Tag: 3rdperson

Mass Effect playthrough – Pt3

a second wind special

In this final part of FBT’s Mass Effect playthrough, he and Ash get into it, Tali breaks his heart and Javik pays the kind of compliment you can’t come back from. Oh and Reaper stuff too.

So far, ME3 has been an up-and-down game. It’s not followed through on any of ME2’s promise but it’s a tight, fast moving game that keeps the pressure on. With all the ME2 deaths and impacts indifferently accounted for, all’s that left is the Reapers. And Ash.

DGAFShep and Ash haven’t really been seeing eye to eye. When we draw our guns on each other, it hits home; Ash would believe we’re behind this attack, all her fears realised. I’m dreading this; if it doesn’t go the way DGAFShep needs it to, chances are I’ll shoot Ash like she’s an Asari – on top of which, this time Udina has Kai-manipulated footage of me killing the councillor. Ash takes aim, I have no choice but to Renegade interrupt and … she backs down. I have no idea why, or what I did (or what more I could do to provoke her), but after I shoot Udina, which I really enjoy, I dismiss Ash with a curt ‘told you so’ and leave.

Later, I find her outside the Normandy and we have a tense conversation where I insist she join Hackett. It makes more sense. It’s selfish to keep her there when Hackett needs a Spectre and I’d be holding her back. She’s outgrown Shep. We firmly handshake and I never see her again. Not even at the Citadel party (Sorry James, DGAFShep is also CockblockerShep), but it feels right. DGAFShep might not care, but I do. Hope she makes it.

Oddly, I disagree with the survival of one squad-mate; Grunt. It’s such a great moment when he chooses to stay and give Shep a chance to escape, and his fight-to-the-end is a startling moment that brings home the sacrifices Shep is asking of people. That he rocks up again is great, but it just undermines that moment. He does have one of the best moments in the Citadel DLC so I’m looking forward to that but still, he should die. That’s Loyalty for you. Also, for DGAFShep the non-sacrifice doesn’t really add up to much. Since I gassed the Rachni Queen in ME1, the game has to explain all the Reaper forces and it turns out they just cloned a Queen to produce foot soldiers. This is turning in Borderlands with its respawning mini-bosses. This time I save the Queen and send her off to the Crucible project – where she becomes dangerous and the Alliance kill her. Well done DGAFShep, you wiped out the same species twice. And it causes my War Readiness to drop. More bloody work to do.

Despite that staffing issue, the War Readiness is growing nicely. Without even realising, it gets past ‘minimum’ which feels like DGAFShep’s target. A large reason for that is my new appreciation for ME3’s missions. I avoid the random and emotional stuff but if the Alliance needs boots on the ground I seem to find myself doing them, rather than working through a list of mission-triggering chores like ME2 just to get things moving. And they just get more and more epic like the Asari home-world and the Reaper fights; it’s exciting and fun (not fun as in causing all those Asari deaths, honest). Before I know it, DGAFShep has inspired the universe and aced the war readiness; I even managed to save Miranda from her dad (And another Kai fail). This time I let her hug her sister. DGAFShep is getting soft in her old age.

Nearing the end, we’re off to Rannoch to help Tali reclaim her homeland. I’ve already tangled with the Quarians but managed to keep them on side – by punching that war-hungry General. I even get to dish out some sass to the downed Reaper, taunting “Tell your friends we’re coming” before another bunch of rockets hit it and I mutter “Never mind, I’ll tell them myself.” Badass.

The Quarian’s planet reclaimed, I meet an excitable Tali. I always felt bad about Legion but it’s a great sacrifice – once, I lost Legion in ME2 and another Geth took its place. Despite all the Paragon chat and doing its side-mission it still tried to kill the Quarians and Tali killed it while saying “Legion would have understood” which was affecting; this time though, with Legion loyal and the Quarians onside, we should be good. As I watch Legion upload the code, I start to notice the dialogue is different. Still, sure there’ll be an interrupt where I force that punched general to stand down.

He’s not standing down. Legion’s going to attack the Quarians. My Mass Effect life flashes before my eyes and I realise that without her ME2 loyalty mission, Tali has no sway with the fleet, that she and Legion didn’t patch up their differences, that I didn’t do Legion’s trip into Geth subconscious; because of me, Legion and Tali don’t understood each other. Oh … oh shit. I only have a millisecond to interrupt – but which? For DGAFShep, the Geth are a better option; they have the Reaper code and stronger military. I don’t stop him and the Quarians are wiped out. As I stare at Legion’s body, Tali looks at her beloved planet littered with debris from the fleet … then removes her mask and -just to make it ten times worse- apologises before she jumps.

Tali must really regret throwing in with Shep. In ME1 she brought us the proof of Saren’s treachery which justified Shep’s actions – she gave us what we needed to get here and she’s been by our side from the start, but I never let her complete her pilgrimage or exonerate her father; because of me she gets excommunicated then sees her people destroyed. She’s easily the most tragic of all DGAFShep’s followers and it’s a horrible moment. But, this is how all of ME3 should have gone – that impact, the repercussions of our actions. ME3 should be Shep’s choices coming back tenfold, and narrative wise, the only time we really see tragedy is the fall of Thessia, which is a distant event. Tali was up close and personal. This was Shep’s fault. Seeing Tali die affected me for the rest of the game. I don’t want to be DGAFShep anymore.

What I need is a party to cheer myself up. But who is going to come?

The Citadel DLC is completely justified for DGAFShep – she’s hardly going to turn down a free apartment and some shore leave. The entire DLC is wicked fun; yes, it’s comedy is at odds with the rest of ME3’s stoic, stone-face nature, but on this playthrough I’ve noticed some gallows humour in Shep and this is just an extension of that. It just works so well, you can feel the steam being blown off. You can play it a hundred times and still catch new moments (This time I realised Javik refused to be in Team Mako or Hammerhead and is just Team Prothean, which still gets more kills than the other two). We get to partner with ‘Uncle’ Rex and every character gets their own great moment; when they grumble about never getting picked for missions the meta-humour gets almost too much. There’s loads of jokes and in-jokes, Shep and her ‘dancing’, the digs about breaking the fish tank, EDI going screwy when she loses connection to the Normandy, and the line ‘if you told me this morning a toothbrush was going to save the Normandy, I’d be very sceptical’. And when the caper is over the party begins; no other game gave the characters -or the fans- this much love. There’s more characterisation in this one DLC than most games manage in a GOTY edition.

One of the most amusingly harsh moments for DGAFShep is no one contacts her to hang out. Because I never bonded with them, I didn’t get the main-game moments either; Liara’s star-chart, Garrus’ shooting practice; even DGAFShep feels a pang of guilt for not making more effort now. I’m tempted to just have a party with Glyph and his bow-tie, who needs them anyway. I can’t even invite my clone or Brooks because I killed them both. But I figure this is the one time I’m allowed to have fun; they’re an alright bunch. No crew stopping by means I miss not only Miranda in the red dress and Grunt’s pub-crawl, but one of my favourite observations of Shep across the entire trilogy. When James and Cortez make a bet on the game, regardless of the outcome they both win; they weren’t betting on the winner, they were betting on Shep being able to spot a winning team. It’s a perfect nod to Shep’s inherent leadership. DGAFShep didn’t get that complement, but she got complemented by Javik – for her sexual prowess when they wake up together the morning after the party … Citadel might be my favourite DLC of all time. That group-photo is what it’s all about but for DGAFShep, it’s a harsh reminder of those she’s lost; there’s a lot of empty spaces.

As we reach the staging ground in London I don’t say goodbye to anyone. As they explain the scale of the attack, the odds, the forces we’ll be facing, it makes the Suicide Mission seem like a tutorial. This is gonna be … a standard two teammates mission? There’s a Reaper in the way and you think two followers will cut it? Everything has led up to this, every squad-mate would demand they do their bit just like happened at the end of ME2 but bigger – they wouldn’t just abandon their commander, DGAF or not – we’ve all come too far and it’s the first of many missteps ME3 takes as it reaches the end.

As Harbinger blows everything sky high, I say a goodbye to James – no cutscenes, no romance but the goodbye is still affecting. Both he and Javik survive (also, how come the Normandy doesn’t get involved earlier? You’d expect it to swoop down Millennium Falcon style and take out Harbinger while Joker tells me the blow this thing so we can all go home) and we’re zapped into the citadel. For various reasons, I don’t have paragon or renegade options during the Shep-Anderson-TIM showdown so I’m pretty much just along for the ride. I think this sequence (along with the next) coloured most of my previously negative opinion of ME3, and it’s doing so again.

Playing as DGAFShep has really brought this moment into a sharp focus. It’s gutting that TIM wasn’t an actionable alternative to the Alliance – their attitude is as single-minded and unshakable as TIM’s, and that’s what ME3 should have been about, the lesser of two evils; the true horror of war. This moment should have been Shep’s final decision, not the one that’s about to come. ME2 made Cerberus a tempting alternative and then ME3 pulls all that away and turns him into a boo-hiss villain; worse, it’s not even TIM and his ideals because he’s indoctrinated. He should never have been taken over by the Reapers, it should have been both of them trying to sway Shep to their side. Shep just mindlessly kills TIM and comforts Anderson; yes, yes it’s sad he dies, he was a father figure and a supporter but he could have been less than that, and TIM could have been more.

The Catalyst does have a Matrix Architect vibe about him, but it’s still compelling stuff. I like how an AI endlessly judges us, the irony of it killing trillions over and over to protect the universe is huge – on a galactic scale the individual is reduced to less than zero yet it falls to one to make the choice. Step forward DGAFShep. Uhho.

This has always been the real ME killer for me. The entire series is about choice, even if most of them didn’t really matter as it turned out, but this is one choice Shep shouldn’t make. Even Shep says it’s a decision no one person can make and the game should never have let us. Kid Catalyst should assume you are the best of us to reach here, and take Shep’s choices throughout the series to decide what happens next. It would have been truly stunning reaper-what-you-sow moment. Instead, even if you brokered peace between the Geth and Quarians, helped Legion understand humanity, taught EDI how to love, you have to kill them to destroy the Reapers? They’re not the same, the Reapers aren’t sentient, the fact that the Catalyst can’t be reasoned with proves it. Instead we’re supposed to sacrifice ourselves? A Renegade wouldn’t. This ending assumes you’re a selfless hero and yet, if we’ve learnt one thing, it’s that the universe can’t be boiled down to personal choice – there’s too many variables. That’s what ME is supposed to be about. The only way ME3 could work is if your actions speak for you. It’s an infuriating, simplistic cop-out to leave it up to you then make every choice have a downside.

Symbiosis is not what DGAFShep would chose, she wants to survive, and she wouldn’t want to become their consciousness either. That’s a full-time job. Plus, do we want DGAF Reapers? Those endings completely discount all of Shep’s actions, her attitude. Why would you risk a Renegade running the universe? What to do. Then I realise Destroy is also the only one where Kid Catalyst doesn’t imply death. Since DGAFShep only cares about herself, that means…

I chose Destroy and along with the Reapers, EDI – although I don’t see a death scene for her, which I kinda did and didn’t want to see, I’m gutted to have killed her. Everyone else survives and I watch Hackett give a surprisingly upbeat voice-over about rebuilding with a promise not to repeat our actions. I doubt it and wonder what will happen when another AI war wages and the Reapers aren’t there to stop it. For the first time really, I get that the Reapers were right and all it took was not caring.

As the Normandy blasts off, we pause at the wall of death. So many names this time – Cortez is on there too, which is saddening. Anyway, Garrus goes to place Sheps name alongside the (large) number of crew casualties – but pauses. What’s that all about? I’m a goddamn DGAF hero! Get my name up there! It’s sobering they chose not to honour her. Yes she shot people in the face, destroyed the Quarians and ignored a crew that constantly laid down its life for her, but she got the job done. Well shit. But then, the shot pans through the rubble of the Crucible to Shep’s N7 tags and … she takes a breath!

Holy shit DGAFShep survived. I had no idea there was even a survival option but I’m pleased. She deserves a beer. She may owe the Asari one too. I guess Garrus paused because he suspected I’d survived. Well why didn’t you rescue me instead of getting my name printed for the dead-board?! You’d better not have the wake at my apartment.

And that was DGAFShep’s playthrough. It was a huge red-eye-opener. ME1 is still a brilliant, pure sci-fi game. One of the greats. ME2 is epic in scale and impact, but arguably, it’s where the rot sets in; if only we could have sided with TIM it would be beyond brilliant. As it is, it’s just brilliant. And ME3 … it had an impossible task bettering ME2’s legacy, but I’m undecided on if it even really tried. Once it settled on the idea that we were saving the galaxy, it relaxed, as if that was enough – it wasn’t; ME was about how Shep would somehow find a way to cure the genophage and still think to check Liara wasn’t upset about something.

And then there’s the choices we’re tricked into stressing about. Everything we did in ME1 and 2 should count towards how easy Shep’s mission is in ME3 – the only reason to send Shep on her fundraiser is because she has history and sway with everyone. Past interactions should be their first reaction to her requests, not ‘go do this chore and we’ll give you troops’. Some don’t even make sense – why cure the genophage to get Krogan on Palavan so the Turians can bolster earth? Just ask the Krogan to help earth. And what the hell did TIM do with the Human Reaper? It’s easy to argue the sheer number of interactions, dialogue choices and Asari to shoot would make the final stages impossible to pull together but really, that’s as bigger lie as Garrus claiming to the best shot on the Citadel. A few more dialogue choices, some additional side missions and a few alternative cutscenes and it would have all pulled together. Other series’ have managed branching storylines and impacts but ME3 just doesn’t want to be bothered – it’s as DGAF as Shep was, and you often see little nips and tucks, shortcuts and reskins. It’s a good try though, and at least we have the Citadel, which is the best afterparty ever. The only thing that could have made that DLC better is if Conrad turned up.

Despite all the hardships (mostly around not sleeping with crew mates; I’m amazed I resisted Trainor, no idea how I kept her out of my shower) playing as DGAFShep really refreshed a series I’ve played about as many times as the Reapers visited. I thought I knew it but I don’t – and when I consider all the fantastic moments, intimacies and friendships DGAFShep missed (and I discovered this time) I wonder what else there is to discover; this was just one playthrough, there’s hundreds more – TheMorty talks about his experiences as if we played different games, and he had no idea about some of the impacts and issues I faced – Mass Effect is a series that can be played forever.

