I really hate to admit it, considering i hate Bethesda for butchering Elder Scrolls and Star Trek but Fallout 3 is surprisingly amusing. The whole Character creation childhood thing in the vault is actually fun. When you get out of the vault though, the look of the world does look like a Wasteland. But so far the vault is my favorite part, though I’ve not made it far.

The only problem i have so far is the 3rd person camera sucks, for some reason they shove your character to the side instead of centering the camera on your back. Also heads and limbs get blown off WAY too easily. I have no idea why my little 9mm peashooter gives bloody mess results. 9mm shouldn’t be able to make heads explode.

The only part though that really disappointed me is the sexual under-stone present in fallout games. They have 1 prostitute and she doesn’t really seem like one. It fails to capture the seedy side of the Wasteland, which i find odd considering they have   of F words in the game and it gets really gory but sex is bad? That’s pretty lame on Bethesda’s part.

The combat part is rather easy, I know the old school people would hate it because VATS is like the I win button. I’ve played every fallout and own the originals but i don’t care about difficulty. Though even i was surprised how godlike you are at level 1. It seems that was the intention though, i looked a little at the making of DVD and Bethesda people said how its a single player game and your character is meant to be the most powerful person out in the wasteland.

So in closing, It is actually fun and it comes close to feeling totally like fallout but it falls short. Its sort of like Star Trek Enterprise, it has the name and theme and the like but it makes up its own cannon and generally tries to appeal more to mainstream then the actual fans. And like with that show, if they didn’t call it Fallout it’d probably be a true Game of the Year contender in my opinion, it unfortunately really is enjoyable but once you have the fallout on it, and the intention of making it like that, it falls short.

First, an Xbox style controller is pretty much a must. If you do not own a console and are not accustomed to playing on those types of controls, you’re going to find the controls cumbersome and awkward. As someone who exclusively plays PC games, I at least found this to be the case. Even if you somehow come up with a key scheme using keyboard and mouse you may find it quite unwieldy.

The camera angles work like the Prince of Persia approach where it switches as you move around, to random locations. This can also feel odd. The camera can be controlled and rotated, but only sometimes.

The combat is fast paced but straight up arcade style. It combines Matrix style “physics” with quick gamepad combo button play, reminiscent of a new school Mortal Kombat in some ways. Basically, it feels like a 2008 video game standing in an arcade at the mall. For some, that may be a huge plus. It is what it is.

For those who are into this kind of thing, I’d give it a 7. You’d probably be happier passing on it. I really think you’ll be disappointed. I’m not bashing the game, I just think it is an acquired taste. Unless you are very comfortable with xbox and console style controllers and gameplay, you will probably find this outside of your comfort zone and range of appeal. It’s very old school in its core mechanics, although the graphics are solid.

Just an honest review, not bashing the title. Some of the things above may be a huge positive to others. I can only review this from my perspective, and I am not much of a fan of this type of game.

I wish I had enough disposable income I could throw away $1k to play some buggy half finished beta. Not that I’d use it for that purpose I just wish I had that much money.

From the few friends I have who have this on consoles, I guess it really pushes the Xbox360 hardware to the limit (which seems to happen a lot lately.) So it should look brilliant on the PC considering the developers will be able to push their engine to the max.

Well, in year 2148, humanity has discovered on Mars a construction of alien origin. After numerous studies, it was discovered that it was in fact built by the Protheans, an extinct race which disappeared over 50000 years ago. 8 years after, in 2156, the humans discover the Mass Relay, which allows them to travel faster than with the speed of light, permitting them to explore space. Well, in 2157, the humans discover another civilization on a planet, the Turians almost start a war with them. The war is prevented by the Galactic Council on the Citadel. In 2165, the humans manage to get permission to establish an Embassy on the Citadel, their power growing.Thing is,you can find all info you want about the solar system, planets, races, technology, politics basically everything, from the Galactic Codex, a very interesting addition in the game, in which I’ve spent entire hours.

Thing is, the action starts about 20 years after the last events,where you’re sent to prevent a get attack & investigate a strange artifact discovered on a planet.Firstly you’ll have to build your character,  you’ll have lots of options to choose from. You can also determine your past, where you were born, how you ended up traveling in space, you can also choose your class & specialization. They’re different from each other, I must tell you that this game has a huge replay value.

