Never Too Old To Play™

Zombies have always frightened me. The idea of an easily communicable disease or pathogen that forcibly removes all sense of self and converts a person into an essentially mindless husk of what was once there disturbs me. The idea of a merciless, focused enemy horde that grows by virtue of whittling away the opposition, and the sense that as each day passes there are less of “you” and that many more of “them” is eerie. The thought that it’s really not a matter of if but when you become a snack for the masses, screaming in agony as a dozen reeking, rotting living corpses tear into your flesh while you’re still alive, while your blood is still pumping through your body (and now squirting out of your severed veins), is enough to make me shudder.

Yes, zombies have always frightened me. I am, and always have been, a huge fan of horror, especially films of the zombie sub-genre like George Romero’s classic Dead series so it really did not surprise me that it was love at first sight when I first experienced Resident Evil on the Sony PlayStation.

Capcom’s classic survival horror masterpiece was the first video game to make me feel pure, unadulterated fear. It arrived at a time when video games were only just starting to take on more mature themes with many people still entrenched in Nintendo’s rainbow parade of happiness. Mario and Donkey Kong made me happy and kept me smiling; I virtually peed my pants five minutes into Resident Evil when that first zombie dog crashed through the hallway window.

Even better, it kept up that level of tension throughout the whole experience. At no point in Resident Evil did you really feel safe because there could be a zombie hiding behind any door or a dog waiting to jump through any window, and since you didn’t enjoy the benefit of the bottomless backpack that so many video games of the time employed you couldn’t rely on the safety blanket of adequate ammo and medical supplies to ensure your survival through the next area.

Resident Evil 5 is quite a different game from its great, great, great grandfather. It’s not so much a survivor horror game as it is a survivor action game. The enemies aren’t reanimated corpses but they still act a bit like zombies as they stalk you; now, though, they’re hapless victims of creepy parasites that jam their way down your throat and turn you into bloodthirsty savages – they don’t want to eat you, but they hope to make you dead.

There are a lot more of them, too. In Resident Evil, you’d meet a zombie every few rooms or hallways – the anxiety of bumping into one around the next corner or behind the next door, especially when you were low on ammunition, was what kept the heart pounding. In Resident Evil 5, however, the tension comes from having to stave off a slowly advancing horde without being able to run and gun your way through like a super soldier.

You see, Resident Evil 5 isn’t a traditional shooter game despite kind of looking like one – Capcom decided in the previous game to change things up from the trademark fixed perspective of the series and make the experience a little more personal by putting the camera behind the player character just above the shoulder – because you have to set yourself and aim before you can actually shoot anything. It’s understandably a little disconcerting to gamers heavily invested in the typical first- or third-person shooter style of play, but it adds a little excitement and challenge to what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill shooting game.

Adding to the tension is the new real-time inventory management system that doesn’t include a “pause” function. If you’re down to your last sliver of life and being chased by a chainsaw-wielding psychopath, it’s more than a little harrowing not to be able to freeze the game and take your sweet time deciding between one medicine or another. Thankfully, Capcom gives you a little bit of leeway by allowing you to set certain items to one of the four points on the directional pad so you can quickly equip that item if you need it in the heat of battle; good luck if you didn’t prepare beforehand, though.

The game opens with an introductory cinematic that gives you a little preview of things to come before dropping you in a dilapidated Kijuju shanty town filled with people who are no longer the welcoming type. You play Chris Redfield, the hero from the very first Resident Evil game, who is now a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) on a mission to apprehend one Ricardo Irving, a black market arms dealer attempting to sell a bio weapon of an undisclosed nature (fans of the series should easily be able to figure out what the weapon is).

Your partner on this mission is Sheva Alomar, a top agent in the BSAA’s African branch, who you can play as in subsequent playthroughs after you beat the game. She is quite a contrast to Chris from a design perspective: while Chris is enormous – he must have injected a ton of steroids because he makes WWE’s John Cena look like a skinny little nerd – Sheva is lean and svelte; while Chris is dressed like an operative, Sheva looks like someone about to go on a hike; while Chris pummels his opponents with brutal hooks and uppercuts, Sheva uses graceful kicks to incapacitate her foes.

Sheva is probably one of the best AI partners I’ve ever worked with in a video game. She rarely gets in the way, is quick to heal you when enemies have dealt the pain, keeps up with you quite well, and is quite competent in combat situations (she has saved my butt on more than one occasion).

The common enemy types early in the game are not nearly as competent. While you’re taking out their buddies alongside them, they’ll just keep advancing on your position. The challenge comes in their sheer numbers and ability to absorb damage. You don’t get more powerful weapons until later in the game so it’s not very difficult to get into a sticky situation where you’re being overwhelmed by a horde of infected rabble despite how slow they move when they get near you and how much more open the environments are than earlier games in the series. I’ve heard people vent in frustration about the nuances of the control scheme which prevent you from “running and gunning;” I’m of the opinion that the game is most exciting in these circumstances thanks in no small part to the particular gameplay style.

An especially enjoyable aspect of Resident Evil 5 is the high level of quality in the graphics. From both a technical and creative perspective, the game’s visuals are top notch to the point of being one of the best looking games of the generation. There’s an incredible amount of detail in every part of the game from the different textures of your characters’ outfits to the glossy sheen of the exposed musculature of a classic Resident Evil monster you meet later in the game.

As impressive is just how good each of the number of varied environments you visit in the game look. You’ll find yourself speeding across dusty savannah in a Humvee, wading through crocodile-infested swampland, exploring ancient, subterranean tribal ruins, and pushing through abandoned research facilities. Each environment is gorgeous to behold because of the amount of attention paid to the little details that make it look like a living, breathing place. As you race by the unkempt, decrepit structures in that first shanty town, you can imagine that the people hunting you down were stuck in a living Hell long before the parasites got to them.

The story builds upon events from previous Resident Evil games and even earlier as certain flashback scenes and many of the documents you discover touch upon the lengthy history and back story behind the entire franchise. Most notable is the clear revelation of the relationship between series villain Albert Wesker and the founder of Umbrella Corporation, Ozwell E. Spencer; fans are finally told exactly what Wesker’s motivation has been throughout the six proper games. I saw the story really only failing during one particularly cheesy cutscene just prior to a boss battle where one of your adversaries starts spouting grimace-inducing pop culture references before injecting himself with a mutagen.

