I’ve just finished reading about Bethesda’s “Skyrim Game Jam”, where they let the developers create anything they wanted for a week. They came up with some amazing sounding stuff. I already use mods to improve the UI and the look of water, fire, ice, and lighting. I even use the Midas Magic mod which adds spells to the game. But check this out.

• Stealth Enhancements
  From what I gather, there are some fans of the thief series at Bethesda. They’ve modded stuff to allow for the creation of Thief-style water arrows and guards that relight darkened areas. Considering how I play the game, this is my #1 mod. I love it.
• Dark dungeons
  This one has been on my mod wishlist since day one. I’ve tried a number of mods to darken nights and dungeons, but none have done it well. This would fit nicely with the stealth enhancements.
• Goblins
  Another one from my wishlist. Yes, please!
• Seasonal Foliage
  Very nice. This would be subtle, but I think I’d really like it.
• Spears
  The game could use more weapons. All they’ve got are swords, axes, maces, and daggers. Spears are wielded completely differently, and so this requires new character animations as well as new weapon art. It’s more of a project than you might realize, but I think it sounds great.
• Mounted combat
  Another big one. Attacking from horseback would be epic.
• Dragon mounts
  Whaa? Even in the game’s main plot when you fly on the back of a dragon, they fudge the effect. If they can pull this off, it will be amazing.
• Dungeon enhancements : handing structures and moving platforms
  Whoa. This sounds like it would create platforming in dungeons. Perhaps a bit too late for anything but add-on DLC, but it sounds cool.
• Fat giants
  Haha. Sounds good.
• Ice and Fire arrows
  Why not?
• Werebear
  Interesting. Just a reskin of the werewolf, I’d imagine.
• Lycanthropy skill tree
  Wow. A whole new skill tree. Considering how useless the werewolf form is, I’ll take it.
• Vampire Feeding
  I didn’t realize that this wasn’t already in place, having never been a vampire.
• Become a flying vampire lord
  Flying? Wow. This I would try.
• Vampire Imp Minions
  Imps were another monster from my wishlist.
• “Waygates” for fast travel
  Considering that fast travel already exists, I’m not sure of the point, but I’m willing to check it out.
• Flow-based water shader
  This could look really nice.
• Kill Cams for Magic and Ranged Combat
  I hadn’t thought about the fact that they don’t exist, but… they don’t exist. Adding them would be nice.
• Paralysis runes
  This must be high-level, but I’d use it often. Paralysis is the most powerful magic in the game.
• Water currents in dungeons
  I’d go for a mod just to strengthen all water currents. I’ve barely ever been pushed by water.
• New commands for followers: Combat style, set favorite equipment, etc.
  I use followers so rarely that I probably wouldn’t notice.
• Adopt a child
  Seems cruel, given that I’d be away adventuring so much that you’d have to categorize me as criminally neglectful.
• Build your own home
  I’m not quite sure how this would work, but I’m interested. Apparently, you can also have a skeleton butler. Personally, I’d prefer a monkey butler, but I’ll take what I can get.
• Spell combinations: Use flame and raise zombie to create a fire zombie
  Holy crap. Like Magicka? If they create enough combinations, this could be amazing.
• High-level Draugrs
  More powerful undead? Sure, why not?
• Epic mounts (flaming death horse)
  Seems a bit over-the-top for my taste.
• Kinect voice-activated shouts
  I still plan to try Thu’uMic,  but I think it’s awesome that someone is bringing this to the XBox. My console friends should be able to get some mod love too.
• Enhanced underwater visuals
  Sure. 
• Screen space ambient occlusion
  What?
• Giant mudcrab enemy
  Can I attack it for massive damage?

I’ll be watching closely for implementation of these features. If you’re interested, you can watch the video here.

At this point, I’m sick of writing about 2011 games, and I’m sure you’re sick of reading about them, so I’ll wrap it all up. I did a best of 2010 post last year, and now here’s this year’s best of 2011 post.

In my number five position is Bastion. The game had stellar music, some very nice retro gameplay with a great mechanic for adjusting difficulty, and a compelling story. If you’ve not played Bastion, jump on it.

Number four is Portal 2, which if you’d have asked me earlier in 2011, I’d have sworn would be in my number one slot come year end. That speaks to the awesomesauce that was the 2011 video game release schedule. Portal 2 was damn funny and had some excellent puzzles. I plan to go back to it when my Skyrim frenzy cools, both to finish my second playthrough and to finish the co-op levels.

