As a special Valentine's Day present for my dear girlfriend, I got her the Ghostbusters video game as she highly enjoys the movies. After watching her play it and finish it, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and play it myself. And let me tell you, it's just as fun to watch as it is to play.
The game takes place in 1991, 2 years after Ghostbusters 2, and sets you in the shoes of a new recruit to the Ghostbusters team, known affectionately as "Rookie" and various other nicknames. I think his name is technically mentioned by Ray (Dan Akroyd) at one point, but that's all you hear of it. For the most part, as they initially explain, you're the guy who carries around and initially tests out all their highly advanced and possibly dangerous equipment. As such you remain nameless so that, as Venkman (Bill Murray) says, they don't get too attached.
As you might be able to tell already, almost every single person who was involved in the movies was pretty much involved in this game. Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis all lend their voices as the Ghostbusters, Annie Potts returns as the secretary Janine, William Atherton returns as Walter Peck, hell, even Max Von Sydow provides the voice of the now trapped Vigo, who you can interact with by talking to his painting. AND, possibly the best part is that it's written by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis who wrote both films as well. Both Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis are noticeably absent, especially since the story even mentions Dana Barrett several times, but it doesn't detract from all the awesome.
Right after suiting up with the infamous proton pack, a massive psionic shockwave (or something like that) pulses through the city, releasing Slimer from his windowed captivity box. You track him into the basement and get your first taste of wrangling a ghost.
Using the proton pack is just as destructive and fun as it looks in the movies. Each ghost has a circle of health shown around your crosshairs, which you slowly knock down by hitting them with your stream. The fun part is that the ghosts move around just as much as you expect they would, practically forcing you to leave burn marks, broken pillars, and a wave of destruction in your wake. Once the ghosts are at a sufficiently low health, you throw your trap, put a capture stream on the ghost whereby you literally try to wrangle the ghost into the trap with the right analog stick. You can also slam it around to stun it, causing more mayhem in the process. Once you get it above the trap, the trap opens up and you have to keep the ghost from escaping the light it emits. Do so, and congrats, you've captured a ghost.
Later on the proton pack receives several upgrades, such as a shotgun like Shock Blaster, a green slime stream, and the Meson Collider which acts in practically the exact same way as the Bullseye in Resistance: Fall of Man. Each of these modes also has a special secondary fire. The proton stream fires a big explosion called a Boson Dart. The Shock Blaster lets loose a stasis stream that will freeze ghosts if you keep it on them long enough. The slimer shoots out a slime tether, which can be used to trap enemies to a single spot and is also used in many puzzles throughout the game. The Meson Collider's secondary fire is essentially normal rapid fire, but will track to any spot you've "painted" with the powerful normal fire.
Of course, with all these weapons the types of enemies you face are bound to be weak to one weapon or another, and the way you tell is the PKE meter. In the movies, this is the little sensor thing they hold up to scan areas that has those funny little arms that move up whenever they're close to ghostly energy. In the game's case, it's coupled with what are basically night-vision goggles that let you see invisible trails left by ghosts. You use the PKE meter as a kind of "am I getting hotter or colder?" way of tracking ghosts, along with finding "relics", funny little objects that you can look for and collect. There's no real point to it except for the trophies and the often funny stories associated with them, but it's still fun to hunt them down. You also use the PKE meter for the all-important task of scanning new ghosts you encounter so you can tell what they are, how they attack, and what best to use against them. They too come with often hilarious stories about what they did when alive and why they're now ghosts.
Really there isn't much bad to say about this game, but to be fair...it's short. Like, roughly 8 hours or so short. There is a multiplayer mode I haven't tried out yet, so that could add quite a bit of time to it. Also, while blasting ghosts is quite fun, the battles do get a bit repetitive. You face essentially two types of enemies. Minion-like ghosts that you can just blast and kill, and ghosts you need to trap. While each ghost requires a certain strategy to kill it as fast as possible, after the 30th time of slamming ghosts into your trap it just feels a bit old. Also, you revisit locations in the game, and I always hate when games make you do that, as if the designers were just too lazy to make a completely new area. It's especially bad considering there are only about 7 missions total. Thankfully each of the different areas are quite different from each other and easy to distinguish, so there is variety in that sense.
Also, at many points the difficulty of the game ratchets up to the insane with ghosts attacking you from all directions and making you fall as quickly as you get up. Thankfully the team AI in this game is pretty darn good, though you will want to scream at them when they all stand together and get wiped out by a single area attack. The nice thing is that even though you fall fairly easily, it's only a simple matter of a teammate walking over to you (and vice versa if they fall) and helping you up. As long as at least one teammate is alive, the game continues. It helps keep up the action, and really makes you care about keeping your fellow Ghostbusters alive. The unfortunate thing is that in some levels there are just so many enemies who can knock you down with a single hit that you'll find yourself reloading some checkpoints many many times.
And, I just have to say it...the story is bad. There's some major fan service in letting you battle some familiar faces like Slimer, and that's fun, but the overall complicated plot involving mandalas, the Architect, Gozer and Shandor and all sorts of nonsense (most of which is basically done away with in the final mission, making you wonder what the point was) just doesn't quite work that well. It's all very silly and convoluted, which is kind of what Ghostbusters is, but at the same time it just doesn't hold much water.
Nonetheless the voiceovers are perfect, the jokes and banter are hilarious, and the combat is for the most part fun. It's an enjoyable romp that makes you feel just like you were a rookie Ghostbuster hanging out with his heroes, and at the end of the day, what more could you ask for?
Ghostbusters: The Video Game gets an 8.5/10.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese takes a break from his traditional but very well made gangster genre and decides instead to turn his focus to suspense in Shutter Island. From all the previews I saw I was expecting a rather radical, surrealist, beautifully vivid yet dark and edge-of-your-seat thriller where the distinction between dreams and reality was slim at best. The first thing I should say is that I felt a little misled, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Scorsese's muse, Leo DiCaprio, leads the way as the gruff and tortured federal marshal Teddy Daniels along with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo). The year is 1952, and they've been brought into an investigation of a missing inmate on Shutter Island, a place much like Alcatraz for the criminally insane. Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow round out the main cast as the top doctors who run the facility. Almost immediately after arriving on the island, things turn creepy, and the more they investigate, the more they realize that nothing is as it seems.
And that's about all I can say without giving things away.
Right off the bat it was fairly apparent Scorsese wasn't used to suspense, as the expository dialogue on the ship ride to the island was stilted, the shots cut together were rather sloppy, there's a brief flashback of nonsense images that feels out of place for the start of a movie, and the music that overlays DiCaprio and Ruffalo approaching the gate into the institution was heavy handed instrumental BIG SUSPENSE IT'S SCARY kind of music while the shots themselves were more subdued and would've been much better complemented by a subtle soundtrack.
But once he gets that initial crap out of the way, the movie starts to soar. Both Kingsley and Sydow are masters of subtlety and are well placed in their roles, constantly making you guess at what they're doing and what's really going on. DiCaprio shines, or rather smolders, as the tortured detective who looks more and more haggard as the movie wears on. Ruffalo kind of seemed out of place as a cop, but I think that might have just been an acting choice on his part. Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley each show up for about 10 minutes and almost steal the movie for themselves.
Where I was led astray was in thinking this would be a surrealist and vivid play on dreams and reality. While the dream sequences certainly carry a kind of surreal quality to them, it's quickly revealed that they're riffs on or portions of memories and only serve to add depth to DiCaprio's character instead of making you question the line between reality and dreams. Nonetheless it's still very effective, as most of the imagery is quite haunting and draws you into the shambles of a life detective Daniels leads.
The really unfortunate thing is that parts of the overall plot are pretty predictable, though some of the final twists were still quite surprising. If you're really gullible or haven't seen many movies with a twist ending, I am a little envious, because it was harder to lose myself in this movie and truly enjoy it once I figured out one of the big reveals.
Nonetheless, Shutter Island is a well crafted, well acted, and well directed (minus the beginning on all accounts) movie that will have you fully invested in traveling with it down the rabbit hole.
Shutter Island gets an 8.5/10
Scorsese's muse, Leo DiCaprio, leads the way as the gruff and tortured federal marshal Teddy Daniels along with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo). The year is 1952, and they've been brought into an investigation of a missing inmate on Shutter Island, a place much like Alcatraz for the criminally insane. Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow round out the main cast as the top doctors who run the facility. Almost immediately after arriving on the island, things turn creepy, and the more they investigate, the more they realize that nothing is as it seems.