Resident Evil 5 is certainly not for everyone. Fans of the series as a whole will most likely enjoy this final entry in the main series – producer Jun Takeuchi said that the sixth game would probably be a reboot, and Capcom estimated that the next game could take as long as eight years to make – and even gamers who were not enamored with the story of the earlier games might enjoy this one due to the changes in gameplay direction and a departure from the zombie premise. The people most likely to have an issue with this game are those accustomed to the more freeform first- and third-person shooter style of gameplay who might feel too restricted by this departure. Nonetheless, this is a game interesting enough to at least give a shot before making a final decision one way or another – give the demo a go: it’s a pretty accurate representation of what you’ll be doing through the rest of the game.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

If you’re shopping for a younger player, just leave this game on the shelf. There is a lot of violence and gore in this game with the player taking part in the killing of people who are essentially just victims of an evil corporation’s gruesome bio weapons experiments. The actual infection and transformation processes are depicted quite early in the game, but there is equally disturbing imagery further on as various people undergo hideous mutations into vicious beasts. This is definitely a “Rated R” type of game so act accordingly.

Experience this for yourself!

• Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 (PC) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 Collector’s Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Resident Evil 5 Collector’s Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Xbox 360 Elite Limited Edition Red Resident Evil 5 Console (Amazon)

If you read the review teasers on Metacritic.com, or even go so far as to click through to the actual reviews themselves, you may be inclined to think that Metal Gear Solid 4 is the greatest game in the history of gaming. Don’t be fooled. Like Halo 3, this title that has been described by some as Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus is a beneficiary of exaggerated, and for the most part undeserved, hype.

Or  maybe it’s a victim of that hype. It’s hard to tell when such games enjoy remarkable sales based on the undying dedication of its most diehard fans, the impressive reach of monster marketing campaigns and grandiose declarations by raving critics eager to be the first to recognize the coming of the “best game ev-ah.” It’s a bit telling when you can put any number of the overblown hype nuggets used to describe either game’s supposed greatness next to each other and really not be able to tell which ones go with which game.

Meanwhile, the new breed of mainstream gamer who isn’t a video game geek and doesn’t have any deep emotional or nostalgic investment in these video game series is shrugging their shoulders and wondering what the big deal is. If you went into this game without any clue as to who Solid Snake was, you would within an hour of starting the game likely find yourself asking a) how some old fart is supposed to be a bad ass special operative, b) who would design robots that looked like giant metal chickens missing their upper halves, c) why everyone talks so much that they might as well be reciting a Shakespearean soliloquy, and d) who the hell are the two dozen characters you’ve already met?

Metal Gear Solid 4 is creatively a giant mess. The Metal Gear series is notorious for having bloated, overly complex stories that tend to be heavy handed in their moral preaching and verbose in their delivery. Like many other Japanese game designers, Kojima relies very much on lengthy and sometimes over-the-top cinematic cutscenes to drive the story forward but he takes things a step further by producing some of the longest cutscenes in the history of gaming – some have estimated that Metal Gear Solid 4′s non-interactive interludes make up about 50% of an average playthrough’s time!

This wouldn’t be so bad if there was a clear narrative that made sense, but this game’s story involves so many characters (basically, anyone from all the previous games who represents any sort of loose end to be wrapped up) and plot twists that it becomes even more convoluted than its already confusing predecessors. In fact, Metal Gear Solid 4′s plot makes the previous games’ look like Aesop’s Fables. One of the biggest complaints about Spider-Man 3 was that the story had too many villains such that the filmmakers couldn’t really focus on and develop them – imagine multiplying that number of characters several times! It’s like X-Men: The Last Stand where it seems you’re introduced to a new significant character in every other scene.

To make matters worse, there are so many strange story elements involved that it becomes a chore to keep track of and understand all of them. On top of the war that you’re dropped into in the beginning of the game whose details – such as who’s fighting in the conflict and why the war even started in the first place – are not clearly revealed to you, you have to wrap your mind around the main character’s genetic engineering (as well as the back story which explains why this changed him from Solid Snake to Old Snake), the admittedly compelling story behind the heavily promoted and ridiculously named “Beauty and the Beast Corps”, and the multitude of subplots involving the leadership behind the enemy organization. Oh, and a vampire. Sort of.

There’s way too much exposition in the game – “Let me explain what just happened in this ten-minute speech” – and there are way too many lame plot twists that are there just for the sake of having plot twists – “I was only pretending to do this so you wouldn’t know what I was really up to.” And do any of us really need to see someone hiding out in an oil barrel because they have a wicked case of diarrhea from the local food? I sure didn’t.

At least the game is decent during the parts where you’re actually playing. There isn’t anything that special about the run of the mill missions where you’re just trying to avoid (or stealthily take out) foot soldiers, but a level where you’re trying to tail a suspect through a European city in the middle of the night is kind of cool and most of the boss battles are really well done – I’d even go so far as to say that all except one of the “Beauty and the Beast Corps” stages (especially one that takes place in a snowbound environment in which you are both the hunter and the hunted) are some of the best designed boss battles of this generation. On the other hand, the final battle is not only rudimentary and boring but easy as well, which is somewhat of a letdown considering it’s supposed to be Solid Snake’s last hurrah.

The graphics are pretty good as well although at times the visual design leaves something to be desired. The artists obviously poured a lot of effort into designing Solid Snake and the major characters, but many of the “foot soldier” types that you most often fight are decidedly less detailed. And some of the environments are pretty drab despite having the advantage of higher resolution textures than most console games. Overall, though, the visual experience is one of the stronger aspects of the game.

“Good but not great” is the phrase of the day when talking about Metal Gear Solid 4. With the exception of the mostly asinine narrative, pretty much every aspect of the game is good but nowhere near the exaggerated level of quality that most reviewers have lavished upon the title. It also succeeds where Halo 3 didn’t: it’s a solid “current generation” entry in the platform’s flagship series that doesn’t seem like it could have been done with little compromise on the previous generation of hardware.

While it’s not God’s gift to video games, Metal Gear Solid 4 at least works its tail off to earn the right to enjoy a little bit of that crazy hype.

Final score: 4 out of 5

Parent to parent

Metal Gear Solid 4 is not a game for children despite some of the cutscenes seeming like they were scripted by children. There is a lot of killing (by both the good guys and the bad guys), and the enemy organization makes no bones about being willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish their goal. Plus, the story line is so complex that a kid’s head would probably spin trying to make heads or tails of it. Most importantly, the Beauty and the Beast Corps’ back stories, which involve such themes as cannibalism and mass murder, are definitely too disturbing for younger players.

Experience this for yourself!

• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) (Amazon)
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Exclusive Limited Edition (PS3) (Amazon)
• PlayStation 3 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 Bundle (Amazon)

BioWare forever changed the role-playing game genre in November 2007 with its epic sci-fi space opera masterpiece Mass Effect, an action RPG set in a distant future where humans are given the chance to prove their worth to the galactic community by defeating an ancient evil that threatens all sentient organic life in the galaxy. The game captivated players with a rich, complex narrative involving many mature themes, impressive graphics that were sometimes marred by bugs and framerate issues, and a living, breathing, fully realized virtual universe teeming with history as well as socioeconomic and cultural conflicts similar to ones that we deal with in the real world.