The third slot is claimed by an unexpected gem: Atom Zombie Smasher. I love this game, and I go back to it frequently when I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill. It’s not quite tower defense, not quite real time strategy, and not quite a board game. But it is fantastic.

Number two? Skyrim. Big surprise. Not much more to say here – I’m sure I’ll fill up many other posts with Skyrim blabber.

And my favorite game of the year? Batman: Arkham City. The context-sensitive combat, the open world navigation, and by Grabthar’s hammer, the characters! Epic voice acting, well-written story, incredibly fun set pieces, and one of the best endings of any video game I’ve played make Arkham City my personal game of the year.

Here’s a summary of how I rated all the games throughout my posts

Atom Zombie Smasher (A)
A Boy and His Blob (B-)
Batman: Arkham Asylum  (A)
Bastion (B+)
Batman: Arkham City (A)
Beyond Good and Evil HD (B+)
Dead Nation  (C)
Dead Space 2  (B)
Dungeon Siege 3  (C+)
Dungeons & Dragons Tactics (B)
Fallout: New Vegas  (C)
Limbo   (B)
Mass Effect 2   (B)
Metal Gear Solid 1  (C-)
Metal Gear Solid 4  (C-)
Metro 2033   (C-)
Metroid Prime   (C-)
Osmos    (B)
PB Winterbottom  (B)
Peggle Android  (B)
Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe (A)
Plants vs Zombies Android (B+)
Portal 2  (A)
RE: Darkside Chronicles(C)
Sacred 2  (D)
Shadow of the Colossus HD (B)
Skyrim   (A)
Starcraft 2   (B)
Steel Storm   (B-)
Super Mario Galaxy 2  (B)
Wind Waker   (A-)
Zuma’s Revenge  (A-)

Many people have written off their Wii as a dead console. Probably most of the people who haven’t are the ones playing Skyward Sword or the ones still stuck on Wii Sports. At our house, the Wii game that sees the most play is Super Mario Galaxy 2. From the beginning, I’ve played the whole game through with my four-year-old daughter. She controls the player 2 star, and she’s actually a huge help. She can hold monsters still to let me past certain places, shoot star bits out at enemies, and collect 1-Ups and coins that I can’t reach. Having that extra heart during a boss battle makes a big difference. And the bonding is great. Every time we hear the music that goes along with “You got a star!”, we hug or high five. Mario Galaxy 2 is great. A-.

Before I started my father-daughter replay of Twilight Princess, I used the Wii to play through Wind Waker for the first time. Despite the fact that it’s an older game, I really enjoyed it. And while I found the wide-open ocean somewhat monotonous, the stealth bits and context-sensitive combat music were very well done. All-in-all, I may prefer Twilight Princess, but Wind Waker was a stellar game, and it gets an A-.

I really enjoyed the original Zuma. I played a ton of the free online version before buying the Playstation 3 version. When I heard of Zuma’s Revenge, I jumped all over it. I’ve played it a ton, as has my wife. And while she’s much better at the game than am I, we both finished and enjoyed the game. They added a number of really fun mechanics. There are levels in which you slide rather than spin, and levels in which you have the ability to switch between two locations. There are also bosses every ten levels or so. It’s one of my favorite casual titles, and as such gets the same A- that Mario Galaxy 2 and Wind Waker got.

With the exception of the top few items on the list, I’ll likely wait for the enthusiast blogs to weigh in before I make any purchases, but there’s some good stuff here, including a couple games in which I hadn’t been interested until I did a little checking around.

1-The Last Guardian
Top on the list is a game that I’ve been looking forward to for years. It’s true that I have yet to play through the copy of Ico sitting next to my PS3, but I plan to. Everything I’ve heard about The Last Guardian has made me want to play it even more. The game has been slated to come out in 2012, but whether that’s February or December is anyone’s guess.

2-Thi4f
Yeah, the name is weird as hell. I imagine they’ll give it a colon and a tag line at some point soon. There’s nothing specific to indicate that the game will be coming out in 2012, but I’m hopeful.

