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Rumor: Mass Effect 2 to Receive Massive Amounts of DLC

Nathan Grayson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:43:02 -0600

The original Mass Effect rocked our socks. Its DLC, though? Not so much. Fortunately, if a Microsoft Expert Zone retailer quiz is to be believed, BioWare’s making up for Mass Effect’s DLC deficiency in a big way with Mass Effect 2.

According to the quiz, planned content includes “episodic combat via DLC, weapon and armor packs, new downloadable characters for the campaign experience, new downloadable worlds, as well as full campaign expansions for download.”

Here’s hoping that BioWare doesn’t also take the EA Renegade route and peddle things like cheat codes and cosmetic upgrades for exorbitant prices.”Exorbitant,” in this case, meaning “anything other than free.”

Mass Effect 2 Gets Late January Release Date

Nathan Grayson — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:59:38 -0500

BioWare’s finally pegged Mass Effect 2 with a concrete release date and, well, early 2010’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Joining games like BioShock 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Max Payne 3, ME2 has relocated from the twilight of 2009 to the dawn of 2010. More specifically, the game’s dropping on January 26.

BioWare and EA have also decided to sweeten the pot with some particularly potent preorder bonuses. Preorder from GameStop and you’ll score two in-game items, the Terminus Armor and the M-90 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon. Or, if you put down money on ME2 at any other brick-and-mortar outlets, the Inferno Armor is yours to keep.

The one thing we can’t procure by preordering, though? More time. Dragon Age: Origins, BioWare’s latest 100-hour jaunt into the realm of swords ‘n’ sorcery, is coming out in November. With Mass Effect 2 now making landfall in January, that’s two BioWare RPGs within three months. What to do? Hmmm.

Guess we’ll just have to spend even more time playing videogames. What a shame.

Can’t Wait for Mass Effect 2? Good, Because You Won’t Have to

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:09:24 -0500

After launching to much fanfare on the Xbox 360, the original Mass Effect disengaged its warp drive and sort of just floated over the PC. Granted, we were given a nice, long laundry list of improvements for our troubles, but still, we’d rather have gotten our shiny new game when it was still shiny and new. Fortunately, though, Mass Effect 2’s PC edition is launching day-and-date with its Xbox counterpart, BioWare said in an interview with VG247.

“This time round, doing it at the same time for a [simultaneous-ship], we can control the differences much more smoothly because it’s the same team building it now,” said Mass Effect 2 associate producer Jesse Houston.

“We learned a lot from building the PC version before, and having built it six months later there was a big difference. So we actually took what we learned from PC and put it back into 360. Fundamentally, we want you to have the same gameplay experience, but just with the difference in controls.”

Both versions of Mass Effect 2 launch this spring. Which is a shame for Microsoft, really, because we would’ve bought 360 Xbox 360s if it meant being able to play this game. Oh well, we're sure they’ll catch us the next time we’re willing to spend $72,000 on a single game. Yep. No biggie.

The Game Boy: How Hardcore Gamers Wrecked My E3

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:30:57 -0500

There was something different about this year’s E3. Ok, aside from the 30,000 or so extra people and the occasional, chuckle-inducing swine flu masks strapped to the faces of germophobic show-goers. It was something subtle – invisible, even – but it happened with a great deal of frequency.

It was cheering.

Clapping, laughter, excitement. By and large, at this year’s show, people really, really liked what they saw. This should be a good thing, but in my cranky, cantankerous opinion, it’s not. Why? Because every last cheer, whistle, and imitation air horn blast sounded in raucous approval of the status quo. Another FPS. Another God of War clone. “Our game is a lot like Half-Life, but mixed with Halo,” developers would cheerily exclaim, bathing in the glow of audience members’ beaming smiles.

From me, however, E3’s flood of samey shooters and risk-free sequels elicited only one reaction: a quiet cry of “Down with the hardcore.” Allow me to explain.

As I mentioned earlier, most every big ticket title at this year’s E3 was some sort of rehash, sequel, or clone. Here’s a quick list of particularly obvious offenders: Modern Warfare 2, BioShock 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo: ODST, Halo: Reach, Dante’s Inferno, Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Assassin’s Creed 2, Crysis 2, Mass Effect 2, Alpha Protocol, etc, etc, etc. That’s not to say that my fanboy froth isn’t overflowing for many of those games; it is. I came away from E3 jumpy (though that might’ve been the fault of LA’s less-than-friendly neighborhoods) and excited as could be. However, I’m excited for me. Right now. I’m not, however, excited for the future of the gaming industry.

