Payal Dhar's Blog: Writer's Log, page 19

Commander Shepard: In pictures

This post is for Marie! Click for bigger images.

~PD

Mass Effect: A review

And so it came to pass that Commander Jan Shepard finally got the better of Saren. After 24 hours and 18 minutes of gameplay (over an hour of which must have been spent running round and round, keeping out of Saren’s way while taking pot shots and biotic blasts at him) Mass Effect (henceforth ME) was finally completed. It was only the second time that I’ve pursued a game with such single-minded dedication from beginning to end, Deus Ex being the first, which says more about my impression of ME than words will do justice.

But anyhow, a short review follows.

Mass Effect is the first of a trilogy of role-playing games based in the 22nd century. You play as Commander Shepard, an officer of the Systems Alliance Navy, who is essentially tasked with the job of saving the galaxy from malevolent aliens. The game installed without a hitch on my system (late 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro, running Windows 7 on Bootcamp), though at first it kept crashing whenever I tried to play it. After Googling for a solution, it turned out that an update was needed. Subsequently, everything ran smoothly. It does not need a disc inserted in the drive to play.

ME has a pretty interesting storyline and I won’t give anything away. In a first playthrough, the amount of information one has to process regarding the world can get a bit overwhelming at times. I found that concentrating on my progress mission by mission was less distracting—you eventually catch up with the story anyway.

I played as a custom-created character: Jan Shepard, female, Spacer by origin, and a Sole Survivor by psych profile. Her class was Infiltrator, which gave her a good combination of tech and combat talents. There’s some hand holding in the first few missions, easing you into the story and the game’s universe, as well as the interface. You learn to use your weapons, powers and the heads-up-display, and also how to control your squad.

As an RPG, you will, of course, get plenty of decisions to make. How your character develops is up to you, though, broadly, you can take a Paragon or Renegade path for Shepard, each unlocking a different set of abilities. As you go along, Shepard also collects a bunch of allies who are available to go on missions with her. You can at most select two other squadmates in your landing party, so it’s a tough choice sometimes.

The gameplay took a little bit of getting used to, but felt quite intuitive afterwards (and now I’m in the process of unlearning it all for Mass Effect 2!). The combat is just about difficult enough to give you a challenge and easy enough that you don’t get frustrated. In many other squad-based RPGs I’ve played—Neverwinter Nights comes to mind, as does Dragon Age II—I found the controls for manipulating my team, using their powers and giving orders pretty cumbersome. ME, however, made it relatively simple to hurl appropriate powers at mechs and organics and what have you.

Most of the missions can be played in random order, and there are plenty of opportunities for side missions to pick up experience points and goodies. It is also one of the few games where you get to play as a male or female character with absolutely no difference in your abilities, strength or powers. Girl and boy Shepards walk, talk and behave in exactly the same way (though, of course, they have different voices). In fact, the same template (or whatever the technical term is) has been used for the movements of both male and female Shepards, and there isn’t the usual focus on various body parts that a female protagonist might have otherwise inspired. (That said, I’m not sure this extends to other female characters of the series.) There is also scope (albeit limited) for some same-sex romance. Rumour has it that Bioware wanted to go the whole hog on this, but chickened at the eleventh hour.

You can import your ME character into the sequel—in which case you retain your relationships, and the choices and decisions you make are reflected in the world. Overall, ME has immense replay value—I’ve already started a new broShep playthrough: Derek Shepard, on veteran mode.

If I had to rate ME: 8/10. It reminded me exactly why I love RPGs so much.

~PD

Proof that the Web is evil

The WWW is evil. It entices you away from your True Purpose and lures you into its den of vices. Here are some of the ways I have been waylaid while being an industrious ant and minding my own business in the past 24 hours:

While rechecking titles of academic publications, I unaccountably ended up on a fan site dedicated to the late Stieg Larsson and browsing the discussion forum there.

