Champlain College Capstone Project Blog Entry 4

Well, we've hit a snag in our attempts to get QA done this week. Both our prototypes are still in need of some work. A few bugs here and there before we can get it done. I'll have to ask Bemis if we can get QA done without the whole "Contact the QA person" and have that count.

In other news, next week we're finally going to challenge stage 1. We feel ready and confident to move forward. We just got to document everything and then make it into a presentation. I'll be sure to make sure the group keeps up to date with what they have and I already set up the sprint.

Also managed to find some notes about horror that I've learned over the past week.

Survival Horror Notes: Why play Horror games? What makes a Horror Game? Why are Horror Games not popular anymore?

-These days horror games have become more action adventure games that feature zombies or monsters and other supernatural things

-Horror is about human psychology. Using the earliest fears of mankind to scare people

-Horror is about the breakdown of logic and how things we once thought normal turn out to be untrue

-Horror is about facing things we don’t want to face, we are so helpless that we can’t deal with these things despite whatever self-assurance we give.

-Horror is about embracing the savage natural human instinct we have in order to accompany our everyday life. Sort of a thrill seeking thing.

-Villain is more important than the protagonist

-A main reason why horror is no longer horror in game is due to the increase of technology. The indistinct models and textures hidden in shadows and fog helped hide the limited graphics while also giving the game a scary feeling of asking “what’s beyond this?”

-Center horror around the unknown. It’s both scary and intriguing.

-Leave the player in a unexplainable position and have them try to find out the truth

-Divide the player between fleeing and wanting to know more.

-Build up the fear and then release it

-Some enjoy the ambience of someone else’s dark imagination.

-In horror video games, the soundtrack and the visuals become very realistic making the player feel that he is actually playing a part in a movie.

-Another reason why horror games are no longer big is because of squeals. You can only replay the same mystery only so many times.

-Horror doesn’t sell as well as action adventure

Interesting huh? Well got to go bed for next class. 

Champlain College Capstone Project Blog Entry 4

Well narrowing our project has helped a lot. We've gotten a clear focus and we now ready to start sending the prototypes to testing in the QA department. There are a few things we need to do before we start changing, but I think we might be able to make it in a week or two. Too tired to keep tying.

Mass Effect 3 Review

(Warning: This review contains spoilers. Also the author doesn't own any of the pictures or videos in his reviews)

Oh, I feel nostalgic about this. How long as it been since I've done a review for this blog? Too long. In fact, I think I should start by reviewing the one game I promised to review so much, but didn’t get a chance to when I quit this blog months ago.

Mass Effect 3

If you even dare to remember, I wrote that I wasn’t going to review Mass Effect 3 because I wasn’t satisfied with the ending—despite the rest of the game looking good—and when I heard about the extended cut endings I decided to play all those and then give my final thoughts. I did so a long time ago and I’m happy to say that I am satisfied. Mostly.

A quick recap about me and Mass Effect. Mass Effect is the reason why I got into Game Designing in the first place, specifically Game Narrative. The fact that such a great game managed to create such a thrilling story with consequences based on your actions in a universe that could be this generation’s Star Wars sparked something in me. I wanted to go out and create such games and unique worlds, interesting characters and races, as well design well written lore.

Now I’m a senior at Champlain College. Hopefully I'll  be working in the game industry about a year from now. But in any event, let’s finally close the chapter of this amazing series.

1. Graphics

One thing that I’ve always praised about Mass Effect is its ability to improve their graphics with every release. Mass Effect one today still isn’t as bad in the graphics department despite the game coming out years ago. Mass Effect 3? We got bigger, detailed graphics.

Let’s talk character art first. The expressions on the characters look even better than before. Since Mass Effect has a lot of talking, it was a smart move on Bioware’s part to improve the necessary facial details. Scars, mouth movement, cheek bones, even the old wrinkles on characters help show just how old and experienced your characters are as they progress through this war. Admiral Anderson is, in my opinion, the best example. He’s old, but he’s still got the fire of a solider that burns inside him thanks to the facial expressions. Other characters have gotten much improvement thanks to these upgrades like Wrex, Liara, and even your Shepherd with new colors and looks to customize your character.

Environment art is just as amazing. With worlds like Tuchanka, Paladin’s Moon, Earth, and Rannoch. Your mouth drops at the sight of each worlds well crafted look. The worlds also speak the story as well with the biggest being Earth and Tuchanka. Earth is obvious because the first time you see this nice, clean white world before the Reapers come and hell is soon on the third rock from the sun. When you get back, it looks like the Fallout 3 World Wide Convention came to town. Tuchanka, however, was my favorite. The desert world and rubble cities spoke of the destructive behavior of Krogans, but the green luscious ancient ruins you find show that behind that shell of bloodshed there was a time when Krogans were a civilization that had deeper meanings then war and death.

