Games: What I’ll be playing in October (video)

Oh Fable 3. Why can’t you be out now? This trailer is stunning.

Games: roleplaying vs puzzle

In the last month or two I’ve played Jade Empire and Scribblenauts and together they helped me solidify my gaming preferences. Namely, I love roleplaying games and I hate puzzle games.

Jade Empire

Released in 2005, Jade Empire is an original Xbox roleplaying game from Bioware, makers of my favourites Dragon Age and the Mass Effect games. It takes place in a fake region of ancient China and lets you play as the hero, taking you from a remote martial arts school all the way to the capital city to figure out and fix the corruption crossing the country.

When you’re setting up a character you can choose to be male or female and then choose between normal, fast and slow yet heavy-hitting fighting styles. I chose to create a female character that uses a fast style of fighting. It was sort of akin to the rogue class in Dragon Age, and once I got used to the weird controls (let’s face it, the game is 5 years old and companies have figured out how to do better since then), she was a lot of fun to play.

I also enjoyed some of the companions available, particularly Henpecked Hou and Wild Flower. Henpecked Hou is a bun master who used to be a revered fighter in the Imperial Arena. He doesn’t fight because his wife won’t allow him to, but he can enable you to use the Drunken Master fighting style by throwing bottles of booze your way. Rather than simply having a supportive function like Henpecked Hou, Wild Flower is a little girl who died in a flood but whose body was chosen as a host by a Heavenly Gate Guardian (read: good demon). Any time a combat situation takes place, Wild Flower sort of Hulks out and becomes a big ass-kicking demon. The rest of the companions were varying levels of okay, but none of them are really worth noting.

Overall, the story was good. I was very surprised when the big reveal happened. I left the game feeling very satisfied, wanting to play more games. Unfortunately, one of my next games was Scribblenauts.

Scribblenauts

Oh Scribblenauts. I don’t think I’ve hated a game this much since Professor Layton and the Curious Village. But really, what both of these games revealed to me is that no matter how cool the premise like with Scribblenauts, or how beautiful the art like with Professor Layton, I am destined to become enraged approximately five to ten puzzles in.

But let’s backtrack. Scribblenauts is a Nintendo DS puzzle game by Warner Bros that delivers on its tagline “Write Anything. Solve Everything.” For each puzzle there’s a problem–someone needs you to bring them something or you need to get your character to a specific place. How you solve that problem is up to you. Just think of what object could fix the solution, write it out and it will appear. Sounds simple and yet… ten puzzles into the game post-tutorial, I wanted to throw my DS into the wall. I had genuine hate in my heart for Scribblenauts.

But I gave it a day, thought through the puzzle, and came back. After approximately forty or fifty tries between both days, I gave up and looked at a walkthrough, which is probably for the best because I wouldn’t have thought of a bear on my own. Once past that puzzle I progressed though another five or six without any need for a walkthrough but rapidly knew I still wasn’t having fun. I just hate this game.

I am by no means saying Scribblenauts is a bad game. I doubt it made any “Game of the Year” lists, but the creators were also clearly swinging for the fences and I applaud their effort. But at the same time, I can’t get behind it. At least, not enough to try playing any further because I don’t like puzzle games.

But at the end of the day Scribblenauts was worth the try because I learned something I’ll take with me for the rest of my gaming life: I know what games I love and I know what games I hate. And that’s worth a few hours of rage.

Buy Jade Empire from Amazon.com
Buy Jade Empire from Amazon.ca

Buy Scribblenauts from Amazon.com
Buy Scribblenauts from Amazon.ca

Game experience: Mass Effect & Mass Effect 2

Where have I been the last couple of weeks? I’ve been way too busy playing through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to read things online, let alone post anything. I know, I know. My bad. I would say I won’t do it again, but we all know I will the next time another game captures my attention.

This isn’t really going to be a review of the Mass Effect games. I’ll share my impressions, but I mostly want to put my choices out there and let this be a place where people can also talk about the choices they made when they were playing. So if you haven’t played yet, stop reading here because the rest of this post is going to be riddled with spoilers.

Which game is better?

This is a tough call and it really depends on whether you value story more than gameplay. In terms of story, I think Mass Effect was better. It had a great overarching narrative where you’re the underdog, taking your squad to hunt the bad guy across space.

Mass Effect 2′s story was good but so much time was spent on gaining each team member’s loyalty that I found it easy to lose site of the overall narrative. Yes, many of the loyalty missions are great (Samara’s and Tali’s stand out for me), but the game was really about assembling the team to take out the big bad in one major suicide mission.

Mass Effect decisions

Character

First off, I chose to play a spacer soldier with the standard male Shepherd look. Going the spacer route turned out to be a good choice since Neil had several game files where his Shepherd was a colonist. It made it much easier to know which file to import into Mass Effect 2. It also led to a conversation between Shepherd and his mother that I would have missed otherwise.

