I've wanted to play Mass Effect for a quite a while now and only got around to actually do so now. It's one of those "came out for Xbox and then came out on PC" crowd of games. Jade Empire is another good example from the same developer. People seem to think highly of the game and now that I've played it myself I understand why. I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the better Bioware titles available.

+ The story is great. People expect as much from anything with Bioware attached to it but I'd say this tops a lot of their previous work. I wouldn't say it's as good as KOTOR but that game was in a league of it's own if your a Star Wars fan like me.

+ The game universe is immersive and well thought out. The major races have plenty of backstory and there is an in game encyclopedia of sorts that explains a great deal if your the kind that likes understanding the world they are playing in.

+ Fantastic voice acting. The whole game is voice acted and in general it's superbly well done.

+ Lots of incentives to play it again. There are three choices you make over the course of the story that have huge implications and aren't necessarily easy to choose. Several awards given during a play-through have benefits for your next play-through.

+ Actual morally grey areas. The above mentioned three choices are actually really hard to call, unless your an animal loving hippie or a corperate thug. The rest of us grey human beings will have a tough time with those.

+ Third person shooter combat? But I thought this was an RPG. The blend of RPG and shooter elements is masterfully done and it's the best hybrid of the genres since Deus Ex. The combat is great and skill points spend during level ups have a noticeable impact on weapon handling.

+ Difficulty was just right for somebody like me. Between your regenerating shields, first aid kits, special abilities, and your fellow party members it's pretty hard to die. That's not to say that you can just run around nilly willy and shoot at whatever moves. Once those shields get knocked out you can die pretty fast.

+ Great soundtrack. Not something your going to be humming after your done playing but while you are playing it's rather enjoyable.

- The game is woefully short. Maybe that's why a lot of people love it as not everybody wants to sink 60+ hours into one game anymore. But clocking in at around 45 hours I felt like the game could have been so much more. It's not like I sprinted through the game, I did all the sidequests I came across and I was still done in a fraction of the time I've invested in other great RPGs.

- The vehicle sections are pretty meh, mostly due to lousy physics for the Mako. The vehicle feels like it's made of styrofoam and bounces off the ground if you go over the smallest bump. Also it's uncanny ability to drive up mountains at an eighty degree angle bugged me.

- The character interaction feels stiff a lot of the times, especially the romance dialogue. It basically boils down to you walking up to your party members in between missions and them gushing their past all over you with you just standing there asking questions now and then.

- That good ol PC framerate slowdown is here. If your character is one that makes use of the games titular mass effect powers you will likely see slowdown when the action ramps up and you have a bunch of effects going off at once.

- Not enough interior environments. Outside of the story areas the sidequests will take place on planets you land on. On with there are a total of three interior possibilities to be found. A small mine area, an underground bunker type area, and an above ground two story building. A little variety beyond the placement of boxes inside would have been nice.

- "Meh" AI. Enemies generally strafe around and move between cover but on average are pretty brain dead. The only time your really in trouble is when a tank ****enemies rush you and start smacking you around a la melee. The same can be said for your other party members. They do pretty well on their own but they often get stuck on things and they won't attack things unless they can see them. You could be fighting for your life in a doorway with a buddy right next to you but he'll just stand there with his gun drawn unless you charge in or manually order him to go into the next room ahead of you.

- Lack of enemy variety. You've got krogen warriors and several versions of geth droids which have a jrpg upgrade system of both that are visible due to different color schemes. This droid is harder because it's white, this korgan is harder because he's wearing black armor, ect. That covers 75% of what you shoot at over the course of the game.

I think a lot of the things that bugged me stem from the games short length. I suppose being short it's a great game to replay but personally I could have done with more of everything. The main story is intense and has several great moments and aside from the meh vehicle gameplay the sidequests do a pretty good job of being varied and interesting. Gripes aside I have to admit that it was a great game and ranks well with the many great games I've played this year. I'll certainly be looking forward to playing Mass Effect 2 whenever I pick that up.

Almost every video game has a story of some kind. Mario was originally trying to rescue his princess from her kidnapper. Sonic was trying to take down Dr. Robotnik (or Eggman if you prefer) and save his woodland friends from their robot forms. The guy in Doom just wanted off Mars. Even if it's barely there most games have some kind of story, a reason for our hero to be a hero. It is for the story that I play most of my games, I don't care about and generally never so much as look at a games multiplayer. I can overlook a great many faults for the sake of a good story, poor controls, program bugs, lousy visuals, annoying soundtrack. If the story is strong enough I can and will overlook all those things I just mentioned. It is the single player narrative experience that I spend my money on and in my time playing games to date I've had the pleasure of playing some truly fantastic stories. Some of the best stories are so vast, so long, so epic that they cannot be covered in one game. Metal Gear Solid, Prince of Persia, Resident Evil, .Hack, Kingdom Hearts, on and on I could go. Some series, like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil, drag on and on long after they should be tied up and finished, spanning multiple console generations with their installments. Perhaps the worst thing about that is the fact that if you want to the whole picture you would have to find the series roots, where it all began. When a story started two console generations ago this can be difficult to impossible and sometimes very expensive depending on what you looking for.

But this blog post isn't about those games. This blog post is about the stories that were never finished, that just kind of hung along with those that enjoyed them. Not only that but little or no show signs of never being finished. In this two part blog post I'm going to talk about two game series that offered me stories that blew me away while leaving questions unanswered, and events far from resolved. While the focus of all this will be their respective stories there may be some spoilers but I will keep them to a minimum and I certainly won't ruin the experience for those that might be interested in seeking these titles out. To start off we'll cover the shorter of the two.