And the climactic battle against the Reapers on Earth with every species in the galaxy helping you out only makes you drool. This game is beautiful and it deserves high marks for it.

2. Controls

I’ve never really complained about the controls of Mass Effect before, but I do have one or two issues now with this game. First, let’s talk about what works. The power wheel is still in play, the cover system still keeps its old ME2 feel and switching between weapons still works fast enough. Shooting is awesome,it feels more relasitic the way you handle guns. Also, you have an improved melee system to helps you deal with close quarters.

Yet there are a few issues. First, the running and the cover system. There were times when the cover system didn’t respond or always made me jump out when I didn’t want to. It was too sensitive and there were a bunch of times when I got killed because of it. But the one thing I really hated was how my ability to send my players to locations got screwed up in this game. Every time I tried to position them, they either ignored it or the control always sent them to the wrong area. It got frustrating because there were times when I wanted to play that tactical commando feeling the game promises to give you, but how can I do that if I can’t control my teammate’s actions? Not to mention there were time when my teammates got stuck or something so the characters are a little buggy.

It doesn’t feel that the controls really increased that much, but at the same time they’ve taken a step back with some problems. And yes, I know people are going to say the game feels more like a Gears of War game then an RPG shooter, but I'll get to that in a minute.

3. Gameplay

I guess the first thing I should address is the one complaint a lot of diehard Mass Effect fans have talked about from ME2 to now. Mass Effect got “simpler” as some people call it in the nice term. By simpler, it means Mass Effect slowly started to lose its RPG elements in favor of the ever popular third-person shooter style.  It tended to be a popular thing with EA games that year with the games showing easier controls and focusing gameplay more on already existing popular franchises. In this game, you can make similarities to Gears of War.

While I didn’t see the issue too much in the last game, it’s obvious from this stand point that Mass Effect was more intended towards new players then old players, which I find to be a mistake. By now you already have a growing audience of fans waiting to play Mass Effect 3. You shouldn’t focus so much on making this game for an audience that’s never bothered to play it before; it’s got to be focused more to the core audience.

Mass Effect 2 was such a big hit because it continued that pathway. This game sometimes treats its audience members like newborns. If you want new players to join the series, let them buy the old games first or come out with a triple pack. Don’t waste the audience you already have just for new blood when you already have that huge audience.

Let’s address single player. As usual, a lot was put into the single player campaign. The maps are unique, level designs are good (Sometimes a bit more clustered together, but not always) and the enemies were awesome. We mostly face Cerberus in this series, but we also get our fair share of Reapers as well and more than just husks. We got converted Turians, Krogan, Asari, and more. We do occasionally get a bunch of grunts or Geth back in the battlefield, but it’s q much better variety then the usual three gangs we had to face in ME2. And the AI for the most part remains pretty good.

The AI that lacks is that of your allies, at least in some parts. For the most part your allies will find cover and fight pretty decently, you don’t always have to babysit. But then there will come times when your characters will start waiting in the same spot while your ten miles ahead. Many times I was ready for the next battle only to find my allies three rooms behind me from a fight ages ago. It’s annoying and I’ll tell you right now, Solo Sheperding is very hard. Still, the combat is faster and requires more careful thought so that’s a plus.

Let’s talk about gathering resources or War Assets. In order to get the archived good ending you’ll need Total Military Strength. This is judged by two things, your EMS, or Effective Military Strength, which is judge by the amount of War Assets you get, and your Readiness Rating, but more on that later. This is all the resources that you’ll need to fight the Reapers in the final battle for Earth. Depending on how high your TMS is shall effect how the battle goes, who lives and dies, and what choices you’ll have come the ending.  EMS and War Assets can be gained by three ways. First is by following the main quest. Second, going to various planets and searching for them. Be warned, however, as by scanning the area you alert Reaper scouts who will try to kill you. One missed opportunity in this game is if you do get tagged by them, you should have a mini-shooter game with the Normandy to see if you evade them or not.

And finally, the other way to get War Assets is by the side quests. Unlike, the previous two games where you could listen into conversations while also talking to characters to get them, most of the game features you running around trying to listen in on conversations so you can hear what they need. Then you travel the galaxy, take part in missions, and keep an eye out for the item they need so you can complete the quest. It gets a bit tedious, especially since the mission log does a poor recording of your quests so you don’t know where you are on them, especially when they start to pile up.