There is a galaxy out there and no matter your disposition, it’s great saving it.

Mass Effect 2007 | Mass Effect 2 2009 | Mass Effect 3 2011

platforms; Win/Origin, PS3, X360

Mass Effect playthrough – Pt2

a second wind special

Part two of FBT’s Mass Effect playthrough sees DGAFShep thin out her team and gets angry playing hide and seek with a kid in a forest instead of stopping the Reapers.

So far, despite not caring in the slightest, DGAFShep has stopped Sovereign and is about to stop the Collectors.

Here we go – Goddamnit I need to do a side mission to trigger the IFF. Begrudgingly I do Miranda’s loyalty mission, as she’ll make a good consigliere for my gang and looks better in the black outfit – but I force her to kill that guy and cut her sister out of her life; once you join The Red Sheps, you join for life.

With less than half the team loyal, I know this will be a blood bath. I’d upgraded the Normandy (self-preservation) but expected someone to get offed on the approach. All present and correct. As we head into the base, it’s as tense as my first playthrough – it really is a suicide mission. Ironically, not doing the loyalty missions has distracted me as much as they are; I want to work out how to make everyone survive but DGAFShep wouldn’t care so I pick who I think is best suited and hope for the best. As we cut through the Collectors, I’m on edge – each cutscene is fraught as I watch to see who falls.

It’s not until the seeker level that the team starts to fracture. As my consigliere, Miranda was constantly in charge of the fire team so I didn’t have a loyal biotic. Jack did her best but eventually dropped her shield and … Thane didn’t make it, swept away as we reached the door. One down, loads to go. I always felt ME2 was overstuffed with squad-mates anyway … Not bothered. Don’t care. Sniff. I didn’t even let him connect with his son. I’m a monster.

This is it. The final push. I chose Samara and Jacob, while Grunt takes the crew to safety – I’d default saved them by immediately going to the base. The biotics take care of the collectors and I take out the giant Terminator. TIM pops up to plead for the Collector base. I’ve always destroyed it and earned his wrath, but this time I think he’s right; let those deaths count for something … okay, the base is yours. Anything to get DGAFShep out of this.

The base falls apart and Jacob goes sliding off the edge of the platform and … I catch him! I expected him to fall but no. Wow. Maybe it’s not going to be as harsh as I – Oh. In the aftermath I find Jacob’s body. Poor Jacob; he was a character I always struggled with. A committed soldier throwing in with Cerberus, it seemed as if he was supposed to be a friendly face versus the ultra-loyal Miranda, but it never quite gelled; he always seemed too straight-laced to defect; he was deluded if anything, so I never saw him as a Shep-lite. As I help up Samara, I figure one out of two isn’t so – Samara dies in my arms. I should go. As I escape, I ask for an update and … Mordin didn’t make it either. Harsh, but not as bad as I expected. Okay, I lost a third of the team but DGAFShep did what she set out to do, and made TIM very happy. I wonder if there’s a romance option with TIM in ME3?

I have mixed feelings about ME2 now. It started well, but TIM-related Renegade options are for rebelling against him rather than aligning and that makes them Paragon from an Alliance perspective, while Paragon options just have her forgiving rather than siding with him. A renegade should fall in with Cerberus, become what Ash alluded to. Instead, they just part on wary terms; TIM should want Shep to stick around and Shep knows nothing’s changed with the Council; why give up when things are just getting started? It’s fine if Shep is a girl-scout at the end of the day, but ME1 had a lot of grey areas – If she’s a linear hero then really, Renegade and Paragon are just cosmetic choices and TIM’s sermons hollow. Choosing Cerberus could still mean reaching the end goal – stop the Reapers, and being a Spectre allows Shep to take whatever route she sees fit, not try to earn Anderson’s approval.

DGAFShep in ME2 wasn’t really evil enough to warrant the glowing eyes either; even the people she kills deserved it. Her Renegade interrupts are more DGAF than ‘you die now’ – One time, I get a renegade option to shoot a mech. Wow. Instead of visiting my favourite store on the citadel I just bully the owners into a discount. Shep’s just indifferent; I didn’t stop that kid while taking down Archangel (Garrus shot him not me) and I let that high-as-a-kite Volus get killed.

ME2 assumes I care and want to help squadmates gain closure. Yes you can mess their missions up but that’s not Renegade, it’s just petty. Surely Renegade is a dangerous option, not just a bit stroppy. Shep’s refusal to interact does impact the characters though; Jack and Miranda never get into it and neither do Tali and Legion.

Focusing purely on the main mission, I more readily noticed that ME2 lacked a clear villain. TIM isn’t revealed as such and the Collectors aren’t really doing much for most of the game – a human reaper is terrifying but rather than just a larva I’d have loved to see that thing blast out the Omega 4 relay and attack like Sovereign did, or speak up – The Reaper is people; it might have an interesting take on things given Harbinger was just a disembodied voice.

The biggest let down though is the lack of impact from ME1 moments. I got stopped by an ex-ExoGeni employee to tell me how well the colony is doing (Colony of one with no water or food you mean?) and that’s it, other than a few ‘remember me?’ moments. Also, I find it hard to believe the Alliance would still trust Shep. I sided with avowed terrorists and Saren would be proud of how I abused my Spectre status yet Hackett still sends Shep to sensitive bases full of stuff Cerberus would kill for. I would have loved to see the ME story branch out – Miranda gives you Cerberus tasks instead, exploring their goals and ideals, let you to decide if TIM maybe has the right idea – or at least a more effective end-game than the Council’s ignore it until it goes away.

Oddly then, I’m really looking toward Mass Effect 3 to pull it all together. For all its faults, ME3 relied heavily on ME2 actions – what about Thane stopping TIM’s prancing emo sidekick? What will happen in the Asari monastery with no Justicar? Who’s going to cure the genophage? And Jacob? Erm … I’ll get Miranda to hook up his girl with iPartner Connections. I also realise DGAFShep has made things more difficult – I missed Arrival, and Liara never became the Shadow Broker (why would I ask her about her personal problems?) Also, David is still trapped in the Geth AI machine somewhere – and it’s a testament to that mission’s moving story that I genuinely feel bad about it. It all has an impact in ME3, not to mention I left Reaper tech intact for TIM to sift through; that’s new and now he owes me one, surely? Coming for you, TIM. I mean the Reapers, I’m coming for you, Reapers.

I’d forgotten about Mass Effect 3’s cherubic, innocent child that gets offed then haunts Shep’s 80’s music video dreams. A wise man (TheMorty) once said that the role would have been better filled by whichever character you let die on Virmire and that made sense. There’s millions Shep can’t save, but Kaidan represents what she sacrificed and to have her guilt actually explored with a familiar face instead of chasing a brat around a forest would have been more interesting and tied it all in. But ME3 is less about tying in, it’s about tiding up.

Anderson pulls us from jail to speak to Earth defences, and just as I start thinking ‘why would they want to see a renegade terrorist traitor’ Anderson bellows “I don’t know why they want to see you after all the shit you did!” Oh. Finally, an impact. Sort of. As I tell the earth council they’re idiots for not listening to me two games ago, the Reapers attack. We leave earth and Anderson expects us to get help. You thought that through Dave?

Hey, TIM! Hows it going, you mounted that Reaper head in your office? Remember the time you and I – wait, why are we villains to Cerberus now? Shep’s done nothing but make him proud. It’s the first flag that ME3 doesn’t care so much about your choices as it does keeping to its own narrative. Even if TIM’s indoctrinated by this stage, the Reapers would be desperate to do the same to Shep. Hero of the Citadel as a Reaper spy? Regardless, there’s no reason why ME3 couldn’t have split into two plots, Cerberus and their Reaper-control plan vs Alliance’s destruction – ME3 should be a constant emotional battle for Shep; she wants to save the universe, but it’s going to cost. Going free-agent and having Cerberus missions as well as Alliance could have created entirely new experiences; the foxy Eva instead of EDI for one. Switch allegiances back and forth as you gather forces before committing to one side’s solution. Skyrim did it. But not Mass Effect; a game renowned for it’s choices and impacts. TIM hates me for no reason other than the plot demands it and we blindly support the council who caused this mess. But I shouldn’t be disappointed in the linear story – not when I have choices to be disappointed by.

It would be great to see one seemingly small ME1 event having huge impact, but ME3 doesn’t really have time for that. The war has levelled everything, and nothing except stopping the Reapers really matters – I guess that works for DGAFShep, she’d ignore the repercussions anyway, but it would have been nice to see the actions Shep set in motion become sizable barriers or shortcuts now. Least we still have the old gang, right?

I accept most of the ME2 Dirty Dozen have moved on but Miranda? This will not stand. She was a Cerberus loyalist and we followed the Cerberus party line to the end. There’s zero reason why Miranda would go on the run in this playthrough. Imagine Miranda in the Kai Leng role, hunting us down. Whoa. The game is quick to replace dead characters with clones, there’s no reason Miranda couldn’t have been the one to try and stop us. It would have been amazing!

First off, Kai is a terrible villain. He fails in every encounter until he has a gunship behind him; you wonder what TIM sees in him. He usually gets beaten by a bedridden lizard who can’t breathe – He even got shot by Anderson once; well, twice. Miranda as the antagonist would be a viable threat; she knows us – inside and out, literally. It would turn ME3 into something much more wrenching and intimate to see them go at it, tied into choices with her loyalty mission. Given the unending adulation the rest of the team doles out, can’t just one of them not fall in line? The only time I seem to really piss off the crew is during the Leviathan DLC; I force the daughter to maintain her connection even though James warns me I’m killing her. Afterwards he stroppily marches off grumbling I went too far (and it’s implied she died later, whoops). Aside from that, I can’t bolt around the Citadel let alone the Normandy without some squad member wanting to reminisce about stuff we didn’t do and make deep, meaningful observations. Except Ash.

One of my favourite moments in ME2 is Ash rocking up just to tell us to piss off. I loved that Ash was angry Shep fell in with Cerberus – she was right to be. Ash was pro-human until Shep influenced her (DGAFShep didn’t but still) and in ME3 it’s awkward – Ash says ‘I used to’ when asked if she knew the commander; the tension continues and DGAFShep’s STFU responses don’t placate her (and I don’t visit her in hospital either). We’ve seen Ash grow; she was full of self-doubt in ME1, found herself in ME2 and in ME3 it’s like we’re equals; and DGAFShep has done nothing to convince Ash she’s still the skipper – but I’m getting trigger-happy-ahead of myself; Shep’s barely warmed up.

The renegade options do make Shep see red again, but rather than murdering people, DGAFShep’s rants are just taken as inspiring honesty; I don’t think rousing a squad of Turians with tough talk really deserves glowing eyes. There’s one flash of genius where we go round two with al-Jilani, who ducks a punch so Shep headbutts her. Nice. I have that General on the Citadel assassinated to save running about and as I issue the kill order, he thanks me for helping him see sense back in Cora’s Den. I never spoke to him before. People just can’t stop crediting Shep for stuff she didn’t do. Maybe I have a clone running about somewhere.

As I accept that my previous actions don’t really count in ME3, I concentrate on uniting the universe – and realise that means doing everything since it all relates to the war effort. Still, with the straight-arrow mindset and avoiding small talk, ME3 accelerates as fast as ME1 did; I hadn’t really noticed it before but everything has a dangerous or desperate feel to it. The losses, the determination, it really starts to grip when you’re not scanning for a Volus’ missing laundry; DGAFShep’s ‘get the job done’ attitude works so well – there’s fricking Reapers landing Joker, haven’t got time to groom EDI for you.

The fights are gritty stuff. When the shuttle door opens and we’re dropped into the LZ Shep is agile and responsive while the squad-mates follow my lead even more effectively than in ME2. It’s a tight shooter when considering the size of the missions which all have great, epic moments and explosions. Shep is a hero no matter how DGAF she tries to be. The various Reaper and Cerberus forces are a challenge; it’s a fast, focused game and in the heat of battle I lean towards thinking ME3 might be my favourite. Then it does something to really annoy me.

Because I didn’t do Mordin’s loyalty mission, it could be assumed Maelon completed his cure. But no. He failed and new guy Wiks took over the project. So we go through the same plot with a reskinned Mordin. Although I feel cheated it just reworks his story to hit the same beats, I’m asking too much of ME3 – it would be a shock to not be able to unite the Krogan but really, that’s a dead-end story-wise and would only have worked if it had been set up in ME2 – If I knew Mordin had the cure and still let him die, then I would expect repercussions but it makes sense someone else would try. I would have liked to see it be Maelon and all the conflicts that would bring but Wiks does a good Mordin impression (doesn’t sing though). Despite it being a rework, there is an impact – Eve dies and Rex laments that without her, uniting the Krogan will be hard. Ultimately, the choices of ME2 don’t alter the outcome just how we reach it – there’s still a sense I didn’t have to import my character.

We head off to the ‘so hot they’ll kill you’ Asari monastery. This is where Samara takes care of her other Fatal Attraction daughters, but without her … it’s the same mission; apart from daughter Falere making a snide comment about if we couldn’t protect her mother we can’t save her daughters. Which is … true – once the monastery is destroyed, Shep rightly says she can’t risk letting Falere go free and choses to kill her in the face. She doesn’t even get to turn her back like the other Asari I shot. Jeez DGAFShep hates Asari’s – she let Samara’s killer daughter go, let Samara die then after one daughter dies at the hands of a Banshee, I shot the last one. I couldn’t have failed Samara any harder if I tried. Annoyingly though, Liara does nothing. You’d think she would plead Falere’s case; being the Shadow Broker’s changed you. Wait, what?

I check I’ve not accidentally imported DoGAFShep. How in the hell did Liara pull that off without my help? Liara explains it with ‘oh I just tracked him down and took over so I’m now an inter-galactic secrets trader’. Liara has a bigger character change than Billy in Beverley Hills Cop 2. It’s makes no sense, feels wrong for Liara and really draws attention to ME3’s unshakeable story. It’s not like her being the SB really has an impact anyway. Also, she still comes in for a hug – DGAFShep is not a hugger.

