Whoa... The Darkness punched me in the gut in just the right way

So, I was meandering through The Darkness and was unsure whether I would keep playing. I really liked the demo and heard good things from a friend. But I just wasn't getting into the core game play (shoot out the lights, use your powers in the dark).

Then I entered the blown up orphanage. What an awesome sequence.

Cool ghost apparitions that helped narrate the back story in ways that were compelling and involving enough to make me watch even though I didn't really need to.

And then the sequence where the darkness took over and forced me to watch a rather difficult scene -- the death of my childhood girlfriend -- and then, via a mirror, my own suicide. Let's just say that I was hooked on the story.

It reminded me very much of Planescape: Torment in that this was my character's memory of the first time he died. In other words, dying many deaths is part of this game and of who my character is. He started off dying in the opening credits sequence and has died again at the conclusion of the first act.

I was just left at the beginning of the grisly second act (more executions) and I can't wait to figure out what comes next.

Update: Even better. I spawned into a WWI trench. The soldiers are all reanimated (and won't finally die until you eat their hearts, unlike in the modern world). It reminds me a bit of Eternal Darkness where you play different time periods in the same game as the same character.

Progression: Quantitative vs. qualitative

So, I've mentioned that I dislike the fact that Mass Effect makes me care too much about the spreadsheet when it comes to progression and stats. In other words, I need to decide between adding X% to my cooldown or subtracting Y% from my kickback when I choose where to add my precious talent points each time I level up. This, to me, isn't quite as fun as choosing between the "dagger of swift ass kicking" and the "two handed sword of slow and plodding death".

Luckily for me, I tend to always plunge charisma/dialog based abilities. The game UI didn't seem to offer compelling reasons to upgrade my Intimidate or Charm skills (how exciting is a 5% discount at the item shop?). And, after having navigated countless dialog trees in many games, how compelling is "adds the potential to get additional dialog options"? Despite my misgivings, I did remember the joy of leveling up my chat-stats in Planescape:Torment because of the cool gameplay options it presented me at key points in the game and I wondered whether Mass Effect might also provide the same rewards.

It turns out that yes, Mass Effect does add cool dialog options when you level up your Intimidate skill. My character slams people into the wall, yells at them, and guns them down at the flick of my left stick during a conversation tree. And I chortle gleefully, knowing that the red text options (Intimidate) are grayed out for players who chose not to plunge the chat stat lines.

I recently completed the "resolve an impossible situation" achievement via Intimidate and it was pretty cool.

Now I'm grinding my way through side quests before making the plunge to the end-game at Ilos with the hope that I can max out my Intimidate skill. Why? Because a friend told me that if you have maxed out your Intimidate you can unlock a very cool ending.

And, of course, I also want to cheese out a few more usage based achievements.

Note: Obligatory UI complaint. I landed on a planet and couldn't tell if I had been there before by looking at the map. Nor could I easily cross index the planet with outstanding quests. You'd think that the onboard computer system would be good at that sort of thing. Pfeh!

More thoughts on Mass Effect...

So, I'm really enjoying Mass Effect for the most part. The "most part" being getting to know my character and supporting cast through interesting and engaging dialog.

Yep. By talking to people. Well, not even people. Scripted/AI bits of code that I can interact with.

It's interesting to reflect back on how attached I (and many others) became to the Weighted Companion Cube in Portal or how shocked I was when the white rabbit died in American McGee's Alice. Yet many "human" game characters with much more realistic graphics fail to spring to life.

Lots of variables come into play, especially in terms of the quality of the writing and immersiveness of the story. However, Mass Effect seems to succeed in making in game characters interesting and appealing in ways that other RPGs have failed to do in my mind. In some ways I'm reminded of Planescape: Torment with its incredible dialog amongst the main characters and the interjections between party members and various NPCs.

Where Mass Effect seems to take it to the next level is in terms of the cinematic quality of the cut scenes. They are shot like Hollywood sequences (similar camera angles, cuts, editing), feature gesturing and facial expressions that approach actual "acting", are recorded by high quality voice over talent, and are well-written snippets of dialog that convey drama as well as information.

In short, I'm actually being entertained by cut-scenes. Whoah.

Not surprising are some additional UI quibbles I feel are worth noting:

• Map/Journal integration is dismal. Yes, you can quickly go from Map to Journal via the Y button. However, what you really want to do is pick an objective from your Journal and then quickly plot it on your map (which then gets tracked in your HUD). Oblivion actually did a good job of this.
• Squad selection is painful and error prone. During the tutorial portion of the game you gradually acquire a bunch of NPCs that you can swap in and out. Later on you can swap NPCs at your spaceship hub (which I think was the same in KotoR). Unfortunately, there is no good way to micro your team management in one place (swap equipment, check stats and abilities, etc). All you get in the squad select UI is a big picture of the people you can choose from -- and each NPC is summed up by a single stats bar. This results in the possibility of severe errors in the first part of the game (because there is no way to change squad composition once you exit the squad select screen) and moderate errors for the rest of the game (because you need to select characters, inspect them, then go back to the select screen, lather, rinse, repeat until you get it right). Annoying.
• The Galaxy Map UI is designed in a way that makes it prone to a variety of errors:
• Discoverability: I couldn't figure out how to leave the original space station and go to my next location. I walked around and talked to people. I looked at the Galaxy Map. Finally I figured "it's been long enough, I must be where I should be" and walked outside -- only to find out I'd never left the station. Who knew that your default Galaxy Map view was too far in to suggest that you needed to zoom out several times in order to figure out where to go next?
  
• Usability: A zooms in. B should back out, right? Nope. X backs out. B quits the Galaxy Map. Let's just say that I exited the Galaxy Map several times by mistake.
• Usability: No integration of Journal and Galaxy Map. Forget where you're supposed to go? It's a multi-step process to call that screen up (exit Galaxy Map, go to Start Menu, go to Journal, find active quest, exit Start Menu, go to Galaxy Map, zoom out until you find a likely location, zoom in, select location).

I did experience my first vehicle combat scenario. It was about as uninteresting as I'd heard it was going to be. Luckily I figured out that holding the left trigger meant that I could at least see where I was going and aiming. But the combat feedback is so bad (basically you need to ignore all the beautiful scenery and focus on the ugly red health bar) that the whole experience seems rather hit and miss. It's too bad because it really could have been a cool mini game much the way that Kingdom Hearts 2 or Ratchet & Clank had space combat mission mini games during outer map exploration. Opportunity missed.