Game Review: Madden NFL '09 for Xbox 360

Madden NFL '09 (Xbox 360)

Released: August 12, 2008
Developer: EA Tiburon
Publisher: EA Sports
# of Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Price: $19.99 (new), $7.99 (used)
Available: Now


Well I have finally returned to write another review for you all to bask in the warm glow of my outrageous gaming knowledge and expert critiquing. This time is much, much different though. I am writing a review for Madden NFL 09 for the Xbox 360. Now there are a couple of issues involved with this that I must address before I begin the review, lest you all take to the streets in panic that I played a sports game *shudder*.

First of all, I’m a hardcore RPG (role playing game) fanboy and that is my preferred genre of gaming. First Person Shooters usually accompany the rpgs as well (I know odd mix). I don’t play sports games. At all. Ever. Like hell has frozen over in order for me to write this review. Even Satan is down in hell saying “Dude that’s messed up” about me having to write this. But I accept the task because maybe I can bring you some enjoyment.

Secondly, sports games are not video games. Video games were created with the intent of letting you experience a world or adventure you could never experience on your own. Grand Theft Auto is fun for a lot of people because they can beat up hobos and hookers in the game, while in reality they’d get arrested for being retarded. Anyone can be good at sports if they apply themselves and want to be good at sports. Therefore playing in the NFL is an attainable goal while slaying a dragon is not (this site does not endorse the slaying of dragons). With that, I give you my review and hope I don’t come off too biased or anything.

The Madden games have been around for quite sometime. I felt in order to do this right I had to go back and play the previous year’s iteration of the franchise, Madden 08. Now to be fair, these games have excellent gameplay. If you are in to sports games, these have the most fluid and intuitive controls out there. However there is no innovation. There is next to no difference between one year of the game and the next. They might add ONE new concept each year but that’s more as a test run to see if fans like that, and, if they don’t, well then it’s not in next year’s game. The only major difference is that the rosters for every team changes every year. However I never understood why that wasn’t just a download for say 15 bucks. It doesn’t make any sense to go out, spend 50 bucks on a game, to have it be the same thing, just with new players. But aside from that, it’s not a bad game. If you like sports games then, well you’ve already bought it regardless of my opinion but if you haven’t then go splurge on it so Electronic Arts can use that money to make better games like…..pretty much everything else. The gameplay is smooth, the controls are tight, and it is easy for a beginner to pick up and play, just don’t play a friend or you’ll get clobbered. All in all for a sports game it is fairly decent and fun to play. I just can’t stand to play it for more than 20 minutes at a time. There isn’t too much more to say about this game really and I wish there was, feel like I’m letting you all down. There are a lot of fun modes and surprisingly managing your team’s career feels kind of like micro management in an RPG and is very satisfying. Menus are very easy to navigate and this is truly a user friendly and casual gamer friendly game.

Madden NFL ‘09 is also available for Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP

Madden NFL '09 gets an 80 out of 100

Best Games of 2007

Choosing the 10 best games of 2007 is no easy feat. This was an excellent year for gaming, and I think that it shows in not just the quality of games we received, but also the variety of the good games. There are so many games I’d like to choose among a variety of systems, (except Playstation3....you get no love), but there just isn’t enough room for them all. So I tried to pick what I think are the very best games of the year. Here is my list. Hope you like it.

10) Contra 4 (Nintendo DS)

Contra 4 is a modern take on an old school game. This game re-imagines the difficulty and fun factor of the original Contra, while still doing something new and different. In my opinion, this is even better than the original and it has brought back the Contra series for a new generation of gamer to experience. You’ll still pull your hair out at the difficulty, but you’ll love this game.

9) Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)

Now most people would probably say that this game belongs higher on this list. That’s true, perhaps it does. I placed it at #9 for a few reasons, however. First, while it is without a doubt the most innovative Zelda game yet, it still has the same basic plot. It’s slightly skewed enough to seem fresh but it’s still the same. Change is not always a good thing though, so that’s not something I’m griping about. I love Zelda. I own just about every Zelda game. The main reason I dropped this so low is because I haven’t had much play time with it yet. But it is an excellent game, which really shows the potential of the DS both graphically and in terms of gameplay.

