LadyAether

LadyAether

Gamer girl for life, and writer for Epic Gamer Girl. In real life, I am a graduate student who studies pop culture. In my free time, I prefer to get lost in books, movies, TV, and video games. My favorite game genres are RPG and survival horror, my favorite gaming company is BioWare, and my favorite games are Dragon Age and Mass Effect, among many others.

Review: Mass Effect 2

 Epic Gamer Girls, XBOX 360  No Responses »
Mar 282013
 

Mass Effect 2 continues the epic story of Commander Shepard, the player-defined hero who thwarted a massive plot to destroy the galaxy in the original Mass Effect. Players always knew that Shepard’s story wasn’t over. The Reapers are still coming, and only Shepard and her crew believe it, so they’re the only ones who can stop them. But when the Normandy is destroyed in an attack by mysterious aliens, Shepard will find her allegiance to the Alliance challenged, and she’ll need a whole new crew to win the fight this time.

The brilliance of Mass Effect 2 is that it essentially clears the board. Shepard was a hero by the end of the first game, and she had the respect of almost every race in the galaxy, but now, two years later (don’t worry, the time gap is explained at the beginning of the game), that respect doesn’t count for much. No one trusts Shepard anymore, least of all the Council and the Alliance, but the Reapers are still planning an invasion, and someone has to stop it. This forces Shepard to make a deal with a shady organization known as Cerberus and their leader, the Illusive Man. Shepard has to recruit a whole new team and find new resources in order to take the fight to the Reapers this time around, and this allows the player to continue Shepard’s journey without it seeming redundant.

The Illusive Man is Shepard’s new ally.

It’s easy to understand why a player might be wary of a whole new adventure for Shepard. Throughout the course of the original Mass Effect, Shepard made friends and enemies, and it’s likely that players will want to see these same faces again. They are there, although some of them are only cameos, and there are many new interesting characters to meet as well. Even though Mass Effect 2 can feel like an interlude, that’s what it’s supposed to be, so don’t be afraid to dive in and give it a chance.

In addition to continuing an excellent story, Mass Effect 2 includes a lot of improvements that make it more enjoyable for gamers. Several tedious features from the original game have been streamlined for more efficient gameplay. In Mass Effect, the inventory was massive, but there were hardly any unique items, making it a chore to sort through. In Mass Effect 2, the inventory system has been completely eliminated. Every Shepard gets the same suit of armor, and new pieces are available for purchase at various stores and can be equipped in her personal quarters, and squad members no longer have armor. Weapons are found during missions and made available to the various characters, and there are no longer upgrades for ammo since those have been turned into class powers. Research projects offer the chance to increase damage for each type of weapon, as well as biotic and tech powers, so there is still the chance to upgrade throughout the game.

Sidequests have also been streamlined. Rather than having to drive a vehicle over a planet’s surface to find points of interest, planets with sidequests will be identified by the game, and then the player has to find the sidequest with a probe. This way the player can go directly to the quest, rather than searching for it. Probes also let you mine for resources to complete research projects, which is unfortunately a change in the game that is still tedious, but necessary to get all the skills you’ll need to finish the game.

Combat has been revamped.

Combat has also been revamped in Mass Effect 2. The same character classes are still available, but there are fewer powers for each class, and each power now has two versions that can be chosen from once it is completely leveled up. This allows you to customize your class more based on the way you like to play. In addition, combat is faster and more challenging, with more skilled enemies and various environmental hazards thrown into the mix to complicate things. All of these changes make for a great gaming experience, whether you’ve played the original Mass Effect or not.

The new level up screen.

Mass Effect 2 is a game that should not be missed, whether you’re an old fan or new to the franchise. It is a fantastic gaming experience.

Grade: 9.5/10

Review: Donkey Kong Country

 Epic Gamer Girls, Game Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 212013
 

I have many fond memories of the SNES, and most of them are about the game Donkey Kong Country. My best friend had an SNES, and we would go to her house after school and drink Mountain Dew (original – these were the days before all the crazy Mountain Dew flavors), eat Ruffles, and play Donkey Kong Country. She was a lot better at it than I was at first, and I remember being frustrated because she always made me be Donkey because she was a lot better at using Diddy, but the game was still ridiculous fun. We played our way through all three titles, and also through the Nintendo 64 version.

