Back in 1990, I was in high school. I remember reading in a computer magazine that Ultima VI had been released for the Commodore 64. At the time, Ultima V was one of my favorite games of all time, and I really wanted to play the sequel. But for whatever reason – money, girls, college applications – I never bought the game. I really wish I had, as Ultima VI looks to have been at least as good and as complex as my beloved Ultima V.

I’ve currently got The Ultima 6 Project installed on my computer, which is a complete remake of the old game done in the engine for the original Dungeon Siege. I’d really like to play it, but like anything else, it’s all about how much free time I’ve got.

Maybe it’s a game that we didn’t hear of until years after its initial release, maybe it’s just that we were busy at the time in our lives when the game released, or maybe we just weren’t interested. In any event, all gamers have games that they’re a bit ashamed to have never played, and I’m no different. List of Shame is a short series of articles in which I plan to cover the games on my own personal List of Shame.

Nineteen Ninety Eight. It sounds like such a long time ago. And it was a fantastic year for video games. And while a number of my list-of-shame games come from 1998, the only one I currently own is Metal Gear Solid.

While the Playstation 3 I own isn’t one of the original models with the Emotion Engine that runs Playstation 2 games, all Playstation 3 consoles will run old PS1 games. This is why my copy of Metal Gear: Solid that I picked up on EBay some years back has been sitting on my shelf alongside Dead Space and Batman: Arkham Asylum for the past year or so.

I’ve played the beginning of Metal Gear Solid 3, which I still own. I’ve even played 90% of the way through Metal Gear Solid 2 in one of the worst PC ports I’ve ever seen. But although I’ve played some of the training missions in Metal Gear Solid a couple years ago, I’ve never played the actual game.

I plan to play it. At some point. I don’t know when.

I bought my wife a copy of Zuma’s Revenge for Christmas this year, and so far she’s loved the game. I like Zuma as well. Before we had Zuma 2, we’d been taking turns playing the original Zuma on our Playstation 3, each on our own profiles. At some point, I’d love to try out Zuma 2. But this line of thought got me wondering about the legality of installing this legally-purchased game on my own machine. I know that with a game like the upcoming Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, separate CD keys or the like will keep us from buying one copy and playing together on two computers – that’s how it was with Neverwinter Nights when we played that game together back in the day – we had to buy two copies. But what about Zuma? Is it legal for us to both play the game separately on two different machines? If not, how about if she finishes with the game and uninstalls, and then I play. What if she’s forgotten to uninstall, but isn’t playing anymore? How about if I play the game on her PC? It’s similar to the RIAA arguments about copying your music to multiple devices. In the words of Neil Gaiman, “It’s People Lending Books.”

Maybe it’s a game that we didn’t hear of until years after its initial release, maybe it’s just that we were busy at the time in our lives when the game released, or maybe we just weren’t interested. In any event, all gamers have games that they’re a bit ashamed to have never played, and I’m no different. List of Shame is a short series of articles in which I plan to cover the games on my own personal List of Shame.

The first one is Ico, the 2001 Playstation 2 game that became its creators’ name. Team Ico later released Shadow of the Colossus, and has created the forthcoming The Last Guardian, a game to which I’m very much looking forward. But I’ve never played Ico.

I plan to remedy this very soon when the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection is released this Spring. I’d have bought the game even if it were only Shadow of the Colossus HD, because I absolutely loved that game, and the notion of picking up trophies as I play sounds like fun. The fact that it comes with Ico, which I’ve never played, seals the deal. I’m still waiting for the release date to be announced.

It used to be that I’d just about never quit a game before I completed it. And while I still derive a sense of satisfaction from seeing the whole game through, I no longer feel an obligation to stick with a game I’m not enjoying just to be able to say that I finished.

Penumbra:Overture isn’t a bad game. I got it as a Christmas gift from a friend who gifted me the Humble Indie Bundle. I’ve got no problem when you’re forced you to hide and flee from enemies rather than fighting them – I enjoy scary games. My problems with Penumbra came when I was forced to fight those damned little spiders. The combat controls in the game are designed such that it’s nearly impossible to hit anything. When you’re forced to fight, it’s an uphill battle. So I died. And died. And then I died again. Those little spiders are killers. Uninstalled.