Graphics

Not too much to say about the graphics, because really, the game as a whole draws all attention to it, so you’d ignore the graphics. If I really have to tell you something about the graphics, I will have to use only one word “excellent”. They couldn’t have been better. The interiors look awesome, KotOR like, but much much better. The exteriors look even better, very detailed & well animated, with the perfect chromatic combination, a really great draw distance detail.

But the characters simply look perfect. Yeah, not only the face/clothes details are awesome, but the animations & lip-sync are so great that you’ll really feel that the characters are real. But about the characters I’ll tell you a bit later. As a conclusion for the graphics, they are the perfect choice for this game. I heard the engine is Unreal Engine 3. I would never have said that, but now that I know it, it really seems to make sense. Just to know it’s no Crysis or Lost Via Domus, but it looks definitely better than Gears of War. The only things that I didn’t like, graphically speaking, were the motion blur & the film grain. I usually like motion blur, I consider it to be a “delicious” effect, but the one in Mass Effect is really exaggerated. When you move you can’t distinguish anything when you stay put, there still is some motion blur. Geez, motion refers to moving, so how the hell can it be motion if it’s not moving?! The film grain would have been more appropriate to a bad SF film from the ’50s, not in Mass Effect. Well except these two things I really can’t complain at all about the graphics in Mass Effect.

Sound

The sound in Mass Effect is once again, perfect. I’ve been looking for a long time for the perfect sound, the sound with nothing bad at all. I thought I’ve seen it in The Godfather, then Bioshock, but the real one was Mass Effect’s. What does that mean? It means Mass Effect has the best voice acting (surprisingly, no use of famous actors, such as in The Godfather), the most appropriate music for a SF (& really touching sometimes) without the use of famous songs, as in Bioshock really the coolest sound effects to be used in a SF game. To start all over again, all the characters in Mass Effect are greatly interpretative by the actors, resulting in the best voice acting in a game.They really seem to be there, to be implicated in the action taking place there, to be affected by everything that’s happening. They are not sounding like robots, like bored people who want to finish recording their lines before the baseball match starts. No, the actors really put their best into the recordings, they put heart & emotions in what they are saying this is very rare nowadays. I have to firmly congratulate them. The music is the best that SF has to offer. No Star Wars themes fortunately, the music is really well fit. You may just ignore its presence sometimes because it’s just one of the factors that contributes to the perfect futuristic SF atmosphere, which you’ll feel as a whole,not in small parts. But you will actually hear it in the key moments of the game, when it gets more intense, impressive, touching really. Believe me, I know what I’m saying. Next, the explosions/gun shots/all other sound effects are done brilliantly. Nothing bad to say here, so let’s move on.

Gameplay

To describe the gameplay in a few words, I’d say it is a mix between Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic & Gears of War. It’s obviously that almost everything looks like an improved version of Knights of the Old Republic: the menus, the statistics, the interface, the skill tree/level advancement; basically everything. Well Bioware also made the first Knight of the Old Republic, so the resemblance is self-explanatory. Now the combat is planned exactly like in Gears of War: it’s real-time, the cover system functions great & why not, it’s very intense. Maybe not as intense as in Gears itself, but hey, Mass Effect ain’t just a third person shooter. But we’ll discuss about the blend later, now let’s take it from the beginning.

The first thing you’ll have to do is complete that recon mission I spoke about in the beginning. This will be the typical start of the fighting missions, interrupted by some short dialogues & some decisions to take. You’ll have some get to shoot & that is a very cool thing to do. With two other teammates following you (exactly as in KotOR & Jade Empire,they fight alongside you & level up when you do), you can turn Mass Effect into a tactical shooter by giving your mates orders like attack that enemy, take cover there, throw a grenade or use that special ability. It’s a very cool aspect of the game, but it’s not really necessary on the lower difficulty levels. But shooting is not an optional thing & you’ll certainly need it. As I said before you can take cover & try to shoot the enemy from there but that again depends on the difficulty level. If you’re playing on easy the enemy will come forwards to you in a straight line,so you won’t need to take cover. On the higher difficulty levels though, the enemy will try to take cover himself, or flank you in those situations cover for you & your squad is a must-have. You’ll also have a bunch of special abilities depending on your class & specialization, such as Overkill (better aiming with increased damage), the ability to temporary disable the enemy’s shields or to instantly heal your companions if they’ve fallen down. But I can point you a bad thing here. in KotOR, when your main character was defeated & fell down you could take control of one of the other two characters in your party. actually, you could play as the other characters trough the whole game. Unfortunately, you can’t do that in Mass Effect: you’ll be stuck with your character trough the whole game & if some companion fall during fight you can resurrect them but if you fall, game over. That’s not too bright.

