I have played tens of hours of Oblivion before but never got on with the main plotline. No change here either. That first moment you leave the sewer you really feel like you’re in a living, breathing world where you can do anything you want. I can’t think of any other game that has made me feel like this before.

I’ve gone for the Assasination class this time. Again I’m favoring the bow, it’s just so satisfying getting those critical hits from stealth. My character will be motivated primarily by money and adventure. Like the guy Indiana Jones gets his fedora from. I entered a cave that is right near the sewer exit that I have somehow never been to before. It had several layers to it with artifacts to collect. A little later in the game an artifact dealer requests an audience with me. After seeing I’d sold the main artifact he tells me I undersold it and there are more of them he will buy from me if I can locate them. I loved this, what felt at the time as finding a random tomb to raid has led to a quest to collect them all. Bugger the main plot I’m out for treasure!

I’ll try and post a few pics of it as despite the game being 4 years old it is still one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. It is also hyping me up ready to play Skyrim (hopefully) later this year.

I-War holds a very special place in my heart, it is one of the very few space combat games to use proper Newtonian physics in it’s flight model. Flying that ship took real skill, needing to understand inertia and thrust to really master the combat. It’s missions were excellently varied and exciting. One moment you were fighting off a dozen weapon platforms and 3 frigates, the next sneaking into a base by building up speed and then cutting all power, drifting slowly in.

Since joysticks went out of fashion there have been very few space combat games. The occasional strategy game will appear, the Homeworld games were very enjoyable. Star Trek: Bridge Commander (and much later, Star Trek Online) gave the fun of commanding a much bigger ship too. But all in all it’s a dead genre.

I have recently had the itch to tinker with space ships so I fired up Gratuitous Space Battles. The idea is you design your ships and fleet, set loose tactics and watch the battles play out. I love the idea, but the execution is a little flawed. I think with a bit more effort with the tutorial and some UI improvements it would have been better, but it wasn’t quite enough for me. I didn’t like the loss of control once you set your fleet free. I know it’s the point of the game, but there is no way of you turning the tide of battle.

So I was thinking about the games I’ve got, and one I didn’t play much (due to hitting a huge bug at the time) was Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. You command a small fleet of ships and you can really tinker to your heart’s content. Each weapon can target a specific ship and subsystem, you can toggle your power levels and repair priority, send boarding parties to sabotage the enemy ships, send fighters to protect an ally. Or you can just say “Ship A take down their shields, Ship B disable their engines” and leave them to it. Of course I love to micro-manage everything to feel I’m really making the most of my fleet.

The game is not perfect, the plot seems a bit bobbins, it has unskippable cut-scenes and can get ridiculously hard. But it still looks beautiful and it really scratches my space captain itch. I’ll endeavour to give the game a proper go this time round.

This has to be my Game of the Year by a long long way. Combat on the whole is better (although I found it is almost impossible to replicate the close-quarters, shotgun wielding style I mastered in ME1), quests are more varied and pretty much everything has been dialled up to 11 in the quality stakes.

I’m replaying the game now as an Adept (mainly biotic powers) on Insane difficulty which is an extremely apt name, to the point that it feels like a different game. I rarely had to think about ammo types or combining biotics on Veteran difficulty. If you’re out in the open for more than 3 seconds you are dead. You have to think about who is on your team and what powers they have. Even the most basic enemies will have a shield or armour and if you don’t have the right powers to deal with them you’re screwed. It’s brutal, unforgiving and I love it but seriously don’t opt for this mode on your first playthough!

Anyway if you have a 360 or PC I very highly recommend you get the Mass Effect games. Combined you’ve got between 40-70 hours of brilliant gameplay here and if you’re like me you’ll want to replay them just to try out a different class or choose to be more Mal Reynolds than Luke Skywalker.

Roll on Mass Effect 3!

However not all the emails are so serious. I just got this message and it made me grin enormously:

From: Mister Ganak Ej’hal, Esq.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Having consulted with my colleagues at the Citadel, I have the privilege to request for your assistance to transfer a large quantity of Prothean technology uncovered at Ilos. Believing these materials to be a hazardous danger, they were locked in quarantine. Even though the tests revealed that the few fears were groundless, the quarantine remains in effect until one can pay for a permit to request a reclassification from the cultural ministry.