Missing Jacob seems to have no impact at all; we still save the Cerberus traitors and a scientist takes his role. I do briefly meet the doctor who was forcing his autistic brother to drive an AI machine but since DGAFShep never met him I don’t get a Renegade option. He only mentions a project that went badly wrong and how Cerberus was forced to nuke an entire planet to contain it. Sorry David. Shame he didn’t reappear HAL2000-style, or as the king of the Geth. Real shame.

I was excited to see how the game handled Thane’s death though. I shouldn’t have been. The only real impact is Kai manages to kill the councillor; Captain Kirrahe would have taken Thane’s role but I killed him too so no chance for the counsellor. Oh wait, an ME1 impact! Talking of which, what about Udina? And Ash …

Like a Renegade interrupt, we’ll pause here. Read the third and final part of FBT’s DGAF playthrough to see if Ash and Shep patch up their differences …

or if one of them is patching up bullet-holes.

Mass Effect playthrough – Pt1

A SECOND WIND special

In a special 3-part playthrough, FBT takes on an unconventional approach to the classic sci-fi series; FBTShep is Bi-Paragon and Renegade-curious

I’ve played the Mass Effect trilogy more times than I can remember. But never as a Renegade; all my Sheps have been good Sheps. Not intentionally, but the unfolding of a galaxy-wide threat drew you in as you grew into the role of saviour – playing any Renegade options just seemed a dick move. About the only renegade thing I do is dump Ash for Miranda and be rude to Udina. Thing is, even Renegade Shep wants to save the universe, but what if Shep didn’t actually give a shit? If they were good or evil, just indifferent? If the series is all about choice, how easy would it be to save the world if the only person for the job threw a sickie?

I was also curious about how the Reaper invasion would play without any distractions, romances or side-missions. Should Shep really be wasting time chatting to adoring fans, trying to bed the crew and doing personal admin while Reapers are decimating the universe? A large part of Mass Effect is the experiences, the moments, the family feel that comes from Shep’s George Bailey impression. What happens if the universe is in the hands of a DGAFShep?

I decided a few rules – I know how this story plays out, but DGAFShep doesn’t, so;

  • unless it’s described as Reaper-related Shep isn’t interested

  • I use Renegade options if a situation threatens the mission otherwise it plays out as neutral.

  • I use Paragon if it gets Shep what they need to progress – otherwise neutral.

  • no conversations, side missions or loyalty quests

  • no romances.

  • DGAFShep isn’t renegade/paragon, they just wants to get this done and crack a beer.

  • I should go.

Mass Effect 1. DGAFShep is an Earth-born orphan who ran a street gang before joining the Alliance to escape. I chose femShep to avoid the Ash v Miranda trap again (just have to resist Trainor). Anderson describes me as a soldier who gets the job done no matter the consequences – in reality I don’t care, but a bad rap helps cut to the chase. I even adopt a skinhead look, just to appear meaner. Don’t mess with DGAFShep.

It’s been a few years but ME1 has held up really well. Now a decade old, it’s basic but a detailed, convincing future. And being rude in the future is easier than I thought. There’s some good cut-the-bullshit lines, and it’s fun to not put up with Joker’s shenanigans. Mostly though Shep just holds everyone to an impossibly high standard; she has no time for the crews concerns and is pissy with an unarmed dock worker who smartly ducked a fight between Spectres. I also feel a bit lonely; I miss chatting with the excitable Tali, reassuring Liara and breaking down Garrus’ cynicism. One thing I hadn’t counted on; is DGAFShep pro-human? Paragon Shep put human interests aside in favour of the galaxy, whereas the Renegade options turn her into UkipShep. That’s not DGAFShep, she just wants out, so I take John Lennon’s approach – ‘I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me’. Didn’t imagine her as a Beatles fan.

If missing the gossip speeds up Shep’s progress, avoiding the side missions and searches has turned ME1 into a speed-run. Suddenly it’s all about the Reaper threat and I quickly stop pining for missed missions and moments; this is intense. Events like Virmire come up so much quicker when I’m not spending hours staring at the Mako’s arse, while avoiding chat and side-missions makes stuff like Noveria race by – I develop a sense of urgency that wasn’t there when I was off looking for that Admiral’s team then figuring out where he’d gone too. Finally, Shep’s “I should go” sounds right; I should. When I make my stop at Feros I drive right past the ExoGeni group and just drop off the daughter and depart. I only picked her up because it’s scripted, otherwise I’d have left her to the Varren; Shep’s not bad, she just DGAF. But when Shep is bad, she’s very very bad.

Killing the Rachni Queen was harsh. I coincidentally took Rex and he made a compelling case for wiping it out so I had to go through with my first truly DGAF choice. She was a possible risk, so I gassed the bug. The Thorian Asari tries to convince Shep she’s as changed on the inside as the outside by turning her back and kneeling, letting Shep decide. Seems like proof enough to me that she’s innoc – Shep just executed her! Holy shit. In the back of the head, while kneeling. She was a danger hence following Renegade but I thought we’d arrest her, not blow her head off.

Only one Feros colonist survived and I don’t fancy their chances since I didn’t do any of the side-missions there. On Virmire Shep shoots another Asari in the back as she runs off. No wonder Liara always looks worried. Sometimes it wasn’t even my fault; it was a complete coincidence I took Rex on the Fist mission, forgetting he was contracted to kill him. Rex is clearly a bad influence.

Playing as a complete git wasn’t my intention, but quickly I’m consumed by the chase – anything that might distract from stopping Saren gets put down quick. I barrel through speech options, don’t get emotionally involved and it becomes much easier to make the tough calls. I don’t even know why but at Peak 15 the security guards turn on me. Obviously I said or did something I shouldn’t but that never happened before, and it doesn’t bother me; they’re between me and my goal of leaving work on time. I’m unstoppable, and this new-found personality really comes into focus on Virmire; I expect to put Rex down – I never spoke to him so not like we’d built a bond and I don’t have time for his tantrum so use Renegade options, but after some home-truths he backs down; it’s brilliant. I don’t even have the option to talk Saren around, we just insult each other. Oddly though, Captain Kirrahe died? Not sure how I contributed to that; I sent a team member with him as always. It’s interesting how those subtle changes to Shep’s approach have larger impacts. I picked Kaidan to die simply because Ash was guarding the bomb (convenient). This play style also has an impact on me; I’m nowhere near the usual XP levels so we’re getting through a lot of medigel and I don’t have the cash to buy the high-powered weaponry. Not caring takes a lot of work.

While I get into Shep’s Dirty Harry-style approach and the new-found urgency, what is disappointing is how everyone just takes the rudeness on the chin. Shep criticises Ash for losing her team on Eden – where Shep herself just lost a squad-mate – but I’m still the best commander ever, and I tell Liara her psychic link is a waste of time but she does it anyway. Anderson just nods sagely at my extremism (tellingly, Udina is the only one to call me on my bullshit). They just don’t get shirty or in my face – I was expecting more backchat, or a questioning of my orders. No time to care what they think though, I’m right on Saren’s tail and so caught up nothing else matters. When we get grounded in the Citadel, I’m actually furious and tear Udina a new one. DGAFShep smirked when Anderson laid him out.

The ending though. I didn’t have the option to convince Saren to kill himself, so I had a fight with him that I’d not had before, and let the council die to concentrate on Sovereign. Not because I dislike the council but if Sovereign goes, I go home. I chose Udina to lead the council because I thought he’d protect me. It was the best/worst choice I’d ever made. He hilariously/terrifyingly turned into The Emperor, raging about how the galaxy will bow before humans and his new council will wage war on the Reapers as we dominate the galaxy. It was great if ominous, and instead of walking off heroically, Shep just stood there giving the best DGAF face I’ve ever seen. It’s beer o’clock.

While I didn’t miss scanning the collectors or spend hours dressing each crew member, it was tough to pass up missions and moments; but it was worth it to discover the backbone of ME1 is a pure thrill-ride that didn’t sag; it became as exciting as the first time I played, and I can’t wait to see how this attitude plays in ME2 – and how DGAFShep treats The Illusive Man (aka TIM).

In ME1 Shep was a borderline psychotic. She wilfully murders people, even when it’s certain they’re no longer a threat. DGAFShep is more dangerous than a Renegade, so I wonder how she’ll fit into TIM’s ranks. He likes things just so. In that mindset, I look for a way to leave Joker to his fate at the start of Mass Effect 2 but I have no choice. I’m not happy about killing myself to save Mass Effect’s Claptrap, but it’s worth it for the medicinal sponge baths I imagine Miranda gives me during my rebirth. As the memories come flooding back, I worry it’s going to be hard work to be indifferent in ME2’s world. Even though I’m now a terrorist.

This whole aspect of ME2 always sat a little uncomfortably for me; Cerberus was extreme in ME1 and it always felt wrong that Shep wouldn’t just return to the Alliance – that the Council refused to accept the invasion, leaving the Reapers as Shep’s personal battle and Cerberus her only option always felt a bit convenient, but this time that won’t be a problem after Udina’s crowning; I’m a war hero, an icon, the council’s champion … right?

Wrong, and that annoyed me. The Reapers have still been suppressed by the council who send us on a dead-end mission to get us out of the way. What? What happened to Udina using the Reapers to exert power? I was hoping to see the Krogan statue changed to Udina, a militaristic council with him as a power-mad dictator and Shep feted as a beacon of human might rather than hope. It feels a bit of cheat, something I never thought I’d say about ME2. It also bugged me that the crew fell in with Cerberus just on Shep’s say-so, especially Joker who’s argument that he joined a despicable terrorist group because they rebuilt the Normandy makes him more DGAF than I am. Thankfully, it works perfectly for DGAFShep too; she only cares if the cheque clears.

Dealing with TIM is strange this time around. Normally I tolerate him with a few put downs, but he actually works for DGAFShep in a way that I never got as Paragon Shep. TIM thinks –or wants me to think– our goals are aligned and that suits DGAFShep. After a while, I become indoctrinated. We both have a goal to reach and the quickest way is a straight line. Even when he sends us into traps, I have to agree with the plan and I start to see the Cerberus light. I’m not pro-human, but his ‘sacrifices must be made’ approach is compelling. When I visit Anderson I defend Cerberus and slap Ash down for her naivety. Later, DGAFShep shares some Fake News posts on Facebook with a fumin’ emoji.

ME2 does look and play as beautifully as it did on release. It’s streamlined yet feels so much bigger. Shame I’m ignoring most of it. Still, I realise what a task DGAFShep has ahead of her; ME2 is where Shep evolves from solider to hero, how is it going to play out if I’m anything but a hero? It’s a lot tougher to keep focused – you gain missions just walking within earshot, you’re constantly pestered by Hackett and Kelly, and Shep’s become a control freak; why in the hell am I piloting the ship around? And scanning the planets? What do I keep EDI and Joker around for? As DGAFShep it’s insanely frustrating and makes no sense the ship’s commander would be doing those chores.

I avoid everything I can; those Krogan will never know if there’s fish on the Citadel, Chakwas never even gets to ask for brandy and the crew continue to eat slop. I can’t resist taking down al-Jilani though – Shep gives the gutter-press harridan an actual bloody beat down. But the biggest issue with not caring is everyone assumes I do – even the game.

While Shep’s Renegade interrupts are occasionally a bit mean, the Renegade dialogue options aren’t anywhere near as spiteful or fatal as ME1; they’re more Tough Love than Tough Shit. I have to be actively mean; it takes more effort to let the guy in the Omega slums die than save him – which is then excused by a team mate saying ‘doubt they had any useful info anyway’; whoa, is my DGAF rubbing off on the others? No. Regardless of my behaviour in ME1 the crew all greet Shep like we spent most of ME1 having Pyjama Parties and promising to be BFF’s. Liara comes in for a hug, Ash exclaims Shep’s more than a commander to her -even though I never once talked to her- and Rex uses me as an example of a selfless leader. Even Garrus explains that without my example, he became a burnout. Who are you again? Even sending someone to their death is tough; I leave Reegar to provide cover, assuming he’ll die – yet he limps in at the end. Dunno if he made it home though, I never went to visit the fleet. But, as my Renegade slowly rises, Shep’s brutality literally shines through.

By not bothering to fix my scars (I’m not scanning a dozen planets to get a nose job), red light bleeds through and her eyes start to glow. She looks dangerous and that starts to inspire me to behave even worse. I’m so evil I let my fish die – only kidding; I didn’t even buy any. Kelly still offers to feed them though. DGAFShep starts to teeter on a real Renegade playthrough; I’m actually nasty to Tali. What a monster. I have to keep reminding myself I don’t care rather than I’m a bully. But the game has ways to corral those urges.

Unlike ME1, the main mission – stop the collectors – is often stopped in favour of being nice. TIM won’t give me new missions until I complete side-quests, forcing me on detours. ME2 assumes I care; I don’t. As a result ME2 doesn’t have the zip that ME1 did. Occasionally events happen and you can’t get out of them, which always sent me into a panic originally but now I’m like ‘finally, some action’ – ME2 teases who the collectors are and what their Reaper connection is which is a very different experience to ME1; I’m clawing rather than chasing.

Still, the main missions are solid fights and the companions much more aware and involved, firing and flinging biotics all over the place; in ME1 they would often wait for commands and get shot but this time, picking your pals is much more critical and exciting on the battlefield. To DGAFShep they’re just bodyguards, picked for their prowess not because I want to hang out, and if they fall, I often leave them to smear their own Medigel. They’re not having mine.

Eventually I reach the infamous IFF Install mission. But I can’t trigger it until I’ve done missions and don’t have any Collector-related ones. I’m stuck wondering where DGAFShep is going to have to compromise, until I remember she came up from a street gang; I’ll rebuild it. I chose to make loyal the criminal element only, so Zaeed gets his brutal day in the Blue Suns while Kasumi gets her revenge – although I force her to destroy the Grey Box; I want her thieving for me, not having VR sex. I contemplate Thane and Jack but they’re looking for absolution and there’s no place for that in my gang. Still no IFF so I do Legion and Grunt, figuring they’d make great Enforcers for the Red Sheps. I wanted Samara’s daughter as well, she’d be our assassin but DGAFShep would be unaware of that option and no way she’d want the sanctimonious mum in the gang. Just as I’m contemplating turning Mordin into the gang’s torturer, EDI pipes up that the IFF is installed. Finally. With Shep looking like a Terminator and backed by a team of scoundrels, we start the DGAF suicide mission.

