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Mass Effect 3 Leviathan DLC Mini-Review

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Leviathan DLC

When BioWare released their single-player DLC for Mass Effect 3, I rather stupidly did not have a save that would allow me to access any of it. I kept 3 save points, and I kept rotating which ones I saved over, therefore all my saves are from Earth. Once you’re on Earth, there’s no going back. Literally. Cortez crashes the shuttle shortly after dropping you off, so yeah, that ship has sailed, so to speak. Now that all of the DLC is out and Shepard’s story is officially over from BioWare’s standpoint, I decided to start over my game and finally play some of this DLC. First up, the Leviathan DLC.

I knew nothing about the Leviathan DLC, and I’m glad I did not. The basic story behind it is that an Alliance scientist has been tracking rumors of a beast that possibly killed a Reaper by itself. When Shepard visits the scientist to get more information on how to recruit this beast as a War Asset (it’s all about the War Assets, don’t forget), the scientist’s assistant becomes indoctrinated and kills the scientist. So now Shepard has to find the beast, if it indeed exists, all on her own.

I had an absolute blast playing this DLC, primarily because it is structured almost like a murder mystery. Shepard has little information about what or where this beast is or where the scientist’s other assistants may be doing research, and since the scientist is quite dead, she must search for clues in the lab herself and whittle down where she should go next. Not every clue she finds is relevant to the case, which made it all the more fun and the sleuthing not as “easy.”

Spoiler alert, there is such a beast, and when Shepard finds it, she is treated to an incredible history of the Reapers that I never once fathomed. I’m fairly certain my jaw was dropped during the entire sequence with the Leviathan itself. I am doubly pleased that the Leviathan’s tale became part of my Mass Effect codex so I can read it at my own pace and digest it further later. The history of the Leviathan and the Reapers is actually so incredibly important to the overall story that I’m disappointed this wasn’t part of the original game. Then again, that could just be me, since I love backstories to pretty much everything.

My only complaint about it is that the sequence where James Vega suddenly appears in the research lab is abrupt and feels really unnecessary. I still have no idea why he suddenly showed up and why he suddenly left. I talked to him at every chance I had, and I never really got a good answer as to why he was there. Even when he was part of a particular cut scene, I didn’t feel like his presence was necessary. However, this randomness lasted a total of 30 seconds, and he was quickly forgotten after I said out loud, “That was weird.”

While playing on casual difficulty, the Leviathan DLC took me approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes to get through, which I think is a damn good bargain for 800 MSP ($9.99). It’s also definitely not as tedious as the Overlord DLC from Mass Effect 2 was, so I can heartily recommend this one to friends as well as say I will not grumble about replaying it with future playthroughs (definitely can’t say the same about Overlord).

Paper Mario: Sticker Star Mini-Review

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Paper Mario Sticker Star Logo

I finished Paper Mario: Sticker Star around Christmas-time, but I had to really mull on it after I finished to sort out my feelings on the game. I hadn’t really touched a Mario game of any sort since the NES days of Super Mario Bros. 3, so in many ways, I felt completely out of my element with this game. The Mario-verse has obviously evolved greatly since my last foray, and if it wasn’t for the strategy guide, I would have been absolutely lost and most likely would have rage quit halfway through World 2. After sifting through the pros and cons, my feelings when I first played and my feelings when I finished, and how much the strategy guide the held my hand, I have to say that while PMSS is extremely cute–at times downright adorable–and initially enjoyable, the experience does not hold-up enough for me to recommend it to anyone other than die-hard Mario fans (and they would have bought it anyway).

When I first started PMSS, I was elated. The game was so cute and clever with its presentation, gameplay, and interactions between characters. I had a great time planning out how to use my stickers, coming up with effective combos, collecting new stickers, and successfully executing those “Excellent!” attacks. I even found it charming how creative the developers were with how players can obtain the Things. For example, it was extremely clever to pick up a bowling ball Thing in one world and then remember that in a previous world there was an empty area that looked like a bowling lane. If you take the bowling ball Thing there and use it in that area, Mario hurls the bowling ball down the lane, striking pins that suddenly appeared. As a result, you can find a bowling trophy Thing in another level. Would I have ever figured that out 100% on my own? Oh hell no, I wouldn’t, but I appreciate how creative that idea was.

I also greatly enjoyed some of the cinematics and set-pieces of the game. The little poems that Kersti read after you defeated the main boss of each world were, for the lack of a better word, adorable. The Snifit or Whiffit Game Show was by far my favorite level of the entire game, so I really didn’t mind playing the gauntlet a second time with the Wiggler segment just for that Wiggler diary entry that really means nothing in the end. If that was a real game show, I’d most likely watch it (or at the very least, DVR it).