3-Amy
The release date on this game has been pushed more than I was in second-grade. It’s a 2012 release now, and I plan to download it on release day. It’s been a while since I played a proper survival horror game, and Amy looks to be a good one. The latest rumor says that Amy will be released next week, so Amy is likely the first chronological release on this list.

4-Dishonored
Slated to come out in the second quarter of the year, Dishonored is a first-person stealth game. That immediately grabbed my attention. When I saw that the people working on the game are the same folks who did Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Thief: Deadly Shadows, I got even more interested. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one.

5-Quantum Conundrum
Quantum Conundrum is a downloadable game for XBLA and PSN, and it should be out early this year. Like Narbacular Drop and Tag: The Power of Paint before it, Quantum Conundrum sounds like exactly the kind of game that Valve would snatch up for use in Portal 3. But this time, instead of portals or spray-on gel, the gimmick is switching between four dimensions that overlap in space. I can see this creating a lot of interesting scenarios for puzzles similar to the ones in Portal.

6-I Am Alive
Another game that’s been delayed quite a bit, I Am Alive is supposed to come out in Q1 this year. The description and environment makes me think of Enslaved without the sci-fi. Post-apocalypse, everyone’s just trying to survive. Some dude has to get from A to B, across the destroyed cityscape.

7-Borderlands 2
Although I had a lot of complaints, I did really enjoy Borderlands. I doubt they’ll have the same ideas for the sequel as I’d once suggested, but I’m hoping for a wealth of improvements. With any luck, that will include a better interface on the PC. It will likely be released in 2012, but there are no guarantees.

8-Monaco
It’s possible that you’ve never heard of a little indie game called Monaco. If not, let me clue you in, because the game sounds like a multiplayer Team Fortress 2 meets Pac Man. Monaco is a top-down 4-player stealth action game wherein players are executing a heist. Each player’s thief has a different role. Maybe yours can pick locks, demolish walls, foil security cameras, or see through walls with infrared. There are gameplay videos on YouTube, and they look awesome. They’ve been planning to release Monaco for a long time, so with any luck we’ll see it very soon.

9-Far Cry 3
After an agonizing first playthrough, I decided that I loved the first Far Cry. The second was somewhat less to my liking, but still fun. The weird thing is that the first few games seemed to have little in common other than the name. No recurring characters, themes, or plots. The game will have the same sandbox feel as Far Cry 2, but add experience-based leveling. They’re adding stealth gameplay as well, which is something I love. We should see Far Cry 3 sometime in 2012.

10-Mass Effect 3
The Mass Effect series is something that everyone seems to love, and yet I’ve never felt nearly as strong about it. The ending of Mass Effect 2 was indeed very good, but overall I can’t help feeling a certain ambivalence for the series. Rather than grabbing it as soon as it comes out on March 6th, I may wait for the price to drop.

11-Journey
Journey is something of a mystery to me, and yet I’m still intrigued. You’re a little pup tent looking thing, travelling through the wilderness towards a mountain. What do you do on those travels? Not sure. Is it fun? No idea. But you can meet other players randomly, since as I understand it, there’s no way to play offline. You can’t communicate with them other than by wordless shouts, but they’re there. What can you do together? I can’t say. Hopefully more info arises before the springtime release, as I’m strangely intrigued.

12-SpyParty
SpyParty is a reverse Turing test in the same vein as the multiplayer mode of Assassins Creed, in which you need to convince other live players that you’re a computer-controlled character. One player is a sniper in the bushes outside a dinner party, and he’s got a single bullet. The other is a spy attending the dinner party who has to steal a single item. You can see where this is going. I watched people playing SpyParty in early 2011 at PAX East, and I’m intrigued.

13-Starcraft 2: The Heart of the Swarm
As underwhelmed as I was at Starcraft 2, the Zerg are my favorite. So I’ll probably pick up the Zerg expansion. As long as I can burrow a huge swarm of zerglings beneath a group of unsuspecting space marines, I’ll be happy. The look on their faces when you pop up in their midst is priceless. Nobody seems to know when the expansion will come out, but 2012 seems reasonable.

14-Prototype 2
Prototype and Infamous are similar in a lot of ways, but I have to say that I prefer Prototype. Why? It’s probably because I like the gliding better in Prototype than in Infamous, and I prefer running up walls to clowly climbing them. It’s not at all because I like leaping from 10 story buildings to elbow drop a tank and then eat the guys who jump out of it before it explodes. Not at all. April 24th. Prototype 2.

