Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 4: Extended Cut

THIS IS PART 4, YOU CAN FIND PART 1 HERE.

Around four months after release, Mass Effect 3 received an alternate ending DLC, with a price of absolutely nothing. The Extended Cut replaces the original ending, but not by default; it needs to be downloaded and installed separately. Unless you’ve got the Wii U version that is, then you’re stuck with the new content.

I actually think it’s great that the original ending’s still there for people to experience first hand, as we should be preserving content like this. Plus developers shouldn’t be able to edit our copies of a game to change the story without permission anyway!

Is it a good thing that BioWare ‘caved’ to their fans at all though? Does it set the medium back as an art form when customers can demand changes when a story doesn’t match their expectations? And does it actually fix anything?

 *** WARNING: ULTIMATE SPOILERS ***

Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 3: The Original Ending

THIS IS PART 3, YOU CAN FIND PART 1 HERE.

I've already talked about Mass Effect 3's gameplay, but now that it's three years later and emotions have calmed down I'm going to revisit the controversial conclusions to the Mass Effect Trilogy and finally answer the question "Is there actually anything left to say about this bloody ending that hasn't been said a thousand times before?"

And the answer is "nope".

Sorry, there just isn't. The game was so thoroughly torn apart back in 2012 that there's absolutely nothing new I can bring to the table.

Though I remember that reviewers at the time didn't really take issue with the game's ending, which is kind of bizarre considering how many of the fans did. My theory is that they were thrown off by the fact that you needed to play multiplayer to boost your War Assets for the best ending, and assumed that they must have gotten a crap outcome. Everyone else playing after release was able to check YouTube afterwards to learn that all endings are the crap outcome.

I don't usually like to call what I write for this site 'reviews' even though they can get a bit conclusiony down at the bottom, because most of the time I haven't finished the games I'm talking about and for some games that really matters. When a game's a story driven as this, that last 1% of plot can make all the difference, just ask a 'Lost' or 'Battlestar Galactica' fan.

So for once I actually am going to be finishing something. Twice over in fact; first with the original ending and then a second time with the reworked Extended Cut DLC installed. And I will have opinions to share.

*** WARNING: MAXIMUM SPOILERS ***

Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 2

Welcome to part two of my epic four part review thing!

In part one I played through the prologue up to getting my ship back.
In part two I'll be going through a typical mission and talking about how the game progresses. I'll put my conclusion here along with the comment box.
In part three I'll be going one step further into madness and analysing that ending to figure out why people were so bothered by it.
In part four I'll be talking about the new ending, and whether BioWare did the right thing by retconning their art. Yes I realise that no one's going to still be reading by this point, but I'm putting a second comment box there anyway.

There'll likely be massive spoilers for the first two games, and I'll be talking about how some major storylines wrap up near the end. See, this is what happens when I actually finish a game for once, I feel like talking about all of it and end up ruining the whole story for people. You should be safe to skip to the conclusion though.

Mass Effect 3 (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

BioWare

|

Release Date:

2012

|

Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm celebrating N7 day by replaying the first couple of missions in Mass Effect 3 and briefly... oh fuck it, I'm going to go and beat the whole game again. No sense in half-assing it after I finished the first two to get here.

Plus I remember there being a bit of controversy about how the game wraps up the (first) Mass Effect trilogy, so I'm going to go through the ending in excruciating detail and share my own thoughts on how it plays out, and whether people were freaking out about nothing. You're not going to get a 47 page let's play out of me, I haven't entirely lost my mind, but this shall be an epic four part article!

PART ONE is what you're reading now, where I'll talk about first couple of hours and show how the game plays. It'll likely spoil the last two games along with the start of this one but not much else.

PART TWO is where I'll talk about the game overall and give my thoughts about it. Likely to be more spoilery. I'll review the game at the end and give you a box to leave non-spoilery comments underneath.

PART THREE is going to reveal my SHOCKING opinions about the unloved original ending of the trilogy, as I go through the final act in the aforementioned excruciating detail. This will have all of the spoilers, maximum spoilers.

PART FOUR is going to quickly go over the changes made for the Extended Cut and whether altering the story was a good idea. It'll also have maximum spoilers, plus a second comments box for you to chat about the ending specifically. If you want.

