Mass Effect: A Replay

I have been thinking of doing this for a long time but with all the rumors about a possible Mass Effect Trilogy Remastered edition for PS4 I figured I would wait. However, a couple days ago I decided to go ahead and replay the trilogy on my Xbox 360. Lets face the facts, this series is just too good. So the next three reviews I post on this blog are going to be about Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 and how they stand the test of time. Mass Effect 1 came out in 2007 and Mass Effect 2 was released in 2010. Obviously Mass Effect 3, having come out in 2012, is only two years old, but this at least gives me a chance to write a review that I haven't done yet, on one of my favorite games. Although this is a replay for me, some of you may have not played through it yet, so I will make sure to provide some background information on the story while avoiding spoilers.

I'll admit that I came a little late to the party in terms of the Mass Effect games. I started playing them last summer and each game took me about 25-30 hours, so that kept me well occupied for a couple weeks. Mass Effect 1 has to admittedly be my least favorite of the trilogy but that doesn't mean it is by any standards a bad game, in fact at the time it was released it was one of the best games ever made. Mass Effect 1 is where it all began. I'll get into the technical stuff here in a minute though. For those of you wanting to replay this fantastic trilogy along with me, head on over to GameStop and pick up the whole thing for $29.99 brand new.

Also available for PS3

Mass Effect takes place in the year 2183. 35 years after humans discovered the ruins of the Protheans, an ancient alien civilization. Through this discovery, humanity was able to take the Prothean technology of "mass effect physics" and "element zero" to move at faster than light speed travel and it propelled them into the far reaches of space where they discovered other alien races and the Mass Relay system that threaded the galaxy allowing for this galactic travel. With this new discovery humanity was able to enter the galactic stage. The main alien races are: Turians, Asari, Geth, Quarians, Salarians, Volus, Hanar, and Drell. But there are many others that the player will encounter. You play as Commander Shepard, a human member of the Alliance Navy.

A Mass Relay

One thing to keep in mind is that Mass Effect is an RPG and the best thing about these games is that the character you create in Mass Effect 1 is, hopefully, the same character you continue to use throughout the entire trilogy. BioWare lets you import your save profile from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2 and then on to Mass Effect 3. In doing this, BioWare has allowed each gamer to generate their own unique storyline with the choices the player made, resulting in different outcomes by the end of Mass Effect 3. There are three general paths to take in the series. Paragon, Renegade, or a mix of the two. Being a Paragon means the choices you make will be the "good" choices and people will come to love you. Being a Renegade is the sort of "dark" path. Based on my experience as a Renegade through this second play-though, it just means you will do anything to get the job done. I like to think I'm creating my own Jack Bauer. Or you can mix and match your "good and evil" choices. Leveling up and allocating your experience points into your character is really simple and there are different slots to level up your skills with certain weapons, dialogue options, overall skill, health, and many other things. When you choose your character, you are given the option to decide their background, and that influences how people view you. Whether you choose: Earthborn, Colonist, or Spacer. Then you get to choose your military history which are choices like: Sole Survivor, War Hero, or Ruthless. If you so choose you can also customize your first name and appearance. Creating a first name is sort of pointless because everyone just calls you, "Shepard."