Osmos is another Humble Indie Bundle game that I really like. I’ve heard that there’s an iPhone version, and if there were an Android version, I’d snatch it up in a minute, assuming that the pricing is in line with other Android games. It’s the same big-eats-little mechanic that we’ve seen in Fl0w, Spore, Katamari Damacy, The Wonderful End of the World, and a dozen other games, but it’s done so very well. Your amoeba propels itself by exuding tiny jets of itself, so moving makes you incrementally smaller. Economy of movement is key. In addition, the bits of yourself that you propel don’t disappear – they keep going. If they hit another amoeba, it gets incrementally bigger. And as you choose new segments of the game to try, new mechanics evolve. In one, all the amoebas are orbiting a big sun-like thing. In another, antimatter amoebas exist. In yet a third, the other amoebas have AI. The game is fantastic. Alas, the later levels are hard as hell. Too difficult for me, thanks. Uninstalled.

Magicka sounded like the coolest game I could imagine. A CRPG with no levels and no gear. You’ve got a number of elements with strict rules, such that when they’re combined you get different effects. Water, Fire, Lightning, Earth, Cold, Shield, Arcane, Life. Water and fire create steam. Water and cold creates ice. Shield and earth creates a wall of rock. Fire and earth creates a fireball. The system’s complexity is brilliant, and there are myriad possibilities for accidentally killing yourself. Cast a lightning spell while you’re wet and you’ll probably electrocute yourself. Combine healing and shield and you’ll protect yourself from ever being healed. There in no mana in Magicka – you can cast spells as fast as you can bang them out. Play it in four-player online co-op and you’ll be accidentally setting your friends on fire in no time. The only thing? This game is hard. Really hard. I couldn’t even complete the demo. Uninstalled.

Torchlight is a game people have raved about for a long time as the second coming of Diablo 2. It’s funny, because I thought the forthcoming Diablo 3 was the second coming of Diablo 2, but no matter. Torchlight is kind of fun. Kind of monotonous, but fun. I played through for ten or twelve levels before I got bored with it. Then I found myself just not playing it. For eight months. Uninstalled.

I’m currently in the same boat with Fallout: New Vegas. I’m just not playing it. Last night I went back and played Borderlands with a friend from Colorado. Mothrakk is a serious bitch. Sitting in a parked outrunner for fifteen minutes while somebody else shoots rockets at an endlessly circling mutated space moth and hits one out of ten times is annoying – I nearly pulled out a book – but it’s more fun than I’ve been having lately with New Vegas. Hard to say why. Maybe it’s just the been there, done that of having played 100 hours of Fallout 3. I’m hoping that if I install the Project Nevada mod it might make the game fun again.

I’m about halfway through Metro 2033, and hoping that it stays good enough to keep playing all the way through, as I hear it’s got a pretty good conclusion. I’ll have more to say about this game as I get further in. Dragon Age 2 and Portal 2 are coming out soon, so I’ve got to finish up as many of these games as I can.

iPhone games are big business today. It’s all Angry Birds, Words with Friends, and Cut the Rope. But I’ve got an Android phone. Come to think of it, Brandon and Frank also have Android phones too. We Android folks can’t play Cut the Rope or The Settlers, but there are a lot of really good games on the Android platform. Here are some of my own favorites.

Gem Miner: Dig Deeper ($2.14, demo free)

My favorite Android game is likely Gem Miner: Dig Deeper. It lets you explore and mine out a huge cavern, digging your own tunnels and shafts, placing your own ladders and elevators, trying hard not to fall to your death down a chute that’s hidden in the dark. You’ll need to mine coal, copper, silver, and many other precious metals to earn the money to buy better lanterns, better pickaxes, more ladders, and bigger backpacks. Buy expensive elevators to go really deep and get at the better ores. I had a ton of fun with this game. After finishing the game, I played through on hard, and then played through all the individual challenges. Not bad for $2.14.

Shopper’s Paradise ($2.99, demo free)

Shopper’s Paradise is a management game wherein you build and upgrade various stores in a mall and watch as shoppers pour in. You can buy your competitor’s stores, and in hard mode they can buy you out as well. It’s got enough complexity that I still haven’t figured out how to win the later levels on anything but easy difficulty. I do spend quite a bit of time with this game.
Air Control ($2.88, demo free)

One of the first games I spent tons of time with on my phone was Air Control. It’s a simple premise: give an ever-increasing number of airplanes, jets, and helicopters a safe route to the runway on which they must land. But as the game progresses and you’ve landed over 100 aircraft successfully, gameplay gets very hectic and you just can’t keep track of all the aircraft on screen any longer.