I'm going to be playing the Windows version so some of my issues will be PC specific (like not being able to click on anything without disabling the Origin overlay first). Also I'm using a fix to enable ambient occlusion on my Nvidia card, following this guide I found on the BioWare forums, so my visuals will look slightly sweeter than the default. Or maybe slightly glitchy and screwed up, it could go either way!

(Click the screenshots to expand them to their original resolution.)

Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse (PC)

Developer:

Heavy Iron

|

Release Date:

2012

|

Systems:

Xbox 360, PS3, Windows

---

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Family Guy™: Back to the Multiverse! Because suffering builds character.

Actually I'm genuinely curious about the game. I remember that reviewers thought it was terrible, but I don’t remember why. Do the jokes just not land or is the gameplay itself rubbish? I’ve a feeling the answer’s going to be ‘both’ but I’ll keep an open mind.

By the way did you know that 'Family Guy’ has been on air for 14 years at this point? It would’ve actually been 15 but the series took 2004 off due to being cancelled. The PC version of the game has taken a year off too, as it suddenly vanished from Steam back in December 2014. It's not alone though, as publisher Activision have pulled a bunch of licensed games over the years, including Deadpool and 007 Legends (it's like they don't even care about my plans to play every Bond game ever). But Deadpool eventually came back, so there’s still hope for Back to the Multiverse!

(Click the screenshots to view them in their original resolution.)

Hell Yeah!: Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (PC)

Developer:

Arkedo

|

Release Date:

2012

|

Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

---

Today on Super Adventures I’m having a go of Hell Yeah!: Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, a game with an exclamation mark in its title.

Yeah yeah, I know I’ve been playing too many modern titles lately, games that have a thousand reviews floating around the internet already, but my Steam backlog won’t clear itself! Also modern 2D platformers are interesting to me, because it’s kind of an undead genre at this point. Time and technology left this style of platformer behind, they were pretty much done (well, barely kept alive on GBA life support). But they’ve since risen from the grave and they’ve been doing pretty well for themselves for a few years now.

Some of them are made to replicate the style of classic 8-bit or 16-bit titles, with pixel graphics and retro gameplay built on the principle that the old platformers are still actually pretty awesome (and cheaper to make). Games like Shovel Knight, La Mulana and Super House of Dead Ninjas definitely fit into this category as they're designed to give gamers a rose-tinted trip back to the early 90s.

And then there's the other type: 21st Century platformers straight out of a parallel universe where the genre never fell out of popularity and carried on evolving. Games like Little Big Planet and Rayman Legends that would rather show off flashy visuals and new ideas than take you back to the past. I'm thinking Hell Yeah! likely fits into category B.

(Click any picture and it'll get bigger, but not as big as you want it to.)

Ys Origin (PC) - Guest Post

Hi, I'm Ray Hardgrit and the following words are not written by me. They were put there by some guy called Jihaus who wants to show off the first hour or so of a game called Ys Origin and infect my site with his opinions.

I've never seen the point in asking guest posters to stick with my rating system though, as everyone's got very different taste and it seems like it'd be misleading somehow. You can only really trust a rating when you know the critic and can compare it against their other reviews. Basically what I'm saying is don't flip out if this doesn't get a 'gold star' badge at the end, as Jihaus doesn't hand the things out.

Developer:

Nihon Falcom

|

Release Date:

2012 (WW)

|

Systems:

Windows

---

Today I'm finally playing Ys Origin on PC, an action RPG with platforming elements and fast-paced combat. I've played my share of Ys games so I'm no stranger to their brand of anime-style characters combined with rockin' music combined with crushing difficulty, and this one in particular uses the same engine as its last two predecessors so it should be relatively familiar territory. I always did find it extremely amusing that the correct pronunciation of "Ys" sounds a lot like "ease", because that is entirely the opposite of what these games tend to be.

Unlike the other games in this series which deal with the adventures of the red-haired swordsman, Adol, this game instead goes in a different direction - specifically, 700 years before the first Ys game in the chronology. Despite the the huge departure, it treads a lot of familiar territory, and fans of the first and second Ys games will see familiar people, places, and terminology. In particular, most of not all of the game takes place in the enormous demon tower of the first game, which has changed little on the outside but got a serious renovation on the inside. That's about the extent of what I know going in anyway, so I can't wait to see what we'll find.

I've heard horrifying things about the difficulty in this particular installment but I will proceed to flagrantly disregard such warnings and play on its hardest difficulty, nightmare. Without further ado, time to die!

