Mass Effect 3: Galaxy Exploration and Mars

Hey guys. Just wanted to post this to show that I'm not dead.

I'm aware it's been a while since I last posted but I've been swamped and have really not found a good time to post anything. But, for now, I'm going to post a few videos of Mass Effect 3.

By the way, I've been playing the demo and while the animations aren't the best, it's been really fun, and the multiplayer has been spectacular. I'm absolutely shocked at how good it is. But let's get into these videos.

NOTE: These videos are from IGN so thanks to them for the extra footage.

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One of the biggest complaints about Mass Effect 2 was the tedious mining system. BioWare has heard your criticisms and have streamlined it. Now you'll just look for war assets in each system and cluster. And there are some clusters that have Reapers in them. In these you'll need to send out scanning pulses near planets to look for survivors, runaway ships, fuel, weapons, etc. All of these things will aid you in the final parts of the game and help decide the ending.

But beware. If you use a pulse too much in Reaper-occupied territory, they will come to investigate and chase after you which will mean that you need to stay out of the system until a mission is completed. The new system looks great, tense and calls for careful usage to maximize its effect.

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IGN also posted gameplay footage from a mission on Mars. If you've played the demo, you know what to expect.

SPOILERS: We can see Cerberus up to some mysterious behavior and Liara back in form :D The relationship between Shepard and the Virmire Survivor (Ashley/Kaidan) also still seems to be quite tense and uncertain.

And yes Destin, the Vanguard is awesome.

Release Dates, Diablo III Delayed, Ratings in Australia

Two big games have had their release dates announced: Darksiders II and Far Cry 3.

Now I haven't played the first Darksiders, though it is on my list. I know a lot of people are really excited about it though and it's coming out at a time of year where, strangely, not many big games come out: summer. Darksiders II will be released on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC on June 26th in North America and June 29th in Europe.

For those of you waiting for the Wii-U version, it will be a launch title.

As for Far Cry 3, it currently has a release date of September 6th. That's on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Not having played either of the first two Far Cry games, I can't really comment on it. From what I've heard, the first was solid and the second was kind of a let down.

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Diablo III has been delayed again. What a surprise. The game that has been in the making for over a decade was scheduled to come out in Q1 2012. In a recent earnings call, Activision has, unfortunately, confirmed that no new games will be coming out in Q1. This means that the earliest we'll see Diablo III is April-June of this year in Q2.

While WoW: Mists of Pandaria and Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, are also expected to be released this year, hints have been dropped by Blizzard (including this delay) that it will probably not happen.

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Australia may finally be getting an R18+ rating for video games. A recent piece of legislation presented to parliament by Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare has proposed that an "adult's only" R18+ rating be given to video games no later than January of 2013.

Clare cited facts that showed that the average gamer is about 32 years old with women also making up half of the gaming demographic. He played this quite smart, also going into how it would help the Australian economy by allowing more games to come in and without companies having to butcher them to them "acceptable".

Coming from me, this is also win-win. Without the R18+ rating, some games are given leeway for the MA15 rating which anyone can buy, thus meaning any kids could buy without parental permission. The other times they result in butchered imports or classification refusal, effectively banning the games from stores. The R18+ rating would prevent both of these, meaning everyone wins.

So good luck Australia. I hope you're finally given the right to choose to play anything you damn well want to play.

Mass Effect 3: FemShep Trailer

Anyone who has read this blog much knows that I have been a big supporter of Female Commander Shepard. I play as both Male Shepard and Female Shepard, but for me FemShep will always be the true Shepard primarily due to Jennifer Hale's absolutely superb voice acting.

Unfortunately, she's never gotten much marketing support. In mid-2011, BioWare saw the push for her to get more of that and decided to remedy it, with the promise of giving her more screentime in trailers, unique in-game animations, plus a trailer of her own.

Well, the trailer has finally come in and here it is.

Okay, first of all, three squadmates from Mass Effect 2 who haven't been seen in ME3 marketing yet are here: Jacob Taylor, Miranda Lawson, and Samara (or possibly Morinth). I'm actually quite impressed with this. I didn't know if BioWare was just going to do a quick teaser but they went all out with this trailer. Got me even more pumped than before. Less than a month to go.

