Game Review: Mass Effect 3 - Part 2 - Where Do We Go From Here?

Here's Part 1 of the review if you haven't read it. If you have, here's a link so you don't feel left out.

"LENS FLARE!"

Role-Playing - "I'll take it from here, kid."

Here's the thing I've never quite liked about Mass Effect. It claims that it's an RPG, yet there have been very few instances throughout the series where your choices actually mattered. Yeah, the Council; yeah, Wrex, but none of it really changed anything. In KotOR, you could kill off half your party and conquer the galaxy. In Fallout: New Vegas, you could destroy an entire city and take over the Mojave. In Alpha Protocol, one decision could keep you from seeing a large portion of the game (in favor of another portion).

Not to mention Shepard. I'll say it again, voiced protagonists are really not conducive to a true RPG. When your character is saying things that you wouldn't say, or doing things that you have no control of, with a voice that really isn't yours, then you're not really role-playing, are you? I've always maintained that even though the Mass Effect games are some of the best I've played in a long time, they're not proper RPGs. Which has always been a strange thing to associate with BioWare, the company who has arguably made some of the best ever.

But the beauty of Mass Effect 3 is that, very suddenly, a lot of those choices that you made in the last two games suddenly come back around where they hadn't before. It's like you were firing your gun into the air throughout ME1 and ME2, and this is the game where all those bullets fall back to earth and just mess you up.

Without having played the game a second time without an imported save, I don't know how much of the game was just coincidence and how much was an actual alteration of the game based on my decisions. But what I saw was everything coming back around; like an overblown karma simulator.

There were quests in Mass Effect 1 that seemed insignificant at the time, people I talked to maybe once or twice, and little decisions that seemed to amount to nothing. In Mass Effect 3, I was suddenly talking to these people again, seeing how my little decisions altered the course of their lives - sometimes for the better, sometimes not - and in some cases, it actually helped me out. How many series have you played where being nice to an NPC in the first game amounts to a reward in the third? Not too many. If nothing else, this is what really impressed me about the game.

The other thing I mentioned up there was the voiced protagonist. I do hesitantly support it in the Mass Effect series, if only because that's how they've always done things. (I will never support a voiced protagonist in, say, Dragon Age 2. It didn't/doesn't/won't make sense - ever.) What got me worried in the demo was that the dialogue options that you're provided are noticeably slim. That is to say, where in the last games you were typically provided a few options to respond and then some "investigate" options, here you're typically provided only two responses: with one being amicable and the other being aggressive.

This was tough to accept, but I eventually warmed up to it. What it appears BioWare did was take up all that disc space that would've been committed to Shepard's various and frequent responses, and passed it on to the other NPCs and Shepard himself. In this game, there is noticeably more dialogue coming from NPCs, and although Shepard does a lot of the talking without any input from you (which I typically don't like), it makes the whole game feel a bit more even, more cinematic. And honestly, that's what the games have always been trending toward. Immersion definitely suffers, but you feel more engaged in the story.

You'll still have to make some tough decisions, as I said before, but you won't get many decisions involving the direction of the conversation. If that was something you outright loved in the previous games, you might be disappointed here. Much more than the other games, Shepard feels like his own character here.

I'm fine with this. Mass Effect could never really figure out if it wanted to be an RPG or a cinematic action game. With Mass Effect 3, it finally finds some footing somewhere, so the overall experience is a more consistent one. It's not trying to be everything at once. Now, it's only trying to be Mass Effect, which is cool by me.

But I still won't accept this in Dragon Age. I won't and I can't. Let Mass Effect be Mass Effect. Dragon Age 3, look to Dragon Age: Origins for inspiration!

"I want to be a Reaper."

The Characters - "To Hell and Back."

What really made the game memorable was how pretty much all the characters from the last two games make a comeback - with the exception of those you killed off or got killed, of course. This wasn't like the Star Wars prequels, where somehow all the classic characters made illogical comebacks. Here, all the old characters are written back into the story with the right amount of patience and logic. You never really feel like BioWare's throwing everyone back into the mix, saying, "Look! Garrus! You fans like Garrus, right? He's here! Calibrations!"

It's done with a little more tact than that. Indeed, the characters seem to come through a lot more intensely in this game. Now that they're given more time to talk, unlike in ME2 where they'd suddenly shut up for the rest of the game after two conversations, you can really get to know everyone all over again.

And this being the end of the series and the end of all things, you see a more vulnerable bunch of characters, who see everything that they know and love coming to an end beneath the Reaper invasion. You're not the only one with their homeworld being ravaged, and you'll actually get into a number of conversations where sympathy comes into play. Suddenly, you and all these races from all walks of life share something very personal. You're all losing a home.

There's little else I can say without spoiling things, but I would say that this game has probably the best batch of characters out of any other BioWare game going all the way back to KotOR. When all is said and done, you really do feel like you're bidding real people with real lives a fond farewell. It's an amazing accomplishment for the series and for the company, especially given BioWare had every reason to completely ignore all of it. The goodbyes were all the more heartbreaking because of this.

The Ending - "Departing Known Space"

Note: Again, I'll try to keep this spoiler-free, but just in case, you might want to avoid this section if you don't want to know anything about the ending.

BioWare have said continuously that Mass Effect 3 is the end of the series, Commander Shepard's story arc, and other such things. I will say this much: they weren't lying.

This ending represents a lot of things for the Mass Effect universe. Up until now, the Reapers' greater purpose has been shrouded in mystery, as was the Illusive Man's ultimate role in everything. Why were you brought back to life? Why is the Illusive Man so obsessed with the Reapers? What are the Reapers? Why are they being such intergalactic dicks to everyone?

Most of all: How do you stop an unstoppable force that has already decimated the Council races?

All of these questions will be answered, and then some. Unlike Dragon Age 2, there's no towering billboard raised up just before the credits that reads, "Stay tuned for Mass Effect 4!" No, this is it. This is the end - in more ways than one.

But I guess the big question here, more than anything else, is whether or not the end of a trilogy that we've been following for the better part of five years lived up to expectations. Basically: Is this a satisfying end to the Mass Effect trilogy?

Well... no. It's not.

Well, why the fuck is that?!

I don't know.

You better have some answers, man! I'm playing this thing right now and I don't want to be pissed off when I finish it!

Without spoiling anything, I'll say this. The entire series has been leading up to this "final battle" between the Reapers and the allied forces that Shepard is able to unite. That final battle is one of the most magnificent and exhilarating sequences in any game that I've played. And it's only elevated by everything that's at stake. If you care for the story, for the characters, for an end to the conflict: you'll feel the fire lit under you. It's an all out war against the Reapers, and it's extraordinary.

Everything starts to resolve itself. Questions are answered. Conflicts are put to rest. A lot of people die. It all converges at this moment when you start saying to yourself, "This is it. This is the end, and that was amazing." And then you start expecting the credits to roll.

But they don't, and in the last five minutes of the game, the story makes a sudden and drastic right turn into Lost territory. It's so sudden, so out of nowhere, and so utterly devastating in terms of its implications for the universe at large, I pretty much just sat there, staring blankly at the screen asking myself, "What the fuck just happened?"

