East meet West: "Roleplaying" in 2 easy steps.

The last two weeks have been interesting ones in the world of video gaming and having decided to come up for air, I find myself in the mood for a ramble on here. Recently we have seen the releases of some fairly high profile games and as we head into March we will no doubt see many, many more. Since it has been a little while since my last update, I'll just go straight into it.

Femshepping it up.

Mass Effect feels like an old friend these days and it's almost impossible to believe that it has only been around for the current generation of console gaming. It may not be the best space opera ever and calling it an RPG is getting ever more difficult but the characters are amongst gaming's most memorable. Which was actually drawn on in the plot-light Mass Effect 2 where your relationship with your allies made up the bulk of the game. With three just around the corner, the magazines and websites are building the hype, the random DLC is being distributed with every bit of merchandise, the collector's editions are mostly sold out and the fans are crying about whatever they feel is wrong with what they have seen. Successful so far then...

Garrus Vakarian. So popular that even his actor's
Facebook wall is pretty much all Turian all the time.

Last weekend, Microsoft and Bioware had a code lottery of sorts on Facebook to allow players to participate in the demo for the Xbox 360 Mass Effect 3 early. While I managed to wrangle a code on my first attempt many others were not so lucky and disregarding the usual bitching on Bioware's own forums, there was much discontent. So, while the demo officially releases tomorrow on that day about chocolates and flowers that you may have heard about at one point in your life, some have already put the new code through the wringer. Sadly however, it does not yet currently support EA/Origin account logins and there is no multiplayer access.

After having played through the demo twice I can say that the game plays really nicely. Familiar yet different.. Some of the changes however are much less subtle than others. The first thing you'll notice is that the UI is largely the same as it was last time. Though the Cerberus oranges have been replaced by Alliance blue, which on its own is fine. It does not however mesh well with the warning text which is somewhere between pink and red and comes off quite eyegrindingly garish.

Shepard's health is now segmented underneath your precious shield reserves. The Unity skill that revived team members in Mass Effect 2 has been replaced with a "First Aid" skill that is vaguely similar to the first game and as such, it will actually heal you in a pinch this time out. As a trade-off however, if Shepard is hurt beyond the limits of one of these segments, he will never naturally heal back to full health. This gives you much less freedom and forces you to make fewer mistakes while popping out of cover to aim. Though, Bioware had promised that it would be harder and I will be damned if it stops me getting my 3000 gamerscore out of Shep.

There are loads of the new skills and evolutions with much more customisation available. The squad members are still at a disadvantage compared to Shepard regarding these but with less team-mates, they have had to pick up skills from other characters to compensate. This was a great design decision since the cast of Mass Effect 2 were often overlapping in skills or lacking particular skills that you had no room on your team for. Tali had been a casualty of this, being far too geared towards fighting synthetics and more cripplingly, lacking Overload. Her alternative required loyalty and was lacking in power compared to Overload to boot. Using Warp ammo as an example, in ME2 you could choose between Heavy and Squad warp ammo as a final stage upgrade for Shepard and Jack. This final stage was the only place where the skills differentiated. Now handled by Liara you can upgrade to squad as one of many upgrades along the way to maxing it out.

The demo takes in two missions and they are the ones we have all seen before in the trade show demos and videos released over the past year. The attack by the Reapers on Earth and Shepard's escape to go be an intergalactic Grey Warden with the races of the Milky Way and Mordin's mission on the Salarian homeworld relating to a female Krogan that is seemingly lacking in the usually expected genophage. Mordin's patter however lacks the potency it had in Mass Effect 2 due to the voice talent obviously changing between games. I mean, Meer (If it still is Mark Meer) doesn't do a terrible job at all but it's just not our Mordin. I suppose that's an example of how the ME characters get you.

Though the demo does a good job of pissing people off with regard to characters too. With old favourite Urdnot Wrex showing up to kick some Salarian arse and then being told to stay with the ship so he can talk to you over a communicator. Liara and Garrus are great characters but having Wrex absent as a squad member in any capacity in Mass Effect 2 still stings (Though thanks to playing FFXIII-2 recently, I cannot unhear Liara or Lightning when the other speaks). Kirrahe also shows up if you helped him to not die. Bit of a cloaca though.

So looking generally good. Unless you happen to be a main Infiltrator or "Caster" class. The more weapons you carry, the longer your recast is on powers. However, the demo hands over a full loadout as soon as you hit Sur'kesh. Sadly that means you aren't getting an accurate insight into how your cooldowns will be with just a handgun or similar, with classes like the Adept getting a rough ride through the demo accompanied by near-constant waiting. Sorry, did I say full loadout... the air turned blue when my girlfriend realised that the demo didn't give her Infiltrator a Sniper Rifle to play with. Personally I'm more of a Vanguard/Engineer kind of guy so I welcome the shiny Heavy melee (All classes can now invest points into melee). Engineer seems much better in 3 too actually with a much-improved combat drone and a turret to dispatch. Enemy Engineers will actively repair their artillery too, so watch out for them.

