Why Fight a Losing Battle, and other important questions raised by Halo

Last week, I was gifted with a copy of Halo: Reach, the latest (and, allegedly, final) game in that famous series. I was giving a friend the rundown at Bible study the other night, mostly going on and on about the fantastic gameplay but also setting the scene of the game. Chronologically, it's the first game in the series, ending where the original Halo begins. For those unfamiliar, Halo begins with your character receiving the news that he is the last surviving member of the Spartan army (the Special Forces of the future), the rest of it having been wiped out in a surprise attack on Planet Reach by the evil Covenant forces - in other words, Halo: Reach is about playing through the campaign in which you and all your mates are systematically dispatched by rampaging aliens. And my friend Greg made one of those laughy-frowny expressions and said, "why would anyone want to play a game that you know is going to end in everyone dying?"

Clearly, Greg is not a Halo afficionado. Those people need no story-based reasons to play Halo, and developer Bungie knows it, having introduced (with Reach) daily and weekly challenges over Xbox Live for both single- and multiplayer modes. I highly doubt a game with such a storyline would sell much if it were a stand-alone title, or the first released in the series. There are many excellent and interesting reasons why Halo has attracted a fiercely devoted fan base on an unprecedented scale, which I will not get into at this time as my mother-in-law glazes over every time I talk shop on video games, and she constitutes one-third of my regular readership. And Greg unsuspectingly posed a question that is important on other levels (no pun intended).

The Halo trilogy and its stand-alone offspring, Halo 3: ODST, are all about victory. Throughout the trilogy, even though the Master Chief is the last of his army, there's no real sense of grief or desperation about it. The trilogy's tone isn't "oh crap, I'm the last Spartan and all the Marines (and humanity) are depending on me", but rather "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." It's a series with a story and atmosphere of victory. Similarly, ODST is about a squad getting stuck behind Covenant lines and escaping, while causing plenty of mayhem to the enemy and retrieving crucial intelligence along the way. You can't pass the game without getting everyone to safety, gaining a high-level Covenant defector, and seeing one of the characters win back his ex-wife. I don't think it's possible for a shooter to be more feel-good-rah-rah-victorious than ODST.

In summary, every Halo game made before Reach is about getting the win, and getting the win isn't just what gamers want, it's what people in general want. I feel safe assuming that sacrificing oneself to ensure someone else's victory is not a common fantasy or daydream. A lot of people don't even like games in which you have to help other characters sacrifice themselves to get the victory, because then you're not the hero - that was the major complaint about the fantastic The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. But that's what Reach is about: upon realizing that the battle is lost, you and your squad go all out and eventually give your lives so that someone else can win the war. Two-thirds of the way through, the story shifts from planetary defense to data retrieval, making sure that a critical computer program gets off-world to safety, and that program turns out to be the one essential for victory at the end of Halo 3. You and your squad give the hope of victory to everyone else. But none of you make it off Reach, dead or alive.

So why play, from a purely story-based POV? Well...I can't rightly say, in a general assumptive sense. There is something very poignant about helping ensure the war is won, rather than winning it myself. Speaking only for myself, I don't mind (and, in fact, rather like) games with goals like Reach and Oblivion, and I suspect a large part of that has to do with theology. The concept of fighting a losing battle is a strange one for a Christian, since an integral idea/truth of Christianity is the hope of the war already won, the irreversible triumph over evil and death incurred by the Resurrection. But there are many battles to be fought along the way, and we don't win them all by a long stretch, and anyways, we are not the heroes of the story. We don't barrel through life slaying all obstacles by the power of our own awesomeness to win the day. We are meant to and pledge to live not as heroes, but as champions. There's nothing poor or bad about playing a supporting role. And the idea of a sacrifice to keep hope alive, like the one you make in Reach, is not necessarily a pleasant idea...but it is beautiful.

So that's why I appreciate stories like Halo: Reach and others, aside from all the glorious technical/gameplay/etc. things that make the Halo series the only shooters I really enjoy. That is why I don't object to taking part in this particular losing battle.

Red Dead Redemption Original Soundtrack (OST)

Marketers, take note! The ultimate factor in convincing my husband and I to pre-order Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption, as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to cut in half as is our usual game-buying habit, was not the free DLC or the map poster, but the free inclusion of the game's soundtrack with all pre-ordered copies. Soundtracks are expensive, game soundtracks especially so, and we figured we couldn't go too wrong gambling on a Western soundtrack - a relatively new genre, they're hard to screw up, and many a forgettable or outright crappy cowboy flick has been elevated by its solid musical score. And I can rarely get enough of the soundtrack from LucasArts' old PC game, Outlaws.

Red Dead Redemption is a solid game, memorable, intriguing, and fun, but its soundtrack is exceptional, a great listen even when separated from its in-game context. Composers Bill Elm and Woody Jackson have brought the Western musical genre into the present, doing two notable things most Western soundtrack composers don't: heavily incorporating both contemporary musical influences and musical influences from the time period their story takes place in. The end result is a lesson in what fusion should sound like. Elm and Jackson's skills have even created a handful of acid jazz-fueled tracks that would sound at home on Lalo Schiffrin's score for Bullitt, or even on The A-Team - but don't sound out of place here, on an album for a Wild West video game released in 2010. Mexican influences are also clear and present, which is swell seeing as how the game's second act plays out south of the border. The only place this album hiccups a bit is on its final track, a vocal number called "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie", whose lyrics and tone disagree with the game's conclusion and led me to believe that it would be soaked in hopelessness and despair, when its bittersweet ending was actually quite the opposite (much to my relief, though it was still quite emotionally draining).

The closing track's relation to the game's story aside, Red Dead Redemption (OST) is a basically perfect record. For music lovers, soundtrack afficionados, and anyone who likes a good Western, this is something well worth looking up regardless of whether or not you'd play the game.

Red Dead Bittersweet Irony

It is not uncommon, on highly anticipated game release dates, for obsessive/impatient/image-conscious gamers to "call in sick" so that they can try hot new titles ASAP. As I was standing in line at EB Games to pick up my anniversary present - a special ed. pre-order of Red Dead Redemption - observing the two-dozen-odd 18-35 white males surrounding me, trying not to be too self-conscious as the only woman in the room and cursing my coughs, sneezes, and especially cursing my fever, I couldn't help but take some amusement in the irony that, the first time I ever got a pre-ordered new release, I actually was sick.

Turns out the game's pretty sweet, too. More on that in sixty hours or so. I need to go sneeze some more first, and the cows need herding.

My Ten Best Friends are Talking Pies: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2
BioWare Studios, EA Games
ESRB: M for Mature (Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence)

There are exactly three good things about the city of Edmonton: the good company, the public library, and BioWare, that august game studio which brought us Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins - in other words, more high-quality fun than you can shake ten to twelve sticks at. Sometimes, good things fraternize with each other, like when you find out that some of the good company you keep works for BioWare. The ultimate irony of the video game developer is that the good ones who work for good studios are way too busy developing games to have the free time to play them, and one in particular makes good use of this irony by combining it with his delight for gift-giving, and so it came to pass that in the space of three months, I've had the superb luxury of playing two games a week or two after they were released as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to fall into my tax bracket. One of those was Dragon Age: Origins, which I've been meaning to blurb about for a while now, is ridiculously entertaining, and has just released an expansion pack (Dragon Age: Awakening). The other one, you may have surmised, is the highly anticipated Mass Effect 2, which I'm playing on an Xbox 360.

Beginning shortly after the attack on Citadel Station that served as the climax of the first game, ME2 is set around (surprise!) a fresh encroachment of Reapers and their new lackeys, the Collectors. Human colonists are disappearing in huge numbers throughout the lawless frontier Terminus Systems, and the Citadel Council doesn't appear to be doing too much about it - meaning neither, seemingly, is the Alliance Navy. The game opens with Commander Shepard and the Normandy nearing the end of a long geth patrol, being sent to a system in which ships have been going missing, the official speculation being to blame geth (the synthetic villains of the first game) or slavers. Of course, the official speculation is dead wrong, the Normandy is lost, and after a long series of negotiations (further explained when meeting an old friend in the game's second act) what's left of Shepard's body ends up in the hands of Cerberus, that shady, biological experimenting organization whose entire base of operations in the Attican Traverse you may or may not have destroyed as a series of side quests in the first game. Two years later, Cerberus has put you back together because they believe you're humanity's best hope against the Reapers, and Cerberus insists that their primary goal is to protect and advance human interests. They provide you with a ship, a crew, and the information you'll need to prepare for that ultimate battle, and off you go.