Dungeon Scroll ($1.98, no demo)

The latest game I’ve purchased for my phone is Dungeon Scroll. When I read that it took inspiration from Word Worm Adventures, I was immediately interested. The premise: write words to kill monsters as you advance through a dungeon. There’s no real exploration and no real character stats, so it’s not at all a RPG, but it’s got a decent amount of complexity as you can see by the screenshot.

Trap! (Free)

One of the first games I got on my phone is Trap!, a very simple game which draws its inspiration from an old arcade game called Qix. The premise: section off as much of the game board as you can. While you’re drawing a line, you need to be careful not to let any of the bouncing balls hit it. Once the line is complete, you’re safe. Fill 75% of the screen to complete the level. It’s harder than you think.

Tower Raiders ($5, demo free)

I’m always on the hunt for a decent tower defense game, and Tower Raiders is the best I’ve yet found on Android. Lots of people will tell you that Robo Defense is better, but I like Tower Raiders. Other than that, it’s a straight-up tower defense game, very much like Defense Grid: The Awakening.

Bonsai Blast ($1.99, demo free)

Bonsai Blast is a well-made Zuma clone. If you like Zuma, you’ll most likely enjoy playing Bonsai Blast on your phone. Many of the levels are quite annoying, most notably the ones in which you need to shoot balls through tubes to reach their targets, but overall the game is a lot of fun. I’m playing the demo and I can’t tell what more I’d get were I to buy the $1.99 full version – I have yet to make it through all the demo levels.
Scrambled Net (free)

Scrambled Net is a free game, and a fairly basic puzzle. Spin the circuit units to make sure that all terminals are connected to the power source. Fun little app, and it’s free.

Game Dev Story ($2.53)

The last game on my list is the only one I’ve not yet tried, but it may be the next game I buy for my Android phone, as it seems to have been reviewed well. The premise: you’re an executive working at a video game company, and you’ve got to make all the right business decisions to keep your company afloat. Sounds a lot like Shopper’s Paradise.

Have you heard about Dungeons? It’s a new game coming out very soon – February 8th – and I’m fairly excited about it.

I loved Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper. It was a great game that embraced the player’s creativity and gave free reign to create a huge and customized dungeon. This new game looks like it’s going after much the same thing. I don’t know much about it, but apparently the goal is to lure in adventurers, make them happy by giving them good challenges and lots of treasure, and then slay them.

The game releases on February 8th, and February 10th on Steam, but I’m going to be sure to read reviews before dropping any money on it. My hopes are high, but then again my hopes were high for the steaming pile of crap that was Grotesque Tactics.

It wasn’t until I looked back at the list of games I’d played in 2009 that I realized just how few games I played in 2010. I guess moving across the country and starting at a new job will do that. While I managed to play twenty-three games and replay an additional five in 2009, I played a scant fourteen games in 2010. As I did last year, I’ll review them and give a brief rating to each.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Arkham Asylum is a game that snuck up on me. I didn’t expect it to be very good, but in the end I loved it. Along with Dead Space, it’s one of my very few Playstation 3 “Keeper” titles. The rhythmic combat was engaging, challenging, and fun. The stealth segments were as good as any I’ve played and better than most. But what really made the game shine was its excellent use of Gotham City’s rogues’ gallery. The mainstream Batman villains such as Penguin, Riddler, and Two-Face took a backseat and didn’t even appear in the game. Instead, we were treated to Zsasz, Killer Croc, Bane, Harley Quinn, and Scarecrow. I learned a lot about Batman villains, and they’re pretty damn cool. I was engaged enough in the game to track down every one of the Riddler’s hidden riddles, and with one or two exceptions I enjoyed the search. Get game gets a solid A.

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

After having played the amazing Escape from Butcher Bay, I had high expectations for Assault on Dark Athena. Sad to say that the game didn’t meet my lofty expectations. There just weren’t nearly enough moments where I had the joy of sneaking up behind guards like I did in the first game. Hiding in the pitch darkness while guards stumbled around blindly was one of the best parts of Butcher Bay, and Dark Athena didn’t have nearly as much of that. All in all, the game felt relatively uninspired. I’ll give it a C-.