Oh and at the end: SHE'S A'FIRIN HER LAZER! Sorry I had to do it. Can't wait to see my Shepard finish her fight against the Reapers. March 6th is almost here.

Mass Effect 3 Trailers

NOTE: THERE ARE VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE THAT COMBINE THE FOUR TRAILERS BELOW. I WANTED TO SEPARATE THEM TO GIVE MY THOUGHTS ON EACH OF THEM. HERE'S A LINK IF YOU JUST WANT THAT.

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Well, Mass Effect 3 marketing and my coverage of that marketing continues. We had FOUR trailers released yesterday and I believe one is supposed to come today (which means I will probably be making another post later).

Anyway, the first trailer go over the enemies with possibly the first look at Kai Leng, a Cerberus assassin who is sent to kill Shepard after s/he is betrayed by Cerberus. Having read the novel Mass Effect: Retribution, I can say right now that Kai Leng is a huge badass, right up there with Shepard. I can't wait for the fight against him in ME3.

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Next we've got a trailer showing off some more gameplay footage. Probably more than any other trailer, this one shows just how smooth the gameplay looks in Mass Effect 3, especially compared to the first two. The vanguard still looks absolutely awesome and I'm so excited for my Shepard to use her charge ability again.

Also those Banshees (asari husks) are creepy as hell.

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MINOR SPOILERS BELOW!

Caution if you haven't played the first two!

Now a small story trailer showing off the dialogue wheel and separation of consequences. Not really a big thing but I always love seeing more footage and whoring myself out...despite not making any money for this :(

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Now some good stuff. One of the few but still main criticisms against Mass Effect 2 was the lack of customization for armor and weapons. BioWare has heard your opinions and taken them to heart for this. While the crappy inventory system from Mass Effect 1 is not back, they've come up with a middle ground that can be seen here.

Please let there be silencers (yes I know they're technically not silent and called suppressors). Even if they serve no purpose, they increase the badassery of nearly any weapon.

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I believe that the trailer for Female Shepard is coming later today. If true, then I'll be back later to post it. See you then.

Double Fine Kickstarter

Tim Schafer is a genius. The man and his company, Double Fine, has been behind some of the most unique games of the last decade. Psychonauts and Brutal Legend are both perfect examples of creativity and interesting ideas that unfortunately just did not make money.

Well now in conjunction with 2 Player Productions, Tim Schafer and Double Fine have set up a Kickstarter fund to raise money for a point-and-click adventure game. The goal? $400,000.

In less than nine hours, they reached the 400k goal. About five hours ago, they reached $750,000. They are currently just under $1 million, with about 26,000 backers. Just an incredible show of support and it inspired me to donate $15 as well. By donating a certain amount of money, you will get perks for when the game is made and released.

So go on and donate, not just for the perks, but to back a game from a man and company that have been behind some really great stuff in the past and love to make really unique experiences. Their games are unlike any others out there and deserve to be made.

Here is the link: Double Fine Kickstarter.

Mass Effect 3 Achievements and Live-Action Trailer (Extended)

Yeah, you can probably expect quite a bit of Mass Effect 3 coverage for the next few months. Just bear with it, I promise it's not going to be ALL I talk about.

Anyway, the achievement/trophy list got released today and really, they're pretty spoiler-free, with the exception of one that I wish I hadn't read, but even that isn't all that big. For the most part, they're so vague that it's hard to count them as spoilers.

But here's an interesting thing, as a series driven by a strong single-player narrative, many were curious about multiplayer achievements with the addition of co-op in this game. Well, the short answer is that there are multiplayer achievements.

The long answer is actually quite ingenious on BioWare's part. Any achievement that can be obtained in multiplayer has a separate requirement for single-player. So if you're not at all interested in the multiplayer, you can still get every achievement. For example, the "Tour of Duty" requires you to either complete all multiplayer maps OR complete all N7 sidemissions in single-player.

