Mass Effect 2: Initial Impressions

I've had a little time to delve into Bioware's latest video game that released this past Tuesday.  I have to say that I am extremely pleased.  The game has definitely been given a visual upgrade.  Gone are all the texture pop-ins that I complained about from the first game.  The inventory system has been revamped, as in, completely dropped from the game!  In its place is an upgrade system that requires you to either buy or research upgrades for your team's weapons and armor.  This is a much better replacement to the massive amount of loot garnered from enemies and boxes from the original Mass Effect that clogged up your inventory and made it difficult to find the best items amidst all the crap that was lying around.

The cutscenes are much more enjoyable this time around.  You can tell that Bioware has learned a lot about composition in the years since Mass Effect 1.  The opening scenes are some of the best I've seen in a video game and set the tone for the rest of the game.

The combat system has been revamped as well.  Now multiple powers can be mapped to the controller for quick use during combat.  Your abilities also recharge much faster.  When you use an ability, all of your abilities go through a cooldown period before you can use another ability.  It is slightly annoying that using one ability blocks your use of your other abilities, but this new combat mechanic lets you use abilities much more quickly.  Your weapons now require ammunition, which keeps you from going gun-crazy.  My problem with this mechanic has been that running out of ammunition in a battle is a frequent occurrence.  You can upgrade your characters to carry more ammo, but it is still a little annoying. 

After I've played more I'll post more thoughts.  However, I know already that this game is worth the money if you are interested in it.

Beaten By a Girl

     In the early days of video games, the primary players were boys.  To an extent, that's still true, though more and more females are playing video games everyday.  However, it's still common for the insult "You just got beaten by a girl" to be thrown around the video game world.  This insult probably has its roots in physical sports where traditional society thinks that a boy should be able to beat a girl at any physical competition, and if the boy loses then he is obviously some kind of pansy wuss who wears My Little Pony panties.
    
     This mindset transferred itself into the video game realm because boys still had some kind of mindset that girls are genetically incapable of being good at a video game.  Guys, let me tell you this is not true.  If you are beating a girl at a video game it's probably because she's letting you so that you will feel good about yourself.  Now where this insult used to be hurled from one guy to another, you're more likely going to hear it being hurled from a victorious female to a slightly despondent male player.  On one occasion while playing on Xbox Live my team was utterly decimated by an all female team.  After their victory, the ladies hurled the insults such as "Now get into the kitchen and fix me a sammich!" followed by "And change my tire while you're at it!" 

     Now of course I have no problem with female gamers.  Several of my best Xbox Live friends are females who would sooner snipe you in your face than fix you a sandwich.  I'm saying all of this to lead into this fact:  I have been beaten by a girl.  And not just any girl, but by my lovely wife (AKA, the Paper Toss Goddess).

     If you are unfamiliar with Paper Toss, it is an iPhone game where your goal is to toss wadded up sheets of paper into a trash bin.  Sound easy?  Well it's not!!!  There is a devilish desktop fan that thwarts your efforts with variable wind speed and direction.  If you've ever wondered how the field goal kicker who is trying to make the 40-yard field goal so his team can win the game feels, then download this game. 

     Your score is based on how many consecutive wads of paper you can toss into the trash bin.  As you can see in the screenshot, my best efforts have earned me a respectable 28.  My wife's score?  88.  I cannot wrap my puny male brain around how she was able to attain this score.  It boggles my senses.

     So I'm writing this to concede defeat, honey.  I can't beat your score.  It's 4th down and all my field goal kicks are falling short.  You will forever have the title of Paper Toss Champion in our home.

I have been beaten by a girl.  But it's ok.  I'm proud of her.

Mass Effect Revisited

     So here we are a week out from the release of Mass Effect 2, one of the most highly anticipated games of 2010.  I've been replaying its predecessor lately in anticipation of this sequel.  I've always had a strange relationship with Mass Effect.  While I've always felt it was a good game, I felt it fell short in several areas.  I'm really hoping that Bioware has taken time to refine these areas during Mass Effect 2's development.

     Here I present my wish list of problems for Bioware to fix:
     1.  Texture pop-ins.  These things were SO annoying!  It was painful to watch cutscene after cutscene where the characters  and backgrounds were being rendered during the cutscene.  This gave the game a terribly unpolished look.
     2.  Inventory management.  Mass Effect had none.
     3.  The Mako.  Getting to drive a tank around unexplored planets and running over enemy combatants should have been fun.  Sadly it was not.
     4.  Secondary missions were copy and pasted.  To my recollection there were about 4 environments that secondary missions took place in: a cargo freighter, an underground cave, an underground bunker, and a large gray building.  These environments were repeated over and over again.  Each time the only changes were to the layouts of crates, machinery, and rocks inside the environment.  This just screamed laziness on the part of the developers.
     5.  Short main quest.  The primary missions of the game could be completed in a day.  A day.  The secondary missions extend that playtime, but come on!  A day?  Really?

     Still, even with these complaints I have been enjoying playing Mass Effect again and I'm really looking forward to its sequel.  From videos I have seen Bioware seems to have acknowledged some of its predecessor's problems (2 game discs FTW!!).  Videos of combat look much more intense and the biotic powers actually appear to be powerful, whereas in Mass Effect only the Throw and Lift abilities looked like they did any damage.  For example:



     I'll be sure to post my impressions next week after I've had some time to play and digest Bioware's latest game in the series.  If you want to see more visit www.masseffect.com for Bioware's official page for the game.

Halo: Evolutions

Last night I finished reading Halo: Evolutions, Essential Tales of the Halo Universe (Tor). This is the latest entry in the successful series of novels based on the Halo video game series. However, unlike its predecessors, Evolutions is a collection of short stories by a variety of authors, including Halo novel veterans Eric Nylund and Tobias S. Buckell. This gives the collection a variety of flavors, like a seven-layer cake (see what I did there, Bungie?). Each story has its own distinct flavor and contributes to the richness of the book as a whole.

As someone who has read all of the Halo novels released thus far, I couldn’t resist Evolutions, and I have to say that I am not disappointed. While Evolutions doesn’t bring much to the overall Halo mythology in the ways that The Fall of Reach, Ghosts of Onyx, and Contact Harvest did, it is able to deliver engaging stories without getting bogged down by canonical fidelity.

As I said, Evolutions doesn’t expand much on the Halo mythology, so if this is why you’re reading the book then you will find very little to satisfy you. These readers will most likely be most interested in the story “Human Weakness,” which covers Cortana’s experience aboard the Gravemind-controlled High Charity. If tales such as this are what you are looking for I would also suggest reading “Headhunters” and “The Return.”

Evolutions is a strong entry in the series that holds its own against the more canon-focused novels. It delivers engaging stories that are easily digested like a good short story should be. I don't think any fans of the previous Halo novels will be disappointed with this entry in the series.