Thursday, April 8

Contrast

Last night I completed a play through of Mass Effect. I've been avidly playing Mass Effect 2 and decided to do a play through of the original because the choices your character makes in that game carry through into #2 and will ultimately affect the conclusion to the trilogy as well.


The first game feels really clunky during combat compared to the much smoother experience of ME2, but the storytelling and emotional investment in the characters are still top notch and overall still a very enjoyable experience.


And the ending is just plain awesome. You know how most (RPG) games will have this big boss fight at the end where every skill and ability you learned throughout the game is useless and your get frustrated by having to adopt completely different playstyle/strategy just to finish the bloody thing? Well Bioware tends to do things a little different.

First of all, you have the option of getting the Big Bad Baddy to put a pistol against his head and pull the trigger. Unprecedented awesomeness right there. After that some Awgner worthy cutscenes of a spacebattle that have George Lucas crying into his pillow wondering when he lost it (around the time you cooked up Phantom Menace George) and then they play with you a bit.

It gets better when your main character tells your party members to confirm Saren,(the Big Bad Baddy) is really dead. The following cutscene sets you up to expect the classic bending over the corpse to see if he's dead only to have the 'corpse' put your neck in a vice-like grip dramatic effect. Instead your team members show uncommon sense by stopping at three yards to put another round through his brains to make sure he's dead.
The fact that this enables the Even Bigger Bad Influence directing Saren to take over his body and transform into to be destroyed mutant boss takes nothing away from the whole awesomeness. The battle itself isn't easy (certainly not as easy as Mine-blind Marek in KoToR) but not too hard either. You end up with a very satisfied ending feeling.

I finished at 22:05 sharp. So what to do then? Switch on the TV. *Click* End battle for Naboo opening scene commences and Starwars theme music plays over the surround set *click* Hmmm, I haven't finished reading Shadow of the Apt yet.

Contrast...



I fully expect Mass Effect 3 to be a fitting end to the trilogy. Where your protagonist will have to bring together several factions currently in various states of cold to hot wars in order to fight the ultimate evil known as The Reapers. For some reason I kinda expect you find a new race of furry fuzzballs to help fight the final battle

6 comments:

  1. I still have to finish the first Mass Effect once! I love(d) the game, but that my silly MMO addiction keep me away from it.

    Also a Theory Driving Test DVD-ROM is currently occupying the tray.

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  2. Wow, that is beyond typo. Being on the phone and wanting to enter a quick response is not a good combination. Apparently.

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  3. Never played Mass Effect, and don't really want to. Has Bioware stopped making you read everything? If I wanted to read, I'd read a book and my to read list is already quite long. Still, it's on my list of game to try some day, though it's quite low.

    I don't have time any more for much of anything game wise. Though right now, I'm working my way through Gothic 3. I love the Gothic series.

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  4. Does Bioware make you read?
    Maybe a little bit. The Mass Effect series is 100% voiced over with many voices a Sci-Fi or Fantasy Nerd like me recognizes.
    Luckily you can hit space to skip dialogue when reading the subtitles is faster than hearing them out.
    There's a lot of talking involved in Bioware games, but while their older games were more like Interactive books with turn-based combat (yay!) their ME series gets really close to the concept of Interactive (action) Movie.

    I never did get around to trying the Gothic series myself.

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  5. Could be I'm still living in the gaming 20th century. lol

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  6. Well, that's good for your budget I guess :-)

    http://www.gog.com/

    Great for those games you already have but won't boot under modern OSes.

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