Dragon Age: Origins

I started this game in late 2009, but finished in 2010. Its strategic combat didn’t quite match that of Baldur’s Gate, but it was indeed very well done. And the characters and relationships in the game were better done than most games I’ve played. I like the fact that Bioware moved away from the one-dimensional good/evil or paragon/renegade scale and instead focused on how the individual NPCs felt about your character. It made the characters feel so much more real.

The game’s dark fantasy is something I loved, and to me it was best expressed by moments such as the Grey Wardens’ brutal Joining ceremony, the destruction of Redcliff by the undead, and the late-game execution of political rivals. Small bits of the story which do not have a happy ending, but which add a decidedly dark tone to the game. I think I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Dragon Age. It gets an A.

Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening

While Dragon Age was a fantastic game, the Awakening expansion was far less impressive. It took the same engine and used it to tell a far less exciting story. They kept Oghren, which was a good move, but most of the characters weren’t nearly as good as the original game. Furthermore, the plot, which had to do with intelligent Darkspawn, seemed to detract from the excellent setting the original game had created. By the time I’d reached the midpoint, I couldn’t wait for the game’s ending, and it felt far too long. I can only hope that Dragon Age 2 doesn’t continue the yawntastic themes of this expansion. C-.

Enslaved

Enslaved was a game that had a lot of big plusses and a lot of big minuses. It seems that the game’s flaws hurt it more than its triumphs helped it, as the price very quickly plummeted after the first few months. The demo didn’t encourage me to go out and buy the game; it was only the ravings of some friends on Google Buzz that finally pushed me into picking up a copy. I’m glad that I did.

Enslaved began very mediocre. The world-conquered-by-machines subgenre is one I generally enjoy, whether it’s The Matrix, Terminator, or The Two Faces of Tomorrow. All in all, Enslaved doesn’t flesh out the specifics of its setting as well as it could. We learn that slavers capture and haul off humans regularly, but not much more. Are human settlements common? Are there robot cities? For the most part, mechs seem to stand around in the middle of nowhere, waiting for a human to walk within 30 feet of it so that it can attack. Beyond the well-executed combat, some minor collecting, and sub-par platforming, there’s not much gameplay to be had.

But this isn’t where Enslaved shines. I’ve heard it said that the game’s story is what makes it good, but I have to disagree. The story is just okay. It’s the characters that make the game good. Specifically, the way they’re written and voice acted. The facial animations are more expressive than in many movies.

Enslaved is a short game, but I’m not sure why that’s so often presented as a flaw. Some stories are better told in 10 hours than in 60. To me, Enslaved was the perfect length, and it was a good solid game that I enjoyed despite two chase sequences that drove me a little crazy. I’ll give Enslaved a B.

Gem Miner: Dig Deeper

What? An Android game? Yep. When listing my games for the year, I generally don’t include Flash games and the like, but amongst all the games I’ve played on my phone, Gem Miner is the one that felt most like a full-fledged PC or console game. There was a lot to do and to explore in Gem Miner, and I played the crap out of the game until I’d done every last little thing.

In Gem Miner, you explore and dig mine tunnels. You upgrade your character and your equipment, dig deeper, and find progressively better and more valuable ores. All the while, you’re shaping the tunnels, so it has some of the same appeal as Dungeon Keeper. If you’ve got an Android phone, I recommend trying out the free demo. Gem Miner gets a B+.

Heavy Rain

Of all the games I played in 2010, Heavy Rain has got to be my favorite. I’ve written a lot on this site about how the notion of indelible decisions in a video game changes the way you play and brings a sense of seriousness and immediacy to the game – makes every decision deliberate. And while that’s certainly the facet of the game that made the biggest impression on me, I shouldn’t ignore the fact that behind the game’s mechanics lies a very well-written murder mystery, told from a variety of perspectives. The game’s voice acting has often been criticized, but it remains my favorite game of 2010. I’m giving it an A.

Hoard

I’m not finished playing Hoard. Like Pixeljunk Monsters, I’m not sure I’ll ever really be done playing Hoard. But I’ve done everything that the game has for me to do, although I’m still working on getting gold medals on some of its levels. I nearly didn’t include it on 2010’s list, but then I found myself asking whether I’d add it to 2011’s list. Nope.

