Now that the entire trilogy has been released, I have no doubt many of us must have completed at least 1 playthrough of the latest installment and gotten to the ending.

In fact I did a complete playthrough – I started a new character in ME1, continued the story in ME2, and finished it in ME3. It feels a little different because this character doesn’t have a break of 2 years in between games – I knew exactly what happened in ME1 when I imported him into ME2, and ME3. To me it’s like watching a trilogy movie all in one go.

What I can say is, after playing through again with a new Commander Shepard, I have a few thoughts.

Mass Effect:

The most RPG-feel of all the 3 games. You literally can go ANYWHERE, land on most of the planets. This is akin to traditional RPGs where you can enter any town and just walk around. In ME2 it became that you have to scan every planet to find “resources” to build your improvements for your weapons/armour/ship. Not the same thing to me.

You have a multitude of WEAPONS and ARMOUR to select. You can mod your armour and weapons to give different bonuses or effects!

This is sadly missing in ME2, but it made a comeback (somewhat) in ME3. In ME2, if I remember right, I only had a choice of THREE (3) assault rifles – Avenger, Vindicator, and Revenant (if I picked that up in the Collecter ship) as an example. I only had a choice of TWO (2) pistols – Predator and Carniflex. You get the idea. ME2 seemed to be more of an adventure story narrative than an RPG.

By the way, I had completely forgotten that we don’t need to “reload” our weapons in ME1 – I kept hitting “R” key between shots and kept throwing grenades out… doh!

Mass Effect 2:

Best story-telling in my opinion. The game starts off very dramatically with Normandy under attack, and the heart-tugging scene where Joker refuses to abandon ship and Shepard dies. Throughout the game when his friends realise he’s been brought back, you can actually see the conflict within them, to either be loyal to their friend or to be suspicious of who Commander Shepard is “working for”.

Plus, all the DLCs that Bioware has put out over the years for ME2 has made it, im my opinion, the best game in the series by far.

However, in ME2, the RPG-feel was lost. As mentioned above, I had very limited choice of weapons and armour. The differences in performance/protection of the weapons and armour aren’t even apparent to me, or not much anyway. No matter which class of Shepard I play, all the fights play out almost the same way – a lot of shooting plus a little biotics here and there.

This game is also where weapons went back to the “limited ammunition” style of needing you to reload. Of course, in the future, we don’t need bullets – we need heatsinks! Each time you use up a heatsink (a thermal clip), you eject it and pop a new one in to continue firing.

Mass Effect 3:

Sucky ending aside (personally, I didn’t think the ending sucked. Puzzling, maybe, but not “sucked”), ME3 tried to bring back some RPG elements. Now I get my choices of weapons back, and the differences in accuracy/damage is rather apparent. Using a Paladin pistol (the 190,000 credit white one) kills a mob faster than a Predator. The Valkyrie takes down a mob faster than the Avenger. Accuracy also plays a part here, because most times I aim for the head, but I don’t use scopes. Hence, I can say my favourite assault rifles would be the Valkyrie and the Mattlock followed very closely by the Vindicator.

Armour choices have been expanded, and I think ME3 finally managed a nice blend of action/RPG elements into the game. They even put in the “encumbrance” limit that is present in other RPG games. Only that in ME3, if you had carried your full complement of weapons as you did in ME1 and ME2, your biotic/tech powers would recharge oh-so-slowly. Actually I don’t see why being weighed down with weapons should slow your power recharging. In fact I don’t see why they should implement this game mechanic at all since in the previous 2 games, you had always carried all your weapons with you – pistol, shotgun, submachine gun, sniper rifle plus assault rifle. In ME2, you even get one HEAVY WEAPON to add to that list. And you did fine!

Conclusion

Mass Effect 2 is, in my opinion, the best game in the series, even without all the DLCs to expand the story. In fact I am re-playing ME2 right now, by importing my Shepards again from my previous playthrough of ME2.

Related articles

• BioWare: Mass Effect 3 brings back a lot of what was missing in ME2 (inquisitr.com)
• Mass Effect 2 Review Second Look (epicagames.com)
• 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Mass Effect (io9.com)

Garrus, left; Commander Shepard, center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By now, many fans of the Mass Effect series would have already completed at least 1 playthrough of the latest installment – Mass Effect 3.

Strangely, I have had friends and colleagues, some of whom are either non-gamers, or casual gamers (read: Facebook games players) come up to me and ask “What is Mass Effect?”

