My bags were packed for the 13 hour drive to southwestern Ohio to visit my family for Thanksgiving. Doing some kitchen cleaning, I had bottles all over the counter and put cleaning solution into a juice glass so I could dip the cloths and sponge into it. Unfortunately I also set my drink — also in a juice glass — among the clutter. You can guess what followed…
So after a trip to the doctor and barely being able to move most of Wednesday, that meant I was unable to drive to see the family. I could have driven yesterday but by the time I’d arrived I would have missed the festivities and most of the family members. Given how I felt and what it did to my muscles, etc. that day, I am thankful I even woke up at all after the several naps I ended up taking, but all is well now. I was also mostly unable to move into the office to sit at the PC to get any gaming going on once I felt up to it that evening, so I stuck with the 360 since I was on the couch anyway and with console gaming I can recline, lie down, and just generally get comfortable instead of sitting upright at a desk with a keyboard in front of me all the time. It sucks that it happened, I really wanted to see my family, but it also emphasized one of the drawbacks of living alone. My girlfriend flew to be with her family, I was supposed to be with mine but I’m here and a Bad Thing happened. What if I’d been unable to get myself to the doctor? What if I’d not woken up? It’s hard telling how long it may have been before my girlfriend visited unannounced after so many unanswered phone calls. Just something for me to think about…
Anyway, enough morbid talk…
First, the New Xbox Experience, or NXE (the Xbox guys pronounce it “Nixie”) came out last week. I installed it and made an avatar immediately but otherwise have been fairly firmly entrenched in LOTRO. I wasn’t being especially imaginative and just went for the polo, cargo shorts and shades look since I’m a Florida guy and I tend to dress that way at home.
I like aspects of the NXE’s interface; it’s polished, friendly and leaning towards the Apple end of the spectrum for style. However it’s slower than the old “blade” interface, which is still available by pressing the Guide button on your controller. It’s not slower in terms of performance, but slower getting to what I want because everything has been separated into different categories and it now defaults to a “Spotlight” category with adds for all the new games and events on Live rather than “My Xbox” like it used to. Avatars are cool, though at the end of the day I find it strange that it took Rare four years to develop them. I mean… they don’t do that much, how hard could it be? Of course, this opens up the opportunity for yet more micro-transactions using the abominable Microsoft Points (seriously, why can’t we just pay the exact price for what we want instead of buying bulk “points?”) for new clothes, etc. for our avatars. In fact, they’ve already announced that the first avatar DLC will be free, but the rest will not. Some of the new Premium Themes also include game-related avatar outfits as well. Expect the trend to continue. Live customers are fully used to micro-transactions for new content, but [rant] Microsoft Points (the Zune Marketplace uses them too) are so 1990′s it’s not even funny. Even for parents, Points does not make more sense than cash value. Apple and Sony let people pay the exact price for a song or PS3 content. Especially with the current economy in a recession and headed towards a depression (whether the government will admit to it or not) it just doesn’t make sense to pay in bulk for Points that do not add up to the exact value of any of the available DLC. [/rant] The new Party feature is very cool, and something Live customers have been asking for since Day One. I just wish Microsoft would spend some of their billions and develop a higher quality VOIP codec…
The two games I played were Battlefield: Bad Company and Mass Effect.