BioWare games tend to have outstanding writing, and ME2 has (unsurprisingly) set a new standard. With an eight-author crew co-headlined by Star Wars novelist and BioWare regular Drew Karpyshyn (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire), ME2 features a solid cast of archetypes and cliches removed from their boxes and turned into whole, satisfying, engaging characters and storylines, with very few exceptions. Honestly, the only aspect of the writing I'm disappointed with in ME2 is the missed golden opportunity to pay tribute to the classic running joke from John Carpenter's Escape from New York ("Snake Plissken? I've heard of you! I thought you were dead!"). As in the first game, there is a Paragon/Renegade scale in lieu of the standard RPG Good/Evil scale (cue Bill Bailey's slide whistle), in which Renegade dialogue and actions are blunt, aggressive, usually focus on the Big Picture, believe in "live and let live", and that the end justifies the means, while the Paragon is diplomatic, polite often to naive excess, concerned with the small-scale personal elements that form the big Picture, and believes in intervention and that that the end never justifies the means. The fact that neither the Paragon or Renegade actions are always good/wise or bad/foolish choices, coupled with the facts that both paths contain hard to stomach decisions and work towards the same main goal, is what makes the Mass Effect story so interesting to play. Also very interesting, it is made quite clear in-game that decisions made in regards to loyalties and alliances in ME2 will have significant impacts on the outcome of ME3. Decisions carried over to ME2 from ME1 save games did not have as blatantly big impacts in this game as I'd expected, but a quick peek between the lines suggests that they will become very important in the story's final installment. I'm also very interested to see how the writers will handle the fact that most if not all of your squadmates can end up dead by the end of ME2, and how that will affect save games carried over to ME3.

While we're on the subject of dead squadmates, it should be noted that in spite of the big fuss made over the fact that the suicide mission that ends ME2 can in fact be a true suicide mission - even Shepard can die, rendering the whole playthrough null and void since if this happens there are no do-overs and you will be unable to import it to the sequel - the game tells you repeatedly what to do in order to ensure that everyone makes it home. The only way to lose people at the end of the game is by ignoring those instructions and/or making obviously foolish or illogical tactical decisions. There is a critical point after which, if you don't begin the suicide mission immediately, you will lose some or all of the random NPCs floating around the Normandy, but this is easily avoided for experienced gamers who know that heading for your objective is always the last thing you do - and for the inexperienced gamer who gets trapped here, the game tells you in two different places at this point that delaying the mission will help ensure squad survival but sacrifice the crew, thus giving you a clear choice instead of an unwelcome surprise. And while I hate losing usable characters, it would be interesting to see which losses will make a difference in ME3, since I can only think of three instances during the suicide mission in which you can ensure a specific character's demise - all others are chosen at random by the computer. At any rate, my point is, it is impossible to unwittingly lose any of your ten specialists, or your Shepard - it must be done deliberately, through ignorance or choice, so if you haven't played yet and are nervous about this, don't sweat it.

In other story-related news, ME2 also does a great job with romantic sub-plots. They are considerably more interesting and evolved than ME1's, make strong efforts to avoid boring cliches, run the gamut from poignant to cheesy to hilarious (see previous post), and those who protested against ME1 on grounds of moral degeneracy for including a relatively tame, optional sexual cutscene will be pleased to note that there are no similar cutscenes in ME2. There is, however, what could be perceived as a significantly higher fetish content, as two of the three gender-specific love interests for a female Shepard are aliens, and all three characters available to both Shepards for sexual flings are female, with one being an alien Amazon and another being - I am not making this up - an alien sex vampire. Read into that what you will. Someone on the writing crew may have been poking fun at this business by including the galaxy's first "titillating alien magazine" as an in-game shop item, kind of like Three Dog's "weather forecast" taking a shot at the excessive gore in Fallout 3.

On the boring technical side of things, the main edge video games have over any other entertainment media I can think of is that, due to continual and rapid evolutions in computer technology, it's a very rare and embarrassing occurrence for a game's sequel to not surpass its predecessor in almost every way. BioWare doesn't have a habit of letting gamers down, and ME2 is no exception to that rule. For starters, it runs smoother than any other game I've played to date - it doesn't even pause while saving. There are some obvious ways in which this was achieved, most notably in your ship's layout. While there are four levels on the new Normandy, as opposed to two on the original, separating the ship into those load zones makes a huge difference in how the game runs, dividing conversations across three decks. Also, not having a personal inventory is probably a big factor. Sure, you can acquire a decent amount of armor and ordinance over the course of the game, but significantly less than the average RPG selection, and they're stored in different locations. Guns are kept in weapons lockers found aboard the Normandy and in various locations during main quests, and these are the only places to swap out your weapons - you can't carry more than one of each type on your person. Armor is divided into parts (helmet, chestplate, etc.) and stored in your shipboard cabin, and that is the only place you can swap your armor after completing the game's introduction. All this to say that the game doesn't have to remember nearly as much content in each save as it did in the first game, which had a 150-item personal inventory. As well, upgrades are no longer items, but permanent additions to weapons and armor once found, bought, and/or unlocked.

This inventory system also contributes to more interesting tactical decisions than were available in ME1. The limit of one weapon of each type can be a hard call at times, because the developers did a great job of giving each grade of weapon a different purpose, meaning that the "higher"-grade weapon isn't necessarily the one you want. You can have a mini-nuke, but it's not the most practical heavy weapon, it's tricky to use and you cannot get off more than one shot even at full ammo-carrying capacity, and there's a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned grenade launcher - which in this game happens to require a good deal of skill and practice to use effectively. Likewise, a more powerful sniper rifle or shotgun may not always be more practical than its weaker, rapid-fire version which carries three to four times as many rounds, and oftentimes which weapon is better for the job seems to rely on your character class. For example, the high-caliber Widow Anti-Material sniper rifle (unique to Soldiers and Infiltrators) virtually guarantees, when paired with sufficient upgrades and skill, a one- to two-shot kill even on "Hardcore", and for an Infiltrator is the kind of weapon that explains why some people name their guns. However, the weaker Viper rifle is arguably a better pick for Soldiers, who do not have the passive "sniper time" slowdown unique to Infiltrators, but who do have the class-specific "Adrenaline Rush" ability, which in this game pairs a total time dilation with increased weapon damage - meaning that the slow-firing, slow-reloading, one-round chamber Widow is largely impractical for the Soldier on "Hardcore" or "Insanity", but the rapid-fire Viper (with twelve rounds to the chamber and fourty-eight in the clip) can have first- and second-tier enemies dealt with before Adrenaline Rush times out (2-5 seconds). Combined with the fact that, unlike the first game, there are class restrictions on weapon use (ME1 only had restrictions on effectiveness), the combat is much more interesting than it used to be.

ME2's leveling system is another significant change from the first game, with fewer abilities and only four ranks of each, requiring a total of ten points to fully upgrade each ability . That may sound like leveling up is a breeze, but the way squad points are awarded in ME2 - combined with a 30-level cap - makes for some tough decisions for your squad. However, if you're not happy with your decisions for Shepard, one upgrade available after the game's halfway point is the opportunity to re-distribute your points at any time aboard the Normandy provided you have the necessary resources (or you can always exploit the "infinite squad points" glitch, but that's kind of lame). It's a fantastic system that allows you to specialize your abilities in accordance with the mission you're about to undertake, and really ties the game together as specialization is a big deal plot-wise in ME2. While we're talking about missions, my absolute favourite gameplay aspect of ME2 is the ability to, from the load menu, restart whichever mission you last began, allowing you to change your weapons or squad and providing the choice to skip the hassle or take the challenge if it turns out that you chose the wrong tools for the job. The restart option for any mission, main or side, will remain available until you begin a new mission. It really is a fantastic enhancement to the gameplay. As well, you can unlock non-essential main quests (what?) by completing side quests. Unheard of! Absurd! Fantastic.

