Review: Mass Effect 3

Well the trilogy has finally come to an end and after what 7 years, the journey is over and it only took 120 hours+ to finish the story. Well it's time for me to throw a review into the ocean of Mass Effect 3 reviews to be ignored so here's my review of Mass Effect 3.


Mass Effect 3 is a hard game to review since like most Western RPGs, it's all about your personal choices and experience. The story is the final chapter in Commander Shepard's fight against the Reapers. The Reapers have final come to exterminate all advanced life in the galaxy(kinda like Daleks but only to advance races) and it's up to Shepard to rally the galaxy to fight against the Reapers and build an ancient weapons that may have the power to destroy the Reapers and end the war. You'll experience many victories and loses of life during your journey and the big finale will not disappoint... assuming you're paying attention and have been playing since the first game.


The gameplay hasn't changed much since the last game so returning players have nothing new to learn but newcomers will have no problems getting used to the game because the game does a good job of teaching you how to play it but I highly recommend getting Mass Effect's 1 and 2. A few things have changed since the previous games though, now the resource mining is gone completely and when you're traveling you can use a type of sonar to find stuff in each star system, which can also attract Reapers that can cause Game Over if they touch you. You also don't need to hack anymore!

Like in the previous games this is a 3rd person shooter first and a RPG second. The shooting is as you'd expect from 3rd person shooter but they've added the special powers to make it unique. These power are tech and biotics and while useful, don't really make you want to choose a class other then soldier since your teammates cover all spectrum's of the powers.

When talking to people and in cutscenes you'll be given choices on how to respond. The responses are usually a choice between good or bad(they call it paragon and renegade) and rarely you get neutral choices. In some cutscenes a little icon will appear onscreen that will give you a chance to make a paragon or renegade reaction towards an event. These can have a variety of effects and can be ignored but you may want to give them a shot and see how the story flows with them.

The game has a fair few sidequests to pass the time with. These are found by talking to people at the Citadel or by walking around, listening in on conversations. Most of these quests require you to scan planets in certain star systems or talk to specific people. Occasionally you'll get sidequests that will have you actually fight but these are given to you on your ship by Specialist Treynor or other people. The sidequests are the meat of the game and if you ignore them you'll miss out on roughly 50% of the game.

During the game you'll find armor parts, weapons and weapon parts while on missions. These shouldn't be missed since the better the weapons and upgrades you find, the better chance of survival. Some parts can be purchased and the weapons can be upgraded for extra power, ammo capacity and lighter weight. You can also buy full armor sets with locked in stats. Personally I suggest just going with an armor set that looks good or choosing pieces of armor that look good, mainly because I never noticed a difference in combat.

They also threw in an online multiplayer for the sake of pocket mining. It's pretty much no different to most 3rd person shooters multiplayer but you can use the special powers from the single player in it. Seriously this multiplayer won't live long considering it's generic and unnecessary. The multiplayer is just waves of enemies and a couple of small objectives like kill a specific target or interact with a specific item. Like I said it's generic and won't live long. Also if you buy this game for the multiplayer, then you're an idiot and should go buy Gears Of War 3 for the online multiplayer.


Mass Effect 3 is a fantastic game and a great conclusion to one of the best modern game franchises. With 40+ hours of gameplay(depending on how much DLC you've purchased from the previous games and if you got the Prothian DLC) and is worth every penny. I recommend buying all 3 games in the series and get all the DLC for the full experience. Regardless it's a great game and a fantastic franchise. I honestly expect Bioware to release a trilogy pack in the near future but don't take my word for it, just go buy all the games. I also recommend buying them during the gaming drought since it will cover the entire 3 month period if managed right.

Score 5/5

Review: The Last Story

The Last Story is one of those games I know no one will play. Why you may ask? Well 3 reasons,
1) It's a JRPG and the gaming majority doesn't like them because they're "gay!"(they say the games are gay) and don't have you looking down a gun barrel.
2)Retailers aren't stocking them on their shelves under the fear that no one will buy it. This is retarded since a lot of people will impulse buy a game out of curiosity.
3)It's not getting advertised on websites or TV.
Regardless I bought it and I loved it. So here's my review.

