MEMBER PROFILE FOR Marcello
Average Overall Score Given: 9.21429 / 10
Total Forum Posts: 78
Reviews
James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace
Overall: After Goldeneye no 007 game was really awe-inspiring. Last generation of consoles saw some good games staring pierce Brosnan but still they didn't feel like 007. Quantum of Solace however has the debut Daniel Craig in the 007 game legacy and is, more importantly, a game to be remembered.The story begins with Bond raiding the house of the guy who's supposed to be the big man behind the whole plot of C@!%#*!ino Royale, after unleashing hell in the mansion 007 scapes to a gorgeous intro, and the story based on the motion picture Quantum of Solace begins, the story is very rushed however (as was in Goldeneye), and anyone who didn't see the movies is NOT going to understand what's happening, not to mention that, as usual, some sequences from the movie have been radically changed to accomodate a whole bunch of enemies and gunfire.
As the story "unfolds" Bond takes a moment to think about his first mission, and then the player is transported to a LOT of missions based on the C@!%#*!ino Royale motion picture, after the whole movie ends on its gaming version, you get back to finish Quantum of Solace per se.
Don't expect to really use any gadgets, as in the new movies there are no major gadgets, and unfortunately you never get to drive Bond's car either.
Gameplay: The game plays similar to Rainbow Six Vegas, it is extremely urgent to take cover at all times, and the scenario is very convincing in a manner that things do not look as if they were "created for cover".
Bond also has the very neat ability to fight melee (most boss fights are only melee), that happens when you go behind an unsuspecting enemy oir if you run too fast towards one or press the melee buttom. That will always prompt a fast response to the player to mash a certain key or press them in as prompted (like in Force Unleashed), those sequences are brutal, often involving the breaking of legs, arms and heads-smashing, everything in a cinematoic fashion that keeps the action alive.
Many times the player can take the game in a stealth fashion, trying not to be seen and sneaking on enemies, however, most of the game involves simply taking cover and killing armies of enemies.
The variety of weapons is quite big, you always begin with the PP9, and you can get more weapons from certain "weapon caches" or dead enemies, the firefight is instense, in "007" dufficulty 3 bullets is the maximum you can take before dying, that is if the enemies don't hit you with a headshot. To help the good old agent out, there many explosives around to help you creat havoc wherever you go, sometimes you can even shoot certain objects that will creat electrical discharges that take you enemy out of cover, also try shooting the gl@!%#*! near the enemy, the shards will get into his eyes, maing your foe temporarily blind.
In certain occasions you'll also be jumping train cars, walking on ledegs, keeping your balance on thin walkways, etc.
Graphics: Graphics are mostly pretty good, sometimes it looks as if it lacks texture, but all in all it's a decent graphic. Character modeling is superb, 007 looks just like the actor that gives him life, same goes for other characters.
Enemies however have mostly the very same face, they don't have a good variety of faces.
Weapons look realistic enough as does the scenario which certainly takes the trophy in this game. The scenario is simply gorgeous, and comes in a high variety of environments.
Overall Score: 9.3 / 10
Fallout 3
Overall: War. War never changes.Fallout is a series of rpg set on an alternate reality, where, during the 50's, in which somehow humankind was extremely advanced, a war breaks out leading the world to a nuclear holocaust. The two first games of the series set the player in a desolated north-american wild west, full of radiated creatures and such. Then Came Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Stell, both were very weak games, and even though Fallout 3 was in production, the fans dreams were shattered with the awful news that Black Isle had closed its doors. Fallout 3 seemed lost forever.
Than Bethesda released "Oblivion", the game was a hit, with its huge scenario of gorgeous woods, shinning lakes, and mighty knights. After some time Bethesda took on the role to reshape Fallout 3 and bring the game back to production. The game wouldn't be set in California anymore, but in Washingto DC, also it would go through many changes, as fans will realise when they play it, but Bethesda really hit the spot: it's a game that pleases fans and newcommers.
You begin with your chracter being born, your father tries to see what sex you are and then you choose your sex, he then asks your mother what name she'll give you and the player creates a name, after that you create your character's facial appearence per se and you're taken to play the game... as a baby!!! That's where you'll start distirbuting points to the chracter, and from then on you'll grow up in a fast pace, going through some studying getting "perks", etc.
