So I was thinking of what to write next and I’ve spent the last 40 to 50 hours playing Mass Effect 3. I’ve taken my sweet time with this and really tried to enjoy it and savor every moment of my Commander Sheppard’s trilogy ending experience. Besides the Xbox, PS3 and PC version of Mass Effect 3 there’s also the ioS Mass Effect Infiltrator game for $6.99 and the Mass Effect 3 Data Pad app.

The Mass Infiltrator game on ioS controls like your typical touch screen controls which provides a very clunky experience and often irritates the user. I played the first two levels and gave up on the game.

What I like is the Mass Effect 3 Data pad application. This data app provides you access to Alliance news, Mail, Media, Galaxy at War and Codex. The keys for me for this app was the Galaxy at War section this provides the player with a view of the map and how well from a percentage stand point how ready you are to defeat the Reapers. You start at 50% ready when you start Mass Effect 3 and throughout the course of the game doing the main missions and side missions you increase your galactic readiness. There is no skill required for the data app, click a system, pick a planet and send your ship to battle after a set period of time from 1 hour to 6 hours you’ll receive credits and your galactic readiness will increase. You start with 3 ships but over the course of completing missions you earn credits to buy more ships, better shielding, more readiness points. I’ve used this app a ton to help me in my battle against the Reapers and highly recommend that anyone playing Mass Effect 3 who has an ioS device get this FREE application.

There are a couple of things that I don’t really like about Mass Effect 3 mining and the lack there of a proper explanation on what Galactic Readiness is and why it’s important to your game.

We all remember how terrible the mining in ME 2 was well they’ve streamlined the process but god damn it just eliminate this useless feature. So how it works is you send off a beacon and EDI let’s you know there is an anomaly in the area. Once an anomaly is detected you go to the planet and start scanning. Scanning will detect where you should shoot a probe (unlimited probes!!!!) and generally after collecting whatever it was on the planet it’s time to head back to the Citadel and hand over the object to the mission giver. The catch here is that you can’t simply press the LT trigger to the beacon to scan the systems if you do it to much you’ll alert the Reapers and they’ll come ready to kill you.

When you start the game and do a couple missions your brought into the war room and your shown the galactic map and which outlines how infested the universe is with Reapers. Throughout the course of the game you need to procure war assets and increase your galactic readiness that will help shape the final battle and outcome in the game. I strongly believe the game did a piss poor job in explaining all of this to me.

What also surprised the hell out of me was the multiplayer and how fun, addicting and competent it is. The premise is Horde mode with 3 other players against 10 waves enemy forces. During the course of the match there are some objective based waves were you’ll need to hack terminals for example on top of killing on the baddies that are trying to kill you.

There is an RPG element into this as well that I really like. You can pick your class and race and set your character up. What skills do you upgrade, what weapons and upgrades do you attach. Most importantly through micro transactions or through earning in game credits you can unlock more characters and better weapons. You receive the starter pack when you first start the game. The recruit pack costs 5,000 credits and is a way great way to upgrade and unlock basic weapons, mods and characters. The veteran pack is 20,000 credits or 80MS points to buy which includes 5 random items or characters and 1 uncommon item. The Spectre pack is 60,000 credits or 160MS points, which includes 5 random items or characters with at least 1 rare item. In my experience of playing online I have yet to encounter your typical 14 year old tea bag mother cursing douche bag yet and that’s made me want to go back and play more.

Well I think I’ve avoided any spoilers and now I’m off to hopefully finish the game after milking it and doing every side quest I could.

The game starts off with a gentleman by the name of Lee Everett riding along in the back of a cop car on his way to prison for a crime he may or may not have done. Somewhere on his journey to his 8 by 8 cell the zombie apocalypse starts. Injured and freaked out Lee makes his way to a suburban neighborhood and comes across a young girl named Clementine and now it has become his duty to ensure she stays alive and safe and return her to her parents.

Since this was my first experience with a Telltale game the conversation tree was interesting and I had live by some of the lies I had Lee tell. When someone has a question to in the game your presented with three options and the fourth is not to say anything and remind silent. You have a limited time to choose an answer. There was a situation early on in the game where I lied to Herschel and later on in a cut scene he called me out on lying to him. So be careful on what respond with, as it will affect this episode and as well future episodes.