It makes no sense. It feels like BioWare outsourced the final moments to the lowest bidder and slapped it on there. Compared to the extraordinary amount of love and care that went into the other 99.9% of the game, the last 0.01% seems like hate mail. It's just impossible to reconcile what it does and what it means with the rest of the game. I wasn't expecting a happy ending or anything like that, but I certainly wasn't expecting to be mindfucked.

For me, the game ended twenty minutes earlier, when you say goodbye to everyone before the final battle. That's the ending, and it's a damned good one. The ending that BioWare throws in there at the last minute exists solely to confuse and aggravate. To make matters worse, it's horribly derivative. I won't pretend to know what the developers were thinking when they wrote that ending, but it was very likely contempt.

I know this because my first reaction when I shut off the game was, "What did I do wrong?"

In Summation - "Beyond the Point of No Return."

Despite that last minute ending, Mass Effect 3 hit all the right notes, with a single sour chord being struck at the end of the composition. Everything up until that ending, if I might say so, is absolutely brilliant. This game was made for fans of Mass Effect. Legitimate arguments can be made concerning their use of Day One DLC and their other questionable marketing tactics, but the game itself is solid. If you've followed the series thus far with much excitement, then this last chapter will just about tip you over the edge.

As far as the story and the characters are concerned, there's no going back. As such, the game retains an "all or nothing" feeling throughout. If it stumbles, it does so when it's of no consequence. If it does something terrible, it's that it tried to go out in an ambitious and unpredictable way instead of taking the responsible route.

But for all intents and purposes, this is a satisfying conclusion to the series and an interesting, new beginning for the Mass Effect universe. I have no idea where future games in the franchise will go, how they'll function, who we'll meet. If nothing else, the galaxy that Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy SR-2 leave us with is an uncertain one, born of immeasurable sacrifice and steadfast friendships, upon which all things will be built.

4.5 out of 5 Stars

Game Review: Mass Effect 3 - Part 1 - This is How the World Ends

"Take Earth Back! ...Or Don't."

Note: I've tried to keep things as spoiler-free as possible, but there may be indirect allusions to things, if you're worried about stuff like that.

Before we talk about the end, let's go back to the beginning. Let's talk about Mass Effect here for a moment and what makes it such a special thing 'round these parts.

As always - though I'm threatening redundancy here - I don't think I can overstate just how much of an impact Knights of the Old Republic and subsequent BioWare games have had on my life. It's immeasurable, unquantifiable, tautological. I think of that revelatory moment in KotOR when you discover the "truth" of Darth Revan, and I can't even fathom where my life might have gone otherwise. That was the moment I fell in love with writing, storytelling, literature in general. But that was KotOR. What does this have to do with Mass Effect?

Well, because of KotoR, I became a BioWare fan. I made it my mission to play every single game they released, and Mass Effect naturally came up. I wasn't sure what to think of the game, since it was most certainly not anything close to what I thought it was going to be. Voiced protagonist, a new cast of characters, a universe I practically needed a manual for, and Gears of War-style gameplay. Weird, initially, but I ended up absolutely adoring the universe. The politics, the locations, the alien races, and the history - you just don't get that in a game everyday. I was excited about Mass Effect for a long time.

The sequel was a different story. It played better and it was new, but it felt like a wasted opportunity. I mean, compared to the first game where you traverse the galaxy and fight you a Reaper, the second game had you working with a terrorist organization and acting as Space Counselor to your crew. And let's not forget about the removal of most of the RPG elements in the game, and the "Suicide Mission", which was about as ill-conceived as you can get. I liked the game, but superior to ME1, it was not.

Mass Effect 3. I was worried about this game for a good long time. This is post-Dragon Age 2, after all - one of the worst games I've ever played. It just seemed like BioWare had lost their touch, and with The Old Republic out, making some of that internet money was their highest priority. Based on what I'd seen, what I'd heard, I could've bet you Mass Effect 3 would be a cash-in, straight up. There just seemed no reason for them to step up, because they already had the fanbase and already had a bunch of people (myself included) who pretty much had to buy the game. This was going to be the last of the trilogy. The big send-off.

Even with the game in my hand on launch, I thought the thing was going to be as big, if not a bigger, disappointment than Dragon Age 2.

In so many words: I was fucking wrong, and for that I'm thankful. The BioWare that made me love storytelling has made a comeback.

The Story: "All or Nothing."

"Fighting big ass robots isn't how I imagined spending my twilight years, Shepard."

The Reaper threat. It's a conflict that the series has been building since its opening moments, when Eden Prime was all but leveled by Sovereign. Now, three years later, the war has finally arrived - and, unfortunately, no one has bothered to listen to Shepard's warnings. (Bastards.) As a result, Earth is taken within a matter of minutes, in one of the more exhilarating set pieces of the series.

You're just barely able to get aboard the Normandy with Admiral Anderson, who then proceeds to stay behind and help organize the resistance. This leaves you with the task of organizing a fleet to, as the trailers say, Take Earth Back. Seasoned Mass Effect players will know that this is no easy task, because if the last two games have taught you anything, it's that most of the galactic races can never seem to get along. A tough task, but too bad, you have to make them see the light. In a sense, the bulk of the game boils down to one big diplomatic mission after another: appeasement on a galactic scale.

The game presents you with a myriad of ways to accomplish this. You'll find that you're constantly given the option to just screw things up royally or bend over backwards to ensure that everyone gets along. The choice is up to you. Anderson trusted you enough to leave the unification of the galaxy in your hands. If you'd like, you can show him just how misplaced that trust really was. The difficult choices are back in full swing here.

In your journey to unite the galaxy (or to travel thousands of light years just to piss everyone off), you'll be visiting many, many places throughout the Mass Effect universe. A handful will be familiar, but for the most part you'll be seeing places that the games have alluded to quite frequently. I won't say which worlds, since they might be a bit of a spoiler. I will say that, as per the trend, the Citadel is back. Those of you, like me, who were disappointed by the three or so rooms that you were able to explore in Mass Effect 2 will be delighted to know that there's probably more of the Citadel to see here than in the first two games combined.

As advertised, all of this is leading up to the final encounter between you, whatever army you're able to gather, and the Reaper forces. This final battle, if I can say as much, is definitely one of the most amazing and frenetic sequences I've ever seen in a game - elevated to spectacular heights by the story that's been building behind it across three games for nearly five years now. If you've invested a lot into that story and the characters, you'll definitely feel a sense of urgency there.

For those of you wondering, Assassin's Creed this is not. There's no cliffhanger here, no door left wide open for Mass Effect 4. BioWare have said this is the conclusion of Commander Shepard's story arc, and that is most definitely the case. I'll tell you this: the goodbyes were pretty rough on me. It feels like you're leaving a world behind. The way to the exit was an emotional rollercoaster, and tastefully done - on par with the ending to Dragon Age: Origins.

There's a small little detail about the ending that should be mentioned, not spoiled, but I'll cover that at the end of the review.

That little detail aside, though, this is definitely one of the finest stories BioWare have put together in some time. How it constantly draws upon the finer points of the last two games, how it celebrates all of the memorable moments throughout, and how tons of your decisions from previous games swing back around to either assist you or bite you in the ass... it's a very unique adventure. One of the best.

I won't be forgetting this for quite some time. Only positive memories here.

God, it's been a while, BioWare!

Gameplay - "Take Cover! Take Cover Everywhere!"

"Chest-high walls are the real hero of this war."

