Never Too Old To Play™

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.

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.

Saw came out of nowhere in October 2004 to take the movie industry by storm and become the most successful horror franchise in history. The refreshingly different thriller, directed by previously unknown filmmaker James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell who also played one of the supporting characters, was shot for about $1.2 million and went on to gross over $100 million worldwide, later spawning five sequels and now a video game.

Like the film sequels, the game focuses significantly less on the sense of thrill and mystery that made the original movie so great and more on the gore that seems to get more explicit as each year passes (and a new Saw film arrives in theaters) to the delight of today’s shock horror fans. The game isn’t nearly as gory as the more recent sequels – understandable, since Konami took over the project early on (Japanese game companies eschew overly graphic violence) in the hopes they had found a spiritual successor to their dying Silent Hill franchise and no country’s ratings board would approve a game of that nature – but includes enough blood and body parts to give the player a sense of its film origins.

Ultimately, the game is made for fans of the series. Konami hired Wan and Whannell to write a whole new story that ties into the overall Saw legend, and it works very well both as a piece of the overall puzzle and as a standalone arc that continues from the original movie’s plot (in case you didn’t stick with the franchise after the first film). The setting – a long abandoned psychiatric institution in which the staff conducted all sorts of vile experiments on their patients – is exactly the kind of place the Jigsaw Killer (played appropriately by the films’ Tobin Bell) might choose to test his captives. And references to the movies are abundant: newspaper clippings scattered about the hospital tell the backstory about the Jigsaw case, doctor’s notes hint at John Kramer’s psychological evolution into the Jigsaw Killer and various rooms showcase the aftermath of some of Kramer’s tests.

As former detective David Tapp, portrayed in the original film by veteran actor Danny Glover but voiced here by Earl Alexander (who played Louis in Left4Dead), you have to make your way through the dilapidated hospital avoiding instant death traps (doors and tripwires rigged with shotguns that pulverize your head), broken glass strewn on the floor (an ultimately annoying obstacle to deal with that doesn’t really advance or complement the gameplay in any way) and violent thugs who have been trapped here by the Jigsaw Killer and tasked with removing a key stitched into your body.

Following instructions left to you on mini cassette recorders and through the intercom (often accompanied by video footage played on strategically positioned television sets), you must solve a slew of “light” puzzles in order to gather the things you need in order to get to the victims you are meant to save, all of whom have some sort of past relationship with Tapp. For example, one victim is the wife of the late detective Steven Sing, Tapp’s former partner who was killed by a trap when the two of them broke into Jigsaw’s old hideout.

The traps holding each of these victims, and the puzzles you have to solve to beat them, are by far the most interesting part of the game. Whether you’re playing Jigsaw’s demented version of Concentration where each wrong turn results in a steel rod spearing a victim’s body part or his alternative take on Pengo where passing over too many designated spots causes an elaborate iron maiden to swing shut, you’ll rest at ease with some sense of satisfaction after having rescued each inevitably irritable and ungrateful captive.

Unfortunately, you won’t feel quite as good going through all the repetitive gameplay of the vast areas in between each of the major tests. Aside from having to avoid the obstacles listed above, you’ll find yourself at the mercy of sluggish controls and a monotonous combat system reminiscent of the Silent Hill games. Combat is never enjoyable but is thankfully pretty easy for the most part as you only face one real boss character who can be very easily taken out with certain features of the environment – during the rest of the games, you’ll just be facing peons who can’t hack any real pain.

Worse than the combat, though, are the basic puzzles thrown at you when you do things like pick locked doors or open weapon cases. These challenges, if you can call them that, involve fairly mundane and repetitive tasks that get old very quickly; in fact, many of them cycle through a small handful of choices so you start seeing the same puzzles very early on (there’s even one puzzle that is exactly the same every single time you see it). Unfortunately, you have to go through them so often during the game that by the end you’ll be able to solve most of them in your sleep.

On the graphics front, anyone hoping for outstanding visuals should look elsewhere. While the game looks far from horrible, it is definitely a game that could have been done on a previous generation console. It’s surprising the development team didn’t put a whole lot of effort into taking advantage of the powerful Unreal Engine 3 – there’s a painfully conspicuous gap between the quality of graphics in this game and those in Batman: Arkham Asylum, BioShock and Mass Effect. If you’re going to pay for that kind of technology, you might as well leverage its capabilities, especially when it comes to how the characters look: there are only four or five different enemy models, and Tapp and the other central victims don’t look remarkable at all.

The team did seem to put a decent amount of effort into the presentation and overall art style of the game, however. The design of the hospital is formidably creepy although there isn’t a lot of variation in the environment – other than the major testing chambers, you’re basically either in a tiled bathroom, a decrepit hallway, a dirty storage room, a bloody examination room, or a ruined patient’s quarters. The doors all look the same. The floors all look the same.

Like I said earlier, this is a game made specifically for fans, and this is quite obvious during every second of the game. However, only the parts of the game that are closest in spirit to the content of the movies, the puzzles, really work as far as gameplay is concerned with everything in between – the flaky combat in particular – coming off like arbitrary filler created without much thought as to why it should even be in the package.