Hoard has three game modes. First is treasure mode, in which you compete against zero to three other dragons to collect as much gold as possible in the ten-minute time period. As you drop off gold at your hoard and the pile of gold grows, your dragon can level up his speed, his breath, his carrying capacity, and his armor. There are princesses to capture and knights rescue them from you, there are archer-protected cities that you can burn and receive tribute from, there are taverns that spawn thieves who will try to rob from your hoard, and there are wizard towers that shoot balls of magic that can kill you in a single hit.

The game’s second mode is Princess Capture, in which you try to capture fifteen princesses as quickly as you can. Each time you drop a princess at your hoard, you need to decide whether to stay and protect her until she’s ransomed. If you stay, you lose valuable time, but if you leave, a knight may rescue her, or another dragon may come and steal her for himself. The more difficult levels require you to capture fifteen princesses in under four minutes to get the gold medal. Not easy!

The final mode is the most difficult: Hoard mode. In Hoard mode, you try to survive for as long as possible while the game throws everything it’s got at you. Knights, heroes, wizard towers, and dozens of archers. And you’ve got no hoard at which to heal yourself should you be hurt.

Hoard is a great little downloadable game. I’ve only played multiplayer once, against my brother, but the single player is generally enough for me. The game gets a B.

inFAMOUS

I was seriously late to the party on inFamous. I’d already played Prototype, and it’s hard not to compare the two games. Overall, I may have preferred Prototype. Prototype had better gliding, better challenges, better powers, and I preferred running up the sides of buildings to slowly climbing them. I finished inFamous – it was a good game, but I’m not going to go out of my way to recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it. I’ll give it a B-.

No More Heroes: Desparate Struggle

The original No More Heroes certainly had its flaws, but it was a fantastic and hilarious game. This sequel got rid of many parts in the original which had been overly tedious or problematic, but also lacked much of what made the original shine. It was easily as weird though. Desparate Struggle did have more than one ridiculous and hilarious moment, and those scenes are what make the No More Heroes games great. No More Heroes: Desparate Struggle gets a B-.

Punch-Out!

Maybe it’s just me. I loved the original NES Punch-Out!, and this game is a beautifully-remade version of the same game. The controls are tight, the animations look great, and the same timing-based puzzle-fighting mechanics are in place. But after having beaten the first couple circuits, I found that the harder levels were just too difficult to be fun. And I didn’t want to go back and replay the ones I was able to get past. The game is really short. And as well-made as it is, I got less enjoyment out of it than I did out of many other games. So I’m hard pressed to give it anything more than a C+.

Retro Game Challenge
The last game I played on my DS before its untimely demise. I’d heard great things about the game on a podcast, and it was a good bit of fun, but partway through the game’s RPG tribute, my DS exploded. If you like 8-bit era games, Retro Game Challenge is a fun one to play, and the meta-game that comes from hanging out with a friend, sitting on the floor in front of his TV, and looking through magazines for cheat codes, adds quite a bit to the gameplay. C+.

Trine

Trine is the best platformer I’ve seen in years. It’s also the only PS3 game that’s given me a platinum trophy. That’s right – I did every last stupid thing that the game has to offer. This includes summoning 500 objects with the wizard and getting through the Tower of Sarek on hard without dying once.

Trine takes full advantage of a current-gen platform’s graphics engine; for what’s essentially a 2d platformer, it’s inordinately beautiful. Moreover, it does an excellent job of giving you three characters with fundementally different abilities, any of whom can execute any challenge, although each is best suited to a specific kind of task. The wizard is best at most puzzles due to his ability to teleport and create objects. The thief is best suited to platforming because of her grappling line. And no one is better at straight combat than the knight, who can block enemy attacks with his shield. But although he has no weapon, the wizard can attack with levitated or dropped objects. The knight can solve puzzles that the wizard is best for by throwing boxes or kicking walls. And the rogue tends to excel at just about everything, due largely to her triple-shot and flame arrows and her immensely useful grappling line.

Trine is about platforming and reflexes, but it also allows for creativity in solving its puzzles. And I love that. The game gets an A-.

 
Uncharted 2

I know that everyone will think I’m crazy, but I really did not like Uncharted 2. At least I finished the first Uncharted game. The sequel I just could not get through. Way too much frustration. I’ve heard reviewers say that Enslaved was trying to be like Uncharted 2, but in my opinion Enslaved was a much better game. Uncharted 2 gets a C.