The series has come a long way from its rather cluttered origins. In terms of combat, Mass Effect 3 actually succeeds in playing as fluidly as the Gears of War series has for some time. Shepard moves a bit quicker, traversing obstacles is a bit easier, and the new melee system adds a new "wild card" to the whole process. But even then, it feels only slightly improved over ME2, but it seems to make a difference, however small.

The big thing here is that the RPG elements from the first game have been reinstated, so to speak. Remember how you only had, like, five guns to choose from in ME2? There are a lot more this time around, and each are upgradable. A weapon can be modded by way of attachments or upgraded models - and the attachments can be upgraded as well. So you feel like you have much more control over your weaponry there, and it's pretty satisfying when it makes a noticeable difference in combat. Wow, look at me giving props to something that was in the first game.

But seriously, glad to have it back.

Armor slots have been thrown into the mix, as well (which is actually an improvement over ME1, which just had mod slots). There are a variety of different helmets, chestpieces, gauntlets, greaves, etc. You can also customize your armor's color, tint, pattern, and lighting. In addition to that, you also find Reaper and Prothean tech along the way that can be used to give you bonus attributes.

Lastly, you'll a little more freedom when it comes to your abilities, since they now do a little bit of branching. It's fairly rudimentary (since they only branch in two directions, really), but it's still another level of control. It's certainly not Dragon Age or Skyrim, but it's a breath of fresh air to have these RPG elements back, and to see them optimized and structured more efficiently. The manufacturers and all that are back, but you won't be scratching your head wondering how you have all these items and none of them seem to be an upgrade (which was half the battle of ME1).

When BioWare said they were bringing back those RPG elements, they weren't lying. I hesitate to say they're very deep options or anything you'll spend an overabundance of time analyzing, but it's a thrill to see them make a return. More than just having additional options, it brings back a sense of control, customization, and immersion back into the game where it had been severely lacking in Mass Effect 2. When you suddenly have a choice of how you go into battle, it makes a difference. It separates the series from Gears of War, with which I felt ME2 shared a little too much real estate. It's great to see some heavily defined borders here.

That does it for Part One! Read Part the Second right here!

Game Review(s): Dead Island (Link)

I think I've written three different reviews for this game, and none of them ended up here. What a shame. But it was mostly on account of the circumstances. The owner of Obnoxi.us gave me the opportunity to rant on his website, and my Amazon review of the game is the "most helpful" over on that end (for now; people tend to slam critical reviews back into the depths). So... blaaaah. Don't think this'll happen too often, but if you'd like to read what I thought of the game, here are the two places to do so!

"Obnoxi.us" Review

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Amazon Review

Mortal Kombat (1993) - The Alternative Instruktion Manual

It's no secret that one of my oldest and dearest hobbies is playing video games, and that I generally prefer the older ones: games with simple control schemes and no learning curve, which are quaint and non-threatening and which I warmly remember playing as a child. Luckily for me, my tastes are very much catered for at the moment, as the last ten years have seen a rush of revivals, re-releases and nostalgic internet musings. People of my generation are starting to look back to their pasts, and want to play Super Mario Bros. and Zelda and Goldeneye all over again. Retro is in.

But one series of games that has curiously never been re-released (not properly anyway) is Mortal Kombat - the main rival to the brilliant Street Fighter 2, which invented and simultaneously perfected the 'tournament fighter' genre.

Mortal Kombat was one of the few imitations that almost surpassed the original. It had neat graphics based on animated photographs rather that standard cartoons, it had a cool oriental theme... and it had a comical amount of blood. And death moves. By today's standards these are silly and tame, but as a small child playing these behind my parents' backs, I remember feeling a wonderful hot flush of guilt at the back of my neck.

Death. Moves. You could rip people's heads off and everything! Or at least, Gary from number 12 said he had a friend who knew how to rip people's heads off. It was a secret move which no-one really knew how to do. I just settled for an uppercut as my standard finishing move, which I pretended was fatal.

Scorpion, seen here reassuring himself that that final knee-to-the-chest probably caused internal bleeding or something, as a legion of unimpressed John Malcoviches clap politely.

So it was with enormous joy that I noticed today that whoever it is that bought up Midway have gone and released all three of the classic 2D Mortal Kombat games, in one package, on Xbox Live Arcade! Immediately I downloaded it and got to grips with a nicely-ported version of the arcade machine original. I played as Liu Kang, because I remembered how to do his moves, and bravely chose the 'normal' difficulty setting. As a kid I remember finding this game pretty tough and never daring to go higher than the insultingly-misnamed 'very easy' mode. But you know, nowadays I'm so much wiser and smarter. I have a beard of sorts. I bet now I can win it, maybe even properly!
All right, let's do this! It's time for MOOORDAL KAWMBAAAAAT! *and then techno music in my head.*

The following hour was interesting. As I played, I was mentally compiling the following instruction booklet. I wish I'd had this information available before I'd started. It might have helped me lose less.

---------------

FIGHT!

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1. Getting Started

Thank you for your purchase, and welcome to the curious and soul-destroying world of MORTAL KOMBAT (TM)! Here at Midway we pride ourselves on not just copying Street Fighter 2 outright, but rather putting time and effort into disguising that fact, and doing all we can to piss off your parents too (yes this is the game where you can rip people's heads off, and no, this booklet will not tell you how to do that.)

First, download and open your 'Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection' virtual game pak. After maybe a hundred company credits screens, the game will begin. Now press 'Start' and try not to notice the spelling and grammar errors in the load-screen instructions. The original classic MORTAL KOMBAT is the first game available, so just hit start. Now select a difficulty. These range from 'Quite hard' through to 'Bloody hard', 'Jesus Christ this is hard', 'How do they expect children to play this?' and 'Nobody even tested this.' Choose based on your tolerance for pychological pain and hit 'Start'.


2. The Story...

The story of MORTAL KOMBAT begins many centuries ago, when the Elder Gods separated creation into several realms: Earthrealm (the Earth), Outworld (a mixed lesbian and gay nightspot which did very well for itself), Netherrealm (Hell), Edenia (paradise) and the realms of Order and Chaos (filler). Upon doing this, the Gods decreed that should one realm's rulers wish to invade another realm, then they would have to stage a martial arts tournament known as Mortal Kombat (the Elder Gods were apparently dyslexic) and have one if its representative fighters win against those representing the other realm ten times in a row. Everybody got that?

The Elder Gods figured that nobody would ever win ten in a row (like, who has the time and stuff), but failed to realise that some of their new realms would breed distinctly better fighting champions than others. As such, Edenia and Order-realm were conquered pretty quickly, and the Emporer of Outworld starting getting ideas about Earth.

Ten generations later, the Emporer found himself sitting on nine straight victories and ready for a tenth. His finest general and martial-arts master, Shang Tsung, organised the most important Mortal Kombat tournament of all: the fight for Earth. Acting quite hastily, the thunder-God Raiden assumed human form and gathered a handful of top Earth-based fighters at the absolute last minute, explaining the rules and origin of the tournament en-route. Their questions about why he hadn't warned them, trained them or prepared the Earth in any way were brushed aside as he told them something about destiny and responsibility, which they weren't listening to.

Later that day, the dazed and baffled kombatants arrive at Tsung's mysterious private island, where the tournament is about to begin...

