Mass Effect changed all of that. For a month straight, I played nothing but Mass Effect. After that month, I was a gamer.

So, in the days leading up to the release of Mass Effect 2, I was beyond excited. This game was my game, man. That special game that every gamer has.

Once I started playing Mass Effect 2, I couldn’t stop. Well, I could, but only when I absolutely had to eat or sleep, and even then only grudgingly. It’s a great sequel to the first Mass Effect and a great game in and of itself. Yet as good as it is, it isn’t perfect. No game is, and practically all of the great parts of Mass Effect 2 are matched by an equally spork-to-the-eye gameplay decisions.

The plot suffers from the same problem The Empire Strikes Back had when it first came out in theaters way back when—it’s the middle part of a trilogy. Some of it is going to have parts that feel like filler. And it did. The story isn’t bad, mind you. Yet, compared to the depth of story we had in the first game, the story in the second game feels somewhat lacking. But that’s the nature of the second part of a trilogy—it’s a bridge between the first and last story. However, Bioware fills this story bridge with deep characterization of the NPCs. For anyone who has played Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic, the structure of Mass Effect 2 will feel very familiar. There’s an overall story, but the meat of the game is recruiting your party members, gaining their trust, and preparing for a big ol’ battle in the endgame.

The size of your party in Mass Effect 2 literally doubles from the party size of the first Mass Effect. While the NPCs from the first game were good, the depth of their background stories are almost nothing compared to the depth of the backgrounds of these other twelve party members. As you talk with each party member between missions and eventually accompany them on what’s called a “loyalty mission” to gain their ultimate loyalty, you really learn who they are, what they’re good at, what they fear, etc.

Wait. Let’s take a moment to examine the loyalty missions and the “gaining loyalty” bit. Personally, I think Bioware made a mistake in calling them loyalty missions and saying that you’re gaining a party member’s loyalty. The overall story of this game is you’re going to go on what amounts to a suicide mission. All of the loyalty missions are loose ends that each character needs to take care of before they can fully commit themselves to what looks like a suicide mission. It isn’t a matter of gaining their personal loyalty, but their loyalty to the mission and the ability to dedicate themselves fully to the task at hand.

Anyway. The NPCs interact with each other more in this game than in the first, oftentimes with hilarious results.

Which brings me to the dialogue. Bioware is amazingly good at dialogue, both for your character and the rest of the cast. In this game, Bioware doesn’t disappoint.

I’ll admit, the combat in the first Mass Effect felt somewhat lacking. In this game, the combat has been greatly enhanced and given more strategy and depth.

However. This enhanced combat (which is really enhanced gunplay) comes at the cost of having unlimited ammo to having to use actual ammo and pick up actual ammo clips. If you played the first game, or even if you didn’t, having to find and pick up ammo is annoying and gets in the way of the game itself. Added to the ammo problem, you have the nerfed Biotic abilities. In the first game, if you wanted to, you could play through the game without having to use a gun if you were an Adept. For people who aren’t particularly good at shooters (or play enough shooters that they want to try something different), it was awesome. I mean, once you got to the higher levels, you were practically a Biotic god and could toss people and items around at your whim. It was great.

You can’t do this in Mass Effect 2. Everything has armor and/or barriers, and the “fun” biotics don’t work unless armor and barriers are removed from the enemies. The thing is, once you get rid of the armor or the barriers or the shields (sometimes an enemy has all three!), the enemy becomes a one or two-hit kill for a gun. It’s more efficient to just finish them off with some bullets than throw them or pull them.

As someone who played through the first game on Insanity using an Adept with minimal use of guns, this nerfing makes me very sad.

