Hi there! It’s been so long since I last posted, I could barely find the “New Post” button
So, what’s been keeping me so busy? Well, apart from lots of work, an unexpectedly large tax refund, some illness here and there, and an awesome camp away in Franschhoek this past weekend with other young adults from our church…. Oh yeah, for my birthday a few weeks ago, Deems and family very kindly gave me a voucher to Kalahari.net, which after much deliberation (and I mean “much“…) was converted into two new games for the old ‘puter (much to wifey’s understandable concern)
So I got me paws on “Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II” and “Mass Effect” (wow, what a crappy site…). Now, I know, those aren’t exactly the latest releases, but I run my games on my work laptop, which, while no slouch, is not exactly gamer’s paradise. So I’ve gotta delay a little on the titles, k? Anyway, in short, LOTR is ok. It seems cool, and I can’t find anything huge to fault it on, really, but it just doesn’t grab me either. I suspect my love of the Middle Earth setting is what *almost* saves it…. I played a few missions of that, then figured I’d try out Mass Effect.
Wow. Right now, I’m terrified that the game is going to end. Which would be a bad thing. A quick description to bring you up to speed, if you haven’t seen it: it’s a Sci Fi Roleplaying game. You play the role of a military Commander (in the “Starfleet Alliance” or whatever it’s suitably predictable name is, who cares….?), and basically race around the galaxy in your ship, in your armoured terrestrial lander, or on foot, solving mysteries and blowing up aliens. Nice.
Ok but seriously, the ambience is typical Sci Fi (grand scales, yet a little moody), and so far the game seems to have reasonable depth (I’m really not sure yet that it will have the same depth as RPGs like Neverwinter Nights, for example, and in fact Mass Effect might turn out to be more like an Adventure game….. time will tell) The combat is cool and interesting (minor squad control with issuing of orders, special abilities etc), and interestingly, though the combat control appears to be First-Person Shooter, it really requires more of a strategic approach. The characters are all interesting (both played characters and NPC’s), and the dialog options are smooth and sensible.
Anyway, the game has poor performance on my crappy laptop, but even with my reducing all graphics settings to Atari-like look & feel, it’s still great fun to play. I highly recommend it to anyone who is even vaguely interested in Sci Fi games OR in RPGs.
So, thanks Deems, it’s been a long time since I was excited about getting home to play a game
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