I recently replayed Donkey Kong Country, and it’s every bit as good as I remember. The original Nintendo Kong was an antagonistic character who threw barrels at everyone’s favorite plumber, Mario. Now the Kongs have retired from such practices and are living lives of leisure in the jungle. Unfortunately, evil lizard King K. Rool has other plans for the Kongs. He steals their entire banana horde, prompting Donkey Kong and his short sidekick Diddy Kong to go on a quest to retrieve it.

Be careful – the ice and snow make the ground slippery!

The game is a side-scrolling platformer that takes place in a large variety of environments, including jungle, forest, and snowy mountaintops. There are underwater levels, mine cart levels, and lots of hidden bonus levels. All of the levels are bright and colorful, and they’re also populated with lots of kooky enemies. There are standard lizard troops, lizards in army helmets with cannons, vultures that throw nuts, armadillos that roll around, and some mean octopi in the water levels. The odds are stacked against the Kongs, but luckily, there are also some friendly helpers scattered throughout the levels to lend their aid.

Mine cart levels are ridiculous fun.

The other Kongs hang out in each level to help Donkey and Diddy in various ways: Candy lets you save your game, Cranky gives you advice (and also yells a lot), and Funky lets you travel back and forth between levels to collect lives or find bonus rooms you might have missed the first time. Inside various levels, you will also find animals like a swordfish and an ostrich with special abilities that can help you reach special places, kill enemies, and access bonus levels where you can rack up tons of extra lives.

Rambi is great for smashing through enemies.

All of these features, along with a peppy soundtrack, combine to make a great game that you will have fun playing over and over again. There are several different modes – single player, cooperative two-player, and competitive two-player, so there are lots of ways to play as well. This is a great classic game that everyone should try.

Grade: 9/10

Review – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

 Epic Gamer Girls, Game Reviews, PS3  No Responses »
Mar 172013
 

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune came to me by accident when I bought my PS3. It was included in the bundle package I wanted, so I chalked it up to a free game and brought it home and didn’t think much about it. After a few days, I was curious and decided to try it out. I sat down on my couch and didn’t get up until I had finished the game eight hours later.

Okay, okay, there may have been a bathroom break in there somewhere. But the point is that this game is so good that it made me not want to do anything else until I finished it, and for me, that’s a rarity. Don’t get me wrong, I really get into my games, but because of the limits on my time, it’s not often that I’ll actually just sit and play one all the way through without even thinking about the other things I should really be doing. Basically, I’m telling you that this is a game that literally everyone should play at least once, and here’s why.

Uncharted begins the story of Nathan Drake, who is sort of a modern Indiana Jones, except without the degrees. When we first meet Drake, he is looking for the coffin of his ancestor, Sir Francis Drake. Francis Drake was an English explorer, and Nathan thinks he found the secret location of El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold. Accompanied by a reporter, Elena Fisher, and aided by his longtime friend, Victor “Sully” Sullivan, Drake’s goal is to find the city and become famous and rich. Of course, other people are aware of what Drake is doing, and those people are not nice, which means that finding the city is going to be a fight, and not just a fight to the finish, but a fight to survive.

But make no mistake, Uncharted has a lot more going for it than a great story. It is also one of the most visually stunning games that I’ve ever played. Most of the environments in the first game are jungle and ruins. There is also a lot of water. And it all looks absolutely amazing. I will freely admit that I died a couple of times because I got distracted standing on top of a mountain looking out at a magnificent view.

See what I mean about the view?

Mechanically, the game also goes to great lengths to use these environments in various levels. There’s plenty of platforming to be had, most of it over crumbling ruins (yes, it’s as hazardous as it sounds). There are gunfights in the jungle and in the ruins, as well as puzzles to be solved. There are also several vehicle sequences that are exquisitely done, and I usually hate vehicle sequences in games, so that’s saying something. The controls are simple and fluid and the combat, which consists primarily of picking up various guns discarded by enemies and occasionally punching someone in the face, is exciting and satisfying.

