Protoss: The Road to Diamond Weeks 5-6

With the new season starting, this week was mostly full of highs, but it wasn’t without its pitfalls.  Well, one pitfall, anyway – I placed in Gold!  I briefly considered going back to Terran to fix this error of sorts, but that wouldn’t be very genuine of me now, would it? Besides, my fundamentals with Protoss are getting pretty good.  It’s my mouth-breather decision making that’s holding me back.  I’d like to hear from anyone who shares in my issue with patience when it comes to the RTS genre, because seriously, sometimes I just get to this point in a match where I just want to get it over with. That leads to throwing whatever army I have left after a big engagement at the enemy and hoping for the best. If it turns sour, I GG out and move on.  It’s horrible, I know. What’s worse is knowing that when I put my mind to it, I’m really not bad at macro games at all.  My brain just goes into cruise control.  I guess that’s what people refer to when they talk about stamina at tournaments.

Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning In A Nut Shell

No one can deny that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has an impressive pedigree to its name. With the likes of Todd McFarlane (creator of spawn) and Ken Rolston (lead designer behind Morrowind and Oblivion) working on it I was told by everyone that this game would combine the RPG elements of the Elder Scrolls series with the fast paced combat system of Fable and add to that a bright and cartoon like aesthetic. So that sounds like a bunch of things I love put together to make a sandwich of pure enjoyment. But I have had my heart broken before by such promises, see Alpha Protocol for evidence of this. So does Amalur live up to all it promises to be? Well I can tell you now without any doubt that….

It does… kind of… mostly… it is good.

Let me explain. The world of Amalur is wracked by war as an element of the immortal race, the fae, has taken up religious extremism. They believe that a new god is going to be born from under a mountain and that god wants them to KILL EVERYTHING! So the mortal armies of elves, men, gnomes and the remaining fae have taken up arms to defend themselves. This already gives the developers a great narrative excuse to make a whole group of enemies respawn in front of the player without it breaking the feeling of immersion in the world (That comes between fights).

The combat system is slick and fluid allowing the player to switch seamlessly between swords to bows to magic attacks with ease. The player does not need to spend effort trying to string together increasingly long combos but it is encouraged, if only for the look of them. In the course of one fight I managed to knock an enemy into the air with my long sword and then keep them suspended in the air with a flurry of hits from a pair of daggers, which then sent them flying into a tree. With them dispatched I activated the dagger power attack and darted between my remaining assailants with blinding speed only to end up in the middle of the group, at this point I harnessed my magical powers and sent out a shockwave that catapulted me and all others around me into the air and then slammed them into the ground. I stand at the center of a morbidly serene battlefield, my enemies fallen and not a scratch on me or a hair out of place. I feel like a badass. Which makes what comes next all the more jarring.

On return to the nearby village I go to the guard captain who tasked me with the quest of clearing out the enemy forces. The subtitles start the conversation before he does and he starts before the cutscene does. This is a common experience in Amalur, every conversation feels clunky and stilted. The voice acting is agreeable but a lot of the characters come across as feeling constricted by the script. As they stand there telling me how the Dokkalfar have suffered at the hands of the Tuatha Deohn their voices filled with pain and their chiseled, muscular faces struggling to move under the weight of his own facial hair I look to the cramped drop down list of conversation points and find it very hard to give a damn.

Honestly seeing nigh unpronounceable fantasy jargon spouted from the mouths of hyper muscular knights sporting the carnival strongman look is pretty funny. Now this isn’t a bad thing, in fact there are a lot of little touches in the game that seem to imply that Amalur is giving a wink and a nudge to the audience at some of the more outlandish elements of the fantasy genre. The gnomes in centurion armor and the scantily clad elven maidens, these all seem like smiling nods at the things the fantasy genre has left behind as it’s evolved over the last ten years. As to whether or not you thought these things were better left in the past will greatly influence your enjoyment of Amalur.

Despite a somewhat jarring menu system and awkward scripting Amalur does have a real heart. When I played this game I got the real sense that it was trying to be something greater than it was. Certain aspects may need fine tuning but I would rather have a game fail for trying to do too much than too little.

Mass Effect 3: Better with Kinect?

The third title from developers BioWare and the final chapter in the trilogy, but this time with an added twist. The final installment of this epic series will have integrated Kinect usability, now while many gamers may find this a turn off, EA and BioWare are promising that the game will actually be better with the usage of Kinect. The role Kinect plays is that players can control the action via voice commands, such as ‘Bypass’ for doors or ‘Cover Me’ for a team mate as well as powers and switching between weapons, limiting the amount of button pressing and in game circling through wheels. Sounds promising but for those without Kinect or PS3 users will not be able to access this feature, but all the regular menus and features still carry on through from the previous titles, so this shouldn’t detract too much from the overall experience.

Carrying on from where Mass Effect 2’s DLC left off, players are once again cast as Commander John Shepard and thrown back into the fight against the Reapers.

BioWare have stated their desire for the ending of Mass Effect 3 to be memorable and have devoted many man hours to doing so, making sure the players get just reward for all their hard work and no doubt countless hours of playing. However they have not completely closed the door on continuing the series, many believe that Mass Effect 3 is simply the end of the Shepard trilogy and that BioWare will continue on with the universe. Casey Hudson, Creative Director on Mass Effect 3, had this to say: “We want to do more stuff with Mass Effect, of course, and I’m sure we will. But we’re not really thinking about that right now. We want to make sure we give people the best ending to Mass Effect 3 that we can.” It certainly would be a prudent move for BioWare to continue with the title that has brought them the most success, especially with a movie in the pipeline, but this remains to be seen and it depends on whether the writing staff can compose a new story that justifies continuing the title.

Mass Effect 3 is due to be released on March 6th, with prices scheduled to be $59.99 for the standard editions on all consoles and $79.99 for the collector’s editions, roughly £39.99 and £59.99 respectively in the UK. There are also bonuses for pre-ordering the game such as exclusive weapons and armor. BioWare has also announced that a demo will be available to download from the 14th of February, giving Kinect users a chance to hone their commands before the full release. We look forward to seeing how the Kinect works and how this epic trilogy concludes.

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Review

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

Best game of the decade?