When you're "grown" you awaken to find out that your father has left Vault 101 (this Vault in aprticular has a director who prohibts anyone from leaving), now you're in trouble as well, you soon find out that things are VERY complicated and you decide to run after your dad.
As soon as you escape you'll see what fallout is really about: your first view is that of a HUGE landscape, a big desert, ruined houses and buildings, towns that look like slums. Not a pretty site at all.
From then own you're free to do as you will, go around helping people for hgood or bad, go in a psycho frenzy shooting everyone, or be the nice guy, or simply go and get the main storyline done with. It's your choice.
Gameplay: The gameplay is a mixture of shooter with rpg. The old fallout games had a system based on "action points", one would spend them to walk and attack during every battle, here the action points were given a new life: you play like a fps, you can shoot but the player aiming right doesn't mean the chracter is aiming right, it's always based on atributes, your points are only spent when you use the system called V.A.T.S. This means you get to choose body part to hit and the percentage of chance that you'll be succesful.
You'll be doing a lot of talking, even getting out of very ugly situations with mere talk. this is real RPG taken to the next level!
Graphics: Visualy the game is consistent if you're playing it in first person view, taking it to thord person you'll realise your character moves in an awkward way, it seems Bethesda hasn't really hit the spot there.
The scenario can change from a wasteland to little slum-like towns, and remains of cities, it's very climatic, and it makes you feel like people are trying to make a living, as hard as that is.
When usiong VATS and killing an enemy, the player is usually rewarded with a short slow-motion scenematic view of heads popping up and other gross kinds of dismemberments.
weapons range from realistic to downright nostalgious, for instance, the laser pistol, looks a LOT like those your dad probably had as a toy when young. So yes they look weird, and it only looks weirder when you see the carnage they do.
It's a very violent game and it's also very complex, it's really not for children. Even if you keep watch on your kid and make sure him or her are making a "good guy" character, there is a lot of violence all the time, from mutated desfigured figures, to the very essence of the scenario itself.
Audio: Remember the old days... Music here is only ambient sound and a few scores. However, your pip-boy (a machine that acts like the menu, you where it on your arm) can play the radio, and the radio works just like in GTA, it has DJ's and songs, only old songs you'd expect from the 50's. There's a radio called Enclave Radio, it's from a military unit called The Enclave, it's only babbles from the President making propaganda of the army and such. All in all, the music is great, the special effects are great everything is wonderful and ads to the expected sound of a Flallout game.
Overall Score: 10.0 / 10
Dead Space
Overall: Dead Space tells the story of Isac Clarke, an engineer sent to the USG Ishmura with a security team and a girl called Kendra (another engineer) in order to investigate the reason behind the communications blackout.As usual it turns out that it's much more than a simple blackout, as soon as you arrive in Ishmura (after a disastrous landing) you get separated from the rest of your team as you see everyone getting salughtered by strange zobie-like aliens. Later you find out that kendra and a security officer survived, now they need your help in order to get away from this creepy destiny.
As the story progresses the player will learn the reson behind the aliens and how it is linked to the excavation process that Ishmura was leading.
The game is a mixture of Resident Evil 4 with Alien and Event Horizon, making a good blend that actually surprises the player.
The game brings nothing new to the genre but it does looks original enough instead of just a cheap copy like most horror games nowadays.
Gameplay: Gameplay is that of Resident Evil 4 with the ability of upgrading armour, habilities and weaponry. Most of your weapons are actually high-tech enigineering tools, just like your armor is simply a high-tech engineering suit. The abilities consist of kinesis and stasys, the power to "freeze" enemies temporarily.
The camera is set on the hcracter's shoulder, making it a great position to aim and shoot, the weapon itself has two firing m,odes. The Plasma Cutter has an interesting twist to it, the secondary shot is actually the ability that the weapon has to change its axis of fire (from horizontal to to vertical).