8) Rock Band (Xbox360, Playstation3, Playstation2)

Rock Band is the next big thing. It takes the screaming guitar gameplay of Guitar Hero, and combines it with 3 other instruments. The price tag for the whole set is steep, though it is honestly worth it. This game provides endless fun. The problem though is that, if you have no friends, you won’t get as much joy out of it. The hook for this gameplay is playing with friends and feeling like you are part of an actual band. While you can’t form a band online due to the current lack of a world tour mode, it seems likely this will be possible in the future.

7) Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (Sony PSP)

This game is a remake of the original Final Fantasy Tactics for the Playstation. It was a hard game to come across, due to a limited production run of the game. So, this is Square Enix’s attempt to make it available for more gamers who missed it the first time. The combat is superb and has more depth than any other game out there. Story is told through in game text sequences and anime styled cut scenes which look fantastic. This is definitely a must have for any PSP owner, or strategy game afficionado.

6) Persona 3 (Playstation2))

This game is a good example of why the Playstation2 was dominating the game industry for so long. It’s a fantastic game, with nice anime styled visuals, a great story, and an intuitive and unique combat system. Not just that, but this game is quite the hybrid. It successfully combined a Role Playing Game with a high school dating simulation for unique results. Your monsters will get stronger based on how you handle your relationships with the people around you. This is such an interesting concept; it makes you wonder why no one had thought of this concept sooner.

5) Resident Evil 4 (Nintendo Wii)

Resident Evil 4 is one game that has stood the test of time and has never faltered. This game single handedly redefined the survival horror genre for video games. Now, this is an old game. It was originally released for the Gamecube around the end of 2004, beginning of 2005 I believe. Since then, it was re-released on the Playstation2 with extra content that the Gamecube owners never got to see. Well the Wii version remedies that by giving Nintendo owners the most complete version to date by combining the extra modes and content from the other games into this one entry. Not just that, but the control scheme works remarkably well on the Wii. And even though it is fairly dated, this game’s visuals still look impressive. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the price is just right. $30.00 for a brand new game is a lot better than $50.00, especially for a game as good as this. This game is one of the greatest games of all time. And, I don’t think it will ever be bumped from that list.

4) God of War II (Playstation2)

God of War II shows the true potential of the PS2 and gives gamers what they want. Visceral action and an intriguing storyline make up the heart of this game. No PS2 owner should be without it. Playing Kratos as he tries to reclaim his lost God powers is an absolute blast from beginning to end. Get your fill now though, because God of War III is going to be a Playstation3 exclusive . This game will keep you coming back for more over and over again, and it really shows that you don’t need to spend $600 to get the best graphics known to man. God of War II has the best graphics of any PS2 game and then some.

3) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Multi-platform)

The Call of Duty series has always been deeply rooted in World War 2 history. This time, it’s all about modern day combat. Gamers around the world are eating up its extremely fun and challenging multiplayer component, and that’s where this game shines. Call of Duty 4 is a game that was meant to be played online, even though it does have a robust single player campaign. There is no greater joy then having your pick of around 20 different guns and the variety of perks at your disposal just to kill your opponents. This game changes the way we think of multiplayer First Person Shooters (fps), and has paved the way for the next era of the FPS genre.

2) Bioshock (Xbox 360, PC)

Bioshock is one of the main reasons to own an Xbox360. This game has incredible story-telling, somewhat complex, but fun, combat and gameplay, a unique but fun hacking system, and a deep upgrade system. This game has only two problems. It’s not as long as I would have liked. Though, that is only a problem because it was so much fun. I wanted to play more of it. Also, the final boss fight and endings aren’t that good. Yet, it still keeps bringing me back to explore the undersea world of Rapture. The graphics are some of the best on the 360 to date. This is one that should not be missed. If you own a 360, you owe it to yourself to purchase this game.