Read part two of FBT’s brutal Mass Effect playthrough – will the entire team commit suicide? Will ME3 be any better on a DGAF playthrough? Can’t be any worse.

Mass Effect Andromeda

A RAGE QUIT REVIEW

FBT wishes ‘destroy Andromeda’ had been an option at the end of Mass Effect 3

Sometime between Mass Effects 2 and 3, several ‘ark ships’ depart on a one-way trip to Andromeda. But after a 600-year voyage, a disaster costs us our ‘pathfinder’ – the survey specialist who claims new planets – and the system turns out to be hostile and dangerous, not the ‘golden world’ we were promised. Up steps one of Pathfinder’s off-spring to lead the rag-tag crew to a new home. But all I can think is ‘Wonder what Shep is doing’ because unlike the plot, ME:A doesn’t break new ground, it just reminds you of better ME moments.

Once our ship has reached the Nexus, a mini-citadel for the various Arks that launched, we find it barely hanging on; it’s become a powder-keg of tension as the inhabitants went stir-crazy waiting to get onto a planet. As the other arks are still AWOL, it falls on us to get the Nexus shipshape and the inhabitants a home. We’ve got dozens of planets to explore and at first it’s exciting. But we’re rarely doing Neil Armstrong impressions. Most of the time Nexus scouts already tried to settle the planets and it turns out an ancient civilisation of Poundland Protheans did all the hard work (most of the missions are restarting their old machinery). I’m less Pathfinder and more path-follower.

Adding to our woes, the ‘kett’ rock up. An invading force which takes entire populations never to be seen again, they’re hilariously cliched (the boss wears a cape) and look like a mix between Saint’s Row’s Zinyak and those aliens from Galaxy Quest – you can’t take them seriously as what amounts to fun-size Reapers. There’s also the annoying, characterless Remnant, hostile Geth-a-like tech left behind by pretend Protheans who also caused ‘The Scourge’, a dark energy fallout from a bomb, trapping us here. So we’ve got not-Reapers, not-Geth and not-Protheans. All we need now is a not-Shepard.

Stand up Pathfinder Ryder. And … sit down again. Scott or Sara, you can pick either Ryder (the other one joins in later) but it doesn’t matter, they’re as middle-of-the-road as it’s possible to make a hero. The Pathfinder has an element of Spectre-like adulation but it’s undeserved; they blandly defuse problems and just bum about – this is supposed to be an adventurer, a heroic leader yet if they make a movie, you can picture Owen Wilson as the lead. There’s some commentary about trying to live up to Dad’s legacy, but there’s a problem with that – Dad chose this area, put everyone in hibernation for 600 years and is then shocked to find its all changed? Well, yeah? We picked the wrong family to follow. Shep felt the pressures of command but was outwardly a decisive, natural leader and you got behind them; Ryder just acts like he’s got a bong hidden in his quarters. It would have been better to play as Dad for a while, build up and get to know the Ryder twins then chose one to play once he pops off; one naturally Renegade, the other Paragon in nature. But no. We don’t even get Paragon vs Renegade, which really has more relevance here than it did on the Normandy; conquering or colonising, displacing or bonding with locals, do we make this an exploration or an invasion? None of that happens; choice is the one thing they don’t bring from ME?

The squad-mates we get are equally second-rate. Cora the explorer, our second in command is supposed to be an Asari-trained Commando but rather than dangerous or cool she’s a brittle character missing Ash’s warmth. There’s Liam, a too-cool dude who sleeps on a sofa he sneaked onto the ship. Idiot. We have a Wrex-lite Krogan and a female Garrus, who behave exactly like their epic counterparts. We’d already had those squad mates, it just invites comparisons. And then there’s ‘Peebee’ an Asari adventurer who comes across like Annie from the 80’s musical. She’s a romance option which feels off given her prepubescent look and attitude; she’s hardly the coquettish Liara or the experienced, older-woman fantasy of Samara and Benezia. It would have been far more interesting to deal with a bratty teen Asari growing into herself rather than this ‘carefree’ annoyance with sub-Joker comments. As an afterthought, there is one local that joins the crew, Darav, the only interesting one out the lot – and a Javik replacement, given to pointing out how idiotic and naïve humans are. We know. Our first contact with his species is epically fumbled; it should be a startling, amazing moment but no – the crew makes jokes like a new fricking species isn’t a big thing and Ryder saunters out to meet them in his off-duty attire, which in my case is a Blasto vest and some Beats. Just checking, you’re Scott Ryder, son of the Pathfinder, right? We didn’t accidently thaw Shaun Ryder?

The ship’s pilot is a Salarian and actually one of the better characters, while our Dr Chakwas is an Asari who’s been around the block – why are the two best characters non-squad mates? I’d take the doc over sofa-boy any day. Can’t romance her either, so if you’re into Asari it’s baby Peebee or nothing. Romance is odd. Luckily for our drippy hero, it seems the name Pathfinder opens a lot of legs. I get locked into romances without even realising that’s where the convo was headed, while twice I was just talking to crew members and got a variation of ‘I have a boyfriend’. I wasn’t asking. Seems like everyone on the Ark was a nympho. Guess that’s one way to colonise quick and the romances are the one time ME:A doesn’t follow ME – instead it goes for Witcher ‘adult’ scenes which feel a little gratuitous.

We’re also supported by a god-bothering scientist and have a commando team to do … stuff. No idea what, it’s the multiplayer mode but in single-player, it’s the trading sub-game in AC Black Flag. Finally, we’re accompanied by the voice of ‘SAM’, a male EDI who controls everything and is linked to the Pathfinder. Whereas EDI had that voice and her curiosity, SAM is a know-it-all (even in a new galaxy) and about as compelling and real as that voice telling you ‘unexpected item in bagging area’.

It’s also needlessly complex and over engineered. When Shep said “I should go” there was nothing stopping them. In ME:A there’s so much fiddling and viewing and clicking and choosing and researching and – I’m supposed to be exploring the star system not the menu system. Ryder has more choices than planets to tinker with making it slower to get going than in ME1 where you’d spend hours tidying up everyone’s lockers. Even when you do get out into the great unknown, SAM is badgering you about this and that while the game helpfully tells you stuff like ‘press to slow the mako’ endlessly. Another problem dragging the game down is the number of places you knock about. In ME, the Normandy was your centre, in ME:A you start aboard the Hyperion – the ark ship – then transfer to the Nexus, the mini-Citadel, and finally get your Normandy-lite, the Tempest. And then spend forever staring at the backside of the new Mako. You’re just lacking that grounding, that place to strike from. There are tons of planets to explore and each looks beautiful but there’s nothing on them. And why do we plant a flag on one tiny speck of land then have to move onto the next planet? There’s entire continents being ignored yet I’m being pestered to provide space for all the colonists. ME:A isn’t sure if it’s like the original trilogy where you had some freedom but focus, or Skyrim in Space and everything cancels everything out being so epic but empty.

The fights themselves aren’t much but Pathfinder and the others have a mini jetpack to scramble about with (which means watching squad mates leaping like they’re on a trampoline as they try to follow) and you can use it to pause in mid-air to fire over cover, but the biggest leap is you don’t control squad mates as you did in ME. No control wheel – which is a massive trampoline backwards. Take Cora – a honed, precision killer. What does she do? Charges into a huge group of bad guys and gets overwhelmed – and the others aren’t any better, having panic attacks or choosing your gun muzzle as a good spot to stand. I thought we left that kind of follower idiocy back in the Goldeneye era? Get out the way. It’s also repetitive. Rather than constant kett, why not have individual villains dedicated to each system which we chose to bargain with or beat up, apex predators, hell even a Thresher Maw if pressed, instead of always arguing with the kett over it? We tangle a little bit with a Cerberus-style group who want to drive all not-them folks out of the system but otherwise, it’s the kett and they’re just an annoyance when we could be doing so much more.

It’s also hard to believe. Why the citadel races would go for this when the milky way is still half undiscovered is one thing, but four huge ark ships plus a mini citadel have embarked on this venture, which happened just after the Reapers were exposed? Isn’t that precisely when you’d not spend trillions sending folks to a new galaxy? It’s semi-explained in a side-mission which ultimately makes Pathfinder Dad an even bigger coward and idiot; plus, the revelation isn’t explored in a way that lets it resonate. It’s a half-baked attempt to separate ME:A from ME but that doesn’t ring true when ME:A seems unwilling to break away, and the twist is hidden in a side-mission you’ll almost certainly not bother doing – it feels like a cheat. Plus, who’s smart idea was it to fill a ship with Krogans? They’re still dying at this point, not too smart for a colonisation is it. Bet it was Dad again.

If you’re going to call this ME then go all the way. Imagine the possibilities; it’s not an ‘ark’ it’s a refugee ship running from a Reaper. It reaches a Relay just as Shep’s Catalyst choice hits, sending us and the Reaper millions of miles into uncharted territory. Shep’s choices then affect the entire game – if they chose destroy, then the ship and it’s AI are dead, leaving you to rebuild from scratch. If they choose symbiosis then we have to deal with having circuits and full-realised AI – and a cautiously friendly Reaper as a huge side-kick. And if they chose control, the Reaper has Shep’s personality; a Renegade Reaper that can’t be trusted would be awesome. Okay, drop the Reaper idea but at least by having ME’s impact feed in, ME:A would be an adventure in its own right but still explore the repercussions of Shep’s actions. That’s a Mass Effect game. You can’t simultaneously ignore and rely on past triumphs. Just have the ship crash on a planet like Normandy did, make it all about surviving a huge, unknown planet; hell, let’s just pick up where the Normandy crashed and play as your grieving lover dealing with your choice. Anything but this load of empty space.

Like space, the entire game is a vacuum; it has its moments, looks good and plays really well. If it was only brave enough to drop the ME adulation and dig into what colonising a new star system would really be like, you’d have something. Even when we colonise the first planet it’s not celebrated – we just leave. Epic, memorable moment there. ME:A is scared of its own potential and intimidated by the original trilogy – it'[s so vacuous you just lose interest, kinda just stop playing and forget about it. It’s so bland I Rage Quit out of indifference. The best I can say about ME:A is it’s not a bad game, just a bad Mass Effect game.

2017 | Developer, BioWare | Publisher Electronic Arts

platforms; Win/Origin | PS4 | XO

Alan Wake

FBT is Max Payne’s nerdy brother

In 2001 Remedy burst into the shooter scene with Max Payne, a game that helped shape shooters in the noughties; not just a great game, it’s a nod to action cinema of the time -The Matrix & John Woo- and an engrossing noir story, but what made it a classic was the guy we played; Max Payne, a suicidal burnout we thought was cool and we cared about. Two years later Remedy did it again with Max Payne 2, deepening the character, story and the gameplay. If only all game (and movie) sequels could be that good. Let’s not talk about Rockstar’s Max Payne 3. Remedy then spent seven years perfecting their new man, Alan Wake; this is a developer that likes to get things right. And while there is a lot -a hell of a lot- right with Alan Wake, the game isn’t quite the sum of its unnatural parts.

Alan Wake, our eponymous and unwilling hero (I get it, Awake, but Alan? I’m an Alan?), is a famous novelist struggling with writer’s block. His wife Alice suggests a trip to Bright Falls, a remote town that’s so quaint it screams ‘dark underbelly’. Settling into their cabin on the lake, Alan’s hoping to mope about and be all tortured-artist, but Alice has an ulterior motive; get Alan to visit a local celebrity psychologist to lift his spirits and knock out another best-seller. Alan’s not best pleased but no sooner has he stropped off when Alice disappears, and Alan wakes to find himself in a wrecked car a week later. The next thing he knows, violent ghost-like figures are after him and his most valuable weapon is a flashlight.

Alan Wake is as much a pot-boiler film or novel as it is game; Polanski’s Frantic meets Stephen King – in fact, there’s so much King in AW that Remedy sent him a copy. Should have given him a credit. The world is incredible, beautiful yet foreboding, isolated but intimate, it just has this off quality and it ramps up that unease with some juicy ghost-story beats to complicate things; the cabin on the lake hasn’t existed in years, who’s the unknown woman in black who gave them the cabin keys, the slightly off-kilter locals – it’s got all the makings, and that’s before you really get into the Novel-quality story; this isn’t some contrived plot to drive the game; King, Poe, M.R James, Susan Hill, Shirley Jackson; Alan Wake fuses everything that’s good about a small-town ghost story into its own compelling and chilling tale. Where the hell is Alice, what happened in that missing week? Why are there pages of a novel Alan doesn’t recall writing scattered around the town? What broke his writer’s block? Typically, the answers are to be found in the dark and that’s great, but that’s where the game unravels.

As Alan searches for answers, he contends with ‘the Taken’, previously cheery Bright Falls residents now wrapped in some evil Darkness and intent on butchering him. He can dispatch them with a wave of his torch and a well-placed bullet, and that’s the problem; it’s a shooter that doesn’t need to be a shooter. The best thing about a ghost story is nothing traditional will save you; we’re a pasty-faced intellectual, Alan should be completely out of his depth, an everyman – when did Max Payne get here? We’ve played this a hundred times before and it’s hugely at odds with the set up and cut-scenes. The fights are scary at first as you put your flashlight on full beam causing the battery to drain while firing wildly, then take off running, desperately trying to reach the safety of a street light only to be surrounded, with low bullets and no batteries, but the further you stumble on, the more you realise there’s not much else going on; it starts to feel like a zombie shooter and it’s so rail-linear it is literally you walking one way, the Taken staggering in the other; quickly you lose the key thing about going into the woods at night; apprehension.

A surprisingly bold/frustrating move is no melee. Alan can shoot like a trooper but he can’t muster a pistol-whipping? Running out of ammo means dodging until you find a safe haven (and hope it has ammo) or just wait to die and it feels like a lazy way to add tension – it would have been so much scarier to wander with only your torch and smarts as a defence; alone in the dark, hassled by possessed locals you just had a damn fine cup of coffee with isn’t enough? Why is this a shooter? I never thought I’d be annoyed at being armed.