Now, about some other game mechanic choices. In the first game, you had to explore planets in a vehicle called a Mako, discover ore, survey it, and that gave you money. In this game, you survey planets from the ship by using a scanner and when you find a deposit of ore, you send a probe to mine it. Now, this scanning doesn’t even net you any money. Instead, you use it for various upgrades. Here’s the thing about the scanning—it’s boring. It’s mind-numbingly boring. There’s one planet that isn’t boring to scan—Uranus. I’m serious. Go to the Local Cluster, scan Uranus, and send a probe. And then for good measure, send out another probe. You’ll thank me later.

Despite its faults, Mass Effect 2 is a wonderful game. I loved it, I played it for hours, and will play it for even more hours when more DLC comes out. It’s got an A- from me.

Anyway, I stumbled on this exchange about two-thirds of the way into the commentary thread (bit of comment that started the exchange highlighted in the first screenshot):

I played the demo available on the Xbox Live Marketplace and was underwhelmed and perhaps somewhat whelmed. I liked all the aspects of it (even the controls didn’t suck) except one—the camera. It won’t zoom out far enough so you can see the entire map.

If you’ve played Starcraft, there’s no excuse why they can’t show the whole thing (I mean, you zoom out far enough, you saw all your revealed land and armies and stuff, and the fog of war applied to the rest). It’s a real-time strategy game and it’s hard as shit to really get some good overall strategy when you can’t see everything. (I’m not talking about the fog of war either, that’s a great, long-standing RTS element). They have every reason to emulate one key aspect of one of the most popular RTS games of all-time.

I played through the tutorial and barely started the campaign, hoping (because I’d liked the rest, surprisingly) that you could have a zoom-out-more option once you got out of the tutorial.

I was wrong. You couldn’t. And all I could think about as I tried to play was “I want this motherfucking camera to zoom out more.” Since that was all I could think of, I certainly couldn’t strategize, and stopped playing.

Though I did feel like playing Starcraft.

I have never seen the ending to Super Mario Bros.

…or Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, TMNT, Jurassic Park game for Sega, or any of the Sonic the Hedgehog games.

For a long time, I thought it meant I sucked at video games in general. This inability to beat the early games (invariably, always platformers) gave me a deep-seated fear that I would never finish any video game, ever. Especially not by myself. So when other types of games came out, and I heard the story was really good, I almost didn’t want to play them because I’d never find out the ending.

Because, for me, the Princess is still in another damn castle.

When I actually beat Starcraft, I thought it was a fluke.

Then came Mass Effect, the 3rd person action RPG. I really, really wanted to play it. And I really, really wanted to beat it and finish the story. Why? Because I like stories. A good story, for me, is a huge component of a good game. When I started playing, I nervously set out on a Normal difficulty. When I got to the “surprise” battle on Therum just before going into the prothean mine to save Liara, I died. I died a lot. But I got through it. Then [i]after[/i] saving Liara (something I later came to regret, but that’s another story) with the krogan Battlemaster and a bunch of geth troops, I died. I died several times. And the old fear came back—verily, I did suck at video games. Yet, I kept trying, and eventually got past it. I’m glad I stuck with it.

Because, little did I know that that particular battle with the krogan was one of the most difficult battles in the entire game (if you’re playing a new character and go to Therum first once you get your ship). I went on to beat the game. Then, in a burst of courage, I tried the game on Veteran. I beat it on that difficulty, too. Next came Hardcore. And then I tried Insane. I was shocked, even speechless, when I beat the game at that difficulty. Oh, and ecstatic.

Recently, I stumbled my way onto this video via Twenty-Sided Tale. It makes the case for Prince of Persia being the most innovative game of 2008—but not for obvious reasons.

Turns out, I just suck at platformers, not video games as a whole.

Nice.

Just read this post by a forum member on Bungie.net:

“Girls are better to play Halo with for the same reason that girls are better to do everything with.

Basically they smell better than guys, they’re softer, they’re nicer to look at and they have the affect of making you act like a better person when they’re around.

I can’t think of anything I enjoy doing that I don’t enjoy doing even more with a girl.”

I less than three that post.

