• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Streamlined
• Two Words: Shepard Lives!
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

This review contains spoilers from the first 15 minutes of the game, where something major happens. If you haven’t already heard about it, you might be upset at me for mentioning it. Proceed with caution.

When a game is already great, it’s often a tough act to follow. Many sequels to great games have been extremely good games in their own right, but did not quite live up to the original (see: my recent review of BioShock 2). Other sequels to great games are just plain not as good. It’s a rare thing indeed to find a sequel to a great game which is better than the original in virtually all ways. Mass Effect 2 is one of these sequels.

At the end of the first Mass Effect,  your character has saved not just the planet, not just the solar system, and not just the local cluster, but the entire damn Milky Way from annihilation at the hands of the evil Reapers. These creatures are gigantic, sentient, robotic space-squid that hibernate in “dark space” (the empty area between the Milky way and its nearest neighbor) most of the time. Every fifty thousand years or so they wake up, warp in to the galaxy, and proceed to destroy all sentient organic life. Why they choose to do this is not exactly made clear in Mass Effect. For now, it’s good enough that you, as Commander Shepard, have managed to thwart their plans via courage, good looks, and the human penchant for unparalleled violence.

I played through Mass Effect in its entirety not once, but twice, the first time as Commander Adrian Shepard, a bald Asian dude with a rocking handlebar-mustache-and-beard combo that made the ladies swoon, and the second time as Commander Adrienne Shepard, a sharp-faced, raven-haired woman with a predilection for heavy eye-shadow and black lipstick. Both of them were “Paragons,” which is to say that they didn’t choose to be total assholes to anyone and everyone they met. Stick with me here because this will mean something in the long run.

Mass Effect 2 allows you to import your character from the first game and keep playing with the same basic traits, appearance, and so forth. This really helps keep you invested in the story, since you’re picking up right where you left off (well,okay, two months after you left off). Once you’ve imported this character who you’ve grown attached to over the course of dozens of hours of play, the game does the only logical thing: it immediately and mercilessly kills you off.

Never fear, though, because a rogue pro-human agency named Cerberus shouts “WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY” and rebuilds you, Steve Austin-style, over a period of two years and to the tune of 4 billion intergalactic credits (that’s a lot). Cerberus needs you to spearhead the fight against the Collectors, a mysterious alien race that’s abducting human beings from fringe colonies for unknown, but probably Reaper-related, reasons. So now you’re back, albeit with some glowing facial scars and an apparent loss of any and all techniques/powers you acquired in the first game. This is what’s known as “a plausible excuse to set the character back at level one.”

From here you’ll embark on an adventure that spans the galaxy, putting together a team of compatriots twice as large as that found in the first game, and even more varied. I have to fault the game a tiny bit here because a lot of the characters are kind of straight out of “secondary characters 101″ … you’ve got the badass shaved-head convict chick, the brute who just wants to kill things, the philosophical and mild-mannered assassin, the sexy ice-queen with the universe’s greatest ass, the black guy who talks in a semi-urban dialect despite being from outer space, and so forth. You’ll even get to work with a couple of your pals from ME1 in the game, and you’ll visit the others, assuming they survived.

Bioware, the company responsible for the Mass Effect series have a reputation for being pretty much unparalleled masters of the story-based RPG, and the original Mass Effect was a hell of a game in that department.  Mass Effect 2 retains some of the key introductions from the first game. The terrific “dialog wheel” conversation interface is still there, there’s an incredible amount of dialog to be had (all of it with full voice acting), and you are given a wide opportunity during the game to make choices that will affect your Paragon and Renegade scores. Unlike the first game, you can successfully accrue renegade points without being the galaxy’s biggest asshole, so that’s a plus. The game also remembers several choices you made in the first title, and will reference your actions when appropriate. It’s impressive.

In addition to the formidable story depth, they’ve somehow managed to eke out even better-looking environments and characters without making dramatic changes to the overall look and feel of the series. I don’t know how they did it, but they’ve managed to improve the graphical fidelity while simultaneously reducing by a large amount the “texture pop” which is so prevalent in modern, Unreal-Engine games. I only saw it happen a few times, whereas in the first game it was a near-constant experience.