Jet skis are a lot of fun in this game.

Basically, I’m telling you that nothing is wrong with this game and that you should play it and love it. It’s perfect in every way, and you shouldn’t miss it!

Grade: 10/10

How Important is Backwards Compatibility to the Next Generation of Gaming?

 Epic Gamer Girls, Rants & Raves, XBOX 360  2 Responses »
Mar 062013
 

The PS4 has been announced, and early reports show that it will not be backwards compatible. Of course, this led to a social media backlash, with gamers declaring that not having backwards compatibility is a huge faux pas, and some even saying that they won’t buy the PS4 unless it is backwards compatible.

For me, these responses are, simply put, overdramatic. Backwards compatibility has only reliably existed for one generation of Sony consoles (the PlayStation 2 played original PlayStation games), and as technology advances, I find it hard to believe that the gaming community didn’t see this as simply a temporary perk.

Original consoles used cartridges, so of course they weren’t backwards compatible, since each cartridge was different from the last. Then consoles switched to using disks, and of course they wouldn’t play any cartridges. The Wii was the first Nintendo system that had backwards compatibility in that it would play GameCube games, and the Xbox 360 only has backwards compatibility with certain Xbox games (which I discovered when I bought an older game a few months ago that won’t work on my 360). Even the PS3 is not backwards compatible with PS2 games, minus a few consoles made at the beginning of its cycle.

For the most part, the PS3 wasn’t backwards compatible either.

While it’s easy to understand why gamers would crave backwards compatibility (who doesn’t want to play an old favorite game over again?), I don’t think it should be the biggest concern when it comes to new consoles. If we want our consoles to get better, we need to release them from the stricture of being backwards compatible, because at some point that’s going to hold them back in terms of overall capability. I think that we need to let go of our desire for backwards compatibility and look towards the future of gaming and not its past.

Review: World of Warcraft

 Epic Gamer Girls, Game Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 032013
 

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a comprehensive review of World of Warcraft. The game is quite user-friendly, mechanically speaking, and so I don’t find it necessary to discuss that too much, especially since this is a game where the mechanics are constantly changing, since the game has almost weekly updates. This is simply meant to be a basic review of the game and its largest components, meant for those who might be interested in trying it out.

I remember when World of Warcraft first came out (which, in case you were wondering, does make me kind of old). At first, I had no interest in playing the game. I’m not much for gaming experiences that revolve around multiplayer, and that is one of the obvious selling points of World of Warcraft. Still, when I finally did try it, it was hard to not get hooked. Blizzard has done a lot of things right with this game, which is why it’s been around for almost a decade.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about World of Warcraft is that it looks great. Every environment is bright and colorful, and there are lots of people milling around, going about their everyday lives, which makes the world feel much more real and active than it really is. Character creation features a variety of races with unique faces and hairstyles, and equipment drops frequently, so the look of your character is constantly changing. The artistic style of this game is a big part of its appeal, and makes progressing to each new area and finding new equipment very enjoyable.

A cave environment.

In addition to the artistry, World of Warcraft has a story rich in lore, although most of that is found off the beaten path in the game, either through reading books or talking to other characters. A lot can also be found outside the game in novels and, of course, the previous games in the Warcraft series. Unfortunately, your character falls into the role of generic hero meant to save the world, which is basically a necessity in an MMORPG like this. Still, there are lots of individual questlines with great stories, so that makes up for this a bit.

To me, the two biggest problems with World of Warcraft are the repetitive nature of the quests and the generally crappy quality of the players. The former is simply something that happens when you have a game this big – the quests all become go kill ten of these, go collect ten of these, take this to this character in another city, and it just gets a little tiresome. The latter isn’t really Blizzard’s fault. As far as I can tell, they’re pretty good about policing inappropriate player behavior, but that can only go so far in a game where you’re required to group with other players to complete certain content. One of my biggest frustrations playing the game was ending up in groups with people who weren’t willing to work with the group and follow instructions to get through a dungeon, or end up in a group with people who did basically nothing and stole all the loot, or having to group with people who were just mean for no good reason. I game to have a good time, and there would be times when I would play for hours and not have any fun at all.

