My 5 Gripes About Mass Effect

Mass Effect has been ruling my life for the past week. If my first impressions post wasn't any indication, I've really been taken with almost every aspect of this game, from the near-perfect blend of action and role-playing, to the engrossing pull of its narrative and cinematics. Like Oblivion before it, Mass Effect stands as a prime example of how to open up the traditionally hardcore genre of RPGs to a mainstream audience.

All is not perfect in the galaxy, however, as my numerous play sessions this week have uncovered more than a few black marks that as tarnished an otherwise superlative gaming experience. I give to you, in no particular order, my key complaints with BioWare's latest masterpiece.


Auto-Saving
I'm so grateful that this game has a save anywhere system. In fact, it's pretty much expected with a game like this that the designers would allow you to save your progress whenever you felt like it. Save checkpoints would frankly be moronic and would no doubt cause a black hole to open up beneath BioWare's headquarters to be swallowed up forever, never to be seen again, had they been foolish enough to go that route. The game also auto-saves your progress at certain points, oh, maybe once every 30 minutes or so.

Seriously, if you're going to bother implementing an auto-save system, can you at least by smart about it? How about an autosave before a big battle, or an autosave after you've hacked a bunch of storage lockers in a row and acquired all the sweet loot inside? No, you're not given those luxuries. In fact, the game practically forces you to manually save your game yourself, which becomes pain after a while since it breaks the flow of your game and takes you out of the story.

Thankfully, saving and loading games is a speedy affair, but I truly feel they could have done the autosaving mechanics so much better. Could there be an update for this in the works?


Sprinting/Storming is Broken
If you hold down the "A" button while you're moving, you can make Commander Shepard do a full dash and possibly fatigue himself. It's a useful move at times when you need to enter (or escape) a room quickly or get into cover without getting pegged too much by biotics or gunfire. My only problem with sprinting is it almost never works. IGN's review of pointed out how certain button functions disable for no reason whatsoever. While every other function has performed without any hitches for me, the sprinting button is consistently broken. It seems like I can only sprint once every mission or planet landing. Once I've used up my sprint, I get this fake Gears of War camera effect that gives you the impression that you're running faster, but you're not.

This is probably the biggest, ugliest technical issue with the game and I hope an update is in the works to get this patched up.


Game Manual is Useless
The days of the juicy, tome-like game manuals chock full of beautiful imagery and detailed instructions are pretty much the thing of the past, even for PC games. Console games have always had skimpy manuals in the box, but when you pick up an RPG, you sort of expect a little more meat on the bones since you're dealing with more complex game play mechanics.

Mass Effects manual is an atrocity. It's poorly organized, poorly ordered and doesn't contain enough useful information about combat, inventory management, leveling, control layout and skills. These are huge omissions, which wouldn't be a problem if there were some in-game tutorials. Unfortunately, Mass Effect's idea of a tutorial is to throw a tiny text pop-up onto the screen. Press A to clear the message, and that's it: the lesson is over.

This snafu qualifies the BioWare crew as some the dumbest smart guys ever in gaming. Either give us a quality game manual with useful information, or give us some well-integrated in-game tutorials. Please don't shaft gamers on both.


Thresher Maws
Need I say more?


RPG Elements Not as Deep as Expected
I'm not a role-playing elitist, but I don't feel the leveling and skills system in Mass Effect is all that deep. Sure, you can manage the skill point distribution of your entire squad of NPCs and acquire "specialty classes" in the course of the game. I was expecting a system that went a little deeper, something that accounted for base statistics like intelligence and strength and at the same time presented some sort of branching skill tree. As it is now, the skill system is very flat and linear. It doesn't take any time at all to max out a couple of your main skills and while you sometimes need to invest points in one skill area to unlock a new one, there isn't really a big sense of discovery or accomplishment. It literally feels like a RPG leveling system that was tacked on to an action game.

It's still possible to create different versions of a particular class. For example, you can make a Soldier that specializes in stealth and long-range firepower or a real close-range bruiser that excels in using the shotgun, melee attacks and heavy armor. I just wish there was more depth to the leveling system in general and hope they improve on that in the next two games in the trilogy.


Bonus Gripe: The film grain effect sucks and it's beyond me why that is enabled by default.

(Update)
Okay, so I had no idea OXM also had their own little 5 Things... critique of Mass Effect. No matter, as I wanted to correct myself regarding the sprinting/storming function. It's not broken, apparently, and I was merely just not noticing how it only activates when the game has entered "combat mode". After a few tests of this during one of my side quests to confirm this, I humbly retract my complaint... and replace it with a new one!