The developers weren’t simply satisfied with improving the graphics and retaining the deep story possibilities of the original, however. They’ve also overhauled several significant areas of the game in order to reduce tedium and keep things rolling along. For example, there’s no longer any need to constantly evaluate the bazillion new items you’re always picking up. Instead, there’s just a simple tech tree to follow and only a few types of weapons to choose from. Upgrades and additional weapon models are available, but they’re relatively rare and very easy to manage. Upgrades = good, always, and the differences between weapon models are substantial and easily determined (and for the most part, there’s little reason to stick with an old model once a new one becomes available). There are also five or six Shepard-only “heavy” weapons to choose from, like a rocket launcher and a beam weapon you steal from the Collectors. You can only carry one at a time, so it’s best to figure out which one you like and stick with it.

They’ve also removed the occasionally fun but mostly awful part of the game where you lumber around planets in your land-based crawler, getting stuck on mountains as you attempt to search for that elusive, unmarked Prothean ruin or pile of lithium that you need to finish a collection quest. Instead we’re given a much more straightforward planet-scanning UI which allows you to collect the four elements you need to use when upgrading your weapons, armor, biotic utilities, and ship. This still isn’t perfect. To describe planet scanning, even after getting a few upgrades that speed it up and allow you to store more probes, as “somewhat tedious” is like describing the world’s fattest man as “a little chubby.”

Fortunately, there’s way more elements available in the galaxy than you actually need, so you can basically ignore all but the richest planets, just stopping by the others to read the thoroughly interesting descriptions and then moving on. Occasionally a planet will have an “anomaly” which will invariably let you go to the surface and perform a little mini-quest. In Mass Effect these sequences were all very similar, taking place in the same two or three prefab environments over and over. In ME2, each one is hand-crafted, and not all of them are combat-oriented. It’s a nice break in between the story missions, which have you first recruiting your team, then (optionally) doing missions to make each one more loyal, and then finally going after the Collectors with guns blazing on a “suicide mission” that never feels very suicidal because there’s an achievement description available right from the beginning that says “survive the suicide mission.”

While you’re doing all of this, you’ll visit several new locations, such as the lawless asteroid Omega, the Asari planet Ilium, and the Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka. You’ll also return to the Citadel, although your reception by the council whose asses you saved (assuming you chose to save them in ME1) is pretty pathetic. You can also sex up a variety of your shipmates — there are six possibilities in total, three for each sex, plus the option to have some encounters with your personal assistant. Both male and female versions of Shepard have the opportunity to get busy with aliens in addition to humans, which can lead to some very amusing dialog. Alternately, if you got involved with Kaiden, Ashley, or Liara in the first game, you can choose to remain true to them in the second. My wife forced Adrienne Shepard to stick with Liara, and we’re curious to see how it works out in Mass Effect 3. Adrian Shepard, on the other hand, is flirting with everything that moves. Hey, after two years frozen in space, a guy has needs, right?

In all, Mass Effect 2 is just a killer title, and an early contender for Game of the Year. It’s got action, romance, space travel, and a deep storyline that customizes itself to your playing style and the actions you choose to take. The characters are fun and interesting, the voice acting is top notch (Martin Sheen gets a crucial role as the head of Cerberus), and the game does an awesome job of setting up the third and supposedly final title. It will leave you looking forward to finding out more about Shepard and the galaxy’s ultimate fate, and eagerly anticipating the conclusion to the series.

• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Depth
• Two Words: Swarming Splicers
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

The Long Version

I’m pretty torn about giving BioShock 2 only a “good” and not a “great” rating. I mean, here is a game far more ambitious in its storyline and symbolism than 90% of the dreck out there, but at the same time, whenever you start to really get into exploring these new parts of Rapture, it decides to throw an army of splicers at you and bog you down in pointless, repetitive combat. The game delivers excellent dialog, creates compelling characters for you to interact with, and features a few interesting moral choices … but it also tries too hard to shoehorn the new villain into the existing Rapture storyline, so much so that one is left wondering how it would be possible to have seen no sign of her influence during the first game. On the one hand, I played the game for hours basically every day after I bought it until I’d beaten it. On the other hand, I spent a decent chunk of those hours bitching to my wife (thanks, hon!) about how little fun I was having during yet another massive firefight.