As for the weapons,they’re divided into 5 categories: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles & grenades. Each of these categories has a skill bar for every character & their weapons. There are a lot of weapons corresponding to the categories & each weapon has some upgrade slots: better ammunition or just add-ons that result in better accuracy, more damage to certain types of enemy, etc. To make things easier, the game’s interface will sort the objects in the inventory for us, so that the best ones will always be the first & easiest to select. Oh, I forgot, all these things I said apply to armor as well. Now let’s go again for a not-so-good thing: weapons overheat. Quite quickly. I dunno if the weapons 150 years from now will overheat or not, but in Mass Effect you fire two shotgun rounds & it’s already overheated. This is where an ugly bug comes in: sometimes the overheated weapons will not de-overheat & will remain unusable. And believe me, it ain’t nice to go trough an area crawling with enemies only with your pistol.

OK,so that concludes fighting & inventory, so now let’s speak about the quests. It’s true that man of them will always get you too shooting someone or blowing something up, but that doesn’t go for all of them. In some you’ll have to use your persuade or intimidate skills in order to convince some persons to act right. Now here’s where your orientation comes in; as in Knights of the Old Republic there seem to be two sides, but not really seen as good & evil, cause that really got lame by now. No, in Mass Effect you can either be the nice guy who wants to help all people who need it, called Paragon, or the cold-hearted one who does everything to accomplish his goals, even if that means murdering innocents, Renegade. While acting as a Renegade you may do quest faster & easier, Paragon always brings you more satisfaction & also allows you to enter Mass Effect’s universe better & know all the characters much better. The good thing is that there isn’t only a single bar showing the alignment: there are two. Because even if you’re a Paragon, you may act as a Renegade in some situations. Okay, now going back to the quests, there are also some quests that require path finding skills in order to find some objects or characters. There are no stealth-base ones, but that would have meant a stealth-engine & I don’t know how that would have ended up. Nevertheless, whatever you do in Mass Effect, you’ll talk a lot. Yeah, the dialogues with the other characters are maybe the best part in the game. Not only because of the terrific voice acting but also thanks to the very wisely written lines & very cinematic look of the dialogues. I mean the characters won’t just stay there looking to each other while talking, they’ll move from one place to another, gesticulate…in a word, they really seem like speaking & directly implicating themselves in what they’re saying, both audio & visually. Yeah, in these moments you won’t feel like playing a game (the only thing you’ll have to do is selecting the dialogue lines); you’ll really feel like watching a movie. A really great one indeed.

Now at a certain point in the game, you’ll be let to explore the galaxy as you wish. You’ll be given access to the Galactic Map, from where you can navigate trough the different solar systems. Thing is,there are a lot of clusters & nebulae, each containing one or more solar systems, each solar system containing a lot of planets. In all, there are certainly over 200 planets, with their own attributes: specific orbit duration, gravity, day length, temperature, population (if existent) & a lot of other things. Some of these planets may be colonies or uncolonized & uncharted. Well it’s a very cool thing that you can explore & chart these planets. You land on them with your special jeep, explore part of their surface & maybe you can find something interesting: some rare minerals, resources that can be gathered or artifacts. And you may encounter a couple of people in your adventure who would like to know about such facts. Of course, the local inhabitants, be it huge sand worms or just monkeys or strange jellyfish, may not ignore you totally. Not once have I found myself in an epic battle against some upset sand worms or running after a naughty monkey who stole an important data pad. You might also encounter pirate bases in the most unexpected places, somebody might repay you handsomely if you destroy the base & kill them. In a word, the galaxy is a very very big place & you have a huge number of things to do & worlds to explore.
You might also like decrypting. It’s done by a fun mini game that is a good addition to the gameplay. By decrypting or hacking you might be lucky enough to recover some great equipment or some Codex entries.