Team

Because my Shepherd was all combat, I ended up rolling most of the game with Tali and Liara. I was a little leery at first about not taking another combat person along but it worked out better this way. When things would start to get overwhelming, Liara would pull someone up in the air. Fantastic.

Relationship

I mostly thought Ashley was annoying, so I had Shepherd go the relationship route with Liara. She was also more interesting because she had more  at stake emotionally since she doesn’t trust easily and she’ll outlive Shepherd by 800 years or so.

Major decisions

• I saved Wrex
• I let the Rachni queen go in hopes that a Rachni army will help out in Mass Effect 3
• I let Kaidan die instead of Ashley. In terms of the story, it made the most sense to me that the guy rigging the bomb wouldn’t make it out alive
• I let the Council die. Again, this made the most sense to me because otherwise most of humanity will die. However, I’m considering doing another run next year or the year after in anticipation of Mass Effect 3 because I didn’t know how much shit I’d get from NPCs about the Council not being around. It is probably literally the only decision I’ll consciously change from this run
• I left Captain Anderson in charge instead of Ambassador Udina because Udina was such a pain in the ass

Mass Effect 2 decisions

Character

When I imported my character, I opted not to change his specs. It was a good opportunity to do so, but I wanted to see the story through as a soldier. It worked out well because I greatly benefited from the adrenaline rush ability when I used the sniper rifle, which was most of the time.

Team

I mainly rolled with Tali again, but I tended to switch up the second character between Jack, Samara, Grunt and even occasionally Miranda.

Relationship

Because Shepherd had the relationship with Liara, I didn’t have him get into another relationship. The quests around Liara on Illium were okay and sort of indicated that there would be a payoff in Mass Effect 3 if Shepherd doesn’t cheat on her. I’m looking forward to the rumoured Liara DLC and am hoping that it’ll be a mission to take out the Shadow Broker.

Major decisions

• I helped Miranda’s sister get away and encouraged her to talk to her
• I let Jack blow up the Cerberus facility where she grew up but stopped her from killing the other former patient
• I let Mordin take the data
• I let Garrus shoot Sidonis
• I let Samara kill Morinth
• I helped Tali get pardoned
• I helped Thane stop his son from assassinating Jorim Talid
• I let Legion upload the virus to the geth heretics
• I chose to blow up the Reaper station
• I had Tali open the doors at the station
• I let Miranda lead the other teams
• I had Kasumi escort the doctor back to the Normandy

I didn’t manage to save most of the crew because I wanted to complete the loyalty missions first. Having no crew makes the Normandy creepy as hell, but I was happy to make it through without losing any of the squad members and with all of them loyal.

Final thoughts

Unless they start releasing GTA-style games, I will play any game that Bioware puts out. They’re masters not only of storytelling, but of creating complex moral choices that have real consequences.

I loved going through Mass Effect 2 and seeing the way my decisions in Mass Effect affected people, with the exception of all of the race relations issues that came with letting the Council die.

So although I recently said Dragon Age: Origins is my favourite game, I think the Mass Effect series soundly kicked it down to second spot. That’s still good news for Bioware though.

Buy Mass Effect on Amazon.com
Buy Mass Effect on Amazon.ca

Buy Mass Effect 2 on Amazon.com
Buy Mass Effect 2 on Amazon.ca

College Humor nails it with RPG Heroes are Jerks (video)

RPGs are my favourite type of video games, so despite a tendency to play as good a character as possible, I’ve done my fair share of the kind of stuff seen in this video. So true, so funny.

Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies iPhone game

Freeverse announced last week that it’s releasing a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the New York Times best-selling book that re-imagines Jane Austen’s classic novel following the young Elizabeth Darcy, her life, and her zombie battles in England during the Regency period. Freeverse has produced the official game for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a rollicking action title with the perfect blend of zombie slaying action and touching romance narrative.

I’m almost finished the book (review coming soon!) and am not totally sure it’ll translate well into a game, but I’d definitely like to check it out. Here’s hoping they’ll develop an Android version soon.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies coming for iPhone and iPod touch from Freeverse (via Kotaku)

Game Review: Dragon Age: Awakening

This week I did something I’ve never done before. I went out, bought a game on its release date and played it every day for a few days until I finished. I get that this is both normal and good, but it takes a special kind of game to get me to do that, and we all know I loved Dragon Age: Origins enough that I couldn’t talk coherently about it (oh, the perils of writing immediately after finishing it).

So yes. On Tuesday I bought Dragon Age: Awakening, started playing and immediately regretted I hadn’t booked the next day off of work. As soon as you load the game you have a choice: create a new Grey Warden from scratch who hails from Orlais or load a saved game. Since I just finished my second playthrough last weekend with an arcane warrior, I decided to give her a try and see how it goes.