Mass Effect 2 improves on almost every aspect of its predecessor to provide a deep and fulfilling gaming experience that is very much like the Empire Strikes Back to the first game’s A New Hope in that the main story is significantly less epic because the focus is more on the development of the characters than on a grandiose mission – in this game, you’re finding out that Darth Vader is your father instead of making an attack run on the completed Death Star.

The early promotional campaign for the game focused around old comrades’ surprise that Commander Shepard is alive, and the reason for that is shown right at the start of the game with an intense cinematic that introduces a new menace to the galaxy and sets up the need for a new team of specialists to accompany the hero into the vast expanses of space.

Just like the more recent marketing materials leading up to the release of the game in January implied, it’s all about the relationship between you and your teammates this time around. There’s a lot more emphasis placed on interacting with your squad. As in the first game, you can spend your off-time between individual missions visiting each of your team members in their respective areas of the ship and learning a bit about what makes them tick. Unlike in the first game, however, the connections you build are somewhat stronger with more of an emotional bent to them, so much so that you can now develop a romantic relationship with almost any member of your squad (in most cases depending on gender).

Furthermore, each teammate now has a loyalty mission unlocked during the second act of the game in which you can assist them in resolving some personal crisis. In some cases, these missions are more in depth and longer than the ones you had to go through to recruit the specialist in the first place. None are particular “light” in theme, either – the majority of these loyalty missions revolve around family troubles of the worst kind (no “my husband doesn’t put down the toilet seat” issues here).

All of this serves to build strong connections with your squad so that by the time you start the final act all the decisions you make and the risks you take seem to have that much more weight. In say a Call of Duty game, you couldn’t care less whether the all-but-nameless soldiers in your squad are taken out in that final suicide run against the Nazi bunker, but in Mass Effect 2′s final mission, you may have to task that person you’ve been building an emotional relationship with the most dangerous assignment in order to ensure victory. It won’t mean much to players who just see a video game as a succession of battle sequences but makes the experience much more real for players who can immerse themselves a bit more into the game.

To go hand in hand with the more nuanced and complex story line, Mass Effect 2 boasts graphical quality and visual design that is noticeably improved over Mass Effect’s already groundbreaking visuals. One of the most memorable aspects of the first game is the level of detail and realism in the faces of the characters during conversation close-ups and on the character status screens: aside from the occasional freak like Navigator Pressly, the cast of Mass Effect is one of the best looking in all of gaming. Things only get better in the sequel, with even more details, both subtle and obvious, visible on many of the characters. Especially impressive are the very different skin textures on the various aliens, such as the scaliness of the new Krogan warrior and the leathery hide of the Salarian scientist – and the freckles on the face of your new Asari comrade are a nice touch as are the handful of birthmarks you can see on, uh, various parts of her body.

Even better, the graphical glitches that were a bit more than infrequent in Mass Effect are all but eradicated. The game has a smooth and consistent framerate and no longer suffers from the texture pop-ins that sometimes shattered the suspension of disbelief in the first game.

This makes it a lot easier to enjoy the stunning environments BioWare has created this time around. Through the course of the game, you’ll explore immaculate skyscrapers, seedy slums, lush jungles, desolate wastelands, and overgrown ruins, and the various environments are much more fully realized this time around with attention paid to little details like the little monkey-like creatures wandering around on one planet (while Mass Effect had some strange deer-like beasts on a few planets, they used far simpler rendering models).

Mass Effect 2 provides a pretty impressive aural experience as well. There’s some top notch voice acting in this game from the likes of veteran actor Martin Sheen who plays the Elusive Man, rising star Yvonne Strahovski (Miranda Lawson) from television’s Chuck and Adam Lazarre-White, recently seen in a small role on NBC’s Heroes, who is my personal favorite as Jacob Taylor. The game is almost a science fiction television series reunion with supporting voiceover work from Star Trek veterans Michael Dorn and Armin Shimerman, Battlestar Galactica stars Michael Hogan and Tricia Helfer, The Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss, and Firefly star Adam Baldwin. Even Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo joins in on the fun. And Mass Effect alums Seth Green and Keith David return in unfortunately smaller roles (the two really stole the show in the previous game).

Further, the music is as striking and epic as it was the first time around, fitting for a game of this scale and scope. Especially in the action-packed cutscenes, you really feel like you’re watching a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. This is one of the few video games with a soundtrack actually worth listening to on its own.

The gameplay itself is much improved from the first game with the realization of some features that were promoted for Mass Effect but didn’t make the final cut and the removal of some of the bulkier, unwieldy aspects of that game’s interface. You can now direct your squad mates individually, which allows for more interesting combat strategies such as having your team flank the enemy from either side while you make a more direct advance on their position. This is a huge improvement from the first game where your two companions were essentially attached at the hip.

Also new is the ability to perform paragon or renegade “interrupts” of a dialog cutscene where you can drastically change the outcome of a scene by pressing the appropriate trigger at the right time. You might fire a warning shot behind the person you’re talking to in order to get them to give up some useful information or you might go so far as to prevent a comrade from executing an enemy in cold blood. It’s a nice little touch that was conspicuously absent from the first game because BioWare showed examples in promotional trailers.

My personal favorite gameplay change is the streamlined inventory management system. In Mass Effect, there were several different weapons and armor manufacturers, each of whom produced their own model of each of the weapon and armor types, some of which were specific to particular races. Each of those models had different levels of quality designated by a numerical class (e.g. Avenger Assault Rifle II or Hurricane Shotgun VI). Then, there were various weapon and armor upgrades which added specific features to a particular model, and these also had quality levels. And let’s not forget the biotic and tech hardware that improved those skills.

As you found different weapons, armor and upgrades throughout the adventure, you would amass a gigantic trove of treasures that was managed by an interface that had no real sorting or filtering ability such that you could waste lots of time just scrolling through a huge list (I believe you could carry somewhere in the range of 150 items) to find the specific thing you wanted to use, sell or just examine. It was one big confusing mess and one of the only real blights to that superb game.

BioWare wisely decided to scrap that system for this game and start from scratch with a much simpler and more usable one. There are only a few models of each weapon type (although you can acquire a few more through the course of the game) which you upgrade via purchased or discovered schematics that you integrate by spending mineral resources. Armor, biotic powers and tech skills can be boosted in a similar fashion. This welcome change allows you to focus on the actual game experience instead of tedious minutiae.

