice, but the options are simplified. You don’t need to spend points in charm or intimidate, though the functionality is still in the game and still used to open up dialog options. You also don’t have to manage your bag, and equipment, this is instead a loadout and upgrade system that applies to both weapons and armor. You purchase upgrades from stores or find them on missions, and you can develop them by using resources gathered by scanning planets, and dropping probes to collect them. It’s a simple system, after trying to get all the upgrades I did kind of wear out on the process, but by scanning the many planets in the many systems, you may also detect an anomaly which will give you a side quest you can do. It provides a little reward for exploring, and gives a little extra incentive when you’re farming materials for that expensive upgrade. But again, it all felt pretty optional to me.. and if I had my fill of scanning there was always something else I could do to take a break.

The story is one of, if not the best story in a game that I’ve played so far, I really got into it. I think thats because Shepard and the world that I’d created felt like my own. Unlike Mass Effect, which to me really made me feel like a small piece of this giant universe, Mass Effect 2 suppresses this by the rest of the universe refusing to acknowledge the threat leaving Shepard and crew to deal with the threat themselves. Although this is similar to ME1, the reason this feels smaller is because instead of trying to deal with the powers that be, finding evidence to support your claims etc to enlist their help, you are forced into a partnership with Cerberus, a terrorist organization (by reputation) with humanities best interest in mind (or so you’re told… I for one am not buying it). This relationship creates some interesting dialog moments and some difficult judgement calls along the way. I’ve got to say knowing that your decisions in this game will have consequences in the forthcoming sequel, and having seen those same sort of decisions carry forward from the original Mass Effect play their part here really makes you think carefully about the tough ones.

The bulk of the game is spent assembling your crew and doing loyalty missions (these will unlock an additional ability, and character outfit once completed, and I believe has some story repercussion as well), in doing these you really end up developing an emotional attachment to these people, as each provides some insight as to why Cerberus choose them to be on Shepard’s crew, and how they got into the position they’re in. There are some really interesting characters here and they were all a joy to get to know. But this sort of development and detail extends well beyond your immediate crew, the encounters you have on the various missions with people and situations are all incredibly fleshed out, and complete. You run into some genuinely creepy scenarios (not the least of which being the overlord DLC), all superbly written and all really fun to play.  The cinematics in this game are great, and similar to in Mass Effect, the soundtrack compliments each and every scene, it was very easy to get worked up and get on with your mission.

This is easily on my short list of games to play this year, even if you haven’t or don’t go back to play Mass Effect, though if you have the time I would strongly recommend it. It really makes you feel that the universe here is yours to mold.. It’s a truly amazing accomplishment for BioWare and I’m not at all surprised that it sounds like they’re trying to move the Dragon Age franchise in a similar direction (not that I agree with it). There isn’t much more I can say about this other than do yourself a favor and play it… and if you’ve only got a ps3, you should be hammering the bioware forums begging for a port because it’s that good…

Ok, so maybe they’re not really ‘prequels’, but they are both games that came out before the game that I really wanted to play in the series that I hadn’t, so I hopped into the way back machine for a little, ‘this came first’ action… I haven’t decided if I’m going to do a full on throw-back review yet since the game is several years old at this point, but I will share some of my thoughts.

Naruto Rise of a Ninja

I am a closet fan of the anime, haven’t missed an episode… and it’s been so good lately that I considered going back to the beginning and watching again, in fact I started and then realized that there were a couple games that I passed on the xbox due to those same confidence issues that I skipped all those other 360 games for. On top of that, it’s available via games on demand so I didn’t even have to try to hunt down a copy (the same can’t be said for the sequel, which I have also acquired…).

This game is fan-service… relentless fan-service… the game takes you through the end of approximately episode 80 of the original series. The story is told mostly through cut scenes from the actual episodes which sadly, looks grainy and dated at this point. They (thankfully) trimmed a lot of the filler and added some of there own to make more of a game out of it. There are a few different mission types that have you gathering collectibles, races, and retrieving items which inevitable has you fighting some bandits. Which makes sense considering that Naruto is facing weaker opponents since this is all supposed to be taking place before the ‘Chunin Exam’.

The plot missions usually has Naruto in combat, mostly with his peers, keeping with the story line of the show at the time (there are obvious exceptions that fans will already know). The combat itself is fairly simple, mostly 2 attack buttons with a handful of combos and aerial attacks, throw in a kunai attack every now and then. The idea is to use one of your combos to knock the opponent down and buy time so that you can perform a jutsu. I think the implementation here was brilliant; to perform a jutsu you hold down the left trigger, then use both analog sticks in pre-determined directions to emulate forming hand seals as they do in the show, afterwards it takes a second or two to charge the attack, during the time the jutsu can be interupted, when fully leveled you can ‘charge’ them longer for more harmful attacks. It’s not the most amazing fighting system in a video game or anything, but it was fun enough, and felt believable if not authentic to the experience. I’ve got to say, if you’re a fan of the franchise it’s pretty hard to not get $20 worth out of it.

Mass Effect

I also finished off Mass Effect (PC), I tried this one a while back and really didn’t care for it at first. I had heard Mass Effect 2 corrected a lot of the problems I had with the original, and when it came up during the steam sales I figured I’d give that one a try. The reviews were right, Mass Effect 2 is a much better game, but the further I got the more it felt like I was missing by not playing the first one. It was motivation enough for me to try this one again. I’m pretty glad I did, I had a much better time with it this go around, despite the game not running well on my machine at all (oddly ME2 runs far better than ME1… very strange). The story was great, and it really did give me the impression that was making a difference in this huge galaxy, most of which was unexplored by me. I’m half tempted to go back and continue exploring just to see what I missed.

It was a really really satisfying experience, and I need to give all sorts of kudos to everyone involved in the sound in this game, everything from weapons sounds, to the score, to the voice acting, all very very well done, and had my computer behaved a little better, or I had picked this up for console, I’m certain I would have been totally consumed by this experience.

So much so that I almost immediately loaded up Mass Effect 2, imported my Shepard and was ready to continue my adventure. Anyone late to the game on this one would be wise to play this one before playing 2. I’m sure you could play 2 all the way through without all the background but I liken the experience to jumping into say the 3rd season of some TV show, where all the big exciting moments were people who were supposed to be gone from the previous seasons come back, and you are just sort of left with a “who’s this supposed to be” feeling ostracized.

Actually, to add to that, I also put in Naruto Broken Bond almost immediately too, so it’s safe to say that these games were good enough that I didn’t want to stop playing them when I finished.