As one of Earth's chosen warriors (the first six guys Raiden could think of, chosen on the basis that they had cool names), you must save the Earth from invasion by defeating and ideally murdering the other contestants, two ninjas, the famous Prince Goro and finally Shang Tsung himself (yes, Outworld only picked two guys to fight for it). Do you have the strength, skill and inner harmony required to defeat the deadly gauntlet... of Mortal Kombat? No.


3. The Kharacters

You will be given a choice of seven martial arts experts, representing a range of styles and cultures from across the globe. All of them posess magical powers of some kind, but weapons are not allowed, unless you're Scorpion. Scorpion has some kind of disability scam going, but the details are cloaked in mystery.

Liu Kang is the canonical hero, despite the fact that he is Bruce Lee. Aledgedly. Similarities and legal disputes aside, Liu is a brave Shaolin Monk who has entered the tournament in order to save the Earth. He wears black pants and cuts his hair short. He is Chinese, and... makes noises like Bruce Lee.

Raiden is the ancient Chinese-I-Guess God of thunder, alive inside a mortal body, sunhat, apron and white hazardous materials suit. He has the power to shoot electricity from his hands, and can hurl himself across the room like a torpedo while screaming incomprehensible faux-Chinese gibberish. This all sounds good, but remember that he and his hand-picked elite squads have so far failed to win a single tournament out of the last ten. Might not want to bet on this guy.

Johnny Cage... looks nothing like you remembered. You were expecting a cool guy in sunglasses and black trousers, right, like in the movie? The real Johnny wears wierd pirate shorts with a sash, squats with his legs apart and hands up as if he's about to do the Walk Like an Egyptian dance, and his face is oddly long and serious-looking.

Sonya Blade is the girl. Got to have a girl. If she gets you with the sweep kick, she will automatically do this annoying move with her legs, thus effectively sweeping you twice. Also she is an FBI agent. For some reason she is wearing lime-green exercise gear.

Sub-Zero is a ninja who dresses in sky-blue and posesses the ability to freeze solid matter, but sadly not the ability to come up with a subtle or creative nickname. His freeze-move is extremely useful as it is hard to block and slows down the combat for a few precious moments.

Scorpion is exactly like Sub-Zero except that he wears yellow instead of blue, and he shoots an Inspector Gadget-style harpoon from his hand and yells 'Get ooover here!' in a deep American accent, thus overshadowing the obvious palette-swap effect by being the most fun character in the game. Like the freeze move, the Harpoon is much more helpful than most special moves.

Kano has a metal plate covering his glowing red eye, throws magic knives and in the film seemed to be a Cockney crime boss. However, is is rubbish.


4. How to Play

After you have selected your fighter, your opponents will be laid out in order of difficulty, and the easiest one will immediately begin kicking the everliving crap out of you. Don't worry - you paid your ten bucks, so you have unlimited continues! During the ensuing defeats you will learn that every fighter is able to high-kick, low-kick, furiously wail on the other guy with fast punches, sweep kick, block, perform specific special moves and of course... uppercut.

There are three ways to win a fight. Any other stretagy will fail.

1) Be Sub-Zero or Scorpion, and thus have an easy special move which incapacitates the other guy for a second. Abuse the hell out of this move. Shout 'Get oooover here!' to amuse yourself, but remember this is still no guarantee of victory in the cruel world of Mortal Kombat. The first time someone blocks your harpoon and proceeds to brutalise you in revenge, your heart will break.
2) Wail on that impossibly-fast jackass with high punches every time he gets close to you. You will look silly, but maybe you'll win and the game will not laugh at you or loudly applaud your defeat (it does this a lot).
3) Play the uppercut and sweep game. Once you're fairly close to your opponent, he will try to sweep-kick you. The trick is to be slightly too far away and then walk towards him to deliver the uppercut. And vice versa - that is, if he tries to uppercut, you sweep the leg, Johnny, and you sweep it good. Be aware that he will be trying the same thing. Don't keep trying to do one or the other - you must alternate between both moves.

If you do win, you will hear a deep voice cry, 'Finish him!' (regardless of your opponent's gender) and be allowed to perform a finishing move! You have half a second to do it, and the instructions (on the pause menu) are tiny, complex and incomprehensible. You will likely never accomplish this.

Every few levels you will be granted a bonus round. Here you will hear the deep voiced guy say, 'Test your might!' and in the following 0.034 seconds you must tap the punch button until you have built up enough power to hit 'block' and thus shatter a piece of wood before your power sinks back down. You will never accomplish this. The game is just trying to demoralise you.

At one point, you'll fight on The Pit Stage. This is a stage set on a thin stone bridge over a pit of spikes. The winner here is able to actually perform a finishing move, by simply uppercutting the loser and thus dropping him onto the spikes. This feels amazing and makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Liu Kang: "I'm doing it! I'm actually doing it!!"

Once five of your opponents have been beaten and one unfortunate soul has been thrown on the spikes, you will enter what the tournament spectators lovingly call 'The Padding':

- First the Mirror Match! You must fight an identical copy of yourself for unknown reasons. Here the game is able to dispel the false belief you have built up, that you are playing with any degree of skill. The computer-controlled copy will demonstrate how you were supposed to be playing this whole time, until you either replicate his inhumanly-fast style or get lucky with the sweeps and uppercuts.
- Then you will face the first Endurance fight! Here you fight two of the other fighters back to back! This is, as you would imagine, twice as hard as what you've been doing so far. Time to up your game, chum.
- Twenty minutes later, you face another Endurance fight! Same as before. You might want to get a cup of coffee or something. Count youself lucky you're not playing this on an arcade in the mid 90's, feeding a limitless supply of 50ps into it just so that maybe you can get to the next round, which is...
- Another fucking Endurance fight. You have now fought everyone twice, including the guy you killed earlier. You may begin to question the alledged 'mortality' of the Kombat at this point.


5. Almost There! Except...

Once you defeat the Padding, you will notice that you are shaking, exhausted and sporting a healthy stubble. Well done: this is the mark of a true Mortal Kombat player! You are now ready for the two final challenges - Outworld's two greatest fighters! The battle to save all of mankind!

But never mind that shit - here comes GORO!

Just another day for Goro. Here he is, preparing to crucify Scorpion with nothing but his bare fists and the air. The bones belong to Chuck Norris.

Goro is a half-man, half-dragon. Like Johnny Cage, he looks nothing at all like how you remember him or how he looked in the movie. He fights you outside a cave with glowing monster eyes peeping out from the darkness, and he is enormous and has four arms. You can't knock him over by uppercutting or sweeping, and he can kill you in three or four hits. Also, he growls constantly. Like, constantly. You grow to really resent that.

Goro's special moves include punching you so hard it kills you whilst growling, grabbing hold of you, growling and punching you multiple times and betting on whether you die on an even or odd number, throwing you so hard you lose consciousness and then punching you and growling, shooting a fireball which melts your flesh before it even hits you, jumping onto your head and stomping your body into a fine dust which he then sets sets fire to and stomps on all over again to put it out, and growling as he makes a sandwich out of your lungs, which he then serves to his giant, four-armed mates, who immediately punch the sandwich so hard it flies into outer space and burns up in the sun and then the sun explodes from the sheer force of the punch. Goro's salary is paid in 50ps.

This guy has been fighting Goro for less than a second, and already has no skin. This is a slow day for Goro, but don't worry - he's apparently about to bring about armageddon.