Do this quest for me and I will give you rewards. Then I’ll make you do something else similar and give you a similar reward…

That being said, there is still a lot of content available in World of Warcraft that doesn’t have to be completed in a group, and it’s a good value if you’re a gamer on a budget, since it’s only $15 a month after buying the initial game. If you’re an MMO fan or you’re looking for a game to keep you occupied for a long time, this could be right up your alley.

Grade: 9/10

Achievement Unlocked: Read an Article About Achievements

 Epic Gamer Girls, XBOX 360  2 Responses »
Feb 262013
 

I love achievements. The sound of an achievement unlocking is incredibly satisfying. It makes me feel accomplished. Lately, though, I’ve been reading articles about how achievements could be hurting gaming. Some people seem to think that achievements are changing the way we game – that we no longer see a point to gaming if we’re not going to earn achievements, and that we’ll buy games just because they offer an easy run at achievement points, and that we’ll spend time playing games we don’t even like just to fill in missing achievements.

I think what this argument forgets is that achievements are an optional part of gaming. Most achievements don’t add anything to the game (an exception would be a game like Mass Effect, which offers bonuses to abilities and experience for earned achievements), and points you earn for getting achievements are essentially useless, except for bragging rights. I’m not going to say that the availability of achievements doesn’t motivate me to play a game a second or third time, but if I absolutely hated a game, I’m not going to play it again, achievements or not. If a gamer is buying games just to get easy achievements or replaying games they don’t like, that’s entirely up to them.

Truthfully, I think achievements add a lot to gaming. A lot of achievements can entice a gamer to experience more aspects of a game than they might find otherwise. For example, achievements in Skyrim encourage a player to complete all the questlines, find all the artifacts, and build all the houses available in the game. Achievements in Dragon Age: Origins encompass all the romances and big decisions available in the game, inspiring the player to play the game multiple times and see everything it has to offer. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t replay the game any way you want. I’ve played Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect multiple times, and I’m still missing achievements because I tend to play the same character over and over again because that’s what I enjoy doing.

25,000 points makes you a legend!

Another recent perk of achievements is the Xbox Rewards Program. Xbox offers discounts and gifts to people with certain amounts of achievement points. 25,000 is the highest (I’m about 1,000 points away!), and this gives gamers something else to aim for when playing games.

That’s not to say that there aren’t things that frustrate me about achievements. I am not a fan of multiplayer achievements, especially because once a game gets older, they’re basically impossible to get. I’m still missing both multiplayer achievements for Age of Booty, for instance – there wasn’t anyone playing the multiplayer anymore by the time I bought it. I’m also not a huge fan of difficulty achievements, especially when there’s one for every possible difficulty the game can be played on, but that’s more of a personal preference.

Simply put, I don’t think achievements are ruining gaming. It is totally up to each individual gamer to handle the way they approach achievements, and there’s no reason that achievements have to dictate the way you play games, unless you want them to.

Review – Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale

 Epic Gamer Girls, Game Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 122013
 

I’ll tell you guys a fun fact about me. I am really into Jane Austen. I’ve taken multiple classes about her books, and I’ve seen more Jane Austen film adaptations than I can count. Austen is awesome in every way, so I was pretty stoked to see that there is actually a decent video game about her books out there.

Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale is definitely going to be most enjoyable for Austen fans. This PC game pulls romance plots from several Austen novels, including her most famous, Pride and Prejudice, as well as others, including Sense and Sensibility, and (my personal favorite) Persuasion. Players take on the role of Elizabeth Bennet, although you can give her any first name you like. The goal is to navigate Elizabeth through multiple chapters of Regency intrigue and Austen plots twisted together like a giant pretzel to find her a suitable ending. The game has many endings to choose from, and some are harder to find than others, giving the game a lot of replay value. The game also tracks which endings you’ve received, so you can easily play again with the same profile and try for a different ending. There’s even a fast forward option for scenes you’ve already been through.

