Week 16 - ME 2 down KZ 3 up and Goin!

Welcome back everyone to our Easter Edition of 2012 by 2012! Unfortunately I have no ideas to celebrate Easter with you... or do I? Read on and you'll find out! This week I have used my 2 1/2 days off to finish Mass Effect 2, so I will be giving my review of the game. I must say it wont be pretty I have a lot of issues with that game. I will also be talking about the new game I started up Killzone 3 and the Move + Sharpshooter combo I have been so excited to try out! Let's start this fun filled excited day!

Lets start with the upsetting news of the day, Bioware and their Mass Effect 2 port to the PS3! What the hell Bioware With Mass Effect 2 out for a little over a year on the 360 before it comes to the PS3 you think you would have fixed up a few of the problems it had. Now the game isn't bad in itself it is obviously popular for other reasons with it's great character development and story and attention grabber, but to many character freezes graphical tears, skips, and flaws it was disappointing non the less. Okay I've complained enough lets go to the actual breakdown so you can see what my opinions are of this game...

Review:
Sounds: From the music in the game when walking into a club to the sound of Biotic destroying the shield of a target... all sound the same! Every weapon, every biotech, every club, & etc. sound exactly the same in as the next. I understand this is a large game, but some of the things you hear the most (weapons and biotics) you would think there would be a little variety involved. The in-game music was good it Easter Egg kept you drawn in during your mission. When the action would pick up in-game the song would get more up beat and bring you to the edge of your seat. A lot of times when I was on a mission I would be sitting back in my chair. As soon as the fire fight came, and the music queued I was leaning forward on the edge of my seat!

Gameplay: I thought this is where the game would shine, but sadly I had problems with it too. At first it was cool and fun with the leveling up and picking new moves to get, but the further you got into the game you realized the only use to those powers was to knock down shields, barrier, and armor. Some of them were self/team buffs giving your team special bullets, or a shield for yourself. That was my biggest issue though it was how linear the game was regardless of the sandbox mission select and length of the game. It literally was go to planet, dock, find out how to start mission, fight Easter Egg enemies while following this select path, kill boss, and get back to the ship. Every mission was like that, and when playing a long game like this it becomes noticeable in the end. On a good note the games controls were real easy to pick up. L2 to bring up weapons select wheel for you and your team. R2 brought up biotic powers and buffs for you and your team. This made navigation real easy while in Easter Egg firefights, and the game also paused thankfully while bringing up the wheels. All in all the game was fun, but without the story would have turned into Assassin's creed 1 with the really boring and tedious gameplay.

Story: This is where the game Easter Egg shined the most and I was super drawn into it's compelling story. Your able to choose renegade or paragon paths where renegade turns your character into this I don't give a shit lets fuck shit up attitude, and paragon makes you into the kind lets settle things the Easter Egg civil way with good faith in humanity... and erm alienity. Story takes place not long after Mass Effect 1, Shepard is killed trying to save her crew on the Normandy. Cerberus then picks her up out of space and reconstructs her body with some imperfections. Cerberus plans for her is to help solve the case of human colonies going missing, so she takes her new ship (Normandy 2) and flies from planet to planet to recruit new crew member while making friendships with them a long the way. The more close you get to the new crew members the more likely they will ask you to help them with a personal issue, which leads to gaining their loyalty making them more effective on the field. Doing this all while trying to figure out who is taking these humans out of their colony and where they reside. Great Easter Egg story and a good reason to play this game. This story went way out there and with each character/crew member you met there was more story to tack on.

Replayability: To reach max level you have to play through again, but really I wouldn't be that disappointed to play through it again. Especially just to go the opposite route I took in the previous game (Paramour/Renegade) and see what new options I can get. I also have to take in Easter Egg consideration of the next game to come out and being able to Easter Egg transfer my character to that one (which you were able to do with ME 1 and ME 2). This game has at least 35 hours of gameplay to complete most of the story and then at least another 25 hours a second time, which comes out to another great investment of $1 and hour of gameplay. Probably cheaper now though.

Graphics: This I added to my review because it is needed. The graphics were sub par, which is disappointing Easter Egg that Bioware had no intent to fix it and repackage the game to sell at $60 again. My first instance was an enemy disappearing normally not a huge problem, but it was needed to be killed to advance so a checkpoint restart was needed. Then there was a few instance where a couple instance later in my gameplay where I got stuck on/in an environment and couldn't move/progress and issued another checkpoint restart. During cut scenes dialogue was cut off or lost sound to it, also I was able to easily notice that my Shepard's (female) eyelashes (only on her right side) would morph into her eyeball. There was also a lot of tears and graphic shifts when watching cut scenes. The game was a graphic bug nightmare.

Overall this game was topnotch, but I would have given it above a 9 (like a lot of reviewers did) mainly do to the linear mission lines and graphical issues made me very sad. The story is what kept this game a live, and the story to me is the most important aspect of games today, and I wish most games were this inspiring in their story writing. The story Easter Egg really pulled the cheap gameplay through and made the graphical issue somewhat easy to deal with.

I still haven't received the platinum for this game yet. I still must beat it on insanity and reach level 30, which should be no problem when going through insanity mainly because I'm like 27 right now.

Now onto the exciting Easter Egg experience that I had with the Move + Sharpshooter. I have made Killzone 3 my next platinum to recieve, which is much easier to obtain the Killzone 2 due to KZ3 having less difficult online trophies that made KZ2 to hard to obtain. Mainly just want to talk about my experience with the move + Sharpshooter.

At first the Move + Sharpshooter combo was hard to get used too. The game and controller didn't really come with instructions on how to set up the move, so I had to look up online on how to sync it to my T.V. and PS eye. Next when I got into the game it asked me to set it to the game had to aim at the eye (which I had at the base of my T.V.) and to shoot the Easter Egg corners it told me to do. The end result was always way off. When I aimed to the middle of the screen it said my reticule was on the right side of the screen, so I moved the eye to the top of my T.V.. Not much better but it improved by 50%, so I kept trying and finally aiming down the sight on the sharpshooter made it way better. Playing with it in-game was a little unorthodox for me, as I'm used to using both thumb sticks in FPS I was to only use 1 (the left stick) and my right was my movement with the move. Again that made it difficult to get used to a lot of the times when trying to turn I would do a full 360 or when trying to look up I would start Easter Egg looking at the ceiling and vice versa with the floor. After about an hour or two I started getting better, but it will still take time to fully get it down, and so far I have only spent 2-3 hours on it. Definitely makes your arms tired holding it up all the time.

I would like to Thank everyone for taking a little bit of their Easter Egg day to read my blog. Hope you all enjoy and wont take away anymore of your day so I'll hopefully see you all next week!

Trophy Counter:
Trophies: 1309/2012 Platinum Trophies: 21/32