One of the big advertised features for ME2 was the fact that you can change your class and appearance on imported ME1 games. I was really excited about that, because while ME1 was a big deal at the time for how much you could customize your appearance, I was never very happy with its presets, never quite able to get the look I wanted, and after seeing how far BioWare upped the customization ante with Dragon Age, I was totally jazzed. Which means I was also totally bummed at first when I discovered that ME2 has the same toolset as ME1 - all the preset faces are the same, all the eye/nose/mouth shapes and hairstyles are the same, and there's no additional fiddling around that wasn't present in the first game. I got over it because it makes sense. Another big advertised feature currently unique (as far as I know) to the Mass Effect series is its combination of facial customization and fully cinematic dialogue, in which your character speaks and runs a wide range of facial expressions. These have been really nicely toned up in ME2, and I can't see how it would work so well and run so smoothly if you could go wild with customization. Also, though I can't find a way to save it on the 360, there is a code at the bottom of the customization screen which encompasses every aspect of your appearance, meaning that if you got a really good face and you just want your next character to have different hair, you can write down that code and enter it next time to get that same face instantaneously. For someone who takes their customization seriously, and spends what some may consider a disgusting amount of time getting it "just right" since I'll have to look at it for the next 40+ hours (especially if I run a second play on the same ME2 character, for which you cannot change appearance or class), this is a very big and welcome deal.

The only kind of big downside to ME2 is that the combat AI, at least on the 360, has some weird issues that tend to get you killed three quarters of the way through a huge multi-wave fight for no good reason (though I should note in the game's defense that its well-planned autosave system will only require you to restart the fight you got killed in, not the entire mission). For starters, you can only regain health by taking cover (no medi-gel for you!), and it's not always clear what stationary objects the game does or does not consider to be cover. There are also many instances of the AI making you stand up out of cover if you tap a button too fast when changing weapons or issuing commands, which causes a whole lot of instant death on higher difficulty levels. And while the ability to vault into/out of cover can really come in handy, it can also really screw you over if you tap the left stick in just the wrong way, as can that same tap accidentally running you into something the game considers to be a corner or wall, which will also make you stand up, and if staggered by an attack, you can't take cover until regaining your balance...by which time you'll probably be dead. It also seems that the squad AI has more problems the higher your difficulty level, at least I'm noticing a huge shift from "Veteran" to "Hardcore", though this could simply be perception based on the fact that "Hardcore" is, um, harder. Squad members will also sometimes randomly get out of cover, and if you don't send them to just the right angle, they'll shoot at their cover instead of at the enemy, or simply not fire at all. There have also been a lot of times when I've ordered a squad member to use an ability, and they just...don't. And I may be too busy to notice that they didn't, until it's too late. This is probably a button time-delay issue, though time-delay doesn't explain why squad members sometimes repeatedly turn off their specialty ammo in the middle of a fight. All that being said, the combat is overall more interesting than it was in ME1, especially since the main story fights tend to involve being ambushed on the enemy's turf, with little or ineffective cover, and there are a lot of other big quest fights in which it's more effective and more efficient to learn how to move around a battlefield rather than try to depend on cover. However, "more interesting" also tends to mean "more frustrating"... :)

Of course, there are scads of little features that have made wonderful additions to ME gameplay, like the new and greatly improved minigames for hacking and circuit bypass...but listing them all would make this post even more long and boring then it already is. ;)

Lionhead Studios' Fable series was and is infamously sold on the hype of being an RPG in which all your actions affect the world around you. The first installment, enjoyable though it was, didn't take this premise anywhere close to as far as advertised, and neither did the second installment which, though having excellent gameplay, lowered the bar in spades by continuing to hype this feature while still forcing all serious plot decisions of consequence on the player, decisions which were, in my opinion, rather thoughtless and other less complimentary adjectives, resulting in a game whose completion provided no satisfaction whatsoever and in which "affecting the world around you" really only meant whether wandering NPC's think you're the cat's pyjamas or the devil's right hand (wooo! Hard-core!). The Mass Effect series showed Fable how it's done, resulting in two engaging, outstanding, utterly satisfying titles whose decision-making aspects command repeated playthroughs for the sake of seeing what their consequences will be, and in which combination. Though I got it for free, Mass Effect 2 is some extraordinary bang for your buck, and with how many hours of thought-provoking entertainment it offers, the downside even bigger than the combat AI issues is that it takes an awful lot of self-discipline to not spend way too much time playing this incredible game. The upside? It'll keep you plenty busy while waiting for Mass Effect 3. Enjoy!

Dialogue of the Week

This week's gem which you probably shouldn't use in general public conversation comes to us courtesy of everyone's favourite Mass Effect 2 vigilante sniper, on the subject of not rushing relationships to fourth base:

Garrus Vakarian: Well, you know me. I always like to savour the last shot before popping the heat sink.

[awkward pause while him and Shepard give each other weird looks]

Wait. That metaphor just went somewhere horrible.

Army of Two

Army of Two (EA Montreal)
Third-person co-operative shooter
Rated M for Mature

PRO:
As the name suggests, it cannot be played alone and requires improved teamwork and communication skills, as it prevents you from completing missions if your buddy is dead (unlike Halo, one person can't just carry you through). It also involves and/or requires actions like flanking, covering, drawing fire away from your buddy so that they can take someone out or because they're injured or re-loading, moving objects or scaling walls that can't be done without help, and dragging your wounded buddy to cover so that you can patch them up before they bleed to death and you get an automatic game over. If you don't have a live buddy handy, the game provides you with a very decent virtual one.

CON:
The split-screen can be tough viewing at some points, unless you have a really big TV. The enemies are pretty small.

PRO:
You don't have to keep checking the split-screen to know what your buddy's up to if he's out of your line of sight, thanks to an inset camera on your half of the screen that follows him.

CON:
Not for the politically correct, as the game centers around the military-vs.PMC (private military contractors) debate, and places you in real-life hot spots like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There is one particular mission in which your biggest danger is suicide bombers, and one of the game's Xbox achievements is setting off 25 suicide bombers before they can set themselves off.

PRO:
A fun arsenal of unlockable, buyable weapons that includes an interesting assortment of assault rifles, sidearms, sniper rifles, RPGs, and machine guns. Most of them have available upgrades for the barrel, stock, cartridge, suppressor, and/or frountmount, as well as on-the-barrel shields.

CON:
You can only swap out your weapons at set points in the game, and as far as I can tell, can't decide what your virtual buddy is packing.

PRO:
This results in interesting decisions, if you've already played the game, or interesting strategies if you haven't played the game and find yourself in a scenario in which your equipped weapons are not really the right tools for the job. However, you can swap your primary, secondary, or special weapon with your partner at any time.

CON:
I always forget that you can swap weapons with your partner.

PRO:
One of the character's lines when in "Overkill" mode is "Game over, man! Game over!".

CON:
People tend to swear a lot when they're getting shot at. This can be a put-off to some gamers.

PRO:
One of the achievements involves making like Dirty Harry.

CON:
Viewing the achievements leads to plot spoilers, such as purpose of the achievement that involves making like Dirty Harry.

PRO:
You probably saw that plot point coming from a mile away, anyways.

CONSENSUS:
Silly but fun.

Fire Up The Warthog!

I've never heard of South African director Neil Blomkamp, nor his award-winning sci-fi short Alive in Joburg, nor of the feature film that led to, District 9, which is set for release this August. I have, however, heard of Peter Jackson, and his refusal to direct (but agreement to executive-produce) a film version of the Xbox phenomenon Halo. Halo: The Movie never made it far past the greenlight room, reportedly because Universal and Fox didn't want to approve something so expensive without Jackson directing. The story goes that Jackson put forward Neil Blomkamp's name to helm Halo. The studio response: "Who's going to watch a film directed by Neil Blomkamp?"

Judging by this trailer, a lot of people - myself included.

If District 9 holds up to the quality promised in that clip, I'd look forward to the same director's version of Halo. There hasn't been a good military sci-fi film since Aliens, so we're long overdue. What I would not look forward to is Halo by Peter Jackson, mostly because of his disturbing love of melodrama, amply demonstrated in weird plot additions to The Lord of the Rings that didn't so much render the story more accessible as they did cause my ears to bleed. If Jackson made Halo, he'd probably do something like have Cortana download into a hot human body so that her and the Master Chief could get jiggy with it. And let's face it, their love is strange enough as it is. (Cortana is an artificial intelligence. And the Master Chief is a cyborg, so can he even, I mean, you know?)