Here’s an interesting topic I’ve never seen explored: video game RPG systems, and what makes each good. I’ll admit that the reason I haven’t seen it discussed much online is probably because most people really aren’t interested. But that’s what makes me different, I guess. The subject is interesting to me. Tally Ho!

CRPGs go back decades, and I certainly don’t plan on talking about every Elder Scrolls or JRPG title out there. I’ve chosen five, and I’m going to hit them in alphabetical order because I want to avoid any qualitative assessments.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

I can’t say why, but I still get the warm fuzzies when I think of Troika.  Arcanum came out in 2001. I never progressed very far in the game’s plot, and the battles in the game never felt fun, but the actual rules system surrounding character creation drew me in far more than the gameplay did.

You could choose a race, gender, and then a background. The various backgrounds function much like traits in Fallout’s SPECIAL system, granting both a benefit and a detriment to your character.

Characters in Arcanum have four physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Beauty) and four mental stats (Intelligence, Perception, Willpower, Charisma) The game’s skills are organized into four categories. Combat skills include bow, dodge, melee, and throwing. Thieving skills include concealment, pickpocket, silent move, and spot trap. Social skills include gambling, haggling, persuasion, and healing. Yeah – I’m not sure why healing got grouped in there either. Lastly are technological skills, which include firearms, pick lock, repair, and arm/disarm traps. Lastly, fate points are sometimes awarded which allow players to guarantee a critical hit, heal all damage, or succeed in a skill check.

In the steampunk world of Arcanum, magick and technology exist as opposing forces. If you’re a technologist magic doesn’t work as well on you, and your aptitude for anything magical is poor, and the reverse holds true. A technologist can study the disciplines of herbology, chemistry, electricity, explosives, mechanical, therapeutics, weapon/armor smithing, and gun smithing. A mage can study any of the colleges of magic: conveyance, divination, force, mental, meta, morph, nature, summoning, temporal, black or white necromantic, and any of the four elemental colleges. Each of the technological disciplines and each of the magical colleges have numerous schematics and spells.

Maybe its my background as a tabletop RPG player, but I’m inordinately interested in systems such as these. Typically, they either work really well, or else crash and burn. The obvious complexity in Arcana’s rules system fascinates me, and I’m sorry that I didn’t go further with the game.

Baldur’s Gate 2 / Temple of Elemental Evil

I’m grouping Baldur’s Gate and Temple of Elemental Evil in this case because they both use the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. Baldur’s Gate 2 used Dungeons and Dragons second edition rules, and gave you some fantastic options for customizing your character. I’ve created more multi-classed and dual-classed characters in Baldur’s Gate than I can shake a stick at. The character kits and proficiencies you could choose allowed you to have a wizard who used a bow, a kensai/invoker, or a cleric who could backstab. I’ve tried a number of weird and powerful combinations, and they’re a lot of fun.

Temple of Elemental Evil was plagued with bugs, but it had such a wonderfully-realized interpretation of the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset that it was hard not to love it. It was a true turn-based game, unlike the pause-based gameplay of Baldur’s Gate, but it allowed for so many tactical decisions. You could use a ready action to have your archer shoot any enemy wizards who began casting a spell so as to interrupt them. You could use a charge action to get the additional movement before an attack, and accept both the attack bonus and defense penalties that came along with the charge. You could even make the always-useful five-foot adjust. Those of us already familiar with Dungeons and Dragon’s tabletop rules took to the gameplay like a fish to water. Too bad so many parts of the game were buggy.

It’s hard for me to talk about D&D games without mentioning Neverwinter Nights, so… Neverwinter Nights. Yes, I spent a solid year in the creation toolkit almost nightly building my own adventure, but the actual gameplay was nothing compared to ToEE and BG 2.

Dragon Age: Origins

Although much of the goodwill I once had for Dragon Age was worn away by the Awakening expansion, the game did a lot of things right, and the new ruleset created for the game works very well. Having such a well-made RPG with only three character classes is unheard of, but works very well. I love the way that the thief’s backstab works; strategic combat games so often ignore the direction a character is facing. The system of spells, talents, and skills is terrific: trap-making, herbalism, and poison-making are all well-implemented, and I’m a fan of the way area effect spells work. I’m glad to use the cones and burst-area spells, but I wish the game had some line-effect spells like lightning bolt and Aganazzer’s Scorcher from Baldur’s Gate.