As anyone who reads my blog(the what, 1 person or something?) I have an affinity to JRPGs, mainly the Final Fantasy's and I'm a bit of a Nintendo fanboy(mainly because it was a better thing to play instead of sports, especially in Australia!). Well imagine how excited I was to learn that Nintendo teamed with Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's company Mistwalker to make an exclusive JRPG for the Wii.


The Story of the game is, as you'd expect the best part of the game. The game's story is about a mercenary named Zael who gains the power of the Outsider. Thanks to this power the Count of Lazilus Island has interest in Zael and offers knighthood to Zael if he helps him fight the race of Gurak plaguing the island. Along the way you also meet a girl named Calista, who is the Counts niece and with her help find out more about the Outsider and fall in love. The story is filled with so much more then what I've written but that's just the basics. The characters are all memorable and for once, a game doesn't have a character you wish you could just strangle every time they talk. I actually looked forward to each new conversation with the characters in this game because their personalities were so interesting. Oh and it's mostly voiced so anyone who hates reading for the most part(I call them idiots but hey, I also like real books not eBooks). This is also a very beautiful looking game, even with the Wii's limitations. The art design of the characters and world are great. The music is also beautiful and I bet Square-Enix is kicking themselves for not being able to keep Nobou Uematsu.


On top of a great story that's well written and voiced by UK voice actors, there's the actual gameplay to talk about. The game uses action combat similar to most action RPGs but with a difference. The game also uses tactics in combat to change it from a mere button masher into a strategic game of chess. Like in most JRPGs enemies have elemental weaknesses and strengths, so exploiting them ensures victory but there is also combat moves like striking an enemy while they aren't looking from cover to do more damage or luring them to you to allow your mages to cast spells. During combat some of the battles will have environmental items that can be used to make the battle easier, like a pillar to destroy and using these can usually be beneficial. The spell circles(yes the spells are cast as circles on the battle field) in the game have essentially 2 effects, one effect happens in the circle itself(eg. fire circle damages enemies) and one when the circle is diffused by Zael's abilities Gale and Vertical slash(eg. fire circle when diffused will inflict guard break). There is also no targeting system in the game but I honestly prefer that then being locked to one enemy. Zael also can use a crossbow in combat to attack enemies with a variety of arrows or to search areas for points of interest.

In combat you can only use the main character Zael unless the chapter does otherwise and this is actually a smart move by Mistwalker because it makes sense to the story. Each character in combat has 5 lives, lose them all for Zael and it's game over... but since the game has autosaving at checkpoints dying isn't too much of an annoyance but you still need to use save points to actually save your progress which isn't a bad thing, I actually prefer this to just autosaving. When a party member falls in combat you can revive them by just walking over them with the Gathering technique active. This technique is also used to draw all the enemies in battle to you and focus their assault on you. After receiving enough damage while using Gathering you can unleash a burst that can either slow or stop a target, this is very useful and should be used often.

Each character also has a kind of Limit Break ability they can use once they've learned the skill. These skills can be used once the spirit gauge is filled and can be used to inflict heavy damage on an enemy or buff the party, depending on the character using their ability. Using them requires using the command mode. The command mode allows you to command everyone in the party to use a specific ability on specific targets and is vital for strategically taking down bosses and making regular battles easier.

The game only features 1 town with a castle to explore which may make some people angry, but like Skyloft in Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword it actually made the people living there more important. The town is large and is filled with sidequest to complete. These sidequest are usually just find something or someone, collect X about of items for someone but it actually makes you feel like your helping the towns people instead of just XP grinding in an MMO... especially since the rewards for the sidequests are items. You can fast travel around the town if you hate walking about by using the map in your menu which while it makes life easier, you can miss out on hidden items in the alleyways and side streets that are hidden on the ground or in a corner. When collecting hidden items in the street if you're fast enough to chain 5, you can earn a rare item and trust me, you want these.

One of the cool things about this game is that each piece of equipment has a unique look to them and you can customize the appearance of your party. I'm sure most people will try and make the characters look good instead of stat maximizing and this is what I did myself. The equipment can also change appearance when upgraded so after a while a new piece of equipment can look better then another. Mixing and matching the equipment can monopolize a fair bit of time, especially since you can change the colour of them with dyes you collect in the game. I probably sank an hour of gameplay just customizing my gear's look to suit me. You can also remove parts of the armor to suit yourself without losing stats so if a piece of equipment gains a piece that looks like crap to you, you can just remove that one piece to make it look better.