But hey! There's a new sci-fi film coming soon, and it promises very good things, so let's all be happy and wait for August (and hope it screens locally).

Fallout-Sequitur: The Amazing Disappearing Nuka-Cola Truck?

So, you know how the distribution list at the Nuka-Cola factory lists the Super-Duper Mart, Paradise Falls, and the Old Olney grocery at the main Quantum drop sites? Long after completing "The Nuka-Colla Challenge", I finally went into Old Olney - I was avoiding it because it's full of Deathclaws, and I didn't have the dart gun - and not only is the Old Olney grocery apparently no longer in existence, but the whole Deathclaw-infested city and sewers only yielded one puny bottle of Quantum. Sure there's lots of ordnance in the sewers, but you'll probably spend it all killing Deathclaws, and the only real reason to go down there is for a unique suit of power armor, a couple of mini-nukes, and a free Fat Man (too bad I'm using a character more closely resembling a U.S. Army Ranger than a Cap Trooper - that loot's useless!).

But then, a glimmer of hope! On the steps of the firehouse, on the southeast corner of town, is a skeleton with a note beside it telling of how the Quantum delivery truck had an accident and jacknifed on the highway "east of town", but the shipment was intact! So I spent quite some time trolling the ground-level and elevated highways in the southeast quadrant, but no truck. I remember coming across a truckload of Quantum earlier in the game, but it was nowhere close to Old Olney, so I'm thinking this truck doesn't actually exist, and that's it's all a cruel, cruel joke. A cruel, cruel joke full of Deathclaws.

So if you haven't completed the Nuka-Cola Challenge, and are thinking that going to Old Olney will help, it looks like you're mistaken. Unless you want that power armor, save yourself the time (and ordnance).

(One plus side: the eastern overpass overlooking the town is a great place to practice very long-range sniping in safety. Even if you hit a monster, it won't see you and can't get to you anyway.)

Oblivion: Knights of the Nine

The good men and women of Bethesda Games have done it again. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is, all by itself, an excercise in video game excellence. Then, as with Morrowind, Bethesda added two wildly different expansions: The Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine. I recently completed the latter, and had a great time doing so.

Knights of the Nine is a very Arthurian tale of taking the place of fallen holy crusader Pelinal Whitestrake and re-building his order of knights to fight the return of the Nine Divines' worst enemy. It's straightforward, sure, but well-designed, though some of the eight quests for the crusader's relics (as well as the final battle) could have been a bit longer or more challenging - only one of them had me seriously baffled, and finally had me admitting it was a great puzzle. Overall, Knights has a good flavour and tone, though some may find it a bit too easy and occasionally anticlimactic. To be fair, I built a character specifically for this expansion - a heavy armor-wearing, claymore-wielding, very strong Nord with cranked restoration skills - and started the quests at level 13 (enemies and bonuses scaling max out at 26). But to be fair in another way, what else would you build for an Arthurian crusade? A battlemage with heavy armor skill would also do nicely here, and probably work enemies over just as easily. It's almost as if the enemies weren't scaled, and I was superior to whatever level they were set at. On a completely different gripe, the ending of the quest was also a little disturbing for me as a Christian, what with all the knights assembled in the priory courtyard shouting, "The Crusader has risen! All hail the risen Crusader!" Kind of creepy.

At the end of it all, though, you get the rebuilt Priory of the Nine (southeast of Skingrad), complete with a bed, a chest that doesn't seem to delete items, an altar, and the ability to get every wayshrine blessing in one location. You also get as many knights as you recruited before the battle and kept alive during (I kept all of 'em), plus a few random extras, and you can ask any of them to follow you at any time. You also get to keep all the relics of the crusader, that being a full set of constant-effect heavy armor including a shield, as well as a sword and mace, and not only are the starting stats excellent, but you can level them up with you, a feature unique to this quest as far as I can tell.

You can ask any knight in the priory to follow you at any time, however, they are not invincible. I'm still going to bring them to the Siege of Bruma at the end of the game, and see what happens.

Dad's Wager: Fallout 3

In my world, the biggest factor in determining an RPG's (role-playing game's) success in regards to personal satisfaction and appreciation is how much the game offers to make me consider why I make the choices I do. That's one of the main reasons I don't enjoy playing Japanese-style RPGs, as they tend to run on predetermined, destiny-based plotlines that make the experience more literally playing a role, as if one was in a play with a fixed script. When I role-play, I want to explore what makes me tick in real life. Recent releases like Mass Effect have been great for that, but I have to say that Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3 (2008) is the greatest yet, and with a few tweaks could be my favourite RPG thus far.

The newest addition to a series I've never played, Fallout 3 takes place two hundred years after a nuclear war has decimated most if not all of the U.S. and is set in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area. You play someone who's grown up in a Vault, an underground bunkered community safe from radiation and other dangers above. Raised by your loving dad after mom dies in childbirth, life is content until you're woken up one day to discover that Dad's left the Vault (forbidden!), the Vault's Overseer is furious and has already had Dad's assistant killed, and Dad, that louse, has left you nothing but a cryptic note explaining absolutely nothing in regards to where he's gone and why. It should be mentioned here that Dad is the Vault's doctor, so it's a safe bet that whatever's happened has something to do with scientific pursuits of grave importance. And so, up you go in to the big wide Capital Wasteland, a lonely nineteen year-old forced to take your first taste of the world as you set out to find your father, and ask him why he left you.

The most notable thing about Fallout 3 is that it's massive. What I mean by this is, the map is humongous, and very, very full. Even the buildings are huge compared to similar zones in other games - you can easily spend two hours exploring a bombed-out school or office building. And it's not just the size that requires so much time. You know how the word "wasteland" is generally preceeded by "barren", and used to describe a place that is empty and desolate? The Capital Wasteland is a literal land laid to waste, full not only of rubble and half-ruined buildings, but the detritus of human society. Everywhere you turn the ground will be littered with things like bent tin cans, empy bottles, lunch boxes, and it's pretty common to find drugs lying around in a bathroom. The sheer amount of random crap lying around for you to pick up in Fallout 3 is astonishing, but perfectly realistic and an effort much appreciated by this gamer. Also, a lot of it isn't so random, as you can build your own weapons out of certain items, and one of those weapons is a launcher that can use anything as ammo. Anyways, from a visual point of view, it's one of the most holistic games I've seen. It even does the "retro future" thing well, without seeming forced or winky to trying too hard. I don't think I've ever seen this style feel normal before.

Indeed, Fallout 3's attention to detail extends clear through to its soundtrack. Sure, it has an instrumental score, but it also has two fixed in-game radio stations, one of which plays nothing but retro jazz and big band tunes - all of which have lyrics that make nice, often sad or hilarious allegories for things like leaving the Vault, Dad's quest, and one, from South Pacific, that I've determined is a dark in-joke for folks who know their U.S. WWII history as relates to the sequence of events that led to the bombing of Hiroshima. People who still insist that video games as a medium are brainless and stupid have less of a leg to stand on in this decade than ever before.

A nice gameplay touch is the "Perk" system. Every time you level up, you distribute your skill points and then must select from a list of perks, according to your level and skill/attribute ranks. On top of that, some perks have ranks, so as more perks become available to you, choosing between acquiring new ones (say, better criticals) and raising the ranks of existing ones (increasing the number of skill points you get for reading books, for example) becomes a tough tactical decision. Oh, and speaking of tactical decisions, you can't progress past level 20, so choose those perks and skill increases wisely! My other favourite aspect of Fallout 3's gameplay? You can't just magically repair your weapons and body armor, you must have spares to take the parts from. In other words, in order to repair an assault rifle, you'll need another assault rifle on your person. Fun! It's those little touches, upping realism and requiring a little strategy, that really tie a game together.