Enemies can be brought down with a heavy rain of shots, but doing that will get you out of ammo quickly, plus, most of the time, the "necromorphs" attack in groups making it hard to kill them the "heavy way". The best way to bring them down is dismember them, shoot in the legs and you tear them apart, they fall but keep comming, then take away the arms to make sure they stop comming for good. Pretty grotesque but it works wonders and is also a very innovative way to kill enemies, requiring the player to aim in areas one wouldn't usually seek to destroy (most usually go for a nice headshot, which is no good at all here). The expalnation is simple: the enemy here is an alien lifeform that takes the dead bodies of Ishmura's crew to become stronger and bigger (?), so destroiying the head is the same as destroyng a corpse's head, you can't hurt a dead person, so it means nothing, destroying the organs that can attack you or make the enemy move however, is great deal, since you'll be severing the most oimportant ties from the dead host to the alien parasite. If you take the time and pay attention to the body of most enemies you'll see where the alien is sprouting out from and where it's nothing but a dead body.
The upgrades are based on nodes you collect or buy, and when you reach the "benches" you can use those nodes to upgrade your weapons and armor. Nodes can also be use dto open certain doors that have a nice ammount of itens inside, most of the times they even have "gold/ruby semiconductors" which only use is selling them for a huge amount of money.
Graphics: Graphics are downright gorgeous, from the chracter's modelling to the scenario. The biggest innovation here is the armor itself and the way it interacts with the menu, the whole menu (but for the pause screen itself, for obvious reasons), is integrated with the armor, your health bar is shown in a sort of shinning column on Isaac's back, so is his stasys gauge, the ammo is displayed on the weapon itself, and the rest, such as map an inventory, are displayed via hologram comming from the armor itself, so you can walk with the map open "in front of you" and you look directly at what Isaac himself is seeing, not at a separated map as usually happens.
The scenario is all set inside the USG Ishmura (but for the last chapter), all in all, the scenario is very claustrophobic and well designed, like in Bioshock the gamer will really feel like the whole place is indeed integrated and functional.
Audio: Audio here is amongst the essence of the game. Mostly it's plain silence with some weird whispers in a very low tone and the respiration of Issac. Sometimes a fast paced soundtrack will crack in (and you'll know there's a monsters lurking towards you)... Unless you are in the vacuum, then there is no sound at all, you'll get attacked and not know where the enemie came from, it's chaotic and wonderful at the same time, the only sound will be the bufffed up respiration sounds (cause they are heard by Isaac from inside his suit).
The only complain here is that the player won't hear a single word comming from Isaac, which is weird since there's a lot of talking towards you in the game and Isaac never replies to people...
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Overall: The story happens between Episodes III and IV, and before Dark Forces as well. Basically darth Vader is hunting the remaining Jedi, and he founds this kid, called Galen (you only know his name in the book, the game never quotes it), he takes him as his secret apprentice and send syou off in in many important missions as a SECRET agent, the game begins with your veryu first Jedi hunt mission. The really important point in the game however is that it'll show the very birth of the Rebel Alliance WITH Leia Organa and Bail Organa.By now fans must be striving to get their hands on the game. But hold still, the story, as told in the game, is ridiculously POOR, it has a lot of blanks and very badly explained things, true fans MUST buy the book The Force Unleashed, since that's where the story is reall told, with all points well explained. The game is just an action game where you conrtol a Sith, that's very bad since you'd expect good storyline in a Star Wars game.
The controls are good, however you'll get very stressed at grapling thing cause the game doesn't consider the way the camera is looking, but where your character is... Still it plays very well.
The game brings many Jedis and inmportant characters in general, the cool thing are the fights against Force users, it plays like Mortal Kombat, and by the end of the battle you are prompted to use a series of buttom pressing in order to finish them, and that part is VERY cinematographic, that also happens when fighting certain enemies.
The Force however, became too strong, and it's not like YOUR character is the strong one, every Jedi and Sith is incredibly strong, And even though that's the fun of the game, for fans like myself it's also the biggest defect. If Vader or palpatine was as strongf as they are in the game, the UNIVERSE would have been destroyed, everyone would be slaves to Force Users, it's simply to big an ammount fo Force and it runs far away from what we see in movies. To make matters worse, if you're playing in the harder levels you'll be stressed at the fact that even though you're Mr. Sith does all, you'll be getting killed by a bunch of Stormtroopers (?!)...
