(NOTE: May contain minor spoilers. Readers be ye warned!)

Subtitled THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL. (Right, Harbinger?)

Here we are, at last. I know quite a few people have already played and reviewed this game. Some are even playing it again. I actually went back to the original game to start a new playthrough to span both games, and while I know there will be some repetition in dialog and encounters, the story’s solid enough to withstand repeated playthroughs. That’s more than you can say for a lot of games out there today. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mass Effect 2 opens with a shocking curbstomp battle between Commander Shepard’s intrepid vessel, the Normandy, and a mysterious attacker that can see the plucky ship despite its stealth systems and blasts through its defense systems like they weren’t there. Shepard manages to get his crew to safety before he’s blown out to space and dies. The pro-human semi-terrorist “by-any-means-necessary” organization Cerberus scrapes Shepard off of the nearby planet’s surface and spends two years resurrecting him. The Reapers, extragalactic Big Bads introduced in the first Mass Effect, are still a major threat despite the government’s denial of their existence. They’re not helping humanity in the disappearance of their colonies, either, so Cerberus turns to the reconstructed Shepard to undertake a suicide mission through an unexplored mass relay to uncover the source of the abductions and send back more information on the Reapers. Because who better to send on a mission where everybody’s likely to die than someone who’s been dead already?

Stuff I Didn’t Like

We got this instead of a vehicle. I hope you’re all happy.

Wait. Shepard dies? He wasn’t in a coma or suspended animation and presumed dead by the galaxy at large? I found that to be a little far-fetched. Sure, technology in the future depicted by Mass Effect is pretty advanced, and being rebuilt by Cerberus explains why you can implement so many cybernetic upgrades to Shepard as the game goes on, but the whole resurrection angle pushes the limits of believability. Shepard doesn’t really seem that bothered by it, either – there’s no crisis of faith or any real rumination on what thoughts are evoked by the experience of coming back from the dead. Even the more spiritual team members don’t think to ask, which would have been a good opportunity for the player to do a little role-playing in choosing to start a deep theological conversation, or give a Renegade-oriented “None of your damn business” response.

Oh, and the story problems don’t end there. We do learn more about the Reapers, as to what motivates them and why they do what they do, but it still doesn’t explain why it wasn’t explained to us previously. Did Sovereign go for a stream of verbal crap in the style of Matrix: Reloaded‘s Architect just to mess with human heads, or was it embarrassed that the motivations of its supremely powerful machine-race were so basic and organic-like that it needed an extra layer of obfuscation? Or had the writers not figured it out yet themselves at that point? Maybe they had but they wanted to keep us guessing. Don’t get me wrong, the writing in this game isn’t bad, not by a long shot. More on that later.

The only other major insurmountable problem I had beyond the story issues was the scanning mini-game. I touched on it previously and it appears that my initial assessment was on the money. Here it is again to save you some time:

Some of the complaints about the Mako sections of the first game were their length and tedium. Scanning in the sequel takes just as long and… is just as tedious. Another Mako complaint is, obviously, it’s handling. So if scanning is meant to be an improvement over the Mako, the controls should handle smoothly and be a delightful diversion from ducking for cover like we’re playing Gears of War, right? Sorry, that’s not the case here. The reticle moves slowly over the surface of a world when you’re scanning, and unless you want to risk missing a particularly rich pocket of Element Zero, you need to drag it across every square mile of the planet’s surface.

Now one thing the scanning mini-game does well is convey the feeling that one is in space. And I don’t mean it hearkens to Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. No, it hearkens more to 2001: A Space Odyssey or video recordings of NASA operations. That is to say that it’s lengthy, quiet, procedural and really rather dull.

Stuff I Liked

“Gosh, I hope you weren’t fond of your face, buddy.” *ZAP*

Let’s move on to better news. The other major complaint about the first Mass Effect was the inventory system, which stuffed your interstellar backpack with a plethora of ultimately useless junk that you then needed to sell one at a time to the nearest vendor. BioWare tossed that stuff into the Mako when they shoved it out the airlock, and the system of managing equipment in the sequel is extremely streamlined. Rather than switching weapons, you upgrade the models available to your team members. While these upgrades must be purchased with resources gathered by the aforementioned scanning malarkey, you won’t be thinking about that tedious stuff as your new Normandy takes you from one gunfight to the next.