The Longest Journey and it's sequel Dreamfall have a story that left me floored and desperately wanting more. The Longest Journey was released for PC back in 2000 and was a point click adventure. With no combat and a heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving it was at times infuriatingly frustrating leaving you little to no idea what you were supposed to do at times. But that could be forgiven for it's brilliant story, unique setting, and superb voice acting. The Longest Journey centered on the character of April Ryan, an art student living in the distant future. It would seem that several mellenia ago the earth was home to practitioners both science and magic. To avoid a techno magical apocalypse the world was split into two separate worlds, both existing in the same place. These two words were known as Stark (our world) and Arcadia, a world of magic as opposed to science. The divide was overseen by a succession of guardians, powerful beings chosen from either world to oversee the balance and ensure that the two words did not recombine. April discovers that she possesses the exceptionally rare ability to shift between the two words and her once simple life is turned upside down. At first struggling to survive in a alien fantasy world while getting used to things like talking animals and the idea of magic being real she befriends a talking crow whom she names . . . . . . . crow. The two of them travel together as April tries to understand why she has this power and to find a way home. Eventually things escalate and she becomes wrapped up in events that threaten the balance itself.

The story for The Longest Journey continues in it's sequel Dreamfall which was released for PC and Xbox in 2006. The story starts off several years after the events of The Longest Journey with the character of Zoë. After dropping out of university Zoë is just kind of living in limbo with her father in Casablanca. Shortly after the start of the game she starts seeing a little girl on screens around town. The little girl pleads with her to "find April Ryan. Save her!". It seems that a huge company is trying to use technology to induce lucid dreams as the new breakthrough in entertainment. Problems is, a number of the people testing the product have a habit of not waking up. Dreams are a strange thing and are one of the few things that travel freely between Stark and Arcadia. Once Zoë starts investigating bad things start to happen and eventually she finds herself sucked into Arcadia, after which the narrative really takes off. In general the only real fault the game has is that it's over much to fast. Superior to it's predecessor in just about every way Dreamfall was nominated for a number of game awards the year it was released taking home the MTV award for best game soundtrack. Unlike April Zoë could defend herself if the need arose and also ended up sneaking around a number of locales. At times Dreamfall was more like an interactive movie then a game with long cut scenes and tons of superbly done voice acting. After it's climax it was apparent that a sequel was intended but to this day nothing has surfaced. In March of 2007 it was announced that the story would continue in episodic content called Dreamfall Chapters though nothing relating to the project has seen the light of day, not even any word about development so much as starting.

To date the best way to play The Longest journey and Dreamfall would be to pick up the collectors edition of Dreamfall for PC which includes both. If your not one to care about owning a physical copy you can purchase both on Valves Steam service, which most PC gamers will likely be familiar with. If your looking for a game with serious focus on story then Dreamfall will blow you away. It would be a shame if this story were to be left unfinished as to date it remains one of the best stories I have had the pleasure of playing.

I shall continue this train of thought (hopefully within the next month) with an epic series of games. Spanning five games across two console generations over the course of seven years. Six years after the last installment the story remains unfinished. The story of The Legacy of Kain.

2009 has been a great year for me in terms of gaming. Oblivion, Persona 3 & 4, Okami, lots of good times have been had. But there can be no win without fail and early this year I played Puzzle Quest for PS2.

Please! Make it stop!

It's the first game I can think of that I abandoned with no intent to ever finish. Gather round and I shall tell you the tale. You see I've had a lot of good experiences with puzzle games on the PSP. Lumines is superb, Every Extend Extra is a blast (pun unintended), and Gunpey is frantic fun. I had heard tales around the internet of an epic merging of puzzle game and RPG, a grand title that went by the name of Puzzle Quest. Intrigued and spoiled by my experiences with the PS2 port of Lumines I picked it up for $15 from my local EB. Placing it into my PS3 I was greeted with what looked to be an enjoyable experience, it was fresh, different, and appeared to be deep. At first it was fun, I enjoyed the puzzle gameplay, the variations of said gameplay, and all the things you could do. But after a while I got tired of the random battles forcing me into more of what I had been doing over and over for hours. Twenty hours in I found myself making excuses to not play the game, anything to keep me from another round of bejeweled. I realized that there was no depth, just an illusion tricking you into doing the same thing over and over and over and over. Thirty hours in I felt like I was going crazy. Bear in mind that I played and enjoyed Final Fantasy I with it's constant random battles. By thirty five hours and at the urging of my wife who couldn't stand to see me suffer any further I put Puzzle Quest away, never to be played again. After which I started having fun again with a game that didn't suck.

Back then I had started a review documenting my thougts on the game that had me doing the same thing over and over. I never got around to finishing it. Due to a trip to Germany and a computer reformat it lay neglected and unfinished like the title it was based on. A week ago I was tidying up my secondary hard drive when I came across it hiding in the corner, crazed and frothing at the mouth. The file looked at me and whimpered like it knew that it was unfinished and unwanted. Taking the review in my arms I did my best to finish it before throwing it onto Gamespot, far away from my PC. There is sits, in a dark corner of the site, where few shall ever read it. But after all those long months buried in the depths of my PC perhaps it's best it doesn't get much attention. I'm left with the opinion that bright lights or sudden movements might make it let out one of those soul chilling moans that I was making while playing the game. I certainly wouldn't want any of you to experience that kind of thing.