Mass Effect

It seems that most people believe that if it is called a video game, it has no sense of a good, in-depth story that a book would have. And while regrettably this is the case for many games on the market, there are some very fine exceptions. Like Mass Effect.



Mass Effect is a third-person, over-the-shoulder shooter for the Xbox 360 and PC made by the company BioWare. It is set in the future, in the year 2183 AD. Humans had, thirty-five years prior, discovered a piece of ancient technology left behind by a race called the Protheans, which after studying it launched them into a technologically advanced future of their own. Space travel was now easily possible, and there were many races out there whom also had similar pasts about finding technology and had formed a galactic alliance.

You play as commander Shepard. The last name and rank are the only things unchangeable. The character is then decently customizeable, from being able to choose your gender to making up a first name to changing the facial features with impressive options.

The story for Mass Effect seems simple enough. You get a mission to recover another ancient artifact called a "beacon". As you arrive on the planet, you see that it is/has been under attack by a group that also wants the beacon. The group is led by an alien samed Saren, who has the rank of Spectre (which is a special rank made by the galaxy's presiding council to do the dirty jobs, and do them right with little-to-no laws binding them to a small set of methods). The story shows right off the bat, however, that Saren is betraying the council and is ignoring their orders.

You fight your way to the beacon's location, and right before it blows up it sends a sort-of bloated and broken signal directly to Shepard's brain, nearly knocking them unconcious. After you debrief the council on the situation. After you convince them that Saren has gone rogue, the council makes Shepard a spectre to hunt down and eliminate Saren. After that point, the galaxy is opened up and you are given various missions and tasks that lead you to the typical story end, which is saving the galaxy from certain evil.

But the story is so much more detailed than that. The game has incredibly rich dialogue, with minimal cheesiness. The game even gives you an option in many, many instances where you get to choose what you are going to say to someone in the given situation, with each of the choices available being aligned to good, bad, or morally gray. And in game-affecting situations, you can try to influence someone to do or say what you want them to say, and how effective it is is dependent on how many points you put into a couple of particular categories on your character as you level up.



The gameplay itself is something impressive, too. It doesn't break the norm of typical shoot-em-up games, but it does follow the pattern quite well. There aren't really any puzzles, and although there will be some exploring to do in order to find certain parts of the story to continue on, the paths themselves offer little direct deviation and are easy to get back on to.

Review: 5 out of 5

This game is basically like an interactive movie. The dialogue in the game is so rich, so full, so deep, it feels like you are watching and participating in a near-perfect movie. Add the gameplay that plays so very well, and you get an ideal combination that few games still can't match. The gameplay and story parts are spaced out so well, too, that you aren't really wondering what is going on, and if you get lost, it is because you didn't pay attention.

Not only is the story good, but the voice actors chosen played the parts very well, adding to the movie feel and taking away from the 'this is obviously a game story' feel. Feelings and thoughts are portrayed with striking accuracy. Character interactions are well-built and played very professionally.

Further, if you beat the game you can transfer you character and all of your equipment and stats from your recently completed file to a new game so you can play it all over again with everything you beat it with.



It is a game definitely worth playing at least once or twice. I recommend playing it many times. It is definitely something you won't come across often.

~Koubo

[Prototype]

Prototype. A game set in Manhattan, New York. You play as Alex Mercer, who at the beginning doesn't remember a thing, waking up on an autopsy table. As he escapes, he is shot dead presumably several times. As he tries to uncover his past, he unravels a super-secret government conspiracy around the development of biological weaponry, particularly around the one that infected him, known as the Blackwatch Virus.

It plays much like The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.



The game is pretty simple to understand. You can free-roam around Manhattan and do whatever you please, and when you want to continue the story, the marker is on your minimap as well as your main map showing you where to go.

It looks pretty much like a zombie game. Infections of a virus spreading, and the military attempting to contain it. Both sides gain stronger units built specifically to fight Mercer as the story progresses.




But thankfully, as the game progresses you gain new abilities which will allow you to be more agressive against the ever-increasing military numbers coming into the island. Some of the abilities are given automatically during story events; however, most of the abilities must be purchased through an "upgrade" menu. You earn points to spend in the menu with pretty much everything you do in the game, and the harder the task, the more points you earn. There are also "Events", which give you a specific task to earn a specific amount of points, littered throughout the city. More appear as the story progresses.

Alex also has an ability innate to the start of the game, that allows him to "consume" a person. When you do, you can then disguise yourself as that person. But only the most recent person you consumed. Usually, it would be used to gain health. But it could also be a part of the story, or to hide from the military.

The story itself is pretty straightforward. Do this, attack that, kill that guy, consume that guy. If you want to get the meaning behind the picture, however, then finding certain people, marked with a little floating red head above them, will give you information that makes the simple story a lot deeper, and if you find enough, it becomes significantly darker. These people are called "Web of Intrigue" targets, and the name rightly fits them.




I give [Prototype] a 4 out of 5.

The good points:
The story is very detailed, if you try to find all of the web targets. Even if you find the minimal amount of the side story, the flow between the main events is smooth. The gameplay is pretty straightforward. The battle system is somewhat complex, but remains consistent.

The bad points:
Some missions, as well as events, require precision movement, which is practically impossible. It takes less than a minute fully upgraded to move from the lowest corner of the island to the opposite, highest point, but when you are asked to move from point 'A' to point 'B' in a certain amount of time, with sharp turns and ludicrus obstacles, it gets to the point of "throw your controller through your tv" frustration. And if that wasn't bad enough, boss fights in the game will make you even more angry. Fighting leading up to the boss fights are relatively easy to somewhat complex; but then when you get to the boss himself/herself, it's as if the game developers that went something like this:
"All right, How should we do the boss fights?"
"I vote we put the hardest rarer units in with the boss, in large numbers."
"I vote we add the military to go in there, with tanks and helicopters, and rockets, in large numbers."
"I vote we make the fights long. Very long."
"Good, good. And to top it all off, if you die, even if you were two seconds away from winning, you have to restart from the beginning of the fight. Good work everyone, that alone would make any gamer weep with joy."



Definitely a game worth playing, and even replaying. Just beware of the movement-specific events.

~Koubo