Abir Chowdhury's personal website.

Category: games

Anything to do with video games. Console or PC, modern or retro, news or opinion; it’s all valid here.

  • Finally Getting ‘Round To It: Mass Effect 3

    Alright, I LOVE the Mass Effect series. I even preordered the N7 Collector’s (no pun intended) Edition of the game despite the fact that I could’ve gotten the regular edition imported for less than half the price.

    I looked forward to Mass Effect 3 like a little kid does to Christmas and hot damn was I excited to finally finish my version of Shepard’s story that I had started two years earlier. And then I played the game and after a few hours, stopped playing…

    It was a combination of three things:

    1. I didn’t know if it really was worth saving the galaxy. After all, when Shepard helped defeat the Reaper Sovereign in the first game he returned in Mass Effect 2 to find that the whole event was covered up as a terrorist attack by the Geth, and in Mass Effect 3 Shepard finds himself court-martialed and left ship-less despite the fact that he led a suicide mission to destroy the Collectors. Was it really worth saving the lives of those who would never acknowledge Shepard’s actions? I figured that it was a question that would never provide me with a satisfactory answer and that it doesn’t matter what became of my story so long as I would save help save billions of innocent lives.
    2. I thought I couldn’t get the best ending without playing multiplayer. I guess I read too much into what people were saying about how the “Galactic Readiness” level was what determined the final outcome of the story. I had replayed Mass Effect 2’s final mission in order to save everyone in the crew, and also replayed the entirety of the original game just to save Wrex: the “best” ending was what satisfied me the most. NB. I wasn’t one of the people who complained about the endings themselves. I figured that BioWare made the game the way they saw fit, and that it was them who put in all that time, money, and effort to crafting such a beautiful series – NOT the pricks who felt that they were “owed” something by BioWare. Seriously, if you didn’t like the endings then that is fair enough, but don’t go demanding the developer make changes just to appease your mismanaged expectations. Making a series where decisions from earlier games are brought into current ones is a difficult task in and of itself, and players would be kidding themselves if they thought that every single permutation of every save file would have its own specialised ending. We just don’t have the technology to pull of something like that, and I think players should’ve known better. Either way, it was just a game after all right? Hmm, that kind of contradicts my previous dot point, doesn’t it?
    3. BioWare gave in. This broke my heart. I got over my indecision to save the world, and I had learned that I could maximise my readiness by complete side-missions, but reading Dr. Muzyka’s defeated blog post was the last straw. It put me off of Mass Effect 3 and made me lose faith in BioWare. I dismissed the “entitled” players that complained about the endings, but I hated the fact that they had won. They got what they wanted, and brought an established studio like BioWare to its knees. In September, Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuck left BioWare, the company they had founded together in 1995.

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    So why am I playing Mass Effect 3 now, almost 10 months later? A) Because I want to be able to listen to the Giant Bombcast without having the game’s story spoiled, B) I’ve heard that the From Ashes and Levathian DLC add a lot of worthwhile content, and C) I REALLY love Mass Effect.

    Mass Effect 3 deserves another chance, and I will make sure to play through the game to completion (without the Extended Cut endings), and enjoy myself while doing it. I’ve heard a lot about the two DLC packs, and will include them in my playthrough (though From Ashes was already included as part of the Collector’s Edition).

    I will post updates here as I continue through the game so be sure to check back from time to time. You may even find some of it on Doublejump so keep an eye out on there too. Anyway, it’s late and tomorrow’s going to be an eventful day (I’m going to see my girlfriend yay!) so good night, and happy new year if I don’t post before then. 🙂

    This post was originally published on Tumblr.

     

  • My Halo 3: ODST first impressions

    The latest game that I have been playing is Halo 3: ODST, I’m only a couple of hours into the campaign and have been enjoying it so far. I don’t actually own an Xbox 360 so I have borrowed one from my cousin. I figured that if I am to write about video games for a living I should probably familiarise myself with all three major consoles and not just my PC.