SPECIAL

The SPECIAL system is used in the Fallout games, and is based largely on GURPS. The various Fallout games have used many minor variations on the SPECIAL system, but the core seven attributes, percentage-based skills, and perks aquired as you level up have remained a constant. The system’s name is an acronym which draws its name from the seven core attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.

Ultima V

This system is 25 years old. It’s old school, and it works. One of the main things that had always stuck out to me is the fact that occasionally, one of my faster characters would end up attacking twice before an enemy would get a turn. There’s a speed mechanic in place that takes your character’s dexterity and the weapon he’s using into account when calculating whose turn it is.

Doing a bit more research online, I uncovered this document (pdf) which explains a lot about how the system works. Very well designed in my opinion.

I’d like to give an honorable mention to Dungeon Siege, Elder Scrolls, and any other systems that employ an improve-skills-as-you-use-them methodology. I’ve always liked that approach.

I was never a huge fan of the first title in the Mass Effect series. While it did many things well, it never grabbed me as it had so many other players. So going into Mass Effect 2, my expectations were pretty low.

I love the setting of Mass Effect. The progenitor race, the mass relays, the Citadel, the interspecies politics. And as much as I’ve never been a fan of the alien species in Star Trek and Star Wars, the races of Mass Effect were as well done as could be expected. Personally, I’d much prefer that aliens were more than overly short, tall, fat, skinny, or muscular humans with face prostheses.

Bioware also does a great job with its characters. While I found Miranda and Jacob to be fairly boring, many of the other characters were very well done. Mordin was my personal favorite, and as much as I didn’t love the first game, the return of Tali and Garrus was very nice. Tali grew on me. Jack annoyed me, which made her memorable. Grunt became that supremely useful guy who I never got close to. Thane and Samara made very nice late additions to my group. All the characters were well fleshed-out, probably aided by the fact that I did all the loyalty missions, even if I did succeed in pissing off Jack and Legion to the point where they weren’t loyal anymore.

I had heard so many good things about the female Shepherd voice actress that I played the femme-Shep. I enjoyed it. She feels much less generic than the male Shepherd I’d played in the first game. I tried to romance Miranda, but was never able to make anything happen. Maybe it’s because I’d had a romantic rendezvous with Garrus.

Somewhere around the 50%-65% mark in the game, I developed a theory. It turned out to be totally false, but I think my theory was almost more interesting than the game’s actual plot. If you haven’t yet played Mass Effect 2 and want to avoid spoilers, skip the rest of this paragraph. No spoilers after the ending of this paragraph – this is your last warning. Okay. So after I learned that the Collectors were harvesting human genetic material, I knew that they needed it but not why. My theory was that they wanted Shepherd’s DNA. I thought that perhaps Shepherd was resurrected for the sole purpose of serving the Reapers’ ends, although the details were fuzzy. Following that line of thought, I’d theorized that The Illusive Man was actually an illusion, and controlled by the Reapers to boot. And while my theory was totally wrong and totally bogus, I’m willing to bet that we learn in Mass Effect 3 that he’s actually an AI. Insanely ironic that the leader of a radical pro-human organization isn’t actually human.

As mediocre as I found the majority of Mass Effect 2, the finale made it all worthwhile. The game’s end segment was fantastic. I’ve long been a fan of killing off the main characters in a story as a way of maintaining dramatic tension, and Mass Effect uses this to great effect in the game’s end sequence. Another part of what made it great and unpredictable is the fact that while I knew that it was possible for all characters to live or die depending on your actions, it wasn’t clear what actions determined the fates of the game’s characters. Loyalty? How much damage they’d taken in a mission? Something else? I’m still really not sure. The following game events are not really spoilers since they pertain to my playthrough specifically and likely will not happen in your playthrough. Legion died after successfully navigating an air vent, and he wasn’t loyal to me after I’d taken Tali’s side in an argument. But I also lost Grunt, who was totally loyal. And in regards to my other non-loyal character, it had appeared that Jack survived after escorting us through a segment using her biotic bubble, but it later showed me a quick pan of her dead body while Collectors ran past. Not sure what happened there. But I was nearly tempted to give that last segment another playthrough. Not gonna happen at this point though. I’ve uninstalled Mass Effect 2 and I’m playing the next game.