And now folks, we come to the number 1 entry for Best Game of the Year. Not many of you will disagree with this choice. The few of you that do can’t manage to get your hands on the system itself, let alone the game.

And the winner is….

1) Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo Wii)

Mario again takes the title of champion for another year. The Mario games have always been a blast, but not too innovative. They all play essentially the same way. While this is somewhat true for Galaxy, it also means something completely different. On the surface it may seem like it plays like its predecessors, but then you round a corner and now you’re on the bottom of the planet. The game constantly disorients you (which is actually fun) and gives you a fresh Mario experience. Yes it plays similar but at the end of the day,but, if it isn’t broke why fix it? This game also clearly demonstrates the real potential of the Wii’s hardware and the crisp, vibrant graphics the system is really capable of displaying. People thought the Wii was a joke and that the hardware could never have matched anything Sony or Microsoft could come up with. Here’s proof that those people are wrong.

So there you have it folks, the Best of 2007.

Worst Games of 2007

I have been given the daunting task of choosing the 10 worst games from 2007. However, choosing the 10 absolute worst games isn’t always the best of ideas. I mean a Barbie game could have come out this year and who even cares? No, instead I am going to do the 10 worst games of 2007 that you have played or are probably playing now. So buckle up kiddies. There will also only be one game per franchise. With some of these games I am also factoring in expectations. I realize no game ever meets expectations but I’ll be damned if they shouldn’t come close. So now I humbly present to you the Worst of 2007.

10) Crysis (PC)

Many of you would probably read that and want to burn me at the stake. That’s fine. I’m not saying the game itself is bad. It truly is a phenomenal testament to gaming. However, the fact that you probably need to buy like a $600 video card just so you can play it so it runs smoothly is just a joke. That’s like saying you bought a Playstation3 just for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. In other words, it’s a good game but the price tag is way too high.

9) Halo 3 (Xbox360)

Shhh…I feel a disturbance. I feel as though a thousand screaming fan boys cried out all at once and then were silenced. No matter what way you slice it the Halo series has not lived up to the hype since the first Halo. This series isn’t bad per say, but it’s not exactly trying to accomplish much. Halo 2 felt like Halo 1.5 and Halo 3 just feels like Halo 1.6. The story is extremely uninspired. The multiplayer is not very robust, except for the Forge, but more than half of the game types and settings you won’t try to use because you think they are lame. So most of the originality of the Forge is tarnished from the get go. I will applaud the 4-player online co-op addition which is what makes the game. But after that, all you have is an over glorified first person shooter, with the same story as its predecessors, extremely underwhelming and shinier graphics for a next-gen game, and the fact that the multi-player does not offer as much as nearly any other multi-player game on the market. Legendary mode is ridiculously easy as well. We all wanted to love you Halo, but every time I enter a game store I see more than a few copies of you used on the shelf. And we all know why.

8) Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (Xbox360, Playstation3)

Considering that this is a game from the makers of Hitman, you could believe that it would be pretty good. Let me assure you that it isn’t. If I had to rate it I would give it 2.5 stars out of 5. It has got a great story, but the game itself is basic by today’s standards. You play as Kane, a man who is told by fellow crooks that you owe them a lot of money. If you don’t get that money for them EXTREMELY soon, your wife and child are going to die. They give you this nut job to help you named Lynch. He will literally randomly start taking out hostages for no reason whatsoever. And the computer Artificial Intelligence (AI) is flat out retarded. You can pretty much stand behind one wall of cover and the computer opposition will take turns running blindly at you. It’s a joke really. Also for a game with this much gunplay, there has to be a better way of shooting people like a lock on system or something.

