Mass Effect 3 Demo

I downloaded the Mass Effect 3 demo last night through Origin and played it earlier today, encountered no problems with it. It was my first experience of the Mass Effect series. I have been meaning to pick up the first 2 games but have yet to get around to buying them. First thing I noticed is the lack of advanced graphics options, which doesn't really effect me as I tend to leave graphics settings on default but I know a lot of people won't be too happy about this.

Also with the key bindings use, cover, and jump all use the same button. I'm playing on a PC I have a entire keyboard to use and don't need one button to do numerous things, I'm not limited to the amount of buttons like consoles with controllers. They need to make separate keys for each of these. It's doesn't sound like that big of a deal but I find it interrupts the flow of the gameplay. It's more annoying when your in cover and need to get up and run somewhere, there are times when I was running along with some cover in front of me and I went to jump over it but ended up ducking for cover behind it. I should be able to jump when I choose to not when the game says I can. The controls seem very console orientated and not at all optimised for PC, you know because it's a PC port of the game, the least you could expect is some decent controls. It's a shame because throughout my play through of the couple levels available in the demo I actually enjoyed the story and the gameplay, except the not so brilliant controls. If they get some decent controls implemented for the full release, I would definitely consider getting it.

On the plus side of things, the combat is pretty swift and accurate, both melee attacks and weapon combat. Also you don't have health regeneration like a number of recent games, which is a good thing, unless you play a cyborg character, have robotic implants or have some actual reasoning behind it doing so it isn't acceptable to implement into the game. It does have armour regen though which considering the game is set in the future, the concept is definitely plausible.

Overall the game seems pretty cool, but it's the consolised controls I can't get past. So I will probably give the game a miss until it turns up cheap on sale in a few months time or so. Also I feel I should play the first two games before I before I play this anyway. I know very little about the series or the characters in it so playing previous games seems like a good idea.

Q.U.B.E

Q.U.B.E has grabbed my attention as of late. The little news I have read about it has compared it to Portal. So I downloaded the demo and gave it a shot. Upon loading up the game you can definitely where it's been influenced from. A first person puzzle game with a bright and light colour scheme has Portal written all over it. Instead of explaining the game below is my play through of the demo available on Steam. It seems little a fun little game and I reckon I'll get it some point down the line.

Hard Reset Demo

So the demo for this game came out today, so as I'm looking forward to it. I gave it a little download. Haven't finished the demo but played for an hour maybe, this is my first thoughts on the game.

First off the in game menu is pretty cool. It has robot arm type things, the kind you see on say car manufactor lines. They sit and assemble the menu, then when you click on whichever option it disassemble the menu and assemble the next/previous menu.

Controls seem to be your basic wasd setup as per damn near every PC game. You can't crouch though which is a little weird for a shooter but isn't really necessary even though I do keep hitting Ctrl purely out of habit. You have two weapons which can be easily accessed through 'q' and 'e' keys. It does have very simple controls qweasd, shift and mouse is all you need. 'Shift' is sprint, which is quite annoying as you HUD goes blurry while running and you can't shoot while doing so either. Also there doesn't seem to be a quick save or regular save option and it relies on checkpoints, which is disappointing as I like to be able to save when I want to save and not when the game wants to.

Onto the game itself, after the opening cut scene you get your first glimpse of the Hard Reset world, graphically it looks pretty amazing and this is on default graphic settings. It doesn't take you long after you set off to come across you first enemies which happen to be speedy little robot (dog?) type things with buzz saws for heads. They are easily taken care of though blowing up enviromentals around them such as gas canisters and power generators which seem to be everywhere. Due to me blowing up barrel and such it lead me to find secrets hidden behind walls. The first couple secret walls are frankly quite blatant, Essentially making sure you know there are secret walls you can blow up. Shortly after? (I think it was may of been before the first secret wall I really can't remember) you come across what seems like a mini boss (you go encounter more of them later, so I think it's just a pain in the ass normal enemy), they seem to jump out at you can charge at you and if you don't dodge it or just cornered you will die very quickly. The enemies I have encountered do seem to be very annoying and no doubt they will only get worse as the game progresses.

The two weapons you get are the CLN firearm which is a machine gun type gun, and the N.R.G weapon which has got a plasma rifle type thing going on, which looks pretty awesome. Which you can upgrade, along with armour and health and such. The cool thing is the upgrades aren't just your normal have some more ammo, have faster fire rate, while these are an option, you can actually upgrade your guns to have more guns them, this is frankly a great idea and I don't believe it has been done before, or at least not that I can remember anyway. With the CLN you can add a Shotgun, a Grenade Launcher, an RPG and Proximity Mines, then you can upgrade your upgrades, I haven't tried this out yet as I went for secondary fire for both of my guns, which adds a zoom element to the CLN and a charged energy burst attack for the N.R.G. With the N.R.G I noticed it recharges ammo upto 50 which is a nice touch. The charge shot on the N.R.G is also very helpful against the little robot dog things (I still have no idea what these are) so I would suggest getting this upgrade first chance you can. Also there is absolutely no reloading with is something I loved about old school shooters.

One last thing to mention is you actually get a health and armour bar on a little corner hud which bobs along when you shoot/move/do anything really. The armour regenerates in time but the health doesn't. I really do hate the whole 'I'm your standard off the shelf marine ready for war, but what's this I somehow have magical super human regeneration powers, all I have to do is hide in this dumpster from the world and suck on my thumb for ten seconds then I somehow am not crippled and bleeding to death. It's a miracle.' No it's not a mirable, it's bullshit. The amount of time it takes to create a video game you would of thought they could create a HUD telling you how much health you have. Games in the fricking 80's had them so I don't see why this isn't possible now. Fair play if you have a story explaining why this is possible, eg your part robot and the technology inside you can slowly regenerate injured parts of you or something to that effect, that would make sense. But no we will just go with magical army folk. Anyway before I get deeper into my tangent I'll stop.

It does seem like a pretty fun yet quite hectic shoot um up game which I reckon you will get better as the game progresses which all your weapon/health/armour upgrades. It is definately worth a look into and I for one will be getting this.