The biggest defect however are the glitches, many people have been facing problems when facing a certain boos in the Imperial Raxus Prime: the game stops and the videogame with it, you have to rebbot it. Just awful!
All in all the game is good, but very short and relatively disapointing to big fans of the series. Fortunately the books isn't as half as exagerated or faulty as the game, in a matter of fact, the book fits perfectly with every other book and even the movies of the series. play the game for the graphics, design and action (those are really gorgeous), read the book for the story.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
Silent Hill: Homecoming
Overall: Silent Hill is back and it rings true to its franchise, bringing a lot of elements, not just from other games of the series, but also from the movie and the comic books. This time around we'll see the story of Alex Shepperd, a USA Soldier who just got discharged and is comming back to his hometown, Shepperd's Glen. This nice little town used to be just as cute as Silent Hill, but when Alex arrives the place he realises that there's something wrong, the commerce is gone, most places look downright abandoned... And there's a strange myst creeping around. Soon you find the town's Judge, and in a very strange conversation you're told to check on your mother soon, cause she's not ok she "needs you". As soon as you reach your house and meet your mother you realise that something very evil has happened to the town, people are disappearing and that includes Josh, you're younger brother who looks up at you as if you were his supreme hero. You tell your mother you'll find him, and that's when hell breaks loose. That's as far as I can tell of the story without spoiling anything, you see, Shepperd's Glenn is a neighbour town to Silent Hill, in a matter of fact, they're so close that Toluca Lake itself touches Shepperd's Glenn, people can even easily sail across the lake to the other town; for some reason the "Ancient Gods" of Silent Hill have reached Shepperd's Glenn and brought horror to it, just as they did to Silent Hill.Shall we start with the very bad parts of the game? The graphics, as far as character modeling and texture goes, is awful. Sometimes it looks barely good enough (the face is somewhat good), but most of the time it'll look just like a PS2/OrigXbox game. Other times it's so ridiculously dark that it only frustrates you (your flashlight illuminates almot nothing), maybe that kept them from making a really great scenario (after all you won't be seeing it because it's too dark...). If the graphics were'nt so bad the game has some really ugly glitches, I'll give the reader the worst one right now, in order to get future players ready: there's a puzzle near the end of the game where you have to move the hands of a clock to a certain time, and that'll get some windows open, well I got the time right and the windows would NOT open,after checking on forums your poor reviwer realised that he wasn't the only one suffering, it was a GLITCH, the game won't respond to the correct answer (Gosh knows why), so you'll just have to try every single possibility 'till one works... Dubbing is also awful, many times it doesn't match the timinig of the character's mouth. Fortunately, at least the monsters were very well disigned and modeled, they show the expected graphical potential. But when you see a monster, make sure you don't die, cause the savepoints are few and usually far away form where you die...
Controls, in terms of action, have changed dramatically, since you're a soldier it plays similar to Resident Evil 4, you can dodge, counter attack and even do combos with your weapons.
The music is great, done by Akira Yamaoka it's just what one would expect from a Silent Hill game; the sound effects are also wonderful (in a very disturbiong way).
Other than the new scenario from Shepperd's Glen, you'll revisit our beloved Alchemilla Hospital in Silent Hill, a Hotel (just like in the movie), the Church, and a few other places, most of them new, in Silent Hill itself.
The monsters are very grotesque, and the bosses are huge and gruesomely gorgeous, ranging from a giant aggresive-looking porcelaine doll to a naked pregnant woman with spider-like machinery for limbs, all bosses are a tough fight with extremely brutal "finishing moves" (just as in God of War, Star Wars the Force Unleashed and others), and even worse psychological horror: each monster is somehow the display of somebody's (if not Alex's inner self) evil secrets. There is an interesting innovation to the enemies though, this time around you'll face the cult "goons" themselves, they look just like in the movie, and even though they're weaker than the monsters, they're just as good in fighting as you are, dodging, blocking and countering your every move.
The game has improved a lot in terms of dialog, now, at some cutscenes, you can choose Alex's line of topic during a conversation, some of those will even change the ending.
During gameplay the player will find many collectbles other than the usual health drinks and ammunition. Those consist of pictures, children's drawings and serums. The serums are very interesting: not only do they replenish 100% of you health, they also make your health bar bigger.
