Podcast Episode 55 - Half Off 2019

In this episode we chat a lot about the leaks and rumors leading up to E3, while throwing in some spicy announcements people threw out over the past few weeks.

After talking about the games we've been playing we take a look back at the past 6 months and see how good 2019 has been for games so far. It's like a 6 month review.

News - 00:32 to 1:23:50
What We Played - 1:23:51 to 1:47:28
6 Month Review - 1:47:29 to 2:22:21

Specific Game Time Stamps
Mass Effect - 1:23:51 to 1:29:22
Sunset Overdrive - 1:29:23 to 1:34:10
Halo 5 - 1:34:11 to 1:38:34
Dauntless - 1:38:35 to 1:47:28
 

Podcast Episode 52 - Let's Go to the Movies

This week we discuss PSN Name changes, the PS5. Ubisoft rumors, and the newest Smash patch. For the final bit of the episode we talk about when movie video games were still coming out, but also slip into talking about sweet branded games as well.

News - 00:32 to 1:24:46
What We Played - 1:24:27 to 1:59:24
Movie Games - 1:59:25 to 2:32:52

Specific Game Time Stamps
Mass Effect - 1:24:50 to 1:26:45
Wolfenstien: The New Order - 1:26:46 to 1:30:13
Katana Zero - 1:31:14 to 1:40:02
Dreams Beta - 1:40:03 to 1:59:24
 

Podcast Episode 48 - #1 Crackdown 3 Fan

This episode is a wild ride. Tons of news happened that we were interested in and this time we didn't accidentally leave out a topic. There's a lot going on at Nintendo, Activision is laying people off, and Crackdown 3 came out...

News - 8:47 to 1:30:52
What We Played - 1:30:53 to 1:54:03
Crackdown 3 - 1:54:04 to 2:24:46

Specific Game Time Stamps
Mass Effect - 1:30:53 to 1:35:18
Steam World Dig 2 - 1:35:20 to 1:38:19
Yo-Kai Watch 3! - 1:38:20 to 1:54:03
 

Podcast Episode 47 - Kingdom Hearts is Fast and Furious

In this episode we start off talking about the Fast and Furious spin-off, because I am obsessed with the franchise. We eventually transition into the news before getting to the games we played like Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Anthem beta.

News - 8:50 to 1:02:18
What We Played - 1:02:18 to
Kingdom Hearts 3 - 1:59:25 to 2:27:40

Specific Game Time Stamps
Mass Effect - 1:02:18 to 1:10:57
Wargroove - 1:11:02 to 1:22:43
Anthem beta - 1:22:44 to 1:39:59
Cytus 2 - 1:40:01 to 1:47:01
Halo 4 - 1:47:03 to 1:52:33
Ori and the Blind Forest -1:52:34 to 1:59:22
 

Game Time - March 2017

Here we are on the precipice of April, and 2017 is already shaping up to be an incredible year for video games. However, I feel that while March had some incredible highs for me, there were also a few lows. To start, the Nintendo Switch came out alongside Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I love Zelda with very few caveats. Nintendo took a rick and tried something new. The payoff was a video game that's completely on another level. I recorded a podcast with my thoughts on the game, but it's always good to document them in text form as well.

Then there was Horizon: Zero Dawn. It released on the last day of February, so I only played it for a few days before moving over all of my time to Zelda. What's a bummer is that I don't know if I'll ever go back to it. Personally it didn't really grab me, which seems to go against the grain.

Finally, we have Mass Effect: Andromeda. This game causes me to get upset just thinking about it. It has so many issues, but somehow I can't seem to pull myself away from it. Perhaps my love for the original trilogy is clouding my judgement?

There's a lot to talk about, so let's get right into it. It's game time.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo is a company that is famous for rehashing a lot of its ideas. While that has brought them a lot of success in the past I feel that myself and many others have been craving something new. I got my first taste of new Nintendo goodness with Splatoon and now they have followed it up with Breath of the Wild. Initially I was skeptical that Nintendo would be able to pull off a compelling open world, but somehow they nailed it.

See that mountain? YOU CAN TOTALLY GO THERE!

I feel like I say this all the time, but Ocarina of Time is the game I can point to as the one that got me to continue playing video games. The sense of adventure I felt while traversing that world is something that has stuck with me. Now they have replicated that with Breath of the Wild. You can go literally anywhere in the game with some effort. If you can see a place, then you can definitely go there. Link can climb up almost any surface, and stamina is essentially his only limitation. The world is vast, and filled with areas that are exciting to explore. While there certainly is a lot of empty space, there are also many hidden villages and treasures to be found.