I think what it comes down to is that the net result of the changes to the game play from the first game made this one more hardcore, and it has been a long time since I was a hardcore gamer. I no longer play games, even first-person shooters, for the combat. I don’t care that I can fight with plasmids and weapons at the same time, because I never found having to switch to be particularly cumbersome in the first place, since you were rarely facing more than a couple of enemies at a time. I don’t care that the weapons and plasmids are generally beefed up from the first game, because I never thought the ones in the first game needed much improvement. I didn’t come back to Rapture because I loved fighting legions of the same four splicers in the first game and wanted to fight many more.

I came back to Rapture because its decayed, art-deco beauty and tragic history make it without question one of the most compelling video game environments ever conceived. Nearly every part of Rapture is a work of art, and to explore it means contemplating what it might be like to exist there, to live in an underwater city, never seeing the sunlight, but with constant access to the beauty and mystery of the ocean depths. The original BioShock was so damn compelling because it was so gorgeous, and had gone so horribly wrong.

Fortunately, in this aspect, the game delivers. The Rapture of BioShock 2 is even more decayed than that of the first game (though, oddly, it didn’t seem as wet), but there are still glimpses of stunning beauty all around. While I was disappointed that we didn’t revisit any of the original areas, the new parts of Rapture shown in BioShock 2 fit right in and make sense as parts of the city. We’re given information on how Rapture was built, and how people originally got around it (a sort of undersea subway system) before the invention of personal bathyspheres.  We see Andrew Ryan’s amusing attempt to indoctrinate, via a horrific version of a Disney ride, the children of Rapture into fearing and hating the surface. We glimpse the seeds of that which would eventually be Ryan’s undoing even as we gain insight into what Rapture was like in its glory days.

I remain as baffled as ever as to why it is that Andrew Ryan, Sofia Lamb and Frank Fontaine’s audio diaries (among many others) are just lying all over the damn place in the city … but it’s a plot delivery vehicle that one can overlook without too much trouble. What one can’t overlook is the incessant focus on combat.

In BioShock 2, you’re a Big Daddy. One of the prototypes, actually, if you want to get specific, but it doesn’t really matter that much. As a Big Daddy, part of your job is to “adopt” Little Sisters and use them to harvest the genetic elixir Adam. Whenever you set a little sister down to gather, you’re mobbed by splicers. Also, whenever you hit an important plot point, you’re usually mobbed by splicers. When you visit a new area of the game, you’re usually given just enough exploration time to build up a dread that you’re going to be mobbed by splicers, and then you’re mobbed by splicers. Sometimes you revisit an area that you just cleared out less than five minutes ago, you find that it has been entirely repopulated with splicers, who proceed to mob you.

Sometimes while you’re being mobbed by splicers, a Big Daddy / Little Sister combo will come stumbling heedlessly right through the firefight, at which time the Big Daddy will almost assuredly get hit by one of the bullets or plasmids you are wildly spraying around like the money shot in a porn movie, become enraged, and decide to beat the crap out of you.

Understand: it’s not that I died a lot … I played the game on easy because I’m a wuss, and rarely found myself holding less than three first aid kits. It wasn’t so much that the fights were frustratingly difficult. No, they were just frustratingly frequent. Yes, you can set traps before the splicer-mobbing in some instances (particularly relating to the Little Sisters). No, these traps don’t do a particular amount of good, nor are they particularly fun to deploy. In a short time, the entire thing has become an exercise in tedium. “Ho-hum, another firefight with fifteen splicers. Let’s just get through this so that I can get back to the interesting part of the game.”

The parts of the game that are good are really, really good. There’s a scene late in the game involving a Little Sister that does a fantastic job of illustrating how Rapture looks through their eyes. There are small, poignant vignettes and audio logs to be found all over the place if you look for them which help to tell the story of the city. There’s even a couple of more significant moral choices to be made, beyond simply “rescue” or “harvest,” which help to shape the game’s ending … though to be honest in only one of these did I find myself actually wrestling with my decision. The other two might as well have “click here to be the good guy” show up on the screen.