Mass Effect 2 is a bigger, better game with a deeper plot, a richer setting and notably improved gameplay that makes it easier for players to dive right into the epic story. The breathtaking graphics, impressive voiceover work and slick presentation are nice bonuses that make playing the game that much more rewarding an experience. And those who upon completing the game find themselves desperate to find out how Commander Shepard’s story ends can take solace in the fact that Mass Effect 3 will arrive in stores sooner than they expect.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

Like its predecessor, Mass Effect 2 deals with some rather mature topics that are likely too heavy for younger players. While there is a lot of combat-related violence in the game, I posit that this will have far less impact on players than sacrificing the life of a character with which they’ve developed a close friendship or romantic relationship, helping a parent hunt down and kill their own child, or debating the merits of developing a pathogen that sterilizes an entire race of creatures. The game should be okay for teenagers who have mentally and emotionally developed enough to better understand the underlying issues that the game’s narrative examines.

Experience this for yourself!

• Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect 2 Collector’s Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect 2 (PC) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect 2 Collector’s Edition (PC) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect (PC) (Amazon)

Anyone who has played Baldur’s Gate (or its sequel), Neverwinter Nights or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic knows that BioWare is one of the top video game development studios in the industry. As far as the role-playing game genre is concerned, the strength of the BioWare brand is second only to that of Square Enix (although that could change soon if the reception of the two companies’ recent releases are any indication).

Almost every BioWare game is both a financial success and a critical darling:

• Baldur’s Gate sold over 2 million copies worldwide during a time when the computer role-playing game genre was struggling and won numerous Game of the Year awards from various industry publications. 
• Baldur’s Gate II and Neverwinter Nights also sold over 2 million copies worldwide and won various year-end awards.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide, won numerous Game of the Year awards and is considered by many not only to be one of the best and most influential Star Wars works but one of the best games of all time.

BioWare continued this trend with their first next-generation release, Mass Effect, and surpassed their past achievements by creating a game that is without a doubt superior to all those that came before it. Mass Effect is quite frankly an evolution of the role-playing game genre, building on concepts first introduced in Knights of the Old Republic to reach a point where the player is deeply and directly involved in playing a role instead of just assigning stat points.

Don’t get me wrong – the game involves character customization (a ton of it, to be honest) for all the stat geeks out there. The ability to decide whether your character will be mighty brute of a warrior or a powerful wizard, a front line trooper or a stealthy sniper is important to role-playing games.

However, most RPGs (especially Japanese RPGs) are content to limit the effects of the player’s choices to just the combat. The rest of the time, the player is just watching as their character goes through predetermined, unchanging cutscenes where the exact progression of the script was set in stone long before the game even hit the shelves. No matter what kind of player you are, no matter how you’ve chosen to build your character, the details of the story and the dialogue – and how your character fits into it all – is exactly the same as it is for any other player.

This is not the case with Mass Effect where almost every conversation in the game includes dialogue choices that can elicit notably different responses from the other characters. Depending on how you interact with a given character, you may be able to learn useful information, avoid (or initiate) a combat situation or even set up an eventual romantic encounter. Better yet, many of the choices you make in this game have some effect on aspects of future games in the series.

While the game of course follows a general story structure – no matter what choices you make, you’re going to end up facing the final enemy in the game – the details of how you get there are going to be different for each player because each player is going to decide when their character will stand up for what’s right, when their character will take the low road and when their character simply doesn’t give a damn, and those decisions will determine how much of the story the player gets to experience.

And trust me – you’ll want to experience as much of the story as possible. The writing is far better than what you’ll find in most video games and even most movies, and the story has a truly epic feel to it. Playing through the game is almost like watching a cinematic masterpiece unfold before you, like discovering the love child of Star Wars and The Godfather. But you get to participate in exactly how it all plays out: you get to decide whether Luke Skywalker is a momma’s boy or a gangsta from the mean streets of Mos Eisley. There’s so much story that you can’t even experience it all the first time through – to truly see and hear everything the game has to offer, you have to play through multiple times and make different choices to see how it all plays out.

If you decide to do this, your eyes certainly won’t be worse for wear as the game is absolutely beautiful. The level of detail in the graphics is simply stunning although perhaps a bit ambitious for a team working with both the Xbox 360 hardware and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 for the first time. Especially impressive is the modeling and animation of the faces during all the conversation scenes – although some of the characters fall deep into the uncanny valley, these are nevertheless the best faces of any video game by far.

The game does suffer from a very inconsistent frame rate, some noticeable texture pop-in when you enter new areas and a strange symptom where sometimes during cutscenes parts of a character’s face look like they’re missing, almost like they’re in front of a green screen and someone speckled green paint on their heads. Fortunately, most of the visual bugs go away when you install the game to the hard drive – I highly recommend you do this if your 360 has a hard drive.

Perhaps the most incredible feat BioWare pulled off during the development of this game was their creation of one of the most believable universes in video game history. As you progress through the game, you’ll encounter about a dozen different intelligent alien species that you’ll be able to interact with. In some cases, you’ll be able to recruit a representative to your squad.

The various races look quite distinct from one another despite most being of humanoid form. For example, the volus are short, squat beings who are shaped somewhat like bipedal rodents – BioWare probably named them after the vole – although one can’t say for sure what exactly they look like since they have to wear pressurized environment suits due to their ammonia-based biochemistry while the hanar resemble giant walking jellyfish and the asari, an entirely female species that is somehow attractive to all races, look very much like blue-skinned human women.

BioWare didn’t stop with just visual differences, though. As you interact with members of the different species, you’ll notice distinctive vocal qualities as well as varied adaptations to the English language. The aforementioned hanar, who speak in a melodic tone, always refer to themselves as “this one” or “it” when conversing with individuals they do not consider close friends or family as the usage of the first person with strangers or mere acquaintances is considered egotistical in their culture. The giant elcor, who hail from a high gravity planet, speak in monotone with a deep, hollow vocal quality; thus, they have to explicitly communicate the tone of their statement (i.e. anger, sarcasm, happiness) in order to avoid misunderstandings with other races.

Further, BioWare developed for each race a relatively detailed culture and history which often times comes into play when you converse with members of that species. For example, you won’t find a shortage of complaints from volus individuals about how unfair it is that their species does not have a seat on the Citadel Council, the ruling body that presides over the galaxy, despite their contributions.

Mass Effect is one of the only games where you are cognizant of a world outside of the area in which you’re playing. You and your comrades are just one piece of the whole puzzle – a big freakin’ piece but still just one piece. Regardless of whether you are successful in your mission to defeat the enemy, the universe will keep moving on: the Council races will still look down on humans; Krogans will still hate Salarians for the sterilization they instilled upon them; Quarians will continue their nomadic existence.

BioWare included all these little details that fill out the world they created to make it vibrant and real such that it almost becomes an organic entity unto itself instead of just a backdrop for the action like in most games. Theirs is one of the most fully realized game universes ever put to disc (or cartridge for that matter).

