Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 - They should not change the ending and screw that DLC.  But the ending was awful.  Now that that's out of the way, this is a complete lateral move on Bioware's part and maybe even a step back.  I liked the first two games quite a bit, especially the second one.  This is me trying to work out why.  In no way is the game bad, it just bored me and by the time it started getting close to the end I just wanted to finish it.

One of the problems is I think is that a lot of what Bioware stakes the series on just cannot hold up this late in the game.  The morality system has no basis when it is tied to a bar.  At least you can't wipe it out or change it like you can in other games, and they at least came up with a way to often remove what you say from carrying some sort of "nice" or "not nice" connotation by using neutral reputation.  Still, there's that gauge to show you just how you stack up, like some goofy arbiter of whether you are the good guy or the not so good guy.  And that's the rub.  The gauge reinforces the notion that you need to play the game a certain way, and it also doesn't help that, sure enough, every single choice you make is obvious because paragon is on top and renegade is on bottom, same as always.  So instead of making a choice that you might actually want to make, the game pushes the notion that you should make the choice that corresponds to "how I'm playing this guy" which is generally either straight one way or the other, which is just dull.  Games like Skyrim and The Witcher 2 instead force you to make excruciating decisions that can backfire on you and have vastly different outcomes.  And there's no stupid bar to influence what you do.  Instead, you evaluate based on what you've seen and then see what happens.  I felt way more invested in those games from a personal perspective for the short while I played both of them than the entire time I played Mass Effect 3 and it's two games worth of back story!  Another element to the problem is that it is easy to game the system, so to speak, in the Mass Effect games.  If you pump your conversation skill and don't just run straight through the story, you can basically resolve any situation in a way that eliminates the "bad stuff" (probably interesting stuff) from happening, or at least I was able to throughout each game.  That takes a lot of the tension out and removes you from the experience.  It also lowers the stakes in a way that revokes supposed core features of the game.  And while I always say I'm not a graphics guy, LA Noire's conversation choreography and facial modeling crush this game.  That's minor, but I kept thinking about it because it's what drives the game.

Outside of that area, a few other things bugged me.  The side-quests have been integrated with the planet-scanning activity, but instead of minerals or natural resources you're scanning for stranded forces or groups you can use in your fight against the Reapers.  It's an interesting idea that makes sense, but is just as tedious as the sections before, though at this juncture I assume that's the point.  There's also no way to track which quests you've finished and need to turn in or where in most instances they're turned in outside of a general area.  That is simply a bewildering design flaw.  The controls still are not very tight, especially in the ever-crowded land of cover shooters.  You feel heavy and weighted while walking and rolling but then immediately become a speed demon when running, able to spin three hundred and sixty degrees on a dime.  The cover system still has problems "recognizing" you, leading to frustrating deaths where you constantly roll into a barrier or can't move out of cover or keep moving from side to side when you want to move out.  The other big thing is a personal annoyance, but I have to bring it up.  The game just cannot bludgeon you with enough heroic motivational speeches, glorifications of heroic sacrifice and determination, and bravery and courage in the face of overwhelming odds because damn it we are going to succeed!  Cliche doesn't get even close and it all gets old after a while.  I get that Mass Effect as a series is as far from subversive or deconstructive and that the stakes can't get any higher at the end.  The whole thing falls apart in places because each time it's a gigantic repetition (a tying metaphor to the Reapers themselves?????????????????????????  I kind of doubt it).  Lastly, the characters of your squad don't get fleshed out nearly as well as before.  The loyalty missions are gone, replaced with some interactions that do grant a sense of development and closure, but don't have the same kind of impact.  I thought the personal missions were some of the best parts of the Mass Effect 2 because they got to the heart of the characters and had an impact on your game.  How development plays out in Mass Effect 3 seems more trite and expected, like the developers knew they had to go through the motions and just slogged it out to resolve things.             

