Muffin Wrench

This is a bit of an older game now, with no shortage of reviews out there telling you that's it's great, game of the year, a life-changing epiphany waiting to happen, possibly the cure for ebola, or just a game worth sinking 12ish hours of your life into. But, I like this game, and I have a witty title that ties into the gameplay and muffins, so I'm writing it whether you like it or not. Even if you don't like horror games, play this, it's not horror, it's awesome, you can't help but like it, and if you don't, you may be a communist, and since this game has a retro 60ish feel to it, that means that by default you'll be exiled by your friends and neighbors and that the local gas station won't serve 'your kind' anymore, kinda like C3P0, yes, not liking this game would make you that annoying. But, if you're reading this, I'll assume you're not a commie, and you're not annoying, mainly so I can sleep at night knowing that the dirty reds aren't being entertained by my writing nor are they being guided through the capitalist petri dish that is America, rather that they are floundering around out there, trying to figure out why the hell radioshacks even exists, but, then, the average american might not even know that anymore. But I digress.

Though on a related topic similar to communism and broken down reactors that make entire cities uninhabitable, for some odd reason, we as human beings seem to have a strange fascination with wandering around a failed dystopian society whilst being the lone sane person left alive and killing everything else. And if this fantasy is one that you have every day at work, on your drive to wherever the hell it is that you decided to go, or simply when you're around other people, then Bioshock is likely a game that will fullfil your deepest desires and leave every other aspect of your life feeling comparatively empty. Is this to say that the game is a dream come true? Well, maybe, maybe not; while it will certainly fuck your dreams over with a steam powered blender and to a 50's era soundtrack just like in your twisted dystopian fantasies, it does have some drawbacks. It has no multiplayer: no co-op (which would have been awesome, like, crawling around Chernobyl fighting mutant commies awesome) , no versus, no CTF, nothing. To me that's a missed opportunity. But would you really want to share your dystopian fantasy world with your friends? No, of course you wouldn't, it's your dystopia, and all the miscreants in it are your bitches, and you're not in a sharing mood. Sharing is for commies anyway. But the lack of multiplayer is, sadly, not your perfect dystopia's worst flaw: the save system is. While it's not the horrendous holocaust grade trajedy that was the password system of old, it is something akin to finding out that the hot girl you just drunkenly hit on was your sister, or worse yet, your mom's sister; it's bad, game-breakingly bad. It makes dying more of an inconveinence than anything, or, in some cases, even the prefered method of playing the game. And only the commies prefer to play games by dying for mother russia; Americans survive, like McGyver, or Chuck Norris: we don't die like those commie death whores.

Oh, and you play Pipe Dream as a minigame; I'm not joking. I thought that had died with Windows 3.11, but, i guess if you're gonna have a minigame you can at least pick a classic and give it a slightly shiny new coat of paint. But it is a lump in an otherwise smooth and creamy milkshake of gaming goodness; but hey, some people like lumpy milkshakes as is their right, in America: but in Soviet Russia, milk shakes you.

Now, the good about this little, personal, communist free apocalypse. For one, it's beautiful; the Unreal 3 engine does a superb job of rendering this game, especially for the 360. It's not the prettiest game, especially not for the PC, but everything fits together perfectly. The art style is, well, art. This game could be put in a museum and, not only would it be the most badass piece of art there, but it would piss on the mona lisa and scare away the small children; basically, it's the perfect piece of art and a general improvement to society in general. But not only is it beautiful and a functional scarecrow for the elderly and the infantile, it's gameplay is fast paced (usually, with a few rare exceptions), well balanced, fluid (ok, the system's a bit clunky, but it works beautifully), atmospheric (the first five minutes of this game draw you in as nothing else before or since in my experience), stays fresh for the entire game (really, the game never gets old, and rarely repetitive), and is some of the most satisfying combat in a FPS game (possible exceptin being the Condemned games, but they're different, lets compare apples to apples here, or at least toasters to stainless steel toasters). But really, one of the greatest points of this game is it's plot, and the way it's told; you can't get this in any other medium: not movies, not books, maybe comics, but that's a stretch. It's phenomenal, I can't spoil anything for you, I won't, only a communist would do that; and if you have a friend that did spoil it for you, they're a communist, and you should email your state's governor to have them hauled off to a commie-camp, or at least start telling people that this friend has the herpes, everywhere, and is contagious, all the time, so that way people will avoid eye contact with them and treat everything they say as meaningless herpes induced alphabet vomit.

Essentially, if you enjoy, life, freedom, happiness, cars, and the right for every random person you meet to potentially be carrying a boomstick in their pocket and a miniature poodle in their purse, then you'll like this game, or at least enjoy it more than licking Oprah's fat rolls.

