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Tag Archives: Oblivion

Mass Effect and Blue Dragon are 360 home runs

If ever a couple of videogames were, by themselves, reasons to re-outfit your entertainment room with an HDTV and a plasma TV lift, as well as all the other accoutrements of of the new generation of videogame goodness, Microsoft and their Xbox 360 partners have come up with it this holiday season.

I’m speaking, of course, about Mass Effect, developed by BioWare, and Blue Dragon, developed by Mistwalker Studios and – basically – created by the same minds that brought us the first nine editions of Final Fantasy. I have recently spend time with both and am completely re-devoted to my Xbox 360, which only a couple months ago was gathering dust as I had run out of new things to discover in Oblivion.

Like Oblivion, Mass Effect and Blue Dragon are also RPGs; none of these games, however, are very much lick each other. Everyone by now should know what Oblivion is like. Mass Effect is an sci-fi RPG that is more completely cinematic, photorealistic and deep than any game you’ve ever played.

Now, that’s not to say Mass Effect can’t be beaten quickly. I know one killjoy who bragged about “beating” the game in 30 hours. Personally, I like to take my time in good games and really explore and enjoy every nook and cranny, every encounter, every bit of dialog. And that’s where Mass Effect excels; with the quality of the animated actors, combined with the voice acting and an all-new, more complex than anyone’s ever seen before in a videogame dialog system, Mass Effect is a complete winner and probably the new winner of “a real next-gen RPG experience” award type of game. That honor previously rested with Oblivion.

Blue Dragon is completely engaging as well, but in completely different ways and for different reasons. Blue Dragon makes no pretenses of being photorealistic or completely immersive. Instead, it is quite simply chock full o’ action and never stops dishing up the thrills.

Of course, unlike Oblivion and Mass Effect, Blue Dragon is turn-based, but the system is do fun and fast, you might not notice.

Anyone who says the 360 is allowing PS3 to catch up hasn’t played Mass Effect or Blue Dragon.

PS4 wishlist, part 3

Here’s another good one for my personal PlayStation 4 wishlist, and all the Pigeon Forge vacation rentals in the wold isn’t going to make me right with the world if PS4 is released without this addressed and dealt with:

3) Stupid glitches in otherwise near-perfect games.

I know this one has less to do with hardware power and more to do with developer discipline and publisher scheduling, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

Take a nice next-gen game like Oblivion for example. Is it a great game with unparalleled depth? Sure. But it has many flaws that take the bloom off the rose after a while.

For example, after hours and hours of laboring in the game to become the head of the thieves guild, your payoff is *spoiler alert* becoming the Grey Fox yourself. Well, that’s fine… except that then there’s simply no more to it than that. You can enter the hidden thieves guild meeting places, but nothing ever goes on there. The quests and subplots are at an then. It’s merely, “oh, you’re the Gray Fox now” and that’s it.

You mean I put in all those hours just to have nothing happen after I become the Gray Fox? Forget that!

This sense of emptiness after a lot of work invades many other professions, also. Become the head of the assassin’s guild and get paid… about 200 gold a month ferrying orders from the Night Mother to the guild leader. That’s what I became the head of the assassin’s guild for? A mere 200 gp per month, after all that work and I already have tens and hundreds of thousands in gold already earned? Bite me. That’s just not a good payoff.

Things like this could stand improvement, even in games that, otherwise, are masterpieces.

Rogue Galaxy is a great "final PS2 RPG"

The folks who made Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2: Electric Boogaloo and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King have released their latest – and last – PS2 masterpiece. Developer Level-5′s Rogue Galaxy is being billed as the last great PS2 RPG, and it lives up to that billing.

While the game isn’t a next-gen, open world masterpiece like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, that allowed you to do everything from becoming a vampire to taking up a job doing presentation folder printing, Rogue Galaxy does its best to offer a game that pushes the boundaries of previous-gen gaming.

The graphics and soundwork are solid, the game is over 100 hours long, and the writing is witty and light-hearted without losing an element of heart. Anyone who has owned the PS2 and loved it for its wealth of RPGs need to get this one. It’s a great capper to a great run on a great platform.

I just hope PS3 will do as well. Level-5 is working on their first PS3 title, White Knight Story, though… so the signs are promising!

Oblivion gets first-ever GOTY honors at DigNews.com

I’m happy to say I was part of the decision-making in naming 2K Games and Bethesda Softworks’ Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as DigNews.com’s first-ever Game of the Year winner. Our site’s never named a game of the year before, and there’s no guarantee we will again, but Oblivion is a game that’s made a huge next-gen impact.

There’s a lot of freedom in the game to do whatever you want to, from farming to setting up a retail business to – probably – printing up professional business cards for your fellow adventurers. Well, maybe not quite, but you get the idea.

It’s a game that has turned a lot of people who don’t normally play videogames into addicts. That’s rare, and that’s why we game this first-of-its-kind honor to the game. What fun!