So, overall, my return to Rapture was a good, but not great, experience. I found myself missing the slower pace and frequent creeping dread of the first game. I also found myself questioning the main plot quite heavily (and wondering what the hell happened to a couple of the people I met early on in the game). That’s okay. I enjoyed exploring Rapture again, thought the characters were excellent, and I was glad that they didn’t shoehorn in a “twist” just to compete with the first BioShock. If you’re a fan of lots of combat in your games, this is a no-brainer: go buy the game. If you’re less into combat, I still highly recommend it. Just be prepared for the fact that some parts of the game will become something of a slog.

Oh, also there is multi-player, if you’re into that sort of thing. I haven’t bothered with multi-player FPS’s in years, and see no reason to go back to them now, so I can’t give you any insight on that end. I assume it’s like most multi-player: jettisoning everything that’s good about the game in favor of yet more combat. As we’ve established, that’s not why I came back to Rapture in the first place.

Images borrowed from the good people at Giant Bomb

In late 2009 Crispy Gamer acquired GamerDNA.com, 360Voice.com, TweetMyGaming.com, and an associated ad network running ads on multiple privately-owned gaming websites. The board of directors, excited by the massive increase in page views and ad sales opportunities, decided that it was time to cut costs on the Crispy Gamer front, consolidate down to one company, and focus mainly on revenue. They laid off Crispy Gamer’s entire editorial staff, including the managing editor, the copy-editor, the senior writer, and several contract writers. They alerted the other freelancers that there would be no further work coming in. They also told the development team, consisting of myself, my friend Gabe, and our Junior Engineer Stanley, that our services would only be needed for a few more weeks as they transitioned Crispy Gamer to a more basic website.

To that end, Gabe and I were still technically employed by Crispy for a few more weeks, working on some back-end changes to the site. It felt a little creepy, like dressing up a friend for his own funeral, but this is a part of the internet startup world: sometimes things don’t go as expected and the board, who let’s not forget invested $8mm in this company, jumps in and assumes control in order to try and recoup their initial investment.

For my own part, I find the timing unfortunate. Beginning with the redesign in May 2009 and moving forward into the summer and fall of 2009, I thought the site had really turned the corner. It was much easier to use, much easier to navigate, and much easier to read than the previous design had been. We’d developed some really cool technology using current AJAX and DHTML techniques, and were looking forward to building even more. Our user community was taking off, with nearly every article getting several comments, and some of them getting dozens. Our numbers were holding steady despite dramatically decreasing the amount of paid traffic … in short: people were using the site, liking it, and coming back without having to be enticed by marketing or ads.

That’s exactly what you want, when you build a website. Unfortunately, that tipping point came too late. Instead of happening at about six months in, it took about eighteen, because there was a lot of stumbling in the first year. This, also, is not exactly uncommon in the world of startups, and I don’t blame the Crispy founders or employees for it — sometimes it takes time to find your voice and establish who you are. It’s just sad, because I’ve been on the other side of things. I started working for GameSpy in 1999, just as it was making its move from “three guys in an office running a couple volunteer sites” to “investment-backed real company with multiple product types”. It was touch-and-go during that time and a single different — not even necessarily bad — decision could’ve submarined the entire company. Instead, we struggled through, figured things out, and became profitable. It’s a great feeling and an amazing thing to have gone through, and I’m sorry that many of my fellow Crispy staffers don’t get to find out what it’s like.

I worked with a lot of good, smart, talented people at Crispy and I’m happy to have spent the last two-plus years there. We may not have made it over the hump, but we came damn close, and I’m proud of what we accomplished with the site. Now it’s time to move on to the next adventure. Gabe and I have both accepted some work with a San Francisco-based startup, for one thing. For another, I’m 35 pages and counting into a business plan for our own internet startup, which we’re hoping will allow us to raise some grant money and be able to employ ourselves full-time. It’s a very busy, very interesting time, but I’m excited about the possibilities out there and looking forward to continuing to learn and improve as a web designer and development director.

Oh, and now that I’m done with CG, you can expect more frequent updates to this blog, too. Woohoo!

I am officially on the job market, so if anyone out there in cyber land has any leads, please send ‘em my way!