7) Clive Barker’s Jericho (Xbox 360, Playstation3)

This game looked amazing from the screenshots and all the information we were getting on it. Then it suffered the Halo syndrome. All bark no bite. The graphics are stellar but the rest of the game falls short. Uninspired enemies (there are only about 3 different enemy types in the whole game), bad mission design, level lighting issues, and horrible computer allies’ AI. The developers did work in a cool mechanic where you could switch back and forth from your unique teammates by possessing their bodies. However, this becomes boring real quick as you will just stick with the 1 or 2 characters you like most and never switch (unless absolutely necessary). Oh yeah, there is no ending either. It just shows a shot of the ocean and plays music of some girl singing like a Kenny G song. How would that make you feel?

6) Two Worlds (Xbox 360)

I think this may have been on another system as well but I don’t know nor do I care to know. This game sucks. One would think that to copy the formula behind Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would make this game superb. In reality, this game is the destruction of everything that was fun in Oblivion. It’s not worth your money. The controls are terrible, the graphics are terrible, the combat system is terrible, and oh look at that, the story is terrible. Skip this game if you know what’s good for you.

5) Spider-Man 3 (Multiple Platforms)

This game could have been excellent if the developer’s simply copied the game play from Spider-Man 2. For whatever retarded reason they came up with in their twisted minds, they decided to change and screw up the perfect web slinging mechanics of the preceding game. If something’s not broken, why fix it? Well that’s because you’re a jackass and you like to make babies cry. Everyone who has played this game will talk about the poor mission structure and all of that crap. However, poor mission structure would have been more than bearable if you could have at least had fun getting there.

4) Lair (Playstation3)

Let me get this straight. This game was developed by the team that created Star Wars Rogue Squadron, one of the best Star Wars flying simulations ever made. Not only that but they used the exact same engine to make this game. How can that go wrong? Well it didn’t just go wrong; it went about as wrong as you can possibly get without pissing God off. Apparently turning X-Wings and Tie-Fighters into dragons just doesn’t translate well I guess. The controls are absurdly difficult to handle thanks to Nintendo’s patented motion control….wait…..I mean Sony’s patented Sixaxis motion control. That and a terrible story make for a terrible game. Steer clear folks.

3) Tenchu Z (Xbox 360)

The Tenchu series has been steeply declining in quality ever since the Playstation1 era of gaming. The first entry on the Playstation2 marked the series downfall. This game continues in that direction. There is a character creator which is cool. But this is where the game has another big fault as well. Since you make your character in this game, he/she isn’t really the central protagonist and you can feel that when you play. It is hard to get drawn into a character that has no place in a game whatsoever. Not just that but the graphics are terrible and so is the game play.

2) Vampire Rain (Xbox 360)

Here is another case of good-idea-gone-bad. Take an incredible game series like Splinter Cell and mash it up with vampires. Sounds good in theory but in execution is just awful. You are charged with mission after mission of sneaking around avoiding these super human vampires to complete certain objectives. However, if these vampires see you its game over because your guns can’t possibly kill them. The guns do little to no damage so what’s the point of even having the guns? Not just that but these vampires are like high school cheerleaders. They talk so fucking much. Just shut up already!

And now folks, we come to the number 1 entry for Worst Game of the Year. Some of you may disagree and some may sing my praises from the rooftops (if you’re going to do that, come sing on my roof so I can hear it). Whether you think I am being too harsh or not, no one can dispute that my facts are false and/or opinion based.

And the winner is….

1) Heavenly Sword (Playstation3)