Speaking of fights, the combat system in Mass Effect 2 is also somewhat streamlined. You can map more powers for easy use, you don’t have quite as many to manage, squad commands are broken a bit more easily and fights are bit faster-paced. The measures of protection on your foes, as well as their scale, can vary from encounter to encounter which can lead to breaking up the monotony of the cover-based shooting. The multiple map buttons mean you can address a particular enemy’s defensive measure at a moment’s notice, provided you don’t just pound them into submission with a stream of mass-accelerated death or your favorite physics-altering biotic ability.

Like the previous game, this one is rendered very well, with the environments and technology providing a great sense of immersion. The voice-acting, for the most part, also draws the player into the experience, as they travel from one exotic locale to the next to recruit members for Shepard’s suicide mission. And being able to customize your armor’s look was a nice touch, along with the fish tank & Space Hamster you could add to your cabin on the Normandy.

Stuff I Loved

Thane: “Shepard, what is this ‘DeviantArt’ site you sent me?”
Shepard: *whistles innocently*

BioWare might be a little shaky in the story department, but one of their strengths is their characters. Mass Effect 2 gives us a diverse, interesting and well-written cast, from the penitent and quiet assassin Thane to Subject Zero, who uses aggression and profanity to conceal a deeply wounded soul. The conversations Shepard has with these individuals give the game a surprising amount of depth for what could easily have been a Gears of War clone with a few RPG elements. While this might come as no surprise to long-time fans of BioWare’s games, the purchase of the company by EA could have caused some concern. However, as much as EA might mess with other aspects of a game – DLC or DMA or some other acronyms – it appears they’re leaving the story alone, and thank the Enkindlers for that.

Being able to import your Shepard from the first game gives the experience a fantastic sense of cohesion and immersion as well. It’s surprising the amount of continuity exists between the two games, from the outcome of major events to minor encounters you frankly might have forgotten about in the intervening years. Returning characters are a welcome sight, even when they’re hated foes and especially when they’re beloved party members. There’s a real sense that time has passed since the end of the first game, and every life you touched then, even in passing, has been changed because of your influence for better or for worse.

The last thing that really made this game enjoyable for me was the changes to the conversation system. It’s been said that quick-time events should be an integral part of gameplay and not thrown in arbitrarily. The Paragon/Renegade interrupts are not mandatory for you to finish a conversation, but setting one off not only flows well with the conversation but often yields pretty spectacular results. On top of that, conversations in general flow more naturally, with characters moving as they speak, camera angles changing dynamically during conversations and subjects reaching far beyond the usual “What did you think of the last mission?” or “Do you think I look cute in this armor?” fare.

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“I believe the organic saying is: ‘BOOM. Headshot.’”

Bottom Line: Are you a fan of the first Mass Effect? Buy this game. Do you like sci-fi shooting action? Buy this game. Looking for a relatively decent story with solid, well-rounded characters? Buy this game. Got a void in your life that only a Space Hamster can fill? Buy this game. Have I made it clear yet? No? Go buy Mass Effect 2. It’s well worth the money, the time and the frustration of the scanning mechanic. Hell, I plan on playing it again, not once, but at least twice. I mean, we’ve established previously that I’m pretty damn dull, but at least something like this is more exciting than Star Trek Online:

All that blood means this game is totally dark and edgy. Totally.

I’ve ragged a bit on the length of Dragon Age: Origins as well as the infamous memory leak that completely devoured at least an entire day of my life. But how did I feel about the game overall? How does its writing compare to Mass Effect or even its spiritual ancestor, Baldur’s Gate? Read on, and find out.

Dragon Age is a fantasy setting based in the world of Thedas. Origins introduces us to this world through the nation of Ferelden, which is facing the threat of invasion by twisted creatures known as darkspawn. The only force with the knowledge and experience capable of ending this threat, before it becomes a full-blown contagion of violence and destruction called a Blight, is the elite order of the Gray Wardens. It is this order your character will be invited to join after you get to know the race and/or class you select at the opening of the game.

Stuff I Didn’t Like

“A little club soda will get those blood spatters out of your dress, sir.”