The final stage is Shang Tsung himself. No-one knows who he is, because no-one has ever defeated Goro. It's rumoured that he may be the the old man you see in the background on some levels, but nobody knows or cares any more.

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At this point, I would like to say that I'm only kidding. Mortal Kombat has a strange and amusing storyline and it's unbelievably hard when you reach the later stages, and Goro, but hey. It's an arcade game, what did I expect? And its a damn good arcade game, too. The moody, vaguely-Chinese-mythological setting and music are fun and atmospheric, the uppercuts feel great, the Pit Stage is wonderful and the fatalities, should you ever get them to work, make you feel on top of the world. This nostalgic classic does hold up, after all this time, even now that the novelty and controversy of the blood has worn off. And it was worth buying just to have another crack at Goro. Besides, the difficulty level helps to create the sense of doom and dark fantasy that this whole experience is built on.

Maybe if I try 'very easy' mode, eh?

I recommend the new release: Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection. Just... don't expect to win. Ripping people's heads off may be possible with practice.

And as I remember things, the second game was much better! I got MK2 and 3 as part of this deal, so I look forward to testing them too. In the mean time, remember...

YOUR BROTHER'S SOUL IS MINE!

Game Review: Dead Space 2

Typical outcome: "It's beautifu-OH SHI-!"

It's like being asked if you want to be bit by a rattlesnake a second time: Hey, wanna go up against the necromorphs again? Huh? Do ya? Rawr?

But by the time my copy of Dead Space 2 came in the mail, I was psyched beyond any semblance of a care. I thankfully knew very little about the story, or even what to expect. I knew my mom probably wouldn't like the game very much, but, then again, she's the one who introduced me to The Thing. I was very excited going into this game, with expectations that sat pretty high up there. It would've been very easy for Visceral Games to just rehash the first game (like BioWare, they're a subsidiary of EA), but I was amazed that DS2 pretty much met all of them, and did so with style.

The game's story picks up some three years after the quagmire on the Ishimura, with Isaac Clarke waking up in the psych ward of a hospital, confused and suffering from a severe bout of trauma-induced amnesia. He remembers absolutely nothing since escaping from the Aegis System, but he does remember just enough for him to recognize a necromorph infestation when he sees it. Things just never get better for good ol' Issac.

Barely escaping with his life, Isaac is thrown into absolute chaos, with no other real objective except to survive. As he soon discovers, the place he's currently running around is "The Sprawl": a massive, self-contained city built around a shard of Titan, one of Saturn's presently-pulverized moons. Things are gradually going from bad to superbad, as the necromorph infestation spreads violently throughout the unsuspecting populace. He (and by extension, you) has no idea how the necromorphs appeared here or how to even go about stopping it. Eventually, he comes into contact with several other characters, who shed some light on a conspiracy at the heart of it all, and inform Isaac Clarke of just how f**ked he is.

Without giving too much away, I absolutely loved how the story unfolded in Dead Space 2. Much like its predecessor, it's a slow process of gathering information and just taking a look around, but unlike DS1, this game doesn't even tell you where you are, or why you've woken up in a straight-jacket! It's reminiscent of the mansion from Resident Evil; you're just there, bad things are happening, and it takes some time to figure out what due to the horrible, horrible circumstances. There's a palpable sense of wandering in ignorance at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time - minus the Jill sandwich.

As for the location you wander in ignorance, the Sprawl is pretty much the opposite of the USG Ishimura, in that there are less winding corridors, more open locations (comparable to the Ishimura's bridge area), and many more pretty things to look at. Dead Space was a visually stunning game to me, especially considering that it's just about three years old. Even on the Xbox 360 version, Dead Space 2 looks even better. Everything looks cleaner, the use of light to create mood and tension has been employed more frequently, and the level-design is fantastic.

As before, there are no real loading screens or "cutscenes" in Dead Space 2, only strategically-placed elevators or story moments to distract you from when the game's actually doing its work. The camera never cuts away for the entire game (unless you die), so when shit goes down, it's very unexpected. This also makes the Sprawl feel as massive as it looks, since the entire city was actually designed around the areas you can explore (much like Alan Wake and Mirror's Edge). It feels like a real spacestation, and that's the important part. There are apartment complexes, shopping malls, food courts, a church, sewers, and other spoiler-ific places that you'll be fighting your way through. Some care clearly went into the design of this game if they designed a whole city even though you only play through certain parts.

Click to see just how massive the Sprawl appears.

Overkill? Perhaps, but it makes the experience. (It's an eight hour game spread across two discs, which should give you an idea of how dense this game is!)

So, it's bigger, prettier, and the story expands upon the main plot and the lore in all the right places. But is it fun to play? Well, Visceral Games have clearly charged ahead here with that old mantra in mind: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There are many gameplay tweaks that rectify the major hangups that most people had with the first game. The zero gravity sections now allow you to float around them using thrusters, instead of a point-and-click bounce from one room to the other. Isaac is also a little more maneuverable, where he was previously kinda sluggish, which makes a big difference during an attack.

The return of "context-sensitive events" that pop up every now and then was very welcomed. Nothing breaks up expectations like being suddenly flung through space, forced to maneuver your way through debris along the way. They're almost like unique mini-games that you only play once, much like the drag tentacles from DS1. More of that is always nice.

But aside from tweaks and the token addition of weapons and new brands of necromorphs (terrifying, though they are), the gameplay remains largely unchanged from the last game. For better or worse, you're still dismembering necromorphs for eight hours, which gets noticeably repetitive this time through. This wasn't much of a problem in the last game, since getting acquainted with "dismemberment combat" and the necromorphs themselves was half the fun. Not to mention the encounters were more infrequent and set up with a greater sense of subtlety, which just built more tension. This time, you just get swarmed. Every time you feel like you're gonna get swarmed or attacked, you do. Lots of swarming going on.

It would be the equivalent of picking up Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age 2 for the first time and discovering that geth/darkspawn are the prime enemy again, and you're gonna be fighting them exclusively for the whole game again. When it comes to the combat, there's a lot of deja vu going on, and I'm worried that Visceral Games are beginning to back themselves into a corner in that regard. I didn't care for Gears of War 2 because you were just fighting more of the Locust Horde, and I don't much care for Halo because in this rich sci-fi universe Bungie created, the Covenant and their various sects are apparently the only threat to a supersoldier in the entire galaxy.

Variety is the spice of life, Visceral, and making a variety of one type of enemy isn't gonna cut it for Dead Space 3, because it almost didn't work with Dead Space 2. The necromorphs are scary as hell, but so were the zombies in Resident Evil, and you can see what repetition did to those guys. Dead Space 3 needs to be your Resident Evil 4, where you go back to the drawing board and make with the "outside the box" stuff.

So, I guess my main gripe with the game isn't necessarily with the game itself, but with the direction of the franchise overall. You can just see Dead Space there, with its sci-fi universe that I'd seriously rank up there creativity-wise with BioWare's Mass Effect series, teetering on the edge of becoming a series about shooting different kinds of necromorphs in slightly different ways. Once you get swarmed for the billionth time, the scares and the immersion goes away. The opening? That was terrifying. The school? Nightmare-inducing. Getting swarmed again outside the factory? Annoying.