(Click images to view them at their original weird-ass 1024 x 578 resolution)

Sleeping Dogs (PC)

Super Adventures' run of spectacular semi-recent story-driven sandbox games starting with 'S' concludes at last with Sleeping Dogs! Here, you can listen to the theme while you read: youtube link.

The game didn't used to start with an 'S', that only happened relatively late in development. It actually began life as a new IP with title Black Lotus (no relation to the Lotus Turbo Challenge games), but publisher Activision decided they'd like to revive their True Crime franchise and relabelled it 'True Crime: Hong Kong' instead. Then three and a half years into development they decided that they'd rather cancel the whole thing altogether, and that was the end of it... until Square Enix stepped in like a big damn hero and saved the day, in a similar way to how Deep Silver saved Saints Row IV. They then retitled it to Sleeping Dogs, which is a decent enough name I guess, though personally I think they should've gone with 'Final Fantasy XV' just to see the reaction they got.

(Click the pictures to view them in an epic screen-filling 1280x720 resolution... well, screen-filling if you've got a tiny little monitor like I do.)

Max Payne 3 (PC)

Hello and welcome to my humble website where I share my first impressions of video games in "humorous" long-winded "articles" that are totally not just lazy game "reviews".

Today I'm taking a quick look at the first few chapters of Max Payne 3. Seemed like the thing to do, seeing as I already played the first two games earlier this year (and the GBA game a few years before that).

Max Payne was originally Remedy Entertainment's series, but Bully developer Rockstar Vancouver took over for the third instalment (presumably because Remedy were busy making Alan Wake). I'm just hoping they're better at making games than they are are making logos because... well just look at that thing! I've never seen a title screen in a AAA video game flicker and glitch out so much.

(Click screenshots to... maximise their resolution. Heh heh.)

Long Live the Queen (PC) - Guest Post

Sorry, can't talk long, too busy. Bad time management and poor decision making on my part has given my scheming friend Jihaus an opportunity to (temporarily) invade my site, so today he'll be sharing what he thinks about this recent indie game. You'd think that with a name like Long Live the Queen this would be a British game about assassinations and intrigue... and it actually is! Also anime girls, apparently. I'll leave Jihaus to explain how that works out.

Today I play Long Live The Queen, a harsh game about medieval court intrigue and politics wrapped up in a deceptively kawaii package. A cursory glance at the main developer, Hanako Games, shows a history of visual novels and casual games for girls which tend to be on the cute side. Of course I know going in that the story is anything but that, and that the title itself is the challenge of the game. Let us see about meeting that challenge then.

(Clicking screenshots will display them at their original resolution).

Crusader Kings II (PC)

My odyssey through the alphabet shall continue, but today I've reached the final 'C' game I'll be playing this year: Crusader Kings II, and man what a C it is; I've definitely saved the best 'til last, typographically speaking.

I have to admit, I've been deliberately putting this off as long as I could, because it seems like it's horrifically complex and strategy games aren't really my genre at the best of times. This is really out of my comfort zone and I won't be surprised if I get hopelessly stuck halfway through the tutorial, and have nothing else to show to you.

I know, tell you what; if the worst case scenario happens and I get absolutely impossibly lost in the game, I'll quit and fill the rest of the space up with more screenshots of Charly the Clown.

(Click the images to restore them to their previous size.)

Alan Wake (PC)

Alright, Alan Wake is the last game beginning with 'A' that I'll be playing this ENTIRE year. I had a few ideas of other games I wanted to check out, plus a couple of requests, but then a friend pointed out that I'd played Max Payne recently and that I should probably play the first game in Remedy's follow up franchise while the memory is still fresh. Better than leaving it sitting in my Steam library for another twelve months anyway.

I'll be playing it on Easy Mode by the way. I usually go with the default or medium difficulty for a game, but for the PC version Easy Mode is the same as the Xbox 360 version's Normal Mode, and I've heard that it's not a game that improves as it gets more challenging.

(Click the images to view them at a slightly less horrifying resolution.)

La-Mulana (PC)

Here's another requested game for y'all. Today I thought I'd play an hour or so of retro platformer La-Mulana which, despite how the title screen may look, isn't actually a late 90s PlayStation game by Konami.