E3 showed me that the industry has finally solved the puzzle that is the hardcore gamer. And now, like the savvy players it serves, the industry intends to exploit the crap out of its newly acquired knowledge. See, as it turns out, the solution to said puzzle isn’t all that difficult. Just stop giving hardcore gamers what you think is best and instead hand them everything they ask for on a silver platter. Oh, and use the word “hardcore” a lot. Every other sentence, if you can.

And what do hardcore gamers appear to want, as evidenced by sales numbers and – of course – cheers? More of the same. But bigger. Like, with more dudes and cooler guns. Oh, and graphics! Don’t forget those. Never forget those. Don’t worry, though; E3 delivered in spades.

My favorite bit occurred when Sony announced its new ~~worst kept secret ever~~ motion controller, and immediately proceeded to shy away from innovative, interesting uses for the bleeding-edge tech, instead opting to show us how it could be used for a – you guessed it – first-person shooter.

But what else would Sony have demoed its take on the waggle wand with, you ask? Surely not casual games, you probably wince, as the words dance through your Mountain Dew-hardened hardcore body like some kind of foreign virus. Well, to be perfectly honest, yeah – I’d have been much happier if most companies hadn’t treated their casual titles like attic-dwelling high school dropouts who don’t even get a place on the family Christmas card.

At least casual gamers haven’t been “solved” yet. Hardcore gamers are two parts FPS, one part RTS, one part Action, with sequels scattered liberally throughout, but casual gamers aren’t so easy. So long as non-gamers and casual gamers still exist, developers and publishers will have to try. Creativity and new ideas are the only way to lure in potential buyers who, thus far, have proved impervious to the industry’s advances. And for now, I’m thinking tiny timewasters and other games typically dismissed as casual fare will provide the best – and maybe only -- glimpses of novel gameplay ideas we’ll get from big, triple-A publishers. Which is a huge shame, because whether you like their games or not, those big-name studios are bursting with talent, a resource that – unlike the bland tastes of the hardcore gamer – isn’t being adequately mined.

Maybe when (if?) the economy is resuscitated back into stable condition, big-budget games might get a new infusion of creativity, but even then, companies like money. So long as we keep spending, they’ll keep dishing out the same stale goods. But beyond that unlikely avenue, is there hope? Perhaps. Maybe, due to increasing development costs, major publishers will eventually scale back development anyway, hopefully leading to more innovation. Or maybe this is the beginning of the fabled Indie Revolution, where indie games become our only source of innovative nourishment while multimillion dollar corporations, well, do exactly as I outlined in this article. Who knows?

All I can say for sure is this: Hardcore gaming as it is now – at least, in the eyes of big-name publishers – is caught in a big, uninteresting loop. Companies have solved the hardcore gamer puzzle, and now they’re receiving their monetary prize. Hardcore gamers, from what I can tell, couldn’t be happier.

Man, getting exactly what you purportedly want really sucks.

First Mass Effect 2 Trailer Says R.I.P. Commander Shepard

Nathan Grayson — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:23:29 -0600

The original Mass Effect may still be priming the DLC buffet for one or two more bites, but that isn’t stopping BioWare from slipping gamers a small dose of its sequel.

The trailer in question can be seen here, and – for those who are deathly afraid of even the remote possibility of a Rickroll and would rather not click that link – not-so-vaguely suggests that Commander Shepard (your main guy or gal in Mass Effect) suffered a quick and clean off-screen death. And a permanent one at that – not simply due to bad camera angles.

But, to be honest, we’re thinking the rumors of Shepard’s death have been greatly exaggerated, mostly because the only other tidbit BioWare’s dropped concerning 2Mass2Furious involves reusing save files from Mass Effect – probably for stat boosts, character profiles, and other such pieces of space bling. Otherwise, BioWare could’ve tossed in a few “So, how about that one guy who saved the universe that one time?” questions, ala Knights of the Old Republic 2, and called it a day.

So, what do you think?