So did I actually like anything?  Yeah, I did.  The combat is still very good and the squad AI is very helpful, only prone to the occasional frustration.  Raising the default difficulty was a good move, as the previous games felt a little too easy at times.  There are some challenging encounters in the game that force you to use all your weapons, ammo and powers to survive and the new enemy types, particularly the Banshee, put the pressure on something fierce.  Additionally, there several encounters where the environment, while not directly impacting the action, adds to the feeling of being in combat very well and creates an involving atmosphere.  The story makes the best it can out of fighting a faceless and comically overwhelming enemy by showing the conflicts between the races of the galaxy and how old grudges and misconceptions permeate everything when they should be forgotten.  The Reapers get counterbalanced with Cerberus and the Illusive Man, which is certainly more interesting than going against massive bug machines that have to be developed by pull-out-the-rug exposition at the end.  Having to gather forces and broker alliances works well within the huge scope of the story.  Keith David and Martin Sheen are still awesome.  After being disgruntled by Bethesda apparently hiring about five voice actors for the entire game in Skyrim, it was refreshing to witness the variety and depth of full voice acting on display.  And if I had to single out one character I thought was well done, it would be Mordin, whose arc throughout the second and third game was one of the high points of the entire series.  Wrex was another strong figure, the story of the krogan being one area where I thought the games really worked well.  Wrex's growth across the games and the struggles he and his race endured were where I thought the games really showed their potential, in taking a figure and letting him grow into someone that you trusted and wanted to help because you felt like he was sincere and you knew him on a personal level.

The fact that these characters might not even be in your game speaks back to the interest to be had initially in Mass Effect 2 when you realized that your choices carried over and shaped your game.  It gave a screen of individuality to your experience that defined Mass Effect.  It's too bad Mass Effect 3 often pulls back the screen, especially in the ending, and removes those modifications.  Your story gets boiled down to numbers on a board that plod into the ending and then disappear.  In general some of my misgivings have been with the series from the start and just caught up with me and I also think Mass Effect 2 was the pinnacle of the series and that colors my reaction to Mass Effect 3.  In the end, I'm kind of glad the mass relays are done.                        

Call of Duty: Black Ops/Template 1 (Version 4.0)

1. Hundreds of guys vs 4 (we fixed the infinite respawn problem, so it's all cool now)

2. Follow until the leader stops moving for some reason and then you're supposed to move up and take charge all of a sudden.

3. Stealthily kill between 3 and 6 enemies before you are discovered/outnumbered. Standard fighting against regular guys commences.

4. Explosion/non-interactive event leads to blurry fall, disorientation, regain composure/awareness just in time to: get saved by ally, save ally with handgun, run to escaping vehicle, or get beat up by non-ally.

5. Shoot regular guys until: mounted machine gun, enemy vehicle, or heavy fire from structure occurs. Proceed to pick up explosive ordnance conveniently lying on the ground and blow it up. Resume shooting regular guys.

6. Enter vehicle. Blow up other vehicles and regular guys until vehicle is destroyed.

7. See Step 4.

8. Listen to stupidly stereotypical bad guys (probability: 45% Russian, 45% German, 10% Asian) speak perfect English in stupidly stereotypical accents. Note: If bad guy is Asian, perfect English requirement is lifted. Stupidly stereotypical accent still applies.

9. Enter the Matrix temporarily and shoot guys. Quickly leave the Matrix.

10. Apply list to next mission.

L.A. Noire - An Experience in Gaming

L.A. Noire is a game built for me. It takes a broad classical adventure gametype and drops it into late 1940s Los Angeles. Your role is a detective, working your way through various sections of the LAPD, catching cases in the moral shithole you'd expect. The game is James Ellroy-lite, though it mainly fails to transcend the cliches he blasts open so spectacularly. Still, a "crime" game? Yeah, I can get behind that no matter what. Collecting evidence, interrogating suspects, breaking cases? Distill it however you want and I'll lap it up. My threshold for enjoyment is perilously low. But really, L.A. Noire has been billed as much more than that, both by its creators and players. A lot of talk has centered on it being the first video game to transcend that pesky "game" label. Instead, it holds the category of "experience".