The story though continues to grip, with Alan under suspicion for killing townsfolk and we’re not entirely sure it’s not all in his head – the psychologist even commits him at one point, but the sinister unease is always ruined by some contrivance that forces Alan back into the woods or elsewhere, at night, again. Alan Wake needed to merge the scenes with the reality, make it one inescapable nightmare not a game of two halves. But even without the clearly defined shooter parts to interrupt the flow, the game is broken out much like a TV series, something Remedy’s follow up Quantum Break explored further. Once a story element is resolved, we go to ‘credits’ and the next opens with ‘previously on’ featuring key scenes from the last episode. Why? I should be playing Stranger Things not watching it. An encroaching, suffocating narrative like this shouldn’t be ruined by the game pausing to ask, ‘are you still watching?’

Early reports suggested Alan Wake was going to be open world but Remedy decided would ruin the suspense – it might have worked better non-linear, if you could get lost … Everyone’s taken a shortcut at night down some alleyway, across a park or woods and gotten the heebie-jeebies and to have the town and surrounding area open up as he investigated the pages – then going into the woods would be truly horrible because we would have made the choice; and without weapons it would have been unbearable. If it had a constant clock and you roamed safely in daytime, venturing further only to get lost and see the sun setting … that would have been awesome. I should be too scared to go into the woods, not just dumped with no choice; it reduces the narrative’s dread and scares – I should be bravely walking out, hearing a twig snap and immediately saying “I vote we go back to the Slaughtered Lamb…”

Still, once out of the woods Remedy really have fashioned something beautiful with Alan Wake, it’s one of those games you grumble about then say ‘but it’s great really’; as a (cutscene) hero Alan is a refreshing one – petulant and self-obsessed, while others such as Alan’s agent/friend Barry and the local Sheriff work really well, wondering if they’re just feeding his fantasy, while the ending is Bioshock-brilliant; bitter-sweet and moving, it’s actually one of the best game endings I’ve seen in years. Despite everything else, the final reveal and what Alan does saved it. Alan Wake’s story is pure art, but the game-play … when you turn a bright light on, there’s nothing underneath.

Alan returned for the standalone add-on American Nightmare and a sequel was planned but poor sales caused Remedy to rework some of the ideas into Quantum Break, with mixed results. There aren’t any other developers out there with this level of ingenuity or originality in gaming; the risks and chances Remedy take are always more interesting than a play-it-safe CoD clone. Alan Wake is worth a play just to see a developer pushing the limits of what a shooter should be. Long may they continue.

2010 | Developer Remedy Entertainment | Publisher Microsoft Game Studios

Platforms; Win | X360

Stranglehold

a second wind review

FBT goes Woo for Fat in the sequel to Hard Boiled. Cue the doves and slo-mo.

Ever since ET almost destroyed the game industry trying to phone home, games based on movies have been generally lame. For every decent ‘based on’ like Mad Max or The Warriors you get something like 007 Legends; Tie-Ins are always without question, shit. And then there’s the game-sequels. Alien Isolation might have made a good go of it, but then Colonial Marines ruined it, as did Robocop (2003), Ghostbusters the Video Game, even Wreck-It-Ralph; a sequel based on a movie based on video games? The game sequel genre isn’t littered with greats. But this is Stranglehold, exec’ed by John Woo, who’s atheistic shooters have attempted to emulate since Max Payne. We’re ‘Tequila’ Yuen, a cop who, in slow-motion, burst onto our screens dual-wielding his way through Hard Boiled. It’s got slow-motion doves in it. That’s a movie I can play.

The setting, Hong Kong. The case, a missing policeman. The Captain’s orders, send a team. The Tequila, goes alone. After surviving the trap, Tequila get sucked into a Triad war while dealing with police corruption and a personal reason to go rogue.

Stranglehold does call to mind Max Payne. They’re similar cops with the same outside the law reasoning that justifies killing endless hoods along with bullet-time and shot-dodge mechanisms. But while Max Payne was inspired by John Woo, this is John Woo. Literally, he’s in it, reprising the bartender in Hard Boiled. But Stranglehold soon surpasses Max Payne for cinema references. There’s so many it’s hard to keep track; vendetta-driven cowboy cop trapped by an offer he can’t refuse, involved with a bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks that’s connected to the larger plot and used as leverage? Check. Double-crossing panto villain with a revenge-connection to Tequila who has an infinite source of bag-men and wants Tequila DEAD, check. A surprise betrayal followed by regret before they die, contemptuously dropping guns when they run out of ammo, ignoring orders from an Alka-Seltzer guzzling shouty captain? Check. Awesome cool? Check.

Once Tequila’s on the case, our 3rd person view does everything it can to make us believe John Woo is going to yell ‘cut’ at some stage. You name it, we can cinematically interact with it – surf down bannisters and on trolleys, leap over boxes, slide across counters, shoot things to create runaways or creative ways to take out hoods, crash through practically anything and destroy the rest. The problem is, if something can be Tequila’ed, it shimmers or glints and there’s so much of it you’re distracted by the epileptic fit it all triggers. The art design is really detailed but it’s covered in white lines demanding you leap, slide, roll or jump on them or repeatedly flashing shoot me. There’s nothing like shooting a neon sign and watching it swing around and take out a bunch of baddies, but you end up looking everywhere at once, wondering what’ll happen if you shoot this or activate that and is it really going to help if I – by the time you’ve decided to run up a wall or just shoot the guy, you’ve been riddled with bullets. It becomes one big overwhelming novelty like an arcade rail shooter; leaping and sliding along firing is great unless it happens to take you in the opposite direction or you slide along a counter into the face of a crouching mobster and you’re stuck with your legs in the air getting pummelled. You have to trigger Tequila to get on and then to get off again but he’ll only do it if there’s room for a cinematic roll or leap so you wind up yelling at Tequila like a parent in a park; ‘get down from there!’ The villains are top notch hard work, fast and unforgiving; but they must be wondering why you’re pirouetting on a lamppost instead of returning fire.

Of course, Tequila has more than enough ways to return his own fire; while he only carries two at a time, there’s pistols, uzis, machine guns, heavy machine-guns, grenades, rocket-launchers lying about everywhere and the smaller weapons he can dual-wield naturally. Once a weapon is spent he’ll drop it and auto-pick up anything nearby which more than once saw me smugly switch to the heavy machine gun only to see him pull out a puny sidearm, having not noticed the switch during the mayhem.

As he progresses, Tequila unlocks more opportunities to give it the ol’ razzle-dazzle; Tequila-Time is standard Bullet-time but the real killers are the Tequila Bombs; Precision is bullet-time from the point of view of the bullet, while Barrage just lets Tequila have a bullet-fuelled tantrum and Spin lets him twirl and fire while doves fly. Then there’s Stand-Off; when Tequila gets surrounded there’s a moment where they all eye each other and grip triggers, then the bullets start flying. You can shift Tequila from side to side to avoid bullets and return fire – it’s all charged by the destructive antics Tequila gets up to, so the more you break, slide and generally make like an action star the better.

So, we’re Chow Yun-fat in a John Woo film, how is that not the coolest thing ever? Because although you’re leaping in slow-mo through flying debris with a gun in each hand, you’re also in a constant state of frown, trying to see through the wreckage, distracted by the highlights, working out if the flashing thing will help; it takes you out of the moment by giving you pre-set moments and never lets up, it gets exhausting; meanwhile, Tequila insists on new things to be cinematic about; at one stage he’s swinging from chandeliers. It’s to frenetic and busy, the infamous 2min 42seconds from Hard Boiled extended into some seven hours game play. Once you take a breath you realise Stranglehold is a very thin shooter, trading style over substance; Stranglehold is a new example of why movies don’t work as games; if, on the big screen I saw Chow Yun-fat take out a posse in slo-mo while swinging from a chandelier, I’d go ‘cool, wish I could do that’ but when I do it I end up looking like a four-year-old on a swing with no one to push him. It’s too staged, I feel like Chow’s stuntman. It doesn’t feel natural the way parkouring about in Assassin’s Creed does; games are supposed to let me live vicariously but Stranglehold just reinforces why I’m not an action star popping up for five minutes in the latest Expendables movie.

As if the sheer amount of destruction and QT moments weren’t enough to prove how incredible the Unreal engine is, the work done to make Tequila look like Chow Yun-Fat is brilliant, in both the cut scenes and the action, and he’s voiced by the man himself. The locations are great looking too; an island that’s been turned into a drug factory, dirty back-streets of HK, a museum (bye-bye antiquities), and a restaurant with panicked extras running between the bullets; this is a very faithful game that tries hard to put you in Tequila’s shoes, but I’m the wrong shoe-size. It’s so busy being Hard Boiled it forgets to be a game; Max Payne knew when to pull back, to be cinema when it counted and game when it needed to be. Stranglehold makes you realise movies and games are mutually exclusive. An hour with Tequila is great fun but any longer and it gives you a hangover.

2007 | Developer Midway | Publisher Midway Games

platforms; Win | PS3 | X360

Mad Max

A SECOND WIND REVIEW

In this extended playthrough review, FBT tucks into some Dinki Di and revs his way through Mad Max. One man enters, one man auto saves.

Games based on films usually fall into two groups; the first, ‘tie-in’ games supporting a movie release – cheap, quick and nasty, there’s a special hell is reserved for them alongside child molesters and those who talk at the theatre (When is that Firefly game coming out?) The second, games based on past movies fare better but generally we get less The Warriors, more Jaws Unleashed and middling exceptions such as Enter the Matrix, Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza and Avatar; you had to really love the film to forgive those. There is a third way, games acting as spin-offs, but The Thing, Stranglehold, Butcher Bay etc. worked only because they reference the original then do their own thing; but again, for every Alien Isolation there’s an Aliens Colonial Marines. And don’t get me started on TV-series tie-ins; 24, X-Files, CSI even The Shield and Sopranos have been digitally ruined. Movies based on games don’t fare much better and there’s a reason both fail to emulate the other; the experience. Games can be cinematic but they’re not cinema. Films can be involving but you’re not involved. They should just leave each other alone.

If the game-based-on-a-movie tag wasn’t enough reason to avoid Mad Max the video game, the bigger problem is we’ve already played it – not the 1990 NES game, that was Max in name only, but we’ve gamed as Max-by-proxy for years; any apocalyptic wasteland game is Max-inspired the same way a rain-soaked neon future is Bladerunner (which had two games). We’ve never gotten to be Max, never driven the Pursuit Special while acting out Fifi’s immortal line ‘People don’t believe in heroes anymore? Well damn them! You and me Max, we’re gonna give ‘em back their heroes!’

Plus, do we want to play Max? He’s not exactly the kind of character you want to inhabit. He’s too complex -for all his simplicity- to be reduced to a game perspective, and even the movies played fast and loose with the continuity and motivations, which makes a game adaption tougher; what kind of game is it? It can’t be a driving game, it can’t be FPS, that only leaves RPG – Which makes sense in that Max lives in a wasteland, but still, he’s the very definition of linear; he drives in a straight line, always away from his past – he doesn’t make a home, he doesn’t join guilds and he’s not the kind of guy given to helping Randoms. Max on a side mission? Sacrilege! Yet that’s exactly the genre that developers Avalanche decided on. And the bad omens continued; it was delayed for nearly a year then a teaser revealed Max with an American accent. Later trailers announced in full-screen text ‘you are Max’ – If a trailer for Mad Max has to spell out you’re Mad Max, it’s in trouble and the gameplay looked like it was Fury Road based but they couldn’t afford Tom Hardy. This is a tie-in isn’t it. Shit. Looks like we’re headed for another Rambo The Video Game.

But the thing is, while Max never thrives, he does survive; survived Toecutter, Immortan Joe, Lord Humungus and even Tina Turner. Can he survive a Tie-In?

Fittingly, we first find Max behind the wheel of the V8 PS Interceptor. Eyes locked on the horizon. Like Fury Road’s opening, Max is ambushed by Warboys – but this time led by a giant called Scrotus, who wants a V8. Left for dead and without his Interceptor, Max inherits a dog, thrown from Scrotus’ War Rig for failing to tear Max’s throat out. The two scavenge along until meeting a deformed and clearly unstable mechanic named Chumbucket; Chum has been designing the ultimate wasteland car, his Magnum Opus, and after seeing the fight with Scrotus, believes that Max is a Saint sent by the Angel of Combustion to make Opus soar. Okay then. We can go along with that if it means getting a new car.

Problem is, not only is the Opus unfinished, she’s not a V8. Chum explains there’s various local strongholds under threat from Scrotus and they will have the tools he needs to finish the Opus; and we’ll need the Opus battle-ready to reach Gastown, the only place we’ll find a V8. It’s standard RPG to create a situation where various hoops must be jumped through to gain the final prize, but those hoops, this prize works for Max. It’s minimalist, there’s no distractions and it justifies tearing about in the Opus. We slide behind the wheel. Cue engine roar. Cue shiver-down-back as I, Mad Max, drive into the wasteland.

A Fury Road prequel of sorts, we’re in what’s left of a world ravaged by a resource war, that triggered an environmental collapse, which lead to a worldwide plague, resulting in a societal breakdown. Now that’s an apocalypse. Huge rusted ship hulls litter the land as we drive through bleached coral, dusty seaweed and the occasional whale skeleton – we’re in a dry ocean bed; the Grand Canyon meets the Great Barrier Reef, and it has a sickly sense of death to it; whereas Fallout suggested humanity was at least surviving, rebuilding, all we find here are bodies; things are not going to get better. This is the end. But the end looks great, it’s a detailed, believable-looking game.

And as a game, MM is as stripped back as it’s possible to make an RPG. Max travels light. There’s no backpack full of junk to sell, no wardrobe choices beyond upgrades; he takes only what he needs and gets it by scavenging derelict camps – but stepping outside the safety of the Opus comes at a cost. The wasteland of Max is incredibly dangerous; not Borderlands gimme-a-break dangerous but you’re never going to just wander like Elder Scrolls. Factions run rampant in the wasteland and will come running when they hear the Opus pull up; leaping, punching and kicking at Max, throwing stones or worse. Others burst out of the sand in sneak attacks or wait in the shadows; expect to fight for that tin of Dinki-Di.