• The game’s intent of being a ‘dark’ fantasy is apparently the reason even the briefest of melee encounters will see you and the members of your party spattered in blood. It’s as if Jackson Pollock runs from one member to the other armed with a brush dipped in red paint, giggling with childlike glee. Having this happen in the wake of a bloody close-up kill would work a lot better than having these people constantly covered in gore. It actually becomes kind of hilarious if you try to talk one of your party members after a fight. They will casually talk with you and even joke, without bothering to even wipe the blood out of their eyes. I know it’s foolish to expect complete realism in a fantasy setting, but this always struck me as a bit off.
• There’s a lot of loading that happens in this game, at least in the PC version. Especially when playing for longer than an hour or two, due to the aforementioned memory leak. I started seeing the slowly spinning tribal-influenced loading graphic in my sleep.
• The Codex of the game is very dry. I’ve started to get used to sparing glances at posted information or an overheard conversation dumping a ream of text into my journal, but in Mass Effect there was some narration on the major entries that helped convey some interesting and world-building information. Now, while Dragon Age’s Codex isn’t essential as most of the background and world-building happens in the course of conversation with others, but the fact remains that the full text presented in-game can be difficult to sift through. Browsing a wiki for the information outside of the game is more informative and interesting.
• Quests in fantasy games can often feel a little contrived. Stationary NPCs, especially those who are reputed to be powerful or fearsome, often give tasks to the players that they could easily accomplish themselves if not for some plot-imposed restriction. And in the course of your travels, it’s easy to begin to lose sight of your motivation as you try to hurdle one obstacle after another in what should be a straightforward affair. The two biggest culprits in this area are the tower of the Circle of Magi, and the Deep Roads extending from the dwarven city of Orzammar. Unlike the optional side quests posted on various boards around Ferelden, these areas contain sequences that require you to move from one map to another in what I assume was an attempt to give the game scope but really just felt like they were trying to make a long game even longer. Now, as I said I’ve already had a gripe about the game’s length, but having finished the game it did feel like a sweeping epic which is something I’ll discuss more in a bit. But the Deep Roads in particular just felt overly tedious. When I finally reached Caridin at the end of the Roads, I half expected the big guy to take me through an exchange that’d go something like this:


“YOU WILL GO TO THE WAYOVERTHERE MOUNTAINS, TO THE VERY PEAK OF MOUNT NOOBDEATH, AND BRING ME THE TEN HAMMERS OF AWESOMENESS TO PROPERLY DISPOSE OF THE ANVIL OF THE VOID.”
“Is the anvil bolted down?”
“…WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?”
“Well, if isn’t bolted to the stone, why don’t we all pick it up and heave the thing into the molten lava flowing below us? Hell, even if it is bolted down, I’m a mage, Oghren’s a mighty beer-drinking dwarf, Alistair’s pretty badass when he stops whining and snarking, and both you and Shale are immortal super-strong golems. Why don’t we eliminate the bolts, THEN hurl it into the lava? That’d do the job nicely, right?”
“…YOUR SOLUTION IS NOT EPIC ENOUGH.”
“But it just makes more sense to use what we’ve got here than to wander all the way out and up into the mountains…”
“EPIC SOLUTIONS DO NOT MEAN LOGICAL SOLUTIONS. GET ON WITH THE QUESTING.”
“…”
“THERE’S EPIC GEAR IN IT FOR YOU.”
“Fine, whatever.”

• Speaking of Shale, it boggles my mind that one of the best characters in the game is only available via DLC. Shale is interesting, useful, deep and absolutely hysterical, but if you didn’t get the right retail copy or don’t have the $15 necessary to download her, you’re shit outta luck, friend.

Stuff I Liked

This view is why the PC version works very well for me.

• Regarding the game’s length, while some of the sequences did feel a bit long in the tooth, the overall arc of the game is like that of Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia, in that we have a sojourn across a foreign land in the name of an epic quest. Seeing the story through to the end, while a frustrating slog at times, is very satisfying. It was like the first time I finally finished all three Lord of the Rings novels. I didn’t really care about Tom Bombadil’s hat or how green the grass is in the Shire, but it was pretty damn awesome to see how everything resolved in the end.
• There’s a lot of replay value here. Beyond the different origin stories, there are a lot of choices to make with a given character both in terms of dialog and specialization. No two playthroughs are guaranteed to be the same. In fact, I’ve thought of going back to an earlier save of my mage and tweaking his build just a bit, to make him more of a magic knight and less of an armored healer. Hell, I could change his build entirely and just nuke everything in sight.
• The politics and religions of Thedas in general and Ferelden in particular feel three-dimensional. The main NPCs you’ll encounter in your travels also come across as more than cardboard cut-outs, despite their somewhat stiff uncanny valley appearance.