A caveat up front: I'm not here to be the dreaded defender of the games industry from all those proles and their Modern Warfare fix that destroys my chances of getting the latest JRPG translated. However, I do think the attempted re-branding of L.A. Noire is related in a way to how mediums are often interpreted. You see it a lot in comics, where people talk about sequential art as just a storyboard for a potential movie, everything already laid out, both interchangeable, completely missing the unique qualities that separate them. Sadly it's not just a question of the form, as the countless godawful movie pitches as comics, ready-made to lurch onto the screen attest. I rarely see anyone talk about the relationships movies have to comics on a formal level. This has started popping up in games discourse too. When surefire successes like Halo and Call of Duty drop, the developers are aiming for the blockbuster action setpieces you're used to seeing every summer at the megaplex. They're quick to trot out the dreaded (by me at least, YMMV) word: "cinematic". As in, they want the games to feel like movies. Once again, I'm not going to overextend in the other direction and say all this pap is diluting the industry and pretty soon you'll be watching a game more than you'll be playing it. But just look at how non-interactive cutscenes have become a standardized focal point of games. Sure, they've always been there, but now they're at the forefront of hype and advertising. Cinema's influence is more and more apparent.

That aside is meant to show that labels for media are often changed to denote an uptick in quality, relevance, or importance. Look at "graphic novel". No more of that comics crap, this shit is real. It's like a novel, but with graphics! Let's not focus on how inadequate that term is, being tied to the novel format, but on how it took something and tried to take the same contents of what it always had been and then drag it out of the doldrums and into the light. The same thing is happening with L.A. Noire. This is no game, it's an experience! Now I get to try and destroy that connotation.

After all, what is an experience? You experience anything. A song, a comic, a novel, a movie, a TV episode, a painting. But wait, games are all about inserting actions you make into that experience, thereby personalizing it. Well maybe. I've got two big problems with that. The first is that anyone's experience with anything is different. Sure, commonalities, themes, reactions, they certainly spread across all manner of people, but deep down everyone feels differently about the same thing. How you're feeling at the time, a personal situation that mirrors what you see, someone you just saw, these are just a few of the countless things that affect how you experience anything. So saying L.A. Noire is an experience is really as one-dimensional and unhelpful as you can get. Everything is personal to some degree.

Second, and this is the bigger one, games are at their heart no more personal than any other medium. A stock line might be, "Well, you're controlling what's happening, so you're invested in the action way more." And to an extent that's true. But anything can get you to care about what happens or want to see what happens next if it's compelling. And games operate in the relatively confined, linear world that other things do. Within reason, a book only keeps going as you keep turning the pages, music has to keep playing to finish, and games only play out if you do what is prescribed to you. Princess is in another castle? Keep jumping on stuff and shooting fireballs. Zelda's been captured? Use that hookshot and work through those temples. Some guy that might be a clone of you is about to melodramatically threaten the entire world with a weapon of mass destruction? Hide in boxes and use the codec. If you don't, you're getting nowhere. The rules change specifically from game to game, but the one that differentiates games from other mediums is everything the creators wanted you to see is there and you must work through it in the order that they prescribe. You can open a book and read a random chapter. You can look at any page in a comic separately. You can look at a painting an artist did at any point in their career. Now that may not be the most compelling or fulfilling way to accomplish something, but the option is there. How do you get to the final boss? You beat all the other bosses, overcome all the other challenges, acquire the upgrades. Your choice is severely restrained, if there is one at all. Sandbox games and other types certainly give you more options and things to do, but there is always a larger plot that is meant to be moved along at some point. You might also rebuke this by mentioning that you can play a single level or section of a game just like you can read a single chapter or single page, but the key difference is access. Unless that level or section is the first one, it's almost always going to be blocked until you've gotten there.

To be sure, games have mixed it up. Choices in video games have become all the rage lately, but they've been around forever. Do you wait for the train or keep going in Final Fight 3? Do you save Kid or leave her in Chrono Cross? Do you go light side or dark side in Knights of the Old Republic? The game plays out differently and it makes you feel like you have some control, like you're shaping things. But of course you're not. You make a choice, and one formulated avenue is brushed aside for another. Then you replay the game and go the other way so you can see it or to just get the achievements/trophies. Character customization, depending on the game, is one place where games can allow for strong user involvement and individualization, even though it often can paradoxically become almost non-existent in the games where it has the largest potential, like in World of Warcraft or other MMOs.

So now that my opinions are out there, what about L.A. Noire itself? It is really an experience, a new take that transforms games and elevates the form to new heights? No, not at all. In fact, by trying to paint itself as something other than a game but coming up short, L.A. Noire blatantly (and I would guess unintentionally in some ways) screams that not only is it not an experience, but that it is a G-A-M-E through and through. A few thoughts on why that is.