That’s right. Heavenly Sword is the worst game of 2007. This is for many reasons however, for me there is one main reason: Originality. This game is a straight bootleg rip-off of God of War. There is no denying that fact. The game starts off with the main character Noriko, a scantily clad female, dying in the throes of battle and the rest of the game is spent recapping the story of how she got to that point and ultimately to what happens right after that event. God of War starts off with Kratos dying by throwing himself off a cliff and the rest of the game is recapping how he got to that point and then his ascension to being a God. Seeing a pattern yet? Now just like God of War, you have two attack buttons, square and triangle. The point of having two of them is to that they DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT! However it is made clear early on in the game that if you hit the triangle button at the right time you will counter an enemy attack and do a quick kill. So basically they tell you at the beginning to mash the triangle button cause square won’t benefit you at all. In God of War (GoW), square was your quick attacks and triangle was your heavy attacks. Heavenly Sword decided to assign different stances. By holding a particular shoulder button, you can stand in a power stance, quick stance, or ranged stance, all with different properties. However you have to hold down a shoulder button the whole time which can be pretty tedious. The sixaxis controls are terrible as well. There are several segments in the game where you play as Noriko’s retarded and creepy sidekick who shoots like an automatic crossbow. These segments require you to tilt the sixaxis in order to hit your targets. This is hard enough when the enemies can’t get at you and you’re just trying to take them out. Its damn near impossible when they can actually hit you and you need to fire fast to kill them. One shot when doing the motion controls, called After-Sight (what the f**k)), kills them instantly, but it can take up to 4 crossbow shots if you are not performing the After-Sight. I’ve been told you can shut those controls off but if you can’t play a game with the default settings then what good is the game? That’s like playing Ninja Gaiden with a game shark and saying, “Well it was too hard for me with the game’s standard settings so I had to change them.” And last, but not least, there are the puzzles. Now again for every one of you people out there who has said to me “An action game doesn’t need puzzles” let me take this time to tell you to back off and go play Grand Theft Auto or Halo 3. Puzzles are the reason we play these games. Want proof? Look at God of War. Every boss battle in that game is a puzzle combined with hack and slash. There is a reason most hack-and-slash games have puzzles, and that’s so the combat doesn’t feel boring or repetitive. Heavenly Sword’s puzzles don’t really break up the action much so it constantly feels repetitive. The puzzles are absolutely laughable. Every single one consists of finding a cart of HATS (Screw you. They are not shields. Why would they have straw shields?) and proceeding to grab one of the hats and throw it (using the After-Sight controls) at a gong which will open the door you need to proceed through. How uninspiring. I’m sorry but who the hell thought this was a good idea?! “Hey, let’s make them throw hats at gongs! Wouldn’t that be fun? Man I have always wanted to do that!” Not just that but this game is ridiculously short for a “killer app” for the Playstaion3. You can beat it in around 6 hours I believe. The story is crap as well.

So there you have it folks, the Worst of 2007.

Leave your comments to this story. Do you agree or disagree? Let’s hear what you think.

Worst Games of 2007

Game Review: Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (Nintendo DS)

Released: November 20, 2007
Developer(s): Square Enix and Think & Feel Inc.
Publisher: Square Enix
# of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E10+ for Everyone 10+
Price: $19.99 (used)
Available: Now

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS is a real time strategy game (from this point on known as RTS). RTS games are all about building a small army then using it to destroy the enemy’s army and base. One would think that the DS would be the perfect platform for RTS games what with the touch pad/stylus control scheme. However, they have yet to do one of these games right. Revenant Wings is the closest they have come to success though.

Revenant Wings begins with a few tutorial stages on how to play the game and how the rock-paper-scissors style of gaining an advantage over your enemies in combat is supposed to work. Melee characters have an advantage over ranged characters, which have an advantage over flying characters, which have an advantage over melee characters. Now this game is a sequel to the Playstation 2 game, Final Fantasy XII. Even though it is a sequel, you do not need to know a single thing about the first game to understand this one. The only real tie in to the first game is that a good portion of the characters from the first game appear in this one. That’s it. Not much of a sequel.

The plot is extremely simplistic. As Vaan, the main character, who is SEVERELY feminine, your Sky Pirate ship is lost at the beginning of the game after the training missions. When he witnesses a kind of ship he’s never seen before land in the city, he decides to steal it and his fledgling sky pirate friends decide to find him on the ship when it suddenly flies into the sky to some unknown floating continent. Upon exiting the ship they find that this continent is under attack by other sky pirates, who are able to summon monsters (just like you are) to basically slaughter all of the people. Later on (like 12-18%) in the game, you come to find out that the bad guy is called the Judge of Wings and he is looking for this huge piece of Auracite which will basically allow him to challenge God. It just so happens the reason you can summon monsters is cause you have a smaller piece of the auracite crystal, as does your other friend Balthier, who you don’t see after the training levels (gasp! I wonder where he could be….).