Don’t worry you’ll get to kill a lot of zombies throughout of this game with axes and ice picks and you’ll even have to decide on several occasions who should live and who should be eaten by the zombies. My favorite chapter in the game was the motel level where there were about 5-6 zombies that you had kill. You had to plot your way around the level to kill the zombie’s quietly in order to not to startle the rest of the herd. This brings me to my only complaint of the game, which are the controls. You use the left stick to control Lee and the right analog stick. You use the right analog stick to interact with the environments and to fight off zombies if they attack you. I just found it this cursor took up too much the space on the screen and often led to me dying repedately.

If you enjoy the Walking Dead comic and television show and can live by the decisions you have your character make you should really pick up episode 1.

What concern’s me the most about the Vita is the steep $249.99 price tag. I’m not saying this isn’t a sexy little machine but if you rewind a year ago the Nintendo DS launched for the same price and saw a distract price cut by $80 before the one year anniversary of the console. Yes, the Vita has a bigger and better launch line up but are customers willing to pay that price tag?. The games are ranging anywhere from $29.99 to $49.99 for retails game. If you care to purchase the game digitally? most games not all are 10% cheaper in the PSN store. Are consumer’s willing to pay such a step price for games given the risen of the ITunes App store and the content on there? Hopefully takes a cue from Valve and does some major promotions on games during the holidays. Don’t worry they will continue to rape us on the cost of the proprietary memory chips.

One of the first thing’s I noticed when I opened the box to my new Vita was this hideous three piece power cord. Seriously could make this any more complex. Plug A into B and B into C before you can start charging and it looks ugly. The cord is also 6 feet long. Please have a designer make things before involving an engineer or just take a look on how Apple operates.

One of the biggest complaint’s of the original PSP and PSP Go was the lack of dual analogs while that’s been changed with the Vita with dual analog sticks. The problem with the dual analog stick’s is there height above the screen is kept to a minimal to make it portable. The issue with this is this handicaps them and makes games like shooter’s very tough because you can’t get a good enough grip and move them quick enough like you would on a console controller.

The Vita comes with a front facing camera and a rear facing camera with technical specs of 640×480 (0.3MP) VGA which on paper are the same specs the Nintendo 3DS uses. However, the vita’s image’s aren’t very good compared to the 3DS. The 3DS produces a better coloured imaged. Sure the iPad or iPhone camera will kill this thing but is the camera in the vita an essential element to the success of the device? I don’t think it is but I’m sure they could have put something a bit better in.

One of the most important things on any hardware device is how does the operating system and software cope with it. For the most part I like it but there are some little things that I don’t like. For example, I click an icon on the home screen like Uncharted, I expect that the game will launch and I can start playing. But that doesn’t happen it brings up an interstitial page and ask’s me are you sure you want to launch this game?. Another is that trophies still do not automatically sync, like come on Sony get with the times.

What I like about the screen is it’s gorgeous at 5 inches and it’s an OLED screen. Better yet it’s touch screen too and it’s really good. The touch is responsive and there isn’t any lag. For me it’s as responsive and as iPhone or iPad. Where the touch screen doesn’t get as responsive as it should is during games. I’ve noticed a bit of lag playing certain games.

One of the big surprises at launch for myself and the rest of the gaming world was that most Vita games that are bought on the PSN store are 10% cheaper. I’m hoping with a drop in the over priced memory cards and really kick ass playstation sales that can rival steam digital Vita game sales can sky rocket in popularity.

Overall it’s a sleek beautiful handheld device that’s lightweight, the triggers feel and respond fantastically. It has potential as long as the Sony continues to support it and developers continue to make great games for it. Everyone is waiting for that big killer game to make us go crazy. Do I think you should get a Vita? at some point in 2012 I think you should. It will have a great line up of games and hopefully cheaper memory sticks.

My top games of 2011

1. Batman: Arkham City – Who doesn’t like Bruce Wayne. Arkham City is basically Arkham Horror but with the ability to roam the streets of Gothom and experience
the open world in your quest to find a cure and to stop The Joker and Hugo Strange. Along the way if you bought the game new or bought the DLC you’ll get to enjoy a few missions as Catwoman there fun but not necessary in order to enjoy the overall game. Rocksteady refined the fighting mechanics and brawling couldn’t be easier and more fun. The story was very well told the various sub plots always kept me wanting to play. The challenge rooms are back and been updated. How many bad guys can you kill and how well can you use stealth. The real fun happens when you start new game plus mode where you start a new game but carry over all upgrades, gadgets you earned through the first play through and face tougher enemies. Overall I had a ton of fun, didn’t experience many issue with game and enjoyed a well written extremely polished game.