Choice is certainly a major factor in the game. In a certain case, you might have to find close to 20 clues at various crime scenes and interview people, asking close to 20 questions. If you miss a clue you have less information to work with which cuts back on the options you have during an interview. Whenever there are clues to find there will be a certain backing music, and once you've found all the clues for a certain area, a sort of "victory chime" will play and the music will go away. Finding the clues is usually only a matter of walking up to the few noticeable objects in an area and then pressing the corresponding button when the controller vibrates to let you know this is something you can examine. It's a very simple process. Sure, you can turn off the music, but then how do you know if you've gotten all the clues? That might not be a huge deal, especially if this was an "experience" but the game makes sure to point out how you did after the mission is over, when you get what is basically a score report, showing your stats for the case. It's tied to the linear nature of games. By placing a statistic on how you play the game, the developers are trying to railroad you into playing the game how they have designed it and grading you on it. Why not remove that from the equation? Because that's how games are made and how people consume them. If Team Bondi really wanted to push, that would have been a great way to start. You work the case and it ends and you move on to the next one. No report that shows you how your "experience" was wrong.

The interrogations have a similar problem. They likewise show up as a statistic on your case report, but there's little subjectivity present when they actually take place. Whenever you ask someone a question, you can respond by believing they're telling the truth, believing they're lying, for which you have to have a piece of evidence to back it up, or doubting them, which basically is when you think they're lying but you don't have evidence to back it up. It's a pretty good system that usually works well. Sometimes it's hard to decide on which piece of evidence to use if you believe the person is lying, but that's about it. Whenever you select a response you get a "good chime" if the answer is correct and a "bad" one if it is wrong. More blatant examples of the game telling you there is a specific way to play each case and even though it continues and changes in ways, you still got it wrong. Why not strip all that away and just let the case play out within an overriding framework that hides as much from the player so the gameplay gets further into opacity (I'm trying here, I swear, it may not look like it) and unpredictability.

One of the reasons this is all a problem is because L.A. Noire has an overarching story that goes on in the background at first and slowly moves into the main part of the game. Sure enough, you can't control any part of this narrative. So even when your character does stupid things that are barely explained (HE'S FLAWED, SEE BRAH? SHIT IS DAYEEP!) you get to watch and marvel at the dismal goofiness happening. So no matter how you do in a case, that story has to continue, which, in a surprise to no one, involves you climbing the ranks of the department and great scenes where you're lauded as the crime solver of crime solvers even if you punted the entire previous case. Even worse is when you see or hear details in a case that you want to act on but have no ability to. Obviously we're not near a point of interactive games, but this is really frustrating, especially if you're supposedly in an experience. It comes across as the developers cutely playing with you, knowing that if you do notice, you don't have the capability to act.

A final point of frustration: the telephone. Throughout the game there are various spots where you can use a telephone to contact dispatch or records and information. You sometimes will also get connected to other members of the department or be given messages or updates. The thing is, you can only use the telephone when the game allows you to. It feels badly artificial, especially when it blatantly shows up on your minimap whenever you're "supposed" to use it, and always very convenient to your current location. There are also a few spots in the game where it is far from obvious that you should use the telephone, but since the icon pops up, you know you'd better dial away (it's not like you always know who you're calling, in another annoying quirk) because you risk losing out on information if you don't. At times this can make you feel like the game is on auto-pilot, playing itself.

Throughout this it might seem like I'm being unfair to L.A. Noire, especially since overall I like the game. I just really hate the experience wording, it being one in long trend of trying to replace unique forms with watered down versions of other, supposedly better ones. Just for fun, and because this really went off the rails near the end, here's my dream take on how L.A. Noire should have played out.

No overarching story. Instead, you have various cases set around a locale (in this case Los Angeles post-WWII). You could switch up the playable characters and the supporting cast to keep it interesting, with enough differences so that they aren't the same person with a different graphics model. There's not success or failure indicators in the quest. The evidence and interrogation methods can stay. Instead of focusing on a greater story, spend more time putting in multiple angles and directions that each case can branch to.

Mass Effect 2 Review

Mass Effect 2 is a superior game to its predecessor and Bioware should be given credit for fixing the majority of the serious issues with the original. More importantly, they made some key overhauls that not only better the game, but make it different from the first Mass Effect, so you are not playing the same game with different characters or story. Due to me being uncreative, here are some bullet lists.

