“The Unfinished Swan” at playstation.com
Rated E10+; Reviewed on PS3
“The Unfinished Swan”, developed by Giant Sparrow, is the latest game to come out of Sony’s incubator initiatives. Sony is making a habit of spotting and encouraging promising new development teams. While the PS3 definitely can’t rival the PC in the sheer volume of independent and experimental games, it stands well above the other consoles in this area.
“Papo and Yo” at playstation.com
Rated E10+; Reviewed on PS3
Games can definitely be art, something I’ve discussed before. Art, as anything, has a value range. It can be beautiful but vacuous, ugly but meaningful and any other combination that you can imagine. Any screen shot of the game will tell you instantly that Papo and Yo is far from a beautiful game, but is it meaningful?
“Costume Quest” at playstation.com
Rated E for Everyone; Reviewed on PS3
Twins Reynold and Wren are new in town on the most important day of the year: Halloween! Their parents, misunderstanding the serious business of free candy suggest that they use this as opportunity to socialize and make new friends. Unfortunately the monstrous Grubbins are well aware of how serious candy is and have infiltrated your neighborhood to steal it all!
Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 at Amazon.com
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3 and PC
Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this series covered my impressions of the Mass Effect games as a whole. This last section will focus on the controversial end game.
[Story spoilers will be sprinkled liberally throughout this discussion.]
As we’ve explored, the Mass Effect trilogy provided an engaging experience within a complex framework of racial and social tensions against an amazingly deep historical context. Exceptional gameplay and characters kept players moving through the story and excited for each installment. While there were flaws that marred the experience most were ironed out by the third game making them easily forgiven and forgotten.
Until the ending came along and punched you in the face, slapped your ass and left you naked and cold in the woods.
Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 at Amazon.com
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3 and PC
Part 1 of this series discussed the promise of the game and Part 2 covered the how several of the key game mechanics evolved as the series progressed. In this section I’ll cover the more subjective aspects of character growth, interaction and story evolution.
[Story spoilers will be sprinkled liberally throughout this discussion.]
Mass Effect promised a cohesive character building experience across an epic, multi-year story arc. One in which you could build relationships, both friendships and enmities, and forge a galactic reputation. While the trilogy definitely met many of these goals, in my opinion it often failed to meet them on the scales promised.
Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 at Amazon.com
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3 and PC
Part 1 of this series discussed how I’ve spent my time with Mass Effect and the promise of the game. While we’ll get into the story of the game later every gamer knows the gameplay has to be solid. While some of us will suffer through terrible gameplay for a good story the reverse is much more often true. If your gameplay is solid the story can be secondary (or non-existent). Of course true classics offer both.
One recurring theme here will be that things tended to get simpler as the games were released. The largest change was between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 where literally dozens of mechanics were simply abandoned (rather than, as many of us had hoped, being improved). The changes then made to Mass Effect 3 were more subtle but still in the direction of simplification.
Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 at Amazon.com
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3 and PC
The Mass Effect games represent a grand experiment in game design and story-telling. Instead of reviewing the games individually I’d like to spend some time considering the evolution of the trilogy as a whole. In this first part I’ll set the stage by explaining how much I’ve invested in these games and clarifying what they promised to deliver.
I first played Mass Effect on the XBox 360 shortly after it was released. During the course of completing the game I had to replace two consoles due to the “Red Ring of Death” issue that plague the early 360’s. Eventually I ended up replacing four separate units (and spending way too much due to the insulting 90-day warranty of the original units). I decided to simply never play anything on the XBox 360 again unless I absolutely had to.
There are few studios that produce such uniformly excellent content as Naughty Dog. Producing exclusively for the Platform since the beginning their work has, in large part, defined each generation of PlayStation hardware. Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter and Nathan Drake are truly iconic characters. Never ones to over-stay their welcome the studio decided against a fourth “Uncharted” game and instead have moved into more serious territory with “The Last of Us”. They presented the first gameplay trailer at E3 and it’s absolutely stunning.
As I discussed in my comments on “Beyond: Two Souls” the most impressive games from E3 this year have not been those attempting to carve out new territory but rather those that have decided to polish existing genres. For all their undeniable genius Naughty Dog has never been known for truly orignal games. Rather they excel, more than any other studio, at perfecting existing paradigms. “Uncharted” was far from the first pop-and-shoot adventure game – but it was the best one.
French studio Quantic Dream, the highly regarded studio behind the under-appreciated classic “Indigo Prophecy” and 2010’s highly successful PS3 exclusive “Heavy Rain”, has announced their next game, “Beyond: Two Souls.” Surprisingly for a new announcement the trailer is substantial (over five minutes long) and offers a significant look into the tone being set by the game.
Quantic Dream has always approached their games firstly from a cinematic view-point and this one is no different. Ellen Page’s acting, seen clearly and meaningfully through the filter of the studio’s updated motion capture techniques, is clearly the focus of the trailer. However it’s also clear that this game will feature more action than many have come to expect from this team.
Rated E for Everyone; Reviewed on PS3
The debate as to whether video games can be “art” is worth no more time than any of the multitude of similar debates that raged in the past. Popular music, movies, comics, animation – essentially all new mediums – have been accused initially of lacking some quality that raises them to the level of “art”. The debate is worthless because the answer is always the same: yes, they can be art but most often aren’t.
(The fascination for me on this topic is that film critics often incite this ridiculous conversation. People who can see plainly that “The Seven Samurai” [IMDB] is art and “Mega Piranha” [IMDB] is not but are wholly unable to see that parallel in other fields. Baffling.)