There seem to be only 2 or 3 template designs for the "dungeons" used on the side quest planets. Aside from being populated with slightly different enemies, these mercenary hideouts or research labs all boil down to the same couple of room layouts, right down to the positioning of the crates and combustible canisters. For a game of this caliber, this obvious use of templates is more than a little disappointing. Shame on you, BioWare.

Now excuse me while I go play some more...

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Mass Effect: First Impressions

I struggled out of bed this morning, dizzy and feeling under the weather. That, of course, did not deter me from bolting out the door, breakfast bar in hand, to snatch up my pre-ordered copy of Mass Effect over at EB Games.

After greedily ripping off the shrink wrapping and hunkering down for a day of sporadic play (about 6 hours), I'm here to report that... I'm not very far into the game. At all. This is rather surprising, given that the game critics are clocking the main storyline to be a mere 10-15 hour run. If you add on the time it takes to complete all the side missions, that's another projected 15 hours. This brings the grand total for Mass Effect to a mere 30 hours on one thorough play-through.

By MMO and old-school RPG standards, 30 hours is but a drop in the bucket and if everything else about Mass Effect wasn't so good, I'd probably take issue with this more. A lot of the content in the game is not directly tied in the main storyline or to pad it out in order to make it longer game. No, from what I've seen so far, much of the content would seem to be optional but if you choose to explore, this optional content adds a lot of richness to the experience.

So maybe I'll get deeper into this talk about content and jump straight into my initial impressions of the game so far. Hit the jump for more details.


Graphics & Sound
How could I start this piece without praising the overall visual and audio design of this game? Mass Effect is a graphical powerhouse and is such a beautiful game to watch in action. This what happens when you employ cutting edge technology with thoughtful, creative design. BioWare has created a wholly original IP and the universe they've created is exceptionally realized, complete with breathtaking settings, memorable characters and a real cinematic approach to the presentation. I love the look of the cutscenes and even conversations with the most trivial NPCs are framed like you were watching the scene straight out of a movie.

The sound is no slouch either, with some of the best voice work seen in a video game so far. Aside from cast of excellent actors on board to bring these characters to life, you have this amazing quantity. I have never heard so much spoken dialog in a game, and I've barely finished the first main quest. Almost everything is spoken, right down to your Codex guide, which is a sort of personal encyclopedia of the Mass Effect world.

Gameplay
As I mentioned already, I may have spent half the day playing this game, but my Commander Shepard is only at Level 7 and I've just cracked my first main quest. The play mechanics are pretty standard for your typical RPG: you find a new area, explore the beejuzus out of it, take side quests along the way, level up your avatar (and NPC companions) and obtain new loot. What really elevates this old song and dance is the overall polish and execution. Conversations with NPCs, an eventual chore with most RPGs, becomes pretty addictive thanks to the fluid and intuitive dialog system that's been perfected since BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic days. Your responses in conversations are broken into 4 general quadrants of friendly or aggressive and open-ended or close-ended. You only need to select a sort of "gut response" in the dialog wheel and your avatar will piece together a concisely worded response for you.

All of this seems gimmicky at first, and in all honesty, many conversations are railroaded into a binary choice of some kind (you either help someone or you piss them off) and you eventually get nothing but the usual hub of topics to probe an NPC about. Despite being aware of this, I still enjoy talking to even the most inconsequential character, if only to learn their story or pick up on some juicy rumors. The facial animations of the character models only enhances this social connection even more and I've already found myself regretting the things I've said to certain people, if only because their impassioned responses made me consider the implications of what I've done. That's how badly you can get wrapped up in these interactions.

My impressions on the game play wouldn't be complete without talking about the combat system. I'm playing a soldier class, so all I've had to worry about is the bang-bang and not much else. The combat really holds its own against dedicated third-person shooters like GRAW and Gears of War. Shooting the weapons feels nice and solid. It seems to strike a great balance between letting you take control (you actually have to aim to score hits) and doing the number-crunching behind the scenes to calculate damage and hit probabilities). RPG players used to turn-based or auto combat will likely hate this system. The main concessoin to these players is you can pause the game at any time by bringing up the weapon selection or combat abilities wheel. You do this by holding down the left or right bumper, then using the left analog stick to select a weapon or skill to use.

These wheel interfaces look impressive at first, but I can see them becoming quite clunky once you've started to unlock new gear and abilities through the course of the campaign. So far I've been happy to issue some basic squad commands using the D-pad and let my teammate AI determine how they react during battle. They do a pretty competent job too, although they have an annoying habit of not taking cover when I tell them to and simply standing out in the open to be shot at.