As great as the game is, it’s not all that surprising that it wasn’t a runaway success. BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic was well received but its spiritual successor Jade Empire, its first foray into inventing their own intellectual property instead of licensing an already successful on such as Star Wars or Dungeons & Dragons, didn’t fare quite as well at retail. However, good word of mouth (and some price drops) helped it accrue more than two million in sales since November 2007.

Now that you can purchase Mass Effect as a Platinum Hit for the more than reasonable price of $19.99, there really is no reason for you to not give it a try. It’s easily one of the best games of the generation and a masterful experience that you’d find hard not to enjoy.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

I probably would not recommend Mass Effect for younger gamers. It’s hard for me to say that because I think the title has some of the best storytelling in gaming history with a lot of thought provoking material, but that material is often based on rather mature themes that are likely too heavy for most children. The game also involves a lot of violence as well as an optional romantic side story which can culminate in a love scene – a fairly ambiguous and tasteful one but a love scene nonetheless.

Experience this for yourself!

• Mass Effect (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Mass Effect (PC) (Amazon)

It’s been a while since the shift of power in the console gaming industry from Japanese developers to their Western counterparts. Microsoft kick started this trend with the introduction of the Xbox, a video game console that was similar enough in architecture and design to a PC that formerly PC-centric developers had little problems porting their titles to the system. All of a sudden, Western developers like Bungie, Epic, id, and Valve who were marquee players in the world of Windows and Macintosh gaming but virtually unknown by gamers whose cash lined the coffers at Nintendo, Sega and Sony found themselves at the door of a whole new market of consumers.

However, while the console gaming population’s appetite for games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto III, and Splinter Cell grew, they still relied on Japanese developers like Square and Namco for their role-playing fix. Game series like Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest were among the many Japanese role-playing franchises available on the PlayStation 2, and the genre contributed to the console’s greatest strength: its “something for everyone” library of software. Some titles even reached blockbuster status with four in the top ten list of best selling PlayStation 2 games.

Then, the Xbox 360 arrived and everything changed. (Cue dramatic music.)

Actually, all Microsoft did was take the smart approach with regards to the design of their new console. (Cue PlayStation 3 fanboys ranting about RROD.) Microsoft knew the appeal the Western style of game development, up to that point mostly exclusive to the PC platform, would have with the growing video game market, and knew what those developers liked about working with the Xbox. Instead of trying to make radical changes for the sake of change (and under the guise of innovation), they simply expanded on what already worked and kept the architecture similar enough that the transition from Xbox to Xbox 360 would be fairly easy for developers. More importantly, they listened when the teams demanded more memory without which games like Gears of War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare would have been impossible.

One of the results of this approach was the release of highly evolved fourth entry in the Elder Scrolls role-playing game series on video game consoles. Oblivion arrived to much fanfare due to the high degree of character customization, the vast and fully realized world, the sheer number of characters with whom to interact, the epic story, and the beautiful graphics which all but guaranteed that gamers who weren’t interested in role-playing games before took notice. Critics raved about the game to the tune of a mid-90s average review score and many year end awards. The game went on to sell 2.93 million units on the Xbox 360 platform and 1.15 million units on the PlayStation 3 platform.

Bethesda followed up this masterpiece two and a half years later with the even better Fallout 3, a more action-oriented role-playing game set in the post apocalyptic world of the Fallout series of computer role-playing games. Fallout 3 was almost the exact opposite of Oblivion as far as concept – instead of a high fantasy world of wizards and warriors, elves and monsters, and good and evil, you had a depressing glimpse at a realistically possible future set on the desolate backdrop of a ravaged Washington D.C. where the denizens didn’t have the luxury of worrying much about the morality of their choices.

Similarly, BioWare’s space opera Mass Effect, released a year before Fallout 3 in 2007, challenged the player’s own perception of what was right and wrong. Although the setting was completely different – Mass Effect took place in a distant future where humans are galaxy-trotting with aliens on board advanced starships – the developers had the same approach with regards to the choices you made: almost nothing was clear cut good and evil, and it was commonplace for someone to find themselves conflicted about which path was the right one to take.

What these three games did was introduce console gamers to actual role-playing games where the gamer actually plays a role by deciding what their character says and does, and how they say and do it. Until this point, most gamers only knew Japanese RPGs, which were games that merely paid lip service to the term “role-playing game” – the stat-building aspect of traditional tabletop role-playing games was there but the spirit of the genre was missing.

Oblivion, Mass Effect and Fallout 3 opened gamers’ eyes to the reality of JRPGs. The wool over their eyes had been lifted and many realized just how shallow and simple these games were: it’s kind of hard to go back to the linear progression, restrictive turn-based combat, static stories, and canned dialogue that simply served as sound for pre-rendered cutscenes when you’ve experienced open worlds, thousands of dialogue options, real-time action, and the ability to make choices that have an actual impact on the game.

The old style of “role-playing” was no longer acceptable, and both sales and critical reviews reflected this new attitude. Of all the JRPGs released this generation, only one – Final Fantasy XIII - broke a million units sold with 1.88 million as of early February. Mind you, this is after seven weeks on sale in Japan where Final Fantasy XII sold 1.82 million units in Japan in the first week alone and ended up with a total 5.69 million units worldwide when all was said and done.

Games without the benefit of a mega franchise fared significantly worse at retail: Infinite Undiscovery from Square moved only 0.57 million units; Blue Dragon moved less than that at 0.53 million worldwide; and the well-reviewed Demon’s Souls (GameSpot’s 2009 Game of the Year) has only managed 0.63 million in sales. And none of the JRPGs released this generation have achieved aggregate scores in the 90′s at MetaCritic whereas just one – Demon’s Souls - barely made it at GameRankings (Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect 2 all scored in the 90′s on both sites).

And if the game with one of the biggest brand names in console gaming history can’t put Japanese role-playing games back in the spotlight, what game can? Dragon Quest X? Highly unlikely despite the history of that series because the game will be a Wii exclusive. A third Kingdom Hearts game? The Final Fantasy series has historically sold better and received better reviews so the likelihood of that currently theoretical game surpassing Final Fantasy XIII is probably low. Plus, the real diehard Disney gamers are actually likely to spend the money on a Wii (if they don’t already have one for all those Disney licensed games) just to play Epic Mickey, a Disney game where you actually play Mickey Mouse instead of just drag his buddies Donald Duck and Goofy along for the ride, instead.

No, sadly (for JRPG fans, anyway) this seems like the permanent trend as Western developers for all genres take the reins of the video game industry from Japanese developers mired in their old ways, unwilling to adapt with the times and create products that appeal to more than just the often quirky tastes of the Japanese consumers.

