Tag: xbox

Review: Halo: Initiation

Halo: InitiationHalo: Initiation by Brian Reed

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Based on her role in Halo 4, it seems like Sarah Palmer was intended to be the “face” of the new Halo generation and the Spartan-IVs. And on the surface, she seems like a pretty great character; she’s a Commander, which is cool, and she’s voiced by legendary voice actor and perennial fan favorite Jennifer Hale. Unfortunately, her characterization throughout the game is uneven and even somewhat unlikable, and those problems extend to this book which was meant to serve as an origin story for the character.

Palmer’s character is, for lack of a better term, just flat-out unlikable as a protagonist. It’s always great for characters to have flaws, of course, but those flaws do need to be tempered with characteristics that cause an audience to identify with the main character. Even worse, Palmer is uneven, at first disliking the Spartans for being “superior” and then lording that same superiority when she becomes a Spartan herself. There’s also the odd inconsistency in her rank and promotion: originally, her character was supposedly a lieutenant before she became a Spartan, which would make sense, but here she’s a lowly corporal . . . which means that, by the time of Halo 4, she’s jumped how many ranks in how short a time?

Basically, it’s just hard to root for her, and as this story is entirely focused on introducing us to her character, it drags the entire story down, even though the rest of the book is pretty decent. Fortunately, I’ve also read the next book in the Halo graphic novel line, Escalation Volume 1, and that story does a great deal to redeem Palmer’s character.

Thus, I’d say skip this one entirely. It doesn’t do anything for the character except make you dislike her, which is a huge problem for a backstory book.

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Review: Halo: Helljumper

Halo: HelljumperHalo: Helljumper by Peter David

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For me, the best Halo stories are the ones that dive headfirst into the Halo universe’s deep well of lore. Most of the games barely scratch at the surface of this universe, only lightly touching or referencing the deep mythology. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since the action of the games themselves is so deeply satisfying.

“Helljumper” has the problem of trying to be more like the games than other stories. It’s very light on the story, focusing on the bond-of-brother-soldiers thing between Romeo and Dutch, two of the characters from Halo: ODST. Romeo was always my least favorite of the ODST cast, although to my surprise, he reads very differently than his game counterpart. Regardless, the focus of the book is largely on ODST action, kicking butt and killing aliens. Which is . . . okay, but the games handle this action-first focus far better.

Things like “the Knowing” which could be deeply interesting questions to ponder and investigate are instead reduced to a McGuffin that needs to be kept out of enemy hands or humanity is doomed, though we’re never told how exactly, as the McGuffin is blown up about four pages after it’s revealed.

Helljumper doesn’t really do anything wrong, but it doesn’t play to the strengths of its medium. Dutch and Romeo are likable and their bond is a good one, and I did like how the story ended on the question of whether they will transfer out or not. So while Helljumper doesn’t make any mistakes, it plays things too safe.

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Review: Mass Effect: Homeworlds

Mass Effect: Homeworlds
Mass Effect: Homeworlds by Mac Walters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After the last few forays into the Mass Effect comic series, I’d started to wonder if they weren’t for me. I’m happy to say that Homeworlds, the fourth entry in the series, is an excellent change of course and gets things moving in a direction that I really enjoyed.

We get some backstory scenes for four of Mass Effect 3’s crewmembers: James Vega, Tali, Garrus, and Liara. It was interesting to see how the game universe handles the incredibly deep number of choices, as depending on how you played through Mass Effect 2, it’s possible that up to two of these characters will be gone by the time Mass Effect 3 starts. The story handles it by varying where in the narrative they take place: one is pre-ME 1, one is pre-ME2, and the others are just before ME3. I won’t specify which are which, to avoid spoilers.

It’s great getting to spend time with these characters. The crew members are my (and I imagine most players’) favorite aspect of the Mass Effect universe. It’s fun getting to spend some time with them and to see them operating on their own, outside of the long shadow cast by Commander Shepard (your player character).

There’s so much going on here, however, that it’d be almost impossible for a non-game fan to piece together what’s happening. Normally, that kind of thing rubs me the wrong way; my rule of thumb is that a video game story should be able to stand on its own. But it was so much fun getting to reconnect with a few of my favorites and I enjoyed the stories so much that I’m willing to overlook it.

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Review: Mass Effect: Invasion

Mass Effect: Invasion
Mass Effect: Invasion by Mac Walters
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Mass Effect graphic novels continue to be interesting, though like book two of the series, I don’t feel like this book is essential reading. The first book set an incredibly high bar with its focus on what happened to Commander Shepard between the prologue of Mass Effect 2 and the main story. It also focused on Liara, one of my favorite characters, and it was just a great story to boot.

This book focuses on Aria and how she lost control of Omega Station, which is something that becomes a sidequest focus in Mass Effect 3. And while Aria herself is an interesting character, the line this story has to follow is basically a tightrope. There’s very little room for deviation. We know Aria’s going to lose the station. We know we’ll help her take it back. It makes it hard to really feel invested in the struggle. This might also be due to a general ‘meh’ feeling that I have towards Omega itself as a plotline, as the Omega downloadable content (DLC) missions were fairly lackluster.