I have thought about it, and came to this conclusion:

Mass Effect is the story of one soldier. That’s it. When you come right down it, despite the Reapers and geth and everything else, it is the story of Commander Shepard. The enemies are the meat of the story. The entire story is told through the eyes of Commander Shepard. Like a typical epic movie, it starts off with Commander Shepard being evaluated for entry into the Spectre ranks of the Citadel. Then he discovers ancient artifacts that warn of an imminent invasion of a machine race, the Reapers. The next 2 games detail his exploits in trying to get the authorities to believe that an ancient race of machines is coming to wipe them out, but no one believed him. In the end, he had to work with a shady company (Cerberus) to gather info to fight the Reapers, and eventually (in its current incarnation), give his/her life to save the entire galaxy after uniting all the races under one banner.

Many parts of this story contain controversial topics which may or may not relate to current global situation. For example, in the Mass Effect world, same-sex relationships is not frowned on. Anyone and everyone is free to pursue a same-sex relationship (including Commander Shepard). On the other hand, you have the Genophage – an engineered disease which the Salarians developed, and delivered by the Turians, to the race of Krogans, to limit their population. Only a few out of a thousand births produce a living Krogan. The rest are stillborn. That means less than 0.01% of births produce a living baby. Atrocious? yes. Why was it developed? Because in the eyes of the government, Krogans reproduce too quickly and their numbers would overwhelm every other race in the galaxy if left unchecked. Thus the genophage was decided to be introduced, “for the good of the galaxy”.

Yet in the face of this injustice, the Krogans still fight for survival. They are akin to the Klingons of Star Trek – feared warriors that fight for honour and glory, and fighting is their way of life. Only the strong survive, and that is due in no small part to the genophage. Every Krogan looks out for only himself, and the chance to get a female pregnant. Depending on how you played ME3, the genophage may or may not be ended with Shepard’s help.

However, some topics seem to have been “left behind” in later games. For example, biotics appeared to be a frowned upon in ME1, but no mention of this social stigma is mentioned in ME2 and ME3. Biotics are like the “magic” of Mass Effect world. Humans exposed to Element Zero (or eezo) while in the womb may or may not have mutated to be able to manipulate mass effect fields, hence giving them powers like mages in fantasy lore. Humans (and it appears) and Asari needed implants to help control this ability. This topic was prevalent in ME1 and a number of missions were in the game to assist or destroy biotics. As I said, this is strangely missing in ME2 and ME3. By the later games, it seemed that everyone had “accepted” Biotics into normal society and they are treated as equals, or “no different” than other people.

In fact, by ME3, it may even appear that people come to revere biotics – There is a scene where Liara T’soni comes up to the Captain’s quarters on the Normandy and tells Shepard that she is making a time capsule which contains everything they knew about the galaxy, and wanted Shepard’s input on his/her own entry in the time capsule. If you select the option to tell Liara that it’s her call, Liara will mention that Shepard is a “powerful biotic” that helped to free the galaxy.

In the Mass Effect world, humans are the second-class citizens of the galaxy. This is in stark contrast to many sci-fi stories where humans are either the founders (Star Trek is a good example) of are very important to the galaxy.  Humans are the youngest race to achieve space-flight, being only a few hundred years. Other races like the volus, elcor and so on, have been spacefaring for thousands of years. Many of the other races have already had space flight when humans could barely speak and form communities. In this world, humans are often derided, frowned upon and shunned. In ME1 you can sometimes hear aliens telling humans that they should never have left their own system.

In ME2, this tone seemed to carry on, but less obvious. Mainly because the second game had you working with a pro-human shady corporation to advance human interest against the impending invasion of the Reapers. In ME3, when the Reapers attacked, humans had to beg the Council for help (and get turned down) before Shepard embarked on a quest to unite the galaxy against the Reapers.

In fact, Turians have the largest military fleet in the galaxy, and Asari commandos are the best and most feared special forces available. Krogans are the shock troops of the galaxy and well… humans are lumped together with other “lesser races” where we have nothing much to speak about.

So, what is Mass Effect? It is a story of a single soldier that can make a difference, and opening our eyes to a world where humans are not the dominant species, and aliens bicker like humans.

Related articles

• First Person: I Shouldn’t Have Feared The Reapers(escapistmagazine.com)

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• The Best of Mass Effect: Its Greatest Moments(bnbgaming.com)

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• Obligatory Mass Effect 3 Ending Post(mrrecursion.wordpress.com)

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I have always been a sci-fi fan, what with me being a Trekkie and all. I know SWTOR was released, but I’m not as much of a Star Wars fan as I am a Star Trek fan. Star Trek Online has released a new expansion-cum-makeover called “Season 5 – Call to Arms” where the skilltrees have been revamped and crafting practically overhauled. Mission progression from Ensign to Vice Admiral has been streamlined. All these are done to prepare for the Free-To-Play launch on 17 Jan 2012.

But, this post is not about those. This post about a new little game I discovered on Steam. It’s called SOL:Exodus. It’s made by a small independent company, hence it is labelled an “Indie game”. Indie games doesn’t necessarily mean “sucky games”.