THE GOOD

• Primary shooter/secondary RPG. This is the biggest change between the two Mass Effects. The first was an RPG first and a shooter second. This relegated the combat to underdevelopment. It looked great in previews and test runs, but seemed around halfway there when released. Fortunately Bioware looked at this and took the steps to fix it. Mass Effect 2 now plays fully like the 3rd-person cover shooter made popular by Gears of War. The cover system has been improved from its near-unusable state in Mass Effect to the key component of combat. Unlike the first game, you cannot just run straight into enemies and mow them down. Careful management of cover is required to survive and the controls to use it work well. The way ammunition works is different too. Formerly, weapons had unlimited ammo but had an overheat gauge. This was a decent idea but fell apart when you realized ammo management was unnecessary. Now weapons do use ammo, but they all use a single type that enemies will drop. While this seems like the new false front, it makes sense because of the six possible class types for your character and their limitations on what weapons they can use. Specific ammo types would create the details that Mass Effect 2 sheds. Building on this, the micromanagement of equipment has been removed. You will only upgrade to different weapons in the same class (like getting a different assault rifle or shotgun from the one you currently have) a few times, and the new one is always better. Instead, weapons as a type can be upgraded for your whole squad and you can change up your armor but not the armor of your squad. I'll discuss why I think this might be a little too much later, but overall I feel like the emphasis on squad combat while still keeping the RPG elements that worked best (the dialogue wheel, exploration, and tech/biotic abilities) makes Mass Effect a well-balanced and stronger product.
• The AI of your companions seems improved in combat. I only have one trip through the game under my belt, but the improvement is so exceptional I am assuming it is constant. Your teammates will usually move to cover if they are being attacked and often move up and use different angles intelligently. This is opposed to Mass Effect, where the common strategy was to run into the middle of the area and take fire from every enemy until death. The friendly AI actually is friendly now, instead of a nuisance you have to manage so they cannot screw you over.
• The environmental design has expanded. The game areas are now varied graphically and the level design is different in every area. Mass Effect suffered from two or three standard level layouts and designs that were monotonous mere hours into the game.
• The graphics look excellent and avoid the old technical hiccups. This point is a good compliment to the new level sections. Really the graphics follow more from the original, which looked nice at the time. Faces in particular are vastly more detailed and well-animated. The framerate holds steady and most importantly the ridiculous texture pop-in from the first game is gone. To be fair, it is present in some instances, but it is hardly noticeable and resolves in a second or less, opposed to the beginning of conversations being marred by it in the original.
  
• The side quests have been fleshed out more. Specifically, each of your squad's "spotlight" missions have received a big upgrade and carry significant consequences depending on how they play out. Various interactive scenes replace the skeleton combat scenario with maybe a choice at the end. Particular highlights include an interrogation, working from within an assassination, and trying to tempt someone from out of hiding and trap them in a nightclub.
  
• It is plain cool to play a game where choices you made in a previous game directly affect everything. Relationship choices, life/death choices, and how you treated the world in general can show up. Fortunately this is somewhat restrained, as you are not given constant updates or appearances from every character or old quest you did, which would feel over-the-top and not befitting the huge universe.
• They took out the MAKO. If you've never played Mass Effect, count yourself lucky you missed this. The MAKO was a six-wheeled vehicle that you drove around in during several story missions and in general anytime you dropped from space onto a planet. It had some weapons and often you were tasked with killing enemies while in it. Unfortunately it was badly developed, out of place within the traditional framework, and frustrating as hell to control. Oh, and if you flipped it, your whole party died. It does not matter that this rarely happened, because it happened to everyone at least once, which is ridiculous. It might be hard to understand how annoying it was unless you played the game, but trust me: it being gone is a Martha Stewart-esque good thing.