In response to a recent IGN interview with Sony executive Peter Dille in which Mr. Dille proclaimed that the PlayStation 3 would “be around in 10 years” and eventually overtake the Xbox 360 in sales, GameStooge writer Jordan Lund unsurprisingly went on an anti-Sony tirade, making sure not to forget any of the key fanboy tactics in arguing the superiority and domination of their preferred entertainment device.

Mr. Lund gets what appears to be an ad hominem argument out of the way early on in the article, declaring that Mr. Dille’s position cannot be taken seriously because he is a Sony executive and other Sony executives have in the past professed confidence that the PlayStation 3 would surpass its competitors (or at least its primary competitor, the Xbox 360). While Mr. Lund is of course unable to support any point of view that said Sony executives are wrong about their predictions since the timeframe has not yet passed, the intent is certainly there to link the possibly dubious nature of their claims to the validity of Mr. Dille’s.

The crux of Sony’s argument that the PlayStation 3 will eventually outsell the Xbox 360 is the premise that Microsoft’s console is not “future proof” and thus cannot possibly stay on the market for an extended period of time beyond the historically standard “five year lifespan” afforded to video game consoles, resulting in a period of time during which the PlayStation 3 will no longer have competition from the Xbox 360. This is a laughable strategy because the PlayStation 3 does not and will not have a deep and broad enough library of software to be a viable “cheap” option for so many years after the next Microsoft, Nintendo and, yes, Sony consoles hit the market. The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were able to stay relevant because they had enormous game libraries – the PlayStation 3 selection pales in comparison.

Mr. Lund has the generally right idea, but argues based on the iffy prediction that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony will not launch new consoles anytime within the next six years (assuming that Mr. Dille was actually referring to a ten year total life cycle for the PlayStation 3 and not an additional ten years from now). The notions that in six years the economy will not have recovered to the degree where gamers would not be interested in new console technology and would be fine with playing Project Natal games and editions of Halo and Gears of War that look pretty much the same as the ones we played a couple years ago are ridiculous at best.

He continues with irrelevant paragraphs of stats that are focused entirely on the North American region with no consideration whatsoever for the rest of the world mainly because the only significant Xbox 360 sales lead is in this region whereas the two consoles are nose-to-nose in Europe and the Xbox 360 is a lost cause in Japan. After crunching tons of numbers to show just what kind of a lead the Xbox 360 has over the PlayStation 3 in terms of install base, he “put(s) things in perspective” with an extreme example of the PlayStation 3 needing a whole year of sales consistent to its 2009 numbers while the Xbox 360 sells nothing instead of the realistic example – the PlayStation 3 maintaining its current weekly worldwide lead of just under 37,000 for three years – that might show just how flimsy his whole line of argument is.

In short, Mr. Lund’s protestation of Sony’s incompetent arrogance is understandable, but his modus operandi of using nearly any statement by Sony that doesn’t fit into his narrow world view of things to vomit a veritable feast of selective statistics tarnishes his credibility by painting him as little more than a bitter fanboy trying desperately to play down any bit of positive news for “the other system.”

And lest we forget – Nintendo did not lose the 16-bit console wars to Sega. Sega squandered a two and a half year lead time for their Genesis console to end up with only a 10% market share lead on Nintendo just two short years after the launch of the Super Nintendo. Now, to put that into perspective, imagine a scenario where the PlayStation 3 didn’t launch until December 2007 yet started off 2009 with the same proportion of sales to the Xbox 360′s that it enjoys today (45% of sales that don’t include the Wii) at only 10% the number of games that the Xbox 360 had. That would be pretty impressive indeed.

Note: It might be useful for me to mention that the reason why Mr. Lund’s fanboyism doesn’t surprise me is because he is a (now rare) poster in the Usenet forum alt.games.video.xbox that I often browse.

It’s not very often that a video game sequel notably improves on its predecessor in almost every way. Left4Dead 2 for the Xbox 360 did it. From what I’ve read in magazines and various websites and heard from friends, Uncharted 2 for the PlayStation 3, the 2009 Game of the Year for most industry publications and gaming websites, did it (I have not yet replaced my broken PS3 and so have only played a little bit of the game on a friend’s system).

However, for every Left4Dead 2 and Uncharted 2, you’ve got games like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 which is every bit as good as the first game but doesn’t really improve on it in any way, Knights of the Old Republic 2 which is technically on par with the previous game but is a creative disappointment with an underwhelming story and uninteresting characters, and Gears of War 2 which has even better visuals and underlying technology than the original game but feels like a confused mess half the time with new styles of gameplay that feel too disconnected from the core game.

The developer Pyramid, a branch of Sony’s respected Japan Studio, fortunately succeeded where Ubisoft Montreal, Obsidian Entertainment and Epic Games didn’t by making some minor (but important) changes and adding some new stuff without doing anything too radical: they built on the tried and true Patapon formula without messing around with it too much.

Very little has changed in the core game design. You still act as the Patapon’s deity, leading the little eyeballs who find themselves stranded in a new world with their former foes, the Zigatons, after their seafaring vessel is destroyed. You still issue commands to your army via timed four-press combinations of the PlayStation Portable’s four face buttons, each of which represents a talking drum -  for example, pressing circle-circle-square-circle results in the song “pon-pon-pata-pon” which orders the Patapons to attack any enemy, animal or structure within range. You still move your warriors through side scrolling levels set in various environments filled with opponents, obstacles and the occasional boss fight, and in between these levels you still return to Patapolis where you can play numerous mini-games or improve your units with harvested materials.

Indeed, for the first several levels of the game, it may seem like nothing has changed from the original Patapon. The developers took a smart approach by gradually introducing the new changes as the game progresses.

The first new feature you’ll come across is the Hero character, a special warrior who is able to act as any Patapon unit in your army and further transform into any Patapon species unlocked for a given unit. The Hero also has a unit-based special ability that is activated when you issue a certain number of commands with perfect timing – for example, the Yaripon Hero’s spears create a green cloud upon impact that damages any enemies it touches while the Tatepon Hero’s shield provides invulnerability for the entire army. Also, the Hero can wear attribute-enhancing masks that can only be acquired in the multiplayer mode.

After facing off against the giant dragon boss Dodonga from the original game and going on a few more simple missions, including one hunt, you’ll meet the first new boss in the game, a giant version of the Motiti birds you hunt named Motititi. It’s fairly easy with relatively weak attacks – including a rather lame fart attack – but is useful because it drops rare bones you can use to evolve your Patapons. Other new bosses include the much tougher Mamboss, a giant woolly mammoth who seems to shrug off damage and attacks by goring your warriors with its tusks or stomping them, and the relatively weak Sentura, a giant spider-like creature that spits acid , spears Patapons with one of its appendages and can only be damaged under certain environmental conditions.