2. Gears of War 3 – This was my most anticipated game of the calendar year. It’s no secret that my love for this franchise and characters is out of this world.
Considering that this was the third game in the franchise. There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered in game and Karen Travis did an
outstanding job putting the story together. We found out where Chairman Prescott went, what happened to Adam Fenix and mostly importantly in my eyes the truth
about the Locust and why the E-Day happened. There was some new weapons in this installment The One Shot and Sawed off Shotgun and the roadie run, cover mechanics
where polished. The storyline was filled with up’s and down’s and cheers of joy and tears of sorrow throughout the game. The end of Act 3 without spoiling it
was one of the sadness moment’s I’ve had in a game and generally brought a tear to my eye, well more than a tear to be honest. I felt connected and joyful that
Delta squad finished what they had set out to do 6 years ago. Horde mode was refined and had added a tower defense element to it which is an unique addition that
makes the player think about what defenses to buy and what to upgrade in order to survive against the Locust. Any Gears fan knows how bad the multiplayer
was in Gears 2. Epic couldn’t just get it right in that game. Epic set out from the beginning to ensure this didn’t happen this time and it didn’t. Gears 3 moved
from player hosted to matches to dedicated servers, no more host advantage with the shotgun!. It’s Gears competitive multiplayer without issues which really
tickles my fancy. Also a good fun edition was Beast mode which allows you to play as the Locust in Horde mode. It’s genuinely a lot of fun to tickler and run
around and cause havoc!.

3: Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception – Another 3rd game in the franchise coming out this year and having to live up to the expectation’s set up by Uncharted 2: Among
Thieves is a really tall order and Naughty Dog was up to the challenge but didn’t deliver on exceeding those expectations. I’m not saying Uncharted 3 was a bad game at all, I’m just saying it wasn’t as good as Uncharted 2. Uncharted 3 started off really slowly for me and didn’t pick up until we hit the ship yard at that point I was questioning why we were in a ship yard and the relevance of these chapters were to the story. I got really hooked into the game once we were at the airport the action picked up, I was engrossed into the story. One of my biggest complaints about this game was the shooting mechanics they were horrid!. There was a patch to address these concerns but I was already 2/3rd’s through the game and I wasn’t completely convinced the patch had made a difference. I really enjoyed how Uncharted 3 ended which was for once wasn’t a boss battle. When Alana and Drake left together holding hands in Uncharted 3 I felt satisfied. I haven’t gotten
much time to sink into Uncharted 3 multiplayer but I have dug in and finished all the co-op missions with my dysfunctional guest writer DartAlbertIII (Scott). I
hope Naughty Dog continues and supports this mode and also looks at ways to incorporate more puzzles into the mix and stay true to the Uncharted franchise.

There were many other great games in 2011 and some titles worth mentioning are Resistance 3, Forza Motorsport 4, Killzone 3, Assassins Creed: Revelations, Alice: Madness Returns, F1 2011, Saints Row 3,Kinect Sports Season 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

The third piece of downloadable content for Gears of War 3 is the first single player add on content available. It costs 1200 MS points or it’s free if you’ve purchased a season pass. I was able to beat the DLC in just over 2 hours.

The DLC takes place just after Emergence Day (E-Day) as Zelta squad is on a missin to evacuate the city and protect it from the Locust Kyrllstorm that is starting to blanket IIima City.. Yeah, you heard me no Delta Squad in these chapters. Zelta squad consists of Michael Barrick, Lt. Minh Young Kim, Tai Kaliso and Alicia Valera. There are no mechanics to speak of but several weapons found in Gears 3 make an appearance like the sawed off shotgun (still way over powered in my opinion). There are several cameo appearances along the way from various Gears that we’ve meet over the life of the franchise. It also reveals the story and introduction of Jace.

The interesting piece in this act is that you get to do something that you’ve never done in any other Gears game, play as the Locust. You can control and be General RAAM. There’s no dropping in cover, no roadie run and no dodging the Gears attacks. There isn’t really much of a challenge being RAAM you feel like your a god walking through the streets steam rolling people. RAAM has two attacks one with iconic knife which allows you to run at people, stab them and slightly places them into the air. The second attacks is he can fling Kryll at any target and watch them die instantly.

For you Gears multiplayer or horde players don’t worry Epic hasn’t forgotten about you. This DLC also comes with the chocolate weapon set, 250 worth of achievements, 6 new multiplayer characters including General RAAM, Theron Elite Commando, ALicia Valera, Lt. Minh Young Kim, Tai Kaliso and Michael Barrick.