Now, let’s move on to the flaws of the game. I’m sorry to any readers if it seems like I pick on a games flaws mostly. Unfortunately as is usually the case, flaws stand out more than unexpected perks. And I have yet to play a game where I was pleased by something that was never talked about being in the game, pretty much because they will always talk about whatever it is to hype the game.

First off, the DS controls fall flat on their dual screened ass. RTS games are fun and great to play because of the control you have. You can literally pick out each and every single one of your units and direct him to do something differently. In this game you can not, it’s almost impossible to just pick the one character you want to select when they are all clumped together or in the middle of a fight. Square did try to work around this problem though. Part of the problem is that the screen is too small to be very accurate with the stylus. The other part is that there is no real way of breaking up the controls to a working point without complicating the interface. Square Enix’s solution was basically to let you clump units together. Every main character you had was like a leader. They would get special skills that they could use on enemies. Example: Kyte, your ranged attacker, could learn (through leveling up) to use firaga, blizzaga, or bio magic. These would hit all enemies but obviously, you would have to play to their weakness to be truly effective with it. Let’s talk about your summoning chums now before I get too crazed.

Your piece of auracite lets you summon monsters onto the battlefield through special summoning gates. These gates do not appear on every level though, so most often whatever you start with is what you are stuck with. When you start a level, each leader type will have 2 monsters as his (for lack of a better term) lackeys. Whenever you click that leader’s character tab at the top of the screen, it selects the whole group so instead of moving one character you can move 3 or however many you have. This was actually a wise move on Square Enix's part. But at the same time it clogs the interface. The screen is small enough as is and it’s a pain to be confined to such a small face with a big enough interface interfering with it. Now as for the monsters, how you acquire news ones is different and unique. Basically, you have something like the license board from Final Fantasy XII. It’s a ring with 4 general sections of fire, earth, lightning, and water. Each corresponds to a different elemental magic. You spend spare auracite you find after some missions (usually story missions) to unlock a new monster on the wheel, unlocking 1 of each type of monster (melee, ranged, flying) in that section opens up the next LVL 2 branch of monsters to unlock. The cool thing is you get to unlock some serious classics like Ifrit and Shiva. The bad thing is that more often than not, your monsters weakness is the elemental type of the creature that’s weak to you. In other words, Ifrit is fire and Shiva is weak to fire, but Shiva is ice and Ifrit is weak to ice. It’s not very well balanced. You can actually set up a grouping of 5 monsters before and after each battle so you can try to play to the enemy’s weaknesses. With this, the problem is how the characters start off.

You can configure your monster setup so that Vaan should be starting off with two lightning melee types but his starting lackeys will be just random. How are you supposed to use the STRATEGY in REAL TIME STRATEGY if you can’t even manage your troops accurately?

I have 2 other things to say about this game before I drop my score. 1) The missions. While there are a lot, they are broken up too much by pages and pages of text. I don’t know about you but if took a game like Devil May Cry and had Dante talk for about an hour in the middle of each fight I’d get pretty tired pretty fast. Not just that, but some of the missions are ridiculously out of place. One such mission appears early on, where instead of letting you amass a small army to take out the bad guys, you have to stealthily sneak Vaan into a temple. And if he gets noticed, you have to start over because he can’t kill any of the enemies on the map. While there is no place for a mission like that in an RTS, it would even be manageable except once you’re in a spot where you think you can’t be seen, and the computer still manage to somehow see you. There are chests to get on the level but its damn near impossible cause you have to rush to the end of the level if you want to live. 2) The customizing. Now early on you are told that you get to make stronger items out of random things you find in battle or after each mission like bones, leather, etc. While that’s true, it’s not until somewhere around 4 hours into the game that you are allowed to do so. This is about 20% into the game (if your doing all of the optional missions as well). That should have been available from the start considering how a large part of the success of battle depends on what items your character has equipped.