With the exception of the photo source used in the Blue Rust pic, all of the photo source was acquired from GrungeTextures.com and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. If you’re looking for free, quality photo source, GrungeTextures.com and its associated sites have tons!

Without further ado, here are the textures

Blue Rust

Download High Res

Big Bricks

Download High Res

Grimy Wood

Download High Res

Mossy Rock

Download High Res

“No! It’s too strong! I … oh, damn it, the f*cking troll killed Carbomb.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asks my wife Charlotte, who with a quick glance toward the little bed perched on our window-shelf can see that our cat, Carbomb, is still totally alive and sleeping peacefully.

“Oh,” I say. “I set the game so that if I start with a pet cat, the cat’s name is Carbomb.”

“That’s a game?”

“Sure. This little ‘at’ symbol is me, and that ‘T’ is a troll, and this is a …”

“Sounds great,” she says, and goes back to her book.

Okay, so perhaps not everyone understands the appeal of Nethack. Actually, it seems likely that the vast bulk of today’s gamers have never heard of Nethack, which really is something of a shame. How many games do you know of which have been in near-constant development for thirty years, boast a stunning depth of artificial intelligence unrivaled by modern titles, and will run flawlessly on any computer, of any speed, running any operating system available?

Check out the full article and let me know what you think!

Recent releases like Gears of War 2 and Killzone 2 have offered gamers visual fidelity of unparalleled quality. For over a decade, improving visuals has been the focal point of development in gaming, and titles have advanced by great leaps during that time. We’ve also improved the audio in our games, and arguably even moved into telling deeper, more interesting stories. Text-adventure advocates may disagree with that last point, but certainly we expect a great deal more story from today’s mass-market titles, such as Gears of War, than we did of titles like Bubble Bomb or DOOM.

Unfortunately, the characters that populate our games seem to have been lost in the shuffle. One could easily argue that modern gaming characters are shallower and less compelling than their ancestors, some of whom had great reams of text-driven dialogue to spout. Even in a Game of the Year-quality title like Fallout 3, we’re still presented with primary story characters about whom we know virtually nothing, and with whom we have a hard time forming compelling, coherent relationships.

You can read the entire article over at Crispy Gamer!

Additionally, I’ve got an editorial in the editing phase for Crispy, so I’ll post when that goes up.

Additionally part two, I’m working on something fairly awesome with my friend Gabe that we’re hoping to launch this month. More on that soon!

The Short Version

• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Improvement
• Two Words: Funny Action
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

The Long Version

“I am encouraged by any game that uses as much casual profanity as I do.”

So I said to my wife, as we walked along Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue, headed for a local watering hole, and she laughed, because she’s watched me play the Penny Arcade games, and knows that it’s true.

I have to admit, I’m a fan of Penny Arcade. Not a completely biased, insane, slavering fanboy, mind you … the comic strip itself has its ups and downs. Some are funnier than others. Some are better drawn than others. That’s going to be the case when you do anything episodic for ten straight years. I also think that Jerry “Tycho” Holkins frequently comes off as a pompous windbag in his news updates (he’d probably agree), and that Mike “Gabriel” Krahulik has some abominable taste in video games (he probably wouldn’t). But I’ve met them in person, and I like them, and I like their work.

That extends to their episodic series of games, On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness, or at least to the first two. I can only assume the third and fourth installments will continue to present the quality that’s been available so far.

I bumped Episode 2 up from Episode 1′s “good” to “great” for several reasons, not the least of which that it’s cheaper than the first. They shaved five bucks off the price, and now it’s sitting right at a point that feels about right for the length and level of entertainment you get. This isn’t some 80-hour RPG with a ton of depth; it’s mainly a turn-based beat-em-up with some very minor Adventure and RPG elements. That’s not exactly a template for earning a “great” from me, but the game exceeds the sum of its parts thanks to some clever writing, better implementation on the part of the developers, and an overall tighter package than the first delivered.

The storyline and setting, a deranged version of 1922, really allow Holkins to flex his muscles. The dude knows his ten-cent words, and isn’t afraid to use them liberally. While this makes his news updates sometimes a bit ridiculous, his propensity to lose himself in the language absolutely fits the world created for the game. The sudden, jarring inclusion of casual profanity and modern slang serves well as a comedic foil against the purple prose, and you get a weird cross of Lovecraft and “modern gamer” that’s unique to the game, and in many ways unique to Penny Arcade. Holkins also proves an admirable plotter – the stories make sense, strange though they are, and tick away in a logical manner that keeps the player wanting to open up one more movie, or read one more funny bit of dialog.