You can replay dungeons in the game by using the map. This is a good thing to do if you missed an item but you don't earn any exp from returning to dungeons, or at least I didn't. If you want to earn exp however, when in a dungeon for the first time there will be a red circle pattern on the ground. Use the Gathering ability and it will summon monster for you to kill. You can do this to your hearts content to level up of "farm" items from the monsters.

The game will last you about 30 hours which isn't a bad length but is short compared to the majority of JRPGs. The game is heavily story focused and like I said 30 hours isn't a bad length, it's just shorter then most modern JRPGs and RPGs in general. I honesty think it's because of Nintendo hating multi disc games and the fact the story doesn't waffle on with garbage. There's is also a New Game+ after you finish it which lets you keep your levels and items into a second playthrough with tougher bosses and large enemies as well as the ability to upgrade you equipment further.


So should you buy this? YES! YES A thousand time YES! The game has a great story, great gameplay and it's worth every penny. I swear I couldn't find any faults in this this game. 30 hour of gameplay is about as much as Mass Effect and at least this has more action in it. I loved every minute of this game and being one of if not the last game on Wii, at least the Wii went out with a bang! I also recommend buying Xenoblade Chronicles too because both The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles are innovative advances the JRPG genre needs to appeal to a wider audience and they do it as well as Kingdom Hearts did.

Score 5/5

Review: Final Fantasy XIII-2

78 hours, 2 weeks, 1 cliffhanger ending to piss you off! Sorry to spoil it for you if you haven't finished it but if you get to the main ending, it ends with "To Be Continued" just before the credits. So yeah, Final Fantasy XIII-3 coming soon. Until that comes out, here's my review of Final Fantasy XIII-2... half a game!


The story of Final Fantasy XIII-2 starts 3 years after the events of Final Fantasy XIII. For some stupid reason Lightning disappears just after Final Fantasy XIII's ending and is now in Valhalla, a place where the Goddess Etro(first time we ever here of her too) resides and is unaffected by times flow. The new main character Noel falls into Valhalla in the middle of a fight between Lightning and new bad guy Caius Ballad. Anyway, Lightning sends him and a moogle to Serah and we find out Noel is a future boy from 700 years in the future where everything is apocalyptic and Mog is a weapon. Now Noel, Serah and Mog are on an adventure to change the future. Yeah I know it's a long description for the story but it's a grain of sand compared to the full story... for half a game!(Yeah, I'm going to keep this up throughout the review.)


The gameplay has been tweaked to be more lenient and easier. Unlike it's predecessor, you can change your party leader in combat and recruit monsters(stolen from Shin Megami Tensei) to take the 3rd party space. The game is also more open then Final Fantasy XIII but more constrained at the same time. What do I mean? Well the game isn't as linear as Final Fantasy XIII, but every area is relatively small and the game is shorter if you aren't level grinding or going for completion(which is impossible without finishing the game first.)

While navigating each area you'll be able to find hidden objects using Mog and you can throw him at unreachable objects. Also random encounters return, but you can avoid most battles by just running from the spawned monsters. Chocobos are back again and they can be ridden once you complete an area and you can collect them to use in battle and believe it or not, race them.

Combat is pretty much the same from Final Fantasy XIII since the paradigm system returns and you still only control 1 person in combat(My biggest gripe about Final Fantasy's XII and XIII), fortunately you can swap the party leader in combat but like I said, you only use 1 person in battle... which sucks! If you played Final Fantasy XIII(If you haven't played that, do it first.) you should be able to adapt quickly and easily to the combat. You even earn Gil along side CP from combat so no more hunting for selling items to earn Gil, but item hunting for weapons is still in this game.

The crystarium returns but it's now streamlined and is hard to use for optimising your characters without starting from scratch again. The monsters you collect use the cystarium too but to level them up requires you too use specific items you collect in battle and you can also infuse monsters with other monsters to obtain extra abilities to enhance them.