And that's about all I can say without giving things away.
Right off the bat it was fairly apparent Scorsese wasn't used to suspense, as the expository dialogue on the ship ride to the island was stilted, the shots cut together were rather sloppy, there's a brief flashback of nonsense images that feels out of place for the start of a movie, and the music that overlays DiCaprio and Ruffalo approaching the gate into the institution was heavy handed instrumental BIG SUSPENSE IT'S SCARY kind of music while the shots themselves were more subdued and would've been much better complemented by a subtle soundtrack.
But once he gets that initial crap out of the way, the movie starts to soar. Both Kingsley and Sydow are masters of subtlety and are well placed in their roles, constantly making you guess at what they're doing and what's really going on. DiCaprio shines, or rather smolders, as the tortured detective who looks more and more haggard as the movie wears on. Ruffalo kind of seemed out of place as a cop, but I think that might have just been an acting choice on his part. Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley each show up for about 10 minutes and almost steal the movie for themselves.
Where I was led astray was in thinking this would be a surrealist and vivid play on dreams and reality. While the dream sequences certainly carry a kind of surreal quality to them, it's quickly revealed that they're riffs on or portions of memories and only serve to add depth to DiCaprio's character instead of making you question the line between reality and dreams. Nonetheless it's still very effective, as most of the imagery is quite haunting and draws you into the shambles of a life detective Daniels leads.
The really unfortunate thing is that parts of the overall plot are pretty predictable, though some of the final twists were still quite surprising. If you're really gullible or haven't seen many movies with a twist ending, I am a little envious, because it was harder to lose myself in this movie and truly enjoy it once I figured out one of the big reveals.
Nonetheless, Shutter Island is a well crafted, well acted, and well directed (minus the beginning on all accounts) movie that will have you fully invested in traveling with it down the rabbit hole.
Shutter Island gets an 8.5/10
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Assassin's Creed 2
Be warned, there be spoilers ahead out of necessity.
We start back as Desmond, kidnapped former assassin with a line of assassin ancestors. Having just given away the location of the remaining Pieces of Eden to the modern Templars, and realizing just how much peril the world is in, Lucy, the forlorn assistant turned secret assassin, helps get you out of the Animus machine and after a few scuffles gets you out of Abstergo by means of hiding you in a trunk.
When you come to you're led into a warehouse and meet your new compatriots: Shaun, an asshole with a love of history, and Rebecca, a nutty whiz technician who has upgraded the Animus to the Animus 2.0. Your new Animus comes complete with historical info about various places you visit along your journey, accessible by pressing the select button.
Also new in the 2.0 is the ability for whatever you learn as your ancestor to be learned in real life. Known as the "bleeding effect", it allows them to train you as an assassin while still learning about the Pieces of Eden and how to keep them out of Templar hands.
This time you play as your Italian ancestor Ezio, a roguish guy who loves women and a good fight. It's a welcome change from the angry, stoic, and mostly silent Altair. Soon enough you're introduced to Assassin's Creed 2's new mission format, where you accept missions to complete tasks and in exchange either the story progresses or you just get a monetary reward. And yes, there's now money. You can pickpocket it from passerby, loot it from corpses, get it from treasure chests, or complete missions. You use it to buy armor and weapons, or things like treasure maps, paintings, or dyes for your clothes. More on that later.
Soon enough your family gets tied up in some political plot and your father and brothers are killed before you can save them. Your father leaves you a note with the location of what becomes your assassin's garb, and a broken hidden blade. Your uncle lets you, your mother and your sister (who survived the assault) stay at his villa and trains you to be an assassin. From then on you can spend money to renovate the villa, which in turn pops out a certain amount of money every 20 minutes depending on what you've invested. Certain renovations also open up locations of hidden treasure chests, and give you bargains at the local shops.
You then spend the rest of the game tracking down The Spaniard, your father's killer and a Templar, to take revenge on him and his compatriots. In the process you find his real name is Rodrigo Borgia, and he has the "Apple", which is the same Piece of Eden that Altair once found. He claims to be "The Prophet" who will use the Piece of Eden to open the way to "The Vault" which would contain more Pieces of Eden.
Along the way you make lots of friends, including Leonardo da Vinci, who helps you translate codex pages you find that were left by Altair for future assassins (and also contain a hidden secret). These upgrade your health and hidden blade, as well as give you new weapons such as the poison blade which makes the target convulse and then die without raising suspicion on you, and A GUN.
Speaking of suspicion, it's now okay to run! And swim! Unfortunately the free-running is almost even more hampered than before. Ezio has more of a tendency to simply jump right off a wall into the open air and crash to the ground below, and also has a lot of trouble going where you want him to. When climbing up, often you need to position him EXACTLY in the right spot for him to climb to the next handhold when any normal person could just reach right up and grab it. There's also just a lot more stuff around for you to jump on, so it gets confusing both for Ezio and for you as to where exactly you should jump to. The rooftop chases simply don't flow like they used to.
Also there are now even fewer types of side quests to do. You can race, beat up a cheating husband (yes that's a specific type of quest), or fulfill an assassination contract. That's it. Thankfully they kind of make up for it by having the main quest missions be much more varied, but still, it would be nice to get more variety in non-story progressing things as well.
Thankfully now the guards will only be alerted if you do something like steal from someone right in front of them, and even then it only raises your infamy level a little bit. You can reduce your infamy by tearing down posters, bribing heralds (and then stealing your money right back), or killing corrupt officials. If for some ungodly reason it goes up to 100%, you then become recognizable and guards will attack you on sight. In this case you must reduce your infamy 100% to become anonymous once more.
And that brings us to combat. In the first game it was a simple matter of hold the block button, wait until someone attacks, counter attack and kill them, rinse and repeat. I'm sad to say it's still much the same. Yes there are lots more weapons to use, and you can even steal weapons from enemies, but for the most part your best bet of surviving is to counter attack with your hidden blade, which means an automatic kill. And it's even easier now because in the first game if you tried blocking with your hidden blade...you couldn't, and you'd get hit. Now your bracers act as a shield, giving you absolutely no reason to ever use your sword or knife. Each weapon is supposed to have different stats like speed, damage, and blocking that make some weapons better than others, but for the most part as they get unlocked there is one best weapon and other crap ones that you have no reason to buy until the end just for the sake of spending some of the millions (I'm not exaggerating) of florins that you've collected. The armor boosts your health, and can be broken if you get hit too much, making you lose that extra health, but often it doesn't matter at all.
There's also the matter of Altair's armor, the best in the game. You unlock it by finding 6 assassin's seals, kept in various tombs. These are honestly the best part of the game. Relying on some actual thought, many of the tombs require you to think about where you climb, how you're going to deal with the two guards up ahead, or just how in the hell to reach a ledge with no visible way to get there. These levels play like mini tributes to Prince of Persia, and they're highly enjoyable. It just made me sad there were only 6 of them.
You also find that in the logs you stole from Abstergo, the previous subject to you actually hacked the Animus and hid what they had found in various glyphs scattered around important landmarks. There are 20 in all, and each one requires you to solve a series of puzzles to unlock that piece of Subject 16's memory. Some involve scouring images for a hidden Piece of Eden image, some contain substitution ciphers solvable by a code wheel, and others require you to rotate rings of a picture until they line up. Some are simple, others are hard as hell, but the end product is certainly worth it, even if it makes no sense. You are shown a man and woman, naked but with silver marks running down their backs, running fast and carrying the "Apple". They run and run through a futuristic looking place, until the finally scale the building which looks like a futuristic resort. They then refer to each other as Adam and Eve, look surprised, and the memory ends. Weird, but cool.
Back to Ezio. You run through the story, and after skipping two corrupted memories (now revealed as downloadable content, the fuckers), you arrive in Rome to find your arch nemesis has now become Pope, and worst of all, the papal staff is another Piece of Eden. You challenge him, defeat him, but in an act of humanity let him live because you realize it won't bring your family back. It's then revealed that Ezio is the Prophet, and with the Apple and the staff merged, the way to the Vault opens.
And that's when shit goes crazy.