As I mentioned before, I have always been a sci-fi and space combat fan. X3 is an open-ended game where I will NEVER be “finished with it”, hence my savegames are still there waiting to be reloaded and continued. However, Sol Exodus is a linear game, much like Wing Commander (anyone still remember that?) series or the Freespace series.

In the game you are a combat pilot, and the missions are linear – you finish one, the story brings you to the next encounter immediately. There is no trading, exploring, flying around aimlessly like you can do with open-ended games like X3 or Freelancer. Controls are pretty much intuitive for the most part. However I did have to get used to not having a “strafe” mode… in its place, there is a “slide” mode where you disengage all your X and Y axis and rotate to face a direction while going in another. This allows you to, for example, fly AWAY from enemies, while looking back and firing on them, all the while flying AWAY from them.

The graphics are pretty, and they use the Unreal 3 engine (usually used for FPS games like the Tom Clancy Splinter Cell series). Hence you can be sure of some pretty eye candy. However most of the time your attention will be on trying to stay alive and killing the bad guys, the “Children Of Dawn”.

Voice acting in the game is decent, and doesn’t sound stiff. Pretty good for an indie game actually. The in-game computer persona that is part of your ship is called “Cassi”. I would even go as far as to say, if you have played Mass Effect 2 before, she sounds a little like EDI there.

Anyway let me just show you a video clip of the actual gameplay. No it’s not a video capture from me – I found this on Youtube.

It just got released today actually, 25 Jan 2012. Well in US it is 25 Jan 2012, but over here it’s 26 Jan 2012.

It’s only US$9.99 on Steam, and it is worth it! I haven’t had such a mindless blast-everything-that-moves space combat game since Freespace 2. Hmm I may even reinstall Freespace 2 again one of these days and re-play the whole game… I kinda miss it..

Related articles

• Space Combat Sim SOL: Exodus Launches on Steam January 25 [Video] (kotaku.com)
• SOL: Exodus Launching Fighters This Wednesday (escapistmagazine.com)
• Further Spacebiff: SOL: Exodus (rockpapershotgun.com)

Like everyone else, currently I’m gripped by the Battlefield 3 fever. Like everyone else, I tried playing the single-player campaign then abandoned it and went online to multiplayer.

What I can say is – it’s bloody fun!

Oh yes I get shot up more times than I kill someone, but it’s still FUN!

The majority of the players online in those servers I managed to get online to, seem to be just casual players, kinda like me. It’s ok to lose a round. It’s ok to be dead. The important thing is we just run around and shoot people. It should make you feel sad though, because Singapore males are SUPPOSED to have served in the army (SAF), or are currently serving. The way they play and rush forward is…. reckless. People just run into a hail of bullets. People just hop into a tank and take off, without waiting for a gunner to climb on board. People just hop into an F18 and take off and shoot everything that is marked “enemy”.

Definitely not how a real army works.

But, it’s still fun as heck!

Of course there are some who attempt to rally and organise the attacking or defending force… but more often than not these guys are either ignored, or they get snotty remarks like “Chill, it’s only a game”. Kinda makes you disheartened when you see remarks like that when someone tries to organise and rally an attack.

Anyway before I leave, here’s a video of the Single Player campaign mission – the first one. All settings are maxxed out (ie ULTRA).

See you online!

Yeah in Star Trek Online, every mission is called an “episode” and every expansion is called a “Season”, just like the TV series.

Anyway the major update in Season 4 is the ground combat. It underwent a revamp and now features an over-the-shoulder shooter mode (very much like Mass Effect) as well as the more traditional mode, dubbed “RPG mode”. There were many limitations in the original “RPG mode”, such as you can’t throw grenades in between enemies to take them all out. You must have 1 enemy targetted before you can throw, and that enemy may not be in the optimal position to affect as many enemies as you’d like.

There are a bunch of other fixes and game re-balancing too (otherwise known as “nerfing“) but on the whole, this expansion made the game much better. Many redundant skills  have been renamed or re-powered. Weapons now sport their own unique firing sounds, and no longer shares the sound with other weapons. For example in the past, by listening to the sound, you couldn’t tell if it was a Tetryon rifle being fired or a Disruptor Rifle. Now you can. They both sound different.

Graphics underwent a change too. Many effects have been “refined”, such as the plasma fire from a grenade. If you’re on plasma fire, now the Breen weapon can put you out too (part of the changes). This is pretty cool.

Without wasting too much time, here’s a video clip of me playing a ground missions to demonstrate the new Mass Effect-shooter mode.

See you in the game!

Image via Wikipedia

Right now Steam is having its Summer Sale. There’s a heap of games being offered for a 24-hour discount, and needless to say I wasn’t able to resist the temptation and bought Just Cause, Just Cause 2 plus all DLCs, and Homefront.