In terms of combat and plot, Breath of the Wild isn't spectacular. At first the weapon durability annoyed me, but in the end I grew fond of it. Since every weapon is breakable it encourages you to use a ton of different kinds. It's functional, but exploring the world was the main draw for me. If you want to hear me babble on for close to an hour about the game and all of its systems I recorded a podcast, which you can listen to here.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Have you every felt left out, because you don't love something that everyone else loves? That's how I feel with Horizon. Initially I was super excited to see Guerilla games making something new. The reviews hit a bit early for the game as well, and they were all glowing. I still hear people talking about Horizon with a reverence that I don't know if I'll ever be able to understand. I would have chalked it up to being tired of open world games, but then Zelda came out and I absolutely loved that. I feel like I'm missing out on something and its very frustrating.

Horizon centers on a girl named Aloy who is born as an outcast. At a young age she finds a device called a focus, which is essentially a Bluetooth earpiece that shoots AR things around that explain the world to her. The world of Horizon takes place after the apocalypse where machines have taken over and humans have gone back to a much more tribal state. Things like the focus that Aloy found are considered forbidden relics from the metal age of humans past. The people of the world seem to believe that humans in the past ruined the world. I find all of this to be interesting, but in what I played it never really took off.

I hope you like shooting robots with a bow.

The gameplay takes place in third person and focuses around a bow. You can get different kinds of arrows, which will affect the machines in different ways. You gain other tools as well, but the bow seems to be the number one way to take down your foes. The combat seems to be the thing that most people praise above all else, but I personally find it to be tedious. Where I am right now the bow does too little damage, so I find myself running up to enemies and using a melee attack until they die. Eventually I'll get back to this game, because I honestly feel like there has to be something I'm missing. Hopefully the plot picks up in a way that I can get behind.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

I love the original Mass Effect trilogy. I'd be willing to go so far as to say that Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. As a huge fan of Star Wars it was awesome to see Bioware essentially create a new Star Wars RPG without the Star Wars license. I immediately found myself enamored with the universe and its characters. Yes, the ending of Mass Effect 3 is awful, but it was not enough to taint the journey I had along the way.

Now we come to the 4th entry in the franchise, Mass Effect: Andromeda. If you've never played the original trilogy then the conceit of Andromeda might not make sense to you. Without spoiling the whole plot, let's just say that things in the Milky Way went sideways, and a few of the races decided to try and settle a new galaxy, Andromeda. A little bit of me feels for Andromeda while it's being railed on by almost everyone. When you're making the 4th thing in a franchise beloved by many, it's automatically going to be hard for it to succeed. Even if the work stands on its own it will always be held up against the original trilogy. Despite that, Andromeda feels like a straight to DVD sequel that no one really wanted.

All the familiar elements are here, but it just doesn't feel right.

If Andromeda felt new, I would feel a little more hesitant to criticize it. The main issue I have is that every character and many of the locales are trying to be things from the original trilogy. For example, the Citadel was a space station in the Milky Way where many alien races gathered. It was a central hub where you got to experience all kinds of interesting scenarios. In Andromeda it's the Nexus, which is almost the EXACT same thing as the Citadel! The characters are the same, they each fit into an archetype of characters from games past. So far I've had fun talking to them, but no one seems particularly interesting. Hell, even the plot is about finding ancient alien tech again.

The one praise I'll give the game is that the combat is fun. It's essentially the same third person shooting of the original trilogy, but it adds a lot of mobility through the jet pack. You can jump and dash, which adds an additional layer to combat scenarios. It's fine, but that might be the only place that the game is "fine." I feel bad saying this, but Andromeda is the buggiest AAA game I've ever played. Yes, some of the animations are bad. I don't think that's a bug though. I've had issues ranging from not being able to talk to someone because their prompt won't show up to not being able to interact with literally anything in the game. It's crazy. Most of it is the kind of stuff that would never get through QA. I had the game literally become unplayable, how is that okay? Even with the bugs aside, the underlying game seems uninspired. I'm going to see it through to the end, but that's really only because of my love for the franchise.

IT'S HAPPENING!