THE MIDDLE

• The story. I never thought Mass Effect's story was anything great, but it got the job done and Mass Effect 2 is the same. There are some serious curves thrown in throughout the opening, but they mostly fade away quickly without discussion. It also suffers from being the middle piece of a trilogy, as you cannot shake the feeling that everything you do is just setup for Mass Effect 3. Still, story has never been the chief goal of these games. Instead, prominence is given to extensive world-building with your ability to shape its outcome through your choices that exist in a now-perpetual world. While saying everything else is window dressing is an overstatement, it still is partially true.
• Voice-acting. Some of it is great and some not so much. The male voice for Shepard is still...off. Sometimes the lines come across as terribly overplayed and laugh-eliciting at the wrong moments. Some of that is due to the dialogue, which is overall solid but can still produce some real clunkers. Whoever voiced Zaeed and Mordin are the standouts. The former is basically Boba Fett with lines and the latter is an alien genius geneticist that speaks in rapid-fire minuscule sentences and fragments as he outlines seemingly everything running through his mind at every second.
  

THE BAD

• Resource gathering. Even though they canned the MAKO, this seems like its equally annoying replacement and not in the spirit of the new direction at all. In Mass Effect 2, you purchase upgrades for your ship, your squad, and your weapons by using quantities of four minerals. While you can find varying small amounts of them on missions, the main way to get them is by scanning planets and launching resource nodes. The problem is you need a considerable amount of all four to maximize your upgrades, and this takes hours of time. Basically, you go into a planet's orbit and start scanning by holding the left trigger and moving it around the surface. You have a gauge that will react whenever minerals are detected and then you can send out a probe that collects it. The whole process is time-consuming and boring as hell. Later you can acquire an upgrade that allows you to scan faster, but it is still a pain. It takes you out of the action and the story, but you have to do it to progress in the game. Certainly this is not something that should prevent you from playing the game, but it still grates, and seems like something that would have been in Mass Effect, with its much more varied options for equipment.
  
• Fuel. This sort of relates to resource gathering. Now, in certain parts of star systems, you must purchase fuel in able to move between points. What I fail to get is why only in certain parts and not everywhere. When you jump into new systems you do not need it, nor when you move around in interior clusters or nebula's. You only use it when you move between the clusters, nebula's, or other interior areas of systems. Fuel is thankfully not expensive and can be purchased in most systems at fuel depots, but I cannot understand why you only use it intermittently. In the big picture, this hardly detracts from the game, but it seems misplaced in the stripped down setup.
• Cinematic conversations. Now here is a good idea that went awry. The dialogue wheel was such a revelation in Mass Effect that Bioware could be forgiven for making the conversations always between two people that never moved and always stood a foot apart. So now they tried to step up their game and make everything the word I hate to use but which seems most appropriate: "cinematic." The characters will now move around during dialogue and sometimes interact with the environment. This works well for a little while, until you realize there are around four stock expressions and movements anyone will do. You can only watch Shepard crack his knuckles, clench his fist, and my personal favorite, cross his arms across his chest and assume the ultimate suspicious power stance, so many times before it gets irritating. Also stuck on repeat are instances in conversation where a character will get up and move around or examine something during a certain line and then will do the exact same movement with the same angle after they return to their previous position again and again. It gets unintentionally hilarious fast. Good try, and if Mass Effect 2 is any indication at fixing things that need to be, Bioware should get this under control next time.
  
• No customization is no fun. So earlier I said the less customization was an improvement, but on a smaller scale I think they might have taken too much out. While there was an overabundance of equipment in the first game, that mostly stemmed from the game giving you access to it too much, making ninety percent of it pointless. It was still interesting looking through the different manufacturers and mixing equipment with strengths for different characters that had vastly different abilities. That's totally gone in Mass Effect 2. The image of your characters never changes outside of few and far between weapon switches. The characters themselves have had their number of individual powers you can level reduced and the powers are more common among each member. It is certainly not bad enough that every character plays the same, but there has been a significant melding of the vastly different character classes from Mass Effect into two or three simple archetypes. This is certainly a subjective point, as the game is more streamlined for these changes, but I think it removes too much variety as a cost.

• The helmet glitch. Okay, here is something incredibly minor to finish up and affects nothing. The game does not recognize when your character is wearing a helmet. Since you keep your armor on constantly unless on your ship, this can create some hilarious moments. Watch in amazement as you take a drink straight through a visor and try not to fall out of your chair when your emotional embrace with your previous love leads her to assault your helmet with her tongue.

So there you go. I'm surprised I actually finished this. I probably left out half of the important things and am wrong about what I did talk about, but what are you going to do?