The game is essentially a dialogue-based adventure that requires the player to make decisions while interacting with certain characters that will affect how the game plays out. Players must also choose what activities Elizabeth will complete during the week, which will raise and lower attributes she has. Certain attributes must be at a high or low level to achieve endings in the game, but of course, the game doesn’t tell you what they are, so a lot of experimentation is required to get different results. As you advance through the game, some dialogues will eventually reveal hints about attribute combinations you should try. Still, some endings are much harder to achieve than others, and achieving the ultimate ending, the actual ending of Pride and Prejudice, is the hardest of all.

Taking walks will increase your willpower, decrease your propriety, and sap your energy.

Overall, this game is pretty basic. The graphics are bright and fun, the music is decent, and most of the dialogue is taken from Austen’s novels, which is a nice touch. However, you can’t simply duplicate character responses from the novels to win the game, which adds challenge to the game even for those who are ridiculously familiar with Austen’s plots. If you’re not into Austen or text-based adventures, this game is probably not for you, but if you are, I highly recommend giving this one a shot.

Grade: 8/10

Mobile Review: Game Dev Story

 Epic Gamer Girls, Game Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 082013
 

I’ll be honest. I’m not much for mobile games. Most of the ones I’ve purchased are related to console games I own, and generally I forget that they’re there and never end up playing them. However, the mobile game market is becoming more sophisticated, and there are lots of mobile games out there that are worth paying attention to. One of the ones that I have played is Game Dev Story.

Game Dev Story is a great little game, partially because it’s related to every gamer’s favorite thing – gaming! The game puts you in the shoes of a new game developer trying to get a company off the ground. The goal of the game is to survive as a company for a certain number of years. Trust me, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of things that factor into making your company a success, and you have to be able to manage all of them to go the distance.

Every year, your company has a certain amount of money. It’s in your best interest to not overspend, which means you have to be able to develop games and pay all of your employees with the money in the bank. There’s no way to reliably tell how much money you’ll make from your games, either, so you can’t count on any figures to give you a leg up in that department.

This is the normal working atmosphere at your company.

Making games requires employees with certain skills. As you hit milestones in the game, you will be able to expand your office and hire more employees. Employees with multiple skills or very high skills cost more per year to hire, so you can’t always hire the most skilled people off the bat. The employees you start with are very low level, but you also have opportunities to level employees up with data packets you earn when developing games. Sometimes it’s more lucrative to hire a low level employee and level them up than it is to shell out the big bucks for someone who’s already skilled, especially at the beginning of the game. During a game’s development cycle, you also have the opportunity to hire someone from the outside to work on a certain aspect of your game, but that costs more money, and the results are never guaranteed.

To develop a game, first you have to choose some hardware. At first, you’ll only be able to develop for the PC. Developing for consoles costs extra money, because you have to purchase licenses to use their hardware. This can also be a risk, because you can only develop for consoles during a certain cycle, so if you buy the license at the wrong time, it might end up being useless. To start, you have to pick a genre for your game. All of your favorite game genres are here: action, RPG, puzzle, and many more. You also have to pick a game type. Choices include romance, mystery, time travel, and lots of other quirky choices. Part of the formula for a successful game is to pick good combinations, so experimenting gets really fun.

Pray that reviewers like your game, or else it might not sell!

To make a good game, you have to try to get as many high scores as possible in all categories. Categories are things like music and graphics, and one employee is assigned to handle each category. Employees can handle multiple categories, but if you work an employee too hard, or make them do the same task over and over again, they will get tired and not do a very good job. This is where outside hires come in – you can hire a specialist to work on just one aspect of your game, even though they don’t work for your company, but as I mentioned before, this can be risky, because their performance is not guaranteed. The higher each of your category scores are, the better chances your game has of succeeding.

