Age Rating:

12 (BBFC)

What is it?

A Bioware RPG witha futuristic space-colony setting and third-person-cover combat

It is fun?

Hell, yes.

Is it worth the money?

(£39.99)

Yes, yes, yes. At £1 per hour, it’s very good value for money.

Why?

I love western-style RPGs. I love sci-fi settings. And I love taking cover during combat. I love Mass Effect. This game is almost made for me :)

There are flaws. I talked about Mass Effect’s dialogue issue back in December. The inventory interface is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen, as is the party selection menu. Still, I had so much fun playing the game itself that I don’t really care.

The Good:

• Purpose - You have actual goals throughout the game that aren’t simply “shoot everything in sight”. Sure, that’s generally the means to your end, but at least there’s a purpose behind it.
• Combat - The combat system is great. It’s like Gears of War but less frustrating. Gears feels like you’re wearing a huge chunk of magnetic armour and everything else is made of iron. Mass Effect gives you more control when running and it’s far easier to go around things.
• Breadth - You have a giant world to explore. This isn’t a sandbox game but you can spend hours just exploring the Citadel and pick up lots of side-quests
• A useful journal! Longtime readers will know, I’m a bit fanatic about RPG journals. This one does the job, though could have done with listing the target locations more prominently. Iinstead, you’re forced to open up every single item repeatedly, to find the nearby missions.
• Force powers Biotics - These mysterious powers are great fun. There’s a little something for everyone - healing, direct damage, disabling, shields, sharpshooting… I love it. None of them look quite as spectacular as KOTOR2’s Force Storm, but the combination of Lift and an assault-rifle-wielding teammate looks impressively violent.
• Advancement - I’m not sure if BioWare did a sneaky enemies-level-up-with-you but if they did, it was very subtle and much more satisfying than Oblivion. In Oblivion as you got more powerful, it never felt that way because even the lowliest grass-dwelling bandit mysteriously sprouted glass armour and would kick your sorry ass unless you specialised in combat. In Mass Effect, you can do the majority of the game in any order and it’s always challenging, but you still get the feeling of becoming more powerful.

The Bad:

• The interface and dialogue system. The interface will need a whole post to explain, so I’ll save that for another time. Just trust me, it’s rubbish.
• Uncharted worlds - These are fun to start with. The first time you get dropped on an uncharted world, it’s a breathtakingly beautiful scene. The next hundred and fifty seven times start to grate. Ultimately, the uncharted worlds all feel the same - drive around from way point to way point, drive in circles shooting something, fall off a mountain, find building, kill everyone, search back room (or for variety, upstairs back room), play unlocking mini-game, The End. But it’s the only way to get that level 50 achievement so, for some insane reason, I did them all. There’s no way I’m going for level 60 on another playthrough.
• Repetition - The endless combat in corridors for the main quest does get a little samey after a while.
• Achievements - If you collect gamerpoints compulsively, Mass Effect will swallow you for days. Assuming that you play as efficiently as possible, you’ll have to play the game all the way through twice and the middle four planets at least once more with different allies. Considering it took me around 40 hours to hit level 50 with almost all the sidequests, that’s something in the region of 80-100 hours to get all the gamerpoints. I’d advise you to rent Avatar: The Burning Earth instead, but you probably already did.
• Tower of Hanoi - Has BioWare ever made an RPG that didn’t feature the Tower of Hanoi? I’ve been solving this puzzle for at least 15 years now. I know it was in KOTOR and I’m sure I saw it in another BioWare game. Here’s a compromise; show us the puzzle and have a character ask what it is. If we answer Tower (or Towers) of Hanoi we get a free pass, okay?

In summary:

It’s a brilliant space-shooter RPG. Mass Effect would get my vote for Game of The Year 2007.

Mysteriously HUD-Free Screenshots

• RPG Journal Part I - The Basics
• RPG Journal Part II - The Categories
• RPG Journal Part III - Information
• RPG Journal Part IV - Maps

Inventory

When I pick up an as-yet-unrevealed quest item, please please please, log it in the journal. I can’t stand it when you find odd items like A Toothbrush with no clue as to its importance. I learned my gaming habits from playing Steve Meretzky games. Did anyone else get caught out by leaving the screwdriver back in Arthur’s house in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy? Or have their Simpleberry Bush confiscated in Spellcasting 201: The Sorceror’s Applicance? Growing up with those games has left me with a healthy inventory-centric paranoia.