Stepping through into a dark room with some crazy moving silver on the walls, a holographic image of a woman named Minerva basically tells Ezio "Congrats, you're the Prophet, now step aside and let me talk cause this message is for Desmond...Hey, Desmond, I'm part of an advanced race that came here long ago. We made the Pieces of Eden. You know us as gods, but really we're just like some kind of advanced alien race. Long ago we created humanity in our image (and enslaved them), then they rebelled, then a massive sun flare wiped out nearly all life on Earth, so we joined together to rebuild. If you're hearing this message, the last of my kind is dead, but there's another cataclysmic event heading your way. When we rebuilt, we left several temples saying how to avoid it should we all die. So go find them. Peace."
Given only a few moments to be like, "....WTF?" you are soon pulled back into the real world, now with all the abilities of an assassin, and the Templars have found your hideout. You kill various guards who come at you, but when you reach Dr. Vidic, he drives away. Lucy speculates that Minerva might have meant something about how the Earth's magnetic field is currently in flux, and that a big enough solar flare could flip the poles and cause calamity. In the meantime the Animus 2.0 is loaded into a truck, leaving you rearing to climb back in for the final in the trilogy. You're also given the opportunity to finish up opening treasure chests, collecting 100 feathers, finishing side quests, or going through the new downloadable mission.
Overall Assassin's Creed 2 is a big improvement over the original, but it still has a host of issues. Once again the story and setting give most of the value to the game, while the actual mechanics suffer. The money, weapons and armor, while welcome additions, quickly become meaningless as it's absurdly easy to obtain cash from anywhere and you always have enough for all the best upgrades. The notoriety system, which finally allows you not to slowly walk everywhere, is too easy to beat, allowing you to get away with lots of stuff you shouldn't. The tombs are awesome additions, but there are very few, and the free-running involved can sometimes be unnecessarily difficult mainly due to poor controls. For every step Assassin's Creed 2 takes forward, it seems to take half a step back. But if the developers take all the feedback from this game and apply it as well as they did with the feedback from the first game, I think the final of the trilogy will be one hell of a game.
Assassin's Creed 2 gets a 7.5/10.
EDIT: After playing through it again to get my first and only Platinum trophy (all trophies acquired), I found I actually had a lot more fun with it. It's possible some of the mechanics were fixed in a patch, or maybe I was just more used to how the game worked now, but the freerunning mechanics were smooth as could be and everything flowed together much better than I remember it.
The corrupted memories are also worth the extra price of downloading, especially the extra 3 tombs with Sequence 13. The sequence in Foril expands upon the story quite well and fills in a lot of gaps, as well as adding some fun missions in there. The Bonfire of the Vanities boils things down more than Foril, putting 9 assassinations in front of you, which you can go after in any order, and some of which have restrictions (such as don't be seen). It does less for the story side of things, but if assassinations are your favorite part of the game then this will be a blast for you. Also included are these springboards scattered around the new district, but they seem like a failed concept as they don't really add anything to jumping across rooftops and are only located in this new small district. As for the extra tombs, as I stated before they were my favorite part of Assassin's Creed 2 and the extra additions are quite welcome.
So after all these considerations, I have to bump up my score.
Assassin's Creed 2 gets an 8.5/10.
We start back as Desmond, kidnapped former assassin with a line of assassin ancestors. Having just given away the location of the remaining Pieces of Eden to the modern Templars, and realizing just how much peril the world is in, Lucy, the forlorn assistant turned secret assassin, helps get you out of the Animus machine and after a few scuffles gets you out of Abstergo by means of hiding you in a trunk.
When you come to you're led into a warehouse and meet your new compatriots: Shaun, an asshole with a love of history, and Rebecca, a nutty whiz technician who has upgraded the Animus to the Animus 2.0. Your new Animus comes complete with historical info about various places you visit along your journey, accessible by pressing the select button.
Also new in the 2.0 is the ability for whatever you learn as your ancestor to be learned in real life. Known as the "bleeding effect", it allows them to train you as an assassin while still learning about the Pieces of Eden and how to keep them out of Templar hands.
This time you play as your Italian ancestor Ezio, a roguish guy who loves women and a good fight. It's a welcome change from the angry, stoic, and mostly silent Altair. Soon enough you're introduced to Assassin's Creed 2's new mission format, where you accept missions to complete tasks and in exchange either the story progresses or you just get a monetary reward. And yes, there's now money. You can pickpocket it from passerby, loot it from corpses, get it from treasure chests, or complete missions. You use it to buy armor and weapons, or things like treasure maps, paintings, or dyes for your clothes. More on that later.
Soon enough your family gets tied up in some political plot and your father and brothers are killed before you can save them. Your father leaves you a note with the location of what becomes your assassin's garb, and a broken hidden blade. Your uncle lets you, your mother and your sister (who survived the assault) stay at his villa and trains you to be an assassin. From then on you can spend money to renovate the villa, which in turn pops out a certain amount of money every 20 minutes depending on what you've invested. Certain renovations also open up locations of hidden treasure chests, and give you bargains at the local shops.
You then spend the rest of the game tracking down The Spaniard, your father's killer and a Templar, to take revenge on him and his compatriots. In the process you find his real name is Rodrigo Borgia, and he has the "Apple", which is the same Piece of Eden that Altair once found. He claims to be "The Prophet" who will use the Piece of Eden to open the way to "The Vault" which would contain more Pieces of Eden.
Along the way you make lots of friends, including Leonardo da Vinci, who helps you translate codex pages you find that were left by Altair for future assassins (and also contain a hidden secret). These upgrade your health and hidden blade, as well as give you new weapons such as the poison blade which makes the target convulse and then die without raising suspicion on you, and A GUN.
Speaking of suspicion, it's now okay to run! And swim! Unfortunately the free-running is almost even more hampered than before. Ezio has more of a tendency to simply jump right off a wall into the open air and crash to the ground below, and also has a lot of trouble going where you want him to. When climbing up, often you need to position him EXACTLY in the right spot for him to climb to the next handhold when any normal person could just reach right up and grab it. There's also just a lot more stuff around for you to jump on, so it gets confusing both for Ezio and for you as to where exactly you should jump to. The rooftop chases simply don't flow like they used to.
Also there are now even fewer types of side quests to do. You can race, beat up a cheating husband (yes that's a specific type of quest), or fulfill an assassination contract. That's it. Thankfully they kind of make up for it by having the main quest missions be much more varied, but still, it would be nice to get more variety in non-story progressing things as well.
Thankfully now the guards will only be alerted if you do something like steal from someone right in front of them, and even then it only raises your infamy level a little bit. You can reduce your infamy by tearing down posters, bribing heralds (and then stealing your money right back), or killing corrupt officials. If for some ungodly reason it goes up to 100%, you then become recognizable and guards will attack you on sight. In this case you must reduce your infamy 100% to become anonymous once more.
And that brings us to combat. In the first game it was a simple matter of hold the block button, wait until someone attacks, counter attack and kill them, rinse and repeat. I'm sad to say it's still much the same. Yes there are lots more weapons to use, and you can even steal weapons from enemies, but for the most part your best bet of surviving is to counter attack with your hidden blade, which means an automatic kill. And it's even easier now because in the first game if you tried blocking with your hidden blade...you couldn't, and you'd get hit. Now your bracers act as a shield, giving you absolutely no reason to ever use your sword or knife. Each weapon is supposed to have different stats like speed, damage, and blocking that make some weapons better than others, but for the most part as they get unlocked there is one best weapon and other crap ones that you have no reason to buy until the end just for the sake of spending some of the millions (I'm not exaggerating) of florins that you've collected. The armor boosts your health, and can be broken if you get hit too much, making you lose that extra health, but often it doesn't matter at all.
There's also the matter of Altair's armor, the best in the game. You unlock it by finding 6 assassin's seals, kept in various tombs. These are honestly the best part of the game. Relying on some actual thought, many of the tombs require you to think about where you climb, how you're going to deal with the two guards up ahead, or just how in the hell to reach a ledge with no visible way to get there. These levels play like mini tributes to Prince of Persia, and they're highly enjoyable. It just made me sad there were only 6 of them.
You also find that in the logs you stole from Abstergo, the previous subject to you actually hacked the Animus and hid what they had found in various glyphs scattered around important landmarks. There are 20 in all, and each one requires you to solve a series of puzzles to unlock that piece of Subject 16's memory. Some involve scouring images for a hidden Piece of Eden image, some contain substitution ciphers solvable by a code wheel, and others require you to rotate rings of a picture until they line up. Some are simple, others are hard as hell, but the end product is certainly worth it, even if it makes no sense. You are shown a man and woman, naked but with silver marks running down their backs, running fast and carrying the "Apple". They run and run through a futuristic looking place, until the finally scale the building which looks like a futuristic resort. They then refer to each other as Adam and Eve, look surprised, and the memory ends. Weird, but cool.