Still, although this book doesn’t excel, it’s good as a straight-up comic book tale of kicking ass and cool battle art. I really love how biotics are depicted in the comics; even with the hard sci-fi approach that the Mass Effect universe takes, biotics are shown as these incredibly cool space wizards. It’s also been one of my laments about the game narrative, that it can’t be more of a plot point if my Commander Shepard is a biotic (which he always is).

In conclusion, we have a solid, serviceable story, but one that won’t go on to impress. It doesn’t meet the high bar set by its first predecessor, but there’s nothing here that’s absolutely wrong either, the way the novel “Mass Effect: Deception” was so horrifically flawed. That’s one of the fascinating things about the Mass Effect story universe; its tie-in materials have ranged from the amazing to the awful. “Invasion” falls solidly in the middle, and so I don’t mind telling diehard Mass Effect lore aficionados to give it a look even as I tell more casual fans that they’re safe giving this one a pass.

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You Can Always Tell When Matt Starts Playing A New RPG

In this case, it’s Dragon Age: Inquisition. It was released in November and I know that, had I purchased it then, my NaNoWriMo effort would have been torpedoed and sunk faster than the Lusitania. Fortunately, I had the foresight to delay my purchase of the game until December.

In 2013, I was pretty down about the idea of the next generation of consoles on the horizon. Of course, it didn’t help that the details for the Xbox One sounded uniformly terrible, even to someone who not only has all of the Xboxes but even owns a goddamn Windows Phone. I’m not saying I’m a loyalist but I like my devices to play nicely together and since my Xbox 360 was my favorite device, all my other devices had to build off that. At the time, I wasn’t excited in the slightest about the idea of buying a new console.

But now that the One has had a year to mature, I’ve come around. More importantly, I was able to scoop up a box for a deep discount, which I think made all the difference. I’m past the point in my life where I can spend $500 plus tax on a toy. $300 is a much more manageable chunk of money to justify. It also helps that I have a wonderful girlfriend. I won’t list all the reasons why that it true; I merely want it mentioned here for the permanent record. It is known, as the Dothraki might say.

I’m happy with my shiny box and I’m happy with the new Dragon Age. Dragon Age, of course, is one of the few series for which I am absolutely a huge, unapologetic fanboy. When I met David Gaider, one of the lead writers on the series a few years ago, I pretty much gushed and kept telling him how amazing he is for about ten minutes until he started looking around for a security guard to drag me away (that last part might be exaggerated just a bit).

Inquisition is like a love letter to the fans of the series. It’s deep, complex, full of lore and layers and things to do. It’s also the reason my blog has gone sadly neglected for the past few weeks and why my flood of Goodreads updates has slowed to a trickle.

It’s difficult to know what to write about; I consider a person talking about their personal video game character only marginally more interesting than a person discussing their favorite brand of bagel. That’s not to say that I don’t love video game characters (and weirdly, WoW is the one game where this rule doesn’t hold true) but generally speaking, I don’t want to talk about my character or other people’s characters in any deep way because it spoils the illusion that the Inquisitor is mine. 

I don’t even really acknowledge all the different ways my own Inquisitor could be different based on my own choices. At this point, my Inquisitor is so fully realized in my own mind based on my actions that I simply can’t imagine that things could be any other way. It all just is. And it is because the game world shapes itself to my actions and allows me to maintain that illusion in a flawless manner.

It sounds like an insult to say that I don’t notice all the care and craft that the designers have woven into the game to create branching paths and different narrative experiences. In truth, it’s actually the highest compliment I can offer to a game of this sort.

Console Wars

I think I’m just going to sit this one out. I’ve served my time, you know? I fought in the trenches of SNES vs. Genesis. That was probably the only time I’ve ever been on the winning side of one of these wars. My loyalty to the Nintendo Army saw me through the N64 vs. PlayStation vs. Saturn, but the end of that conflict, I was shaken to my core. My loyalty wavered and I looked for another outfit to serve in.

Eventually, I decided to take the green and black. I enlisted with the Xbox. That was 2001.

It’s been thirteen years of fighting and arguing and justifying. I’ve seen a lot of things in my time. Lost a lot of good friends. And now as the next console war begins to loom on the horizon, I have to ask myself: was it worth it? Was any of this worth it?

How much more can a man be expected to give for his consumer electronics? How many more forums and tweets and Facebook posts can a console warrior be expected to slog through before his spirit breaks and he finds himself wondering what the hell he’s doing with his life?

If I live long enough to look back on my life, this is the moment, I’ll say. It was during the opening salvo fired at E3 3013 that I finally lost the will to fight. 2013 is when I put down my pretend gun and went home.

I’m done. I’m out. You’ll all just have to carry on without me.

Okay, now that the satire is out of the way: seriously, I’m so fucking sick of “console wars.” Why is this a thing? Why is this still a thing? Maybe this is just part of a gamer’s life when you get old. Maybe every gamer reaches this moment and has this epiphany: “this is some bullshit.” Or maybe not. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t like talking about this particular hobby because of the straight-up insanity that exists in the fan base. All of them. They’re all crazy. We are all crazy. It’s impossible to have a discussion anymore. Who knows, maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe I’m just finally now realizing it.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

I realize that if you’re not a gamer, nothing about this post will make sense to you. That’s okay. In fact, you’re better off not knowing.