But it says a lot about the general atmosphere, art direction, and story of this game that I'm willing to shoot my way through even more swarms just to play through it again (having New Game+ available doesn't hurt either). It may not do anything particularly daring gameplay-wise, but everything else tries to do what Dead Space did great, and do them even better. In my mind, they succeeded, and they've definitely made a fan out of me. Dead Space 2 is still an amazing, terrifying, and immersive experience worthy of the hard sci-fi genre that it celebrates. If you loved the first game, there should be very little dissuading you from trying out its sequel.

It's a beautiful game, and your mom will hate it.

(Tardy) Game Review: Dead Space

My first experience with the survival/horror genre was Resident Evil 2 on the original Playstation. My family had gone out to a friend's ranch in the middle of nowhere. It was full dark, we were surrounded by orchards, old machinery, and there were coyotes yapping in the distance. Probably my first, intense feeling of isolation, and it was at that magical moment that our friend's son asked me, "Hey, do you want to play some Playstation?" I could not refuse. This was back when the Playstation was this magical, disc-using wonder of a game system. I loved just watching the thing work.

So, he puts in Resident Evil 2. By the time we get past the first cutscene, I'm already going pale. I had no concept of zombies at that time either, so this was all a great shock to me. Then the game starts going, and Leon Kennedy is desperately pumping round after round into things that die... and then they don't? I never even got to play (the guy was one of those gamers: "Hey, lemme show you something real quick."), but even so, I was terrified. Don't even get me started on how badly those zombies breaking into that gun store scarred me (hint, hint: probably scarred for life). Nowhere was safe!

Then someone suggested Silent Hill and I remember very little after that.

Anyway, my gaming origins, so to speak, are rooted in survival/horror. Since that night, instead of flinching away from any other games of that type from Capcom and others, I ran toward them. I don't know why I did that. Maybe after a scare that bad, it's like a "hair of the dog" kind of thing. As the years went on, I'm not sure if the games stopped being scary, or if nothing had reached that RE2 level of scary since. Resident Evil 4 was the last real freaky-ass game I've played. There's been Bioshock and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but neither of those scared me in the least. I don't even remember jumping.

That's where Dead Space comes in. I had bought it during a Steam sale without really thinking too hard about it. (The game was $5 at the time.) I played the first level, and while it hooked me, I was still getting acquainted with playing games on the PC. This was back when I had just picked up my new comp components, and could suddenly play games of a higher graphical quality than Minesweeper.

The other day, I picked it up again (with the intention of finishing a game so I could clear it off my hard drive), and was suddenly really taken by it. The atmosphere, the story, the gameplay, the macabre and grotesque antagonists: it all sorta clicked. I couldn't put the game down, and ended up finishing it that night. Let me tell you, playing at night was a bad idea.

For the yet-to-be-initiated, Dead Space is a survival/horror game that takes place in spaaaaace. A massive, sub-orbital mining vessel (also known as a "planet cracker") called the U.S.G. Ishimura has recently gone dark, and a distress signal is sent out. The corporation that owns the ship tasks Isaac Clarke, a space-engineer (Space Mario), and his team with figuring out what's gone wrong on the Ishimura, and to fix the problem if possible. After a hard landing, the rescue team finds that the ship appears abandoned. This doesn't last too long, though, as they're soon attacked by the gruesome, mutated creatures informally named "necromorphs."

The whole of Ishimura's crew have been mutated into decidedly inhuman beings, and they don't have a fondness for anything that isn't dead. So, Issac and the rescue team have to figure out a way to get off the planet cracker, stop the necromorphs from infecting other planets (mainly Earth), all the while attempting to look for survivors. Issac's girlfriend, Nicole, was also a member of the crew, so he also has to deal with that along the way - on top of everything else.

All right: the necromorphs. It's clear that this game was primarily inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing, and this is a very good thing (hehe). The monsters you fight are not only painfully scary, they're downright disturbing. You might spend moments of your fights with them just reconciling what they were with what they are. Much like Gabriel Iglesias' "Six Levels of Fatness," there are Six Levels of Scary in this game:

1. Creepy

2. Freaky

3. Frightening

4. Disturbing

5. DAMN!

6. F**ked Up

Sometimes I'd die because I was so distracted by the design of these things, looking on in horror as they approached. Dealing with that is just one part of the game, though. Let's not forget that you're in outer space, and the developers have gone all out to ensure that they take advantage of this. You'll be playing engineer a lot (maybe more than some would like), and fighting things like rogue asteroids, orbit decay, and zero gravity in order to get yourself the hell outta Dodge.

And this is what I really liked about Dead Space. All of your missions, for better or worse, are always sci-fi oriented. Go restore gravity to this deck, take a walk outside before a meteor shower tears you to shreds, play some zero-g basketball to retrieve a nav card (yes, this is an option), learn about the future's most prevalent religion: Unitology. All of this makes your stay aboard the Ishimura a very immersive one. You get a really good feel of how the crew operated aboard the vessel, humanity's economy, technology, social structure. It's a nice, clean(ish) cross-section of a very well thought-out science fictional future in store for humankind.

This isn't a straight-up gorefest. Clearly a lot of thought was put into making the ship and the society that clings to the stars around it feel very logical. That's the key to good science fiction and good horror. Things just flat out make sense. You'll spend very little time questioning the science of this or the logic of that.

If there is one thing that this game suffers from, it's the "Oh! Just one more thing!" syndrome that some games suffer from. This can make the game feel very frustrating at times. Yes, you've just spent an hour fixing the shuttle: Oh! Just one more thing! It seems someone removed the navigational system from it, so I guess you'll have to find it. Yes, you've just spent an hour getting the Ishimura's engine's back online: Oh! Just one more thing! It seems we're passing through an asteroid field now, so you'd better get the defensive countermeasures up and running before we do anything else.

It feels very much like Alan Wake or Dragon Age 2 when they're at their worst (which, for DA2, is all the time - hiyooo!). It can never just be over and done with. One more thing has to go wrong so you'll spend more time running around the ship from hell. Dead Space is fantastic, but the Writer of Subtle Plotlines over at Visceral Games seems to take a vacation at random times. Still, even then, some of these little sidequests take you to some amazing places. So while I don't applaud how they get you there, I'm glad that they get you there, if that makes any sense. It's like being driven to an arcade in a Ford Pinto.

And I just have to say that the visuals are dazzling. For a three-year-old game, there were several moments where I just had to stand and stare for a while. Remember that one really great moment in Mass Effect 2, when you step into the exposed CIC of the Normandy as it's getting torn apart by the Collector vessel? There are several just like that.

Sometimes it's a blessing: playing a game so late in its life cycle. Because now I've played a game that I truly love, and I don't have to wait any time at all to play the sequel! Dead Space is just a fantastic game. No, it's not perfect, but it's original where it counts. Much like Mirror's Edge, you just don't expect games like this to come around every dynasty. Dead Space is a violent, shocking, disturbing, thought-provoking game that's damn fun to play. The immersion factor is high, the sci-fi is mostly on par with Mass Effect, and it'll probably scare the hell out of you.

If you haven't played it, give it a try! Again, like Mirror's Edge, you could probably pick it up for $10 easy. You could do worse!

Game Review: Mirror's Edge

We exist on the Mirror's Edge. Why?

Because we've put a lot of thought into this metaphor.