My level of excitement if through the roof today! Persona 5 comes out in four days! I have been waiting for this game for years. Usually games I wait this long for don't live up to my expectations, but I knew from the very first trailer that Persona 5 was going to offer everything I wanted from it. I have been craving a JRPG with a compelling plot for a while now and now it's finally here.

There's a slight chance that I'll talk about something other than Persona 5 next month, but like I said it's a very slim chance. The estimated time to beat is currently hovering around 150 hours so I don't know that I'll have much time to do anything else. Find out what happens next month!

Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Demo Impressions

When it was leaked that Bioware would be adding multiplayer to Mass Effect 3 everyone seemed to freak out and I was right there with them. Mass Effect is a single player experience. I didn't want a poorly implemented multiplayer mucking up my epic space RPG/shooter hybrid. Without even playing it, I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't like it. I could have just ignored its existence, but they had to find a way to have it invade the single player experience as well. I was down on the whole thing. 

This past Friday the multiplayer portion of the  Mass Effect 3 demo was unlocked for everyone and it managed to shatter all of my preconceived notions. I am no longer upset now that I have played the multiplayer for an extended period of time. Contrary to my previous belief it's actually quite fun and I don't think I'll mind playing more of it when Mass Effect 3 drops in March.

The experience of the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer is most similar to horde mode from Gears of War. This type of thing is becoming more and more popular, so it's only natural for Bioware to capitalize on it. The goal is to fight wave after wave of foes in a group of up to four people with your chosen character.

Character Creation and Customization

What type of character you bring into battle is up to you. Just like the main game there are six classes to choose from. They are adept, soldier, engineer, infiltrator, and vanguard. Unlike the main game other races are finally playable. Each class can be a male or female human, or two other races. There is quite a wide selection of races. Asari,  drell, krogans, turians, quarians, and salarians are all available to play. At the beginning there is only one usable type of each class and they are all human. The others must all be unlocked.

The character select screen kindly displays all of the characters you can unlock.

All the character models are set in stone, but there are ways to differentiate them from everyone else. Only the color of their armor can be changed at first and you must unlock the other ways. Patterns can be added to the armor as well as the lights on the characters backs. I personally haven't unlocked any patterns, but I saw a few people who did and they actually looked pretty cool. The characters all look similar in the beginning, but over time you can make them look fairly unique.

The cosmetic customization is decent, but the gun customization is what most people will be concerned with. That's right, gun customization is actually in this part of the demo. Only two guns can be carried into battle, but they can be any two guns you want. All the gun types from the single player at your disposal, except for the heavy weapons. Each gun has two slots open for weapon attachments, which grant various bonuses to the weapon. These bonuses range from faster reload speeds to adding a scope. It's nothing huge, but it's more customization than the last game had. 

The gun customization page isn't fancy, but it gets the job done.

To round off the customization each character has a skill set, where points can be allocated to certain abilities. These are mostly the same as the single player skills, but there are a few minor differences. Experience is gained through play depending on how well you do. The max level for each character is twenty, so you won't be able to max out all six skills.

Finding Lobbies and How They Work

Once your character is customized it's time to head into battle. Having a party of four players is ideal, but that's easier said than done in this demo. The matchmaking doesn't exactly work as well as it could. More often than not the lobbies I got into would only get two people. There were several occasions when we would start the match and would be added to another game that already had two people, but it didn't happen enough. Other than that I like the way lobbies are done. It's exceedingly simple to view the load-outs of the other party members. 

Searching for lobbies is also easy. What map do you want to play, who do you want to fight against, and what difficulty do you want it to be. In the demo there are only two maps and you can only fight against Cerberus. The final version of the game will obviously have much more available. I've seen screenshots of people fighting against the Geth, which may be why you can't play as them. 

The three difficulty levels bronze, silver, and gold vary greatly in difficulty. The higher you go, the more health and armor the enemies have. Bronze is easy, especially if you have four people. Silver is manageable, but it's pretty tough at lower levels, and almost impossible if you have two people. Then you have gold, which is bananas. Enemies take a ton of shots, but you'll go down in one. If your group doesn't stay together you're not going to live for more than a few minutes.

Lobbies can be searched for based on mission settings.