Hothead Games, the developers who’ve worked closely with the PA guys to actually put the game together, have really tightened up a couple of the big problems I had with the first game. For one thing, there are multiple difficulty levels now. Hallelujah. The first game was so hard in places that it bordered on un-fun, and though I never did turn the difficulty down from “medium” (the default) in this one, it was always comforting to know that if I got in over my head, I could ramp things down. In addition to difficulty adjustment, they’ve also included outfits that allow your character to gain different bonuses, a LOT more variety into the gameplay (including an amusing puzzle game that springs up in the middle of the plot, involving the infamous Catsby and Twisp characters). Yes, you still end up beating up lots of things, but the game is broken up with puzzle solving and more dialog/movie interactions than the first contained (and it had a bunch).

Additionally, the ending’s better — more of a puzzle than a straight fight, although it involves both. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any teaser trailer for Episode 3 included, but that’s a bit of a nitpick. Overall I was amused and interested by the story, happy with the ending, and found the gameplay more compelling than I did in the first. I continue to enjoy all the various PA characters showing up in strange new roles, and I love the in-jokes for longtime readers like myself (Penny Arcade was first published in an online magazine – loonygames – that I also had a column in, so I’ve literally been reading from the start).

You can do a LOT worse than this for fifteen bucks. If you haven’t already picked it up, I definitely recommend it.

At Crispy Gamer, my place of employment, we’re always striving to give our readers new and interesting glimpses into the world of video games. Because of what we do, we enjoy backstage access to a wide variety of games. In our never-ending quest to bring gamers the real scoop, we sometimes uncover strange information that’s not always appropriate for the main site.

Today, I’ve decided to break embargo and risk my journalistic integrity by showing off these eight titles, each and every one suggested for development on the PS3, and each and everyone unceremoniously shitcanned!

8. Grillzone 2

Oh yes. 30 solid hours of char-broiled action! Master the art of the flip, the twist, the cheese application, and the drinking-six-beers-without-burning-anything finishing move. This extreme sports title was simply too extreme for the PS3.

7. Gran Tourettes

What happens when you take high-speed driving and combine it with an unending stream of profanity so heinous that it would make most sailors curl up in a corner, weeping like a little girl? You get Gran Tourettes! The initial demo for this title still holds the record for “Fastest Game to Send the Sony Executives Screaming Out Into the Hall.”

6. Prince of Perverts

This game was inspired by a developer’s exploration of the New York subway system back in 1987. It took him fifteen years to get over it, and it may take Sony another 15 before they’re ready to let the resulting title appear on their system.

5. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Ha! Can you believe someone actually pitched a Metal Gear Solid game where Solid Snake is like sixty-five years old, and sporting an outrageous trucker mustache? Yeah, I … wait, what? They actually made that?

4. Ratchet & Crunk

For a brief period of time, thanks mostly to Dave Chapelle, Lil Jon was the country’s hottest rapper. At any corner bar you could hear his notorious catch phrases being screamed every few minutes by drunken fratboys, drunken non-frat boys, and drunken everyone else, none of whom had ever actually seen a real Lil Jon video. Eager to cash in on this trend, an enterprising developer proposed this title. Fortunately for us all, cooler heads prevailed.

3. Assassin’s Cock

What? It’s the touching story of a Middle-Eastern assassin and the bond he forges with his pet rooster. The rooster was going to be an instrumental part of gameplay – you’d need his cooperation to finish certain missions. What did you think this was going to be about?

2. Shadow of the Colostomy

This title was to be aimed at young gamers … who like to climb on people that have suffered a terrible and humiliating medical procedure, and, uh … smite them. So it had that going for it.

1. LittleBigPhallus

Look … just be thankful that we’re not showing you the original concept art for “sackboy” here, ok?

Visit Crispy Gamer for all the latest info on real games!

(big props to my friends in #mandog for helping think up the game names. What up, mandogs?)