In this post I’ll talk about Just Cause 2, one of the hidden gems of gaming. I don’t know how I could have missed this when it came out earlier, but I am glad I picked it up.

I’m a fan of “exploration” in games. Well, other than FPS games where the story is linear and you don’t really get to wander out too much to explore. In RPGs though, usually I do 1 or 2 main storyline quest and then I’ll just start talking to people and wander off doing my own thing until it’s time to move the story forward and I’ll do the next main quest.

In a lot of ways, Just Cause 2 is very similar to an RPG. In the game, you are a super spy – Rico. At the beginning of the game you’re told that your old friend and mentor, Sheldon, may have gone rogue, and it is your job to locate him and perhaps, eliminate him. You jump out of the plane over the island country of Panau, located in South East Asia, and you’re off!

After going through the mandatory main quest + tutorial mission, you are basically left pretty much alone. You are told that there are 3 major factions on this island country, and your job is to get in close with them to get more intel (not the chip maker) about Sheldon.

Panau is a damn interesting place, especially more so since I’m in South East Asia, and this fictional island country is modelled after at least 2 countries that I can identify – Thailand, and Malaysia.

First off – all the signs, be it road signs, shop signs, billboards etc. They are all in a script that looks very much like Thai writings. I can’t read Thai, I can’t speak Thai, but they sure as heck look like Thai in the game to me. There is also a prevalence of  Tuk Tuks in the game, which is like the hallmark of Thai traffic. The vehicle is called a “tuk tuk” in the game too. I know Philippines and Indonesia have them too but they aren’t known as “Tuk tuks”. If you accidentally run over or hit a civilian while driving, they will curse at you either in English or in Cantonese (this is the part where I am reminded of Malaysia). The scenery, the landscapes are just beautiful. The roads are realllllly long, and sometimes you literally just drive around for 20 mins or so to get to the next mission. Then the cities, towns etc, have MALAY NAMES (like in Malaysia). Like there’s this place I remember offhand called “Pekan Buaya Tidur”. I know it probably means “Sleeping Crocodile village” or something but it’s very nice to see attempts at authenticity.

One of the earliest NPCs you will encounter is called “Jade Tan” (again reminds me of Malaysia, and Singapore, with this name) and her accent is just about correct for us here speaking to foreigners. The thing that got me was she actually said “Selamat Jalan!” at the end and left. That’s pretty damn cool! By the way, you devs, please listen up. The name “Tan” is pronounced “ton” here, like “a ton of bricks”. So it should sound like “Jade Ton”. My name is Tan too and I hate it when you guys call me Tan (as in “having a sun tan” way).

However, I think there is a bug with the road system. In the game, sometimes vehicles will go the WRONG WAY too up highway ramps. The arrow on the ground CLEARLY says I am going the right way, yet I can see cars and trucks coming HEAD ON at me up the ramp or even on highways IN MY LANE! Also, driving on the right side (like in America) is weird in Southeast Asia. I don’t think I have ever come across any countries here driving on the right.

Of the 3 factions, 2 of them had leaders that were pretty interesting to me. The Ular chief, spoke pretty much fluently but added sprinklings of “lah” in the speech, probably the devs trying to inject some authenticity into the game. However, it sounds so strange and the “lah”s seem to be placed at the wrong sentences. As a native speaker I immediately cringed when the Ular chief tried to speak like a local. As an example, here is how to use “lah” correctly. Instead of saying “Hurry up! We’re running out of time!”, we say “Faster lah! No time already!”. Yes, “lah” doesn’t HAVE to be at the end of a sentence, although it usually is. And there is no way we’re going to say “Comrade, your performance is exemplary lah” when we’re giving a real compliment. Adding a “lah” at the end turns the sentence into a sarcastic one – The meaning is now “Your performance is fantastic lah. Now the whole world knows we’re here” when we’re trying to be covert.

Then comes the Reaper chief. Her name is Bolo Santosi (what the hell kinda name is it for an ethnic “Chinese” anyway?). The information in-game tells me her group is made up of ethnic Chinese fighting against the Panau Government. Anyway. she is voiced by a true-blue Singaporean – Liz Sutherland. Apparently, according to IMDB, she’s born here in Singapore but currently based in London as an actress. While the accent is true-blue Singaporean Singlish (ACCENT ONLY), the way she spoke is definitely NOT the way we speak here. The grammar, sentence structure etc – they are all too western. Here, we clip sentences, drop “irrelevent” words like “the”, “a”, “at” etc. It is very apparent that she is reading from a script instead of speaking naturally like how we speak.

However, the saving grace is that her underlings, her men, all spoke with authentic Singlish accents but do not sound like they’re reading from a script. +1 for that!