The games uses a level select screen called the Historia Crux for the time traveling(Time travel ripped from Chrono Trigger) to each area. Each area has a different map for each time period and some have gates that require Artefacts to unlock and access new time periods. Each time period also has fragments in them to collect. The fragments are mainly collected through sidequests and story progression and unfortunately the sidequests are mainly just fetch quests and monster hunting. The fragments you collect unlock fragment skills which are used to tweak the game with a variety of effects like a longer jump or increased monster encounters to name a few. The time periods can also be closed so you can redo them for different conversation responses or in some cases unlock an alternative ending(after completing the game... half a game!).


Is Final Fantasy XIII-2 better then Final Fantasy XIII? NO! It's just as good as Final Fantasy XIII. While it fixes some of Final Fantasy XIII's problems, it brings a few of it's own like the monster leveling system, too much end game content and the fact it's only half a game! Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a good game. It's the first Final Fantasy since X-2 to have a great story, but ARGH! It's half a game! I highly recommend getting this game but make sure you've played through Final Fantasy XIII first and be prepared to slap down money for Final Fantasy XIII-3.


Score 4/5

Oh yeah! This year is the 25Th anniversary of Final Fantasy. 16 great years, 8 years sucking and meandering and this year looks good for Final Fantasy... maybe.

Rant 33: The PlayStation Vita

Ok. For those who don't understand my anger at Sony when it comes to the PS Vita really need to read my tweets more. See the PS Vita is essentially an expensive portable gaming console that is releasing with bugger all titles worth buying it for and on top of that it's screwing PSP owners like me among other things. I will talk about everything that pisses me off about the PS Vita and what I want to see from Sony when it fails to make up for their stupidity.

First off is the price. AU$350 for Wifi and AU$400 for 3G+WiFi? Piss Off! Didn't they learn from Nintendo's 3DS release? See I could have lived with AU$300 for the WiFi but even that's a little high priced for what it is. Seriously not everyone can afford to pull that much out of their arse and to top it off AU$80 a game? Are you mental? Charging more then AU$70 for a portable game is madness and won't sell units that easily. Again look at Nintendo, they realised that with the DS and they had to knock off AU$10 to make it more appealing. Also why'd you make a new storage system for the Vita? The Memory Stick Duos were fine and since you are trying to get people to download a SMALL fraction of the PSP games released, allow them to carry their saves over would have made them a lot happier and more willing to buy the Vita.

Next we have the piss poor launch line up. All that you're releasing is shit no one wants, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and PS3 re-releases. Not a good strategy. See a good console release has games worth buying on release to not make you feel like such a chooch for buying it, case in point Nintendo released the Wii with a free game and Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a good move on their part. If you released the Vita with a Ratchet and Clank game and a free game showing of the unique features of the console, it would sell relatively high for a newly launched system.

On to my biggest gripe... screwing the PSP fans over! Sony came up with a scheme to allow PSP games to be downloadble on the Vita through a redemption plan so people who bought the UMD games could play their games on it without paying extra... problem is that all the games that kept the PSP alive aren't on the list. See if you have a look at the list all the Square-Enix, Atlus, Capcom and a variety of other companies games aren't on the list and almost 99% of my games are not in the list. This has me absolutely pissed! I was looking forward to retiring my beloved PSP and jumping onto the Vita but Sony gave me a big mid finger and said "Pay up!". See this is why Nintendo does a better job then you when it comes to the video game industry. They allow reverse compatibility on their console so you upgrade to the new one, not throw your money in the toilet. See even though the 3DS didn't sell to well at first, early adopters could still play DS games on it and the Wii allowed Gamecube games to be played on it and even the Wii U allows for Wii games to be played on it. Didn't you learn anything? The PS3 would have sold better if you'd have allowed full reverse compatibility with PS One and PS2 games, I bought the 60GB model because of the reverse compatibility just to find out Final Fantasy VIII didn't work on it or the majority of my JRPGs and it pissed me off!

Allowing 3G but restricting the carrier is a dick move! Seriously why? It would have been a better business venture if you'd have allowed every carriers sim cards to work on it. If you were say building the units to not use a sim and work on a specific network I'd still be pissed but less pissed because I'd be more pissed at the carrier.