15-Diablo 3
Diablo is the king of isometric action RPGs. I’ve played Torchlight, Heroes of Norrath, Sacred 2, all the Dungeon Sieges, and a bunch of others I can’t remember right now. Mostly I play them multiplayer with my wife. But everyone likes Diablo the best. If I recall correctly, there’s a huge DRM issue here that might dissuade me from buying the game at all, but if they do away with it I’ll likely get a copy eventually.

16-Mechwarrior Online
You know what I love about the Mechwarrior games? I love that they’re relatively slow-paced. I love it when my mech is marching STOMP STOMP STOMP through the mountains and I get a missile lock warning and I know that I’ve got about seven seconds before the LRMs hit. Even more, I love to customize my mech. I love deciding that I can remove two heat sinks in the left arm so that I can move the autocannon ammo there, making room for short range missiles in the torso. I love to spend a half hour figuring out exactly the right way to customize my mech. It’s fun.

If reports are to be believed, the new Mechwarrior game is due out in Q2, and will make light, medium, and assault mechs into an analog of character classes, making each useful in their own ways. You’ll also be able to play with a number of other people, which to me is both a pro and a con. I always loved the single-player campaigns in Mechwarrior, and I have no desire to go online and have my ass kicked by a thirteen-year-old. We’ll see how this one shapes up.

17-Prey 2
Prey 2 seems like it’s going to have close to nothing to do with the first game in the series. It’s the same thing that the Far Cry series did between its first two games: new game, same name. That’s fine with me, because although I finished the original Prey, I thought it kind of stunk. I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on reviews for the game once it comes out this summer, although I may wait for it to hit the bargain bin.

18-Torchlight 2
I played Torchlight, but I was never able to get into it quite the way everyone else did. Still, the fact that it’s going to be multiplayer makes it a good candidate for me to play with my wife. To that end, I may end up buying it.

19-Bioshock Infinite
Like Mass Effect, Bioshock is a series that everyone seems to love. Well, everyone else loves it. Not me. I played both Bioshock games and was underwhelmed both times. I’ll probably do the same thing with Bioshock Infinite that I did with the other two games. I’ll play it a year or so after it’s released, picking it up for under $20.

20-Alan Wake (PC)
People with XBox 360s played Alan Wake a while ago, but PC gamers like myself have to wait for “early 2012”, when the PC version is supposed to come out. The gameplay videos I’ve seen don’t draw me, but I’ve heard friends rave about how much they loved the game, so I’ll likely try it out.

And that’s what I see coming in 2012. No idea if the Wii U will be out this year, but CES is next week, and we should learn a lot more about it then.

What is the story behind the overturned cabbage cart?

Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim. Yes, it’s nearly all I’ve been playing for the past few months, and I’ve put in a lot of time. I’ve written about the game so much at this point that I’m hesitant to include too much more, but I’m very much enjoying it, and it’s a strong contender for 2011 Game of the Year. Unsurprisingly, Skyrim gets an ‘A‘.

Starcraft 2 is a game that I’d been looking forward to for quite some time. The original had been my favorite RTS for a long time, and hearing that the sequel was nothing more than an updated version was good news to me. But after playing it for a while, I got Starcraft fatigue. For some reason, I just didn’t end up loving it.  It’s a good solid game, but I quit playing it after I failed at the final mission for the fourth or fifth time. Maybe I’ll like the Zerg expansion better. Starcraft 2 gets a ‘B‘.

Part of a recent Humble Indie Bundle was a game called Steel Storm. It’s a very retro top-down “bullet hell” shooter, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s an age-old and incredibly simple formula, and as such there’s not a lot to say about the game. Shoot other spaceships, reach goals, and upgrade your weapons and shields. But it’s very well made, and I continually go back to the game when I’ve got only ten minutes to kill. Steel Storm gets a ‘B-‘.

Like so many other XBLA exclusives that eventually come to other platforms, I played Limbo much later than everyone else. I really enjoyed it though. Dark, disturbing, and pleasingly puzzly, Limbo is a perfect bite-sized downloadable game. I enjoyed it so much that I wrote all kinds of hints posts for it. Limbo gets a B.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles was largely about nostalgia for me. Resident Evil 2 was probably my favorite game on the original Playstation, exceeding even Symphony of the Night. The fact that Umbrella Chronicles retells that story within an on-rails shooter sounded awesome to me.

