Massive Nerd

Let's face it, if you haven't bought Mass Effect 2 by now, it's not because you're waiting on my review.

Don't look at me like that.

I want to write it, so you're going to read it.

At the time of this writing, I'm somewhere around halfway through the game. I've heard reports of the total playtime being between 20 and 50 hours, based upon how much you do. Judging by the fact that I'm already sitting at around 20 hours, I guess I know which end of that scale I fall on.

I'll give the "tl;dr" version first. Mass Effect 2 isn't perfect, but it's damn close. The few minor flaws are more than outweighed by everything the game does right. Each individual element may not hit spot-on, but the total package is one of the best games I have ever played.

Technically, the game is nearly the best available. The music is so fantastic, I almost want to buy the soundtrack. BioWare, once again, has delivered the best voice acting you'll ever find. Graphically, the game is gorgeous, but but not without its faults. Just like the first game, ME2 uses the Unreal Engine 3, though with an extra 2 years of development time. All the problems present in the first game are gone. There's no more texture pop-in and the shadows aren't as butt-ugly. Unreal Engine 3 renders "ugly" things really well. The Krogan, Turians, Batarians, Salarians, all the truly "alien" races look phenomenal, as well as the "used" areas of the game. The pretty, clean-lined sci-fi areas are beautiful and wonderfully lit, but they lack the detail and polish of the more realistic areas. The humans and "prettier" races just seem a bit off. Whether a limitation of the engine or BioWare's programming, the faces just don't seem right. The combat animations are perfect, but for some reason, Shepard's out-of-combat movement looks like he belongs in the Special Olympics.

Again, it's not perfect, but it's so good that it doesn't detract from the overall game.

BioWare is the best in the business at writing stories. ME2's scope is so grand, it's almost too much to wrap my mind around. BioWare has not created a story, not a world. They've created an entire universe. The planets, the races, everything meshes together. I'm sure if I spent a weekend reading through the Codex, I would be further amazed at the amount of detail. With all the groundwork laid in the first game, ME2 better develops the individual characters. Every member of your crew has feelings and a reason for being there. They have good and bad qualities, as well as real issues. Each crew member has their own side mission that really expands the character. The only issue I have here is that the side missions are too easy to acquire. I'd rather see them as part of the dialog progression, much like in Dragon Age: Origins.

Shepard is pure win this time around. He's focused on the mission. So much so that, occasionally, the "neutral" responses will result in Renegade points. The dialog interrupt system is fun. At certain points in conversations, you can pull a trigger to interrupt the scene with either a Paragon or Renegade response. It gives the player more control over the story interaction and adds a bit of fun to the dialog segments. The characters are more animated during conversations, as well. They will get up, walk around and otherwise physically react to the conversation. The only odd part is everyone having to "reset" back to their original positions for the next dialog thread.

Gameplay has been discussed to death many times over. Some people call it "dumbing down" while others "streamlining." Some lament the loss of some RPG elements in favor of more of a pure shooter. Honestly, I'm entirely in favor of the changes. The shooting in the first game was a bit clunky and the action was slowed down with the constant menu diving. In ME2, it's pure action, and smooth as can be.

The equipment customization is done almost exclusively between missions. I have two of the special armors, the Blood Dragon and Collector sets, but I'm not even using them. Customizing Shepard's standard N7 armor is too much fun. Finding new pieces for weapon damage or shield strength, deciding which to use and making my Shepard unique is the highlight of the changes for me, thus far. Weapon customization is a bit of a mixed bag. You don't buy new weapons, but rather find new versions. Unfortunately, they're few and far between. Almost twenty hours in, I'm still using the starter Sniper Rifle and SMG. Researching weapon upgrades is a nice touch, but too linear for my taste. There's a standard progression you follow, with no choices to be made. The thought of choosing your weapon loadout, deciding between accuracy, damage or other effects would have been a great use of the system. As it is now, you definitely feel more powerful, but in a game that's all about choice, having such a large part of the game completely on-rails is a bit disappointing.