Default male and female Shepard 

In terms of gameplay, Mass Effect 1 is the worst out of all three, but gameplay improves with each subsequent game. All the Mass Effect games are third-person shooter. Combat, specifically shooting, is very outdated and there is a significant amount of lag during intense battle sequences. Overall I don't think Mass Effect is very glitchy compared to Skyrim, or any Assassin's Creed game, but when things pick up during a firefight, any amount of lag is a bad thing. Switching weapons is easy. You just have to hold LB down and move the left stick to your weapon of choice, and the game pauses during all this. The equipment menus are extremely unorganized though. Mass Effect 2 and 3 improve on this feature so that during a mission you can't change your assault rifle to a different one unless you pick up a new gun or find a weapon locker in the level. It sounds like that could be an issue, but it really isn't. Something that stands out as extremely frustrating is the Galaxy Map on your ship. The Galaxy Map is what you use to travel around space. Each mission is logged in your journal. The journal tells you which galaxy and solar system your mission takes place in, but not the planet. So you wind up spending some time through trial and error trying to figure out which planet your mission takes place on. Once you find the planet, you eject out of your ship into the Mako and land. The Mako is my least favorite part of the game. It is a land vehicle that Shepard uses to traverse the area your mission takes place in. The driving controls are weird and unnatural and it doesn't run very smoothly. Slight nit-picking I know but still it is awful. Mass Effect 1's auto-save function is notoriously horrendous. The game simply doesn't save often enough so you could wind up playing a couple hours and then die for the first time and lose all that progress. So I would recommend manually saving as often as you can.

A major component of Mass Effect is your squad. Although Spectres generally work alone, Shepard doesn't. Your squad consists of you and two other teammates. Throughout the story the player will pick up different squad members to choose from for each mission. As Shepard gains experience points from killing enemies and completing missions the player can level up his or her stats along with your squad members'. Using your squad you can combine different weapon styles and power moves. For example, you can play with an assault rife, and command your other two squad mates to use a shotgun and sniper rifle for a deadly three weapon combo.

ME1 Squad Members

The graphics of Mass Effect 1 were pretty amazing in 2007. And at times there are scenes of a landscape shot of a planet and it's still beautiful. Yet naturally they don't live up to the graphical standards of today. The frame rate is low, which causes the lag during intense combat. Character animation can feel awkward at times and the mouth movements aren't the greatest. But once you start the game and play a couple hours graphics can be overlooked as long as the game is still fun and playable, and Mass Effect 1 most definitely is.

Overall Mass Effect 1 is still amazingly fun to play and with all of the different choices a player can make throughout the course of the game, a second or even third play-through is highly recommended. The story is where Mass Effect 1 shines. It is rich and full of unique characters. Enemies are diverse and so are weapon choices and weapon customization. Leveling up never gets old and the whole game is accompanied with an amazing soundtrack that I still listen to all the time. Do yourself a favor and go buy the whole trilogy, play it, and check back here for reviews of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

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8.5

+Fantastic story

+Morality system

+Nice graphics in 2007...

-...but they don't live up to today's graphics

-Gameplay is very outdated/lag issues

-Terrible auto-save function

Infamous Second Son Review

Be Your Own Superman

Let me start off by saying I beat Second Son twice this weekend. My first play through I went down the "Good" Karma path. It's hard for me to play as an evil character, but after playing as a hero, I immediately restarted and set down the path of becoming "Infamous." Second Son is a quick campaign, probably about 10 hours or less, depending on how much time you spend roaming around Seattle. And Seattle is beautifully realized. The developers at Sucker Punch really nailed down the city. And climbing to the top of the Seattle Space Needle was a pretty cool experience, especially when I used my orbital drop smoke power to dispatch the enemies and knock off the D.U.P. scaffolding that was on it. 

Going down

The game is really as long as you want it to be. Since I have beaten it twice, both times on the hardest difficulty, I am on my way to getting all the trophies so I can get the Platinum trophy. You can probably spend about twenty hours on a single play through if you complete all the side missions and completely wipe out the D.U.P.