There are, of course, downsides to the gameplay. The in-game targeting system, V.A.T.S., can be very helpful, but can also be a real hinderance. If you're low on ammo, you'll likely waste more in V.A.T.S. than you will just eyeballing it. However, you could inadvertently wind up wasting a lot eyeballing as well. The game's assisted targeting or auto-aim can't be turned off, so far as I can tell, and what would in a first-person shooter be a guaranteed kill shot can end up missing the target. The auto-aim also doesn't work through gaps so well, meaning that if you want to be sneaky and pop someone through a hole in a fence, regardless of where your cursor is aimed there's a high chance that round will be considered to have hit the fence, and if you're really unlucky it might ricochet back and kill you. It's almost like the game punishes people who are better shots than the assisted targeting is, and it can make playing my favourite character type, the sneaky little sniper, very frustrating.

The single biggest downside to Fallout 3, and what causes the war within me for recommending it, is that it is the first gratuitously violent game I've played. Now, if you know me, or read this blog, you know I'm against sanitizing violence. The thing is, Fallout 3 goes to places unnecessary: all critical hits and/or kill shots result in decapitation or dismemberment. I can see this being justifiable when using explosives, missile launchers, the Fat Man (a mini-nuke launcher), or even a shotgun at close range, but so help me, I'm 99.9% certain it is physically impossible to decapitate a man with a single .44 pistol round to the forehead at 100 meters. You can in theory circumvent this unpleasantry by only using energy weapons, which turn people to ash or goo, but even the plasma rifle can, in V.A.T.S. animation, somehow manage to blow someone's head off before the instant incineration caused when plasma meets organic matter. And, of course, V.A.T.S. happens in slow-motion. It's disgusting, it's unhealthy, it's completely gratuitous and, unfortunately, it's an inescapable part of an otherwise incredible game. I wasn't expecting this at all from a Bethesda game, but Corey says that in this they were just being true to the rest of the series, which Bethesda didn't work on. I wonder if it's Bethesda taking a swipe at this aspect of the series when Galaxy News Radio's DJ, Three Dog, makes a sarcastic comment about "today's forecast: excessively violent, with a chance of dismemberment!". I'm all for ratings boards, but when Australia's board refused to allow Fallout 3 in-country because the game developers wanted to call morphine "morphine" (i.e. a real-world drug reference), but didn't blink an eye over the relentless, excessive decapitations....well, that just seems strange to me. I mean, it's not like using cutesy names for drugs discourages usage - "Special K", anyone? - but excessive violence does desensitize.

And yet, in spite of that major downside, Fallout 3 is the most interesting, probably best RPG I've ever played on the RP side of things. The main story is excellent, and the side quests are just great, and range from fun 'n frivolous to annoying-but-beneficial to dark and disturbing, and everything in between. Also, there are a few fun sci-fi/horror homage quests, like "Those!" and "The Replicated Man" (or, Bladerunner). In keeping with the overall tone of the game, even fun quests will send you to dark places. In "The Nuka-Cola Challenge", you'll have to make a stop at the Wasteland's main slave camp, and whether you just steal the cola and sneak away or kill all the slavers and lead the slaves to safety has nothing to do with the quest, and is entirely up to you. But either way, doing "The Nuka-Cola Challenge" will force you to confront this option. Which brings me to my appreciation for Bethesda's clear stances on good and evil. The most common human enemies in Fallout 3 are slavers and raiders, roving gangs of humans who thrive on slaughter, sadism, and sexual torture, and for whom no potential victim is off-limits. The only reason I cringe when killing a raider is if V.A.T.S. decapitates one. You get Karma (this game's good/evil measurement) for killing them, and a bounty if you join the Regulators after level 14. However, you can choose to live like a raider in Fallout 3, which brings us to this game's best, most interesting, most unique aspect: the ending. If you don't want to know how it ends, this would be a good time to stop reading. In most RPGs, the main quest leads up to you triumphing over seemingly impossible odds, to either continue making the world a better place or begin your formal reign of terror. What makes Fallout 3 different, and more interesting, is that the game will end with your death. No matter how you've chosen to live your life, whether you've brought light to dark places or lived a life of careless evil and depravity, you will die. Much like in real life, you might say. Before your death, you must choose whether to commit a final, wide-scale act of evil, a final, wide-scale act of good, or to do nothing, and simply wait until the clock runs out...but for you, every action has the same consequence. The wantonly evil acts available in Fallout 3 are often so useless - like blowing up the only city you can buy a house in, or extorting people who can't give you more than a couple of bucks - that, combined with the ending, it's almost like a secular, video game version of Pascal's Wager.

There's so much I've left out here, like some of the funny bits, or the main quest, or how drug use will turn you into an addict and severely impact your attributes, or how you can get power armor that'll make you look just like the cap trooper on the cover of my edition of Starship Troopers. If you've been to D.C., as I have, you may get a real kick out of recognizing half-ruined landmarks, or knowing where to go when your quest objective is something like "go to the museum of Natural History and speak with Reilly". I know I did! On a different note, the voice acting is even more uniformly excellent than Mass Effect, and if Dad sounds familiar, that's because he's known by day as Liam Neeson. I have mixed feelings about famous actors making forays into voice work, as professional voice actors have been all but eliminated from Hollywood animated movies in favour of famous names, and major studio games are now the only high-profile platform for professional voice actors to strut their stuff and, you know, make a living). But, it seems like there are only a handful of game voice actors who don't make me want to skip the dialogue, and they seem to be getting regular work on good titles, so...I just don't know.

Fallout 3''s grim nature and setting, plus its gratuitous violence, make it less fun than other RPGs I've played, but all in all, I'm willing to crown it most interesting. If you can stomach it, its a fascinating excercise in, well, yourself, and how you live your life, and to what purpose. Or, to paraphrase the tagline for Shaun of the Dead, a smash hit father-daughter wasteland adventure. With mutants.

No Need to Be Hasty: Fable II (Full Review)

I will, perhaps, in the future be revising my conceit of posting "first impressions" of video games. In the case of Fable II, what started out as an occasionally distasteful but largely entertaining experience (see related post below) turned out to just be, well, distasteful. So distasteful that I have no desire for a second play.

The discovery of how brainlessly cynical the completed main quest is did me in. It's obvious from the beginning of the "The Hero of Strength" quest that Theresa has transformed over the centuries into someone corrupt and more than a little unhinged - her anger at the discovery that the Hero of Strength is a monk (and therefore cannot possibly be motivated to do what Heroes need to do?), and determination to corrupt Hammer into a creature of violence and vengeance in order to get the job done, is pretty disturbing and scary. Who wants to guess that Theresa's the one who orchestrated the sudden murder of Hammer's dad? Either way, Theresa is in full Kreia-from-Knights of the Old Republic II mode here; that is to say, perverted evil hag mode. The key difference, however, in KotoR II, is that you are not ultimately beholden to Kreia's will for things if you don't choose to be. Fable II talks a lot about choices, but when it comes down to the ones that really matter, you are for the most part denied the power to choose.

And then there's the cynicism taken to an extend that's just plain stupid. The game talks about how the original Hero's Guild was destroyed because of self-absorbed, corrupt Heroes who took no action and were subesquently lynched by the people. The final Hero you must recover before endgame is Reaver, a pirate king legendary for his near-supernatural pistol skills. Lionhead Studios at least gets points here for pirates not being cool: Reaver is a thoroughly corrupt, perverse, narcissistic, childish, evil individual. Amongst other things, if you wait around during his dialogue you will see him murder three innocents for the most petty reasons imaginable. He rules the port town of Bloodstone, where Oakvale used to be, on a foundation of despotism and terror. And you must take him with you to defeat the Main Evil, and after that's done you cannot even challenge him to a duel - in other words, you can't actually pursue evil with the intent of eliminating it, only the evil the game insists is untenable (the main villain, Lucien). With Reaver, the game developers are running with a cynicism that defies all logic: the idea that a "hero" who's evil but talented is better than no "hero" at all. They're also badly misusing the Neiztchean concept of the rules not applying to the special people. Has no one at Lionhead ever seen Rope? To muddle the waters further, the end of the game sees the Heros saying, "well, glad I don't have to help people any more, time to piss off!" as Theresa happily disbands them instead of rebuilding the guild...so that she can take over Lucien's old residence in the Tattered Spire. Well, now we know what Fable III will be about!

And Fable II's version of you not having a boss fight? A nonsensical, boring, failed shadow of Oblivion's, and a very poor and lazy argument for why the world needs someone like Reaver.