It might be a little counterproductive to review a game that's almost three years old, but... Well, nevermind, it's definitely counterproductive. I bought Mirror's Edge with some sly talk and a Gamestop coupon, and ended up walking away from the counter minus nine dollars and change. Not a bad price at all, especially for my penny-pinching self.

I had been curious about this game for quite some time. Its demo was one of the first things I downloaded onto my then-new Xbox 360, and I remember being very impressed by what I saw. A game about real parkour? It would be the first game to attempt such a thing (if you don't count 2007's Assassin's Creed, which wasn't technically parkour), and it turned out pretty well! I got a real sense of speed, vertigo as I jumped from skyscraper to skyscraper, and when I was able to link together several different moves at one time, it was very satisfying.

Now I have the full game, and managed to play through the entire singleplayer campaign, as well as a few of the time trials. How does it hold up to the demo? Weeeeeeell, that's the interesting thing. But let me gush about the good things before I move on to the anti-good things.

Let's set up what this game is: very original, and developed by the studio that created the Battlefield series (Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2, etc.) and are also assisting in the production of Mass Effect 3. So the quality is definitely there along with the originality. The visuals are very good. This isn't really a free roam game, but, like Alan Wake, an entire city was still built around each of the stages. It feels like if there had been a few conveniently-placed planks or rails, you'd be able to run off into the horizon. But I digress...

Running and leaping from rooftop to rooftop whilst dozens of stories off the ground is a surreal experience from the get-go. I'd almost compare it to the first few levels of Portal, where you suddenly have this crazy sense of power and freedom in a new and exciting format. The game has you sliding under barriers, walking across a pole in the open air, and jumping onto the landing struts of a helicopter on the first level. It was a definite rush, and the fantastic visuals and art design only accentuated the experience.

And that's really where the fun and the potential of this game surfaces: in the first level. You get acquainted with what the protagonist (we'll get back to her) calls, "the flow." Where you can see the unseen pathways from building to building, linked together in such a way that it demands someone with the skill of timing and agility to even trespass upon it. After some trial and error, I was linking moves together flawlessly. Bouncing from one rooftop to the other without slowing down for anything, without even thinking about the buttons. There was just the experience.

Here's a great run of the game's prologue. It'll give you a good idea of what the game has to offer.

On that note, let's talk about the bad stuff now!

In making this game, DICE was probably unaware what the public at large would gravitate to, and it would definitely be the free-running aspect. But because, in my opinion, they were unaware of this, they threw a whole bunch of things into the game that can, at times, cause the whole experience to screech to a stop. For one: corridors!

Over the course of the first few chapters, you're steadily thrown into the middle of the story Mirror's Edge, which isn't very impressive to begin with. You play as a Runner named Faith, who has made it her mission to transfer sensitive, controversial material by way of the rooftops. The corporations are corrupt, Faith is not, they try to kill you, and you resist. That's about the long and short of it. Not enough to really keep me involved, so it was the burden of the gameplay to keep me entertained. But, like I said: corridors!

F**k!

Maybe it was just to shake things up, but I don't think I'll ever understand why DICE decided to make the majority of a game about free-running take place indoors. Busting through a door and seeing that you're going to be jumping from shelf to shelf for a while is sure to be an instant buzzkill. Aside from the feeling of confinement, the indoor parts of the game just don't hold up well to the whole free-running thing. I was bouncing off walls, falling through ceilings, falling off scaffolding, falling off stairs, falling out of windows. There was a surprising amount of falling! I think I died more falling off a painter's catwalk than I ever did jumping betwixt skyscrapers.

This is compounded by the many encounters you'll have with the law. See, the combat is good on paper. Your goal is to basically run up, disarm, and gun down any resistance you might have (even though that kinda flies in the face of the game's story), or box Johnny Law to death. The thing is that the combat is imperfect. If you don't get killed running up to the guy with the shotgun in an attempt to knock him out/disarm him, then his three buddies will probably end up doing the job for him. In that sense, "divide and conquer" is the best route, though the AI doesn't often oblige you by doing anything resembling "divide". I died many, many times trying to fight my way through some of these guys, and in later chapters, they don't go down very easy.

So, I guess in the way of the singleplayer campaign, I dislike it because of how it seemed to sabotage its own concept. A game about free-running slowly became a platformer, became a poor first-person shooter, became a game that will probably only be played for its time trials and speed runs.

And yes, there are time trials and leaderboards! It allows you to see who's the best for that week, that month, and of all time - and then allows you to race the ghosts of those players for practice or for motivation. One of the most rewarding things in the time trials was when shaving hundredths of a second shot up to the top of the leaderboards. As of now, I'm in the top 500 of all time! Though that's likely to change. There's an exploitable glitch in the game that allows you to double jump your way through the maps. What's sad is that everyone above me exploited this, which I don't really think is fair.

Unfortunately, there's no real multiplayer, so you can't race a friend directly or do co-op or anything like that. You can race their ghosts, but that's about it.

Much like the aforementioned Assassin's Creed, DICE's Mirror's Edge tried a lot of new things at once and managed to get a few things very, very right. It's a very rare thing indeed these days when a company like EA takes a chance on a game that just sounds impossible to get right from the concept alone. But I have to hand it to DICE for making a great new franchise that I will definitely support without hesitation. Because if Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 are any indication, the good people at DICE know how to improve, and improve in all the right ways.

It has its downsides, but Mirror's Edge is definitely a game worth trying out. (Especially since the used prices for it are nearly rock bottom!) Come on!

Hear Me Out: Why I'm Not So Sure You Should Buy Dragon Age: Legacy.

I don't recall anything this epic being in the game. That's the one I wanted to buy!

God, here I go again. Like the Energizer Bunny riding a broken record or something stupid like that. Four months after the release of Dragon Age 2 and I still feel like I need to bash on it in some way. But you know what? I can't help it. It cannot be helped, and I cannot help it. So, here we go with this week's edition of: I Hate You, Dragon Age 2: I Hate You So Damn Much. (Working title.)

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Hi - this is Buch, I'll be writing in this different font - and I'll be adding my comments to this post, being as I am the only Bioware fan on Earth who enjoyed (parts of) Dragon Age 2.

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Essentially, what I want to say regards the upcoming release of the first real add-on for Dragon Age 2 since its release: "Legacy." Nope, not useless weapons and armor, but an actual story. A story that (as far as I know) partially involves delving into Hawke's family history by way of a Grey Warden prison, which was just fantastic to hear. It's good that we're going to get back to Wardens and darkspawn. You know, since they spent the entirety of DA2 letting you know that, from here on out, we're all just gonna do our darndest to forget that abysmal prequel, Dragon Age: Origins, and all of the emotional investment fans might have tied up in it and get on with our lives.

'Cause that worked out well.

At this point, reeling the Wardens back into the picture and throwing you up against the very-familiar waves of darkspawn seems like a bit of a cop-out, which, I know, is a terrible thing to say after all that criticism. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of scenario, but whatever.

