June 2008 Archives
Still looking for a job. ;_; But most of the other stuff's out of the way, so it should go well now.
I am now working on a script for "The Ordinant," which is the new name for the "High Regent" story. After the script is done, it should make drawing the action much easier. Milky's Piano could use some love, as well.
It'd also be nice to be able to customise the main page instead of just using a template. I'll need to figure out how. =( Maybe my good friend over at heyrenn.com can help me. =P I'm totally over, "Morpheus Verge" as the name of the site, and am now considering, "Voxelation".
Also, with D&D 4e out, I'm totally looking forward to playing some. =) We tried out a bit of the combat and stuff, but it was very different from the 3.5 experience. It was a lot tougher -- we couldn't just go out acting cool and being awesome anymore... but I have an inkling that that much is mainly due to the DM. After all, D&D is a game where the DM makes or breaks.
I finally finished it earlier this week. Put in around 25 hours, and like- 197 saves. My favorite character is Tali, followed by possibly Wrex and Ashley. It's still the best (single-player experience) game I've ever played. It's hard to compare it to the likes of Street Fighter and Infantry, because the genre and what I get out of it is totally different.
I've never had a moment where I was completely at a loss for words due to wanting to describe how awesome something was. Whenever I struggled for words, it was often because I knew what something was in one language, but I couldn't for the life of me think of what the correct term was in another. (This has happened in English, Chinese and Japanese before).
Today, I tried to describe to Sam the way I felt about Mass Effect, and I couldn't. It does not suffice, but is all I can do to say that it is the best game I've ever played. Usually, I find that being an overstatement of my initial excitement over something. I have a feeling though, with Mass Effect, I won't look back months from now thinking, "how did I really enjoy playing that?"
It's better than Half-Life 2, it's better than Portal, it's better than Neverwinter Nights and NWN2. It's better than Oblivion, better than FEAR.
Other than FEAR, all the games in that list are aces -- the best single-player experiences I've had.
The presentation of Mass Effect is amazingly cinematic. The camera work, film grain and motion blur all work together to an amazing end to produce a movie-like experience. I'm usually not so impressed by pure graphics, but Mass Effect's is there. The digital actors are great! Their facial expressions aren't as good as Half-Life 2's, but the mo-cap movements are very expressive. BioWare's writing is tip-top, but this time it's brought to life with accompanying high-quality complete voice acting.
Presentation isn't all, either. With BioWare's previous titles that I've played, such as NWN and Jade Empire, the game felt just a little bit clunky as an RPG. However, this is also not the case with Mass Effect. BioWare has a done a great job of blending a well rounded RPG building experience with a very cool 3PS interface. The ability to pause at any time to issue orders is an RPG god-send, but the game plays just as well as any action shooter with the WASD Keyboard/Mouse scheme. It actually feels like I'm playing an action game and that my shooting ability is of consequence, and not like I'm simply commanding my character to attack.
I'm amazed. It's a game that excels in graphic and musical presentation, great setting and storyline, as well as a solid game play in two different genres. As far as I'm concerned, Mass Effect does everything, and does it well awesome.