The reality is that while it was fun to re-experience the story, on-rails shooters never end up being as fun as I want them to be. And like Darkside Chronicles, it got extremely hard towards the end and I was unable to finish the game and see its ending. Too bad. Darkside Chronicles gets a C.

My wife and I have always enjoyed playing RPGs together. We’ve played Dungeon Siege, Icewind Dale 1 & 2, Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, Champions of Norrath, and we’re currently trying out Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. So back before we’d tried Dungeon Siege 3, we tried Sacred 2.

As it turned out, Sacred 2 wasn’t that great. The game mechanics were weird and hard to grasp, the leveling and combat weren’t satisfying, and in the end we just quit before we got very far. Sacred 2 gets a D.

Before the big holiday releases of 2011 started hitting, Shadow of the Colossus HD was one of my most looked forward to games. I’d loved playing the original, and I’ve always loved replaying good games. Now, I got to replay this one with trophies! It’s ridiculous to think I’d try to get all the lizards or fruits in the game, and I didn’t have much interest in time attack or hard mode, but I did very much enjoy the playthrough. The HD remake of Shadow of the Colossus gets a B. I plan to get to Ico HD sometime in early 2012.

Whereas many of my installments in this series contain nothing but C- games, this chunk contains some good ones. First off, Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe. Along with Beyond Good & Evil, Pixeljunk Monsters is one of those games that anyone who reads this site often must get sick of me talking about. I love the game. This year, I bought a PSP, and Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe is nearly the only thing I’ve played on it. And you know what? It’s totally worth it. The game includes new towers, new monsters, and a whole new island. It’s essentially a third expansion pack that’s for the PSP only. As such, it’s one of my favorite games of 2011. It gets an A.

Next off, the Android version of Plants vs Zombies. I played the PC version of this game and got 100% of the Steam achievements, and then later went back to it to finish off new Steam Achievements that they’d added. And now I’ve got the mobile version on my phone. I hit some issues at first where the game would pause at odd intervals, but that was fixed by uninstalling all updates to Google Maps on my phone. Who needs GPS when there are zombies to fend off? There was a period of a month or so where I did without the Maps updates in order to play Plants vs Zomibes. The game is still great. B+.

Ahh, Portal 2. Definately one of my favorite games of the year. It’s become nearly forgotten amidst such fare as Skyrim and Arkham City, but I really do plan to go back and finish off that second run through the game some day. After all, I’m like 85% done and I still have achievements I want to get. The Smash TV and Overclocker achievements have me particularly intrigued, although I’ll probably never get most of the co-op achievements. I’ll just be happy if I can go back and run through the newest co-op levels.

The Portal and Half-Life series are Valve’s best and most valuable properties, and as such, I’ll buy (and probably love) every one they put out. Along with half of The Internet, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Half-Life 2, episode 3, but it’s looking more and more like we’ll never see that one. Half-Life 3 seems more likely. In any event, Portal 2 was a triumph. Again. A.

This week, my list of the games I’ve played throughout 2011 continues. First off, Metroid Prime. Yeah, the old Gamecube game. I just got around to finally playing it. I never owned a Gamecube, but a few years back, I’d played Eternal Darkness on my Wii and had a lot of fun. When I mentioned to a friend that I was interested in trying out other Gamecube games I may have missed out on, he recommended Wind Waker and Metroid Prime. I’d really enjoyed Wind Waker, so it was with much zeal that I dived into Metroid Prime. I was, frankly, disappointed. I understand that this game came out way before anyone had figured out the best control configuration for first person shooters on a gamepad, but the controls just did not gel for me. I played the game a good bit, and only quit while fighting the plant boss. Sorry, Samus. Did not like the game. C-.

Osmos is one of my favorite Humble Indie Bundle games. It surprised me, and in a very good way. The premise is simple: You’re a blob. There are other blobs. Eat the smaller blobs and avoid the bigger blobs. Sounds kind of boring, but a few mechanics they added make it a lot of fun. You move by expelling a tiny amount of your substance, so moving actually shrinks you an infintesmal amount. So you want to minimize your thrust. Also, the material you expel can push other blobs, and if it hits them, they get bigger.