Gameplay

It may come as a shock, but the gameplay of the multiplayer is almost identical to the gameplay of the single player. The main difference is that you can revive fallen teammates by standing over there bodies while holding x for a few moments. When shot down there is a limited amount of time for a teammate to revive you. Mashing x will keep you alive longer, but if the timer runs out then you will be dead until the next wave. Even though it plays almost exactly the same it feels a lot different, because you're working with up to three other human players.

The AI of the squadmates in Mass Effect is less than ideal. Telling them where to go and what to do doesn't always work out the way it should. This problem can be eliminated in the multiplayer by using a headset. Everything goes a whole lot smoother when you can tell the people you're playing with that they're being flanked, or that they need to help out with something. 

Human controlled squad members enhance the experience.

Since this is almost like a horde mode you'll be facing wave after wave of enemies. The shuttle will drop you off and then it's time to start shooting fools. They'll start easy, but gradually get more difficult as new enemy types are introduced. Most waves consist of killing all the enemies, but there are some objectives thrown in like killing specific enemies, hacking a computer, or disarming transmitters. 

In the demo there are only eleven waves, but that may be different in the final release. Once the tenth wave is wiped out extraction begins. In order to be extracted you have to run back to the shuttle, where a timer will start. If you hold out for the duration of the timer the mission is complete.

Players are awarded with experience points and credits upon clearing a mission. Any experience or credits earned will also be awarded upon failing a mission. You'll get absolutely nothing if you lose connection to the EA servers, which happened to me far too frequently. The experience goes towards leveling, while the credits are used to buy packs. These packs are the only way to unlock guns, mods, powerups, customizations, and characters.

Getting upgrades from packs is exciting and frustrating at the same time.

Packs are are like packs of trading cards. You never know what you're going to get, but you hope it's awesome. In the demo there are only three types of packs. The beginner pack is available the first time you go to the shop for free, so that you can get a sense of what everything is about. The two remaining packs cost credits. You can get the recruit pack for 5,000 credits or the veteran pack for 20,000 credits. The more a pack costs the higher the chance it has of getting a rare item. In the final game there are supposedly two packs that cost more. 

Final Thoughts

In short, I like the multiplayer. It's not ground breaking, but it's surprisingly fun. The final value of the multiplayer will be how well it's integrated into the single player. I'm still not quite clear on how exactly war assets will be implemented. I just hope it's not integral to the experience.

As of right now you have to get a character to level 20 in order to send them as a war asset. It takes a decent amount of time to get a character to level 20 and I don't know if I'd want to get someone up to that level more than a few times. 

It's definitely entertaining to play, but I don't know how long it will hold appeal (for me at least). Multiplayer is generally added to established franchises to bring in new players and I think that's working well for Bioware in this case. Most of the people I spoke with in the demo had never played a Mass Effect game before, but they found the multiplayer to be entertaining.

I'm just glad the multiplayer doesn't suck. Let's hope it doesn't detract from the single player experience.

     -Manny

Mass Effect 3 Single Player Demo Impressions

Stories of Mass Effect 3 have been flying around the internet for months. A demo was accidentally leaked to Xbox live dashboard previewers back in November. It was quickly taken down, but not fast enough. Files were extracted from the demo that detailed much of the story for the game and fans were not pleased with what was found. I have not taken a look at anything related to the leaked story, so I can't speak to the quality of what was found.

It's now Valentine's Day and the previously leaked demo is available to the general public. I played the demo on the PS3. As of now I've only gotten a chance to play the single player portion, because the multiplayer is currently unavailable. Here's my experience.

Part One

The Demo opens on Earth just before the Reaper invasion. I'm not positive, but this sequence seems like it's the very beginning of the game or quite close to it. Freddy Prince Jr. voiced James Vega, a tough marine, has come to fetch Shepard. The Council believes that the Reapers are coming, so Anderson wants Shepard to come and see if he can identify them.

Prior to starting the demo there is a prompt to choose whether Ashley or Kaiden was lost in combat during Mass Effect 1. I chose Kaiden, so Ashley showed up on the way to the council. She looks way different than she did before. She's been sexed up a bit, which doesn't make much sense. Why change her look for the final game in a trilogy? She was supposed to be a tomboy and that's what she was established as for two games prior to this one.

I found this handy picture to show the change in Ashley...

Anderson comes to rescue Shepard from his conversation with Ashley and takes him to the Council. Shepard argues with them for a bit and then surprise, the Reapers invade Earth. Without a visual reference everything I've described so far, bar Ashley, might sound pretty cool. Much to my dismay, it wasn't.