Along the way, you’ll learn new drum commands for jumping (to avoid certain types of boss attacks) and partying (to immediately wake up from being put to sleep or frozen in ice from special attacks), a new Blizzard Miracle which summons snowfall during a mission, some new materials such as liquids and fangs, and a few new mini-games in Patapolis. There’s also a slew of new Rarepon species and a new evolution system where you can follow different paths of upgrades to get to the more powerful species.

A more noticeable change in the game, however, is the addition of three new Patapon units that each offer new tactics for the aspiring general. The first is the Toripon, an aerial unit that hurls javelins at ground-based units but is highly susceptible to anti-air weapons. The second is the Robopon, a mechanized unit that punches enemies with its two giant fists or hurls boulders that it digs out of the ground. The last – and probably the most useful – new unit is the Mahopon, a sorcerous unit that uses long range attacks such as fireballs and chain lightning strikes that change depending on what kind of staves you equip them with: once you acquire the more powerful staves, there’s really no reason to not include the Mahopon squad in your army.

Even with all the new additions and enhancements, the gameplay doesn’t really feel that much different from the original game. Rather, the changes work to open the game up further to new tactics and strategies, allowing for a much wider range of playing styles. Much of the fun is in trying out the new units for the first time to see how they fare against enemies you’ve already defeated.

Patapon 2 is a sequel done correctly. The developers didn’t try to do too much with their changes being the video game equivalent putting good sea salt on a steak: the Patapon flavor is still ever-present… it’s just kicked up a notch. The game is easily my favorite on the PlayStation Portable.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

As with Patapon, I don’t think there are any problems with letting your kids play this game. Children should love the appealing 2D artwork and the catchy soundtrack as well as the scores of cool boss monsters they’ll battle. The game forces players to both plan ahead and think on their toes, and promotes a love of music, all great lessons for kids. The only caveat is that the game may be a little too difficult for younger players who may not fully comprehend the nature of strategy. It’s one helluva way to learn, though.

Experience this for yourself!

• Patapon 2 (PSP) (Amazon)

Greg Miller, one of the editors over at IGN’s PlayStation 3 channel, posted an editorial about a week ago in which he asserted that the Xbox 360′s highly anticipated exclusive role-playing epic Mass Effect 2, the sequel to a highly decorated sci-fi epic, is inarguably and definitively a better game than the PlayStation 3′s equally anticipated exclusive action platformer Uncharted 2, which happens to be the 2009 Game of the Year of almost every professional gaming publication in the industry, and then proceeds to dedicate two pages to nothing more than explaining why he likes role-playing games better than action games.

He points to the lengthy, complex storyline and well developed characters in Mass Effect 2, and notes that he felt more of a connection to Commander Shepard than to Nathan Drake because he was choosing how Shepard interacted with other characters during the non-action portions of the game. These aspects are all well and good if you like role-playing games, but they’re irrelevant to someone who’s simply interested in all-out action. In fact, for that kind of player, Mass Effect 2 is likely not a great choice because you spend the majority of your time talking, walking and doing mundane tasks like scanning planets for mineral resources.

This is not to say that Mass Effect 2 is a bad experience or even a worse experience than Uncharted 2 but rather to point out the folly in trying to measure the superiority of one over the other based solely on criteria that is not only subjective but may be of complete irrelevance.

Probably the most laughable thing that Mr. Miller implied, though, was that his claim that Mass Effect 2 is hands down the better game somehow had more weight because he’s “the PlayStation guy,” an editor from the PlayStation 3 channel of IGN who says “Trophies are better than Achievements,” and “who bought a PSPgo on day one and doesn’t regret the decision in the least.”

Just like an opinion that Safari is a better web browser than Internet Explorer doesn’t become more valid just because it comes from a Windows user and an opinion that Jon Lester is a better pitcher than A.J. Burnett is no more valid if it’s offered by a Yankees fan, there’s no reason to believe any more that Mass Effect 2 is a better game than Uncharted 2 simply because a PlayStation fan thinks so.

If you want to do a real apples to apples comparison of the two games, you’re pretty much limited to quantitative analysis of things that can be measured, like which game has better graphics technology (Uncharted 2), better performance (Uncharted 2), more gameplay (Mass Effect 2), more replay capability (Mass Effect 2), longer game time (Mass Effect 2), less bugs (Uncharted 2), etc. Yet even these aspects are still subject to relevance analysis – better graphics or more replayability are each not of any significant importance to a large number of gamers.

In the end, the lesson is one that can be applied at a higher level to the whole “which console is better” debate: don’t worry about trying to prove that the Xbox 360 is better than the PlayStation 3 or vice versa because you can’t when there is no single type of gamer that is the sole arbiter of what makes a console or a game better than another. Just enjoy the games you have and leave the bickering and pandering to the fanboys whose lives are validated only by the hunk of electronics they have next to their television.

It’s been a while since console gamers have had a solid Star Wars action game. Xbox owners were treated to the definitive Star Wars role-playing experience in BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (and arguably its sequel) and got to play a pretty good squad-based first-person shooter in Star Wars: Republic Commando. GameCube owners were privileged with awesome arcade-style space combat along with authentic visual design and high production values with Factor 5′s Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, which was preceded by the popular Nintendo 64 game Rogue Squadron.

However, that fun, action-packed game in which players get to slice enemies up with lightsabers and wield the full power of the Force had eluded console gamers until the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, developed by LucasArts. PC gamers had long been able to boast about their ability to play the well-written and beautifully designed Jedi Knight games in which lightsaber duels and powers like Force Grip and Force Lightning were a normal part of the gameplay while console gamers had to settle for lame titles like Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi and Star Wars: Obi-Wan.

Force Unleashed takes Star Wars gaming to the next level for both console and PC gamers alike by introducing us to a whole new scale of Force powers. No longer are you just knocking stormtroopers off their feet with your Force Push – in this game, you can send them flying hundreds of yards into a wall or knock them off a platform to fall to their doom (and the game camera will sometimes follow them to their demise almost like an instant replay). Force Lightning can be repurposed into an electrifying force field and used to charge up lightsaber attacks for more damage. And one particularly impressive set piece shows your character doing something with Force Grip that makes Yoda’s little trick with the submerged X-Wing in The Empire Strikes Back look like child’s play.

In fact, by the time you reach the end of the game, your mastery of the Force will have become so awesome that you make all Jedi and Sith that have ever graced the big screen look like chumps.

The game is not without its flaws, though. There’s a certain inconsistency in how you can interact with your environment. If there’s a heavy duty, industrial strength, titanium reinforced door blocking your designated path through a stage, you can pound your way through that thing with your juiced up Force Push ability. However, if you aren’t meant to go through a door, you can hammer it with your magical blasts all day long and it won’t do much more than dent a little bit (if at all). In some stages, you can shatter windows by driving projectiles through them to cause environmental damage to nearby enemies; in others, it’s as if the windows are made of the most shatterproof glass in the galaxy. And while your character can apparently lift up entire AT-STs and crush them into little balls of scrap metal, there are plenty of plants on Felucia that you can’t even yank out of the ground.