(For those unacquainted with the games in question, you would get these items near the start of the game. They were fairly unassuming and sometimes used for other purposes during the game. They were also required near the end. You could leave them inaccessible locations throughout the game and only find out that you needed them back after days of intensive puzzle-solving.

A distasteful design practice now but apparently acceptable then. Personally, I think that the quality of writing more than made up for those particularly evil, evil, EVIL mechanics.)

A-hem… and back to the topic at hand. Flag up quest items, please. It can be a simple as this:

Found a mysterious flamey feather today. I wonder what it came from…

Short and piques your interest, yet doesn’t give anything away. Much more immersive than World of Warcraft’s utilitarian ‘This starts a quest.’

There’s one thing more crucial than logging the presence of a quest item. It’s this:

Where did I leave the damn thing?

Most CRPGs have an inventory limit. It can be astoundingly frustrating - you drop a seemingly-innocent useless item. Two weeks later you’re happily playing along and you get “Bring me the Helm of Arturoc from Godwin’s Cove”. You think “Ooo, yeah, I’ve been to Godwin’s Cove. I was carrying that Helm around for ages.” And then your heart sinks as you remember clearing all the junk from your inventory back in… where was it again?

This heart-breaking problem is easily solved by another simple journal entry:

Got sick of lugging the silly Helm of Arturoc around the place. Left it in Bethesda.

Hooray! Problem solved.

Check back soon for the quick summary of this article series.

I do apologise. Here is part 4 of How To Write an RPG Journal - Maps. Turns out maps are quite big enough to warrant their own section. For those of you who missed the series back in January, have a look at RPG Journal Part I - The Basics, RPG Journal Part II - The Categories, and RPG Journal Part III - Information.

Maps

Maps are important. Incredibly important. Even when your game isn’t the size of World of Warcraft. I know, it’s not the sort of thing that gets mentioned in reviews. Trust me, the map feature is sorely missed if it’s not there.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If I recall, it didn’t have a map. If it did have a map, it was next-to-useless. Remember that giant bird cage in the menagerie? I climbed all the way to the top of that. Then I went on holiday. When I came back a month later I had no idea where I’d been or where I was going. I spent a few days running around in large but unproductive circles before moving on to a more rewarding game. Seamlessly-blended levels are pretty and immersive but make everything look very samey.

In other words:

Distinguish between explored and unexplored areas. Please do it. I don’t care if you use a fog-of-war or just change the colour. Choose the best internally-consistent logic for you. If I’m in a city then it makes sense to have a visible map. If I’m wandering around unexplored countryside, it’s fair to hide the fine detail of an unexplored area. ’tis all good as long as I can tell where I’ve already been.

Make notes: Notes are the second most significant part of mapping. Please, if you’re going to say things like “Meet me at Moire’s house” then have the courtesy to mark it on the map. If you can’t be bothered to do that, let me add my own notes. I have to say, the Cartographer add-in for World of Warcraft is indispensable. With the number of ‘get me x amount of y‘ quests, I don’t know what I’d do without the ability to mark “Here Be Sunscale Scytheclaws”.

Well, okay, I do know. I’d look it up on Thottbot. I don’t like doing that because it breaks my immersion and is sort of cheating-ish. Give me the tools to do it myself.

Come back next week for part 5 - Inventory. I promise it will be here. I’ve already written most of it.

This post is all about fleshing out your RPG journal. Make it useful. I’m not about to tell anyone how to write. Rather, I’ll focus on what to include and what’s safe to discard.

Record everything

RPG quests can be horrifically complex. Well-written dialogue provides a lot of information. Journals for computer role-playing games are there to take some of the strain out of remembering. Don’t forget, us gamers are busy people. Between blogging, learning VB.net, having a social life, household chores and everything else, remembering the fine details of a D&D computer RPG quest is pretty low on the list. It is crucial not to overlook pertinent facts when writing a journal. Here’s a list of things you should include in every quest entry.

• What or who gave me the information
• Where to find them later
• What they’ll give me in return for doing their menial task
• What I’ve already done
• Where I should go next

By no means am I advocating a dumb “go here and do this” journal. When it’s appropriate to the mission, it’s much better to simply say “I have heard that Joraq is hiding in Mardon’s bar,” when he’s not, than to spell everything out. We gamers like to think now and then, though we keep that well-hidden.

