Leveling Down

The galaxy of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is wonderfully designed, but hacking leapgates dissuades one from being able to explore it.

Being a current resident of the DC area, we got hit with a major snowstorm this past weekend (almost 3 feet around these parts). 250,000 homes in the DC area lost power for a greater part of the weekend including my own. Being stuck at home with no power meant no electronics, very little lighting, and no heat. What do people do with no power for extended periods of time? Read? Fortunately, I had a fully charged DS ready to go, and ended up spending several hours playing Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. It’s somewhat of an old game, but with my love for Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, I’m more into puzzle-based RPG games as of late, and so I decided to put several hours into Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.
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I dropped my DS Lite recently, and was quite dismayed to discover that the touch-screen no longer works. I actually thought Nintendo’s hardware products were more durable, so I was surprised that I busted part of my DS Lite by dropping it. I’ve had this DS Lite since its launch back in June 2006, and it has really served me quite well these last few years. I’m also slightly annoyed that this is the first portable Nintendo device I’ve had (and I’ve basically had them all) that I’ve broken. The original Gameboy, the Gameboy Pocket, the Gameboy Advance, and the original DS were all in my possession at some point and I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped each of them at least once and they all functioned fine. Now I am at a crossroads though as to what to do next. More »

1011101100101010011 (Translation: Buy Mass Effect 2)

If you’ve been paying attention to this site at all over the past week and a half, you probably know where this review is going. The original Mass Effect remains one of my favorite games of this console generation, but the experience was marred by some bad gameplay design and glitches. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the game for the great dialogue system and its powerful storyline. I found myself sucked in by the tough choices and situations the game forced upon me. Mass Effect 2 keeps in the great story and dialogue elements, throws in stronger character development, and streamlines the gameplay – effectively dumping most of the bad design choices from the first game. The result: Game of the Year 2010 in January? Maybe…

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The snow-based Port Valdez is the one playable map in the demo

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 demo was just released last week on the Xbox 360, so I got a chance to play around with it for a couple hours in the last few days. PS3 owners have been lucky as they had access to the beta since last November.

Read on for my likes and dislikes, as well as my initial comparisons to the first Bad Company.

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Mass Effect 2 – an RPG with a shooter soul, or the other way around?

We live in an interesting time for games. In the not too distant past, gaming genres were clearly delineated: you’d play Doom to get your first-person shooting on, Starcraft to focus on real-time strategy, platformers like Super Mario Brothers 3 for throw your controller out the window experiences, and the turn based Final Fantasy role playing series for some heavy stories and to prove that “video games can make grown men cry”. But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century…

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Unlike Niko, Johnny has a gang that he rolls with throughout his missions in The Lost and the Damned

Several of you are aware of my chagrin about having to play The Lost and the Damned during a time when Mass Effect 2 is out, but I made it through the expansion this past weekend and am ready to share my slightly subjective review on it. While this expansion was released on the 360 about a year ago, it was just recently announced that it would be released on the PS3 and the PC in the coming months so perhaps this is a good time to review it now that I’ve noticed that we are getting more PS3 owners (welcome!) here at Leveling Down.

NOTE: I am playing The Lost and the Damned off the retail disc, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, which does not require the original GTAIV disc to play. I will be getting through The Ballad of Gay Tony and reviewing that hopefully in the near future.
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Settling for playing GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned instead of Mass Effect 2 is just not good enough.

For the earlier part of this month I had been spending my time with Bayonetta, a newly released title that I truly enjoyed. But after I completed that and DJ Hero this past Tuesday, I discovered that night that it was apparently the Mass Effect 2 launch date. I had already made a conscious decision to skip buying Mass Effect 2 at launch, just because I had already gone through Bioware’s more RPG-oriented epic, Dragon Age: Origins, last month and my pre-ordered copy of BioShock 2 is releasing just around the corner. Plus, with the number of games I have sitting in my backlog, I realized that my gaming time might be better spent clearing through a backlogged title or two before BioShock 2’s release rolls around.

But why is this so difficult?
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Mass Effect is going to be a trilogy. Bioware told us that up front when the original released in 2007. Normally, that isn’t a big deal – trilogies happen all the time. But after playing the first few hours of the game, I started really thinking about it, and one question popped into my head… Is Bioware insane?

After much rumination, I have decided that Bioware is indeed crazy…LIKE A FOX! The Mass Effect trilogy is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and playing the sequel has made me realize why I love what Bioware’s doing, and also why it seems like a suicide mission (see what I did there?). But before I go into it, minor spoilers of the original Mass Effect below, although I will do my best without revealing any big ones.

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With the recent news around the Rockstar spouse incident, I felt it would be a good time to share my thoughts on this topic. For those of you that are as old as I am, you probably remember the whole EA spouse incident and how that turned out. I think the Rockstar lawsuit will also rule in favor of the employees and their spouses, but the main problem is, EA and Rockstar are not the only companies that do this. It’s basically the entire game industry. It’s how it runs. That’s the sad part.

I don’t understand how people so talented are expected to work practically double the amount of time that we normal 9-5 people do. Perhaps it has to do with supply and demand: game company execs don’t care to keep their employees happy because so many college graduates are knocking at their door to get into the studio. Hopefully with more negative press, the public will be less interested in working in the gaming industry, resulting in less supply, giving current employees of the game industry more respect. Read on for my reasons why I don’t think you should dream of working in the gaming industry if you don’t want to give up playing games.
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You haven’t played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney yet? OBJECTION!

I’ve finally just about finished Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, and it’s such a solid piece of work that I decided to re-sing my praises of the series. What makes Phoenix Wright so popular, and why is it worth checking out? Since the series has started to be re-released on Wiiware, I figured it’d be a good time to answer that question.

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