The player controls nothing prior to the Reaper Invasion with the exception of conversations. Everything outside of the conversations looks a bit...off. The character models look fine, but the textures on their clothes were straight up bad. There were multiple instances where the texture of Shepard's shirt didn't load at all. On top of that all of the movement looked super stilted, because the frame rate wasn't holding up.

The frame rate problem and stilted movement completely disappeared each time the game waited for me to select from the dialogue wheel. The textures looked a whole lot better too, which I found to be odd.

After the Reapers invade the player is given control of Shepard as he follows Anderson to the Normandy. Running across rooftops, while seeing the Reapers destroy everything is cool, but the frame rate can't hold up. The stilted movement I mentioned before becomes even more apparent when controlling Shepard. There were even points when Anderson's model would warp past obstacles, which I hope is fixed in the final game.

A tutorial of combat and movement takes place as the two run over buildings and rubble. Everything works more or less the same as it did in Mass Effect 2. Shepard run and gun or take cover in order to fight the husks that the Reapers are sending after him. The shooting felt poor, because of the stuttering frame rate. The main difference in the combat is that Shepard can now use his Omni-tool as a blade to melee enemies. It's attacks feel powerful, because Shepard takes a while to crank his arm back before he strikes. The impact is enough to kill most enemies, which is pretty satisfying.

Jackin' fools with the Omni-blade is satisfying.

Part 2

Once Shepard reaches the Normandy the demo moves to a later portion of the game. I have no idea why, but everything in the second portion of the demo seemed better. Everyone was in their N7 armor and the textures looked fine. On top of that the frame rate was totally fine.

The second scenario is exactly what I wanted to see out of this demo. Shepard, Wrex, Liara, and Garrus have arrived on the Solarian home world in order to rescue a female Korgan from the clutches of Cerberus. This portion of the demo is meant to show off the more action oriented sequences and it does a great job.

Wrex stays back, while Shepard, Liara, and Garrus kick some Cerberus ass. Shortly after control of Shepard is given back to the player he comes across Mordin, who is locked in a containment cell with a female Krogan. Your goal is to take out all of the soldiers around you so that you can send the cell to the next level, which will eventually make its way to Wrex. 

Prior to any combat the demo prompts you to level up the squads skills. Everyone is level 12, so they have a fair number of skill points to allocate. The skills are the same ones you could choose from in Mass Effect 2, but now there is much more customization. The first three levels of a skill are pre-set, but after that they branch off. The 4th through 6th progressions of a skill each have two choices. This allows for a deeper level of customization than was previously available in Mass Effect 2. How you choose to level the skills will depend on your play style. In the demo there was an option to undo a previously made upgrade, which may allow for the player to respect.

The new skill trees offer more customization.

Shepard is given one of each type of gun for the sake of this demo, and most of them are new. They all handle well and feel different than the guns I remember from the previous game. It's a shame that the gun customization didn't come into play, or if it did I wasn't able to access it. I did find an assault rifle scope, so I assume that in the final game you'll be able to add parts to your guns on the fly. 

Final Thoughts

The second section of the demo felt worlds ahead of the first. I hope that the first section of the demo was an older build of the game, while the second portion was newer. It's entirely possible that the problems I had were specific to the PS3. I am going to download the 360 version to test that theory and I will update this post with my findings. If anyone played this on PS3 and didn't experience these problems I'd like to hear about it.

People talking about the leaked demo and story elements got me a bit worried about Mass Effect 3. After playing the demo I am no longer worried. While the first section of the game may not have looked or played the best I liked what was going on. Everything is coming to a head and it looks like this will be an exciting conclusion to the story of Commander Shepard.

All of the gameplay in this demo (When it's working properly) is on par with Mass Effect 2. The improved skill tree shows that Bioware is at least trying to put some of the RPG elements back into this series. Sadly the weapon customization wasn't available, but I'm going to assume that it will be fine. 

Mass Effect 3 seems like it's shaping up to be a great game. This demo was certainly entertaining and I recommend that you play it. I'm still skeptical on the whole multiplayer mode. I'll post my thoughts on that in another post, so look out for that.

UPDATE: The multiplayer is only accessible right now for people who have played Battlefield 3 online. Since I do not have Battlefield I will have to wait until Friday for access to the multiplayer.

     -Manny