• How Gamestop ruined my Valentine’s Day
• Gamestop Made Me Do It
• I’m an Idiot

The wife lovingly bought me a copy of Mass Effect 2 for Valentines Day.  In fact, she told me she was going to, hence my desire to get my Xbox working.  She gives it to me, and the first thing out of my mouth is “Oh, you bought this used?  I’ll have to pay $15 to be able to download the free stuff for it.”

I always do this.  My wife could buy me the coolest toy, phone, gadget, or netbook, and I’ll mention how much I like it, and oh did you see the deal on it last week where it was half off?  I make the lovely wife feel like an idiot, and the gift seem cheap and poorly thought-out.

That’s my personal demon to remove.  The real enemy here?  Gamestop, for knowingly selling my wife a game for $55 (a five-dollar discount off new retail price) without even mentioning this to her.  They made a ton of money off the deal, probably way more than they would have from selling the game new.  It was very well publicized in gaming circles that this was coming down the line, there’s no way they were innocent.

I’m putting them on my list of most hated companies.  Companies I won’t go to or buy from.  Congrats, guys — you just joined the ranks of Best Buy and Sony!

Buy.com recently had a great deal on some games and battery packs.  One of the games included was Crackdown.  Here’s a quick review, after playing about half the game.  I get the feeling that Crackdown is one of those games everyone’s heard of, but few have played.  It’s never had a mega promotional campaign, but it’s a solid, well put-together title.  To sum up my feelings about the game: it’s a blast.  And it gets blastier the farther along you get.

This is clearly an open-world title.  The city, its people, and its gangs and cars all go on without your intervention.  They even get into traffic accidents and pile-ups, all by themselves.  There is a light, guiding hand as to the first few missions to undertake, but the order of everything is optional.  You can go almost anywhere in the city right from the beginning, sort of… more on that in a bit.

What do you do?  Well, basically, you can drive, shoot, punch, detonate, and jump.  In fact, doing those five activities nets you better abilities resulting in a stronger ability.  For example, the more you drive a car, with drifting, stunts, and checkpoint races, the better the car handles and performs.  Likewise with shooting, punching, and explosives.  Higher skill levels will give you faster aiming, additional health, and larger blasts.

And lots of jumping gets you, well, nothing, by itself.  Jumping is improved by picking up Agility orbs, placed all over the city.  With some clever jumping, you can pick up a ton of orbs.  Once you have enough for the next level, you are rewarded with a major boost to your jumping height and running speed.  After a couple of levels, you are crossing the city by leaps and bounds.  You might find yourself orb hunting rather than playing the game.  It’s almost peaceful… until you miss that jump and land on the highway and get run over.  Such is life, though.

Taken all together, you have a pretty fun game.  You begin to feel like a superhero, throwing barrels, jumping to the top of tall buildings, punching guys into next week.  And you have guns and cars, which make everything better.  And, you can play two-player co-op.

This is a violent game — you’ll be running people down, punching guys off buildings, and lighting people on fire via explosives.  The game has some minor flaws, and archaic-feeling menu system, some odd button choices for actions, and targeting and camera issues.

• How much would I pay for the game? Despite its second-generation mistakes and issues, I can say this game would be worth buying at least $50, possibly a full retail of $60.  The fact that I paid about $6 for it is just gravy.
• How many times would I replay it? I’m absolutely going to play this one through to the end, and gather all 800 orbs if I can.  I could see myself playing it again, especially if I can find a co-op buddy to do it with.

This game makes me so happy.  Did I mention that I got all 1250 achievement points in Mass Effect?

There was only one reason I wanted the game:  Portal.  I heard from friends and reviews about the thing, so I had a feeling I’d like it.  I did.  Great writing and mind-bending (but not too mind-bending) make for a fun game.

To catch anyone up who has missed out on the Portal premise, the player awakens in an austere lab environment.  You quickly become acquainted with your host, GLaDOS, a computer that has a pretty disturbingly carefree attitude towards life and safety.  GLaDOS introduces you to the concept of portals and in pretty short order, the Portal Gun (aka Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device), and from there you have to figure out puzzles and how to keep yourself alive in order to reach the next elevator.

Now, the Orange Box contains 4 other games and I really didn’t give them a fair shake.  I played through a bit of HL2, and it seemed nice, and polished, but I couldn’t really get into it.  It looks like Team Fortress is doing some cool things with multiplayer, but my lack of internet leaves me unable to test more.

• How much would I pay for the game? You should buy this game if you see it for $40 or less. Portal alone is worth it for $30 or less, and you can now get the Still Alive edition on XBLA for I think $15, a real steal.
• How many times would I replay it? At least twice. There are some “advanced” editions of the levels, so you will be hitting some things multiple times anyway, and there’s a great developer’s commentary version.  Unfortunately, I failed to do some of the achievements on my first playthrough, so I’ll have to try again.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is an XBox360 (also available on PC) role playing game from Bioware, makers of some other great RPGs such as Star wars:Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire.  Combat is real-time like Jade, but has more of a Gears of War feel, with weapons and cover system.  RPG elements include conversation choices, ability points, logbooks, quest guides, and lots of inventory.  It has far more inventory options than Jade or KOTOR, and includes a similar crafting system of swappable upgrades for weapons and armor.

And I haven’t even mentioned the six different classes (three major classes, three mixed classes) that play quite differently and have different special skills.  And at any given time you can pick two other team members with different classes and skills to augment your setup.  One of whome is Wrex, who has the best lines of the game.

• How much would I pay for the game? You should buy this game if you see it at any price.  Seriously, its original $60 is still worth it at this point.  Story, graphics, and gameplay are excellent.  It’s almost like playing a sci-fi movie.  Bonus points for the glitch that lets me get all the “Renegade” points and achievements without actually having to be a jerk in the rest of the game.
• How many times would I replay it? You will have to play it at least 3 times to get all achievements.  I made a couple of mistakes on two runs of mine, so I need to play it through 5 times.  And I will.  It is that satisfying.

Actually, there are a lot of stuff from PSO in there, including color-coded pickups and lots of statistics.  The story is compelling, based on Norse Mythology, but twisted up with technology.  Gameplay is fast and entertaining, with explosions and physics effects.

There is a healthy amount of problems with the game, though, including the chunky/clunky camera (well documented elsewhere) and a very slow menu system.  Death comes often (only one class has healing abilities) brings no penalties, but punishes you with a 40-second-long cutscene of a Valkyrie picking you up.  If the Valkyries are invulnerable, why aren’t they killing all the baddies.

Probably the worst part of the game was the feeling of being stranded.  The manual doesn’t have a lot of detail, and there is almost no in-game help.  And with all the statistics and modifiers you are dealing with, you are left confused often.

• How much would I pay for the game? You should buy this game if you see it for $40 or less.  Story, graphics, and gameplay are pretty good.  It has enough flexibility to cover several play styles, but if you really hated Diablo or the GameCube Phantasy Star Online, you may want to pass.
• How many times would I replay it? At least twice.  The game is relatively short; IGN lists it at 12-15 hours, and even my casual play-style bears that out.  So, it’s a quick play, but the different classes have very unique styles to them, so you can replay without duplicating the experience.

General links:

• Fight for Kisses: A great video with high quality animation (reminds me of Shrek, actually) for… a razor.

Nerd links:

• The Nerd Handbook: How a nerd’s brain works, and Care and Feeding
• White and Nerdy: a music video to go along with the above
• All about the Pentiums: okay, this is older, but great & nerdy itself

read more at TheConans »