The inventory system is back to it's former self, it has a limit for bullets, but other than that you're free to carry what you will.
All in all Silent Hill Homecomming is one of the best in the series, perfect for any fan who will be willing to overlook its problems. Others, however, may find it only good enough. In any case, it is a very decent game, albeit with a vwery disturbing story.
Overall Score: 8.5 / 10
BioShock
Overall: "Building Rapture at the bottom of the sea was not impossible. Impossible was building it anywhere else."-Andrew Ryan
This phrase sets what Rapture stands for: a city at the bottom of the atlantic where capitalism runs wild and away form political plots, where artists don't fear the moralism of critics, where religion is not a blockade to science. But chaos is always a lingering variable, and no matter how well planned things may be, something will always go wrong. Rapture was build somewhere in the mid 30's, at the reveillon of 1959 things went definetly out of control and since then the utopya became a distopya. The game begins during the mid 60's, you play as Jack, sole survivor of a plane crash which fell near a lighthouse in the middle of the atlantic. The lighthouse is the entrance to Rapture... Once inside you're contacted by a man named Atlas, a revolutionary and one of the last sane person in Rapture who is now desperate to escape the city with his family. Now you must help him and his family escape in order for you to escape the cursed place as well... And I promise you, it'll be a very wild ride. For Andrew Ryan still lives, and he's gone far away from his sanity.
The graphics of Bioshock is wonderful, the 30's "gotham city-like" archtecture makes your head spin, and you'll find yourself compeled to walk every inch of the HUGE environment despite the danger you'll be running from doing so only to appreciate the art of the place. The game really looks gorgeous in it's texture and engine. Also, every new plasmid you get has it's own "graphical" representation to explain what it does, this is done by form of very sadistic cartoons (like those from Fallout) that'll certainly amuse you.
Sound is wonderful, and having Dolby Digital/Surround 5.1 will be a great @!%#*!et to you, since it'll give you an accurate sense of nwhere sounds are comming from. That's because the "splicers" (your main enemies) almost never stay in one same place, and they most definetely don't ever shut up, so you'll find yourself trying to listen to their derilous talk in order to pick their location. More than the effects however, the music is gorgeous, it's the jazz and blues of the 30's and 40's and it rocks.
The story is much bigger than what I mentioned at the intro, I only mentioned the superficial part of the game, but this story is a Deus Ex to the very sense of the latin word (Deus Ex means "an engine used in storytelling to pinpoint huge and unexpected turn of events"), so it gives it's own twists depending on certain behaviors of yours. And while initially it looks like something that is "just an excuse for a breakthru shooter" it's bound to become something much bigger and way more interesting like a true Hollywood production.
Enemies are essential to a shooter, so let's talk about enemies. We have splicers, big dadies and rapture's defenses. Splicers are people who became addicted to ADAM and lost their mind due to certain phantasmagoric side-effects of gene-modification, they are divided in various kinds of splicers: thuglish, nitro, spider, houdini and gun; each one has their own charactristics, for instance,m the houdini can vanish into thin air, get to you and spin you around so you become kinda lost, and reaper at the other side of the screen attacking you and disappear again before you noticed. Big Daddies are the "symbol" of the game so to speak; they're modified humans whom sole purpose is to walk around with the little sisters and protect the girls while they collect ADAM, they won't let anyone get near them, they're not violent unless you strike first, and then you'll have a hell of a fight, you must bring it down in order to get to the little sister there are two versions of big daddies: the Rosie and the Bouncer, both of them have an Elite version. Rapture defenses range from various kinds of turrets to alarms and helicopter-like turrets, all of those can be hacked and turned into allies. It's important to point that enemies here are ENDLESS, you will never get all of them, because they keep comming,m you clear a room anbd stay there for too long you'll soon hear more enemies comming around; not that they know you're there, but they simply walk around, which gives a creepy sense that somehow these splicers are still living some kind of life.
Little sisters are essential for your survivor as well as for the game's story: they're modified little girls who now prey on the dead and take their fluids to turn into ADAM, you'll need ADAM in order to get new plasmids, and other boosts, that's why you'll NEED to fight Big Daddies and get to the little sisters, once you have the girl you can harvest her (kill her, get the parasite inside, and with it a hell of a lot of ADAM) or simply rescue her (bring her back to normal and get half of the ADAM you would otherwise).