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This will look I'm interrupting for the sheer sake of it, but - to hell with Darkspawn. As it were. I adored Origins too, way more than the sequel, but after a minimum 40 hours fighting those three or four identical darkspawn sprites, I was utterly sick of them. To me they seem like astonshingly lazy enemies - a literal horde of repeated guys, the big guy and the little guy, who are just... kinda like orcs except they're demons or whatever. Dark-spawn? Yes, that'll do.
I'm going to far now, but I got bored of them pretty fast and I don't want to be fighting them anymore from now on. One the Blight ended, that ought to be the end of the Darkspawn on the surface. I feel that any plot otherwise would cheapen the Warden's accomplishment.
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But as per the inefficient title of this entry: I'm really not so sure people should be buying "Legacy." Even if you liked it. Lemme explain. There are two types of people this add-on is targeting: the people who liked the game and the people that were critical. The fans and the critics. It's doing this by expanding upon a part Hawke's story (a part that was never once referenced in the game, but whatever), appealing to nostalgia for the prequel, and attempting to right some of the wrongs that were in the main game. Okay? Okay.

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Okay. Honestly I'd call myself a critic too. I really liked the first two thirds, but I don't think I'll play through them again, not for that payoff.
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The fans probably won't care in any case. As long as this is continuing Hawke's story, they'll be content, which isn't a bad thing. If you like it, you like it. The critics might like that they'll be getting back into the fight with the good ol' darkspawn, and that they'll be exploring Grey Warden history to boot. They also might like that some of the main(ish) criticisms from the main game have been addressed, as in you won't be bogged down fighting off waves of enemies, and the dungeon will actually be brand new. That is to say, the multi-purpose dungeon from DA2 won't be making an appearance.

Upon first glance, that doesn't sound like an unreasonably bad add-on. Given the backlash that arose after DA2's release, this was probably the most logical route to take toward building up the franchise's damaged fanbase. But I'm here to convince you not to buy this thing, and I've already rambled on awhile, so let me lay down my case before I forget what I'm doing here.

BioWare Dislikes You Right Now

This is directed at both the fans and the critics. BioWare doesn't seem to be very fond of its own fanbase right now. Hyperbole? Exaggeration? Both?! Probably, but it's the only way I can explain what happened to DA2 and the post-release reaction. The game was not finished. It doesn't matter how much you liked it, because it doesn't change the fact that BioWare delivered fans of DA:O half of a game.

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Two thirds of a game.
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When I played Dragon Age: Origins for the first time, it freaked me right the hell out. I had the difficulty set too high, and I hadn't played a real tactics-based RPG since the Knights of the Old Republic series was still new. In my mad rush to get through the game, I literally skipped over everything outside of the main quest. I just couldn't bring myself to do it, because I got my ass handed to me more times than a... donkey farmer? Anyway, I rushed through the thing. How long did rushing through DA:O take me? 33 hours!

With DA2, I told myself that I wasn't going to make the same mistake. I was going for full completion this time around, and I pretty much accomplished this. After doing every single sidequest available (minus the high dragon fight), I finished the game in just under 30 hours, if I remember correctly. Try completing everything in DA:O in under 30 hours; that just ain't gonna happen.

DA:O had several cities from opposite ends of Ferelden, each with their own histories that spanned thousands of years. Histories that the game allowed you to explore and influence. DA2 has one city that doesn't change in ten years, the history of which is about as deep as my old above-ground pool. So, the content not only diminished, but it also got weaker. You could argue otherwise, but I'm not gonna let ya.

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Plus Kirkwall only had one pub. And its Elven Alienage consisted of one room with a tree on-loan from a Dreamcast game, thus making the city less diverse and worse-drawn than Denerim - one of several large locations in the first game. This time I don't even want to argue otherwise.
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So, why would BioWare, after delivering a product to such acclaim, turn around sell you a sequel that took a fifth of the time to develop in comparison to its prequel, with much less content? The only obvious answer being: because they knew fans would buy it blind. Why else would they offer a special edition of the game that could only be obtained by pre-ordering it three months in advance? Not only that, but the embargo on useful information about the game was lifted only a month before it was actually released, which I would say pretty much displays a lack of confidence on their part that DA2 would sell well if they had showed it off earlier.

So, BioWare sold us an inferior product, and it's very likely that they knew what they were doing all the while.

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Actually I would put-in here that Dragon Age 2 was never intended to be an inferior product. For whatever reason, Bioware just prefer these Mass Effect dialogue wheels now and their named, voiced protagonists, and they clearly tried at first. If they hadn't wanted this game to be good, they wouldn't have made it so different to their usual style, taken those risks. I suppose I could be wrong and Bioware could have used Kirkwall for the simple reason of saving space, or the political conflict instead of an enemy for the reason of time constraints, but I can't see it. Not to that extent.

This is the core of my defence right here. Not all the while, Knight. They tried to make this one a little bit different from their usual 'band of heroes led by the last-of-the-whoever off to save the world from the monsters by visiting four places' schtick. They tried to create this soap-opera feel with characters who have homes, jobs and secret agendas - and hell, I loved Aveline and Varric, just for their conversation.
And moreover, they were trying to set up some kind of trilogy or series or something with Hawke. They failed utterly, and it's clear that they rushed the game's finale in a manner than I call insulting. But I think they started this thing with big ideas.

This is all I've got.
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The fans complained (many of them, anyway, if the official forums are any indication), and the response on their part was pretty harsh/hilarious, all things considered. Never once did they answer for all the blatantly-cut corners, such as the multi-purpose dungeon, the-city-that-never-changes, not being able to equip party members, or how it's always sunny in Darktown. Things that were so applauded in DA:O, but failed to make an appearance in any form. I would also throw the lackluster ending and most of the party members onto that pyre, but meh.

But it doesn't matter, because they knew we would buy it. And I did! I got the "BioWare Signature Edition" and played through the extra, reskinned multi-purpose dungeon. For a signature edition, no, it wasn't representative of what BioWare is still (I hope) capable of. And then here comes "Legacy."

Even if you liked DA2, it was not the game you could've gotten. TES IV: Oblivion sold very well, but I don't think any of us are expecting Skyrim to be Call of Duty with swords. DA:O sold very well (not Oblivion well, but very well regardless), and I wasn't for one moment thinking that DA2 would become a super-linear God of War wannabe. There were redeeming features, yes, but then again, Two Worlds had some, too. So, yeah.

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There is an argument that Mass Effect 2 was just Gears of War with dialogue trees.
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By purchasing "Legacy," you're telling EA and BioWare that how they handled DA2, both before and after, was okay, and that it'll be perfectly acceptable to do something similar with the inevitable Dragon Age 3. Again, even if you liked it, it doesn't change the fact that BioWare tried to screw with you for quick money. When someone tries to steal your wallet, you don't give them $20 for the effort.

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One final note from me - that's a very interesting name they went for. Dragon Age 2 Legacy. I wonder if Bioware are trying to save exactly that? Well if so, fair enough, but.... Jesus guys, that game's ending really sucked. $20 or the Sterling equivalent seems like a lot of money. I might have paid that price for some kind of patch that replaces the third act of the story with one that makes a modicum of sense. But not to go fight freaking darkspawn. I can do that in the Deep Roads. Or in Origins. Or my nightmares.

Even I won't be buying this one unless there's something special about it. Bioware can do special with DLC, but they have to really care about it. They can do crap too.

Having looked at the adverts for the new DA2 DLC... nothing stands out. It looks distinctly like a dungeon with some nonsense about Hawke's incredibly dull family thrown in, and a nice new sword. I'm not calling you a liar, Bioware - and I'm really looking forward to whatever new games you put out - but I think DA2 is buried now. So start again, hey.
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Whew, hopefully that''ll be the end of these rants, eh? =D