Back to Ezio. You run through the story, and after skipping two corrupted memories (now revealed as downloadable content, the fuckers), you arrive in Rome to find your arch nemesis has now become Pope, and worst of all, the papal staff is another Piece of Eden. You challenge him, defeat him, but in an act of humanity let him live because you realize it won't bring your family back. It's then revealed that Ezio is the Prophet, and with the Apple and the staff merged, the way to the Vault opens.
And that's when shit goes crazy.
Stepping through into a dark room with some crazy moving silver on the walls, a holographic image of a woman named Minerva basically tells Ezio "Congrats, you're the Prophet, now step aside and let me talk cause this message is for Desmond...Hey, Desmond, I'm part of an advanced race that came here long ago. We made the Pieces of Eden. You know us as gods, but really we're just like some kind of advanced alien race. Long ago we created humanity in our image (and enslaved them), then they rebelled, then a massive sun flare wiped out nearly all life on Earth, so we joined together to rebuild. If you're hearing this message, the last of my kind is dead, but there's another cataclysmic event heading your way. When we rebuilt, we left several temples saying how to avoid it should we all die. So go find them. Peace."
Given only a few moments to be like, "....WTF?" you are soon pulled back into the real world, now with all the abilities of an assassin, and the Templars have found your hideout. You kill various guards who come at you, but when you reach Dr. Vidic, he drives away. Lucy speculates that Minerva might have meant something about how the Earth's magnetic field is currently in flux, and that a big enough solar flare could flip the poles and cause calamity. In the meantime the Animus 2.0 is loaded into a truck, leaving you rearing to climb back in for the final in the trilogy. You're also given the opportunity to finish up opening treasure chests, collecting 100 feathers, finishing side quests, or going through the new downloadable mission.
Overall Assassin's Creed 2 is a big improvement over the original, but it still has a host of issues. Once again the story and setting give most of the value to the game, while the actual mechanics suffer. The money, weapons and armor, while welcome additions, quickly become meaningless as it's absurdly easy to obtain cash from anywhere and you always have enough for all the best upgrades. The notoriety system, which finally allows you not to slowly walk everywhere, is too easy to beat, allowing you to get away with lots of stuff you shouldn't. The tombs are awesome additions, but there are very few, and the free-running involved can sometimes be unnecessarily difficult mainly due to poor controls. For every step Assassin's Creed 2 takes forward, it seems to take half a step back. But if the developers take all the feedback from this game and apply it as well as they did with the feedback from the first game, I think the final of the trilogy will be one hell of a game.
Assassin's Creed 2 gets a 7.5/10.
EDIT: After playing through it again to get my first and only Platinum trophy (all trophies acquired), I found I actually had a lot more fun with it. It's possible some of the mechanics were fixed in a patch, or maybe I was just more used to how the game worked now, but the freerunning mechanics were smooth as could be and everything flowed together much better than I remember it.
The corrupted memories are also worth the extra price of downloading, especially the extra 3 tombs with Sequence 13. The sequence in Foril expands upon the story quite well and fills in a lot of gaps, as well as adding some fun missions in there. The Bonfire of the Vanities boils things down more than Foril, putting 9 assassinations in front of you, which you can go after in any order, and some of which have restrictions (such as don't be seen). It does less for the story side of things, but if assassinations are your favorite part of the game then this will be a blast for you. Also included are these springboards scattered around the new district, but they seem like a failed concept as they don't really add anything to jumping across rooftops and are only located in this new small district. As for the extra tombs, as I stated before they were my favorite part of Assassin's Creed 2 and the extra additions are quite welcome.
So after all these considerations, I have to bump up my score.
Assassin's Creed 2 gets an 8.5/10.
Assassin's Creed
In prepping to write a review of the sequel, much like Mass Effect I decided to take a look back at the original Assassin's Creed.
You play as Desmond, a normal guy with a somewhat checkered past who has been kidnapped and is being held captive in this starkly white, somewhat future looking complex. You get the main gist of what's going on from the mysterious Dr. Vidic and his assistant Lucy, who tell you that the reason you're there is because your DNA contains the memory of your ancestors, and one particular ancestor of yours knows something that the organization they work for needs to know. With the help of a machine known as the Animus, they can view those memories. Unfortunately for them, they can't just jump straight to the memory, they have to ease you into it and synchronize memories up until the final memory. Memory memory memory.
Your ancestor is Altair, a high ranking assassin during the crusades. You start having found the Ark of the Covenant in Templar hands, and instead of listening to your compatriots and being rational, you go in for a frontal assault against your main enemy the rest of the game, Robert de Sable. You fail, run, return to headquaters, get stabbed for your stupidity, and then miraculously survive. You are stripped of your rank and equipment, and spend the rest of the game trying to get it back. You do this by fulfilling your master's orders and tracking down and killing various important Templars in various cities like Jerusalem.
Meanwhile you're also given the opportunity after every major "memory block" is completed to leave the Animus and learn more about your captors and their motives. Dr. Vidic is gung-ho scientist, willing to go to any length to get what he wants, while Lucy is more sympathetic, and has an interesting story of her own to tell.
As Altair you follow a VERY predictable path. Every city/major kill requires you to track down info that will help in your mission in a couple different ways: eavesdropping, pickpocketing, beat-up/interrogation, and free-running speed trials. You can also scale marked tall buildings for a "viewpoint" that reveals things nearby on the map (and a fun sweeping 360 degree view of the area), and help citizens being picked on by guards for access to mercenaries who block anyone pursuing you or a group of monks that you can blend in with. After gaining all the necessary info, you go to the guild leader of the city, tell them the plan, and they give you the go-ahead for the assassination. Along with your knife, sword, hidden blade and throwing daggers comes the "Eagle Eye" ability, which flashes you into a kind of blue, blurry vision where friendly people are highlighted blue while enemies are highlighted in red.
Also, there are literally hundreds of flags and individual Templars scattered around each area that you can grab/kill. There is no reward for collecting all of them except achievements on the Xbox.
And that's about it. Every assassination has different ways of approaching it, but for the most part it's impossible to discern what you're actually supposed to do and often the easiest approach is just to head right on in and kill them. The enemies in this game are so easily tipped off to your presence in this game that if you so much as sneeze they'll attack you. The only way to avoid attention is to bow your head and walk slowly like a monk, which gets MIND NUMBINGLY BORING because the cities are pretty vast, and being forced to walk slowly everywhere you go is an extreme nuisance. And don't even think about running anywhere. If you start running, the nearest guard will immediately attack you.
The story and setting are where the game truly shines. The environments are beautiful and climbing from rooftop to rooftop is a joy, if a bit tricky sometimes since you drown upon touching water, and sometimes Altair simply doesn't jump in the direction you want him to.
For those who don't want spoilers, it all ends with a great big WTF twist that doesn't make much sense but leaves things wide open for a sequel.
Overall it's a great idea with an interesting story and good graphics, but the actual gameplay mechanics are so repetitive and uninteresting that you just wish the developers had put some more effort into it.
Assassin's Creed gets a 7/10.
And for those who don't care about spoilers and want a head's up on what happens in Assassin's Creed 2, read on.
**SPOILERS HERE ON OUT**
As the game progresses you realize that the plot you're embroiled in is much more complex than it seems. The Ark of the Covenant you saw at the beginning turns out to be a "Piece of Eden" which bestows great power on whoever holds it. As you finish off each of the Templars you realize their plan is to use the Piece of Eden to enslave the minds of everyone and thus bring about "peace". However, your fearless leader also turns more and more suspect as the later killings don't seem to be helping. Eventually you face Robert de Sable before Richard Lionheart to try and prove that the assassins don't want war, but with his dying breath de Sable reveals that your fearless leader is actually a Templar, and thanks to you there's now no one left to stop him from keeping the Piece of Eden for himself. You return to your home town to find the populace enslaved and against you, but you battle your way up to Al Mualim (the leader). Strangely you seem to be immune to its influence, but it can still paralyze you for short periods of time. Eventually Al Mualim summons all your previous assassination targets to fight you, and when you kill them, he attacks you with about 6 copies of himself (only one of which is real). You kill him, and when he dies the Piece of Eden rolls out of his hand and projects a holographic image of the world along with several pinpoints of light where other Pieces of Eden are located.