Another problem lies with the targeting system, which seems to rely on a bit too much guesswork to determine what you’re looking at. If there are only a couple of objects or enemies within sight it’s not a big deal, but when you’re surrounded by enemies and wreckage it can be frustrating to grab the right thing in the midst of a heated battle. Thankfully, this type of situation does not come up very often as you generally have more than enough space to maneuver around to a better position.

Probably more annoying is the ability of many enemies to keep striking you while you’re down and unable to defend yourself. It’s not uncommon to be shot down by a well-placed rifle blast and then get hit a second or even third time by more well-placed rifle blasts before you have the chance to get up and try to block or dodge. Especially frustrating is when certain stormtroopers armed with shock rifles incapacitate you with an electrical blast and then fire another shot and then another, each further incapacitating you while the other troopers zap away at you with their standard issue laser rifles.

Fortunately, the pros outweigh the cons in Force Unleashed. The writers came up with an interesting storyline that fits right in between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and puts you in control of Darth Vader’s apprentice, a man known only as Starkiller. The great thing about this plot compared to that of games like Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Knight is that it ties directly into the events you saw unfold in the movies instead of being an unrelated supplementary story involving characters you’ve never heard of. The story is appealing to the super diehard fans who read all the novels and comic books without catering specifically to them.

The team also managed to hire a pretty good cast of voice actors to bring the various characters to life. Sam Witwer, seen in such shows as Battlestar Galactica, Dexter and Smallville, is especially good in the role of the tormented apprentice who finds himself betrayed by everything he has ever known. He received much praise from the Star Wars community for his portrayal of Starkiller, whose physical appearance is modeled after his likeness, and is rumored to be reprising the role in the upcoming live action Star Wars television series. In fact, Witwer’s performance is so good that it could be tough for diehard Star Wars fans to witness another example of a video game surpassing the quality of the films.

It’s a shame that the game couldn’t be a complete success, but the good far outweighs the bad in Force Unleashed, which is a must-have game for diehard Star Wars fans and a compelling purchase for gamers just looking for some fun action gameplay set in the Star Wars universe.

Final score: 4 out of 5

Parent to parent

While the violence depicted in the game isn’t really any more brutal than that shown in the Star Wars films, the player does start off hunting down the good guys for one of the most iconic villains in movie history. As the Starkiller, the player will be responsible for slamming, slicing and shocking hundreds of stormtroopers, Wookies, Jawas, and other life forms before the game is over. Further, the game encourages “creative” uses of the Force to take out enemies. Nevertheless, I feel that the game should be just fine for all but the youngest gamers: players aren’t going to see anything they have already seen in numerous Star Wars movies and cartoons.

Experience this for yourself!

• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PlayStation 2) (Amazon)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii) (Amazon)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition (PC) (Amazon)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its list of nominees for this year’s 82nd annual Academy Awards which takes place on March 7, 2010. As expected, James Cameron’s Avatar, the blockbuster highest grossing film of all time, and The Hurt Locker, the low budget independent critical darling directed by Cameron’s second wife, Kathryn Bigelow, led the field with nine nominations, and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds followed closely with eight nominations. All three films were nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year, the category that the Academy expanded this year to include ten instead of the traditional five nominees, and all three directors were nominated for the Best Director trophy.

This should come as no surprise to moviegoers as the Oscar buzz surrounding all three films has been about as loud as it has ever been in recent years, and truly good, Oscar-worthy films have been few and far between throughout the past year.

Similarly, all we’ve heard about for months is how good George Clooney was in Up in the Air, how inspiring Gabourey Sidibe was in Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, and what a star making turn Christoph Waltz had as Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. There was never any question that these actors would be nominated for Oscars, and their chances of winning in their respective categories range from “really good” to “guaranteed.”

Is there really anyone out there who doesn’t think that Mr. Clooney is taking home that Best Actor trophy in March? Ms. Sidibe has a bit of competition from Meryl Streep, who graced the screen with an amazing portrayal of Julia Child in Julie & Julia (and earned a place in history as the most nominated performer with 16 Oscar nominations and 25 Golden Globe nominations), and Sandra Bullock, who beat her out for the dramatic lead actress trophy at the Globes this year, but I think the strength of her performance and the type of character she played is a better fit for the Oscars than the Globes. And Mr. Waltz? Considering he has won every award there is to win (including the first one, the Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival), I’d sooner bet on lightning striking the same person twice than on any other nominee in the Best Supporting Actor category.

Indeed, there’s little room for surprise at this year’s Academy Awards. Avatar has incredible momentum right now and is all but a lock to win at least every single “minor” award for which it’s nominated while its prospects in the top categories like Best Picture and Best Director are a little less clear with the aforementioned competition. Mr. Tarantino is definitely going to take home the Best Original Screenplay prize while Jason Reitman, the director of Up in the Air, is a lock to win the Best Adapted Screenplay award. And when Pixar’s Up is so good that it’s nominated in the Best Picture category (the last animated feature to show up in that group was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in 1992), there can be little doubt that it will stand proud as the winner of the Best Animated Feature of 2009.

This is not to say that there were no surprises, though. As a big fan of the surprise sci-fi smash hit of the summer, District 9,  I’m pleasantly surprised to see it nominated in the Best Picture category although the realist in me knows that the only reason this happened was because of the field expansion for the category: if the Academy had stuck with the status quo, the nominees would assuredly have been Avatar, Up in the Air, Precious, The Hurt Locker, and Inglourious Basterds. I’m not so much a fan of the other major surprise – the nomination of Penélope Cruz for her supporting role in the huge flop Nine - but it’s not such a big deal since the statue is likely going to either Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air or Mo’Nique for Precious.

Perhaps the bigger surprise, however, will be the likely skyrocketing ratings for his year’s Academy Awards broadcast now that the Academy has finally had the good sense to nominate a film that is not only critically acclaimed but also a popular hit with the mainstream moviegoers for the Best Motion Picture of the Year award. It’s no secret that ratings for the show have steadily dropped for the better part of a decade because of the Academy’s shift towards artsy films that most people didn’t care about.

When the race is down to films like Atonement, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, you know that people are going to do something more interesting (like clip their toenails or do the laundry): the 2008 ceremony had the lowest ratings in Oscar history with barely 31 million viewers and had fully transitioned to a state of irrelevance to the American culture. The Academy didn’t learn their lesson last year when they failed to nominate The Dark Knight for Best Picture despite overwhelming critical and public support for the film, but better late than never.