All in all, this is a decent game at best. At worst, its an experiment adding another lackluster game to Square's downward spiral of bad games. The game attempts to do a lot of things right to push the genre forward on the DS but still falls short. However if you are looking for a great RTS experience on the DS, this is the closest your going to get. The question is would you really care if this game wasn’t called Final Fantasy? Probably not.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings gets a 63 out of 100

Game Review: Mass Effect for the X-Box 360

Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

Released: November 20, 2007
Developer: Bioware
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
# of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: M for Mature
Price: $27.99 (used)
Available: Now

In many ways Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 is a fantastic game. I absolutely love this game however I am aware of some of its problems which I will address in this review. My biases towards the game will be kept out as much as possible. To start reviewing this game, one has to understand its roots. It is developed by Bioware, using the same team that worked on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1. Many of the features that appeared in KOTOR appear in Mass Effect as well and this is where the games biggest problem comes in. KOTOR was a phenomenal game that I still play to this day because of its storytelling and ahead-of-its-time game play innovations. Mass Effect sadly doesn’t follow suit. My biggest gripe is that it feels like a down grade from a game like KOTOR but alas, let me explain further.

In Mass Effect, you can lean your character more towards a crueler, Renegade side or you can lean towards a nice, Paragon side (more on that in a minute). First off, you get to choose between playing the default model of Shephard and creating your own. No matter what you do, you’re character’s last name is Shephard which feels a bit constraining but, for the purpose of voice acting, the reasoning is obvious. However, there aren’t enough options to customize your character and maybe I’m just being picky here but if you can alter the features of your character down to the scars they might have across their face, (which is extremely limited mind you), why shouldn’t you be able to pick a voice type for the character as well? I mean it is certainly not beyond the current technology. It would have been nice to have some more options when it came to customizing especially since that aspect of the game was played up quite a bit in any of the games ads/reviews/previews.

Gameplay wise it’s very well built. The idea of combining a real time RPG with a third person shooter works a lot better than I had expected. That being said there are still some problems. Every gun has unlimited ammo which is great. You acquire new and better guns and armor which you can either hold onto for your teammates or you can turn into omni gel, the games equivalent of “Jesus in a can.’’ All of the weapons and armor can be equipped with different upgrades such as giving your armor 40% resistance against Toxic damage or giving your pistol a 25% increase in damage to organics. This adds a lot of customization to your characters as does leveling up. Each character levels up at exactly the same time, whether they are in your party or not. When your characters level they get skill points which can be allocated to advance their skills. Each character is a different “class” so they have different skill sets. These skill points can be allocated automatically by pressing the Y button or you can customize your characters yourself which I highly recommend (as I was playing I tried the auto-assign twice and it kept giving my character 2 points in Shotguns when he never uses that type of gun). Anyway, you can switch back and forth in mid-battle between your different weapons depending on the situation. The problem with the guns is the accuracy reticule. It starts out very small when you are aiming and gradually gets bigger, with something like a shotgun this might not matter much, but for an assault rifle, it’s a pain. Not because it’s inaccurate though. It makes sense that if you just hold the fire button down you’ll be less accurate, that’s fine. It’s when you do that because you’re surrounded and then it takes literally around 1 whole minute to return to its most accurate point. While it may not seem like much, in a big fire fight/boss battle, that could be the difference between life and death. The other thing is overheating. It adds a distinct feel to the guns so you don’t just Halo your way through the game.