Forcing me to put up with touch screen and track pads for games really pisses me off! I hate touch screens! Sure on a phone it's a great idea since it's harder to make accident calls but it's shit for gaming! The whole reason gamers haven't embrace mobile gaming is because of the lack of button and the Xperia Play is a bridge that will make us care about it, but using touch screen controls for a gamers console it stupid! I hated Nintendo for it with the Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks! Having the option or minimising it's use is the best way to go.

Why did you abandon the XMB? I love the XMB! I love it on the TV, I love it on the PSP and I especially love it on the PS3! So why'd you make that ugly menu interface that looks like an episode of Spongebob? Sure it looks practical but come on! You could of at least allowed me to have the XMB option. Maybe you can update the Vita's software to have that option.

Look Sony, if you want me to buy one here's what I want to see before I buy one.
1) Release an external UMD drive or a PS Vita with a UMD drive so I can play my PSP games on it.
2) Drop the price of the PS Vita, the games and the memory units.
3) Release some JRPGS on it!
4) Get Mistwalker to make some games for it and try to get them to release a port of the Xbox 360 game Lost Odyssey on it. Love that game!
5) Release a HDMI and/or component cable for it so I can play on my big screen TV.

I just hope you guys read this and see your short comings. I like you Sony but I can only take so many kicks to the groin before I become absolutely livid.

2012, the Year of Fear!

What's that? Year of Fear? Whatever could this twat mean? Well from my perspective it's a variety of things. I'd like to go into details about them regardless if you care since this is my blog and I do whatever I want... until Team America world police shuts down the internet in the name of the entertainment industry just because they can't handle their own shit and get with the fucking times! Well if you haven't already guessed it my first "Year of Fear" topic is the US bills SOPA and PIPA


Assuming anyone who may stumble upon me online is net savvy, SOPA and PIPA are bills the entertainment industry of the USA has had drafted to screw with the internet so they can turn it into nothing but online shopping websites, credit card/banks websites and your email. Why? Well since you asked because EVERYONE has participated in piracy at least once in their internet lives and they want more money! The thing is most people "pirate" for a variety of legit reasons,
1) Not available where they live eg. Australia didn't get 'The Flight of Dragons' released here on DVD.(Lucky me bought the US ONLY released DVD from eBay)
2)They don't want to buy an album for 1 song. iTunes has now made that easier to not need to pirate it but in a SHITTY QUALITY MP3! I want 325kb/second bit rate thank you!
3)Everyone can afford the internet but not everyone can't afford to buy all their favourite TV show, movies and video games.
4)The product is discontinued(personally I've had this problem A LOT!)

Now I don't promote piracy but I can understand why some people pirate and why most people unknowing pirate because they DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LAWS! Now if you want full information on SOPA and PIPA you can go read about them on Wikipedia. These bills have been shelved for now and will most likely go into a rewrite with even more legalese to confuse the masses but if we stay vigilant and actually learn to understand legalese, we won't lose the internet to greedy pricks who can't stand losing a nickel from 1 song being downloaded.


Next topic on my "Year of Fear" is about video games... mainly that more rubbish is coming out and selling well! In an age where the besting selling game is a realistic military murder simulator that has you shooting up non Americans(for those who don't understand, I'm talking about Call Of Duty) it's obvious a GEN-NES gamer like me is crying "The End Is Nigh!" and is also ready to throw money at Nintendo for the Wii U. You see I've been gaming since 1990 and I was brought up on gaming from the 8-bit era and have played every console to date and I know when shit is hitting the fan in the gaming world.

This year is that. Sequelitus(thank you Egoraptor for the word) plagued last years release schedule and this year looks worse. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good sequel(case in point anything Mario, Uncharted trilogy, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, etc.) but this year looks like it'll be a huge load of hit and miss with newish IPs second outings(Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite[Bioshock 2 doesn't count!], Darksiders II) and big franchises getting ready to stagnate in the water(any FPS sequel of this year... mainly staring at COD but also Halo 4). My point I'm trying to get to is that the majority of these mega franchises and soon to be mega franchises are the AIDS virus of the gaming industry and we need more new IPs and they need to be cheaper on release so a great new game like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West doesn't fail. See I actually am considering Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning but I think a limited editions for a new IP is STUPID and I don't want to pay full price for an unknown title that may suck and you get fuck all for trading it in(If you bought Too Human on release you understand where I'm going here). See I don't mined paying full price for a Zelda or Mario game because I know the suck to great ratios of those games(Call Of Duty fans do the same thing pretty much) but When it came to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West I waited for a price fall to AU$30(US$15) because it was a new IP, I didn't have the money at the time and I wasn't sure about it and I don't trust professional reviewers since they are mostly corrupt. Yes it's a great game but charging AU$110 for a game that has only a good developer behind it is stupid! A new IP is a risk and it should be treated as one. Developers and publishers need to understand that we are fans of the games, not the company! We don't care who made it for the most part, we care if the game is good.