Well played BioWare. This reinforces BioWare's statements that multiplayer is just an addition that isn't necessary for the full experience and a complete story. It reinforces their statements that the main focus is still on the single-player experience. Well done.

Anyway, the list of achievements is here: Mass Effect 3 Achievements.

Also a live-action trailer was released a few days ago. Actually, scratch that. This was an already released trailer but it's expanded and I though I'd just post it so I could put more here than just a link to achievements.

WARNING: For those who haven't played the first two Mass Effect games, there's a definite possibility of a spoiler, ESPECIALLY near the beginning of the video. Skip if you haven't completed the first two.

Now that I got that out of the way, my hands are clean so don't blame me. Here you go.

Oklahoma Tax Bill, Twisted Metal Censorship, and Simpsons Arcade Game

A few news items today, two of which are annoying and one of which is awesome. So let's get into it.

Thank you Destructoid for the image.

In the Oklahoma House, a House Rep. by the name of William Fourkiller (seriously) has proposed a law that would impose a tax on games that are deemed violent. What constitutes a violent game? That's something that most bills don't specify at all, so this one gets a few points. Any game rated T or higher would have a tax imposed on it.

It still doesn't get a lot of points given that quite a few Teen games don't have much violence in them at all. You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of that dumb bill proposed by California Congressman Joe Baca, which would place cigarette-style health warning labels on their games telling us how they could do irreparable damage to our mental health and potentially turn us into psychos.

Look, I'll grant that a lot of time playing violent video games can lead to increased aggression and maybe a little desensitization. Studies have shown this. The keywords though are "A LITTLE". Killing someone in a game isn't even close to killing someone in real life. And I'm not just talking about learning how to shoot a gun. I'm talking about making yourself so dead inside that you have no clue that murdering someone in the real world is wrong. This is coming from someone who has played video games for 75% of his life.

These bills come from people who have ZERO understanding of video games or psychology, one of which I'm incredibly knowledgable of and the other I've taken classes on in high school and college. With last year's Schwarzenegger v. EMA being beaten, this bill will likely never be passed into law, and if it is, it will quickly be declared unconstitutional. It's still annoying as hell to see these people never shut the frack up when they've clearly been beaten already.
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Another bit of annoying news comes for the new Twisted Metal game. The game was supposed to be released in Europe on the same day as in North America, February 14th. It has been delayed to an unknown date, though David Jaffe has heard a rumor that it would be released on March 1st.

The reason it has been delayed? To censor it of course. Now from what I've heard, the censoring seems to be somewhat limited. But this is still a very irritating thing for me to see as I hate censorship of retail items with a passion. An even bigger kick to the balls is that they decided to announce this less than two weeks before the game was supposed to come out.

So to any European readers, sorry but it looks like you're going to get the game a little later than anticipated.
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On a positive note, today The Simpsons Arcade Game has been released on Xbox Live and will be released on PSN on the 7th (8th for Europe). The Simpsons Arcade Game is, without a doubt, one of the finest beat-em-ups and arcade titles in history. Hell, it's one of the best licensed games ever released and one of the few Simpsons games that had any business of being released.

From what I've read, this is a really solid port of the arcade version, so if you've got some Microsoft points and want to play a classic, put them in for this.

Kingdoms of Amalur Launch Trailer

Alright before I post the trailer, I want to go into the issue of the demo. The demo for Kingdoms of Amalur has gained infamy for being incredibly buggy. I personally did not encounter many bugs, and only one that made me worried about the state of the game and in that one dialogue just cut out.

Curt Schilling has heard the cries and come out with an explanation. He says, and I'm paraphrasing, that basically EA wanted a demo of the game. 38 Studios did not think that they had the time to make it while they were trying to polish the game up and fix the bugs people have been pointing out. In response EA gave the responsibility of the demo to a 3rd-party company (not sure which one).

Not only that, but this was three-month old build. So we have an old edition of the game and the demo was put together by a different studio. This would explain the clunkiness of the camera and combat as well as the numerous bugs and glitches in the build.

Anyway, with all that said, I'm still very excited for this game. Less than a week to go and the launch trailer has just been put out. Here it is.