Mass Effect 2 Impressions

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mass_effect_sheppard_finale
Image by Gord McLeod via Flickr

When I finished the original Mass Effect not so very long ago, I was in awe of how grand and cinematic the game felt. Knowing then that a sequel was right around the corner, I worried how it could possibly live up to what Bioware accomplished with the first one. I shouldn't have.

Mass Effect 2 takes almost all of the fun that existed in the first game and amplifies it, while eliminating the tedium. In the process, they made quite a few interesting design choices.

The most obvious improvement is with the visuals. It actually looks like they use quite a few of the same models they used in the original game, especially for Shepard, who looks EXACTLY the way you'll remember her (or him) if you played the first. The shaders used to enhance those models are vastly improved, though; I actually gasped when I saw how good the game looks.

Mass Effect 2 plays very much like a shooter. In fact it may actually be more accurate to call it a shooter than a roleplaying game at this point. But don't let that put you off; as good as the shooter part is, they have managed to improve the cinematic quality of the dialogue even further in this installment.

The characters so far (disclosure: I haven't finished playing yet) are extremely well developed, with each getting a considerable amount of "screen time" to be fleshed out beyond generic recruits for your grand mission. Much of this screen time is optional though, a good choice on Bioware's part as not everyone will care about getting to know these people. This is their loss, as they're well worth getting to know.

I do have two complaints about the game. One of my favorite elements of Mass Effect was driving around planet surfaces. The rover you controlled was tricky to learn, but a lot of fun once mastered. It is sadly missing from Mass Effect 2, though my guess as to why is that it eliminates potential frustration at having to drive around a large area searching for minerals and other discoverables.

In Mass Effect 2, you locate minerals by scanning planet surfaces. This is a fine approach and would work well if you spaced it out between missions. I, naturally, failed to do this. COMPLETELY my own fault, and something I regret, as I now need quite a few minerals to complete various upgrade and research projects the game gives you. Unfortunately the process does get very dull when you do a lot of it at once.

Still, these are really minor quibbles with a game that in my book is an early contender for 2010's best.

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Bayonetta Micro-Impression

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Bayonetta
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I recently had the chance to pick up Sega's  Bayonetta and give it a run on the PS3. From the little I've played so far though, it seems like a fantastically polished, fast, furious and fun game. It's exactly the kind of quick combat oriented game I can throw in the machine and have some fun with for a short time, without worrying too much about how much progress I make.
From a design perspective, one feature in particular caught my eye. During load times you retain control of your character in a way that reminds me a little bit of Assassin's Creed's Matrix-like loading feature. Bayonetta takes that concept and makes it even more useful. You can practice your combos while waiting for things to load. This is very handy for a gamer like myself; I gravitate more towards role-playing games and shooters than combo-fests. When I picked the game up, I assumed I'd have to get through it with a little luck and a lot of button mashing, but this practice feature gives me some hope that I might be capable of actually learning a few of the cooler moves at some point. It also makes the load times much easier to bear, though the update that allowed the game to be partially installed to the system's hard drive results in load times that are pretty easy to handle anyway.
This post is my first experiment at shifting my game impressions from my blog to Google Buzz. Let's see how this works out!
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Full Review: Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4

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Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
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Way back in January, I wrote an Impression piece on Persona 3 FES, a game I later had to abandon because I got myself stuck in an unwinnable situation without sufficient save games to back my way out of it. At the time, I couldn't bring myself to restart from the beginning.

Instead, I started playing a different game - the next game in the series, Atlus Games' Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4.

I'm not going to write an Impression of P4; the game sucked me in so completely that I have already finished playing it. Not just finished - I finished with the true, good ending. Anyone who knows my game playing habits will understand what this means - I usually take a very long time to finish games. My average play time for Final Fantasy games is measured in years. Persona 4 took months, but for me, that's crazy-fast.

Persona 4 takes the franchise concept in an interesting direction. As in Persona 3, you play a nameless (you get to name him) protagonist, newly arrived in town. Your parents are working overseas for a year, so the protagonist is going to stay with his uncle and young cousin for the year.

Shortly after arriving, though, the town is left reeling by a series of gristly inexplicable murders. As you'd expect, of course, this is an open invitation for the protagonist (a Japanese highschool student) and his friends and classmates to get involved in the investigation. It's a bit of a tricky situation for him from time to time, as his uncle is a detective with the local police department, but all crime-fighting Japanese highschool students have SOME cross to bear, or it just wouldn't feel right.

The investigation is aided greatly by the protagonist's discovery that he has the ability to somehow enter the screen of a TV, crossing over into a strange fog-filled world on the other side. There he is able to use the power of "Persona", another personality inside himself that he can call upon to fight the Shadows that inhabit that strange, misty world.

Without going into too much of the plot, the story unfolds with mechanics that will be largely familiar to players with experience of Persona 3. There are some significant changes that improve the play experience though, chiefly the ability to take control of all of your characters in combat. Persona 3 allowed direct control only of the protagonist; his friends were always under AI control. Having full control allows you to take advantage of character abilities better and to more carefully manage the health and magic points of the party on long dungeon grinding sessions.

Dungeon grinding is another area where Persona 4 improves upon Persona 3 in a dramatic way. In P4, you always have the option to resume exploration of a dungeon you've left at the deepest level you've reached in it, which prevents the often tedious trek back up to where you left off that P3 players faced on a regular basis.

The most important thing for me in any RPG is the characters and the story, and this is where P4 really shines in my eyes. The story and the world are written in such a way that each character that joins your "investigation team" has a Persona, and has that persona because they were a potential victim of the murder spree. Without giving too much away, each character is forced to face his or her own inner demons - or more specifically, their inner Shadow - and once that Shadow is defeated, that person gains a new level of acceptance of who they are. This becomes manifest by their acquisition of a Persona, a figurative and literal gain in power that enables them to join the fight to discover the truth behind what's happening in the town.

This is a really brilliant move because it doesn't just encourage good character development, it requires it. All of the characters you play rise above the stale stereotypes you find too often in games and display a depth and complexity that was beyond refreshing. These are characters who live in the mind and imagination of the player, real people with conflicting desires, self-doubts, multi-faceted personalities and a great deal of growth throughout the course of the game. When the game was over and it was time for me and my protagonist to leave these friends behind, it was with true regret that I had to let them go.

Before you start thinking that Atlus is paying me to write this, I should probably mention that there ARE some things that bothered me about the game. Most serious was the obvious railroading that goes on. Given the time management aspect of the game that P4 shares with P3, it's completely understandable, but it seemed to stand out even more in P4 than it did in P3. Understandable or not, it did affect my ability to enjoy the game on a regular basis.

All in all, flaws or no flaws, Persona 4 is currently at the top of my list of favorite RPGs. The story and particularly the characters are beautifully executed, and kept me completely enthralled. More importantly, those characters are going to continue to live inside my head for a long time to come, and will likely tempt me back in for another play-through, since getting the ultimate good ending allows you to start a new game with some carry-over data to unlock new stuff.

I can't recommend this game enough. If you have any interest in JPRGs at all, it's a must-play. If you have any interest in RPGs in general at all, it's a must-play. If you don't have any interest in RPGs at all, give it a try anyway; it may well be enough to change your mind.

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Review: Fantastic Contraption

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Fantastic Contraption is many things. Part physics toy, part puzzle game, part sandbox, all wonderful and frustrating and delightful combined. The idea is not a new one; you have a set level with an object that must be moved, terrain it must be moved over or through, and a goal space it must reach. To accomplish the moving bit, you have some pre-set components you can use to build various contraptions