Strictly speaking, MM is a brawler game; he does have a rudimentary shotgun with a few shells and a couple of one-stab shivs but he’s mostly a fist man. He can also momentarily arm himself with a melee weapon, including the ‘Thunderpoon’, a type of bang-stick that can be thrown or melee’d with awesome and messy results and uses gas-cans as explosives but most of the time Max is battering heads into walls or the Opus’ hood if not throwing some mean WWE moves; the fights are desperate scraps but it’s not a button-mashing scrum. Reminiscent of WB’s Arkham City (Okay it’s not reminiscent, it’s blatantly the same mechanic and Max has a ‘fury mode’ to unlock quick finishes ending in slow-mo take-downs – I’m Batmad), it’s more of a ballet than a brawl; it’s all about anticipating and timing the beatings you throw down.

Besides the two-legged risks in the wasteland, there’s obviously the four-wheeled ones. The Opus isn’t invincible, but this is where MM becomes something really special. There’s raiding parties patrolling and they don’t just ram, they work together, clamber out of their cars to leap onto yours or lob things to make you crash. It is the most thrilling drive experience in an age, better than any 5-star wanted moment in GTA. It’s terrifying, exciting and random; you get that panic as cars appear on the horizon while you’re scavenging. You race back to the Opus and they give chase; suddenly the Opus is damaged, you’re out of shells, you’re trying to ram one into a cliff-face while avoiding another adorned with spikes, there’s a raider on the hood and you’re running out of road. The Opus bursts into flames and you’re rolling in the dirt trying to avoid them making you their hood ornament, then they pull up, jump out and mob you as the commotion attracts yet more. It’s fantastic.

Each faction has a different style of car, attack and attitude but they’re all insane. Sometimes you’ll find them parked up and catching some rays. Run them over. Sometimes you’ll run them over and then realise they weren’t Warboys but Wanderers desperate for water. Sorry. Destroying cars also yields precious scrap – everything is a commodity in the wasteland. Driving around you’ll come across oil-stained paths criss-crossing the sand. Follow it and you’ll find a truck ferrying Gas to the nearby outposts. Taking on the convoy is just a huge, breathless, desperate fight-on-wheels as you whittle down the convoy to just the Gas rig. Besting it nets you a hood ornament which gives mini power-ups. You’ll need it.

The Opus is just great fun to drive, easily one of the best in-game vehicles gaming has produced. It’s so compelling you often get yourself into trouble just to push its limits. The Opus is your home, a Sacred Place as Chum calls it, and as level-ups unlock it’s potential, you tinker with it as much as Chum does to get it just right for your style. It can be a bullet or a bomb and Avalanche have put a huge amount of work into making sure we love it as much as Chum does. Everything from the muscle-car feel, the growl, the fire it’s exhausts spit, just the feel and thrill of throwing it around; perfect. Max however stays stoically silent on the subject. He’s not a silent hero but he is taciturn and minimalist, only saying what’s necessary, only doing what’s needed. Sticking to the attitude we know from the movies, you’re an MFP Officer, the road warrior, the raggedy man. My name is Max.

Despite Max’s focus, we’ve got some exploring to do. Tethered hot-air balloons let you pinpoint what needs doing to lower the Scrotus threat such as giant flaming scarecrows with bodies flayed on them that need to be pulled down, and for that we get a Harpoon gun that can also be used on the cars, or the occupants of cars, gates outside enemy camps, pretty much anything destructible. It’s great fun. There’s sniper posts as well, but Max gets his own car-mounted ‘lead slinger’ as Chum calls it; I’d assumed Chum would take on the role of mission-giver but he rides with Max, hanging on for dear life. Chum isn’t nearly as annoying as I first imagined; he gets nervous around camps and concerned if we’re not tending to the Opus’ needs. He’s chatty, pointing out locations or dangers (he’s a big fan of the ‘mighty duster’ sandstorms) and he’s also cheeky, asking why you got in the Opus on the wrong side and he’s geeky; when a wanderer marvels at some event saying “Surely that wasn’t you?” Chum pipes up with “It was, and don’t call him Shirley!” – he even quotes Aliens.

Chum will help fight off faction interlopers when they climb aboard and repair the Opus when you exit, meaning you’re not forced to limp to a garage after every battle; you’re often exiting the flaming Opus though, then distracting the factions long enough for Chum to repair her. Hurry up! You control the Opus’ Harpoon gun via Chum and he’ll drive while you snipe which is a nice touch, he really grows on you but he’s not Max’s only companion; if you take Chum’s buggy into the wasteland, Dog will come along to sniff out locations and mine fields. Disarming them will lower Scrotus’ threat level as will accidentally driving into them (irritating Chum as he repairs the flaming Opus). Best way to deal with mines is luring in a Warboy then watch him become a Was-boy.

They have missed a trick with choosing your companion though. Waiting for Dog to sniff out a mine is laborious and he never leaves the buggy, and without Chum to repair the car it’s dangerous too. I know Max is a lone hero n’all and doesn’t have the best history with doggos but if they can’t both fit in the Opus it could have been interesting to at least position it as choosing a defensive or offensive pal when you roll out into the wilderness; Chum can repair the Opus but can’t fight while Dog can’t hold a wrench but he’ll come along and chew through Warboys.

When we’re not thinning out his troops, we’re ruining Scrotus’ businesses. In each area there’s refineries, oil dumps and re-enforcement camps. They can be entered by using their own vehicles, but we’re not gonna do that. Once the Opus has weakened the camp enough to enter, Max is on his own and they know you’re coming; Prepare for some serious Batmaning. Most camps will have a War Crier, a lookout suspended from a crane who also beats a drum to Buff up the Warboys like Max’s Fury Mode. Great. If you take everyone out before him, he’ll drop the bluster and half-heartedly suggest you don’t kill him too. On occasion Criers can be reached from outside with the harpoon/sniper, which is very satisfying. Each region always has the same requirements – scarecrows, minefields, snipers, and Camps have the same ‘ruin this’, ‘blow up that’ parameters, but they’re all laid out differently and never a push over; and then there’s the Top Dog camps. Mini bosses. Taking out their mega-camps is a painful process but a good challenge and it’s only the Top Dogs themselves that are disappointing; they all follow a variation on the same fight technique and it’s a shame they’re not as unique an experience as their bases.

As Max barters for Opus tech by doing Stronghold missions that aid whatever ails them, he can also help make them better – but they always benefit him. Finding the plans for a water-catcher, oil containers etc. mean Max gets refilled upon re-entering a stronghold, making them invaluable upgrades. They’ll also collect stray scrap for Max, saving you constantly exiting the car to pick up materials. Stronghold missions revolve around typical RPG ‘go somewhere really dangerous to get something’ missions, but they’re always fun and often reference key points from the movies. About the only truly RPG side mission is one where Max performs legendary leaps to inspire the locals and he does come across races but they’re optional – although racing allows you to return for a free gas top up. The races will have set criteria and some require different cars entirely. Throughout the wasteland Max can find high-value cars and add them to a garage; it’s the only element that doesn’t feel right. Why does he care, where’s he storing them, why isn’t Chum stripping them for the Opus? Taking a faction’s car does mean driving without drawing that factions’ attention but it’s hardly worth it and even ‘legendary’ cars are no match for the Opus. That the locals would deify cars and oil makes sense, but not Max.

No RPG would be complete without Levelling Up. When Max reaches a Legendary reputation level (from Road Kill to – of course – Road Warrior) a mysterious drifter called Griffa appears to give you a headache. He reflects incomprehensibly on the past and seems to know Max and his pain in intimate detail. It’s implied he might be a figment of Max’s, his conscience trying to let go of the past; or he might be some drifter who had a similar experience, helping Max take on Scrotus. Either way, Max gets upgrade options – nothing new to RPG but we also get to upgrade the Opus. Now this is fun. Everything you need to turn the Opus into a monstrous demon car that actually intimidates factions. A lot of the upgrades are related to the main missions so you feel like you’re preparing for the Gastown showdown, not gadding about gaining xp. It helps that you become invested in the Opus, feeling that while once it was little more than a frame on wheels, now it’s something special.

Eventually, by way of a launchable Thunderpoon (which is even more fun than it sounds) Max and Chum make it inland and Max’s world changes. A bit. It’s still a sand-soaked, rotten world but there’s roads, or at least broken asphalt snaking through ruins, broken bridges, dry river beds, gas stations and so on, but the further inland you go, the more the desert has encroached until it’s all you see. Mostly we see more Scarecrows, Snipers, Encampments and Top Dogs. And bloody land mines. It’s a bit of a stumble on the game’s part; after all that work in the Ocean, the build up to reaching ‘land’, it’s the same challenges on the other side give or take. Still, off to Gastown, right? Nope, there’s another stronghold, a junkyard that surrounds Gastown that we need passage through.

By now, I’m the Road Warrior, ready for anything but the junkyard is something else. After flinging the Opus around all that open space, I’m trapped in close-quarter alleyways, car-catching trash and dead-ends and constantly reduce the Opus to a burning wreck. Well, I wanted a change. Chum, fix up the Opus. We’re going to Gastown.

Naturally there’s a few more hoops between Max and the V8, and one is the best mission in the game; recover something from a buried Airport. The Opus crawls through the tomb-like airport interior as sand slips and we catch shadows. Chum is not happy and neither am I. It’s unnerving, then scary, then scary-fast as the Opus drives for its life, terrorised all the way back to Gastown. It’s a great mission just as our madness is starting to slip after one too many scarecrows. That it’s for a completely trivial reason adds to the mayhem of Max’s mad world too.

It’s an incredible moment when the V8 is revealed – Max is utterly captivated by it and so are we, seeing what the V8 means to him; he’s staring so hard he barely registers the other prize, a concubine in the shapely shape of Hope, a woman we helped (a bit) a while back. She’s owned by the maniac Stank Gum – who we have to beat to win the engine. Hope also had a daughter, Glory, now nowhere to be seen which is troubling. Max doesn’t seem to notice though because V8. That’s my V8.

After everything, it’s no spoiler to say the V8 is a bit disappointing. I’m sure it’s just my uneducated ears, but once Chum has it installed, it’s nowhere near as dirty, guttural; I miss the bang when Max turns the V6’s key. It hums rather than spits. It’s also a let-down that the V8 has a load of upgrades. We just went through all that for something that can be better? It should have been Get The V8, Angels sing, Opus soars, Chum cheers, end credits. But it’s not over yet. After a Thunderdome fight that left me exhausted, we’re thrown into a monumental brawl so epic and unfair that even Borderlands would have said ‘calm down mate’, what could possibly be next? Another exceptional mission to begrudgingly help Hope find her Glory of course, and it feels right that Max would eventually agree to do one thing for someone other than himself – that’s a constant in every Mad Max movie since Road Warrior; someone gets under his madness and briefly reaches the man beneath.

So we’re good to go, yeah? Not quite. It’s a desperately sad moment when Max takes off rather than stays with Hope and Glory. Glory gets in the car only to be lifted out like Feral Kid. Max barely glances in his mirror before taking off. But then, absolutely everything spirals faster than a V8; An insane sequence of events unfold, sending Max so far into the Madness that it’s hard to watch let alone play – and it couldn’t have ended any other way. We’ll ignore a completely ridiculous final twist/fight tacked on to spoil it. It’s that good a game that even a logic-breaking boss fight can be forgiven. Max drives, always away from his past; except now he has even more past to drive away from. Including me. It’s been a ride being Max. And surprisingly, it’s been emotional being Max.

With the Opus purring like a hybrid, I reflect on how well Mad Max the films were woven into the game. And it’s not just fan-service. There’s ‘two men enter, one man leaves’, Max eats Dinki-Di dogfood, the Lost Tribe is referenced, Max is called Raggedy Man and so much more; it might be a prequel to Fury Road (might be) with the Warboys, the huge storms and general look and feel, but the entire series’ DNA is woven in without turning the game into some sycophant greatest-hits tour. This Max can stand proudly alongside it’s cinematic bros – and manages the impossible; a brilliant tie-in. I would love to be Max again and it’s a shame WB didn’t throw enough support behind this game to warrant a sequel; well damn them. Avalanche gave us back our hero.

2015 | Developer Avalanche Studios | Publisher WB Interactive Entertainment

Platforms; Win, XO, PS4

Gun

A Blast from the Past review

FBT saddles up and other clichés as he rides out to tame the wild west.

The Past

When it comes to free-roam, the wild west is perfect for making your own trails; if the buffalos roam why not gamers? But if you say ‘Western free-roam’ aloud, tumbleweeds pass by. Westerns had always been an underdog in gaming, mashed into other genres while pure Westerns usually fall into caricature-driven silliness. Red Dead Redemption was perfect yet still failed to spur a serious resurgence in the genre. Western games just never got over Custer’s Revenge. And then there was Gun.

Released dead-centre of the free-roam explosion of the mid-00’s, Gun was set in the vile west of revisionist western cinema; its brutality earned Gun a BBFC 18 and it exemplified Leone’s description of a western; “where life has no value”. It was a proper wild west experience, William Munny not Roy Rogers and I loved it. I think. I can’t remember much about it other than the violence and a lot of riding but I’d swear Gun was the real west while still hitting all the western beats. Time to yeehaw through the wild west again.

Still a Blast?

Gun’s menu is so western I expect ‘Technicolor’ and ‘Panavision’ to appear while someone yells ‘Rawhide!’ Sweeping plains, buffalos roaming, a stirring score; open and vast, it immediately looks epic. So does the voice cast. Any star who can pull off a moustache is in this – Ron Perlman, Lance Henriksen, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Skerritt, Brad Dourif; all of them at their Marlboro Man best (No Sam Elliott? How’d they miss him?!), while our hero is earthily voiced by Thomas Jane. I’m excited to be a cowboy! Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’.

We are tracker Cole, who, along with his grizzled Pa, boards a Steamboat to collect payment for the animals we shot during a tutorial mission. Once aboard, a prostitute pal of Pa’s gets an axe in the head and the boat is overrun. With the men closing in, Pa tells Cole he’s not his Pa after all and then ignores a chance to escape in favour of making Cole promise to reach Dodge City and visit a prostitute. Pa had his priorities right to the end.

