Hail to the king, baby!

Although I am in school this summer, I am only taking one class. This gives me plenty of time for games, and it has been quite nice. In the past few weeks I have finished up Just Cause 2 (impressions below), the first chapter of Tales of Monkey Island, and this past weekend I decided to check out the first expansion pack to F.E.A.R., entitled Extraction Point. This was prompted by a sudden appearance of the F.E.A.R. games on Steam.

I quite enjoyed the original F.E.A.R. when it came out in 2005, and its AI and slow motion effects are in many ways still top notch. The story was never especially compelling, but it is not often that an expansion pack can actually detract from the original game. This unfortunately was my impression of the expansion pack, which starts where the original game left off. Players are put back in the role of the F.E.A.R. Point Man and are tasked with… well, they just have to do more of the same stuff they did in F.E.A.R., namely shoot stuff and get spooked by ghoulies. The antagonist is inexplicably back from the dead, deaths of primary characters are entirely meaningless and predictable, and there is no more explanation as to the protagonist’s origins, motivations, or loyalties. Why does Point Man, a nameless and voiceless proxy, merely get a few scares from Alma and Paxton Fettle when so many others are just outright killed in horrible, gruesome ways? I can’t say this game can answer that. That is unfortunate, seeing as how the other expansion pack, as well as the sequel, F.E.A.R. 2, do not deal with the same set of characters.

The only positive aspect is the gameplay, which was vintage F.E.A.R.. A couple new weapons and enemy types were thrown in as well, but their influence was minimal. The expansion did seem to be a bit more difficult than the original, but the comparison may not be fair because it has been several years since I last played it.

Grade: C+

I’m not even a big fan of sandbox games, but Just Cause 2 is pretty awesome, and is already my second favorite game of the year so far. (The game featured below this post wins out, but not by much.) The huge, open world lets players go anywhere and do whatever they want. There are the obligatory comments about the horrible voice acting, but it really does not detract one bit. It’s like every 80s action flick rolled into one game.

The only drawback is my computer is barely able to handle the game’s graphics, it being a DirectX 10 game that only runs on Windows Vista and 7, and my video card being nearly three years old. However, even with everything on the lowest settings (except my monitor resolution), the game delivers. I’ve been playing for over 20 hours and I don’t think I’m even 20% complete. The percent completed is a bit misleading, however, since it tracks all objectives and not just those required to progress through the main plot of the game. Still, it’s quite easy to get distracted whilst en-route to an objective to make a stop in several locations along the way to collect upgrade items and beget mad amounts of chaos.

Lastly, I attribute exactly 29.8% of my enjoyment of Just Cause 2 to Gibbed’s sunglasses mod. [Screenshot pending!]

With school being back in full force this semester and keeping me incredibly busy, I somehow scraped together the 30+ hours required to power through Mass Effect 2. I haven’t checked my final save file to see how long it really took, but it is quite a lengthy game, and I know I spent more time than I did on the first game. What made ME2 special for me was its support for importing ME1 save files, so my Commander Shepard is the same one I used when I started the series. I don’t know why I like that so much, but it definitely makes it feel like the story continues on. I hope they expand on it in the next installment.

I don’t want to make this into a spoiler-filled post, but I must say ME2 is a stellar game. I don’t remember being any more anxious about making important decisions in the last game than this one, and I have to admit I did mess up a few arrangements in the game’s finale, something I intend to correct. Making it possible for some of Shepard’s decisions to have life or death consequences for the crew was a true masterstroke, and I feel a little regret for some of my character’s choices.

Still, the game is quite the epic adventure, and I have no idea how Bioware managed to produce it so quickly. Now the wait for ME3 starts, though it appears there will be quite a bit of downloadable content released in the meantime.

Despite not having as much time in the past year to devote to gaming as I would have liked, I did manage to check out a few titles in 2009 that were pretty decent. Some of them I managed to post about before abandoning this blog entirely, and most of them I just managed to wrap up in the last few days of the decade.

Without further ado, here are some quick notes on what I played last year. (See previous posts about Mass Effect, F.E.A.R. 2, and Tomb Raider: Legend.)

• The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition: Not having played the game when it originally came out in 1990, the re-release came at an opportune time and had a lot to offer, with completely redone audio and graphics. Highly recommended.
• Borderlands: Fun (especially in co-op), but the PC version is plagued with more bugs than I care to mention. Death to GameSpy
• Left 4 Dead 2: As cliché as it sounds, L4D2 improves on L4D1 in just about every way imaginable, and is really quite extraordinary. This game and Borderlands provided more than enough opportunity for co-op gaming.
• F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn: This DLC for F.E.A.R. 2 had little to offer in the way of content and story, and was extremely short to boot.
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga: A quick and fun romp through the six Star Wars films, nothing more. It definitely shows lack of polish compared to Traveler’s Tales’ more recent offerings in the franchise.
• Mirror’s Edge: A last-minute addition thanks to the Steam holiday sale, the game was fun despite the combat being frustrating most of the time. The visual style is extremely crisp, a far cry from most other games.
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary: Despite being stuck in one area for several months, I managed to push through in my last-minute gaming binge of 2009 and reach the end. It is good, and the visuals are great as one would expect from the series.

There are a few more games I was hoping to finish by the end of the year, including Red Faction, but it was not meant to be. This year looks like it will be awesome as well, with Mass Effect 2 showing up before the end of the month.