Games have recently been having some sort of Hacking minigame in them for some odd reason. Bioshock is one such game. Mass Effect does this as well. The premise is that in order to open security lockers and special storage containers, you have to hack into the system in order to bypass the lock and reap the rewards. This can be done one of two ways. If you have a character in your party with points in the Decryption and Electronics skills you can manually try to break the lock by playing a minigame. The minigame will consist of you pushing either the X, Y, A, or B button simultaneously as they light up on the screen. This is ridiculously easy and honestly I felt like they could have put a much more intuitive hacking system into the game. A retarded monkey shouldn’t be able to hack a computer for God’s sake. The other way to hack is with omni gel. I just have a problem with this idea in general. It basically says to the gamer “hey, lets take that EXTREMELY easy hacking minigame away because your ADD is that bad.” There is no valid reason whatsoever to have omni gel in the game. The only thing I’ve seen it good for is repairing you’re little dune buggy thing, the Mako, but you can only repair it a tiny tiny bit when it’s about to explode and kill you. And I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure if there was a substance in the future that would basically let you do anything, ONE PERSON would control it all cause I can imagine that would be extremely valuable. Yet, you can obtain it by simply opening your equipment screen and discarding some unwanted armor or weapons. As for the Mako, that’s another problem as well. The damn thing steers terribly. If you are on a flat surface with it, the controls are fairly responsive and tight. As soon as you hit a hill, the vehicle itself will turn whichever direction it feels like turning, regardless of whether or not going over the hill would have impacted it to turn in such a direction.

Now my biggest problem with this game: Morality. Every game that has tried to do the whole morality rating system has had major problems with it in my eyes. KOTOR was probably the best execution of the idea to date. In KOTOR2, you’re entire party would be affected by the light side or dark side decisions you made but the conversation text would not change regardless of your affiliation. In Fable, every little thing you did affected your morality and while you might be crusading to be a good person and one decision is enough to make you completely dark, ruining all your work. Mass Effect works similar to the first KOTOR. You character will always have a charm and intimidate skill which points can be added to in order to give you more options in some quest dialogues. When in conversation, these options will appear in blue for charm (Paragon) and red for intimidate (Renegade). Choosing these will give you some points towards whichever faction as well. The problem here is that it is too linear. They might as well have just asked you at the beginning of the game which type of character you want to play. The good/Paragon choices in conversation will always be in the top right of the dialogue wheel, neutral will be in the middle, and bad/Renegade will be in the bottom right corner. Any options that appear on the left (aside from the blue and red options) are for extra information. Occasionally a good or bad option might be on the left but not often enough to be careful. This makes the game suffer because it doesn’t feel real, not just that but Shephard only talks when you tell him what to say. I’m sorry but if I was receiving orders from a Commanding officer I’m not going to be a complete jerk/Renegade. There is no real reason why he can’t have some lines outside of what you choose. That’s a small thing though. The problem is that the dialogue options are too limited. At most you get like 6 different options, 3 on the right and left, but more often than not, each person you speak to will have the Investigate option on their left side. I just didn’t get the feeling that every decision I made affected the whole galaxy (like they hyped in the marketing). Not just that but your decisions didn’t affect dialogue too much.

Another problem is that the textures usually take a few seconds before they load both for the characters’ armor and the environment. And loading times suck. With the technology we have now, there should be no reason for loading screens. Its one thing to have something going on over these screens and another to see a big device with the words loading in small text at the bottom of the screen. Not just that but the loading when you are in an elevator seems like it takes forever. That is something that could have easily been fixed.

While there are plenty of side quests to be undertaken and a great list of achievements (which give the game even more replay value seeing as though most won’t be acquired in the first run through of the game), the game is too linear. There are no consequences for taking forever to do a side quest you got in the first hour of the game. Hard decisions my ass, you don’t have to make any concerning the general populace of the galaxy except to say “Where should I go first?”

All in all, this is an excellent game. While I have my misgivings and problems with the game, it is definitely fun to play and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs, you’ll get your money’s worth.

Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 scores an 85 out of 100

Finally

Alright well I finally am able to get this review blog going. This will only be part of it though as I intend on having at least one more. This blog will devoted to game reviews and that is it. I will have a second blog that reviews books, movies, comics, tv shows, etc. I hope many of you decide to follow these blogs or at least give me some constructive feedback on my reviews. I hope you all enjoy the blogs as much as I enjoy writing the reviews.