I also played it with Kinect running using the UK setting. It coped pretty well with several accents I tried but notably performed better with a rather stereotypical southern states one bizarrely. For the most part it works to shout at the team to do things but I'm not sure I would put my faith in it when under heavy fire. It didn't seem to like the word "Incinerate" either. Also, if you have anyone else in the room they can easily fire off abilities you may not want to by them simply speaking to you and sounding like they said an ability or weapon. Essentially it saves you from opening a menu or hotkeys but you risk not having it recognise you occasionally. Didn't stop me screaming "BIOTIC CHAAAAAAARGE!" like Strong Bad though. It's a feature I would love to see in something like Pokémon though...

Something irks me about the new facial modelling though. It's a touch on the weird side but I'm sure that I'll get used to it. As with most of my points, I'll reserve judgement proper until the game is actually released. Then I'll be ready to rant or praise depending on how it all turns out. Remember, this is Shepard's biggest day.

It is a Gunblade, Shepard. Ancient Prothean tech.

Someone else had a big day recently too. Final Fantasy XIII-2 saw its western release date and after the failure of Final Fantasy XIII to live up to its forebears in the eyes of the industry and the fanbases, it needed to hit more right notes. Thankfully it did.

While the combat remains largely the same, relying on tactical usage of the party paradigm shift system that allows all members engaged to change their job or "role" as the fight dictates. For example, if an enemy is charging up what appears to be a nasty attack, you could switch your team to three Sentinels (the XIII world's Paladin or Knight tank class) to absorb the damage and then switch in some heals to shrug it off properly. This is unchanged.

You take control of Serah, a planned-but-cut party member from the previous game whose rescue forms a large chunk of the plot in the original. She is the sister of series protagonist Lightning and fiancée of Snow Villiers of Steelguard! fame. The second party member is Noel Kreiss, the "last human" from a destroyed future. Time travel is the backbone of the plot so you can expect the usual jarring, confusion and collections of deus ex machina that come from having such a plot. I'm sorry to tell you but Hope Estheim is also back in a pretty considerable role. This leaves some of the more interesting characters like Sazh and his son and the lesbian Australians to tiny cameos. Ok... only one of the Australians is interesting.

She may have been the Princess in the other castle but at least she gets
the better game in the end.

There are three members to a party but only two human members. This is one of the places that XIII-2 differentiates itself from its forebear: Monster raising. Sometimes after a battle you will capture an opponent as a crytsal. You can then assign that to your team and paradigms. Three monsters can take part in your loadout and you are free to choose from whatever you have without restriction. The monsters all have different traits and potentials and you'll have to investigate which work best with your Serah and Noel. They are raised using items as opposed to the crystarium points used by the humans which means you will have to specifically look for certain items to raise your favourites. Though you have a lot more choice regarding which stats to focus on with monsters than you do with the main characters because of varying stat-building materials that add bonuses to a specific stat after use. Kind of like the "on level up" bonus traits of old.

The game also gives off more of a mission-based structure as the various time periods are accessible from a central hub, though you will have to open up all the areas by good old-fashioned exploration within areas you have already opened up. After the corridors in XIII, XIII-2 is labyrinthine by comparison. The faceless monitors have been replaced by the usually upbeat Chocolina who is a chick in a chicken suit with a very annoying voice. She sells you pretty much everything you need on a by-chapter basis and will show up even in places you wouldn't expect. You can also save anytime on the field but on an autosave system.

Too bad the voice is no product of beauty.

Chocolina isn't the only one trying to sell you stuff though. Square-Enix promise that XIII-2 will be fully supported with DLC for some time. Already franchise superboss Omega is available as a recruitable ally via a DLC battle in the seemingly-custom-built-area-for-downloaded-missions that is the Coliseum. An emulated version of Lightning and her commander Amodar are also available as the first big DLC for the game. Though both battles have a low drop rate on recruitment. Expect to do them a good few times so make sure you have a strategy for repeating any victory you earn. It could be nice if it isn't exploited too heavily and actually gives us a reason to go back into the game to use the cosmetic things like outfits.

Even so, while it is great, the Final Fantasy series is in no way "saved" by this. XIV was a huge blunder and while they are trying to fix it I can't see the loyalty being there forever and Versus XIII hasn't been heard from in a long while. While Dissidia had proved an interesting diversion from the norm, it launching only on the PSP had also driven a lot of people to skip it over, which is a shame really considering how fun it was to fling Cloud around with Shantotto. Theatrythym is a Final Fantasy crossover music game that is due on the 3DS soon but is that really what people want? Chibi Lightning? Time will tell I suppose but I really think they should farm the franchise out to Mistwalker as Sakaguchi has proved over and over that he knows what traditional JRPG fans want and I can't see him taking the role lightly considering its origins under him. Would be a sad day if we lost Final Fantasy to misdirection.

Also played Soul Calibur V recently. Was less than impressed with the direction it's going... I'll leave that for another time though.

As always, you can keep in touch on my Raptr for all things gaming. Current, Retro or otherwise. Also, here's an old Pokémon video to go out with since Youtube disabled it a while ago. All for now!