Continuing with main story, the one key feature about Mass Effect is the choice system. Is that still working well? Yes and no. Yes it’s still awesome and every dialogue choice affects the game and relationship with the characters. However, it doesn’t appear for every moment in the game like in Mass Effect 1. Sometimes you’re going to say something without a dialogue wheel. What’s even worse is that you don’t have many Paragon or Renegade choices. They are nearly not in this game, what the hell?! The whole point of that system was to give players the chance to say or do something more heroic or bad ass. But now they don’t make much difference?

That’s just a big mistake that I can’t help, but shake my head at.

Finally, we’re going to talk about Multiplayer. Remember when I said about Readiness Rating? Well, that’s part of the whole Galaxy at War thing, but I’m just going to talk about the multiplayer aspect. It’s no surprise to us that there was going to be a multiplayer mode. However, the overall feel of this is just like Gears of War’s horde mode most of the time. You take on waves of enemies while sometimes unlocking new data, but it’s still horde mode. Yes you can play as other aliens and gain cool weapons and abilities, but why not try to create a more unique multiplayer like actual team combat or rescue situations? Why not scenarios taking place inside the game while Shepard is battling the Reapers? How cool would it be to drop on Earth and take it back during the whole grand battle as a squad of four?

The reason why it exists is to increase your Readiness Rating. By increasing it, you up the cost of how much your War Assets are, making them more valuable. Before the extended cut, the EMS requirement was 4,000 (as appose to the 3,100 now) and even if you found so many War Assets it was way difficult to get the number needed. By playing multiplayer you can increase, your chance. Before the extended cut, you pretty much needed to play multiplayer which always seemed to be a forced gameplay in my opinion and one that didn’t need to exist in the first place. Mass Effect has always been about single player only. So why multiplayer in this game? Because of the popularity of multiplayer shooters.

It just seems that, while it was a good idea, it should have been on hold to be made more unique and put down as a downloadable content. I know they had it and decided to just put it on here, but still.

Overall, Gameplay has improvements, but also suffers a lot of critical misses. The game can’t decide if it wants to help you or screw with you sometimes.

4. Story

And now we come to the big part of the review. The story. For the longest time we’ve been told that an advance machine race called Reapers were going to come and harvest all advance galactic life. Even worse, it turns out they’ve been doing this for millions of years even. After so long delaying and trying to prepare for their arrival, they have finally come. Earth is nearly concurred 10 minutes into the game and you later learn that other worlds are under attack as well.

The Turians and Asari homeworlds are in chaos, the Batarians are pretty much never going to recover having taken the first blow, and the entire galaxy is an absolute mess. We’ve gone from a single renegade Spectre agent to an entire armada of cuthulu machines and you, as the awesome space marine that you are, must stop them. The entire story is built on the premise of uniting the galaxy and it’s a good theme to go by. The galaxy is broken, scattered, and its leaders aren’t much help (Is that a surprise?).  You’re the only hope the galaxy has to unite everyone and lead a final last stand. Every choice you make will affect your successes or failure, every resource and race you gather will be your shield, sword and hammer, every moment you waste is another millions of humans dying as they cry out for someone to save them.

The whole story is as dark as can be, even the humor is darkening. It really seems that all hope is nearly lost and it will take the biggest miracle ever to save everything. That comes in The Crucible, a Prothean weapon that was supposed to end the Reapers, but the ancient civilization never finished it in time and now humanity must build it. Some people criticize at the idea of a “Big Super Weapon” to be the grand destruction of all the Reapers, but it’s not that bad. Earth needed to be the last battlefield in some way and this was the best they could come up with. This game is also not just the final conflict with the Reapers, but also finally ends a lot of loose ends such as the Genophage, Cerberus, and the Geth/Quarian conflict which will be resolved by your choices. It’s nice to see so much finally get resolved.

Theme wise, there are two important things to look at. The first is Commander Sheperd’s mental state when dealing with the war. You know those dream sequences with the kid and the shadows? Their supposed to be Shepherds guilt that he’s survived all this time and yet people he’s cared about have died in this war. It only makes sense that the commander is breaking down. This is a war for survival. Plus, we were seeing some of this in ME2 especially when it was all about a suicide mission so it's nice to see this theme carry out.

The next important theme is sacrifice. This is a game where anybody can die, even Liara believe it or not. Sometimes your actions will result in the deaths of teammates and people you knew in the past, but there are going to be some you can’t avoid killing like Thane or Legion. In a war like this, sacrifice is required to win. It’s even more dangerous than fighting the Collectors. In some gameplays, you may only have, at most, 3 companions only fighting side by side with you during the entire game from start to finish and even then all of them can possibly die, including you in three out of the four endings.