There's no replay value here; the game offers me nothing to work towards as a goal (or enjoy working towards), and I can't stomach it anyway. I'm sorry I gave it an initial thumbs-up, and may very well delete that post soon.

First Impressions: BioShock

Okay, I like a good first-person shooter (FPS). And no, I'm not some ultra-violent creep who carries concealed weapons and leaves disturbing anonymous message board posts about how I'm going to kill you all in your sleep. I personally prefer the "human versus things that aren't" shooters; I can't bring myself to play things like Call of Duty or even FarCry, and even though Half-Life 2 featured zombies etc., it was too gross for my liking. I'm a Halo kind of girl. We can debate the ridiculousness of giving FPS games all the credit for violent teenage actions another time; today, I want to talk about BioShock!

I've been looking forward to this game ever since Corey told me about System Shock II, the old PC game BioShock spawns from - or, as I like to call it based on Corey's stories, the Crazy Monkey Game. When the trailers, artwork, and screen shots first became available online, I really started looking forward to it. For one thing, I'm obsessed with the ocean, and BioShock takes place in an underwater dystopia; for another, it was also the most beautiful game I'd ever seen. On top of that, I appreciate the thrill of a high-quality scare, and BioShock sure looked creepy as all else. Been wanting to buy it, been waiting for the price to go down, got loaned it by Tim and Scott, and here we are!

Well, I've played about fourty minutes - the introduction plus - and BioShock is meeting all my expectations and then some. Set in 1960, the game opens in a first-person view (and stays that way) as your commercial passenger flight goes down over the ocean. First Bit of Great: when you get dumped in the ocean, it's no cut scene between water and finding land - start swimming! 'Land' in this case is the underwater city of Rapture, created in the '50s by a man named Andrew Ryan as a place where artists, scientists, and inventors could work unrestricted by such constraints as government regulation, bioethics, morality, all those pesky constructs of The Man. Sounds like a great place, what could possibly go wrong?

Ha...Ha...Ha!

If I ever encounter a better-looking game than BioShock, I'll eat my hat (so long as my hat is made of nachos, with salsa in the middle). The art-deco city and the view out its windows are...well...just Google Image Search "Bioshock Rapture City", you'll see what I mean. It's the kind of game that makes you tempted to splurge on a better TV. Even poorly lit and half-ruined, it's incredible, and the period jazz soundtrack does a world of good. This, unfortunately, can be a downside, as I want time to mosey around soaking in the sights...yeah, there's not a lot of that happening in a horror FPS, unless you want to clear all the areas and then spend a while backtracking to you can sightsee. And I do. :D A small price to pay for beauty. From a playing perspective, the controls are pretty intuitive, the world interaction is swell, and giving your bioengineered capabilities finite usage makes for an interesting strategic touch. Your radio-only (so far) helper, Atlas, is a good actor, too, and if you miss any of his messages due to fighting or other distraction, you can replay them at any time. You may find it tough to find the right difficulty, though - I'm playing on medium, described as for "veteran gamers", and so far it's not quite a challenge, though this will hopefully increase as the game progresses. I should mention here than the equivalent Halo difficulty ("heroic"), though doable, is a challenge for me. Corey tried the highest difficulty, and said it was verging on too hard to be enjoyable - and this is someone who typically doesn't have issues with whatever the hardest setting of a shooter is. But there's the rub - for someone like that, 'medium' is far too easy, and though one could play easier the first time through and then step up after they're familiar with the game, BioShock may turn out to be too disturbing to have replay value. A dilemma, indeed!

And did I mention: this game is creepy as all else? BioShock is a horror on the scale of films like Alien or The Thing. In other words, other emotional and adrenaline-related issues apply, on top of the ones associated with a more relaxing shooter like Halo. The first time I played that game, my body responded to all the adrenaline being released while not engaged in physical activity by creating a week's worth of nightmares, mainly involving being out of ammo, that eventually morphed into happy dreams to cruising around with a Warthog full of Marines, eliminating Covenant troops with ease. Fourty minutes of BioShock tempered by a hasty retreat to Fable II as I realised I needed something I could sleep on didn't spawn any nighttime visits, but I'm not looking forward to whatever will accompany more intensive gameplay. That doesn't mean I won't continue playing. Does that make me a masochist?

In a nutshell: Gorgeous. Scary. Fun. If you have the stomach for a high-quality video game scare, I don't see it getting much better than this. More to come when I actually pass the game.

First Impressions: Fable II

By the time I played the original Fable, it was old enough that the platinum Lost Chapters edition was in the cheap bin. I make note of this because what it means is that, prior to this event, I'd never heard of Fable, and so had no pre-play taint from the controversy/general disappointment surrounding how it fell very short of what creator/lead designer Peter Molyneux had trumpeted it to be. Granted, it didn't take very long to discover on my own that was an excercise in unfulfilled potential of epic proportions; however, it also didn't take very long to discover that it was lots and lots of fun. Come to think of it, it may have been the first game I played on Xbox, and what set me on the path of the serious gamer. Fluffy, very simple to play, and having a gorgeous soundtrack, we certainly own games better than Fable, but I don't believe we own one that's more entertaining.

So, the big question was, would Fable II deliver on the promises its predecessor welched on? The answer is...not too much. The big deal (both intended and actual) with Fable was the "your choices affect the world" idea taken to heights that surpassed mere main quest save-the-world stuff - ie., villagers would flock to you or run in fear, shop prices would reflect your renown and good/evilness, your appearance would alter depending on your morality, etc. Fable II increases this, with clothing and hairstyles affecting your attractiveness, scariness, and purity, and by allowing you to do things like purchase any home or shop in the game and either jack up or reduce prices. They've also added things like the options for casual in-game sex, which can earn you an STD if you're not careful (I know this from the manual, not personal experience), and you can also produce children. The most entertaining new "slice of life" aspect are the jobs - you can get work as a smith, woodcutter, or bartender, and the minigames get pretty tough as your level of work increases, but it's still a great way to make easy money during the nights, and oddly addictive in a pleasant way.

As far as the gameplay... Well, I've always seen the Fable series as a bridge between casual and serious gamers. The combat is incredibly easy, as are the puzzles, and of course there's the whole The Sims thing going on, but it's still an RPG, and hey, maybe if you liked Fable, you'll like, I don't know, Knights of the Old Republic, and see that serious games are fun after all? Unfortunately, Fable II seems a bit too tailored to casual gamers, because that's the only rationale I can think of for the unusual, illogical, and downright bizarre button assignments. Things like, you press different buttons to take out and put away your weapons, and - most awful and irritating - 'B' is not your menu. 'B' activates your magic, and if you happen to have an aggressive spell selected and are in the middle of town and don't want a reputation for scaring and killing villagers, well, let's just say there's lots of reloading involved. This is, for Corey and I, the single difficult thing about Fable II: training ourselves that 'B' is Not. The. Menu. Speaking of reloading, another bizarre and irritating decision is that you cannot load a game from the Save Menu - you need to quit the game to the main menu in order to load or reload. It almost seems like the game was developed by, instead of hiring gamers as testers and sounding board, Lionhead Studios went looking for people whose game experience consists of WiiFit and Brain Academy and asked them, which buttons make the most sense to you? And this is what they said. As well, you don't appear to be able to choose your hotkeys - at least, we haven't figured it out yet, and the manual is silent on the matter. Then there are the baffling story-related decisions, like revealing the identity of your mysterious mentor from the very beginning of the game - your first quest objective post-childhood is "Follow Theresa". Okay, if you haven't played Fable, this won't mean very much, but if you have, it's a bit disappointing.

Still, Fable II is even more entertaining than its predecessor. A word of warning, though: although it's quite humorous, it's not always lighthearted. The Fable series is a British production - I know, how often do you play an RPG that isn't American, Canadian, or Japanese? - and as such is infused with a very British sense of humour. This means that the jokes are ridiculous, dry, morbid, rude, cruel, raunchy, depressing, or any combination of the above. That's raunchy in the original sense, not in the weird habit that's popped up in suburbia these last few years of kids saying "raunchy" in place of "gross". If your only British media experience is Monty Python's Flying Circus, this is a pretty good gauge of Fable's style of humour. And if you don't care for that show, this game will probably be little more than childish, nonsensical, and irritating.