Knowing of your interest in Prothean technology, I would be happy to deliver most of it into your hands, keeping less than half for myself. As a batarian I cannot engage in Council official activities, but if you transfer the 20,000 credits required to me, this exchange could be made in your name, enabling us both to profits from this happy accident.

Please reply urgently with your credit transfer account information.

Best regards,

Ganak Ej’hal

Damned Space Nigerians!

The reason I have not completed Mass Effect before is for whatever reason I lost my save game and the thought of having to replay all those missions was too depressing. Now because sufficient time has passed and with the fact that there is a bit of a games drought right now I decided to tackle it again.

As before I’m playing a female Sheperd (better voice actor). My actions are mostly Paragon (goody-two-shoes) but I do like to bitch slap anyone that dares question my actions as a Spectre. Class wise I’m a Vanguard, a specialist in pistols and shotguns with a few biotic powers. I mainly shoot things in the face with a shotgun though.

I have to say even with the very clunky inventory system I am really enjoying the game, even more so than last time. I was going to rush through it so I can play the sequel but I can’t help myself doing all the side missions. It’s pretty amazing how much background information there is in the game to find either through conversation or the codex. I also love the overheard conversations you can hear by standing near certain NPCs. Most of it isn’t relative to the quests you’re doing but adds to the richness of the universe. Bioware really poured a lot of love into this game and I’m happy to explore all of it.

Anyway for anyone that hasn’t played it before it costs about £10 on PC, well worth it. So far at least!

I will add my own exceptions though:

• Huge releases I will buy regardless. Not just any old game, I mean stuff like Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Valve releases. Games that I’ve been waiting for for years.
• If a game is terrible or I find it a chore to play it gets taken off the list.
• MMOs and mainly multiplayer games are exempt due to the fact you cannot ‘complete’ these games.

So off the top of my head, here are some games that are on my Pile Of Shame:

• Mass Effect
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Sins of a Solar Empire
• Kings Bounty
• Sam & Max series 3
• Monkey Island 5
• Time Gentlemen, Please
• Braid
• The Dig
• Dawn of War 2

That’s plenty to get me going!

So reading through the new PC Gamer I read the preview for Supreme Commander 2 and it reminds me I’ve not yet completed SupCom1 or it’s expansion. I’ve played most of SupCom1 and about half of the expansion so for the past few days I decided to finish the expansion, Forged Alliance. It is one bloody unforgiving game, and I have a love/hate relationship with it. I love it because it’s Total Annihilation x 100. Although there are only a handful of missions each one takes me between 2 and 3 hours to complete, which for an RTS is a bloody long time! I’m sure if I wasn’t so meticulous about my base building and actually sent out small groups of units as I went along that I could shave off an hour but that’s just how I like to play my RTS’s, trying to make an impenetrable base is part of the fun and SupCom certainly gives you the tools to try and achieve this. The part where it is rather unfair, is that the maps all start off small and as objectives are completed, the map expands to reveal additional enemy bases. Which wouldn’t be so bad if for the fact that the reveal usually comes along with a new armada heading your way. And even though I know this will happen and you can usually tell which way the map will expand, I still manage to let it catch me by surprise. Last night I’d spent ages building up a base with a couple of small bases the other side of the map, ferrying troops over and taking out the Commander in the south east. Then when I did, the map expanded and a few dozen air units came in from the north and obliterated me. I had not put any defences to the north of my base as at the time there was no north for the enemy to come from. I had plenty of units but they were the opposite side of the map, and for anyone that hasn’t played SupCom, I’ll tell you now the maps are huge and take forever to cross, even with air transports to help you. So I watched my base slowly decay and they finally got my Commander, game over.

I’ll be back tonight though. I think I’ve only lost 30 mins of play, and now I know I can just take out the southern Commander to wipe out his entire base, I will try and blitz him rather than slowly wade through his base, destroying it as I go. Oh and yes, before I do that, I think a few shield generators and anti-air emplacements will be installed to the north of my base!

Looking forward to SupCom2 and also C&C4 which are both out in about a month, so I’m all set strategy wise for the foreseeable future.