Hacking security, safes, locks and any kind of machine works the same way. It happens through a minigame based on that old game where you had to build a pipe line before the water spilled. It's the very same thing, only if you get it wrong you'll lose some health, or if you hit an alarm you'll call security on your tail or even you might hit a "bomb" thing that will do ytou a LOT of damage; you can try to hack it endlessly however. Also some hacking is easier than others.
The scneario as already said is gorgeous, and it's BIG. And more importantly there's ALWAYS something there for you to get, there's a lot of rooms you won't visit if you only follow the objective, but if you make sure you visit everywhere you'll certainly be rewarded for your efforts.
Weapons and plasmids! Weapons are not in such high ammount to make make you go "wow", and they're certainly the common kind of weapons for a shooter. But hell, the way they look will make you go "WOW"! They all look like they were build during the 30's some look very delicate in their details, as the shotguns, and others are really ugly and funny hand-made things, like the thrower (where you can make up a lot of different every-day itens used to build it up heh), things get better when you reach the "power for the people" stations those things are machines that allow you to upgrade your weapons, upgrading here means making them bizarre, but usefull: you'll soon have your piustol with a "rambo" machine-gun-like rounds, a shotgun with moving engines and resitors, and so on. Your weapons will become a mess once they're fully upgraded, but it's a nice-looking damage inflicting mess. Plasmids are your gentically enhanced powers, they range from flame-throwing to insect spawning and eletrical bolts, and so on. The cool things about plasmids is that your hand changes depending on the plasmid your holding, so if you're carrying the electro-shock, you'll be able to see the elctricity coursing through your veins and so on. The environment works in harmony with weapons and plasmids, water will bring forth strong discharges and so on. You can also upgrade yourself, for instance, you can make yourself invisible if you remain still, and also embody electricty into your flesh making any sorry bastard that directly attacks you receive a discharge of electricity, bullets can also be "invented", such as electrical shells and exploding shells, etc.
Gameplay is easy to get accostumed to, kinda awkward at the begining but it makes enough sense and after a while you'll get accostumed to it.
You ask me now about replay value?! Hell yeah, there're three endings here to make you go through the game, but that's not really what will make you go through the game again and again. It's the game itself that will, play it and you'll see what I mean. This is the best game for XBox 360 so far, this is the best "genetically enhanced shooter" this year has to offer and I bet I'll take a very long time before something this huge comes. This game is SOMETHING BIG, the very begining when the automatic video-message from Andrew Ryan stops playing and you see the first glimpse of Rapture is astouing. So welcome to the city of Rapture, you may never leave.
Overall Score: 10.0 / 10
Mass Effect
Overall: Mas Effect is an extremely solid "space opera" with enough fundamentation to take it away from the sci-fi/fantasy genre and place it alongside most traditionals sci-fis, such as Dune and Star Trek, also carrying a somewhat strong hint of cyberpunk. Needless to say that any sci-fi fan will fall in love for this game.Making a huge story short: humanity found an extinct alien technology on mars (Prothean Technology), that allowed us to travel through space, etc. Decades later we are part of a galactic community composed of many alien races. The three "stronger" races, are the ones in charge however. Those three races have representatives at the Council, a sort of over-ruling government, now these guys have a powerful team known as the Spectres, they are the best of the best and they have clearence to do what they will, as long as they reach their objectives. Thus comes the turian alien Saren. Saren is the best Specter around... Or was, he has gone rogue and his plans might as well include the obliteration of every organic life form, including his own race. This introduction I just made, however, is not telling 1% of the beggining of the whole story; I should mention as well that, anyone willing to enjoy this game to its full extent must read the prologue, which is a book named M@!%#*! Effect: Revelation.