First off, it’s not quite as good as Dragon Age: Origins, but that’s okay. This is an expansion, not its own full-blown game, and as an expansion I think it succeeds. It takes the original story further, brings back a few familiar characters and even answers questions I didn’t know I had like how the blight got started in the first place. And at a solid 10 hours or so of gameplay, I never felt like I was being rushed through any particular experience.

I tried to avoid as many of the trailers and reviews as I could so almost everything was a surprise, including that some of the darkspawn were now intelligent. The new companions were mostly great, although Anders seemed to be a mage-version of Alistair. The Broodmother and her children were creepy and The Architect was something I never could have anticipated. Bioware did something very interesting and special when they created him.

Amaranthine is a beautiful extension of Ferelden, but there’s one thing about some of its regions that I can’t look away from–they look a hell of a lot like regions in Fable 2. I don’t know that they were going for that when they designed the levels and, let’s be honest, it’s not like they’re forging entirely new ground. I’m not knocking them for that because I love fantasy world based RPGs, but there are only so many ways you can create a creepy marsh.

Overall, this one is a winner, especially if you liked Dragon Age: Origins. The game came with an insert that had nothing but a dragon and a date. I hope that’s their way of “not announcing” Dragon Age 2 because I’ll be there. And that time, I’ll take the next day off.

Buy it from Amazon.com
Buy it from Amazon.ca

The Best D&D Tool You Can’t Buy (video)

CrunchGear has a review up of a student project from Carnegie Mellon University that lets them run Dungeons & Dragons off of a Microsoft Surface.

The writers says “Now the take-away point here isn’t really “wow, you can play D&D on a touchscreen!” “, and I get his point about how the project really demonstrates how the Surface will be great for collaboration, whether it be games or other social activities. That aside, I still can’t stop thinking “Wow, you can play D&D on a touchscreen!”.

Check out the video. If you play D&D even semi-regularly, I dare you not to drool at the awesomeness.

D&D on the Microsoft Surface from CrunchGear on Vimeo.

Hands-on: D&D on the Microsoft Surface (via SFX)

Game review: Dragon Age: Origins

Okay, so this may not end up being a review as much as me gushing through a couple hundred words.

I loved it. Like seriously loved it. Dragon Age: Origins might be my favourite game ever and I’m definitely looking forward to the expansion that’s due out next month. It was like they sat down at Bioware and said “Tara hasn’t gamed in a long time. Let’s make a game that’ll bring her back”. And did it ever. This game has been hell for that whole reading 95 books this year thing.

What did I love? First of all it’s an RPG. I really got into how you can maniplate the story based on what you do with the conversations. I also grew genuinely fond of most of the companions with the exception of a couple who were pretty useless and who I mainly left at camp. I found I rarely went wrong if I went with a combination of Alistair, Shale or Sten, and Morrigan or Wynne. I ended up taking Alistair, Sten and Morrigan into the final battle, which meant no healer, but I took almost 50 potions in with me so it all worked out.

There was something very satisfying about seeing all of the major dragons get killed, and really, with a title like this, that’s probably to be expected. I was also pleased that they managed to pull off romance in the game without it being entirely cheesy. I’m hoping the romantic choice (I had my guy go for Morrigan) will come up in the expansion. The final screen for my game made it seem like there would be more about it later.

Sorry if this isn’t very coherent, but it’s all still rolling around in my brain. I want to play it again, but I’ll probably move on to Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, or finally finish Arkham Asylum.

Feb. 11 Update: I wrote this immediately after finishing the game. It’s embarrassingly all over the place and an awful example of a review. I’m keeping it here though because I think it pretty decently captures just how excited I was at finishing it and I want a record of that excitement.

Buy Dragon Age: Origins from Amazon.com
Buy Dragon Age: Origins from Amazon.ca

Buy Dragon Age: Awakenings from Amazon.com
Buy Dragon Age: Awakenings from Amazon.ca

Robot Unicorn Attack (game review)

Robot Unicorn Attack is an online scroller by Adult Swim and the premise is simple. You are a robot unicorn and you need to get from one side to the other. Jump to collect butterfly fairies, dash through to avoid getting killed by glass stars and, well, some of the landscape.

I’m awful at this game, despite the fact it only requires two buttons for all of the controls. Regardless of that, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. The soundtrack is pretty majestic too, but I won’t spoil that for you. Just take 5 minutes and give it a try.

Robot Unicorn Attack

Launch trailer for Bioshock 2 (video)

I’m cautiously optimistic about Bioshock 2. The first Bioshock was so brilliant but so much of it was Ken Levine, that I’m a little nervous since he’s not been involved in developing the sequel. Whether it’s great or not, we’ll know within a week.

Via Giant Bomb