The best thing to come out of this system, though is it upgrades your entire crew all at once. Without having to maintain each individual character's equipment, you're free to choose whoever you want to bring with you for each mission. Fighting Blue Suns? Bring "Archangel" and Miranda. Blood Pack? Grunt and Mordin are a great team. ME2's combat is so reliant on weapon, ammo and skill choices, that this feature is vital to strategic gameplay. And you better have a strategy. Enemies are no joke. I've noticed my Infiltrator has far less survivability that in the first game. Proper skill usage and cover management are vital to success. At first, I was unsure about the new "heat sink" system, but now I see it helps balance the game. My Infiltrator used the Sniper Rifle almost exclusively in Mass Effect. Only getting ten shots without having to find some more clips makes me save that powerful weapon for when I really need it. It's a big shift and takes some time to get used to, but it leads to a better game, in my opinion.

Then there's the planet scanning. Nobody likes planet scanning. You need to scan the surface of every planet you come across, searching for resources if you want to research upgrades. This takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R. While more realistic and less annoying than the old Mako segments, it's not necessarily better. That said, I've found a few ways to make it more bearable. First, make sure to research the Scanner Upgrade ASAP. Then, instead of holding down the scan button, click it while moving the reticle. You'll get a quick scan of the surface, and still catch the major deposits, which is all you really should be looking for. It's a waste of time and probes to search for every tiny deposit. With this method, I can take a planet from "Rich" to "Depleted" in 2-3 minutes. I could do without the system altogether, but I've at least found a way to make it reasonable.

At the end of the day, Mass Effect 2 is just a brilliant game. The whole truly is more than the sum of its parts. It's more of a shooter than an RPG at this point, but that's irrelevant. It's fun, it's engaging and it tells a great story.

I don't think I've ever been happier to have a book in my hands than The Gathering Storm. Especially considering it was almost never written.

For those who don't know, Robert Jordan, the author of the previous 11 Wheel of Time books, passed away in September of 2007. Jordan's wife and long-time editor, Harriet, chose Brandon Sanderson to finish the story, giving him all of Jordan's notes and unpublished chapters to the proposed final book, A Memory of Light.

Realizing that Jordan still had too much story to tell, Sanderson and Tor Books decided to split A Memory of Light into three books, The Gathering Storm being the first.

Bottom Line: Egwene al'Vere saved The Wheel of Time.

Writing the series, Jordan became a victim of his own creativity. Around the 4th volume, The Shadow Rising, Jordan started expanding the cast to critical mass. With all these characters running around, some got lost and some just ate up chapters. After 3 books of huge plot developments, book 7, A Crown of Swords started a small decline for the series. Now, with all these characters, they all have to DO something, GO somewhere.

Jordan spent so much time explaining what each individual character was doing that the main plot slowed down to a crawl. The focal point of the fan's anger: the Aes Sedai.

Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Suian, Leane, Elaida, Alviarin, Cadsuane and so many others just brought the plot to a crawl. Nobody cared about the women plotting how to control (and hopefully save) the world. They cared even less about the girls running around like idiots trying to clean up their own messes.

The fan favorite characters Mat, Perrin, Thom and The Forsaken all shined in their too brief and infrequent segments, which made it even more maddening.

Book 10, Crossroads of Twilight started bringing the story back in line and Book 11, Knife of Dreams brought the pace up to a comfortable level.

So, with a large portion of The Gathering Storm focusing on Egwene and the other Aes Sedai, it looked like we were in trouble. Miraculously, Sanderson made this part of the story very engaging and entertaining, by the halfway point, I was actually upset when the focus went back to one of the other characters!

So, yes, Egwene al'Vere saved The Wheel of Time.

The rest of the book is Sanderson setting up Jordan's chess board. All the pieces are in place for the endgame to begin. The Aes Sedai have found direction, Rand has gotten his head out of his ass, and long-dangling plot threads are being picked back up.

For those who have avoided the series for the past 20 years, now is the time to start reading. There are only 2 books left, to be released later this year and next. Robert Jordan's writing has influenced every fantasy author of this generation, it would be a shame to miss out on it.