If you have a seasons pass or your dying to play more Gears of War you should definitely shell out the 1200 Microsoft points and pick this up. There’s an interesting story to be told and well haven’t we all wanted to play as RAAM at some point? you can satisfy that itch once and for all.

Players will notice a quicker push to level 50, which was the maximum level in Forza 3 that’s gone now. In Forza 4 the maxiumum
level is 150 to reward those die hard Forza fan’s. As I write this I’m already in the mid 40′s and the fact that I’m now given
a choice of car’s as a reward time I level is fantastic. I really enjoy the fact that I get to choose my reward. After hitting level 50
the car rewards are gone and replaced with credit bounus’s ranging from 100k to 350k. Car manufactuer affinity rewards you to being
loyal to your favorite car manufactuer. Love Ferrari? only drive Ferrari? leveling your car manufactuering affinity gives you bounuses
like free parts, badges and titles for your player card.

You’ll notice in the early stages that the AI is quite different then in Forza 3. In Forza 3 they removed power from the
AI to make slower on easier difficulties. This isn’t the case in Forza 4 what they do is reduce there confidence when there
in corners. What this does it makes the AI brake earlier into corners which is where you as the player can out break them and
slip in front of them. The moment the AI it’s the apex in the corner they will be flat out regardless of the difficulty level.
The key to beating them on the straight’s is to block them down the straights. What I’ve found so far is that this is producing
closer, better wheel to wheel racing and I’ve actually lost a few races to the AI. This is a great improvement as generally there
really isn’t much of a contest from the AI.

The team over at Turn 10 partnered with Pirelli tires with new data which mean’s the tires in Forza 4 behave exactly as they
tests indicate on real tracks on the real cars. Hardcore racer’s will notice that car’s behave a bit different and that’s because
Turn 10 made some changes to their steering model, let’s be real not all track’s are smooth and are there some bumps along the way, so
expect to see a bit of track bumpiness as well. These changes truly impact the way the car’s handle very different from Forza 3 and
for me make it a bit harder to handle with most of the assist’s turn offed.

One of my favorite little features to Forza that is completely seperate from the overall in game experience is the ability
to navigate the menu’s using my voice and the power of Kinect. When I first discovered this I played around about 5 minutes going
Xbox, My Gargage. Simple use of Kinect but so very convienent.

Turn 10 has also gone a head to implement the ability for racers to drive with there arms. Gas and Braking are controlled by
the game for the gamer and all the racer need’s to do is steer using there arms. I’m not a huge fan of this to be honest and
this is suppose to be a sim racer and well this portion of it isn’t but I understand that it’s trying to get the family together. I
appreciate that but would rather they hadn’t.

Autovista is a new feature that integrates Kinect into the Forza experience. Imagine your own personal automotive showroom
that allows you to fully explore supercars like the Ferrari 458 Italia, Lexus LF-A, 1993 McLaren F1, 2008 Lamborghini Reventon
the 2006 Koenigsegg CCX. With Kinect this allows the player to walk around the car, open doors, sit in the car, turn the engine
on and most importantly hear what gear head Jeremy Clark has to say about these cars. This is a really cool feature but it’s not
available on all cars.

So should you buy Forza 4? that’s the question and since it’s notably the best in the franchise you should. The visual upgrade isn’t
Significant but the changes to the physicis, AI and community are sure to make this game worth your dollars.

Check out more here.

2010 was a year of many great games like Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Civilization 5, StarCraft 2, Grand Turismo 5, and Call of Duty Black Ops to name a few. With a pretty darn good year in video games how could I possibly pick a game of the year? The simple answer is I couldn’t. When I sat down to think about the year in review 2 titles came to my head Mass Effect 2 and Grand Turismo 5. Both games brought me many hours of joy and in the case of GT5 continue to do so.

But before I dive into why I choose GT5 and Mass Effect 2 I wanted to take this time to try and understand how we come to the conclusion on criteria is used for game of the year. What makes a game worthy? is it the most polished, most complete package? is it the game that we had the most fun with, is it the game that left us with the most awe dropping moments?