All this is also not to say that Fable II isn't worth playing. It's certainly not worth the current new copy rate of $59.99 (Can.), but it's a good borrow or cheap bin purchase. It's great fun having an invincible doggie companion who sniffs out treasure and dig spots (and goes for the throat of any enemies you knock down without killing), the addition of rifles and pistols is highly entertaining, and there's nothing wrong with spending an hour dyeing and trying on your outfits (nothing). I also get a lot of private enjoyment over the fact that your character is raised by gypsies, and any time I go home to visit I hear the Italian Wolfram & Hart lady from Angel Season 5 shouting, "Feelthy gypsies! (Spit) We shall speak of them nomore!!!" Set several centuries after the events of Fable, you also get some interesting tidbits during the load screens, like the fate of Lady Grey. It's fluff, it's fun, it's easy, it's a great way to relax. It's also not for the faint of heart, or game snobs. Me, I'm having a good time, and plan to continue doing so. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go dye my shirt and play fetch with my dog.

Fragment: On Oblivion

One of the unique pleasures of the video game is that it is very rare for a sequel to not surpass its predecessor. Consider Knights of the Old Republic II, Halo 3, or, if you haven't sat at a console in a few years, Super Mario Bros. 3. In this case, the predecessor in question is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Xbox); the sequel, and subject of this review, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360).

Oblivion begins by continuing the "reformed criminal" theme from Morrowind for your character. The emperor and his sons have been assassinated, but before the emperor's death he recognizes you from a dream he had, gives you the symbol of his right to rule, tells you he has a bastard son, and sends you off to visit the commander of his guard/Secret Service. Then, of course, linked directly to all this is the business of portals to Oblivion (or, Hell) randomly popping up all across the continent and wreaking their evil havoc. Zoinks.

The improvements over Morrowind are substantial. For one (big) thing, the combat engine is not a hack 'n slash. Blocking is now something you control, you can disarm opponents (and be disarmed), you can dodge blows, etc. This comes courtesy of a neat little system called Skill Mastery. There are five levels of skill mastery - Novice (0-24), Apprentice (25-49), Journeyman (50-74), Master (75-99), and Expert (100) - and bonuses that accompany each. Nice ones, too. Speaking of skills, big improvements in the Alchemy area! Remember how in Morrowind you could make poisons, but all you could do with them was sell them or drink them yourself? Oblivion lets you poison your weapons and arrows with effects like elemental damage, health and magicka drains, and paralysis. Very handy!

In other news, the world of Oblivion feels nice and full because it is nice and full. A medieval setting, it's packed with creatures including bears, wolves, mountain lions, trolls, will-o-the-wisps, and goblins. The game even contains a lone unicorn and, if you set conditions up just right and have a bit of luck, you can watch that unicorn duke it out with a minotaur. I kid you not, it's awesome. Villages, farms, caves, mines, forts, wayside chapels, camps, geographical landmarks, and elven ruins cover the continent, full of plunder and quests alike. Which brings us to the absolute best thing about Oblivion: the quests. I can't say enough about how fun and well-plotted the quests are. The main quest and Mage's Guild quests follow such a realistic progression that they continue four or five quests past where earlier games would've ended it. The Thieves Guild is an enormous step up from Morrowind, and when they call the final quest "The Ultimate Heist", it isn't hyperbole. In addition, most if not all villages etc. have a quest attached, aside from the numerous ones you can pick up across the seven major cities. Oh yeah, and the Daedric quests - many more than in Morrowind; on the downside, as far as I know only four of them aren't ones I feel uncomfortable doing. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. The game takes clear stances on evil and perversion, in particular as pertains to the practice of necromancy. There are necromancer lairs all over the continent, and what's inside them is as disturbing as it should be. In an interesting and well-done twist, you must become the Arch-Mage before you have the option to practice necromancy yourself. However, the options for perverse gameplay are there: you can join the Dark Brotherhood, and most of the Daedric quests are, as I mentioned above, quite unsavoury. But that's just not my style, man.

But the single biggest (in my mind) change over Morrowind is the flavour of the game. Morrowind is a fantasy through and through, from the look of things to the dreamy music to the fact that you're the ultimate hero, and has an overall triumphant tone - your world is pretty black and white, and very few situations don't end well. Oblivion has a distinctly medieval flavour that applies to far more than the art and monsters. This is most evident in the quests. Whether main quests, guild quests, or side quests, a lot of them begin and/or end in tragic, morbid, or bittersweet fashions - few if any victories in Oblivion are not tempered by some form of loss. As well, your character is not the hero of the story. Sure, you're important, and will play a significant role in helping someone else save the world - but, to use a very Canadian analogy, you provide the assist, not the goal. I though this was just great; it was lots of fun, and very refreshing after playing through hero-fests Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic I & II, and Mass Effect. It also helps that the character you're assisting is a great character.

At any rate, you shouldn't need to read anything to know what a brilliant game this is. The thought and care put into its development is evident just from the title, which contains the numeral "IV" - the game's place in its series - with an equal number of letters framing it on each side. With the Game of the Year edition now going for $30, and at least two hundred hours of gameplay contained therein, it's also the best bang for your entertainment buck, hands down.

Discovery: The Monkey Does Not Have the Data Module

After a disappointing text-only homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey - you shouldn't have to work that hard to unlock text-only Easter eggs! - the developers of Mass Effect returned to my good graces with the sidequest "UNC: Lost Module", a tiny hiccup of a mission which artfully combines classic horror film/game lore (toxic hazard planets full of monkeys!) with classic camp sci-fi lore (dirty thieving monkeys!) as well as classic odd cartoon lore (see below). A video clip of the following was, sadly, not forthcoming.

One time I hired a monkey to take notes for me in class. I would sit there with my mind a complete blank while the monkey scribbled on little pieces of paper. At the end of the week the teacher said, "Class, I want you to write a paper using your notes." So I wrote a paper that said, "Hello, my name is Bingo. I like to climb on things. Can I have a banana? Eek eek." I got an F. When I told my mom about it, she said, "I told you, never trust a monkey!" The end.

- "Brak's School Daze: Never Trust a Monkey" (Space Ghost Coast to Coast)

My Best Friend Is A Talking Pie: Mass Effect

A good action RPG - not quite the same thing as a good adventure RPG; see: Oblivion - is hard to come by. That is to say, there aren't too many of them. Edmonton-based BioWare is not only one of the top-rated companies to work for in Canada, period, but they make darn fine action RPGs, too.

Mass Effect (Xbox 360) is one of those, a more than worthy successor to BioWare's famous Knights of the Old Republic games. With a good enough main story, more side quests that you can shake a stick at (many of them interesting), a great (and very fun) combat engine, an all-around first-rate design and character creation, and one of the best endgames ever, Mass Effect is the best time I've had with an action RPG since, well, Knights of the Old Republic II. You play as Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy, and start the game by selecting not only your combat class (standard-issue for any RPG), but a personal history and psychological profile as well. Those last two affect or govern conversations, dialogue options, and some side quests. You can be a spacer, following your parent's footsteps into the Navy; you can be a colonist who saw your family slaughtered by pirates, or an Earthborn orphan who ran with gangs and joined the Navy young in order to get out of trouble and have a fresh start. For a psych profile, you can be known as a war hero, the sole survivor of a massacre that wiped out your unit, or a ruthless soldier for whom the end always justify the means. Each personal history comes with a unique side quest involving your past, but some profiles, like the sole survivor, overlap with side quests anyone can take. Fun stuff, and it adds a new dimension to the action-RPG world. Obviously, the main quest involves you and the crew of the SSV Normandy saving all organic life in the known universe. Standard, but there's nothing wrong with standard - and this game does standard very well, and throws in enough speedbumps along the way.

Also, Mass Effect feels nice and big. The KotOR games could feel very restrictive at times, and small, but there are very few instances in Mass Effect that remind me it's not a sandbox game. There's plenty to do, and far to travel. It's a far fuller game than KotOR. Scaleable enemies permit you to burn through the main quest in, I don't know, you could probably do it in six hours if that was all you did in the game, but to put things into perspective, I finished my first play at around twenty-one hours...with roughly a fifth of the side quests completed. And those were just the side quests that I'd unlocked in my journal, so there's some nice bang for your buck. Speaking of KotOR, there are also some fun Star Wars references, including your very own Trench Run (Death Star not included), a very familiar-looking maintenance shaft, and a world that bears a striking resemblance to a fleshed-out version of the final planet from the first KotOR game.