There is very little I can say about this book without giving anything away, so this will be a short one.

The Lost Symbol is not a bad book.
The Lost Symbol is not a bad Dan Brown book.
The Lost Symbol is a bad Robert Langdon book.

Brown has a great tradition of taking 100% factual evidence and creating amazing fictional stories out of it. The Lost Symbol has everything you want from a Brown book: shadowy conspiracies, secret organizations, bizarre plot twists and stunning revelations.

However, we've come to expect more from Brown's Langdon novels. I, personally, love trying to solve the puzzles along with Langdon and reveling in his knowledge of obscure references. However, The Lost Symbol has very little of this. Langdon only solves about 2 or 3 riddles across the story, and even then, he has his hand held through it.

Honestly, you can't even call this a Langdon novel, since most of the story is told from the point of view of other characters. Sure, it's nice to see different points of view on the story, adding depth to the mystery. However, when half of your book doesn't involve the main character, that's a problem.

Lastly, it almost feels as if Brown is overly preachy as the book winds down after the climax. The constant repetition of the potential of the human race just gets annoying, especially after the disappointing story.

Again, it's not a BAD book, I was just expecting much more.

It's no secret that I've been anxiously anticipating Brutal Legend.

Many of you out there may be a little dissuaded by the negative reviews popping up online. Is it a bad game? No. Is it a Game of the Year contender? Not likely. Many reviewers are giving it a 1-point Schafer Bonus.

Here's what you need to know about the game:

The demo is a bit misleading. Playing it may lead you to believe that the game is a Heavy metal Legend of Zelda. This is true, to a point. After the initial missions, the game transitions into strategy gameplay.

No, it's not Halo Wars. It's very LIGHT strategy. You capture objectives, pull up a quick menu selecting units to build, point them in the general direction of the enemy and unleash Hell. You're not some omnipotent overseer, you've got to get in there and mix it up yourself.

Check out the multiplayer trailer for the game:



If that seems fun to you, then you have nothing to worry about. It's action with small strategic elements added in. Check out this article by Tim Schafer himself discussing the Strategy battles.

The next major concern is the length.

Yes, you CAN beat the game in one sitting. The missions are very short, some taking only 5 or 10 minutes, with only about 20-ish of them to complete. However, there is MUCH more to do. Free Bound Serpents for stat boosts. Seek out Legends for an AWESOME look into the game's lore. Unearth Buried Metal to expand your soundtrack.

I can relate it to Assassin's Creed. AC was a fantastic game, but COULD be very short, 5 or 6 hours. However, the more you put into the game, the more you got out of it. The more story you experienced, the more fun you had.

Personally, I've invested about 5 hours into the game, and I'm a little under half "Complete." I see this as reasonable. Sorry kids, this isn't the 90s. 10 hours is about average for a non-RPG these days. I finished Modern Warfare's Campaign in one awesome sitting, and never held that against the game.

One thing made me feel like a total idiot. The game constantly bombards you with hints. After 5 hours, apparently I still need to be reminded how to use Nitro while driving. So, when I came across my first Bound Serpents and Legends, and the game DIDN'T tell me how to unlock them, I assumed that meant I couldn't do it yet. I tried a couple attacks just for the heck of it, and went about my business.

So, just so you don't make the same mistake I did:

Bound Serpents: Pyro Attack (Hold X/Square)
Legends: Earthshaker (X+A/Square+X)

Also, for the Powerslide (Press X/Square while running), you're not actually RUNNING until you click the Left Stick.

Gameplay aside, the game is amazing. The world is brilliantly crafted. The writing is top-notch, and the voice work is some of the best I've seen, especially considering many of the actors are musicians. Even Ozzy and Lemmy's work is professional quality.

Bottom Line

Pass on the game if you don't like the strategy aspect.

Pass on the game if you're not into metal. Seriously, this game isn't for you.

Rent the game if you're the type of gamer that just wants to play through the story.

Buy the game if you love the music and just want to play a great game, regardless of length.