For me I sit down and thought of 2010 and instantly thought of Mass Effect 2′s opening scene where the Normandy is attacked and my living rumbled by noise of a battle of two ships. I was blown away and knew I was in for a very good ride. I sat down after worked and played for about 5 hours. I couldn’t put the game down but knew I had too. Bioware did a great job in allowing the decisions I made in Mass Effect to be carried forwarded and ultimately help shape some of Mass Effect 2. This was an evolution in the gaming industry in 2010 for myself and I sincerely hope Bioware takes this a step further in Mass Effect 3. I’m going to get into some spoilers here so stop reading the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t played Mass Effect 2. The plot generally involves the  Illusive Man bank rolling Commander Sheppard’s operation. Sheppard travel’s around the universe  recruiting individuals than goes out to ensure he has their loyalty by doing specific missions for those characters. They ultimately find the collector base and Sheppard needs to decide to destroy or preserved the Collector base. I sat there for almost a half an hour weighting the pro’s and con’s of each decision before ultimately coming to the conclusion that the Collectors need to be destroyed. Mass Effect 2 had me on the edge of my seat for most of the game but for when I was bored out of my mind mineral hunting.

After 6 years of development, a delayed launch and finally a very low profile launch of Sony’s biggest title of the year Gran Turismo 5 failed to live up to a lot of peoples expectations of perfection. This game is far from perfect, from it’s horrible UI, unlocking of damage, and confusing online lobby system when you get down and dirty and look past these faults this is a simulation racing game at it’s finest. Buying, racing and tuning car’s has been a blast. I just enjoy it, no gimmickie rewinds or anything, just pure racing if you screw up it’s your fault. The game has been out over a month and we’ve already seen 3 huge patches to the game. To me this means continued support as we wait 12 year’s (I’m only joking) for the next Grand Turismo game.
For these reasons  I listed above I must co-name Mass Effect 2 and Grand Turismo 5 my games of the year.

The track list in DJ Hero 2 is awesome and aims to attract and branch out to reach a different type of audience. Sure, Lady Gaga, Pitbull, Rhianna and Janet Jackson are stars but they’re not my thing. The first game featured a ton of Jay Z and Eminem and they don’t have many tracks in this game, however, my favorite tracks so far have been Eminems “Not Afraid” and Lil Wayne feat. Static  Major “Lollipop.”

When I first played Guitar Hero 2 it was all about the music and that’s evident here in Dj Hero 2 as there is no world tour and story modes. Empire mode is where you begin DJ’ing house parties and you can make it all the way to an international sensation. The issue with this approach is that I never felt like I was progressing my career at all.  Another problem is that all the characters are pre-defined and sometimes you get replaced a real life DJ. I can use my Avatar in the game but why they did not go the extra mile to incorporate that piece of functionality into the single player is beyond me. Along the way you have to battle fictional dj’s as well as David Guetta and Tiesto, but it never felt like it was a real challenge against these real life stars.

Once you’re done unlocking all 83 songs for quick play mode set up some play lists, rack up the high scores, and challenge  your friends to beat it. Alsok from the main menu you can enable party mode which will randomly play songs so you can sit back and enjoy the remixes. The only downside to this mode is all the song selection is randomized.

One of the main complaints of the original DJ hero was that as the DJ you had no control of the mash ups.  In each mash up there are freestyle sections where you can control the crossfading, scratching and trigger samples as you like. The best implemenation of this is crossfading where you can choose to play either track A or track B or mash up the two tracks how you like it. This is one of the best parts of the game for me, I wish I had more control of the mash ups. trigger samples are hard to keep in tempo with the song and scratching is fun but doesn’t sound as good as the recorded scratches.

DJ Hero allowed players to sync up a microphone and give shouts over the music, this has been taken a step further in DJ Hero 2 and allows players to sing along to the songs. Since the songs are mashed up this can make singing along to your favorite song very impossible since the lyrics to another song could pop up at any moment. I personally would have been happy with this portion of the game not being included.

The two-player battles have also seen a face lift. Now player 1 will perform a section of a song and then player 2 will have to perform the same section of the song and try to out perform the other DJ. A winner will be decided at each checkpoint and when a player reaches a certain number of checkpoints won there is a winner. This mode can be played locally or on Xbox Live/PSN against other players.

Also, from the main menu you can view your Rep, check how you are progressing on your Achievements/Trophies, compare your your scores on the leaderboards and you read the Hero Feed which provides all sorts of statistics  from how many mixes you played to how many hours you’ve played.

Overall this DJ Hero 2 is a good improvement over the original game and it’s kept me entertained for hours and hopefully through DLC it will continue to provide many more hours of entertainment.