And speaking of “lahs”, Bolo Santosi would be the PERFECT one to use “lahs” everywhere, but yet, there is none in her lines. And again, her lines are too western. Grammar is too perfect, sentence structure too precise.

Just Cause 2 is touted as a “free-roaming” game, as I mentioned in the beginning. After the initial missions, I just went driving around, meeting up with the faction leaders, doing their missions, or even just visiting towns and cities collecting Weapon and Vehicle upgrades hidden among them all. The interesting part of Just Cause 2 is that the hero has a grappling hook which can be used for multiple purposes. The most basic is of course to climb tall stuff – walls, buildings etc. The more esoteric ones are like to hook a car to a statue and then you drive the car and pull the statue down. Or, to hook onto a helicopter that’s firing at you on the ground, and you zip up there and hijack the helicopter and turn its guns onto your enemies!

By far the best use of this grappling hook, to me, is to TRAVEL. Just zip around the city, hooking buildings and swinging around like Spiderman. In fact, it’s EXACTLY like Spiderman I’d say. Except that Spidey doesn’t have a parachute that you can deploy if you missed the building and falling to the ground 40 storeys up *grin*. Also if you need to travel pretty far but lack a vehicle, you can always jump off a mountain and then use the parachute to sail to your location!

Oh yes did I mention that you are ENCOURAGED to cause mayhem and destruction too? Yes you get points for blowing up stuff. The bigger they are the more spectacularly they blow up, and yeah I get a weird sense of gratification from blowing stuff up too. Especially if you have an armed chopper and you train its weapons on stuff to blow them up. Realllly cool! You get points for blowing up as many things as you can under 60 seconds too! I think so far my record is 30 objects blown up in under 5 seconds.

I also love hijacking vehicles. There is really no point in sticking to just 1 vehicle that the Agency may or may not have provided for you. Just use that one and then go up to a vehicle that you fancy on the roads – jump over and hijack it! I love it!

In all, this game has an “RPG-feel” to it. A friend of mine commented that I should have played the Grand Theft Auto series, because they are similar to Just Cause 2 too. Maybe I should. Too bad though, cause I saw Steam had a sale of GTAs1-5 for only US$7.95 a couple of days back, but I didn’t pick them up.

Before I leave, have a look at the video below – it has most of the elements I talked about in this post – the zipping around, the hijacking etc.

Related articles

• Singlish (96lines.wordpress.com)
• The Malaysia ‘Lah’ (laurenzapata.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I haven’t written in a long while eh?

Fear not, I am making a comeback. Part of the reason why I have been “quiet” for almost a year, is that I have been engrossed in an MMO – Star Trek Online. I currently already have 4 max-level characters in the MMO, and I’m now starting on my 5th one, currently at level 2.

This is probably the first MMO that I feel that I won’t be quitting in the long run. Why?

Simple. Because it’s Trek.

I’ve been a Trekker (or Trekkie) since my teens. I started off with The Next Generation or TNG as it is more commonly known. After watching through all 7 seasons (no thanks to SBC at the time, now TCS. They abruptly stopped showing TNG after the 6th season), my interest in Trek grew to the point that I wanted to know more.

Also, as I also grew up with tiny 8-bit computers in the days of Atari, Amstrad, Sinclair and Commodore, I wished that someone would make a STAR TREK WORLD where I can be a part of. When MUDs came around in the mid-80s I was happy that finally I could play in a world (although a medieval one) with other people. As the years went on, text-based MUDS made way for graphical MMORPGs.

Finally, someone made a Star Trek MMORPG, a true world where Star Trek is alive! I’m finally HOME~!

Did you watch Star Trek by JJ Abrams, back in 2009? The one with the young Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the 17-year old Russian genius Chekov? You did? Cool.

Because Star Trek Online, the MMO, picks up where ST2009 left off, kinda. In the movie, we know Spock went through a black hole into an alternate timeline, ie the movie. Star Trek Online takes place parallel to those events, back in the original Star Trek universe.

As Spock disappeared, the Klingons broke off the alliance with Starfleet. Cardassians, Starfleet, and other familiar factions started a galactic war.

80 years after the events shown in the movie, is where the game begins. The year is 2401, this is the 25th Century. Welcome to Starfleet, Ensign!

The game itself manages to blend both space combat and ground combat into a pretty seamless (most of the time) gameplay. The tutorial section tells you that due to a battle with the Borg (yeah they’re here in the game too!), a ship has been disabled and needs help. You beam over and start doing the reparing, fighting, etc. When you complete the whole tutorial, you’ve helped push the Borg back, and are warping back to Sector 0,0,1 (That’s our solar system, Sol) to Earth Spacedock, to meet with Admiral Quinn.

Admiral Quinn then tells you that he was impressed with the way you handled yourself, and, in these desperate times, a desperate measure was taken – he’s giving you command of a Miranda-class light cruiser, even though you’re only a Lieutenant.

