Mass Effect 3 with Kinect

     For the last two days, I've had the pleasure of playing Mass Effect 3 with the Kinect support and while I have plenty of hours left before I finish it (and possibly complain over the ending), I wanted to give an honest review of the gameplay before I would need to comment on the story, the ending, and how it might be lacking in some way.


     The game picks up a few months after the end of Mass Effect 2, and the improvement in graphics is the first thing of note as you walk through the halls on Earth on your way to see the council that has been keeping you under house arrest. Of course, since I am using my Kinect, my first "oh-god-how-cool-is-this" moment is when I noticed that even the conversation options can be spoken into the Kinect, making the conversations more natural and interactive. This, of course, makes me think of the future in ten years when we'll just speak normally without pre-determined options and the characters understand us and the conversation continues according to what we Really want to say, but I digress...

     After about five minutes of catching up story-wise, we jump right into some action sequences, re-learning the interface and controls, and shooting the bad guys. A race to escape Earth in order to rally the other races to band together to fight the Reapers (aka, the rest of the game) of course ensues.

    I was surprised how quickly I changed from Disc 1 to Disc 2 as I progressed through the game, but then since I haven't finished it I don't know if it doubles back to Disc 1 again later like some games have done in the past, so I'll have that in the Post-Mortem review after I've finished it. The story is strong, the action sequences are as wonderful as ever, and the Kinect interface to control and direct your allies makes the game so much better it is astounding. The halls of my house ring with "Liara: Singularity! Garrus: Overload!" and "Grenade!" as I make my way through battle after battle. The conversation options, as always, determine whether you continue down your Paragon or Renegade paths. I have only noticed one thing I don't like, and it might be my Xbox more than the game. Occasionally, at the end of a conversation with another character, it will seem to freeze for a few moments before continuing on. The game music keeps going, but the characters involved in the conversation (usually when its doing a close up on someone's face) simply stops for about 30-45 seconds, which is just enough for me to worry about it having frozen, and not enough for me to reach for the power button before it starts up again and keeps going.

     I haven't gone through the advanced training modules in the private console the commander has in order to see if it gives the Kinect commands in there, but they've been intuitive enough for me to figure them out rather easily. I'll give some examples below:

      Attack - Tells your party (or a certain person if you say their name first) to attack the enemy in your sights.
      Follow/Follow me - Has your allies regroup around you.
      <Name> - If you state someone's name and look at a certain location, they'll move there. Keep this in mind as you try to remember everyone's powers, so that you don't make them walk somewhere while trying to remember what the name of what you want them to do is.
      <Power> - If you only have one character with a particular power (singularity, incinerate, etc), simply stating the power you want used is enough to have someone do it at the enemy in your sights. Very handy, trust me.
      Grenade - If you simply say/yell grenade, your character will throw it. If you say someone else's name first, that person will throw a grenade. Both are especially helpful against armored enemies and big mechs, as well as brutes.


       So, gameplay-wise, my review ends here only because I want the Post-Mortem to be the in-depth story and details review that we all expect from a review after the game has been utterly obliterated.


Gameplay without Kinect:  8/10
Gameplay with Kinect:     10/10
Storyline so far:                  9/10
Graphics:                           9/10

Overall Score:                   9/10

Battlefield 3 - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

I finally got time to check out Battlefield 3 and play through and I've got some interesting things of note, some quirky and others plain ridiculous. Please note, all of this review is on the Story Mode only, not on the online multiplayer mode at all.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Why aren't you including the Multiplayer?" Well, I have three very good reasons. First, when I buy a game I usually play on my own. If its a Co-Op multiplayer, I can usually try to drag one of my FPS-loving friends over, but otherwise its just me. Second, I game for the story. Random running around and killing people online doesn't fulfill me. Instead, give me a strong story and re-play-ability and you've sold me on a great game. Lastly, I don't have XBOX Live, since I've never needed it, so no multiplayer online for me.


The Good:
Being a fan of Battlefield: Bad Company and Bad Company 2, I hoped for good fights, better graphics and a good story-line. I wasn't disappointed. The graphics are crisp and smooth, and I remember looking at several different levels and thinking part of it looked more the part of a movie than a video game. The fights were intense (I was on Normal) and good enough to get me killed once or twice on the tougher levels. Some of the levels have a bit of a "what the heck am I doing right now" problem if you don't pay close attention to the dialogue (and a couple of times, even when you do), but for the most part the logical step takes you to where you need to be. The story was insightful, original, and interesting; everything I have come to expect from Battlefield. The weapons were pretty good, I ended up with some favorites that I could consistently find and use. I also liked that most weapons let you switch between single shots and short bursts, which is great if (like me) you're either making sure to be a good shot or conserving ammo. The story allowed for various different kinds of missions, making everyone happy if only for one or two specific missions.

The Bad:
Mind you, a couple of these are me being picky because of the genre and the way most games let you do things. First off, I spent half the beginning of the game saying to myself "if I had a Sniper Rifle..." anytime I was hunched over behind cover wondering who was shooting at me and from where. This is an incredibly minor thing, since ... I spend most shooter games thinking this.

Here's something a bit more major (SPOILER): There's a small section of a Snipe Mission (obviously my favorite mission) where I kept failing. Failing without dying. It actually looked like I was dying for no reason. So here's what the issue was: You and your sniping partner come across a guy you need to kill with your knife. My natural inclination when taking someone out stealthily is "go slow, don't make noise, do it right". Nope. That was my problem. The only way to get past this part is to RUN at TOP SPEED and NOISY towards the guy and knife him. This makes little to no sense, and goes against anything most military games or military training teach as far as I know. Especially in this particular place, where there's lots of debris, metal and wooden planks that would obviously make noise as you run over them (especially if you'd trip), so slow and steady would SEEM to be the way to go. So I died about 9 times trying to kill a single guy the right way, and the only way to get past is to pretend to be Forrest Gump and RUN at him.

The Ugly:
The Ugliest part, honestly, was the knifing incident, though I did have one problem the first time I played it. I was playing for less than a half hour and the game froze. I thought it was pretty odd, the game freezing especially so quickly. Luckily, it didn't happen again, so I'm assuming my Xbox360 was just having a bad day. I was disappointed that the story was a bit short (though nowhere near as short as Homefront, for example), but the action made up for it.

Here's something that needs to fall under Ugly just because it is the strangest thing I've ever seen: Battlefield 2 comes in two disks. The Story mode and the Multiplayer mode. Perfectly normal, yes? No. Multiplayer is Disc 1 and Story mode is Disc 2. HUH? WHAT? Why is the STORY/Single Player on Disc 2. Shouldn't someone want to play through the normal game BEFORE jumping online and playing multiplayer? And even if they wanted to skip the story... Why wouldn't they just be able to jump to Disc 2 on their own. Why the prompt to skip the storyline? Were they that ashamed of the story? It was Good!! What the heck?!

All in all, the Good make up for the Bad and the Ugly a few times over.

Overall Scores:
Graphics: 9/10
Weapons: 8/10
Replayability: 8/10
Story: 9/10
Running noisily to knife someone instead of stealthily: -47/10  (doesn't count in the scoring, but it's satisfying)

Total Score: 8.5 / 10