Mass Effect review (transferred from the deceased AGV)

Space Opera RPG/FPS Mass Effect has, since it's initial release in 4th Quarter 2007, been critically heralded many times over, and is regarded by many as the sole justification of their choice of console. Developed by MGS' Bioware, the game was bound to be an instant hit. Much to the delight of millions, it delivered in shovels. Mostly.

The gameplay engine and controls are fairly intuitive, if not generic; "A" to run, "Right Trigger" to shoot, "Left Trigger" to aim. So far so blah. It's a tried and true formula, so this certainly isn't a problem, but then you'll start to encounter some weird mechanics that'll throw you off even 30+ hours in. The seldom used "Back" button fires a frisbee-like grenade that finds it's way to your determined aiming zone through ever changing aerial curves that will more-often-than-not just hit the wall you're using for cover. The "Right Bumper" brings up your "Powers", which you'll forget even exist past the first mission unless you choose the "Biotic" class. You'll encounter several glitches, rendering issues and AI imperfections throughout. But that doesn't matter. Because this game is so damned fun to play, and I cannot fully explain why. As ever-conscious you are in free roam of clunky game-mechanics, the moment you encounter enemies, these petty gripes just disappear and you are one with the game and it's protagonist; everything just clicks. In this respect, the best analogy I can draw is playing Donkey Konga for the first time. You're sitting there, dozily clicking through the roster of awful songs, wondering when "Wave of Mutilation" will show up and save this poorly-sourced playlist. You finally settle on "99 Red Balloons", draw a deep breath, and have the most fun you will probably ever experience in this lifetime.

The other dominant gaming aspect is the dialogue engine. Mass Effect was a demi-revolution in interactive story-telling due to it's multiple choice speech mechanic, with clear boundaries between pure and brash responses. It's such a simple system, but it works so well in delivering the intended impact on the player. I'll try and do it justice in this example:

Towards the beginning of the game, the protagonist is always able to talk his way out of any sticky situation, merely by constantly choosing the kind and fair dialogue options; conveniently placed on the top of the dialogue wheel and sometimes even highlighted in blue. Because of this, you are lured into a false sense of security and overconfidence. This continues to the point where you will frequently hold the thumbstick bound northwestern and simply mash "A". Suddenly you near the end of the penultimate mission. You stand between two portions of a base complex, your best friends Ashley and Kaiden are on separate sides, both in grave danger. It is made very clear to you that if you do not assist them, they will die. But of course, they are a good distance away from you in opposite directions; you can only save one. Up comes the little dialogue box. Two options-Save Ashley and Save Kaiden appear on the left and right hand sides-no up or down, no clear divide between moral or immoral, just the option of who will live, and who will die.

If this were at the beginning of the game, you wouldn't think anything of it, but through 10 hours of building up friendships with these people, this decision becomes far more emotionally straining. That build up is what separates the emotional impact of someone getting stomped on during an establishing shot in Godzilla, from Steve Buscemi's heart attack at the end of The Big Lebowski; that's why the story and dialogue of this game is so revolutionary. Even Seth Green's character, who comes across as a totally ignorant twat jerks a tear towards the end.

Because of the sheer amount of content in this game -almost 7 gigs- in the way of linear missions, side-quests and free-roam worlds, the graphics and programming underwent an understandable tune-down, as no engine exists at this time that can fully optimise any amount of data higher than this to run smoothly on consoles. This is unfortunately the largest disappointment in the game, as vast planets and their alien races are brilliantly designed but are shamed by hollow-looking character rigs, shocking lip-synch, and environments that can take anything up to 15 seconds to render. That said, it still retains some pretty decent audio quality, with some sterling voice acting and a working soundtrack. It's nothing on the scores of Halo or Metroid, but it does the job no less.

So, my overall thoughts. Mass Effect is a brilliant game, which has warranted, redeemed, and indeed surpassed it's value many times over, accumulating 50+ hours and counting of my time. Stunning replay value in the way of achievements and alternative storylines etc, but somewhat lacking visually.

A predictable 9/10 from me, an average gamer.

Here lies splitscreen.