Now, as a Trekker, I recognise many elements of the original Trek lore, what we call canon. Many of the stories contain either recognizable locations, planets, or people. In fact, you get to meet many of the characters, or their children, from all the series – TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and of course, ENT. For example, remember the cute girl on Voyager, Naomi Wildman? Yeah she’s in the game. What about Miral Paris, the daughter of Tom Paris and B’elanna Torres? Yep she’s also in the game.

Worf too, is in the game, altho a visibly aged and more tired version.

As you work through the storyline, you level up and gain promotions in rank. As you rank up, Admiral Quinn starts giving you command of bigger and better ships. By the end of the game, you would have reached the rank of Vice Admiral, and would probably be in command of a Galaxy class or a Sovereign class ship. Or, a Defiant class, or an Intrepid class (Voyager).

There are other things present in the game that isn’t canon too. For example, money. As far as we know, money doesn’t exist in the future. But, Ferengis trade for Gold Pressed Latinum, apparently a galactic kind of currency. However, the game strangely uses another form of currency – Energy Credits. While GPLs are present in the game, and you can actually win GPLs at the Dabo tables (oh yes they’re in the game too!), you don’t actually use GPLs for anything other than buying cloaking emitters to disguise your ship. This is only a cosmetic change – it does not affect gameplay in any way.

Also, during the story and missions, you will come across many items like personal force fields (shields) and armour. Those aren’t canon in the sense that we don’t see them on screen at all whether in movies or on TV episodes. But, they exist in the game.

Also, to cater to different tastes of the individual players, Starfleet has “relaxed the uniform regulations”. So, you can wear ANY uniform from ANY era, with ANY colours you wished… even pink or green. You don’t have to follow the established colour codes.

So as you can imagine, running around Earth Spacedock (or ESD as it is known in the game) is fascinating. You can see players of all ranks running around with all kinds of costumes and uniforms. Each is a captain of his or her own ship and crew.

Speaking of crew, yes you do have a core bridge crew which you can train in specific skills to help you in space, or ground, missions.  You can dress each crew differently from each other too as you see fit. You only need to spend the game currency – ECs or Energy Credits, at the tailor’s to do so.

Honestly if you’re not a Trekkie/Trekker, you may find the game a little daunting, not know what to do, or where to go. Familiar names like “Deep Space Nine” or “Q’onos” to us would be bewildering to a non-Trekker. They won’t know what a Bat’leth is or what Klingons are like. However, Cryptic has tried to ease the non-Trekker into the game as much as possible.

However, Trekkers will enjoy this game immensely.

The game is continuously improved. Each “expansion” is called a “Season”, and each mission is called an “episode”. Right now we’re at Season3, with Season 4 slated to come very soon. The major feature of Season 4 is the change in ground combat – to make it more like Mass Effect style of over-the-shoulder kind of thing. However if you’re used to the current way of fighting on the ground, you are free to switch back to this mode.

As for me, I think I will definitely switch over to the new mode!

Back in 2001, a new game hit the market – “Operation Flashpoint”. It was a new concept in First-Person gaming. It was eerily similar to an earlier game – SpecOps. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was a new and improved version of DID’s “Wargasm”.

In short, you play the game as a soldier. However, your soldier can climb into vehicles and enter buildings. Now, prior to 2001, games just didn’t allow you to do this. If you’re a foot soldier, you’re a foot soldier all the way through the game. Yes I know, games like Battlefield and Call of Duty all can do that, but they were all made AFTER 2001, after Operation Flashpoint led the way.

Now somewhere along the way, the developers of Operation Flashpoint (ie the people who did the programming), Bohemia Interactive Studios (or BIS), had a falling out with the publisher, Codemasters. The result of this falling out was that Codemasters kept the title “Operation Flashpoint”, and thus BIS couldn’t use it anymore for any of their future games. So BIS changed the new versions to “Armed Assault” (in America it’s called “Combat Arms”). To the gamers, the name didn’t matter – what mattered was that BIS made new and improved version of the game we loved – Operation Flashpoint.

At this time, Armed Assault is already in its second incarnation – Armed Assault 2 (or ARMA2). In total, BIS produced 3 very successful games – Operation Flashpoint, the original, Armed Assault, and Armed Assault 2.

8 years later, Codemasters finally caught up with BIS, and released the SECOND Operation Flashpoint game. Affectionately referred to as “OFP2” for “Operation Flashpoint 2″, Dragon Rising is a totally different beast from BIS’s versions.