My favourite thing about Mass Effect, especially in contrast to KotOR? The Paragon/Renegade scales, and the dialogue options that govern them. In KotOR, the Dark/Light Sides were on the same scale, so you were either one or the other, and if you earned yourself Dark Side points, they'd cancel out an equal number of Light Side points. Plus, the Dark Side dialogue options tended to be brainlessly violent - in other words, not that interesting. That drove Corey nuts, especially in KotOR II where Kreia keeps going on about how the Dark Side is all about subtle manipulation...but none of your dialogue options reflected that scene. In Mass Effect, the Paragon and Renegade points are kept separate, on two different scales, so you can earn both. More reflective of real life, actions that are classified as qualities of a renegade are not necessarily evil; likewise, actions that are classified as qualities of a paragon are not necessarily good. For example, I got Renegade points for encouraging Kaiden's affection, which made me laugh very hard, but which I saluted, because love is good, but romancing a subordinate officer should get you Renegade points! You can also get points in your Charm and Intimidate skills without ever using a level-up, just by getting Paragon and Renegade points in normal conversation - though I wouldn't recommend not putting any points into Charm and Intimidate, as they're actually very useful in this game, and can lead to some great plot twists. Also, Corey's testing out how many points you can get just from your Paragon/Renegade scale, and he currently has a level 37 character...and only three Charm/Intimidate. It's a nice system, leads to some very interesting conversation options, and I salute it.

Which brings us to the dialogue! The conversations of Mass Effect are fully cinematic - I mean fully. You know how an RPG usually involves you selecting a response from a list of text, and an animated character responding cinematically? Mass Effect presents your dialogue options in one- to five-word summaries, and then has them fleshed out by your character talking - carrying on an actual, two-sided conversation. This has its downsides, though; for one thing, the actual dialogue can turn out to be very different from what you thought was meant by the dialogue summary. As well, in what's perhaps the biggest downside of Mass Effect, the game doesn't download conversations to run off your hard drive based on your gender/profile - instead, it caches every conversation. Caches. Every. Conversation. This results in a good deal of slowdown; as well, it's hard on the Xbox - my pleasure derived by playing Mass Effect is tempered by hearing the poor brand-new console grind and labour in ways it doesn't have to with other games. But hey! The script is good, and so are the cinematics, and so is the voice acting! Veteran voice actor Jen Hale (of the Metroid Prime, Soul Calibur, X-Men Legends, and Knights of the Old Republic series, amongst tons else) does the female Shepard; fellow Star Wars alumnus Raphael Sbarge is back as yet another sci-fi love interest, Lt. Kaiden Alenko; Brandon Keener is fantastic as ex-cop Garrus Vakarian, and several members of the Halo trilogy cast round out the main crew. On top of that, you've got several Star Trek veterans, including Marina Siritis (TNG's Counsellor Troi) as a key villain, and plain ol' random "why are you in a game?" actors, like Seth Green (Buffy) as the Normandy's pilot, Joker, and my personal favourite, Lance Henriksen (Aliens) as an off-screen admiral who contacts you for jobs he'd like done in a quiet and sensitive (and potentially lethal) fashion. It's nice work, and I need to be feeling pretty impatient to skip Mass Effect's dialogue. And the character conversations are mostly interesting, as well as the characters themselves. For example, one character has a degenerative physical condition, and is very aggressive about having earned their place on the crew and about the fact that they want no special treatment. The same character also makes wonderfully insubordinate comments after every main quest mission prior to endgame, which suggests that they do in fact coast on the expectation of special treatment - you only get a couple of chances to chew them out for insubordination, once in the very first conversation of the game, and once in your very first informal conversation with that character. Interesting.

There are some very interesting choices in this game, too, enhanced by the fact that the game does not decide whether you've been good or evil. Genuinely interesting questions about the means and the end are raised. You can talk your way out of a fight by convincing your adversary to commit suicide for the greater good - and, if you do it by using the Charm dialogue options, you get Paragon points for it. The moral dilemmas are actually interesting and problematic, as are the politics. Also, in the hour-long endgame, you have several Talking Pie decisions to make, one of which occurs early in endgame and affects your primary crew. If you've seen that classic Simpsons episode with Alec Baldwin and Ron Howard, than you know what kind of decisions I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, there's a good chance you're also not the sort who's interested in Mass Effect - but if you are, well, I won't tell you what Talking Pie is...you'll just have a nice, stressful little surprise, and wish you'd saved earlier.. :D I chose to do my first play not as Elly playing Mass Effect, but as a real roleplay, modeled on Alien's Ellen Ripley. A true roleplay tends to be more intimate than distancing, and I raised myself a whole slew of questions as I answered every query with, "what would Ripley do?" - because that's the beauty of the roleplay. I'm not doing it, she is. But, I am. All-in-all, as good for introspection as it is fun. Mass Effect as a whole takes video-game roleplaying to a next level, which is great...but it also means things can get wierder than usual. For example, there is an optional romance sub-plot, a normal RPG nicety. It includes the standard military/horror "let's make love tonight, because tomorrow all organic life may be extinct" clause. However, in a game with fully cinematic conversations, that means that you can end up watching your character and chosen love interest Do It...which, depending on your point of view, is either awesome or creepy (I choose creepy). Potentially, this is a very big apology for the forcibly unrequited love from Knight of the Old Republic II - I can't imagine the slew of angry e-mails and porno fanfic that followed that one - however, I suspect that's not the only motivation. As a female character, you can choose bat for the other team with an exotic same-sex alien. Your Normandy's belowdecks are full of speculation as to your sexual preferences, and I had to undergo two separate conversations to convince hetero love-interest Kaiden that I wasn't a lesbian, and you have to confront the alien directly in order for the rumours to cease. Since, if you play as a male character, there's no same-sex option (or rumours) for you, I'm crying foul on some group of developers/programmers/designers shameless use of Mass Effect as an outlet for their girl-on-girl fantasies. It is interesting to note, though, that said exotic female alien is a complete bimbo - for a research scientist, she's amazingly dimwitted, slow, and full of the kind of inane and stupid dialogue that isn't the norm in this game - if her colouring were different, she would be the personification of the Dumb Blonde. So maybe someone on the development end decide to cry foul themselves.

Exploitation and cacheing aside, my only other complaints with Mass Effect would be that there are too many identical side quests involving hitting a planet, driving around, surveying stuff, and killing mercenaries, and that I'm not sold on this game's land vehicle. The Mako is a solid concept, a fully-armored, six-wheel, low-riding rover that is the means by which you're dropped onto planets, but - Corey and I disagree here - I don't find it handles very well. Probably because of its construction and concept, it's far clunkier and less maneuverable than my reference point for sci-fi game land vehicles, Halo's Warthog. It doesn't pull smooth, fast turns like the Warthog, and I like it less overall. Yes, they're very different vehicles in very different settings - the Mako is built for zero-atmosphere, low-gravity engagements. Still. The Warthog has a horn. When the Warthog gets damaged, its horn sounds like a jalopy horn. Warthog wins.

There's far too much good stuff about Mass Effect that the bad stuff can't possibly override. Some may find the combat too easy; personally, I like that. I don't want hard, stressful, adrenaline-filled combat from an action-RPG, I'll go play Halo 3 (thanks, Glenn!) if that's the sensation I'm after. Still, you can beat the game on "Veteran" to unlock "Hardcore", than beat it on "Hardcore" to unlock "Insane", so the options are there if that floats your boat. The assorted engines (combat, dialogue) are great, the plots and characters are interesting, the environments are gorgeous, and the score combining 90's action-movie music with shades of Babylon 5 doesn't hurt either. For an idea of the game's sense of humour, the music on a planet filled with horrible mutants uses sterotype circus music as its base, capitalizing on the general populace's horror of clowns. Mass Effect is a year or so old now, and can be had for under $20 if you shop right. Then, you can play through it with every single profile, do every endgame possible, and use those saves to influence the world of Mass Effect 2, due out...I don't know when. Well, you'll have a lot to keep you busy while waiting.