BF:BC is awesome! I still mostly suck at console FPS but to a degree I’m getting better. The campaign is fun, challenging, and the characters in your squad have some humorous dialogue. The only sticking point for me is that they’re also dumb as rocks. Preston, the character we portray, is supposed to be the FNG in the squad. But the sergeant never really leads, it’s all up to us so that’s a little “off.” Unlike the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter or Rainbow Six: Vegas series, players cannot issue orders or any control whatsoever to your squad. They just follow you and shoot things. Sometimes they’re effective in combat, other times I look at them and wonder what they hell they’re shooting at or why aren’t they hitting anything? So… AI is iffy. But the appeal of the Battlefield series has always been giving an immersive feel of being in intense battles of varying scale. Audio has always been a strength for the Battlefield games and Bad Company raises the bar. The sounds of battle of incredible and really go a long way into making the battles feel alive and intense. The Frostbite engine is great too, with some of the better visuals I’ve seen in a shooter of this scale and, for DX9, some killer shader effects. One of the “big deals” with Frostbite is a destructible environment. I’m not talking what we’ve seen in shooters for the past decade where I can shoot out window glass or a light bulb. We’re talking blowing the walls out of buildings. We’re talking trees falling over from artillery blasts or from tanks rolling through them. It’s incredibly fun, as well as a useful tactic to reach, injure or kill the enemy soldiers. I even delved into *gasp* public Live games, which I normally avoid. Large maps with multiple objectives were always part of Battlefield and Bad Company is no different. When Bad Company launched, the only multiplayer mode was Gold Rush where you’re either assaulting or defending crates of gold for points, which fits in with the overall story of the single player campaign. Whining ensued from Battlefield veterans that no Conquest mode was available, which has been the most popular online mode in every Battlefield game. Conquest was added in the first update to Bad Company, yet every single game I joined the past couple days was Gold Rush. But it’s fun enough online — especially for a “mouse and keyboard is superior, especially online” guy like myself — that I will probably stick with it. In fact it’s prompted me to attempt to improve my console shooter skills in general.
Mass Effect. I still don’t really “get” this game. I’m trying, really. Initially I had no clue what to do with the various skills and roles I can play. I set Shepard as a Soldier, so he would be effective in combat. But I didn’t know what to do with the skills, etc. so I just set the option to Auto Level and have the game handle all that for me. Now, I kinda have an idea what I would like to do but Mass Effect doesn’t have the ability to “respec” your character. Nope! I have to start fresh with a whole new character! I guess I’m caught in my own double standard here: I have never considered RPG’s to have any replayability whatsoever, yet in MMO’s I have no problem making alts and replaying it from a different class. I guess my gripe here is that now I’m feeling like my first character is gimped and I can’t do anything about it, whereas in an MMO I could respec him. Whatever, I’m still so low-level that if I continue I will be able to overcome the current weaknesses. I do like the hybrid shooter combat, although BioWare really needs to play more shooters. I play action games and shooters all the time but I’m having one helluva time hitting anything and especially driving the Mako vehicle. I can only imagine the frustration that RPG-only players have had with Mass Effect. I’m slowly plugging away at the game and at least learning new things about it but damn is it ever slow… Actually, I find that’s been my problem in every single player RPG: the pace. I just get bored. There may be others, but off the top of my head the only two RPG’s I have ever completed are Ultima III (yeah, that’s going back a ways) and Final Fantasy VII. This is why I’m extremely hesitant to buy Fallout 3 anytime soon. At $50 or $60 (depending which platform I choose) for an RPG where I run a historically high chance of only putting a couple hours into before moving on to something more personally engaging, I can’t justify it.
Side note: I would still have preferred a Mass Effect MMORPG over Star Wars: The Old Republic…
Quick shoutout to Oakstout — had a blast doing Gears of War co-op earlier this week; hope we get a chance to do some more! Maybe Casualties of WAR will setup an informal Live chapter!
Tags: Xbox 360
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Well, in retrospect, I doubt my health was ever in serious jeopardy but I’ll own up to being a typical guy who whines like he’s dying anytime he’s not feeling well.
I’m having an absolute blast with Bad Company online though; I think I’m up to Rank 3 or 4 already. I also rented Frontlines (yes, I own it on Steam too, but the performance is a little unstable) which is also a lot of fun and, while it shares the huge maps the Battlefield series is famed for, has its own very unique feel. Unsure if I’ll purchase the game for 360 since I already own it on Steam. Also rented Fallout 3 — curiosity got the better of me — but I haven’t loaded it up yet. I’ll probably save that for Sunday night or Monday.
In the meantime, I’ve made some progress in Mass Effect and I think the mental “OH!” light bulb may have illuminated for me at last. I think I’m finally “getting” what I’d like to do with the characters and especially my Soldier Shepard. Still way, way undecided if I would be up for playing the game again as a different profession, but we’ll see.
Thanks for the pimpage and i do look forward to some more GoW in the near future. I plan on getting GoW2 in the near future as well, so hopefully we can try a little of that after xmas.