We Made Alpha Now on to Beta

Well congratulations should be expressed to everyone involved in my Senior Team Project. We made our Alpha milestone and the game is a lot of fun. Now we need to buckle down and really see if we can tighten up the (graphics on level 3. Just kidding couldn't resist joking about that silly comercial) game. We still need to balance the game out a bit and make sure that we include the necessity for the player to strategize. But I have a good feeling about it, I definitely think it will all work out.

I offered my Lead Designer and Producer to get in touch with the Vice President of Steam and see if they would be interested in putting our game on their service and they said yes but they wanted to talk to the rest of the team/not in it's current state. So I'll let that sort itself out some more.

I'm still working on my portfolio site. Tomorrow I'm required to have my second piece included for my Portfolio class. I hired a Graphic Designer to help me and he made a wicked sweet logo. He also gave me a business card layout and a gave me a suggestion for what I should try to make my website look like. So right now I'm going to try and get all of my content up there that I want up there, finish my resumé because I need to have it all on one page but looking good, and make my business cards. Then I will try to make a version of my website that looks like what he suggested from scratch. Because I like his layout better I just don't have the time for it at the moment so I need to prioritize getting a website up that looks at least presentable before trying to get it all up perfectly.

As for my Advanced Seminar class. It's going. I'm definitely going to have something done by the end of the semester that I can put in my portfolio but right now Unreal is being a little sassy so I have to make a lamp post from scratch on my own and import it into Unreal. Then I need to make sure that the light mechanic of my level works perfectly with it and then it's just a matter of making it look pretty. So that shouldn't really be a problem.

My C++ class is moving along just fine too. We've started discussing and using classes and pointers. I think after I graduate I might take some online courses to keep learning C++. The reason I'm thinking about this is because I'm in the IGDA QA SIG mailing list, that's actually a bit of a mouth full, but a common thing said in the mailing list is that if you're in QA, or Design I'm inferring, you should know code. So that you can understand and talk to the programmers a bit better as well as point out problems because of how something was coded.

How Champlain College teaches us designers requires us to learn some 3D art skills as well as programming. But I'm startting to think of taking it to the next level. Who knows maybe I'll find myself not getting a job in the industry when I graduate and will have to do the part time job thing while I continue to learn programming and maybe even getting a certificate in it.

Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360

I have been looking forward to this game almost as much as I was looking forward to the original. When they announced the original game I knew I would be owning a 360 at some point in the future. So when I had a chance to play the original I knew that my original assumption was right and I have to say the sequel doesn't disappoint either.

Concept: 5/5

Continue the story of Commander Shepard and his crew in an attempt to defeat the reapers. A species of Giant Alien Robots that want to erase all organic life from the galaxy. Pretty simple and everyone that loved the first game will love the second. Plus the second might draw some people in that the first missed.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics are definitely improved over the original. I love everything about the graphics except for a couple things. The faces. I don't know maybe it's just me but I felt like everyone's faces were kind of static throughout the whole game. To explain, if their character's default face is smiling than I felt that whenever they showed any emotion it wasn't a case of taking a passive version of the face and making it angry, sad, etc. It was taking that smiling face and then trying to make it angry, sad, etc. It just felt off. But who knows maybe this is just a quirk I have and no one else has or had a problem with it.

I also noticed the texture popping come back. For those who don't know what this is: When you're far away from a character or person, in real life or in a game, you can't make out all the little individual patches on a person's suit. So the engine is set up in a way to pretty much say "why bother" with all that detail if no one can see it. So when at long distances it loads a fuzzier version of the suit so there aren't all those patches and it doesn't take up processing power to render something you can't see. But the "popping" issue is when you're standing next to a character and the character has a low quality texture on because the game hasn't caught on that you're standing next to them yet, then it does and you notice the texture visually "pop" into a higher quality.

But by far the greatest visual complaint I have of the new game is that it will fail to position people properly during conversations. The first time I spoke to the character Jacob I was somehow standing next to him not across from him so whenever the game would go to show me a reaction shot of my character there was no one there. It was really weird. Then another time I was talking to another person and someone from my team was standing INSIDE the character I was talking to. This issue was very experience breaking.

Sound: 4/5

Overall the sound of the game in terms of music and sound effects is average. There is no real particular effect or song that I found really amazing. However, this game does have amazing background conversations and advertisements. Walking around an interstellar market place and hearing an advertisement for the latest show of Hamlet staring all aliens, this particular species can't share emotion like we do so they say how they feel, was hilarious. Or hearing about the latest future video game and what the fans are grumbling about. All the weapons sound like weapons and the atmosphere of the galaxy is amazing.

Playability: 4/5

The game plays amazingly well, it plays even better than the first game. The inclusion of heavy weapons really makes the game a whole lot better. Especially since the heavy weapons replace grenades. Because in the first game you seemed to be the only person in the galaxy that could use grenades. Honestly I never once came across another person that used grenades. But in this game every now and then someone else will have a heavy weapon so it doesn't feel like you've randomly developed this skill that no one else has.

Personally I did not like the fact that this game gives you a lot less information than the first game did. You have to kind of guess what everyone's class is based on how they talk to you and what they reveal about themselves. Which is ok I was able to piece together who I wanted in my squad this way but I think it would be nice if they just told you their classes. Also all of the weapons seem to be the same? There's no statistics so I can't tell if one shotgun does more damage than another or if they just reload differently.

Also the whole finding resources on planets, scanning thing? Horrible. It wasn't fun the first time I did it, I don't know if it will ever be fun. But doing it vs. not doing it has gameplay repercussions so I have to tell you to do it.

Entertainment: 4/5

The entertainment is great. I played this game with a friend watching that had never played the first one and she was getting as excited as I was whenever things went down. People that hadn't met Shepard before would be trying to act tough in front of him and my friend would yell "Don't you KNOW?! That's SHEPARD!" it definitely helped the amusement of the game.

No spoilers, but during the last couple hours of the game, this one particular location, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was so nervous, excited, and energized all at the same time. It was capable of making me that emotionally charged.

X-Factor: 5/5

The X-factor to this game is pretty great. After I played the first game, as a good guy, I wanted to play through again as a badass. But I didn't feel like a badass I felt like an asshole. So I stopped playing. I have tried to play through the renegade side of the first game at least 5 times and I hardly make it past the first mission each time.

This time when playing I was still a bit of a goody two shoes, but I felt my character had evolved a little bit so I allowed him to do some renegade options every now and then and they were so amazing that I plan on playing through the renegade side. Once I catch a break from playing all the other games I need to review for you all.

Overall: 26/30