You are brought back to the real world where it's revealed that Abstergo, the company keeping you hostage, is a modern day Templar company. Lucy also turns out to be a modern day assassin being kept hostage much like you. The Templars plan to put a Piece of Eden into a satellite, launch it into orbit, and then control everyone in the world.
Also, the "eagle eye" ability of Altair has bled over into the real world, where it's revealed that tons of symbols and diagrams litter the room you've been kept in, and they're written in blood. Turns out the previous subject before you discovered some interesting things, but there's no way to make sense of any of it.
And that's where it leaves you. Ready for a sequel.
For those who look for a score at the end of my posts, once again:
Assassin's Creed gets a 7/10.
You play as Desmond, a normal guy with a somewhat checkered past who has been kidnapped and is being held captive in this starkly white, somewhat future looking complex. You get the main gist of what's going on from the mysterious Dr. Vidic and his assistant Lucy, who tell you that the reason you're there is because your DNA contains the memory of your ancestors, and one particular ancestor of yours knows something that the organization they work for needs to know. With the help of a machine known as the Animus, they can view those memories. Unfortunately for them, they can't just jump straight to the memory, they have to ease you into it and synchronize memories up until the final memory. Memory memory memory.
Your ancestor is Altair, a high ranking assassin during the crusades. You start having found the Ark of the Covenant in Templar hands, and instead of listening to your compatriots and being rational, you go in for a frontal assault against your main enemy the rest of the game, Robert de Sable. You fail, run, return to headquaters, get stabbed for your stupidity, and then miraculously survive. You are stripped of your rank and equipment, and spend the rest of the game trying to get it back. You do this by fulfilling your master's orders and tracking down and killing various important Templars in various cities like Jerusalem.
Meanwhile you're also given the opportunity after every major "memory block" is completed to leave the Animus and learn more about your captors and their motives. Dr. Vidic is gung-ho scientist, willing to go to any length to get what he wants, while Lucy is more sympathetic, and has an interesting story of her own to tell.
As Altair you follow a VERY predictable path. Every city/major kill requires you to track down info that will help in your mission in a couple different ways: eavesdropping, pickpocketing, beat-up/interrogation, and free-running speed trials. You can also scale marked tall buildings for a "viewpoint" that reveals things nearby on the map (and a fun sweeping 360 degree view of the area), and help citizens being picked on by guards for access to mercenaries who block anyone pursuing you or a group of monks that you can blend in with. After gaining all the necessary info, you go to the guild leader of the city, tell them the plan, and they give you the go-ahead for the assassination. Along with your knife, sword, hidden blade and throwing daggers comes the "Eagle Eye" ability, which flashes you into a kind of blue, blurry vision where friendly people are highlighted blue while enemies are highlighted in red.
Also, there are literally hundreds of flags and individual Templars scattered around each area that you can grab/kill. There is no reward for collecting all of them except achievements on the Xbox.
And that's about it. Every assassination has different ways of approaching it, but for the most part it's impossible to discern what you're actually supposed to do and often the easiest approach is just to head right on in and kill them. The enemies in this game are so easily tipped off to your presence in this game that if you so much as sneeze they'll attack you. The only way to avoid attention is to bow your head and walk slowly like a monk, which gets MIND NUMBINGLY BORING because the cities are pretty vast, and being forced to walk slowly everywhere you go is an extreme nuisance. And don't even think about running anywhere. If you start running, the nearest guard will immediately attack you.
The story and setting are where the game truly shines. The environments are beautiful and climbing from rooftop to rooftop is a joy, if a bit tricky sometimes since you drown upon touching water, and sometimes Altair simply doesn't jump in the direction you want him to.
For those who don't want spoilers, it all ends with a great big WTF twist that doesn't make much sense but leaves things wide open for a sequel.
Overall it's a great idea with an interesting story and good graphics, but the actual gameplay mechanics are so repetitive and uninteresting that you just wish the developers had put some more effort into it.
Assassin's Creed gets a 7/10.
And for those who don't care about spoilers and want a head's up on what happens in Assassin's Creed 2, read on.
**SPOILERS HERE ON OUT**
As the game progresses you realize that the plot you're embroiled in is much more complex than it seems. The Ark of the Covenant you saw at the beginning turns out to be a "Piece of Eden" which bestows great power on whoever holds it. As you finish off each of the Templars you realize their plan is to use the Piece of Eden to enslave the minds of everyone and thus bring about "peace". However, your fearless leader also turns more and more suspect as the later killings don't seem to be helping. Eventually you face Robert de Sable before Richard Lionheart to try and prove that the assassins don't want war, but with his dying breath de Sable reveals that your fearless leader is actually a Templar, and thanks to you there's now no one left to stop him from keeping the Piece of Eden for himself. You return to your home town to find the populace enslaved and against you, but you battle your way up to Al Mualim (the leader). Strangely you seem to be immune to its influence, but it can still paralyze you for short periods of time. Eventually Al Mualim summons all your previous assassination targets to fight you, and when you kill them, he attacks you with about 6 copies of himself (only one of which is real). You kill him, and when he dies the Piece of Eden rolls out of his hand and projects a holographic image of the world along with several pinpoints of light where other Pieces of Eden are located.
You are brought back to the real world where it's revealed that Abstergo, the company keeping you hostage, is a modern day Templar company. Lucy also turns out to be a modern day assassin being kept hostage much like you. The Templars plan to put a Piece of Eden into a satellite, launch it into orbit, and then control everyone in the world.
Also, the "eagle eye" ability of Altair has bled over into the real world, where it's revealed that tons of symbols and diagrams litter the room you've been kept in, and they're written in blood. Turns out the previous subject before you discovered some interesting things, but there's no way to make sense of any of it.
And that's where it leaves you. Ready for a sequel.
For those who look for a score at the end of my posts, once again:
Assassin's Creed gets a 7/10.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Mass Effect 2
One review I saw said it best. If you considered Mass Effect to be a third person shooter with some cool RPG elements, prepare to be blown away by Mass Effect 2. If, however, you considered the original to be an RPG with a solid shooter mechanic, you might be a little underwhelmed.
The first thing I should say is, I have only played through it once with an imported character from 1. This means that my entirely different choices with my other character from 1 will probably make the game play SIGNIFICANTLY differently once I play it again. So, in this review, you should even take the PLOT with a grain of salt as it will most likely change depending on what you did in 1, or what you choose to do in 2.
Also, there will be significant spoilers. You are warned.
I started as Commander Shepard, not long after the end of the first game, sent to hunt down the last remnants of Geth. Before you can say, "Normandy!" your ship is attacked, destroyed, and you are sent hurling into space and into the nearby planet's atmosphere.
You heard me right. You start the game dead.
A mysterious organization known as Cerberus (which shows up in some side missions in 1 where you kill as many of them as you can because they're doing nasty experiments) recovers your dead body and reanimates you over the course of two years. With your new enhancements you're given the choice to re-select your class. So if you were an adept in 1 you could be a pure soldier in 2. Each class comes with a special ability that no doubt makes it play significantly differently. I chose to make my former vanguard an Infiltrator, who uses sniper rifles, SMGs and heavy pistols and has the ability to turn invisible for a short period of time. Friggin awesome.
You meet up with some Cerberus operatives who fill you in after being rudely awakened that you're not fully healed but they need your help against some hacked mechs that are destroying the facility. This is where you're introduced to the new and much improved combat system. Instead of the unlimited rounds and overheating mechanic, each weapon now has a set amount of ammo, which can be replenished by picking up thermal clips. In terms of upgrades, instead of having to open up the menu to switch them, things like incinerate, cryo and disruptor ammo are now powers that last until you switch them. While I lament not being able to upgrade them in more detail, I can't complain about just how much it streamlines combat and makes it more manageable. Also gone are any worries about upgrading your team, as the only armor you upgrade is yours (which you manage through exchanging different pieces) and any weapon upgrades you get are simply better upgrades of the previous weapon. This is really the essential component to that first statement I made. Practically all of the RPG elements from Mass Effect have either been trashed or greatly reduced. While this makes for a smoother, more action filled game, it also takes out a lot of the randomness that made the original worth going back and playing over and over again.