A Bad Journal Entry

Using an example from NeverWinter Nights 2: I had to talk to every guard post in the Docks and convince them to ignore the highly illegal actions of Moire’s gang. I played this mission over two sessions. On the second session, I logged in, checked my journal and had the following entry:

“Your sweep of the Docks is nearly complete, you have only one guardpost left to visit”

Well, great. The writer managed to check both the “What I have done” and “What to do next” boxes while simultaneously providing no information whatsoever. Last time I played this game was three weeks ago. He or she may as well as written “Yeah, I talked to some guys. Still gotta talk to some other guys.”

Fortunately, this entry was saved (barely) by putting the location of the final guardpost on the map, not that I knew this at the time.

A Good Journal Entry

A good journal entry for the same quest would look like this:

I have already convinced three of the guard posts to ignore the criminal activities of Moire’s gang. I just need to visit the last one in the north-east corner of the Docks area before reporting back to Moire’s house. It’s a good thing she marked all the posts on my map.

Please overlook the slightly ham-fisted exposition. I am not a fantasy writer.

A Great Journal Entry

A great entry would look like this:

“These guards are useless. No wonder Moire’s thieves practically run the Docks as it is. Outside the tavern, I just had to mention her name and they crumbled. The guards stationed by the armoury almost showed some backbone but caved when I slapped them a round a bit. In the north-east corner I paid the sergeant a bit of money to work for me but we’ll keep that quiet from Moire for now. I just need to visit the guardpost round the back of the Watch House and then it’s back to Moire’s for tea, biscuits and a few thousand gold pieces. Sweet.”

See how that works? Obviously, it’s much easier for me to write the above entry after the fact than it is to create entries using a database or other data-driven system to write plain English. I get that. Still, the ‘good’ entry should be entirely within reach of everyone.

So far I only know of one game where the journal truly aspired to greatness. That was Planescape: Torment and it succeeded magnificently. Sure, the game had other flaws. In some parts the plot was entirely driven by the journal but hey, I’m talking about journals. I’ll ignore that fact.

Check back in a few days for Part IV: Maps and Inventory

RPGs. Role Playing Games. Games where the emphasis is on role-playing and story, choosing what missions to complete and how you complete them.

By their very essence, computer RPGs are complex. You can have five or more different tasks to juggle at the same time and for each task you can choose to do them a different way in order to achieve a different outcome. Gee, what would be useful to keep track of this? Why, a journal of course. How convenient that the game developers provided one for me. Now I don’t need to write everything down and lose it because the game will keep track of all the details, right?

Wrong.

So many times, I have seen journals that just don’t keep track of enough information. Or even worse, they update and you lose half the information you were relying on. So, over the next week or so, I am going to write the definitive How To guide for RPG journals. Some of it will be obvious to a lot of you, but trust me. I have played games that miss out even the most basic features. So, here we go…

The Absolute Basics

To start with, every journal needs the following information:

What quests have I found?
I like to wander around and talk to everyone in a room before I actually do anything. I’m not gonna remember all those trailheads.

What quests have I started?
Hey, it’s entirely possible to hear about a quest and do nothing about it. Or accidentally do part of a quest without realising. Personally, I like to keep trailheads apart from ongoing quests but that’s optional.

What quests have I finished?
It’s not good enough to simply delete a quest from the log once it’s finished, a la Guild Wars. In fact, it’s downright silly. Save games get lost. People play through twice to take the alternative path. I know I finished Guild Wars’ ‘Althea’s Ashes’ but was it with this character or another? I can’t remember. I have a life. (Contrary to what Boris Johnson would have you believe, but who takes him seriously anyway? Side note: check out the comment over there by Aranpreet Bhangal, a 14-year old who puts Boris and most commenters to shame most eloquently. One to watch, that kid.)

Back to the topic at hand - journals in cRPGs. They’re bloody useful when done well and an incredible liability when done poorly. Ideally you want to tie them into the map and inventory to help players keep things straight. Deus Ex 2 had a great premise of being able to choose who to follow but the clunky journal system made it almost impossible to keep track of what the heck was going on. I played the game for maybe 7 hours at the most before I had to stop. I had no idea which faction I was helping. I had maps and photos of all sorts of locations that I didn’t remember. By then, I just didn’t care enough to play on.

In the later posts I’ll talk about how to avoid problems like that by focusing on the details.