The amount of complexity and strategy involved is far greater than you’d think. And there are multiple sections of the game that each introduce new mechanics. Osmos is a lot of fun, and I’ve heard they introduced an iOS version. If you’ve got an iPhone, I recommend Osmos highly. It gets a B.

I got a sweet deal on The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom when I bought it on Steam. I’m pretty sure I paid $2.50. It was an XBLA game that I’d missed and heard many good things about, so I jumped all over it. It seems like all XBLA puzzle/platformers get compared to Braid, and I suppose I can understand the comparison, but the only real similarities are that they’re both XBLA puzzle/platformers, and they both have sections of levels that each introduce new mechanics. For a while, I wasn’t sure I’d get through the game without a walkthrough, but in the end I managed. My daughter watched me play more often than not.

One thing that I nearly forgot to mention about PB Winterbottom is the amazing soundtrack. The music is so well written that I enjoy listening to it at work. It’s a beautiful orchestral score that integrates ticking clocks and other elements of the time-based gameplay very well. It’s second only to Bastion as the best music I’ve heard in a game this year. I really liked it a lot – I’ll give it a B.

I passed on Peggle when it first came out. Popcap has seriously impressed me with Plants Versus Zombies (and to a lesser degree Wordworm Adventures) but I never saw the allure of Peggle. If I was going to be on a PC, I’d much rather play a less causal game. But when the Android Amazon App store offered Peggle for free, I grabbed it. And now, I play the game nearly every day. I’ve finished the “adventure”, and begun going through all the “quick play” levels. I’ve aced roughly 75% of them, and I’m working on the remaining few. On a mobile platform, Peggle is a killer app. It gets a B.

Metal Gear Solid
Yeah. The first one. The Playstation One game. I’d never really played it, although I scored a copy on EBay a number of years ago. My Playstation 3 plays PS1 games, so I gave it a go. The game actually looks pretty good with the PS3’s smoothing. But I played through until the part where you need a cigarette to see the lasers and quit. I’ve got no stomach for repeated fetch quests in games like that anymore. I do admit that I probably didn’t experience enough of the game to rate it fairly, but I give it a C-. Travesty for MGS fans, I’m sure.

Metal Gear Solid 4 got rave reviews, but I was really disappointed to find that the gameplay felt just like the older games in the series despite better graphics. As much as I really want to, it seems that I don’t like Metal Gear Solid Games. C-

 
It’s good that I have a chance here to write about Metro 2033, because I don’t think I’ve yet had a chance to discuss the game here. For the most part, I found it to be a passable shooter. But whatever thing about it that some people seemed to love – I just didn’t get. I got killed dozens of times because I wasn’t playing the game the way it wanted me to play it, and there was no indication anywhere as to how I was supposed to be playing. I got stuck and nearly gave up more times than I could count, but inevitably found my way past those points. I ended up stuck in a library where some demon was trying to force its way in. I know there was supposed to be some way to open this one door, but I never figured it out. I decided that the game was not fun enough to warrant the amount of frustrating effort I’d been putting into it. The game wasn’t absolutely horrible, so I’ll give it a C-.

The next segment of my Games of 2011 list begins with a PSP game: Dungeons & Dragons Tactics. This is one of the few 2011 games that I haven’t yet finished, and will likely continue playing well into 2012. I really like tactical battle RPGs, and this game does it fairly well. Since it’s turn-based, battles can sometimes be very time-consuming, but I grew up playing The Gold Box Games, and those were the slowest-paced strategy RPGs ever. D&D Tactics is fun, if not as full-featured as Temple of Elemental Evil, but it’s a portable game, and so I can forgive. D&D Tactics is also a good bit less buggy than ToEE. I’m not yet finished with the game, but I give it a B.

Fallout:New Vegas didn’t fare as well. I quit the game before I’d gotten very far. After I learned the game’s main plot in New Vegas, I just lost interest. And I was sure that the robot who was following me from the beginning of the game was going to end up being the main bad guy at the game’s conclusion. Meh. The game gets a C.

I’ve never been as huge a fan of the Mass Effect series as everyone else seems to be. The first one was good, but not amazing. Mass Effect 2 was pretty much the same. Good, but not brilliant. I thought the ending was very well done – I liked that part a lot. In the end, I’ll give Mass Effect 2 a B.