Stuff I Loved

Oghren: “You as sick of runnin’ hither an’ yon for these lazy sodding rutters as I am?”

• The speaking characters in your party, while requiring some of BioWare’s trademark micromanagement, are a diverse and well-realized bunch. Shale, as I’ve mentioned, is a stand-out character, and Oghren the dwarf had me rolling pretty much any time he spoke. I mentioned Alistair’s penchant for being whiny and snarky, but for the most part it’s more endearing than annoying. I even found myself warming up to Sten, the extremely stoic Qunari warrior. Another reason I want to play through this game again is to further explore some of the stories behind the party members I didn’t hang out with as often. Your mileage may vary, of course. However, the only reason I imagine someone might not like the character of the Dog is if they just plain hate dogs. Otherwise, I would be very surprised if you played this game and didn’t find yourself wanting a mabari war hound of your own.
• It would be easy for this game, billed as a dark fantasy and covered in blood, to focus entirely on combat as a means to resolve all its situations. But there’s diplomacy, puzzle-solving and even some politicing involved as well. Allowing the game’s storylines to expand beyond the combat engine makes it feel less like a straight hack and slash affair and more like an honest-to-whomever role playing game. Solid writing that compliments the action instead of existing solely for the purpose of shepherding us from one combat encounter to the next makes the game more interesting, immersive and fun. Dragon Age: Origins definitely delivers on that score.
• There’s a definite feeling that your actions (or inaction in some cases) have long-reaching ramifications in this world. From party members deserting you over a given choice to whole parties of pilgrims getting wiped out in the epilogue because you skipped something, Dragon Age: Origins reminds you that Thedas is much bigger than the microcosm of you and your party. The world is built in this way to such a degree that the Codex feels even more superfluous. Thedas is a rich, deep and rewarding world to explore, and I found myself wanting to spend more time there, darkspawn and ogres notwithstanding.

Bottom Line: If you have any interest in a high fantasy role-playing game that evokes the likes of Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age: Origins is worth the investment of both time and money. Fans of straight-forward hack’n'slashers might be better off buying Torchlight or saving up for the upcoming Diablo III. I plan on playing this plenty in the weeks and months to come, which means that for me, Dragon Age: Origins is a great success.

Jaysus Begorrah, there are a lot of Mass Effect 2 reviews out there. I suppose sooner or later I’ll post one of my own, once I’m able to play the damn thing, but going with my revamped “one at a time” policy, I need to finish Dragon Age and BioShock 2 first. Which hopefully means I’ll be able to get past the final final Archdemon boss despite having been a bit helter-skelter in my Arcane Warrior build. But I digress. We’re not here to talk about fantasies today, at least not the ones in a specific Tolkienesque setting – we’re here to get our space exploration on.

If you’ve played Mass Effect 2, you probably no longer look upon this vehicle with the usual quantity of rage reserved for its sections in the first game. I almost want to review the Mako as if it were a car on Top Gear:

The Mako has a fantastic range of armaments, able to turn a regiment of the Queen’s own armored warriors into a fine red mist in a matter of seconds. But if you actually want to close distance with your intended target, you’re in for a shock. Normally when driving an APC, you can expect a stiff, metal-cast suspension built to handle abuse. But the Mako’s suspension is apparently made from poured concrete, meaning it has a turning radius greater than some of the planets you’re about to explore.

The Mako’s not an entire loss, but it’s not exactly a joy to drive, either. However, BioWare seems to think that the Mako was an entire loss, and so gave us something new in Mass Effect 2.

I still haven’t played the game myself, but having seen this part of it, I can see why it is one of the most universally loathed aspects of not just this game, but any game produced in recent memory. Some of the complaints about the Mako sections of the first game were their length and tedium. Scanning in the sequel takes just as long and, from what I understand, is just as tedious. Another Mako complaint is, obviously, it’s handling. So if scanning is meant to be an improvement over the Mako, the controls should handle smoothly and be a delightful diversion from ducking for cover like we’re playing Gears of War, right? Sorry, that’s not the case here. The reticle moves slowly over the surface of a world when you’re scanning, and unless you want to risk missing a particularly rich pocket of Element Zero, you need to drag it across every square mile of the planet’s surface.