After saving Pa’s back-up prostitute from some impatient types in a gunfight, Cole honours Pa’s memory and sleeps with her. In return, she tells us to reach Empire City, but first we have to defend bowing, rice-hat wearing Chinese workers from howling pissed-off in’juns while they finish a bridge connecting Dodge to Empire. This being a free-roamer, I ignore their plight in favour of getting to know Dodge.

Well that didn’t take long. There’s not much to know really, a saloon where you can get battered at poker (you can cheat, but it doesn’t help this greenhorn) and side-distractions like Wanted posters; capturing the renegades Alive nets more gold than Dead but it’s not easy and they often have cohorts making it hard to not kill them during the fight. Elsewhere there’s the Pony Express where you deliver goods within a set time, but those I quickly give up on thanks to my untrusty steed. Horses in Gun are quite hardy and fast in a straight-line, but they turn like a cruise ship and can get disorientating when you’re swivelling Cole one way and the horse turns another. You can also work with the Marshall to take care of various trouble-makers in town. All those give you gold and add to your reputation, making Cole better at riding, quick-draw etc., so they’re worth doing. Except the Pony Express.

Having exhausted all to do in Dodge I go help secure the bridge. As I fight off waves of American Indians I use quick-draw to shoot dynamite out of the air, stop them tomahawking the workers, generally live out my cowboys vs Indians childhood fantasy, if I’d been born in a time when cultural sensitives weren’t a thing. The game did generate a fair bit of controversy around its depiction of American Indians and Activision’s (Not An) Apology was insulting; “we apologize to any who might have been offended by the game’s depiction of historical events which have been conveyed not only through video games but through films, television programming, books and other media”. To deflect it as nothing we’ve not seen before is the EXACT problem; you’re perpetuating an outdated view from a simplistic and one-sided viewpoint – even in 2005 we knew that image was grossly inaccurate and offensive, and it’s inexcusable because a character comments they’re attacking because the bridge is in their territory; so … they’re right to defend themselves then? The bridge stays with me for the rest of the game, hoping it’ll be justified later but it isn’t, and when you consider the clichéd appearance of the Chinese railway workers, Gun takes on an unpleasant, outdated tone.

Equally unpleasant and outdated is the portrayal of women. There’s only one which has a more than incidental appearance, a prostitute who’s gratuitously murdered. Elsewhere there’s Pa’s prostitute with the axe in her head, a prostitute on wanted posters (who will be ‘castrated’ on capture) and most female NCPs are prostitutes, pacing around in their underwear. We do meet two home-maker wifey types – both of whom get shot – and interact with a couple of nagging Southern-Belle types. That’s it. The male characters though are richly characterised and most were based on real-world cowboys (in name only, their real-life exploits were far more entertaining than Gun’s interpretation) – there have been a few notable women in the old west, just ask Doris Day. There’s no reason they couldn’t have found a place for an equal-footed female, yet not one plot-related woman survives.

The game itself has aged about as well as its treatment of women. The world just isn’t as vast as I recalled – there’s convenient cliffs and less convenient invisible borders stopping you roaming the bare and basic environment and there’s no real exploration; only two or three routes between the two cities which feel like a TV backlot rather than the old west, and there’s nothing in-between them. You can work as a ranch-hand for a local farmer, corralling cattle and the like – it’s a nice little side-mission and a great example of RPG that Gun could have done with more of. It’s just a whole lot of nothing. The game also constantly reminds you to go finish the main mission, like you were otherwise distracted. There’s also an American Indian who asks us to kill local wildlife pestering his tribe, but about the only other thing to do is annoy the locals; running over townsfolk with your horse or shooting/stabbing them causes the town to lose patience (Literally, you get a patience meter) and assemble a posse to go after you; for which there’s quick-draw, an old-west bullet-time. Gunfights are fairly straightforward but a macabre element is Cole can also scalp wounded enemies. Originally, he’d sell scalps to the Apaches, but it was removed pre-release (wouldn’t want to appear insensitive). So it just remains a compulsion of Cole’s. Who has other problems.

The biggest problem with Gun is Cole himself. He’s not for or against the American Indians, he’s indifferent towards them. They’re just between him and his revenge so it’s okay? Later Cole is excused for the bridge scene after saving some American Indians from slavery – which he did utterly by accident. Besides that, he’s boring to play; he never instigates or drives anything, just reacts. He’s not the man with no name, he’s the man with no idea. Less Shane, more lame. Not Josey Wales, it’s Josey fails. He’s not even Woody. When we first meet Cole, he’s napping; our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, turns out a railroad boss is searching for a lost city of gold. Pa had a clue to the city hence his murder, so it’s off to avenge Pa, find the gold and help the Apaches regain their land. Well, that bit just happens by accident again. Along the way Cole finds out he has a little Indian in him – bet you feel bad about the bridge now, dontcha. No? No reaction; it’s frustrating that mid-way through Cole goes Dances With Wolves for the wrong reasons; he ends up working with the Indians by accident, not because of his heritage, or any deeper understanding of their plight but because they are looking to bring down the Rail Baron too (and need a white saviour to do it). All that to explore and we’re concerned with a city of gold? We’re playing the plot to Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958) and it has the same dated red-in’jun killin’ and misogyny.

It’s hard to render an incredibly contentious period in America’s history comfortably, but because cowboys vs Indians has been normalised and the image trivialised, it somehow still seems okay; you’d not get a game where a Slave owner puts down thirty slaves for revolting and I’m sure in years to come, more than a few games and a lot of movies featuring ‘the middle east’ as an enemy will start to feel a little uncomfortable on retro-revisits; yet I bet we’re still shootin’ in’juns. I’m beginning to see why most westerns are something else-terns; sci-fi westerns, cyber-punk westerns, horror-westerns; no one gets offended by the misrepresentation of a zombie.

I hadn’t realised how small Gun really is; small in scale and small-minded. It’s not the game I recall on any level; I think my memory of disappearing into a western is because there wasn’t anything else like this then. To be fair, almost all the missions – as far as a game experience goes, are fun – the Bridge battle included; shooting dynamite out of the air, charging a fort, doing train robberies, quickdraws, defending stagecoaches is going to awaken the little cowboy in anyone. As to its tone – the voice cast, the violence, set-pieces and plotting, it’s clear Gun intended to be a mature, serious game and those were the politics and realities of the time – that a tracker from the mountains isn’t going to view the American Indians as anything but a threat and women were second class citizens. The characters can have those opinions, but the game can’t, not when we’re the hero; playing it is a lot different to excusing some old western as ‘of its time’. Gun’s heart might be in the right place but its head was scalped.

2005 | Developer Neversoft | Publisher Activision

platforms; Win | PS2 | X360

Max Payne 3

An Agree to Disagree review

FBT and TheMorty need a bullet-time-out arguing over Max Payne 3.

FBT – Needs more painkillers

Max Payne is one of my fave games. Max Payne 2 is one of my fave games. Max Payne 3 is one of my most hated games. Rockstar games usually get it right but this monstrosity is worse than the movie adaption. Least that had Mila Kunis. MP3 doesn’t even have Mona, just me moaning. My main gripe with Max Payne 3 is it’s not a Max Payne game. TheMorty may come up with various nods to the original, argue it’s Max in spirit, that the main plot – Max trying to save a girl – is the Max Payne DNA, that’s it’s a Noir in spirit but no. There’s nothing salvageable here; MP3 is a Call of Duty reskin.

The original was a subtle retelling of the Ragnarök legend in a classic noir setting that played out like a graphic novelization of the actioners we grew up on. The sequel was a more generic shooter but it was all about Max’s survivor’s guilt, and that killing was all he was ever good at. This time Max is a bodyguard working for a shady businessman in Brazil; not exactly a noir setting, I think one of the CoD Modern Warfare series was set there. Okay, that’s a tenuous link but Brazil’s locations, the shanty towns, offices, airports etc. are the bread and butter of CoD, unlike the original’s fleapit hotels and decrepit tenement blocks; the originals seethed with decay and disappointment, reflected Max’s state of mind.

Unlike the originals where Max was a lone man against the world, most of the time in MP3 Max is taking orders from NCPs in flack jackets who look just like Spec Ops guys. He’s not the driver anymore, it’s not a lone wolf, personal mission – a kidnapped Paris Hilton might stir Max, his weakness was always women but in MP3 it doesn’t have to be Max. In the original, Max was an epic anti-hero, depressed and on a death-wish. No one else could do it. This Max is an shooter-cliché, as formulaic and interchangeable as any of CoD’s characters. Name a standout in the CoD series, one who is significantly different to all the others – you can’t, and this Max is just as characterless. If it wasn’t in third person I’d not know I was Max. The original Max was Bruce Willis in his Last Boy Scout days. This Max is Bruce Willis now.

The first was set during a brutal snowstorm, and like the second, took place over one night. MP3 not only takes it’s time, draining that relentless feeling of the originals, but is set during the day. Noir and night, those were key to the Max games, they reflected him; I’m surprised Max isn’t in a Hawaiian shirt. And where the hell are the graphic novel pages? Why instead do we have this horrible double-exposure effect and dialogue flashing on the screen? If the original was Bladerunner, this is the worst of Tony Scott, keeping your attention with epileptic editing and film-stock changes; it doesn’t mean anything. Max is an action hero now; at one stage he hangs off the bottom of a helicopter and shoots down RPGs…

It’s not just me complaining; Max is a moaning old man too – gone are the fatalistic, Bogart one-liners, now he just nonsensically rambles like Homer Simpson’s dad. And when he’s not grumbling, he’s flaying about like he’s on roller-skates. MP3 has a cover system? That’s not Max, that’s CoD; Max goes straight into the bullets – he wants to die, it’s just that no one can stop him. We had shot-dodge and bullettime and that was enough; now we have both of those plus cover, vault, crouch, prone, roll, sprint, 180 turns – I thought he was a creaking burn-out from the NYPD not on tour with Cirque du Soleil. And we have more moment-spoiling with the Last Man Standing, a poor man’s Second Wind plus shot-dodge has been ruined because Max can get hit while jumping. Shot-dodge was pure Joel Silver, now it’s Michael Bay. MP3 is an over-engineered tactical shooter. I rest my CoD case. And I’ve not even played it yet.

It’s not even fun to play. When Max isn’t pirouetting about he’s fussing over which weapon to pick up, which attachments to use and looking for irrelevant clues. It’s just a series of small, linear moments followed by Max downing a whisky and babbling about how bad everything is – yes, it is, because you’re a completely inefficient bodyguard – By the time I reach a scene where a character he’s supposed to be protecting gets Necklaced I’ve had enough. Call of Duty can pull off torture if it wants, but Max was always about him torturing himself. This game’s tortured me enough.

Sam Houser said this incarnation is “Max as we’ve never seen him before, a few years older, more world-weary and cynical than ever.” Did you even play the original? He’s right about one thing, this is Max as we’ve never seen him; this is Call of Duty, the worst kind of populist trend-following nonsense, a cash-in that sullies Max’s good name.

TheMorty – dual wielding

The way I see it there’s two types of people, those who spend their lives trying to build a future and those who spend their lives trying to rebuild the past. – Max Payne (May Payne 3; 2012)

How better to sum up this review? FBT was desperate for Rockstar to rebuild the past, thinking fondly and nostalgically of re-playing one of the greatest action classics of all time. Whereas I am delighted that the genre-defining franchise has moved forward. Don’t get me wrong, on this I agree with him; The original Max Payne is by far the superior game. It’s impossible to refute and saying anything contrary would be short-sighted and brainless. Max Payne had iconic panache that spawned a whole generation of multimedia and gave foundation for games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. However, where we disagree fundamentally is on the future of the franchise.

I love that Max has evolved and moved away from that dark, 90’s gangster setting and leaped forward to a modern environment with a fresh storytelling dynamic. It’s the only way to keep one of gaming’s greatest heroes alive in a market flooded with poor, slo-mo knockoffs, like WET, Wanted and Stranglehold – all of which dying a death after an unwillingness to evolve.

It’s clear Rockstar wanted to take the game in a new direction but we should be grateful that it doesn’t leave behind Max’s core values. We still have the Bullet Time system and the film noire, snow-laden flashbacks set in a familiar New Jersey to help fans of the original transition into the modern setting and while he might be weary and tired, Max still has that incredible wit and off-camera, one-liners steeped in Hyperbole – “This town had more smoke and mirrors than a strip-club dressing room”. Sure, the story might not have the same darkness and grit of its predecessors but I’m delighted it doesn’t try to force the square peg of the storyboard narrative into a round hole. Instead it boasts an incredible 3½ hours of cutscenes, which suits the new style and makes the game almost like an interactive action movie. It’s a fresh and wholly different take which might not be for the purists, but makes for a fantastically cinematic gaming experience.

FBT argues this Max is an aged Bruce Willis and sure, he has a very valid point. Particularly around the plot similarity of a slap-headed, alcoholic ex-cop jetting abroad to take down a foreign criminal empire. But so what if Max Payne 3 is the Die Hard 5 of sequels, who cares if the McTiernan and Remedy classics are no more and we’re in a modern world of John Moore adaptations. Nothing will ever take away from the originals, they’re still on the shelf and can be watched or played any time you like, but I’d much rather have this Max than no Max at all and the way Rockstar have re-invented the character is so much more palatable than re-making him – particularly considering so many have tried the latter and failed; see Doom 4, Duke Nukem Forever, Mass Effect Andromeda, Resident Evil 6… all frantic attempts to re-create iconic originals and each spectacularly falling flat on their arse in the process.