Once a game is released, it will be scored by reviewers. Magazines might write articles about it, and you can see if it lands on a top ten list. You can also receive fan mail. Eventually, your sales will be posted and you’ll receive any money made from the game. There is also a yearly awards show, and if you win an award for any aspect of your game, you could win money. You have to make sure to release games with frequency, though, or else your fans will get restless and jump ship, and then no one else will buy your next game.

Game Dev Story is an intriguing blend of creativity and commerce, and although it can be frustrating (I had to restart multiple times before I really had a chance to get to the end), it’s definitely a mental workout, and it’s fun to play around with different game styles. This is a mobile game that’s worth checking out.

Grade: 8/10

Enter Your 16-Digit Code To Read This Post: How Far Should We Go To Protect Games?

 Epic Gamer Girls  No Responses »
Feb 012013
 

New consoles have been announced, and naturally, the rumor hill has started up in response. One of the biggest rumors out there is that the next round of consoles will employ PC-like CD keys which will lock any purchased game to a particular player account or console, effectively preventing anyone from reselling a game that they have purchased and used. Naturally, console gamers are pretty upset about this possible development, but to me, it’s not particularly surprising. Video game developers have been trying to subdue the used games industry for a long time because it makes them lose money. DLC and special codes included with a game at its release are some of the tactics that have already been used, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. Another more obvious threat that this attempts to combat is piracy, which has been a problem in the gaming community for a long time. Of course, there are many implications to this feature that are both good and bad for the gaming industry, and gamers as a whole.

PC games almost always come with CD keys (this one has been whited out so it’s not usable).

First and foremost, I’d like to state that I do not agree with piracy at all. I don’t know all the nitty-gritty details of piracy, so I’m not sure how much this measure would stand in the way of piracy, but I’m definitely in favor of anything that does. I think that part of the problem is the attitude towards piracy. People think it’s not a big deal because they feel like they’re screwing the big companies and the CEOs who make a big fat paycheck from the games. But piracy doesn’t hurt those people, it hurts everyone in the industry. It’s the little people – the writers, the coders, the developers – who are going to lose their jobs when the industry is forced to make cuts. It’s also horrible to have something you worked hard on stolen. A lot of people put a lot of time and energy into games, and it’s not fair to take them for free just because you don’t have enough money to buy all the games you want, or because you want to play the game, but you don’t want to support the people who made it. If that’s the case, then don’t play the game. Piracy is never right for any reason.

However, despite the blow this measure could deal to piracy, I’m far more concerned with how it will affect the used games industry. There’s a whole job sector in used games, such as stores like GameStop. These stores usually sell new games, but not at the high volumes that stores like Best Buy and online retailers like Amazon do. The majority of their sales come from used games, especially newer used games, which they can still charge a large amount for. In addition, their sales are made more lucrative by gamers coming in to exchange one new game for another, which ensures that that gamer’s business stays in their store. If games are going to be coded so their use is restricted to the original purchaser, this business is going to die fast, because new games and games made before this restriction will be all they’ll be able to sell.

Used games are a huge part of GameStop’s business.

Besides the obvious fact of losing jobs, another thing that greatly troubles me about this restriction is what this will do to the availability of games. Sure, it’s easy to find a new copy of a game at a reasonable price when it first comes out, but what about after that? Collecting older games is going to become a lot harder if this restriction stands, and although lots of titles are becoming available digitally, not all of them are. As someone who buys a lot of games years and years after they’ve come out (for example, I just bought a copy of Radiata Stories, which came out in 2005), I find it disturbing that a lot of games will simply stop being available because of this. In addition, how many people are going to decide that they hated a game, and since they can’t sell it back, they’ll just throw a perfectly good copy in the dumpster?

As much as I want to combat piracy, I’m torn, because I’m not sure this measure is the way to do it. It seems geared more towards shutting down the used games industry, which has always been an issue for game developers because it obviously makes them lose money. But does it make them lose enough that they’re willing to put an entire industry of people out of work and potentially damage the longtime availability of many great games that are made? We have to ask ourselves what we’re willing to do to protect our games, and whether or not protection is the only result of the actions we take, because in the long run, we might end up doing more harm than good.

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