Anyways, some basic tutorial stuff later and you're introduced to a new and improved Normandy and left to scrounge the galaxy for a team of experts to help you take down the Collectors, a mysterious race that has suddenly popped up from beyond the galaxy to steal thousands of humans for an unknown purpose. In the two years that you've been gone, a lot has happened to your old crew, so you are sent looking for new faces who are the best of the best to make your chance against the collectors the best it can be. That's not to say there aren't some familiar faces who join up, but when they do it's a wonderful surprise and I don't want to ruin it.
You'll also notice that there's no more long elevator rides hiding load screens, everything is nicely summed up into "missions" after which you get a summary of what happened and what you found, and no more awkward Mako trips. Unfortunately, the Mako has been replaced by something even worse. Weapon upgrades are now researched on your ship after finding them during missions, and you spend minerals to buy them instead of credits. The way you find minerals is by going through an agonizing process where you waste credits buying fuel to scoot you around to other star systems, buy "probes", pick a planet, and then scan the surface. When the readings spike, you launch a probe and gather the minerals. It's boring, it's pointless, and it wastes so many credits.
This is the other thing. There is now no good way to make credits. Each mission/quest you complete will give you a reward, and there are plenty of hackable safes and datapads around to give you a credit boost, but there is only ONE WAY to make credits on your own, and that's $500 at a time betting on varren (dogs) on the krogan homeworld. That's it. And when most every upgrade is between 50,000-100,000 credits, that's just not feasible. Sure they had the equivalent of that through gambling in 1, but you could at least sell the massive amount of useless equipment you would find to make a buck. In this, what you find is what you get. And it irks me.
But then we get to Mass Effect 2's biggest draw, just like its predecessor...the story. Oh man the story. From beginning to end I literally had trouble putting this game down because I always wanted to find out what happened next. While the side missions are now much shorter and never feel like anything other than a side mission, the main story and loyalty missions are so engrossing that it can be forgiven for just about everything else. If you liked the story elements in 1, then dig your teeth into 2. Practically everything is improved. The dialogue wheels are more fleshed out and better suited to the conversation style. There is now a Paragon/Renegade interrupt system wherein you can interrupt whoever's talking for either paragon or renegade points depending on the situation. Don't like what that guard is saying? Push him out a window. Is your teammate distraught over a death and doesn't know what to do? Interrupt them with a hug. They're littered all over the place, and many can even give you a significant advantage in ensuing combat.
Oh, and you thought the decisions you had to make in 1 were hard? Not only do practically ALL of those decisions come back to haunt or help you, but they ramp up the newest decisions to 11 in 2. Time and time again I was forced to agonize over certain decisions because both choices had serious implications for the rest of the game and for Mass Effect 3. Or some decisions that might or might not have any effect later simply had such good arguments for both sides of a choice that it was honestly hard choosing. Sometimes it's clear when you're being a hero and when you're being a villain, but more often than not that line gets blurred, and that's what has me salivating for Mass Effect 3.
So overall, the story has improved dramatically as has combat. I wish they had simply tweaked the RPG elements instead of abandoning them, but it's hard to argue when you're in the middle of a firefight and all you have to do is press a button to change your ammo. Space exploration still sucks, and the open endedness with side missions and replayability in terms of randomized equipment has been significantly reduced, but the thousands of different decisions you can make throughout the game makes it just as replayable as 1. Again, if you liked the shooter elements of 1, this is a dramatic improvement that will knock your socks off. If you liked the RPG elements, you're going to be a little disappointed, but it will still most likely knock your socks off.
Mass Effect 2 gets a 9.5/10.
The first thing I should say is, I have only played through it once with an imported character from 1. This means that my entirely different choices with my other character from 1 will probably make the game play SIGNIFICANTLY differently once I play it again. So, in this review, you should even take the PLOT with a grain of salt as it will most likely change depending on what you did in 1, or what you choose to do in 2.
Also, there will be significant spoilers. You are warned.
I started as Commander Shepard, not long after the end of the first game, sent to hunt down the last remnants of Geth. Before you can say, "Normandy!" your ship is attacked, destroyed, and you are sent hurling into space and into the nearby planet's atmosphere.
You heard me right. You start the game dead.
A mysterious organization known as Cerberus (which shows up in some side missions in 1 where you kill as many of them as you can because they're doing nasty experiments) recovers your dead body and reanimates you over the course of two years. With your new enhancements you're given the choice to re-select your class. So if you were an adept in 1 you could be a pure soldier in 2. Each class comes with a special ability that no doubt makes it play significantly differently. I chose to make my former vanguard an Infiltrator, who uses sniper rifles, SMGs and heavy pistols and has the ability to turn invisible for a short period of time. Friggin awesome.
You meet up with some Cerberus operatives who fill you in after being rudely awakened that you're not fully healed but they need your help against some hacked mechs that are destroying the facility. This is where you're introduced to the new and much improved combat system. Instead of the unlimited rounds and overheating mechanic, each weapon now has a set amount of ammo, which can be replenished by picking up thermal clips. In terms of upgrades, instead of having to open up the menu to switch them, things like incinerate, cryo and disruptor ammo are now powers that last until you switch them. While I lament not being able to upgrade them in more detail, I can't complain about just how much it streamlines combat and makes it more manageable. Also gone are any worries about upgrading your team, as the only armor you upgrade is yours (which you manage through exchanging different pieces) and any weapon upgrades you get are simply better upgrades of the previous weapon. This is really the essential component to that first statement I made. Practically all of the RPG elements from Mass Effect have either been trashed or greatly reduced. While this makes for a smoother, more action filled game, it also takes out a lot of the randomness that made the original worth going back and playing over and over again.
Anyways, some basic tutorial stuff later and you're introduced to a new and improved Normandy and left to scrounge the galaxy for a team of experts to help you take down the Collectors, a mysterious race that has suddenly popped up from beyond the galaxy to steal thousands of humans for an unknown purpose. In the two years that you've been gone, a lot has happened to your old crew, so you are sent looking for new faces who are the best of the best to make your chance against the collectors the best it can be. That's not to say there aren't some familiar faces who join up, but when they do it's a wonderful surprise and I don't want to ruin it.
You'll also notice that there's no more long elevator rides hiding load screens, everything is nicely summed up into "missions" after which you get a summary of what happened and what you found, and no more awkward Mako trips. Unfortunately, the Mako has been replaced by something even worse. Weapon upgrades are now researched on your ship after finding them during missions, and you spend minerals to buy them instead of credits. The way you find minerals is by going through an agonizing process where you waste credits buying fuel to scoot you around to other star systems, buy "probes", pick a planet, and then scan the surface. When the readings spike, you launch a probe and gather the minerals. It's boring, it's pointless, and it wastes so many credits.
This is the other thing. There is now no good way to make credits. Each mission/quest you complete will give you a reward, and there are plenty of hackable safes and datapads around to give you a credit boost, but there is only ONE WAY to make credits on your own, and that's $500 at a time betting on varren (dogs) on the krogan homeworld. That's it. And when most every upgrade is between 50,000-100,000 credits, that's just not feasible. Sure they had the equivalent of that through gambling in 1, but you could at least sell the massive amount of useless equipment you would find to make a buck. In this, what you find is what you get. And it irks me.
But then we get to Mass Effect 2's biggest draw, just like its predecessor...the story. Oh man the story. From beginning to end I literally had trouble putting this game down because I always wanted to find out what happened next. While the side missions are now much shorter and never feel like anything other than a side mission, the main story and loyalty missions are so engrossing that it can be forgiven for just about everything else. If you liked the story elements in 1, then dig your teeth into 2. Practically everything is improved. The dialogue wheels are more fleshed out and better suited to the conversation style. There is now a Paragon/Renegade interrupt system wherein you can interrupt whoever's talking for either paragon or renegade points depending on the situation. Don't like what that guard is saying? Push him out a window. Is your teammate distraught over a death and doesn't know what to do? Interrupt them with a hug. They're littered all over the place, and many can even give you a significant advantage in ensuing combat.