    Anyway, Halo 3: ODST is actually a side-story to the main Halo series of first person shooters. Its events run concurrently to those in Halo 2, but instead of playing as inter-galactic badass Master Chief you play as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper or ODST. ODSTs are an elite arm of the United Nation Space Command and are used to complete difficult and high-priority missions. They are deployed via drop pods that are released from large warships in our atmosphere, similar in manner to the way paratroopers were deployed from aircraft during World War II. Your character is “Rookie” and after a failed “drop” you find that you are separated from your squad and that you have actually landed in the middle of the Covenant invasion.

    The game’s narrative is told primarily through a series of playable flash backs which are triggered by Rookie finding clues about his squadmates eg. finding the black box from a fallen surveillance drone or a squad member’s helmet (spoilers). It is a refreshing take on the typical story-telling methods employed by modern games that rely heavily on large set pieces depicting cities being blown up and army men yelling military catchphrases left, right, and center. Okay, there are a few of those in this game but I just find them funny. I guess I’m just used to hearing them really.

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    Speaking of audio, one other departure from typical Halo games is the soundtrack. It doesn’t feature the iconic strings and defined drum beats of the series’ main theme, instead opting for more nuanced and emotionally resonant themes that play off of the game’s noir-esque atmosphere. My favourite piece so far features strings that are accompanied by a piano playing a haunting melody while you search the streets of New Mombassa in the Rookie segments. It does add a sense of unease because your character doesn’t have the super-human strength or advanced MJOLNIR armour of the Master Chief.

    In fact, you don’t have a shield or a motion tracking system – not even regenerating health. Instead you have a stamina meter, a full-sized map via a menu, and rely on good old-fashioned med kits to replenish health respectively. Alright, the systems aren’t exactly innovative but they do provide a noticeable change to the regular Halo gameplay formula. Another key difference is the HUD system called VISR (Visual Intelligence System, Reconnaissance) which boosts the brightness of the scene in front of you and outlines every single object with colour: red for enemies, green for friends, and blue for weapons on the ground, and (I think) a bright yellow for interactive objects like computer terminals.

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    Oh, and did I mention that the entire time you are playing as Rookie you are being watched over by someone (or something) called the “Superintendent”? Whatever it is it uses environmental objects such street signs and ringing phone booths to direct your path through the ruins of the city. It is all very creepy and I have the sneaking suspicion that the “Superintendent” is not actually a human being… or maybe it is? I don’t know, I’ve only played a couple of hours.

    Okay, I do not intend this to be a proper review so I’ll just say a couple of things in closing: the gameplay is fun and you can actually employ a stealthy approach to enemy encounters, the graphics are pretty decent for a 360 game, cut-scene character animations can be exaggerated in a way similar to Robot Chicken, and that this is a genuinely great game even without the Halo connection

    You know what, I may actually end up reviewing this game. 😉

    This post was first published on Tumblr.

  • #TeamBrad

    Another day spent in bed being down.

    I didn’t go to uni because I was going to “do my assignment”.

    Why do I kid myself?

    At least I kept sane by watching Giant Bomb’s Brad Shoemaker play through the final levels of Doom II, and talking to my girlfriend.

    I wish I was a productive member of society, I feel like a bum again.

    Enough of this depressive shit, hopefully I feel better tomorrow. I’m having lunch with the missus.

    Can’t fucking wait!

    PS. They sure don’t make games the way they used to. I know it doesn’t seem like much today, but the original Doom would’ve fucking BLOWN minds when it first came out! Imagine finally playing a game in first person when everything you had played before that (okay, Myth did it first, but c’mon) took place in two dimensions! I guess my generation is the last to have experienced that revolution, man I kind of feel sorry for the kids growing up today. God dammit, my kids will be educated about this shit! 😀

    PPS. Doom is still scary.

    This post was originally published on WordPress.com.