It’s no secret that local splitscreen gaming is a dying concept. This decline is no doubt contributing to the overall deterioration of multiplayer in general, although some don’t like to admit it. It seems that with this HD boom, companies are simply too anal about the graphics of their games for them to be compromised to the effect that the quality is reduced four-fold in incorporating four separate screen divisions. You’ll find this mostly in console-exclusive games, as it is in the best interests of the first-party companies for their console’s graphical capabilities to be showcased in full, so splitscreen is usually dropped in favour of online or system-link play. Now I don’t know about you, but I believe there is no way to replace the magic of having a friend, relative or rival sat on your bed, competing or co-operating with you. No Bluetooth headset can provide the hilarity of your partner-in-game’s involuntary facial expressions and bodily twitches as they tackle large challenges, and the commentary shared that leads to in-jokes brought up for weeks and even years to come. I still have many of my own, formulated in the golden age of Crash Bandicoot, Donkey Kong and Mortal Kombat that never would’ve come about were online multiplayer commonplace at the time. Even recently, I had a split-screen “no-scope” session on COD 6 (which is ironically one of the main franchises to blame for this), during which I laughed more than I had in a very long time. It is arguably because of the online success of games like Call Of Duty and Halo that lengthy story modes and splitscreen multiplayer has gone under such considerable decline, which is ironic, considering these games are 2 of the few modern franchises that still contain splitscreen. This is a real shame, as not all of my friends share my choice of console, so there is no way for us to play the majority of my games together, other than turn rotation. This is where I must also commend Capcom very highly, as they have really stuck to their guns in keeping local multiplayer present in pretty much all of their recent releases; an excellent example being Resident Evil (Biohazard) 5, which was actually an innovation in splitscreen in the way it divides the screen so as not to draw attention to each other’s division. As it remains one of the best looking games ever due to Capcom’s stunning optimisation skills (if only they could apply the same amount of coding prowess into their AI programming), the game was criticised by other developers for implementing splitscreen which slightly detracted from the beauty of the game. Yet Capcom didn’t give into this; they seem to hold gameplay as a higher priority than graphics, which says a lot about the gameplay considering their games have absolutely stellar visuals. Now I'm not saying I'm totally opposed to online play. Being one of the only decent Street Fighter players in my constituency, I am often found playing SSFIV online with no issues whatsoever, aside from ocassional lag. I've also had a great time and made some good friends online on Resident Evil 5, including the northener 'Strike-Team' (with random letters substituted for the 1337 equivelant) who had to leave the session for about 15 minutes as his cat Hovis had run out of the house, leaving me to cover his inactive Sheva for that amount of time because you can't pause online. That's the sort of situation where the magic of local multiplayer does carry over to online play, which is not uncommon if you know where to look. My real issue is how people manage find so much fun in 11 year old prepubescant outcasts telling you to "Cover my left flank" as though we were fighting in an actual war.

Character development (or lack of)

Just saw Hellboy 2 finally. Amazing, as expected. Really faithful to Mike Mignola and his comic masterpiece, but enough has been changed for it to work for the medium. It's one of the rare examples where the balance is truly perfect in a film adaptation of a comic (for shame, Watchmen), which is nice to see. I think people like James Cameron should really take a leaf out of Mignola's book in terms of character development. What seems to be the norm in movies these days is that they have a character for every aspect of the film, with each of their characteristics together contributing ultimately to the all-round feel in the final cut. In Hellboy, however, each of these characteristics exist within every character; there is no token army brute or sensitive generic weak female, every character is developed in such a way that we see all of these things in all of them. Hellboy, a demon discovered in a nazi operation has always had a sensitive side. Abe, the flimsy intelligent fish-lizard-thing has always been prepared to fight for what he loves-even Roger the Homonculus (need I explain) jerks a tear in the comics. This really puts films like Avatar and G.I Joe to shame, with their decadently one-dimensional 'characters' that convey little emotion, and leave the audience feeling even less, as this is substituted for big CGI set pieces, masses of hype and EXPLOSIONS (lookin' at you, Mr Bay). I'm not saying James Cameron is bad; Aliens was a brilliant film with the lovely Sigourney Weaver playing a very strong female character who gets tons of development and sustenance-my real beef is really with Titanic onwards.

Would you?

I don't like when guys say 'I would', in response to seeing a girl they would gladly fuck. It's as though the decision as to whether or not they would have sex with the attractive female in question rests ultimately with the man; which is not true. The real question you should ask yourself, is whether or not she would, as if this outputs 'no', you are basically admitting desire to rape. Most of these guys would bang most anyone given the chance, thus saying they would sleep with a "sexy" girl is a redundant statement. Sexy is in quotes because most of these raving sexists are referring to people like Megan Fox, who is in fact, ugly as FUCK.