Oh, and you thought the decisions you had to make in 1 were hard? Not only do practically ALL of those decisions come back to haunt or help you, but they ramp up the newest decisions to 11 in 2. Time and time again I was forced to agonize over certain decisions because both choices had serious implications for the rest of the game and for Mass Effect 3. Or some decisions that might or might not have any effect later simply had such good arguments for both sides of a choice that it was honestly hard choosing. Sometimes it's clear when you're being a hero and when you're being a villain, but more often than not that line gets blurred, and that's what has me salivating for Mass Effect 3.
So overall, the story has improved dramatically as has combat. I wish they had simply tweaked the RPG elements instead of abandoning them, but it's hard to argue when you're in the middle of a firefight and all you have to do is press a button to change your ammo. Space exploration still sucks, and the open endedness with side missions and replayability in terms of randomized equipment has been significantly reduced, but the thousands of different decisions you can make throughout the game makes it just as replayable as 1. Again, if you liked the shooter elements of 1, this is a dramatic improvement that will knock your socks off. If you liked the RPG elements, you're going to be a little disappointed, but it will still most likely knock your socks off.
Mass Effect 2 gets a 9.5/10.
Mass Effect
In prep for playing the newly released Mass Effect 2, I decided to take a step down memory lane and review the thoroughly engrossing Mass Effect 1.
You play as Commander Shepard, who, depending on your choices at the customization screen, can be: a man or a woman, a "spacer" "earthborn" or "colonist" (which serve to influence how fast you gain paragon/renegade points and offer a specific quest), a "sole survivor" "war hero" or "ruthless" psych profile, and one of 6 different classes (each of which can eventually choose between two of 6 advanced classes to specialize in). Each of the classes are either solely, or some mix of, biotics (force powers), tech powers, and combat powers. For example, the vanguard specializes in biotic and combat, while an engineer focuses solely on tech. Add all this to a comprehensive facial features builder, and the omnipresent Paragon (good guy)/Renegade (bad guy) system and you can already see that this monster is a heavy RPG.
As such, it's nearly impossible to go over every aspect in detail. So I'll try my hand at some sweeping generalizations.
As Commander Shepard you're sent on a mission to Eden Prime, a human world, which has just sent out a distress call. You're joined by Nihlus, a turian Spectre (kind of a warrior spy) to see if you qualify to become the first human Spectre. You land, action ensues, and soon you're embroiled in a galaxy-wide quest to do battle with Saren, a former Spectre, and an army of sentient machines known as the Geth.
And that's only the beginning of it. Throughout your travels you will come across what seem like hundreds of side quests, both small and large, either from exploring planets on your unwieldy Mako tank, listening to Galactic Radio at the Citadel, as part of the main quest, or as requests from your crew members. There is no lack of things to do if you truly want to delve into the experience, and trust me, you will.
Combat is divided between battles planetside on your Mako, and the largely used third person shooting. Mako battles are annoying due to the controls being so lunky, but thankfully it's easy enough to lock onto a target, blast it with rockets and be done. The third person shooting, however, is a breeze, due in no small part to the ease of pressing a button to bring up a menu that pauses the game and allows you to tell your squad what to shoot and what powers to use on any specific target. This allows for some really smooth squad tactics that allow you to effectively manage enemies that might otherwise overwhelm you.
One of the largest pieces of combat actually has nothing to do with the action itself: your equipment. As you traverse the galaxy you will find thousands upon thousands of weapons, armor, and upgrades. Each weapon and armor (including ALL of your teammates) have slots that you can fill with any upgrade available, and switch out whenever you want. For example, if you're fighting Geth you can pop in a special round that does more damage to machines. But if a big organic creature suddenly shows up, you open up the menu, switch to a round that does more damage to organics, and keep on fighting.
One of the biggest complaints against this game is that this constant micromanaging of your inventory makes the game move a lot slower, and it most assuredly does. It gets especially hard when you only take 2 teammates on a mission, and try to pop in an upgrade, only to remember that the only copy you had is currently on a teammate you didn't take with you. Then, if you're allowed to, you have to go all the way back to your ship, take the elevator down to the equipment lockers, switch equipment, take the elevator back up, then run to the airlock and get back to where you were. It takes a significant chunk of time. Ultimately, however, this is one of the key elements of Mass Effect's RPG quality, and I personally find it fun to manage who gets what as it adds a layer of personalization to the game.
Of course the biggest feature of Mass Effect is the story and the dialogue. I had never before played anything this epic when I first played this game, and even now the only real contenders it has in terms of scope are Final Fantasy, and other Bioware games. The story constantly keeps you involved, even when you're just doing a random side mission it feels like you're adding to the full story. But the real reason you'll keep coming back to this game are the dialogue trees, and the tough tough choices you have to make throughout the game. Each and every conversation brings up a little dialogue wheel at the bottom, from which you can choose what to say. Some options will further your Paragon/Renegade status, but most will just uncover extra info that's useful to know. Also, it's not just that you pick a saying on the wheel and Shepard says it. You pick something like "Go on." and Shepard says "I'd like to know more about what you're doing here." It adds some nice unpredictability to what you're going to hear, and yes it's a small thing but it's welcome. The key is that at many points, depending on what you say, your experience throughout the game is going to be completely different than someone else who picked a different option. There are vital decisions that have to be made that not only effect how your missions play out, but also how things in Mass Effect 2 play out (and it's hinted some decisions will even have repercussions in Mass Effect 3).
By the time you get a character up to level 40 or so the game starts to lag in the RPG department as you're maxing your skills, making literally millions of credits, and have the top equipment in the game for your level. However, the enemies can still be quite difficult and the game never lacks in challenge.
If you're up for hours upon hours of RPG shooter fun, pick up this game, play it, play it again in a different way, leave it for a while, then come back and play it again to remind yourself of all the awesome.
Mass Effect gets a 9.5/10.
You play as Commander Shepard, who, depending on your choices at the customization screen, can be: a man or a woman, a "spacer" "earthborn" or "colonist" (which serve to influence how fast you gain paragon/renegade points and offer a specific quest), a "sole survivor" "war hero" or "ruthless" psych profile, and one of 6 different classes (each of which can eventually choose between two of 6 advanced classes to specialize in). Each of the classes are either solely, or some mix of, biotics (force powers), tech powers, and combat powers. For example, the vanguard specializes in biotic and combat, while an engineer focuses solely on tech. Add all this to a comprehensive facial features builder, and the omnipresent Paragon (good guy)/Renegade (bad guy) system and you can already see that this monster is a heavy RPG.
As such, it's nearly impossible to go over every aspect in detail. So I'll try my hand at some sweeping generalizations.
As Commander Shepard you're sent on a mission to Eden Prime, a human world, which has just sent out a distress call. You're joined by Nihlus, a turian Spectre (kind of a warrior spy) to see if you qualify to become the first human Spectre. You land, action ensues, and soon you're embroiled in a galaxy-wide quest to do battle with Saren, a former Spectre, and an army of sentient machines known as the Geth.
And that's only the beginning of it. Throughout your travels you will come across what seem like hundreds of side quests, both small and large, either from exploring planets on your unwieldy Mako tank, listening to Galactic Radio at the Citadel, as part of the main quest, or as requests from your crew members. There is no lack of things to do if you truly want to delve into the experience, and trust me, you will.
Combat is divided between battles planetside on your Mako, and the largely used third person shooting. Mako battles are annoying due to the controls being so lunky, but thankfully it's easy enough to lock onto a target, blast it with rockets and be done. The third person shooting, however, is a breeze, due in no small part to the ease of pressing a button to bring up a menu that pauses the game and allows you to tell your squad what to shoot and what powers to use on any specific target. This allows for some really smooth squad tactics that allow you to effectively manage enemies that might otherwise overwhelm you.
One of the largest pieces of combat actually has nothing to do with the action itself: your equipment. As you traverse the galaxy you will find thousands upon thousands of weapons, armor, and upgrades. Each weapon and armor (including ALL of your teammates) have slots that you can fill with any upgrade available, and switch out whenever you want. For example, if you're fighting Geth you can pop in a special round that does more damage to machines. But if a big organic creature suddenly shows up, you open up the menu, switch to a round that does more damage to organics, and keep on fighting.
One of the biggest complaints against this game is that this constant micromanaging of your inventory makes the game move a lot slower, and it most assuredly does. It gets especially hard when you only take 2 teammates on a mission, and try to pop in an upgrade, only to remember that the only copy you had is currently on a teammate you didn't take with you. Then, if you're allowed to, you have to go all the way back to your ship, take the elevator down to the equipment lockers, switch equipment, take the elevator back up, then run to the airlock and get back to where you were. It takes a significant chunk of time. Ultimately, however, this is one of the key elements of Mass Effect's RPG quality, and I personally find it fun to manage who gets what as it adds a layer of personalization to the game.