Then there's the stupidity of both Nintendo and Sony releasing new consoles in the same year. This is idiocy it the highest degree. See by releasing both Wii U and the PS Vita in the same year, they are pocket gouging people and not everyone has the money for both. If you want to sell a new console you don't release it until you have a good line up of titles(this is where the 3DS failed at launch) and don't launch in the same year as a competitor(This is why the PS3 failed at launch) plus, and this is important... don't over price your console(Again this is where the PS3 failed at launch... and a few years after launch)! See I'm not buying a PlayStation Vita because there's nothing I want on it at the moment but next year they may have BUT I am buying a Wii U on launch since it will replace my Wii and most importantly will have some huge titles released during the first couple of months. Sony, if you read this I will buy a PS Vita under the following conditions,
1) You release an external UMD drive for the Vita or A UMD version of the Vita so I can play my PSP games since you don't support them in your PSP voucher thing.
2)Drop the price of it to the same as the 3DS.
3)Release a minimum of 4 JRPGs on it in Australia and/or the US
4)Release a HDMI and/or component cable for it to play on my TV
5)Get Mistwalker to make a JRPG for it since Hironobu Sakaguchi knows how to make a great JRPG. Hell even get them to release Lost Odyssey on it!

Then there's the SOPA and PIPA thing again... but the fact the ESA supports it. These guys represents the AAA games industry in government and also sponsor E3. I am not doing a E3 recap on my blog since these douche bags want these bills to pass and if they did my blog and 90% of the internet would be shutdown. I love gaming and because I love it I don't want to see independent developers screwed anymore then they have(I'm referring to megauploads being shut down and Megauploads is a CLOUD STORAGE website!) who need online sites to store and distribute their games without publishers screwing them over(I'm looking at you Atari and how you screwed Krome Studios over by not releasing Blade Kitten episode 2 and not paying them and the creator his royalties!).


To add to my "Year of Fear" just for the sake of it, the supposed Apocalypse! See people for generations have predicted and failed on what the apocalypse will be, whether it'll be biblical or metaphorical who gives a shit. See I personally have a series of predictions that I find both logical and unlikely I'd like to throw out,
Scenario 1 - SOPA and PIPA pass, the internet is dead, anarchy across the world leading to heavy police action, war breaks out.
Scenario 2 - Solar flares become strong enough to knock out wireless communication, mass panic, riots start because it will take a long time to fix, anarchy... you get the picture.
Scenario 3 - Economic collapse, the Global Financial Crisis has the big players (eg. USA and Europe) in extreme debt and start a war with their debtors, a new country becomes the new leading financial nation and they become a target of war, famine will ensue because no one can afford food or get paid to produce food.
Scenario 4 - World War 3 is started by a big nation who's paranoid of a little nation and it turns out the little nation makes up for it with big guns, unusual allies are formed and nuclear war breaks out, only a few country remain that aren't irradiated, nuclear winter ensues and a new ice age begins.

Sure the odds of these happening aren't very high but you never know and if the biblical apocalypse happens... HA HA HA HA! Yeah right! Don't get me wrong, anything is possible but anyone who thinks they'll be saved in a biblical apocalypse is an idiot! No one is sin free and sins aren't forgiven.


Well that's it for this blog post. 2012 is a new year of possibilities and by the look of it I'll have a little less games to review, but then again it may be a lot more. Who knows, maybe I'll be lucky enough to be hired as a corrupt video game reviewer for a big website like Gamespot. I hope the year turn out great and I have a niece who will be born any day now and who knows, maybe she'll bring the apocalypse... HA HA HA HA!