A few things

This is my final post before Christmas, so it will cover a few things. First off: Mass Effect. Then an update on a serious issue for the Wii, and finally a look at the current state of the industry. Here goes...

Mass Effect has been in development for a while. It was announced a year or two before the 360 was out, and was getting a fair bit of coverage. I think it was going to be a launch window title, but that soon slipped to make something far more epic. It is mostly a spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic, much like Bioshock was to System Shock 2. The overall feel is the same, with some game play and atmospheric differences. The game play differences: rather then switching to a squad mate and controlling him that way, you have a dial you can use to issue commands. This leads to orders like this: You lift him over your shoulders while I snipe his head off and you force push him off the ledge. It works fairly well. The next one being a change of universe. I recommend reading the book (out now. Mass Effect: Revelations) as it sets the tone and introduces the world while being a decent story in its own right.

I can't find the game to rent ( I now have a plan that lets me rent any two games at a time for a monthly price) and I would rather not buy it unless I have played it first. But the other reviews are good... Its a close call, considering I spend most of my disposable income on the rental plan...

And for the Wii. This is actually an update on "Has the Wii been left Behind?"

And the answer is: (suspensefull music)

YES!!! The Wii has been left behind. At least game wise. While the motion controls are innovative, they have almost completely alienated good ports from coming out. Here is a recent example: Need For Speed: Pro street. A decent game, but it did not blow away anybody. At least for the 360 and ps3 versions. The Wii one was a noticable downgrade, mostly due to the consoles unique controls scheme and inferior power. Before that, Call of Duty 3 was also a slightly above average game. The Wii edition was also a major downgrade. Now you may notice that I have not used any ports from excellent dev teams yet. Why not? Because they don't port to the Wii. Call of Duty 4? (completely amazing by the way) Nope. Assassins Creed? Nope. The Darkness? Nope. Skate? (okay, not amazing, but good) Nope.

Even through all this, the Wii has somehow maintained a steady influx of games, and they number many more then the 360s library of titles. This is because the Wii has such high sales. Now this a great thing. I congratulate Nintendo for making gaming such a mainstream thing. The sales have surpassed that of the 360, and demolished those of the Ps3. But tis also a curse. The Wildfire sales of the Wii has reduced publishers to downright spamming the console with atrocious games. This would never happen on the 360 or Ps3, as both of them make their games go through quality testing. The Ps3 has highish standards, while the 360 lags behind a little bit. The Wii, however, has none. This lets a flood of junk overcome the system.

Combined with a crippling number of third party games, the Wii has definitely been left behind, at least games wise.

And now for the industry.

Next Gen horse power brought a few changes to the industry. The price of making a game went way up, at least if you wanted it to stay competitive with the rest. The overall quality of games went up, and you were no longer as limited by the tech of a platform. While this may have produced things like higher polygon counts and High Definition Range Lighting and anti-aliasing, it gave developers a bit more freedom to express themselves. one could now have truly stylized game.

And this really helped the industry, with games now being nominated for artistic achievement awards. But the other innovation was downloadable content. Bite sized games that be downloaded in minutes were now quite feasible, and they extended past the realm of pcs and into our consoles hard drives. Even the Wii, which had been busy innovating control schemes and ignoring the games using them, embraced this new feature. While the Wii has a comeplete lack of original content, it oldies are great. X-Box Live Arcade has a good slection, with a lot of original content. The PlayStation Store has meatier titles, which are shorter then real titles but cheaper too.