First and foremost, what comes to mind immediately was the awkwardness of issuing commands in OFPDR. When you are busy fighting, running, shooting etc, hitting the command key stops you dead in your tracks. Not only that, because the command radial uses the same WASD keys to select your commands, you often end up issuing the WRONG command to your squad. I have had it happen to me many times when I wanted to order them to FOLLOW ME and ended up telling them to MOVE somewhere else just because I was panicking and pressed W to go forward, and forgetting I was still in the command radial. All the time I’m in the command dial getting my fingers all knotted up, I’m standing still in the game world, being shot at.

In contrast, in ARMA2, even though they have introduced a new “quick command” key, the old key sequences still work. For veterans of the original game since, we’ve kind of memorised where each command goes, and we kind of instinctively hit the correct sequence without even needing to look at the screen. The new “Quick Command” feature is thus almost never used by me, but I can forsee that new players will find it useful. As an example, right now even as I’m typing, I can tell you that the command sequence to tell the whole squad to HALT is 1-6, and to go into stealth mode is 7-1. The command sequence to report status is 5-5, and to call for a medic, 5-4, and so on. Also, when the command option box is up on the screen, it does NOT interfere with you running, shooting, hiding or so on. You can issue a panicky “GET IN THE DAMN APC!!” (4-2-5) when you’re in the APC and watching your squad taking heavy fire, while still driving towards them without breaking the pace.

The next thing is something which I liked in OFPDR actually – the graphics engine seems more “optimised”, and framerates are at least 10 to 15 frames better than on ARMA2 for the same resolution. The movement is smoother, doing video capture didn’t “lag” the game much. In contrast, ARMA2 will sometimes slow down to a crawl during video capture. As an example, most times I see ARMA2 running at between 39 to 45 FPS on my PC. However with video capture turned on, it can drop to as low as 6 FPS! In OFPDR, the framerates were about 20 to 30 or so during video capture, and running at 50 to 60 FPS on normal plays.

The mission editor in ARMA2 is way more powerful than in OFPDR, but the scripting language (where most of the magic happens) is much easier in OFPDR than in ARMA2. As a comparison, I can make a simple “Attack that place and wipe out all enemies” in the OFPDR editor in under 20 minutes, complete with briefings and “objective complete” status flags. Compartively in ARMA2 I might need to spend a few hours getting the triggers, waypoints and other things all done for the same mission. The scripting language in ARMA2 is a little bit un-intuitive, unlike the one in OFPDR which uses LUA, which looks like a cross between C, Pascal, Basic, and Java. As long as you’ve done SOME programming in the past, doing event handling in OFPDR will be smooth sailing. Also, kudos to Codemaster for including the complete reference of commands, events and objects in the helpfile of the editor – no more hunting around on forums and such for some kind soul to gather all the neat info into a nice PDF reference.

The drawback of course, is that the mission editor isn’t as feature packed and powerful as ARMA’s. As a very simple example – you can’t give the player a different weapon from the default one in OFPDR editor. To do so, you need to fool around with other files (or ‘hacking the game’). In ARMA, you can easily just issue a command or 2 in the script to change the weapons – provided you know the exact objectIDs of course.

During normal play, it is easier to play OFPDR than ARMA2 even on the normal, easy mode. In OFPDR you have a compass strip on top which shows you position of ALL detected enemies, your waypoints, objectives and so on. In ARMA2, you have to use the compass, switch to map view etc to do the same. More realistic, but more troublesome for gameplay. Of course this makes ARMA harder to play too since most of the time you can’t see the enemies until you’ve been shot. In OFPDR, you get a nice feedback of whether you hit the enemy or killed him with a little white or red expanding crosshair. White means you hit something and did some damage but didn’t destroy/kill it, and red means it’s dead. So in ARMA, you may have missed the enemy, but you see him drop (he may just drop to a prone position) and should you move your sights away, he may shoot you back and kill you. in OFPDR you can tell for sure if it’s a hit or a kill.

Then we come to the availability of mods, maps, and missions from the respective communities. In many cases, the community actually overlaps – People who played the original Operation Flashpoint also play Armed Assault. As we all know, Armed Assault and its family has a HUGE library of mods, maps and missions made by players for other players. In this way the game doesn’t get deleted once you’ve completed it – other people will make more new missions or new campaigns for you to carry on playing. Comparatively though, OFPDR has very few missions and campaigns, and as far as I know, just 2 or 3 mods. No new models, no new army, no new aircraft, no new weapons etc. In ARMA, you can mod to your heart’s content. You can add Israeli forces, French forces, British SAS etc just by downloading the correct mods. In fact, in ARMA (the first one) someone actually re-did the whole Operation Flashpoint campaign into ARMA format – meaning the same missions, same objectives, but now with the new ARMA graphic engine and physics. I can’t wait to see if someone else would do the same in ARMA2.

So when we come right down to it, which is better? Well my answer is – I couldn’t choose I bought both (quite obvious huh?), and I play both. However I tend to take OFPDR as a “casual romp in the battlefield” and ARMA2 for when I wanna really “get into” the game.