Storyline

What’s this Galactic Codex? It’s a kind of Encyclopedia regarding the Mass Effect universe. Many of you will ignore it, but that’s a very stupid thing to do. I highly recommend you to read it (or listen to it being read), because this way you’ll get to know everything about the history of the galaxy, the races, planets, politics…a lot of things you’ll love to know & that may come in handy at a certain point in the game. All put together, the Mass Effect universe is new, but very intelligently done, so that it comes better than the Star Wars universe at some points. And that’s truly incredible. I can’t wait to see it in another game (ummm, Mass Effect 2), but there are also two books available that take place in the same universe: one being a prequel to Mass Effect, the other one a sequel & a prequel to Mass Effect 2. So till it comes out, you’ll have more than enough time to read them both.

I told you what you should know about Mass Effect’s storyline, so I won’t say it again. So to conclude this as well, Mass Effect is set in an excellent universe & also benefits from an awesome storyline, strong characters & not only. Thing is, you’ll make the storyline, based on your decisions. Not exactly as in the Witcher, but more that KotOR did. The other characters are so greatly created that you’ll feel very close to them (speaking of your friends). The moment when you’re forced to let one behind to sacrifice himself is truly epic & you’ll nearly cry then. And I think that says a lot of things about this game.

Overall Impression

I’ve waited a lot for Mass Effect to come out for the PC,and I was convinced that it will be an awesome game. But it really excedeed my expectations: it’s better than you can possibly imagine. Some people say it’s not as good as some classic SF RPG-s, or that it is made up with a lot of clichees. Don’t believe them. I played most SF role-playing games, classic or not & Mass Effect smokes them all. Mass Effect is the best game in the last 6 years & I think that says it all.

well as a fan of LOST i had to go out and get this game..

the good news is that this isn’t another crappy TV to PC conversion the game is quality and the story is great, the gameplay is a blend of exploration and action and of course some puzzle solving, you run around the island doing what the stars in the show do, you try to recollect your memory while helping the others.

the faces of the game characters are some of the most realistic ever seen, KATE for instance looks incredible at times i thought she’d come out of the screen, so goes for the other characters with the exception of Sun and Sawyer perhaps nothing major though.

if you like an entertaining game and you’re a fan of LOST, you’re going to love this one, i certainly do and even if you’re not a fan of Lost you might like this game, this is a half-decent TV 2 PC conversion, i like it a lot.

Well let me just start by saying this. I can run Crysis on ultra high at 1074×768. This game, runs more choppily than Crysis on LOW at the same resolution. My first reaction was: “What the flipping’ f*ck?” My next response was a bit better, since even on low, the details in this game are nicely done, for what’s designed to be a multi-player game.

This is definitely a patch-worthy game, and I can see it going to some great places if the developers stick by their product. Think a mix of battlefield, gears of war and CoD in terms of style and play. I’m running dual 3 ghz intel, 8800gt and 2 gigs of ram. Honestly, I think I should be getting better results out of this game, but whenever I crank up the res and quality, this thing hangs like a mother hangs laundry on a windy afternoon.

Aside from all that, the story starts off pretty well. It got me hooked and pretty excited to start gunning red star units down. Kind of a cliche start: *chopper down chopper down, boom crash SURVIVE* Then again, it more than made up for it with premise. The story MAKES SENSE for once. I mean really, nothing is off the wall here, except for maybe the drones.
Which leads me to my next favorite part: The drones. I have yet to play all of them, but man I can see MASSIVE tactical potential for these things. Remember the sentry guns from BF2142? YEah, they have wheels now, and come in new flavors. Hella fun to mess around with the mini gun car and flying C4.

Feel a little(A LITTLE) toyish, but over all pack a nice punch. The game does a decent job of letting you learn and practice with them before you do anything dangerous. Vehicles: They are..simply cool. No more need for engineers and most vehicles have both a minigun AND rockets, so you always have options at hand. The only downside would be it takes awhile for the vehicles to heal, unlike having an engineer whip out his wrench and fixing it in less than a minute.