By the way, if you're curious the Japanese text under the logo just says 'La-Mulana' again. I wouldn't want every game title to go bi-lingual, but I've always though English and Japanese text goes well together like that; they compliment each other without making it look messy.

Like Cave Story and Spelunky this started out as a free PC indie game (back in 2005) before getting a more expensive enhanced remake for consoles and Steam a few years later, and it's this new version I'll be looking at. The Windows port I mean; far easier to get screenshots out of a PC than a Wii.

Sonic Adventure 2 (PC)

Today I've been forced (well, asked nicely) to take a look at Sonic Adventure 2, which is something like the 30th of the Sonic games if you count the spin-offs, but the very last to be released on a Sega console. Not that I'll be playing the Dreamcast version; I'm actually going to be checking out the Windows port released a mere 11 years later.

Even before its started it's already proven to be a massive disappointment to me: it didn't have the 'say-gah' jingle at the start.

McPixel (PC)

It's Steam Summer Sale time (2013) so I figured I'd play something vaguely Steam related today, and what better choice than the very first game to make it through Steam Greenlight onto the storefront: McPixel!

Actually now that I think about it Half-Life 2 would've probably been the smarter choice, but screw it I've already loaded this up now. It's too late, I'm on the title screen.

Despite the title this isn't actually another McDonalds tie-in game. Instead it's apparently inspired by legendary 80s TV series MacGyver, that everyone on Earth seems to have seen but me. Unfortunately all I know about the series is that the lead actor went on to play that bloke on Stargate originally portrayed by Snake Plissken, so any direct references will be completely lost on me. But I'm totally expecting to be combining things with things to do other things.

Little Inferno (PC)

Today I'm planning to find out exactly what this Little Inferno thing I've heard so much about is. All I know is that it was developed in part by 50% of the team that gave humanity World of Goo (artist/composer/designer etc. Kyle Gabler), and that it's meant to be a satire about dumb time-wasting unrewarding videogames. But I'm hardly the kind of person who constantly throws their time away on tedious pointless games, so it's possible that the entire message may go drifting past my head when it emerges.

(Click the pics to see them in relatively huge 1280x960-o-vision).

Legend of Grimrock (PC)

Today's game is Dungeon Master inspired retro RPG Legend of Grimrock. I'm going to find out what it's like and how to play it, and then pass that information onto you, dear reader, as that is what I do. Then I'll probably make a bunch of dumb mistakes, misunderstand some fundamental gameplay concepts, get hopelessly lost, and then quit out of sheer frustration about an hour or so into it, as I tend to do that as well I've noticed.

This one wasn't my idea by the way. I actually got a request to play this months ago and I'm sorry it took me so damn long to for me to get around to it.

(Click the pictures to view them as a big jpg compression artefact corrupted mess instead of a little jpg compression artefact corrupted mess. Handy if you want to have a fighting chance to read the text.)

Angry Birds Space (PC)

Well, looks like today I'm playing Angry Birds Space then. Not to be confused with Angry Birds Star Wars which is presumably also set in space, but with more lightsabers or wookies or whatever. This is actually the fourth game in the unfathomably successful Angry Birds franchise and the first I'm going to sit down to play for more than 20 seconds. With any luck.

Honestly, I'm as surprised as anyone that I'm playing this, but someone thought it'd be hilarious to gift me a copy and ask me to write it up for the site. Not that I'm ungrateful, much the opposite, it's just... well, it's Angry Birds. How am I supposed to get an entire post out of this?

They Bleed Pixels (PC)

Here's another game requested by the internet: cute Lovecraftian horror platformer They Bleed Pixels, available exclusively on Steam I believe. Sorry if you were hoping I was going to play another obscure retro game, but hey this looks a bit retro at least. Plus it only uses two buttons, just like a NES game! Kind of.

(Click the pictures to see them at the original resolution.)

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (PC)

Dark Souls scares me. All the hype I've been hearing about the extreme difficulty has set it up in my imagination to be something as challenging as Super Ghouls'N Ghosts, except with loading times, and honestly that combination doesn't much appeal to me. But I was asked to play it, so I'll just have to man up and give it a fair shot. Or at least play long enough to give myself something to whine about.

I'm using DSfix to push the internal resolution (slightly) past the default 1024x720, so hopefully the screenshots won't look like ass if you click the pics for a better view.