Of course the biggest feature of Mass Effect is the story and the dialogue. I had never before played anything this epic when I first played this game, and even now the only real contenders it has in terms of scope are Final Fantasy, and other Bioware games. The story constantly keeps you involved, even when you're just doing a random side mission it feels like you're adding to the full story. But the real reason you'll keep coming back to this game are the dialogue trees, and the tough tough choices you have to make throughout the game. Each and every conversation brings up a little dialogue wheel at the bottom, from which you can choose what to say. Some options will further your Paragon/Renegade status, but most will just uncover extra info that's useful to know. Also, it's not just that you pick a saying on the wheel and Shepard says it. You pick something like "Go on." and Shepard says "I'd like to know more about what you're doing here." It adds some nice unpredictability to what you're going to hear, and yes it's a small thing but it's welcome. The key is that at many points, depending on what you say, your experience throughout the game is going to be completely different than someone else who picked a different option. There are vital decisions that have to be made that not only effect how your missions play out, but also how things in Mass Effect 2 play out (and it's hinted some decisions will even have repercussions in Mass Effect 3).
By the time you get a character up to level 40 or so the game starts to lag in the RPG department as you're maxing your skills, making literally millions of credits, and have the top equipment in the game for your level. However, the enemies can still be quite difficult and the game never lacks in challenge.
If you're up for hours upon hours of RPG shooter fun, pick up this game, play it, play it again in a different way, leave it for a while, then come back and play it again to remind yourself of all the awesome.
Mass Effect gets a 9.5/10.
Monday, February 1, 2010
And in other news...
Sex robots. If there's one thing that drives technological innovation, it's sex. Needless to say the idea of sex robots has been around for quite some time (Spielberg's A.I. for example), but so far the tech just hasn't really been there to pull it off.
Well ladies and gents...but mostly gents...for a mere $7,000 you can have your own lifelike talking sex robot that comes preloaded with 5 distinct personalities, A.I. software, and personable traits like talking in her sleep (which can be turned off).
The wave of the future, my friends.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/01/sex.robot/index.html?hpt=P1
Well ladies and gents...but mostly gents...for a mere $7,000 you can have your own lifelike talking sex robot that comes preloaded with 5 distinct personalities, A.I. software, and personable traits like talking in her sleep (which can be turned off).
The wave of the future, my friends.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/01/sex.robot/index.html?hpt=P1
Remember that immortality talk we had?
Way back in November of last year I wrote up my thoughts on the current state of research towards immortality. There is still no doubt in my mind that it will be here, whether it take 10 years or 50. But some new research has just come to a head that bolsters hope for another avenue: just replacing or patching your biological parts when they start to fail.
Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine...and I want you to pay attention to this...MADE BRAIN CELLS...OUT OF SKIN CELLS. Yeah, there's a hitch in that they only did it with mice, but still.
One of the greatest hindrances to medicine for decades has been that while we can heal/patch/repair just about any damn thing in the body through surgery, transplants, etc., we have never been able to do anything about the brain. It's always been taken as a kind of given that brain cells, and brains themselves, are simply too complex to do anything with. If there's damage, sorry, but it's gone for good. Diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, all of these have traditionally been seen as practically incurable despite the millions of dollars invested in finding cures.
With this latest development, it is more than likely that the cure for such diseases is about 20 years away.
I want every one of you reading to think about that.
In 20 years (optimistic estimate), any kind of brain damage can be repaired. Not only that, but it will be a relatively simple procedure where you take some skin cells, send them to a lab, and then a couple hours later you have brain cells. Not weeks, not even days, but hours. The longest part of the process will be sending the skin cells to the lab and waiting to get them back....or the surgery and recovery, but that's not the point. We have reached such a state of medical technology that a skin cell can literally become any other cell in the body.
This is also what has me worried.
I have always said that my view of technology is highly optimistic, though my view of humanity's future is highly pessimistic. We live in a fascinating duality where the faster that technology outpaces us, the worse shape we're possibly in. Every discovery heralds the dawn of a new age, but has ramifications that won't be known for decades.
Take for example this simple fact that I said above. A skin cell can become any other cell. Including sperm and eggs. That means all those extra skin cells you sluff off everywhere you walk could potentially be used to make children, or even clones. Maybe my head is baked from too much sci-fi, but is it unreasonable for me to think that some organization might try to determine the future of the human race through a genetic breeding program? They wouldn't even need the actual people. They just take skin samples from two people, make eggs and sperm, grow offspring that might not even need to come to term to get viable cells from, or would then go on and live their lives normally while the organization keept samples from their skin. For example, redheadedness is a recessive trait. Say a coalition of redheads wanted to save themselves from extinction and so obtained skin samples from thousands of redheads, who normally would never meet, and then make offspring with red hair.
I know it sounds crazy, and I realize I'm venturing a little into the absurd, but have no doubt...it will be possible. Unethical, and thus mostly black market, but still possible.
A lot of people still see these kinds of things as being very far away in time and certain they won't even live to see it. Yet every single month, hell even every week these days, there comes a discovery that was previously thought impossible or at least 20 years away. Be assured, everything you have ever thought of as "the future" or even "sci-fi" will be here not only within your lifetime, but within the next decade or two.
Barring destruction from 2012, an asteroid, global warming, or a regrown velociraptor.
For the article detailing the research behind changing skin to brain go here: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1815152/scientists_create_brain_cells_from_skin_cells/index.html
Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine...and I want you to pay attention to this...MADE BRAIN CELLS...OUT OF SKIN CELLS. Yeah, there's a hitch in that they only did it with mice, but still.
One of the greatest hindrances to medicine for decades has been that while we can heal/patch/repair just about any damn thing in the body through surgery, transplants, etc., we have never been able to do anything about the brain. It's always been taken as a kind of given that brain cells, and brains themselves, are simply too complex to do anything with. If there's damage, sorry, but it's gone for good. Diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, all of these have traditionally been seen as practically incurable despite the millions of dollars invested in finding cures.
With this latest development, it is more than likely that the cure for such diseases is about 20 years away.
I want every one of you reading to think about that.
In 20 years (optimistic estimate), any kind of brain damage can be repaired. Not only that, but it will be a relatively simple procedure where you take some skin cells, send them to a lab, and then a couple hours later you have brain cells. Not weeks, not even days, but hours. The longest part of the process will be sending the skin cells to the lab and waiting to get them back....or the surgery and recovery, but that's not the point. We have reached such a state of medical technology that a skin cell can literally become any other cell in the body.
This is also what has me worried.
I have always said that my view of technology is highly optimistic, though my view of humanity's future is highly pessimistic. We live in a fascinating duality where the faster that technology outpaces us, the worse shape we're possibly in. Every discovery heralds the dawn of a new age, but has ramifications that won't be known for decades.
Take for example this simple fact that I said above. A skin cell can become any other cell. Including sperm and eggs. That means all those extra skin cells you sluff off everywhere you walk could potentially be used to make children, or even clones. Maybe my head is baked from too much sci-fi, but is it unreasonable for me to think that some organization might try to determine the future of the human race through a genetic breeding program? They wouldn't even need the actual people. They just take skin samples from two people, make eggs and sperm, grow offspring that might not even need to come to term to get viable cells from, or would then go on and live their lives normally while the organization keept samples from their skin. For example, redheadedness is a recessive trait. Say a coalition of redheads wanted to save themselves from extinction and so obtained skin samples from thousands of redheads, who normally would never meet, and then make offspring with red hair.
I know it sounds crazy, and I realize I'm venturing a little into the absurd, but have no doubt...it will be possible. Unethical, and thus mostly black market, but still possible.
A lot of people still see these kinds of things as being very far away in time and certain they won't even live to see it. Yet every single month, hell even every week these days, there comes a discovery that was previously thought impossible or at least 20 years away. Be assured, everything you have ever thought of as "the future" or even "sci-fi" will be here not only within your lifetime, but within the next decade or two.
Barring destruction from 2012, an asteroid, global warming, or a regrown velociraptor.
For the article detailing the research behind changing skin to brain go here: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1815152/scientists_create_brain_cells_from_skin_cells/index.html
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