Paper Mario Sticker Star screenshot

While the gameplay was fun at first, by World 4, I found my enjoyment greatly lagging. Instead of playing several levels a night, I played one and then stopped because I was bored. Sometimes I would dedicate whole play sessions just to finding collectibles, just so I wouldn’t have to make my way through more repetitive gameplay. Halfway through World 5, I started to play the game maybe once a week instead of daily. By the time I started World 6, I had a hard time caring about playing at all.

This is honestly one reason why I’ve never finished a Mario game before. It’s partially because of the platforming, but it’s also partially because I get too bored with playing before I get near the end. The Legend of Zelda games have also suffered from a similar problem with me. It didn’t help that by the time you reached World 6, you needed to go back through some of the levels and “grind” a bit to restock your Sticker Album with the stickers that you will need to survive the regular fights you will encounter, much less the ungodly long fight with Bowser at the end. Maybe you’ll have enough coin to just buy the stickers you need, but most of the flashy stickers that you will need you cannot buy in shops, and they’re only found in specific levels.

Does it sound like your typical JRPG? Dear God, yes. So why can I hack something like Final Fantasy XIII but not PMSS? The only answer I have for that is that at least with other JRPGs, there’s a real story going on. With PMSS, the story is as bare bones as any other Mario game: Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach. AGAIN. Granted, PMSS had a little more to it with the missing Royal Stickers fiasco, but that’s not enough of a story to keep me excited about mundane and repetitive gameplay.

Bowser - Paper Mario Sticker Star

I’m glad I ventured back into the world of Mario, no matter how brief my stint was, but I’m officially done with trying out new Mario games. I don’t like platforming, and even the RPGs don’t have enough story to keep the intrigue going. Mario and I are just not meant to be, and that’s fine. The Mario fanboys and fangirls out there are gleeful enough about Mario to make up for my indifference.

Unfinished Swan Mini-Review

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I bought and downloaded Unfinished Swan back when it originally released after podcasting cohort Blake went on and on and on about damn great it was. He said if I liked games like Journey and Flower, I would definitely like Unfinished Swan. Well, I hadn’t played Journey at the time, but I really liked how unique Flower was, so hey, I’ll give it a whirl. And then it sat in my PSN downloads for months.

Right before Christmas, I finally played it. It started out really promising, but by about halfway through, I was long ready for the game to be over.

swan_village

Unfinished Swan is about a young orphan whose mother never completed any of the paintings she started. When she died, he was only allowed to take one of her paintings to the orphanage (which instantly triggered all of these problems with probate code and family law and inheritance, but that’s besides the point), and he chose the painting of a swan she of course did not finish. In the middle of the night, the boy woke up to find that the swan had disappeared, and he went on a journey to go find where the swan ran off to. Along the way, he learns of his mother’s past, the swan’s past, and other stuff that was not entirely surprising by the end of the tale.

Obviously, with a game like Unfinished Swan, the story isn’t the forte. It’s all about the unique gameplay. The game essentially has four levels, each requiring a different method of playing. For starters, the first level is completely white. It’s literally blinding, it’s so white. The only way you can find your way–other than looking for the swan’s golden footprints–is to throw black paint on the white canvas. The black paint splashes on actual objects that are in the white room, that you couldn’t see since they’re all the same color. You don’t want to go too crazy with the black paint, though, or everything will turn solid black as it was solid white. So it’s all about tossing enough black paint around to see depth, shapes, and how the area really looks. In the next level, you no longer have the black paint; you now throw blobs of water in an effort to attract vines to grow up walls, across ravines, through pipes, etc. You then climb these vines.

The_Unfinished_Swan_-Wand

It sounds really intriguing and different, right? Well, it is, at first. However, the second level went way, way too long. I was really bored and ready for it to be over before I finished the second level. I had stopped hunting for the hidden collectibles at this point as well, because I just wanted it to be over. And then when the third level arrived, pitching me in a somewhat scary scenario where I had to avoid the dark as long as possible or die from most likely a horrific spider monster…you all know what a pansy I am, so I hated this part with a passion. I didn’t even try to look for collectibles here, I just wanted to survive and be done.

At least the last two levels were extremely short, so I was able to finish the game in about three hours.

While I’m glad I got to experience Unfinished Swan, if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have paid the full $15. Not that I will do it over again; all those balloons will stay uncollected, thank you very much.

Halo 4 Mini-Review

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Yeah, Halo 4 came out nearly a month ago, there have been several reviews about it even before it released, blah blah blah. I haven’t said my piece about it, and I ended up leaving Gaming Angels before I could write a “proper” review, so sit down and bear with me. Or go read something else. (No, please stay…what I have to say is mind-blowing, I promise.)