While pitching ideas to editors, I inexplicably found myself looking at backpacks on Flipkart.
While doing routine fact-checking on articles I am editing, I mysteriously landed on a site featuring tips on the best way to earn your living as a farmer in Sims 3. This, oddly enough, led to checking to see if the price of Diablo III has come down and Hitman: Absolution released (I know very well it’s due in November, so why would I need to check?!).
While writing work-related emails, I’ve blacked out and suddenly come to, to realize I’m reading reviews on Engadget.com.

Need any more proof that the Web is the devil in cyber form?

~PD

Gaming gyan: Learning from my mistakes

Getting stuck in a lift with Commander Shepard and her non-human companions Liara and Wrex last night resulted in some introspection. And I came away with the knowledge that a decade and a half of gaming has taught me many lessons. Here are my five tips to gaming without losing your sanity and keeping your pride intact:

Save often: The fact I don’t practise this regulary is why I have less hair than I should. As mentioned earlier, last night, Shepard and her landing party in Mass Effect got stuck in a lift thanks to a game bug. The lift doors wouldn’t shut and the damn thing refused to move. I had to reload the game and go back to a point a good 15 minutes earlier, and redo a lot of pointless (well, not pointless exactly, but certainly tedious) stuff, mostly to do with talking to people and running around here and there. This Being-So-Engrossed-That-I-Forgot-To-Save creature has bitten me in the butt many times—I’ve lost count of the times when a super-ugly toddler has sprouted in the Sims 3 and reloading the game has meant losing out on dozens of days; or when Agent 47′s cover has been busted on the verge of his completing a level and I have to go back and redo everything.
Explore your world: Just as in real life, in gaming too patience is usually richly rewarded (unless you’re on a timed mission, when it would instead end up in your being blown up or the world ending [same thing, really])—yet another lesson that has been tough to learn. I’ve often stupidly missed out on rewards and goodies because I’ve been to much in a hurry to smash open that last crate, hack the final computer or decrypt yet another locker. And that reminds me…
Talk to strangers: It usually pays to talk to strangers. It may give you intel you’d have to pay for otherwise; it could get you side missions with enviable rewards and invaluable experience points that weigh in when you meet the big boss; it may give you an easy way out of a situation you’d otherwise need to go about the hard way. And if you’re playing Sims, and on the lookout for rich townies to add to your family, chatting them up is a good way to find out if they’re The One.
Play again and again: I love games with high replay value, and that doesn’t just mean open-ended games like the Sims series. I know that sounds a bit odd—especially to non-gamers—but in role-paying games (RPGs), where you can choose your class of character and their development, replaying in the shoes of a different protagonist can give a completely different experience. I haven’t even finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution and I’m already thinking about my next play through using a different strategy. I can’t count how many times I’ve replayed the Diablo games just to try my luck as a different character with a different skill set. I never get tired of Hitman because there are so many ways to complete an assignment. Even replaying at a higher difficulty setting makes for a new experience. Which leads me to the last tip…
Don’t play at the lowest difficulty: This is not exactly a tip; in fact, it should be a law in the gamers’ universe. Because the easy setting is for wimps. No, I won’t take that back!

~PD

Finding my romantic bone

Rumour has it that I’m a closet romantic. Now, I’m not particularly keen to peddle such sacrilegious nonsense; in fact, I’ll have you know that though I love puppies and kittens, I don’t like flowers and pink and heart-shaped things. Sometimes I like mushy songs—I usually put that down to PMS—but I hate romcoms with a vengeance, have never read a Mills & Boon, and hate chicklit.

That, I do hope, provides a context to the following news: I have a contribution in a forthcoming anthology of love stories for young adults. It’s called Music of the Stars and Other Love Stories, published by Scholastic. My story is called ‘Secret Admirer’ and is partly autobiographical.

Writing this story might have helped me overcome my fear of dipping my toes in the pink mush. That doesn’t mean I’m switching genres from fantasy to romance, but it has made me keen to resolve a romantic angle from the Shadow in Eternity series in book 4. It has also given me the glimmerings of an idea for a new YA book…

~PD

(Illustration: Cieleke at stock.xchng)