Overall, this game is fun, albeit in need of a patch pronto. I’d say wait to buy this game, but keep an eye on it, because it will definitely be worth it if the devs decide to patch it and patch it well.

Game is solid when it comes to the graphics and cinematics!! They only down side is the lack of the mouse usage in the menus. Also unless you look for it “Key/Control Bindings” the very first thought is this is a game pad
only game and not mouse & keyboard. However it does play great once you configure your mouse and keyboard.

The Germans though bother me because it is like a shooting gallery they just move back and forth while they are trying to shoot you. Some do take cover, However, I noticed they shoot over things like the AI in MO Airborne.
THe German AI is like the same. The story line so far seems good.

This is a refreshing change for WWII in regards to the battle field. It is not like the other WWII FPS were everything is in EUROPE. This offers a fresh alternative!!!

The cover doesn’t provide many details, nor does the short story accompanying it, so there’s really not much news here besides confirmation of its existence. We can at least say that the Soviets will obviously be returning as one of the factions in the game. And judging by the stylized, propaganda-like artwork and facetious headline, it appears Red Alert 3 will likely retain the more lighthearted, goofy approach the past games were known for. We are, after all, talking about a series that has featured aquatic battles between mind-controlled squids and Navy-trained dolphins.

Many questions remain, though — will Red Alert 3 again be powered by the SAGE engine, previously used in Command & Conquer: Generals, the Battle for Middle-Earth games and Command & Conquer 3? Will we once again see the return of Yuri, the powerful psychic who played a major role in Red Alert 2’s storyline? Will Tanya once more be played by Kari Wuhrer? We await these revelations with bated breath.

Just a day after confirmation of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3’s existence, Electronic Arts has revealed a number of new details. Set for release on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Red Alert 3 brings back the Allies and the Soviets as well as a third Japanese faction, and introduces a fully co-operative campaign mode. And it seems the game is farther along in development than one would have expected, as invites to a private beta will be included in copies of the Command & Conquer 3 expansion pack, Kane’s Wrath.

More Details

EA seems to have two main focuses with Red Alert 3: a return to the goofy and playful nature of the past two entries in the series, and a greater focus on accessibility. “The Red Alert games are known for challenging hardcore strategy gamers with depth, variety, and innovative gameplay. But they also belong to that rare breed of games that can draw in more casual players with their over-the-top stories, instantly accessible mechanics, and straight-to-the-fun design,” said Mike Verdu, general manager of EALA. “With Red Alert 3, our team is continuing that proud tradition by introducing genre-first features like co-operative campaign play, which rewards veterans and casual players alike. In Red Alert 3, friends and family can always have your back.”

Red Alert 3 takes place after leaders in the Soviet Union go back in time to change history and set themselves on a course to world dominance. But as with all time-traveling science fiction, something goes terribly wrong, and they instead assure the rise of a new third faction: the Empire of the Rising Sun. This sets the stage for an alternate reality future where the Japanese Empire became a high-tech military super power, where the Soviet Union continues to thrive, and where the Allies enter this three-way struggle for hegemony.

The alternate reality setting also paves the way for the ridiculous units and technologies the Red Alert series is known for. Some old favorites return, such as Tesla coils, war blimps, trained dolphins, and teleportation devices, and new units and technologies include floating island fortresses, transforming tanks, invisibility, and best of all, armored bears. Naval combat will also get a greater focus this time, but no further details were announced.

Additionally, a special episode of the C&C BattleCast video podcast reveals a few more bits of information. Chris Corry, who was the senior development director for Command & Conquer 3, takes up the reigns for Red Alert 3. He assures that while the campaign will be built for co-operative play, you can make your way through it on your own by being teamed with custom AI generals with different personalities. Could these generals be playable in multiplayer games, like in Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour? Hmm…

As for the beta, additional details can be found on the official C&C website, but the date of the beta won’t be revealed until this summer. Stay tuned for more details on that when they become available, and we’ll pass along anything else we can learn about Red Alert 3 in the meantime.