Rockstar clearly wanted Max to have his Liam Neeson renaissance. Re-booting him into an unexplored role as opposed to having him age ungracefully like Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood who, rather embarrassingly, look like mid-life crisis divorcee grandads in their futile attempts to reprise roles from their 20s. Roles where some of the romance scenes should be ringing alarm bells at Operation Yewtree HQ. There is definitely a market for those nostalgically seeking that type of hero, one that Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme have cornered with their 10-a-penny, bargain bucket straight to DVD movie releases but that was never the route for Max and Rockstar certainly didn’t want to see him go down that road. Max himself is pretty open about his transformation and alludes to the changes Rockstar have implemented since taking over; “I guess I’d become what they wanted me to be, a killer, some rent-a-clown with a gun who puts holes in other bad guys. Well, that’s what they had paid for, so in the end, that’s what they got”

It’s a difficult torch to carry, but if there’s one company fit for purpose it’s Rockstar. Taking over a successful franchise and making their own mark on it, all while keeping the integrity of the original. For years Rockstar have always been one step ahead. Using filler games such as LA Noire, Red Dead Revolver or The Italian Job as a risk-free way to try something new and get the right feedback before building them into the gameplay of AAA titles. With Max Payne 3 there’s a lot of similarities to the gameplay of GTAV. The cover aspect, the character movement and, of course, Bullet Time were all features tried in Max 3 before taking the plunge in GTA. There’s also a lot of similarities in between the two protagonists as well, gameplay aside, Max and Michael are almost one and the same. Their humour, the focus trait and even their attire are eerily similar. So maybe our remodelled Max deserves a bit of further praise as a trendsetter and perhaps without Max we might not have had such a stellar, near-perfect game in GTAV just over a year later.

Released in a year full of top rated sequels like Halo 4, FarCry 3, Assassins Creed III and Mass Effect 2, it’s very easy to overlook Max as a game of the year contender but I think it’s re-play value will stand the test of time. It has the feel of a classic 3PS action game with enough nods and throwbacks to the originals to really keep the fans content.

Don’t like it, well, to quote the big man himself “you buy yourself a product then you get what you pay for, and these chumps had paid for some angry gringo…”

2012 | Developer Rockstar Studios | Publisher Rockstar Games

genres; shooter, 3rd person, crime

platforms; Win, PS3, X360

Fallout 4 – Pt1

a second wind special review

In this special edition playthrough, FBT relives Fallout 3 *spoilers (FBT hates it)*

I loved Fallout 3. There was nothing like it. Okay, there were loads like it; Stalker, Metro and … others but this was from the makers of Oblivion. It was Oblivion after the bombs dropped. That’s got to be good. And it was. I lived in FO3 for an age, explored every irradiated pixel. The world was horrible but the experience was unforgettable. When FO New Vegas came out I explored the wasteland again, loving being back in the world from a different perspective. Sure, it was a little juvenile, a bit repetitive with huge areas of nothing but a radscorpion for company and its story was daft (Romans? Yeah, they’re a good role model) but it had some really good stuff in it especially with the factions, reputation and robot sex. And then it was five long years in the vault until I could strap on my Pipboy again.

Fallout 4 opening with a pre-war scene was interesting, clearly that was supposed to make me feel emotionally connected to the wasteland later but it hadn’t ever occurred to me during FO3 to picture the world pre-war. I didn’t really care then and I don’t care now cos the game is making me go through annoying mundane tasks to build suspense, as if what’s about to happen will come as a surprise during this perfect suburban domesticity.

Cracking wise with my clearly ill-fated other half, rocking a cradle with my sprog in it, watching TV, all I can think about is the scene in Saints Row 4 where The Boss is trapped in a 50s sitcom and you’re forced to ‘play’ eating breakfast and get the morning paper, itself a parody of games like Heavy Rain. How meta. Eventually I’ve interacted enough and we’re running for the vault. I don’t get much time to look around but I do pause briefly to see the bomb land which is amazing, but I’m quickly hurried inside before I can really take it in. Safely vaulted, getting a real sense of the panic and drama, I’m looking forward to starting a life in a vault. I wonder if this will be the first Fallout game to explore the Commonwealth before it started, adventure in a world where the bombs are still smouldering, but no; we’re tricked into being turned into an ice-vault-icle and the years pass. I helplessly watch as my other half is indeed ill-fated and the kiddiewink snatched. Another unknown period passes and eventually I melt and claw my way outside to catch my first glimpse of the world I’ve seen before.

One of FO3’s greatest moments is when you escape the vault and are awed by the world for the first time. FO4’s attempt at awe is seeing my perfect neighbourhood reduced to ruins. But this isn’t as affecting as Bethesda may have intended; I never made a connection to the neighbourhood, I saw it pass by as I was running for my life so seeing it now has zero impact on me. I’ve seen this before – It’s just another Fallout ruin. I go inside my house and because I assume the game wants me to and stare at the empty cot. Sads. I have no emotional connection to the place or what happened or even the kid, because it all happened too fast. To really have given this impact, the game could have done with a few more hours in the pre-nuclear environment the way you spend time in the Vault in FO3. You think you know the world, then step outside and gasp. It could have worked quite well with the right quests. It’s like FO4 forgot about FO3 and thinks I’ll be shocked by what happened to my home.

A short chat with my still operating Mr Handy then occurs and I uncover something startling; The voice is Jack in Mass Effect! This game had better allow tattoos. I adore Jack; Courtenay Taylor did a stellar job grinding out Jack-the-killing-machine’s dialogue with barely contained rage then slowly softening to reveal a fragile and hurting human underneath but in FO4 my voice stays largely the same; indifferent. I’m playing a mother who just saw her hubby shot, her baby taken and the world destroyed and I’m talking and acting like it’s no biggie. The Handy gives Jack a waypoint to begin the search and so, filled with despair, determined to find my son and planning on playing ME2 next, I head Jack off in the opposite direction.

Before I’ve even met my first bloatfly, I’m already a little worried about where this game will take me. It’s forced onto me a very strong reason to drive forward and I don’t want one, I want to wander and discover. FO3 wasn’t about saving the world it was about taking the first steps towards a better one and until I did it, everyone just got on with life. In NV it was revenge and the key to that is preparation. Alongside it you got embroiled in a larger power-struggle, but one that didn’t need a resolution quick-sharp. In FO4 I am looking for my helpless baby lost somewhere in this nightmare world. How can that not overwhelm every other consideration? Why would I explore, roam, build some granny an armchair when my kid could be on a slab somewhere? It’s impossible to wander the wasteland and care about the main storyline at the same time. This is a Schrodinger’s cat of a main mission; the kid is alive and dead until I action it. So I’ll make a player decision not a character one, and ignore a kidnapped baby. Other open-world games have reconciled a dramatic main plot with freedom in far better ways. Far Cry 3 got the recovery of his friends out of the way quickly and focused on sacrificing your humanity in favour of revenge. Perfect for side-questing. Mass Effect 3 had arguably the biggest story driver of all time – a trifling mission to save the earth and then the galaxy – but it encouraged side-missioning because most if not all your actions added to your readiness; You were side-questing to prepare for the main quest. Another open-worlder that stumbled its main mission was Tomb Raider – why am I looking for Dream Catchers when my friends are being held hostage? In FO4 it’s worse; maternal instinct or material instinct?

Ignoring the baby and taking on what FO4 is, it’s interesting and brave that I’m a vault dweller with no knowledge of the war’s repercussions. I have no training, no survival instinct, no idea what’s out there. I’m a fifties housewife. Amazing. Everything my character sees should cause her to breakdown, every item should be a mystery, every challenge an impossible feat and every creature a lethal encounter – but we just merrily crack on, knowing how to read a Pipboy, pick locks, fire guns. I should have screamed the place down the first time I saw a ghoul. But no, I’ve gone full Rambo in one cut-scene and it’s a huge mistake because playing someone completely unprepared and incapable would have been more realistic, more frightening. Why create a character so woefully unprepared and conflicted, then have them handle everything like they’ve been doing this for years? It would have been compelling to find trainers, get experience, learn, barely survive. But no, we hit the ground running and gunning.

After a few hours of barrelling about lost in the world I so loved in FO3, I stop and look around. It does look amazing. It’s exactly how I remembered the post-apocalyptic world looking. Just how FO3 looked. Just how NV looked, when it wasn’t crashing. Exactly the same. Same landscape. Same items. Same everything… Everything the same… Maybe a little more pixel-sharp, but yeah … there it is then, the wasteland. Eight years I’ve been waiting for this. Just how I left it eight years ago. And within the next few hours, the worst thing that can happen in an open world game happens. I get bored. The problem is I’ve seen it all before. The thrill of discovery, of getting into and out of trouble, of finding deserted houses with skeletal bodies, venturing into buildings, we went through that in FO3; it’s just more of the same and the impact is lost. I’m deathly, depressingly nonplussed in a huge apocalyptic world.

Oh look, a factory. I wonder if it’s a nuka cola factory? Yes, it is. I wonder if it’ll be full of raiders. Yes, it is. Water, bring on the Mirelurks. A bog? I can’t even be bothered with the bloatflies. I’ll go around. It’s the same disarray, the same crap on the floor, the same super mutants. Even the Megaton replacement Diamond City just reminds you of Megaton. Bigger but not better, not different enough to get the wanderer juices flowing. Each Elder Scroll fundamentally changed the environment, the experiences, why did Bethesda keep going back to the irradiated well? Surely there could have been other ways to explore nuclear Armageddon; New Vegas was set in a location spared direct hits so NV explored how humanity would survive in an isolated world, not an obliterated one. FO4 could have gone somewhere else entirely but instead it feels like more of FO3. When you compare it to rival Sandbox games it comes across as lazy; Far Cry distinguished itself by never repeating itself, every Assassin’s Creed is unique while each Mass Effect subtly updated, changed and refreshed without becoming too distant from its predecessor; all the GTA’s stay safely within a city, but with new ways to explore it and Saints Row 4 rebuilt Steelport but gave you new ways to abuse it. In those you know which game you’re looking at; I couldn’t pick a FO4 screenshot out of a FO3 line-up.

The only part of FO4 that’s remotely fascinating is the Glowing Sea, a deadly ground-zero for the bomb we saw at the beginning. It’s a horrible place and ironically, given its deadly nature the only place FO4 comes alive. A sick and blighted place, full of seeping decay and absolute death, The Glowing Sea is thrilling, not just in the experience but because it’s new. Had FO4 been set here entirely, it could have been something incredible. We’re constantly injecting radaway and the like, surely we’ve built up a resistance by now? Come on; in FO3 we purified water, no one’s built on that since? Setting FO4 in the Glowing Sea would have been stunning; it could have played like Bioshock – folks safe but rotting away inside great buildings with their own society and laws, surrounded by a lethal environment that only the brave (i.e Jack) will brave and bring the different houses together to fight some larger force or maybe eradicate radiation so everyone can leave. Having the Lone Hero find a city trapped by air would have set a new bar. Anything but just visit the place before returning to the rinse and repeat of FO3.

Worse, if not unforgivable, there’s so much reskinning and recycling going on I’m surprised CoD’s legal team didn’t sue. Who reskins a game nearly a decade old?! If you played FO3, NV or Skyrim then you’ve played in the world of FO4. This is more than just lazy art design on Bethesda’s part. This is wilfully cheating gamers who plonked down a TON of Nuka caps on a new fallout world and got something built in Skyrim’s Construction Set. In years to come, people will discuss FO3 and 4 interchangeably – that’s not good enough. And it’s not just evident in the art design. We’re still lock-picking the same way (and let’s not forget that was reskinned in Skyrim too); Sure, the locks wouldn’t have changed but the mini-game? Come on. Who in the fallout world is still manufacturing bobbypins?! I’m not talking about realism (I have a mini nuke, that should get a drawer open), just give us something new; anything but this again, I’ve been breaking locks the same way for at least four Bethesda games. Each Mass Effect had a different approach to hacking, why am I still playing Boggle in FO4 too? It’s all the same like a place-holder, a mega DLC.

Some creatures though do move in new and frightening ways – the same creatures but you can’t have everything. Deathclaws leaping over fencing and through buildings is pants-wettingly good/bad as is trying to sneak around them, and the ghouls are faster too. And then there’s the Legendary enemies. Random encounters with extra-tough opponents that weld unique and powerful weapons. They’re actually more of a frustration and a distraction than anything exciting. Sure there’s going to be ornery old coots out there that know how to take a hit, and they’re likely to be carrying good loot but they’re barely even an event moment, just ammo-sucking annoyances mixed in with regular bullet-catchers carrying rarely exciting but always heavy goods. Borderlands often battered the crap out of you then dropped something even bigger and nastier on you, but you knew BL was as trustworthy as it was insane. That creature will drop something sexy. You may spend a hundred mill on a reclone, but goddamn that loot will be worth it. So you suck it up and Jack Burton it; Gimme your best shot, pal. I can take it. In FO4 it’s not worth all the Buffout and ammo and they appear at frustrating times when you’re just trying to get some place.

And at first, it seems the place you want to get is home. Largely an improved version of Skyrim’s Hearthfire extension, you can stake a claim on multiple locations, rebuild and attract settlers. Sounds fantastic, and judging by some of the settlements gamers have created, the possibilities are endless. They’re also mind-numbingly boring. Setting up power actually requires you to do the wiring. Well, I’m kinda searching for my son but yeah okay, lemme just rewire a plug. And when I do get settlers in, do they get involved? Yes, if I force them to but only in support roles while I’m out trying to find more logs for their fricking roof. Had the building work been played through a mini-game where you could properly plan, like a Sim City or the way Black & White allowed you to train a foreman to direct the rest of the followers, it could have been amazing. Set plans in motion then return to see how everyone was doing, how your little fiefdom was coming along. It could encourage you to talk to NCPs, finding scavengers to find materials, track down a builder, a planner to design it, artists to decorate it, build a militia, become raiders and attract criminals or a peaceful settlement for families. It could have been incredible. Go from a ruin to a functioning town, become a force in the wasteland! No. And thanks to a build system that’s more infuriating and confusing than picking something up in Trespasser, just trying to put a rug on the floor becomes rage-inducing; my house looks like an art student’s Cubism project. I have to do this for the entire settlement?! I eventually lost it and walked off never to return. And I have to do this for every place I’ve secured?! I’m a slumlord and I’m okay with that. The Fallout society can rebuild itself for all I care. The tenants constantly ask for things to be built; how did they all survive this long without me?! I just woke up, how come I’m a DIY God as well as a survivalist expert? I just give up and let the settlers live in squalor. Get out of my bed.

We’ll leave FBT to his impression of Reg Prescott. Maybe he’ll cheer up when he discovers the romance sub-plot, so check out pt2 to see if FBT forgets his other-half who died a day ago and finds love in the wasteland. Oh yeah, and finds his kid. Keep forgetting about that.