The graphics are the best I've ever seen. However, there numerous issues (that strangely seem to become worse if your console is connected to the internet, apparently the XBox becomes quite slower when it's dealing with the internet simultaneously with the game running, which is strange since the game is not online nor anything). The main issue is that the texture will take a few secs more than acceptable to load completly. But then again, you may forgive this, cause the shadow effects and the facial effects of each character is virtually perfect, there are scars, there are pores, marks of every kind, particularly the Turians and the Krogan races are ridiculously well molded, which a facial expression that will make anybody's jaws drop, also, most humans (males specially) look extremely like a real person. These ARE the best graphics to have graced the XBox360. Gameplay is something strange to say the least, it's a blend of shooter with the system used before on KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights 2. It's not hard to understand, but it takes quite some time to get the hang of.
Every character carries an @!%#*!ault rifle, a sniper rifle, a pistol and a shotgun, but it doesn't mean they'll be useful, depending on your character's cl@!%#*! you might, for instance, be the kind of guy who doesn't even know where to point the rifle at.
Creating a character is pretty fun, it has a fair collection of faces which can all be customized by changing hair, eyes, lips, placing scars, beard and also moving things like the depth of your jaw, etc. The hair is a weak point however, it's not a "lose" kind of hair, but then again, doing that would probably be too much even for a nex-gen machine.
The weapons are full of details, every time you detach them from your back they open themselves in order to function properly, all those little details bring an intense vivid effect to the gameplay.
Your party is composed of three characters always, one them being youy, which is also the only one that can b e completly controled.
The universe of the game is, literaly the universe, it has clusters that have system that have planets, may of them allows you to land and search for items or, most of the times, do a sidequest. The planets are pretty unique, but the bases (for the sidequests) are all-too similar. Whenever you land on a world, you will, most of the times, do it on the MAKO, a kind of all terrain-vehicles, it has quite a firepower, but it could have been more precise, but it rocks anyway.
The main quest itself is very short for a RPG, but it since this game is so fun and the story is so well written you'll find yourself playing the game over and over again just to see how things turn out.
You choice of words, your reputation, your deeds, they all have an influence on the storyline. You have three possible romances to go through: Kadan (if you're playing with a female), Willians (if your playing with a male) and the the asari Liara (both male and female can have a romance with her, her race only consists of what we call "women", but to them the comncept of men and women does not exist for obvious reasons).
The enemies, the ones that aren't aliens or humans, are pretty well made. The Geth, an AI robotic army is really good-looking, the Husks, akind of enslaved mech-zombies created by the Geth are just as impressive, and then you have the big guys themselves which are splendorous, such as Saren, Matriarch Benezia and Sovereign.
This game is bound to have a continuation, after all it saves your character after you end the game, so I bet there's a continuation comming and you'll be able to use your previous character again, also I'd bet there are expansions on the way, there many worlds on the game, and many of them are unexplored, they can be easily filled with ne sidequests, and then again, the game has an "extras" department for downloadable content.
This game is not a must have for RPG, but it is a must have for any sci-fi fan; don't let this one p@!%#*!, this game is one that was made with p@!%#*!ion, and the story is one that will drive our minds beyond, like any good old sci-fi.
NEW CONTENT: the expansion called "Bring Down the Sky" will take you to the same level of action as the main game does, only its final moments are pretty tough, tougher than the final battles of the main storyline. For the first time you'll see the Batarian race (they were around as villains in the book Revelation), they have highjacked an asteroid that was being used as some sort of scientific facility and now they intend to throw it against a human colony called Terra Nova. You get with your MAKO to the asteroid and there you'll get the main quest (with multiple endings) and a sidequest. It also brings 50 gamescore for the completion of the mission, whcih takes about 90 minutes (on Insanity mode), its not long but it IS worth its price (400 M$). Most scenario of inside buildings is teh very same built from every other sidequest, only the main base is something completly new. Only one MAJOR complaint here, this sidequest does not "re-open" the game where it ended, so it requires you to have a save game somewhere you can still get on board the Normandy, in order to shoot it towards the expansion's system (Asgard). If you don't have such a save game, you'll have to start the game all over again (using an old character or a new one, it doesn't matter) so you can get to Asgard when you get the Normandy (Asgard is ALWAYS available after you get the Normandy for yourself); it's a short but very entertaining and decent expansion for M@!%#*! Effect, and you even get to choose a good equipment by the end of the mission, not to mension the 50 gamescore points!
Overall Score: 9.2 / 10