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<RANT value=”copyprotect”>

The copy-protection on this however, is a little too extreme. It says it “requires” a constant Internet Connection for it to work. That’s lame, because what happens if you’re not on Broadband, but on dialup, and each minute you’re on dialup costs you money?! That is irrelevant in Singapore since everyone is already on Broadband, but it affects people in other locales.

Secondly, what happens if Ubisosft servers are experiencing heavy loads? We can’t connect to “authenticate” and thus we can’t play it? The North America launch is coming on 9th March, that is tomorrow. You can expect a sudden spike in users trying to authenticate to your servers, Ubisoft.

That’s exactly what happened to me the other day – Ubisoft Servers actually went down (see “Related Articles” below). The game just quit suddenly to desktop, and when I tried to relaunch, it was stuck at he Login screen of the launcher for about 5 mins. Then when the game started and I chose “Story Mode”, the game went to a screen saying “please wait, contacting server” and the only option available at that screen was “Exit To Windows”.

At least Bioware doesn’t force the requirement on the user. Dragon Age, for example, just says the achievements and scores won’t be updated on your web profile. Mass Effect 2 just tells you that you won’t get Cerberus goodies if you don’t have an internet connection. They do NOT stop you from playing their game!

And game companies wonder why people continue to get pirated copies.

</RANT>

Ok, enough with the rants.

The game itself is pretty impressive. After about 4 days of playing this, I can tell you one thing – I learnt alot more about Italy (and some bits of the Italian language) in these 4 days than I ever did at school.

The game takes place in Italy. It starts off in Florence, in 1476 or so. When you come across various landmarks, some of  which you have to climb, a database entry crops up  and you can read about the history of that place. Currently my playthrough has me stationed in Venice (or “Venezia” as they called it). The game hero also is friends with the famous Leonardo Da Vinci, and it’s funny how they portrayed him in the game. Funny as in “ha ha” funny.

Now you get 2 hidden blades compared to Altair, for one thing. You can do double kills silently. You can also fight unarmed, and then disarm your opponent and use HIS weapon against him.  I love doing that to those guys in armour carrying lances (“Brutes” as they are called in the game). I always disarm them and use their weapon back on them.

Also, they made Assassin’s Creed 2 more RPG-like. Now you can upgrade your armour and weapons. You earn money by doing sidequests like “Beat Up The Husband” and “Assassin Contracts”. In the story, you are given a pretty run-down villa and you can use the money you earned to upgrade it. An upgraded villa provides a source of passive income for you. Every once in a while, you should return to your villa and collect the money. Right now my villa provides me about 74,000 worth of florins, which I take it to be the currency of Italy during the Renaissance. Trust me, that is a lot of money. You can buy anything with that amount of money, not counting the income you have from completing quests and continuing with the story. There was once I had about 200,000 florins on me all at once, before I spent it on upgrading the Villa and buying weapons and armour and such.

They also introduced new ways you can kill silently. Dropping from a ledge will activate the air-kill. If you’re hanging off a ledge below someone, you can reach up, pierce him with the hidden blade and pull him over the edge in one fluid motion. Or, you can hide in a haystack, wait for your victim to come along and then reach out, pierce him with the blade, and pull him into the haystack.

Here’s a video of me doing a funny series of haystack kills on the city guards:

The one thing I found very interesting was the Italian language, and realising where our modern words came from. “Coffee” is “cafe”, and milk is “latte”. Then I noticed they called young ladies “madonna”. Interesting indeed!

There are also interesting and funny tidbits of information about famous historical figures in the game. For example, I took on a courier mission and read the note – it was from Michaelangelo (yes, THAT Michaelangelo, not the Ninja Turtle) to his father, explaining why he quit school and wanted to go into painting and sculpting. He hoped his father won’t be too disappointed and that he’ll prove that it was the right decision one day, and hoped his father will forgive him.

Right now I’ve spent about 40 hours in the game, and I’m still only halfway through I think. As I said before, the current gameplay only placed me in Venice, having just escorted Leonardo Da Vinci there.

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The amazing thing is that I keep discovering small bits and pieces of funny things I never saw the first 4 times. The video below is a compilation of the majority of the funny bits:

Joker flirts with EDI:

However, this video below is my all-time favourite moment in Mass Effect 2:

I am guessing this will be my last playthrough for Mass Effect 2, before putting all my Shepards on the shelf (or on my harddisk) and waiting patiently for Mass Effect 3. I’ve done almost everything different among all the 5 Shepards – from completely evil to completely good, and variations in-between. I’ve also blown up the enemy base, and kept it. I have done little things a bit different between the 5 playthroughs. I would like to see how each different thing I did now would impact the outcome in Mass Effect 3.