Review: Mass Effect

It took me long enough, but I finally managed to finish off Mass Effect on the Xbox 360. The start of a proposed series of games, but a self-contained story in and of itself, Mass Effect tells the story of Commander Shepherd as he tries to stop a rogue Spectre named Saren from carrying out his evil plans.

Lets get the bad out of the way right now. This game isn’t perfect, there’s some seriously gimped inventory management and a godawful lot of texture popping happening. Sometimes it’ll switch to a scene with a character and they’ll look like they’re made of clay, then *zing* they’re back to normal. It shows up more often than I’d like, and really shows how technologically stretched thin the 360 is as a platform.

All of that aside, Mass Effect is a brilliant cinematic experience. The presentation is top notch, essentially like a 20 hour long movie where you play the protagonist. Combat is relatively simple and accessible. There’s very little tutorials in this game, but things aren’t too tough to figure out. And once you do, combat will probably get pretty easy for you depending on the role you’ve chosen for your character.

RPGs can get pretty tiresome, what with a lot of dialog reading and such, but with Mass Effect this is made more interesting by the fact that the game’s cast speaks to each other instead of forcing you to read a book. And it’s all done in a very cinematic style, again making it feel more like a big movie rather than a game.

The story is at first glance fairly standard fare for a sci-fi, but there’s enough political and military intrigue to separate it from other games of its kind. There’s a lot of depth, especially with all the interpersonal relationships the characters have with one another.

You can blow through the game in around 15 hours or so, I’m guessing, if you focus on the main thrust of the storyline and don’t steamroll through it. There’s a ton of side quests, which I haven’t finished.

I’m definitely going to give this game another run through, maybe trying a different class and completing more of the side quests themselves. All in all, even with the glitches, I highly recommend this.

Overview Enhancements Coming

Thank Cthulhu, these are a loooooooong time coming. CCP Tuxford started a new dev blog about some coming changes in the next patch having to do with the overview.

When someone uses either an EWAR module or propulsion jamming module on you, an icon is displayed in the corresponding overview entry. The types are aggregated so if “Joe” is using 4 sensor dampeners on you you only get one icon. Also lacking is a gauge of how much effect the EW is having on you.

So we can finally quickly see who’s doing what to us in the middle of those crazy frantic fights. No more spinning the camera around wildly looking for the effects and who’s emanating them.

Also coming, overview tabs with unique settings for each, and bracket filtering so you an finally not see icons in space that you don’t want to see. Pretty sweet stuff, I can’t wait. 🙂

Review: The Orphanage

Produced by Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame, The Orphanage is a story of a couple living in an old orphanage-turned-house, with their adopted son Simon. Simon’s got issues, having all sorts of friends of the imaginary variety. When he goes missing, his mother Laura (a former resident of the same orphanage she now lives in as a house) begins to suspect these imaginary friends could be more.. supernatural in origin.

The story is not the standard-fare ghost story you might be expecting, and the slow story buildup at the start is so worth it in payoff later. It’s very well written, the characters are excellent, and the performances are all believable.

It’s a foreign film (spanish), so expect to read subtitles.

There’s some genuinely amazing bits in this film, and your heart rate will increase rapidly on many occasions. Best part is the film doesn’t suffer the hollywood scary movie failing of doing so by making loud noises and using psychotic editing. There’s some seriously scary crap happening on the screen to freak you out, and it’s damn effective.

It’s also used to service the story, not for pure adrenaline value.

I love writers strikes. They should happen more often, because the focus shifts more to foreign films, where the real talent is lying these days. If you were a fan of Pan’s Labyrinth, definitely do not miss this.