After all the hoopla over Bungie’s forthcoming E3 announcement, it got the stop from its publisher (Microsoft) and had to shelve the whole thing. Bungie went through a shitload of work, from what I could see, only to get everything stuffed by Microsoft. How much does that suck? And then, really kick Bungie in the junk, some xbox rep confirms that Bungie is working on a new Halo title. What a way to take all the glory from Bungie, especially after they went to all that trouble and build up.

GRRface, indeed.

…and then, very flustered, accidentally healed not Cloud and his party, but the enemies instead.

America’s Army: True Soldiers

The only reason this game gets a two and not a one is because it has a sniper rifle in it. I once thought that Delta Force: Black Hawk Down was about as bad a game as you could get. Turns out I was wrong. The first incarnation of America’s Army was released in 2002 as a free PC game. For this new version, they’ve taken that decent, free game out to the parking lot, beat the ever-living shit out of it, and gave us the battered body of the game for the 360 console.

You start out in a basic training mode designed to familiarize yourself with each of the weapons used for the game, ranging from the M16A4 to the SAW. Each section begins the same way—with a lecture from a drill sergeant—and can’t be skipped (which is more than obnoxious for people who already know the weapon’s specs). You can then practice and qualify with each weapon. The aiming system is a bit off—okay, more than a bit—it’s jumpier than a barefoot child attempting to walk on hot sand.

After qualifying with all the weapons, you’re run through an obstacle course that supposedly puts all your training together. It does, in a way, and in the same boring manner as the previous sections. The directions given by the drill instructors are at once incredibly specific and exasperatingly vague. As I played the game, I hoped that our military trainees didn’t have the same issues of vague, yet specific, and entirely cranky D.I.’s.

One particularly frustrating moment in the obstacle course (designed to mimic Individual Movement Techniques) is when you have to ‘drag and heal’ a fellow soldier (in this game, a hapless volunteer). You’re given the instruction to press the ‘medic’ button.

There is no medic button.

A hit of ‘start’ and a quick consult of the instruction booklet.

Ah-ha! The medic button is Y, which is the context-sensitive button.

Resume game.

Press Y. Press Y. Press Y.

Nothing happens aside from a now playing-dead soldier and a really cranky D.I.

I’ve failed that objective. I’m scolded and sent to the senior D.I. He tells me to throw a smoke grenade at the obstacles ahead.

What obstacles ahead?

As I look, puzzled, down the course, searching for these ‘obstacles’ I’m ordered to stay in my lane.

WTF? I’m in my lane. I haven’t moved!

I still can’t find the obstacles.

Then I’m failed for the entire section for disobeying a direct order.

Gah!

Well, on my second time through, I tried holding the Y button.

The pretend-victim still pretend-died.

I did, however, find my lane and the obstacles on my second try. They were well-forward of the position I’d been in when told to stay in my lane. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?

Once you’ve completed the obstacle course, you’re taken through an urban warfare setup as a final mission for your basic training. This urban warfare mission uses paintball.

That’s right, paintball. In a video game. In the large part and not just a ‘customized, amusing feature’ part of a video game.

Turns out the paintball stays in the game. The warfare levels after basic training are all paintball-based. Add this little eye-catching feature to the need to stay painfully close to a vague yet specific squad leader with mind-numbingly boring missions like ‘take out the four machine-gun nests in four look-alike spots in a large farm-looking-map’ and you have yourself a game that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye for a better entertainment value.

Oddly enough—oddly because I can’t figure out who in their right mind would play this enough to make use of it—America’s Army: True Soldiers has a multiplayer component.

I didn’t make it that far, as I couldn’t bear to play the game any longer.

To sum it up, friends don’t let friends play America’s Army: True Soldiers. In fact, if someone offers to lend you this game, they aren’t your friend. They’re the person that picked on you in the first grade and you’re still falling for their shit. So don’t take the game. Punch him in the face instead. You’ll both be the better for it.