Ah yes, the endings. I think I don’t need to go into discussion about that fiasco since you guys have mostly likely taken part or heard about the issue fans had with them (If you want a short summery this link explains it all: http://i.imgur.com/ZrHPY.jpg). I’ve talked about them already so let’s just move on to the extended cut. The free DLC managed to help give added scenes and scripts to the endings, explaining what had happened, who survived, and what the future of the galaxy will be. I know some people still bitched about even these, but honestly, this is what I wanted. Some detailed information about what my actions caused in the end of the game. I was given it and I was satisfied.

I forgive Bioware for this mistake, though I still needed some retribution for Dragon Age 2.

Let’s talk about how the endings are chosen exactly. It all comes down to what pissed me off about Deus Ex: Human Revolution. A single button changes the fate of the world or in this case a galaxy. What is up with the use of this system of solving endings? It just seems like my work was all for nothing if in the end it comes down to a choice regardless of what I do. Granted, some actions have further consequences then others, but I will get to that in a minute. It just frustrates me to have something like this. At least with KOTOR there was build up and the ability to perform evil and good actions before the final choice. In this we get nothing of the sort.

I’m not even going to go to the sense of the Reapers’s reason for why they do this or else I’ll be typing ten more pages.

The first ending is the destruction ending. The Reapers are destroyed, but so is EDI and the Geth if they survived. All advance AI and VI’s gone, meatbags rule the universe. This is also the only ending Shepard may survive if you have a high enough EMS rating. The second ending is the control ending, in which you do what the Illusive Man wanted to do and control the Reapers by having them obey your subconsiousness. This means getting rid of your flesh and becoming sort of a god of machines. Using your new Matrix powers you use the Reapers to heal the galaxy and keep the peace between the species with your rule sort of being implied is absolute. That’s right; Shepard can become God of the Universe. After all, you have the ancient machines of death under your control. The third ending is the synchronization in which you create a new brand of life by turning everyone, sentient and machine, into a mix of both. Making everyone have green eyes, part machine and part flesh, and have some sort of collective consciousness that makes everyone share data. In other words you all become geth with the ability to have half flesh and half machine babies….WHAT?!

How the hell is that even possible?! I can understand the control the Reapers thing thanks to enough Sci-fi, but this? A beam of light suddenly makes geth half human and humans half geth? And they can create life like this? Why do I suddenly think Krogan and Geth porn is going to be popular now. This isn’t science! This isn’t even magic! This is just a big WTF!

And finally the last one is you can reject the three choices like an idiot and let everyone die. Great job hero.
Mass Effect 3’s story has a good start and good build up, but even with the added content to the endings, its still not the big epic finish we were all hoping for like in the previous games. That’s not to say it’s a good story, it’s just somewhat disappointing.

5. Characters

Every character from all three games is back. Old teammates like Ashley, Kaiden, Wrex, and Liara. Friends of old such as General Oraka, Councilor Din, Admiral Hackett, and even Doctor Michael. Plus the team from ME2 (If they survived) is also back along with a few new friends. Since there are too many characters to talk about, we’ll just focus on the ones in your squad.

-Liara: Right from the start Liara is back in action and is awesome in every way. I really like how she’s changed from the nervous, young archeologist who had sexual feelings for you to this dark, mysterious and cold blooded killer who still has sexual feelings for you. Liara is, quite possibly, the closest person Shephard has in dealing with the Reapers and has been a playable character for all three games along with Garrus and Tali. Her focus on the Reapers and her duty to Shepard is heartwarming and she really remains the best developed character in the series.

-Ashley/Kaiden: While you get either of these two at first, they are out for the first half of the game due to the story. They can join later, but only if you help convince them that you are on their side. I found it annoying how these guys still thought I was with Cerberus after everything I did for the Alliance. I proved the Collectors were behind the attacks, I surrendered myself to the Alliance for judgment. I cut all ties with Cerberus and yet these idiots are all “OH I CAN’T TRUST YOU ANYMORE!" Depending how you treat them when they’re in the hospital they’ll either be your friends again or you’ll have to shoot them. I’m serious.