In terms of the actual storyline, you play as Delsin Rowe, a twenty-something year old Native American man. Delsin is a bit of a rebel as his favorite past time is going around and "tagging", or spray-painting, billboards with his big brother's face on them. His brother Reggie is the local Salmon Bay sheriff. Salmon Bay is where you start for the first forty-five minutes of the game and thats where Delsin first gets his smoke powers. A lot has changed since the events of inFamous 2 unfolded. I don't want to necessarily spoil the ending of that game, but you should play it if you haven't. inFamous 2 left the world in a fragile state. Those with powers have been labeled as "Bio-Terrorists" and the D.U.P., Department of Unified Protection, has been tasked with searching for them and rounding them up. Those who sympathize with the Bio-Terrorists' cause call them Conduits. And all Conduits that are captured by the D.U.P. are taken to Curden Cay, a prison just for Conduits. Delsin has to go to Seattle to set something right that happens early in the story and that is where the real fun begins. Overall, the story is good. It isn't the best but its enough. You still feel invested in what is going on. I wish that Delsin had more to do with the other Conduits other than meeting them and then doing a quick side mission, but oh well. I will say that the Good vs. Evil karma system is somewhat outdated. And having played both sides of the story I can safely say that although you make different choices throughout the game, nothing is really different until the end sequence. Choosing to save or kill this or that person doesn't impact anything other than the people in town will hate you or love you. I only wish it was all a bit more complex. The storyline hits some slow points at times but it quickly ramps up, especially whenever Delsin encounters new Conduits that he can leech new powers off of. I had a blast running around Seattle at super speed with my new neon powers. And the graphics really show off the neon.

At the top of the tallest building in the game

Which brings me to my next point. Graphics. I touched on it earlier but Second Son is beautiful. Second Son uses the full power of the PS4 and it turns out great. Hook your PS4 up to a 65" HDTV and you'll never leave the couch...trust me. All of the powers look and feel really great and they run very smoothly. The only time I ever felt a hiccup in the frame rate was when I used my neon Area of Effect power, probably because there is just so much happening on screen. But other than that, everything ran smoothly in the graphical area.

Gameplay is easily the most important factor in this game and the ones that came before it. By the end of the game you'll have up to four different powers and abilities that go with them. Smoke is what you start out with and eventually you get neon. I won't spoil the other two as they are surprises, but don't worry you're in good hands. You're never short of a power source in the game, there is always a neon sign you can drain or a smokestack you can get to in order to refill your power meter. And transferring between powers in the heat of battle can be extremely advantageous. I recommend playing the game on Expert mode, as playing on normal is just too easy. On Normal you can dominate enemies using one power the whole time, which if you're trying to blow through the game then by all means do so. But Expert is just more fun. It isn't too hard and I died more so out of my self-confidence rather than an enemy who got the upper hand.  And in Expert mode you should prepare yourself to be switching powers a lot. As you level up and gain more blast shards to increase your powers, you start working your way through the power trees that Sucker Punch provides for you. These are easy to navigate and once you're about 3/4 of the way through the game you will probably have reached whichever level 5 Karma path you chose to go down. The controls are simple enough, push a button to use this ability, hit the touch pad to drain a power, etc. Bottom line: inFamous Second Son runs smoothly and the gameplay is addictingly fun.

The gem of this game is really the voice acting. Troy Baker, the star of video game voice acting, is Delsin Rowe. Literally he is Delsin. Sucker Punch used some motion capture on the faces of Troy and their other actors so Troy and Delsin very much resemble each other. Troy Baker does a great job bringing Delsin to life and providing the sarcastic jokester personality that makes Delsin who he is. The other voice actors are good too. Particularly Christine Dunford who provides the voice of Brooke Augustine, the game's antagonist.

Thanks Troy

I haven't written a review since my first one, BioShock Infinite, last April. I know I'm lazy. But after beating Second Son twice this past weekend I felt so compelled to write this and tell everyone around me that they had to play the game. If you don't have a PS4, then this is your excuse to get one. Second Son is the most fun I have had playing a game since Borderlands 2. The storyline is good, not amazing. The graphics look just fantastic on the PS4. And the gameplay and controls are smooth and easy to figure out. Hope you enjoyed the review, please comment and tell me about your Second Son experiences in Seattle.

If you want to see some gameplay, just click on this link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=830854433597952&l=431279556556184423

9/10

+Amazing graphics

+Fun addicting gameplay

+Smooth controls

+Cool storyline...