Overall
What can I say? I want to play more. Beyond the pretty graphics and the visceral, shooter-oriented combat system is the gripping story that is unfolding before my eyes. The story has me by the collar and I genuinely want to find out what happens next. This may be a slight spoiler, but when my avatar was promoted to the position of a Spectre (think intergalactic super agent), I felt a chill run through my body. The game does a marvelous job of giving you the freedom to create and customize your own Commander Shepard while still involving you in the mythology of the character within this world. The end result is you never feel like you're just leveling up some generic hero dude who exists in his own narrative void. You are the narrative, and the designers at BioWare make great efforts to ensure that you are always front and center, the star of your very own sci-fi epic.

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November Rain (and Mass Effect)

Or you can call it, "November-mas" as some gaming podcasters have come to say. Yes, we're living it right now, kids. The gaming deluge has already begun and it seems to be hitting its stride this week.

November's shooter prom king, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare released last week to near-unanimous praise. Just today, I soaked in reviews of Assasin's Creed, Kane & Lynch and Blacksite: Area 51. Next week will be all about Mass Effect.

I'm giddy with anticipation about Mass Effect. I can't believe it's a week away and I haven't even gotten that new flat screen to take advantage of what is sure to be one of the prettiest and most epic titles of the holiday season. Starting a new job with a strict attendance policy leaves me wondering how far I can push my luck and call in sick a few times after November 20th rolls around. Either that, or I can just write my next few weekends off. No more social life, just Mass Effect.

I hope the game delivers what it promises. The reviews for Assassin's Creed and have been decent, but far from stellar. I was looking forward to both of these games but after checking out the critical opinion so far, both of them have had their status lowered from "launch day purchases" to "play demo first". Mass Effect has a great pedigree with BioWare at the helm, so I my expectations are still pretty high. Ready or not, I have my copy pre-ordered and I can't wait to sprint over to my local EB Games after work next Tuesday.

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Conan: No Love For This Barbarian

I am tired of shooters.

Now, please don't get me wrong: we've had a pretty good run recently. Beginning in August, I had the pleasure of playing through BioShock, followed by the somewhat over-hyped Halo 3 and since mid-October I've been plugging my way through the triple threat presented by The Orange Box. I even paid some fan service to a forgotten title from early 2007 and picked up GRAW 2 to enjoy the shortest single-player campaign in video game history.

(Please don't mention Portal, since it's bundled with two other exceptional games and can hardly be compared with a standalone sequel the likes of GRAW 2)

I was being subjected to an aggravating jumping sequence in Half-Life 2: Episode One when it suddenly dawned on my how shooter'ed out I am. As much as I love the genre, I don't think I could maintain my sanity if I saw yet another targeting reticle hovering in the center of my TV. My shooter fatigue could not have come at a worse time. Call of Duty 4 just hit the shelves, with Army of Two and Kane & Lynch following close behind. Even my must-buy game for November, Mass Effect, has heavy shooting in its combat system, so there is literally no escaping the influence of shooters this holiday season.

That's why the new Conan game came as such a breath of fresh air. There's something to be said for context and mood. When my shooter fatigue was first beginning to set in, I had played the Conan demo and quite in spite of my pre-conceptions of the tired button-mashing play mechanics, I quite enjoyed it.

When the full game was released last month, I paid no mind, since I was happily involved with coloured portals and reliving the brilliance of the original Half-Life 2 solo campaign. To add to my ambivalence was the unanimously negative press Conan had received. The game has been savaged by critics for any number of reasons, most of them I feel are pretty unfair criticisms. Everything from the short length of the campaign, to the lack of multiplayer and it's unabashed cloning of God of War has been mentioned in most of the reviews. The actual review scores are even more brutal, with 5's and 6's being the norm and only the occasional 7 breaking up the pattern.

Knowing all of this well in advance, I still went out and paid full price for this game. Call me a sucker for gore and nudity if you want, but this game is just what I needed. What I needed to do is wash my palate clean of firearms, reloading clips and throwing grenades and embrace the barbarian within.

Conan is no A-list masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. The game is simply a fun, good old fashioned romp. The fighting system is simple, without being dumbed down and offers enough variety to actually learn a few handy moves and not have to resort to button mashing through every battle. The presentation is very unambitious for a 3rd generation Xbox 360 title, but they do the job well enough. What the game lacks in texture detail and complex geometry, it more than makes up for with its smooth animation and impressive sound track.

And you know what else is good about Conan? Yes, it's the gore. Dismemberment is the name of the game here. Besides, what's the incentive for performing a parry-counterattack or a power combo if the payoff wasn't bucket loads of blood and piles of severed limbs? Conan makes no apologies with its mature content and I for one am glad to see a game have this kind of content and not be yet another shooter.

Give this game a try. It will put hair on your chest.

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