I haven’t had the OHMYGODHALO4INEEDTHISGAMENOWIVEMISSEDHALOSOMUCH like so many other fans of the Halo series have had. As I’ve said countless times, I got into the series late, and I didn’t play a single Halo game until Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary released this time last year. I’ve been nearly a rabid fangirl ever since. Podcast cohort and occasional SGR writer Blake Grundman was so delighted that I found some love for his favorite game series that he gave me Halo 2, 3, and ODST for Christmas last year. This year, I have played Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and parts of Halo 3: ODST. So when Halo 4 came into being, I didn’t exactly have this sense of longing to play another Halo game. Halo 4 is my fifth Halo game to play this year, in fact. So in many ways, this kind of tarnished my experience, because the gameplay rang of “here we go again.”

I simply felt like I had done all of this before, and in many ways I had, rather recently. This time, however, there was no Flood (THANK GOD), which was instead replaced with the Prometheans, who were often so difficult, I found myself wondering if the Flood really was so bad (answer is yes, they were).

This in no way means that I did not like Halo 4. Quite the contrary, I loved Halo 4. I loved how it fit in with the Halo novels I am reading, the story kept me interested, and well, as much as the gameplay felt old hat to me, it was still a ton of fun. In fact, I want to form a team of four to play the game again on Legendary, as soon as I find some reasonable time to do so as well as a willing and committed party. Even the Spartan Ops co-op missions are so much fun, I’ve told several friends that I would play those episodes again with them if they needed a partner.

Also, again, despite my personal feelings of repetitiveness, I could honestly find no flaws to the game. Nothing felt padded, I didn’t notice any glitches, no plot holes were readily apparent, and the game itself looks amazing. Holy cow it looks amazing, almost Uncharted 2 levels of amazing, and the visual quality never dropped between cut scenes and battles.

If I were to pick out flaws, it would be with some of the new weaponry 343 introduced along with the Prometheans, but that’s just because I didn’t like most of the new weapons. At the same time, it’s not like I’ve loved all of the human and Covenant weapons either. I do really want to know why we’re just now getting a human weapon as awesome as the Sticky Detonator. Do you have any idea how great that would have been against Hunters four or even five games ago?

Most likely, you’ve already picked up Halo 4 and played it at least once by the time I’m writing this, especially if you were already a fan of Halo. If you’ve never played a Halo game before, I have a hard time recommending that you play this one because you may be lost when it comes to the story. But if story means very little to you and you just like a good first-person shooter that lets you kill lots of aliens with weapons of mass destruction, then Halo 4 will not disappoint. Halo 4 is not my game of the year (old hat feelings really got in the way of this), but it’s definitely in the top 5, and it’s with goo-oood company.

Dishonored Mini-Review

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Dishonored

Dishonored was completely a mixed-bag for me. I was unbelievably excited for this game after seeing it at E3 and then playing it at Quake Con this year. Gameplay-wise, it didn’t disappoint at all. The game touted itself as being extremely open for the player, both in terms of exploration and methods of completing missions. In many ways, it was like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, except that unlike DXHR, you could really control how you played and stick with whatever method you want, whether it’s stealth, lots of stabbing, or a combination of the two. If you want to go through the game without killing anyone, you can honestly do that. If you want to murder everyone you see, you can do that too. If one path or one weapon doesn’t work for you in completing your particular goal, you have plenty of options to choose from to try again.

That is really the beauty of Dishonored, and I praised it in great extent in my review at Gaming Angels:

This notion of exacting revenge in whatever manner the player wants is where the beauty of Dishonored really shines through. Players have complete control over however they want to play, whether it’s stealthy or murdery (to borrow a phrase from Bulletstorm). In addition, every target Corvo is sent after has a lethal and a nonlethal option. For example, with Corvo’s first target, High Overseer Campbell, Corvo can either kill him or brand him as a heretic, thereby expelling him from power and ruining him in public eye. The choices you make in how you play and how you opt to take care of your targets affects the ending, the vitality of Dunwall, and how your allies treat you.

In other words, many parts of Dishonored are completely up to you, the player, and this includes Corvo’s weaponry and the paths he takes to complete a mission as well.

However, I’ve made it no secret that I am a story gamer through and through, and story has always meant more to me than gameplay. Unfortunately, Dishonored greatly let me down with its overly predictable story. The big “twist” happens at about three-fourths of the way through, and I saw it coming from about the second or third mission. I hoped I was wrong, that I was oversimplifying the game, but alas, I was not. I wasn’t even half wrong or even slightly wrong.

I hung my head in near shame. If I hadn’t committed to reviewing the game or the strategy guide, I would have quit the game right then. How could something with so much promise be so predictable? I couldn’t get over the disappointment at all. As I finished my playthrough, I hoped with the final missions that something unpredictable would happen and redeem itself for me. This was never the case, and I finished the game feeling rather empty about the whole experience.

I gave the game a “Buy” recommendation on GA, and that was solely because I know more people care about the actual gameplay than they do about the story. But if you asked me in person what I thought, I would say pretty much what I’ve said here and on the EvilCast: the gameplay was fantastic, but the story was predictable and disappointing. For me, as a story gamer, I cannot recommend Dishonored to anyone, as much as that pains me.

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