-...but kinda minor in the grand scheme of things

BioShock Infinite Review

"'Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt,' that was the deal. The details elude me now, but the details wouldn't change a goddamn thing."-Booker DeWitt

I got this game two weekends ago and I finished playing it this past Saturday. And let me just say, it blew my mind. I had heard all the hype on the game but I had not played the first two games in the series, so naturally I was a little skeptical. But I figured I would give it a try so I went to the nearest Redbox and rented it for the weekend. I had watched a lot of trailers so I had an idea of what the storyline was, at least at the start. The game takes place in the flying city of Columbia, in 1912, where the player assumes the role of Booker DeWitt, a disgraced Pinkerton agent indebted to the wrong people. These people tell Booker that if he goes to Columbia and finds a girl named Elizabeth, they will "wipe away his debt." Columbia has multiple unique themes which include ultra-nationalism, specifically American exceptionalism, racism, manifest destiny, and baptism. The player really gets to see these different themes play out through the course of the game.

The opening scene has Booker riding in a rowboat towards a lighthouse on a dark and stormy night off the coast of Maine with another man and woman who turn out to play key roles in the story. This scene is very dark and ominous and is in stark contrast to when Booker soars into Columbia, the city in the sky. That moment, with the subtle music playing and the city blazing in the sunlight was breathtaking. This game is a visual marvel. And I was ready to explore. I spent the first few minutes running around Columbia and trying to get my bearings but my objective was waiting so I set off in search of Elizabeth. The story and character development is what really drives this game. And trust me when I say this is not a game to be rushed. Lose yourself in Columbia and really try to discover the secrets and all that the city has to offer. The voxophones, recordings left by individual characters in the game, were especially intriguing and really help divulge some of the less clear things in the story. The campaign on "Normal" difficulty lasted me around 10 hours. But it wasn't until the second half of the game that I really started to explore and not just shoot my way through everything. Speaking of combat, the weapon choices were tons of fun along with the amazing vigors. The vigors are different powers that Booker acquires throughout the course of the game. They add a fresh sense to the combat and you are able to really work out your own strategies. Whether you want to use "Undertow" and bring your victims closer and shoot them with your Handcannon pistol or use "Bucking Bronco" to levitate your enemies then blast them away with your shotgun. The controls overall are very easy to use and although shooting can be bit off sometimes, it's a minuscule detail in the grand scheme. Maybe the funnest thing about the game was flying through Columbia on the city's multiple Sky-Lines. These Sky-Lines are like ziplines that Booker uses to navigate around the city and they become a big part of combat.

The character development in this game is so incredible it rivals that of the Uncharted series. And that is saying a lot. The player really begins to feel an emotional attachment to Elizabeth. The voice acting by Courtnee Draper and Troy Baker really bring Elizabeth and Booker to life. But if you are going to play this game then I have one question for you: are you comfortable with the idea of parallel realities? Because in this game, a building could be vibrant and beautiful in one reality, or burnt to the ground in another. It's hard to explain without ruining significant plot points but Elizabeth has certain powers and she can open these things called "Tears" that allow her to see different places around the world at different points in time. At one point you see her open a tear to Paris showing a movie theater that is playing Revenge of the Jedi in 1983(Revenge of the Jedi was the original working title of the movie "Return of the Jedi") even though the game takes place in 1912. This idea of alternate realities can get pretty confusing but it all comes full circle at the conclusion of the game. After beating the game on Normal difficulty, the player unlocks a new difficulty known as "1999 Mode." 1999 Mode was reported by Ken Levine, lead writer and creative director of BioShock Infinite, as,"Average gamers are gonna hate this mode. Thats okay. It's not for them. " He also said, "This mode is not going to feel like BioShock."

All in all, this game was an incredible journey and I can't stop thinking about it. BioShock Infinite goes down in my top 5 gaming experiences ever. Don't bother with renting this game. Just buy it because once you start it, you won't want to put it down.

10

+Fantastic story

+Beautifully rich graphics

+Great 1st person shooter gameplay

+Sky-Lines!

+Awesome vigors