Now one thing the scanning mini-game does well is convey the feeling that one is in space. And I don’t mean it hearkens to Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. No, it hearkens more to 2001: A Space Odyssey or video recordings of NASA operations. That is to say that it’s lengthy, quiet, procedural and really rather dull. When I sit down to play this game, I’m going to have my iPod handy, and once the Normandy establishes orbit around an unexplored world, I’m going to turn on some music that’ll keep me awake while I’m scanning.

Something like this, for example.

I hate Dragon Age: Origins right now.

There’s apparently a memory leak in the PC version of the game that causes load times to last longer and longer the more you play it. If you play for, say, an hour, you might not notice. But in my fervor to finish my first play-through I spent the bulk of my time this past weekend playing it, and the bulk of that time was spent looking at the spinning “loading…” graphic at the bottom of a parchment-colored screen stained with blood. I finally stopped and turned to other games in the middle of the evening yesterday, occupying myself instead with a little BioShock 2 and starting a game of Mass Effect 2.

But if I’m honest, I’m apprehensive. I want to finish Dragon Age for a variety of reasons, including posting a review here and over at the Escapist. The biggest one is something Chuck talked about this morning. Like writing projects, it’s probably best to focus on one game at a time. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m also trying to keep up with folks in Star Trek Online but that is somewhat beside my point.

I didn’t post a continuation of my Farraday fiction project because in comparison to The Project, it isn’t that important. I should probably make time to write some articles to pitch to the Escapist, but I feel that as much as I might get paid for them, it’s still taking writing time away from the aforementioned Big P. And if you look up at the little column-spanning block towards the top of this webspace, the first thing listed there is ‘aspiring novelist.’ I feel that, when I’m not distracting myself with games, carving out a little time to post here so you all don’t lose interest in me, or doing real-life things like taking my wife places or doing laundry or herding cats, I should be focused on that first and foremost.

Granted, things are still in progress with Polymancer Studios, there are a couple other things I’m waiting to hear about and I do adore everybody at the Escapist and working with them. But the fact remains that my dream has been to get a novel out to someone who can put it into print, and wandering past a bookstore to see something with my name on the cover displayed at the front of the store for people to purchase, take home and enjoy.

I’ve also dreamed of travelling to space and driving an Aston Martin, but like writing projects and games, I should take my dreams one at a time.

The same night I picked up Mass Effect 2 for my wife, I also picked up BioShock 2. I’m a big fan of the first game, for a variety of reasons I covered in my review. I’ve put in a few hours already and am eager to play through more of it, but there’s an aspect of the game that strikes me as somewhat perplexing.

I don’t mind the notion of playing through scenarios set in the tumultuous civil war of Rapture that broke out on New Year’s in 1959. On the contrary, I think it’d be fascinating to see Rapture when it had more rational people in it than spliced-up foamy-mouth quasi-zombie Splicers. However, since this setting is being used for multi-player, it’s unlikely much time would be spent looking at Rapture since if you get distracted you’re likely to wind up face up on the ground with some kid from Albuquerque teabagging you while the respawn timer counts down. I still might try it out, but the inclusion of multiplayer into a shooter that was strictly single player up until now just strikes me as odd.

I know the BioShock games are powered by the Unreal engine and it’s developed for multi-player environments, and I have no objection to multi-player in and of itself. I used to play Counter Strike on a regular basis, and every once in a while I blow the dust off of Team Fortress 2 to make sure my skills haven’t atrophied entirely. But the multi-player of BioShock 2, at least on a concept level, feels a little tacked on. I’m not entirely sold on the idea, and I’d rather get back to playing through the story.

I think that if you want to really capitalize on a multi-player environment with an established single-player franchise, the best move is likely to spend the time and resources developing a separate game that focuses entirely on that experience rather than tacking it onto a single-player game. I mean, Mass Effect doesn’t have any arena or deathmatch play, but then again, if BioWare were to develop a multi-player environment for that universe, I’d pray to the gaming gods that it would be less like a multi-player shooter and more like an MMO.

Seriously. Think about it. A Mass Effect MMO.