MASSively EFFECTive

First appearances are not everything. Speculation around the net told me that Mass Effect was one of the best games for the Xbox 360. Of course, this is all speculation and other people’s opinions. I began playing and wondered what the hype was all about. Creating my character was fun, choosing my class and all that jazz reminded me a lot of Oblivion. And if it even was half the fun as Oblivion was/is I’d be pleased.

I start the game and wonder to myself "Why is my screen all grainy?" Thinking there is something wrong with the game itself, I restart only for it to do the same thing. Just deal with it, I tell myself. So I continue and complete the first part of the mission. After playing about 2 hours of the game itself, i wondered what the hype was all about. It has a grainy screen, slow game play, and my characters have to level up? Maybe I missed something here, but I thought i was supposed to be playing a GOOD game.

                              

As i said before, first appearances are not everything. It appeared to me that everyone on the interweb was wrong. It appeared to me that I would be taking this game back for something else. I finally figured out how to turn off the film grain effect which i so kindly slapped myself in the forehead, as that was dumb of me to not think of it before. However, i still had a major beef with the game. It wasn’t all that fun. The graphics take some time to load in some areas and I’ve come to ignore that and just get over it. After playing and completing a couple missions, I really just got bored with it. Which also could mean that Call of Duty 4 was slowly sucking my soul away.

Now I’m back to playing it again, and amazingly, I’m addicted. After such a slow start i got the ball rolling and started to figure things out. I have to come appreciate the dialogue system and the fighting system. The latter part, isn’t where it shines though. Nonetheless, it’s effective. The infamous romance plot was rather interesting and I think I’ll try and continue it further to see where it goes. Obviously Mass Effect isn’t a game where you dive right in and run straight into action. You need to have some type of tactic and plan to carry on through the game.

So, to anyone that is still on the fence about this game, I say to rent it. You NEED to put time into the game in order to fully understand it’s capabilities and the level of fun it can achieve.

–BD

Revisiting the College Days

While I’m waiting on my letters from some local colleges here in Indiana, I’ve had this temptation to play NCAA Football 08. It’s been since July that it’s been played, but I decided to give it a whirl tonight. I still have that ability to pop and play any game and somehow remember the game controls without much difficulty, but I was mainly focusing on why the sound on the field didn’t sound that good.

It was hard to distinguish whether I really laid a hit on a guy by the pop of the pads. I checked how the Volume was setup in the game and noticed everything was how it was supposed to be. After turning my speakers up and not resolving the issue I figured that’s just how it is. The game plays pretty well, the guys still don’t look like college athletes however. Some look finely tuned machines, others look like regular Joe’s you see out on the street. I keep in mind this is EA we are talking about and if they ever give us a sports game worth $60, they might just have to close the factory. I could go on a deep rant about my disgust with the quality of EA Sports games, but I wont. Not right now at least. I’m in a content mood and I wont let some crappy game ruin that.

EA Sports has slowly declined from being a good sports franchise from being mediocre. It’s not fair for me to say that all their sports games are like that, but Madden and NCAA have been my main areas of interest and I’m quickly learning that they might not be making an appearance in my collection next Fall.

            

                                  Home of THE Ohio State Buckeyes: Ohio Stadium (The Horseshoe)

 

-BD