The story, however, is decent and expands upon what fans already know about several characters in the series so if you’ve seen all of the movies I could certainly recommend this as a rental or a buy if you can find a store selling it at discount.

Final score: 3 out of 5 for fans; 2 out of 5 for non-fans

Parent to parent

This is a game based on the Saw film franchise. If you’ve never seen any of those movies, perhaps you should watch one to see firsthand what the series is all about. If you’re not inclined to do that, I can save you the time by saying, “Don’t buy this game for children.” It shouldn’t be a problem for older teens, though.

Experience this for yourself!

• SAW (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• SAW (PlayStation 3) (Amazon)

What do you get when you combine cutting edge graphics technology, well-designed platform gameplay, production values so high they blur the lines between video game and cinema, and a story line that rivals the most recent big screen adventure of a certain fedora-wearing, whip-wielding archaeologist?

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is easily one of the best games available on the PlayStation 3, rivaled only by its recently released sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. For that matter, it’s one of the best games for any platform – console, handheld and PC – of the past several years. The PlayStation 3 might as well not have existed prior to Uncharted’s November 2007 launch date as the game was the first really solid title for the system, the one that truly declared the arrival of Sony’s console.

In Uncharted, you take on the role of one Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter archaeologist type who is searching for El Dorado, the fabled city of gold, with a diary written by his ancestor Sir Francis Drake, famed sea captain, privateer and pirate. With the help of journalist Elena Fisher, along for the ride to gather notes and film footage for a documentary, and your old friend Victor “Sully” Sullivan, you explore thick jungle, enemy base camps, hidden caves, and ancient ruins all the while fighting off pirates and soldiers on your quest to discover the lost city.

As you can probably surmise from my brief overview of the game, Uncharted offers a mix of shooter and platform gameplay as Drake puts his climbing, jumping, swinging, fighting, and shooting skills to the test against the various obstacles in his way.

In this sense, the game feels like a superior version of the Tomb Raider series of games with Drake navigating along edges, jumping across chasms or pillars, and otherwise exploring beautifully rendered environments.

When combat comes into play, you have the option of taking cover behind whatever objects are in the immediate vicinity. Actually, it’s more a necessity than an option since Drake isn’t a heavily armored, genetically enhanced super soldier in green armor and, when you think about it, even Fenix, Dom, Cole Train and Baird in their heavy armor can’t stand out in the open in the middle of combat for very long – all Drake has is a half tucked-in shirt!

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Uncharted is the exquisite graphics which are more advanced than those of any other console game this generation with the exception of the Uncharted 2. The impressive amount of detail and clarity in the environments, the high-resolution textures plastered across walls and objects, and the layers of animation used to create realistic facial expressions and more fluid motion amount to a veritable bonanza of eye candy like none seen before in any console game.

The high-quality visual experience you get in this game is absolutely mind-blowing and is one of the only real examples of what’s possible when a developer harnesses the potential of the PlayStation 3’s Cell processor. We’re not talking extreme close-ups on a character in a cutscene made possible by diverting resources away from the environments, physics, artificial intelligence, etc. as in a game like Heavenly Sword but organic water effects, natural movement of foliage, and lush and vibrant environments that you’re actually moving around in while you’re playing the game. This is what the PlayStation 3 is all about.

Of course, the best graphics in the world can only take a game so far. Without an entertaining story with well written dialogue and a solid plot, even the best-looking game can fall flat. Thankfully, Uncharted’s story is exactly what we need more of in the video game industry. Granted, it’s not an epic space opera like Mass Effect’s or a sophisticated dystopian tale of the downfall of man like BioShock’s, but it is an action-packed, light-hearted, fun adventure that would have made a better Indiana Jones movie than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (and, incidentally, is being adapted into a film right now by Columbia Pictures under the guidance of Avi Arad, former CEO of Toy Biz and head of Marvel Studios).

Unfortunately, the game is a bit short, leaving players wanting for much more by the time the credits roll. A decent gamer could probably get through the game on the standard difficulty level in seven or eight hours assuming a little time for trial and error as well as taking in the sights. A good gamer could probably burn through the campaign in five or six hours. Add to that the fact that there is very little replay value with no multiplayer modes – subsequent jaunts through the game are really only useful for collecting arbitrary hidden treasures which can unlock alternate costumes, making-of videos and concept art.

Nevertheless, the relatively short time you’ll spend in the South American jungles searching for the riches hidden in El Dorado will be some of the most entertaining you’ll have playing a video game this generation. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is one of the few masterpieces of recent times with all the necessary ingredients for a near-perfect debut of a soon-to-be classic video game franchise.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

The gunplay and a possibly scary development in the last part of the game probably makes this game unsuitable for young children, but there’s really no reason to not let kids who are at least in the tail end of elementary school play this game. Uncharted is essentially a video game version of an Indiana Jones movie with a fun, adventurous vibe.

Experience this for yourself!

• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PlayStation 3 Greatest Hits) (Amazon)
• PlayStation 3 160GB Uncharted Bundle (Amazon)