Massive Muffins

If you have an Xbox 360, you've probably heard of Mass Effect. And if you haven't, you should keep reading. Now two games strong, and with a third and advertised final game on the way, it is, in my opinion, the best single player experience the 360 has to offer.

Mass Effect entered the world of gaming in 2007, shortly after the launch of Halo 3. Unfortunately I didn't get to pick it up until 3 months ago...so it's not exactly new news.

Mass Effect opens with the character creation business. This could have used some work. As interesting as it is, unless you choose the default Shepard, you will almost indefinitely end up looking like a space-pedophile. Luckily, my attempt at a character only resulted in giving him a parrot as a great-grandfather. You then get the joy of choosing between a few different classes, and your options are pretty much this: Weapons or abilities. You carry four weapons with you, the assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, and pistol, no matter the class you choose. Turns out though, that Shepard likes to lug around stuff he doesn't need, because unless you choose to be a soldier, you are "untrained" on at least two of your guns. This made me sad at times, as I decided I liked killing people Carmine-style, and sniper rifles are not made for removing an enemy's lower half.

After you've completed your Shepard, you're off to save the galaxy. Literally the entire galaxy is riding on you. I won't spoil the story for those who actually don't know what I'm talking about, because it's the best thing about the game, but basically doom is coming, and no one else believes you. So you set off in your shiny ship, gather a bunch of bros and gals who believe you, and you go stop it.

The story telling method itself is what will make or break the game for a player, as it's what you do most often. It's told almost entirely through conversations you can control the flow of whenever the magic wheel pops up. Critical choices are made throughout the game in this mode, so you'll want to pay attention. There are pretty much two ways to approach every situation. You're either the good-natured, universe-loving hero (the "Paragon"), or the douche-bag, bad-ass (the "Renegade"). To choose the best convo options for either, you'll either want to dump points into charm or intimidate...which is annoying, as those points would be better served making things die faster. I generally stuck to being the "nice guy", but luckily you can still choose to be a dick when you feel like it.

Regardless of which path you follow, the main story pretty much plays out the same. There are enough "choices" (mainly of who dies or not and who you get to have as a "special friend") that the game is worth playing through twice, which apparently is encouraged, as there's an achievement for it.

The game itself plays as a third person shooter which feels a little lighter and more fluid than Gears of War. The only problem is, to get to the smoothness you need to first break through the concrete shell you're teeth are forcibly crushed down on at the start. The game tells you very little about how it is to be played, which, once you figure it out for yourself, is fantastic the second time through. At first though, you may have those moments of: "What just happened, and how the crap did I do it?" Once you get to the creamy center however, you only encounter the occasional piece of gravel.

As tasty as the combat system is, the inventory screen is one of those gravely-bits. You will come across many guns, armors, and upgrades as you screw around in the universe, but will quickly find only a very few of them actually do anything useful. You also eventually run out of pockets on your space-armor, so you either need to reduce stuff into jelly, or hopefully sell it at one of the few and far-between shops you come across.

The other teeth-breaking bit worth mentioning are the vehicle sections. While I found it fun rolling about a few acres on a planet in a tank with jump-jets, cutting through enemies as if I were simply mowing the lawn, you quickly come to have a bit of disdain for it. Not your little tank, mind you, but for the RIDICULOUS terrain you are sometimes made to trek over. The game designers seem to have a mountain fetish, and it gets frustratingly annoying fast.

The tastiness of Mass Effect is easily worth a chipped tooth or two though, especially when you go back for seconds.

Mass Effect 2 does everything the first game did...but it replaces the stony-bits with nutty-bits. Overall the game feels more polished. The story remains the best part, and is on-par with the first's. The game's start is nicer to you, still throwing you right into being shot at, but at least having the courtesy to inform you how to shoot back. The character classes are all still there, but you only carry weapons you're capable of using. The combat in general is more refined and fun, making you want more. Apparently orbital-bombardment tanks are for the poor, so you now get a shiny shuttle to pamper-you to the surface. The paragon/renegade system is entirely conversation dependent (with the occasional awesome quick-time event...I pushed a dude out a 10,000th-something window), and the inventory and level management are refined and user-friendly. In fact, the only noteworthy issue with the second game is the tedious resource mining for upgrades (I will say it was fantastic when the computer gave me sass for probing Uranus).

So far, the Mass Effect series is simply awesome. If you focus only on the story missions themselves, you're looking at about 12 hours for the first game and 20 for the second (if you don't want your entire crew to die, that is). That's the other thing; as mentioned, this is a series of games. I highly recommend playing through Mass Effect, investing in your character and their decisions, importing them into the next game and continuing on. It makes for one of the most personal games available, and is truly a worthwhile endeavor.

But hey, if all that isn't enough, at least you can get some virtual booty.

> EpicError