-Garrus (If survived): Garrus is still the greatest Mass Effect character ever. He needs his own damn side-game. Your loyal friend/protégé returns with even more bad ass to add to his name. He’s got a chill attitude now and yet he knows that this is possible the end if they fail. With his family on a burning Palavan and his frustrations on feeling useless, you can tell that he still carries scars and old wounds. Still, he’ll fight to the end and he’s going to be the most useful character to bring you bring with you in many situations

-James: The new guy. He’s pretty much your gunho tank. As for his personality… he’s boring. I know they try to get him to act like the everyday common grunt, but really the guy has nothing. He’s not a bad character, very useful in some fights, but he’s not the greatest. Mixed feelings about the guy. I will admit it's nice to see a Spanish character get a few moments in a game like this, since I'm Spanish myself. Still, I feel there is wasted potential in this guy. The best moment you get with him is during a spar where he opens up about himself and he kind of gives off the "I don't care if I live" attitude, but I don't buy it that well. Maybe because of his voice actor,  Freddie Prinze Jr.

-Tali (If survived): Next to Liara, Tali has had the most character development. She’s grown from a young girl on a pilgrimage to an Admiral of her people. You get her late in the game, but her part is very big as she has to deal with the fact her people might go to war against the Geth. She’s stronger, smarter, and more indepentdent. I honestly think she’s a good archtype for strong women video game charcters. I do wish she came by a bit earlier, but I’m content.

-Javik(DLC): You get a Prothan. That’s right, you get a Prothan as a teammate. That is both awesome and a bit silly. What’s awesome is that Javik isn’t what you expect, he’s this cold and ruthless individual who explain that the Prothans may have not been the ancient saints the galaxy thought they were. Needless to say this shatters a few of Liara’s dreams. He’s a very powerful character will a kick ass beam weapon and a set of biotic powers, but green. What’s silly is how some characters take the guy. He’s the last of an ancient species and some people go “Oh, hey a Prothan, cool”. Oh, well. Still a cool guy. Also he has a Jamaican accent which in of itself is cool.

-EDI: USELESS! NEVER USE HER! THE ENTIRE IDEA OF HER HAVING A BODY FOR SEX APPEAL AND TO GIVE JOKER TO ROMANCE IS STUPID! FORGET THIS EVEN EXISTS!











6. Sound

The sound quality of this game is awesome. With amazing battle themes that range from epic to tragic. The best parts are the moving moments like curing the Genophage or seeing the fall of Earth in the beginning. Even if you destroy the Quarian fleet do you feel a pinch in your hear thanks to the music. All in all, this entire game has a great soundtrack and I don’t think I even need to go into amazing voice acting.

OVERALL: 4/5
SERIES OVERALL: 7/5

While this game is the weakest in the franchise, it’s still a great game to play. The entire series itself is one of the most influential and greatest game series to come out and it looks like Mass Effect will still continue. I stay play the entire series from start to finish and enjoy it.

We are gamers and we are legion.

Later

Champlain College Capstone Project Blog Entry 3

Sorry for the late update, but I'm proud to say that my goal for this week was accomplish. The rough draft of my prototype is finally done. Granted the mechanics are a bit weak and there is definitly a lot of need for improvement, but the basic are done and we have another week to work on them

The player is in first person and travels around a series of room where monsters (Shown as capsules) are looking around. If the player is caught in his vision he turns red. Around the area are boxes that the player can pick up and uses as weapons to throw and stun the capsules which turn black if stunned.

The player has to look for three green spheres so they can unlock the red door to be free. To also help them, the players can hide in shadows to avoid the eyes of the monsters.

The monsters are able to move around thanks to a Waypoint script I created last year, but the weakness of this script is you have to input every waypoint instead of making them repeat over and over so at some point they will stop. Me and Mason think we cna fix this later.

I'm only hoping that the shadow collider script will work. Anyway, can't wait to show this and get responces in the next class.

Champlain College Capstone Project Blog Entry 2

Well, if this week has done anything for us it's helped us narrow down what we want our game to be focused on. A lot of thanks really goes out to the other teams for pointing out things and giving us suggestions on what we should focus on.

It's been decided that were going to go for a stealth horror game with a very dangerous creatures looking for you. You have to defeat them to move on and you do this by avoiding them, gathering items to build a trap, and then setting the trap to defeat them.

Some of the games that inspired us were Haunting Ground: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-r1kyzYbNU

And Amnesia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1nY_5-UrY4

While the environments and story sound interesting, with what we have planned, we're focused on getting the mechanics, stealth, and the interaction between the player and the monsters planned out first. Our protoypes have been changed as have many of our issues.

Vincent and I will be making the protoypes after Mason makes the Stealth mechanic. Josh is going to be continuing his art direction as that's been going pretty well so far. Lastly, we all have documents to try and get done this week. While we won't be able to get past First stage this week like we planned, next week looks to be a better chance.

Plus, I think the extra week will give us a chance to really nail down what we need.