Murloc RPG puts you in the role of Murk, an inexperienced Murloc warrior. Your accomplishments shall surely grant you everlasting glory, at least until an adventurer finds your village…

• 20 Talents
• 50+ Items
• Tons of enemies to battle
• Fully developed storyline
• Lots of areas to explore

It looks good. It also does a bloody good job of modelling the early levels of every MMORPG known to man. Yep, your first quest is go out and get the chief 10 chunks of meat. Wolf meat, in this case. Here’s your rusty knife. Try not to yawn too loudly.

It could benefit from a few more keyboard controls, especially in battle. I’m a big fan of one-handed games. The sound is pretty repetitive as is the grind. Nonetheless, it’s an entertaining flash game. Try it out. You get 3 save slots so turn the sound off at work. It’ll make a great long-term alternative to Solitaire.

Screenshots:

Links:
Murloc RPG on XGenStudios
Gamer Disclaimer
World of Warcraft Community Spotlight Archive

[via GamingTags]

Chaos Strikes Back followed a couple of years later utilising the same 3D engine but with the addition of some very fiendish level design and tough new monsters produced what was a very challenging game. You could also play Chaos Strikes Back using the characters you’d previously developed whilst playing Dungeon Master which led to many people revisting DM to train up their characters.

Finally, after a 6 year wait (sounds familiar - Valve and HL2) Dungeon Master II appeared on the PC in 1995 with much improved graphics and sound but still with the classic gameplay intact. It was more evolution rather than revolution which is possibly why the game didn’t perform well at retail. And then nothing. Dungeon Master was no more.

Skip forward to the present day. You can now relive the wonder that is Dungeon Master on your PC thanks to George Gilbert and his Return to Chaos programming project. You can download the latest version of it here (8.9mb). Unfortunately, no Dungeon Master like game has ever appeared on any of the recent consoles (there was Labyrinth on the PSOne, promo screenshots in EDGE in 1995 but the game was never released. Anyone remember this?) Well, maybe Dungeon Siege has been the closest we’ve got to a modern version of DM come to think of it. We’ve really got enough football, driving and GTA games at the moment thanks very much, how about some dungeon action?

Some features of Return to Chaos:

• Only 8.9mb in size
• No installation required - unzip to a folder and run the RTC.exe
• DM and Chaos Strikes Back both fully playable as well as a zoo level populated by all the monsters in DM
• DM II has recently been added (some levels of the game are still in development though)
• Dungeon Editor - create/edit dungeons/traps/monsters
• Custom dungeons - create your own with the editor or download them from here
• Frequent updates - bug fixes, additional features like new maps and new spells

So there you have it. If you fancy a bit of classic 3D adventuring then Dungeon Master is the game for you!

Screenshots:

The bad:

• HUD map looks like a SONAR reading - no landmarks, just blips for people.
• No detailed local area map or visible signposting, so I spent 10 minutes wandering around in circles trying to leave the town.
• No automatic attack - you have to keep pressing the fire button. That wouldn’t be so bad, but…
• No reload time indicator - I have no idea how long to wait before pressing the fire button again will do anything!
• No blood when I shoot something - okay, that’s just me being evil.
• No HUD ammo indicator - how do I know when I’m running out?
• Running speed is waaaay too slow for the size of the game. Just walking across town is tediously boring because…
• Pathfinding sucks - characters can navigate around pillars but can’t cope with corners.
• Viewing distance is appalling - even at highest setting you don’t see creatures until you’re practically on top of them.

I could be wrong on some of these, but the basic tutorial was rubbish! It took me through the intricacies of adjusting gamma and detail in the options menu (move scrollbar left or right!) but nothing really useful. By the time I’d crawled my way out of the city at snail’s pace I just couldn’t be bothered to explore any farther. There could be the most intricate and emotionally engaging story ever written behind that game, but if I have walk through this world to get it… I’ll pass, thanks.

Oh yeah, and in the space of 10 minutes, I had three kills stolen by other players. Urgh…

The good:

• The concept - magic + technology is usually pretty cool, right?
• The atmosphere - I like the (optional) public announcements for departures and ticket-buying in the station.
• Creatures look good.
• The huuuuuge metal thingy in the character selection thingy makes mechanical clanky noises. I like machinery, okay?
• Drops are assigned to players.
• The artwork associated with this game is breathtaking. Pity it doesn’t make it into the backgrounds.

Pity the gameplay is rubbish. I much prefer Guild Wars with its fast-paced combat, no kill-stealing, automatic basic attack, skill reload indicators, fantastic backdrops and general all-around goodness.

Screenshots: