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I decided to play through “Mass Effect” a second time when the new downloadable content, “Bring Down The Sky“, was released by Bioware.  Gavin was born shortly after that, so I wasn’t able to continue the game past the intro.  Now that Gavin is a four months old and sleeping more, I’ve gotten a chance to play Mass Effect again.  The expansion pack was an interesting diversion, since the majority of the game was pretty much the same as the first time that I played it, with the exception of a few alignment-based choices that only affected the ending of the game.

I planned to play as a “Paragon” (good guy) this time, since I was despicably evil the first time that I finished the game.  There are some deep decisions to make at the end of the main storyline, like which of your party members, Ashley or Kaiden, to sacrifice while you pull your team out from the planet Vermire (so as not to be toasted by the nuke that they just planted in Saren’s base).  I left Kaiden behind to die last time, but my female lead has a thing for him, so I chose Ashley to die this time, despite the fact that I had her in my party the entire game.

The last moral dilemma of the game is whether to save the Galactic Council members from certain death during the final battle with Sovereign at the Citadel.  I ordered the Alliance fleet to rescue their flagship from the Geth armada.  This got me the “good” ending, in which the Council, now more appreciative of humans, agrees to create a new seat on their governing body for the Alliance.  I nominated my mentor, Captain Anderson, since he’s a good man.  The “evil” ending was less satisfying: after allowing the Geth to destroy the Council members, I only served to help the smarmy Ambassador Udina into power (slightly akin to promoting Senator Palpatine into Supreme Chancellor-hood).

Making the virtuous decisions during the game this time helped to change things up a bit, even though it was hard to stomach sometimes.  I was just a little too virtuous for my tastes.  I often had the same feeling about playing as a Renegade, though (except for the opposite reason).  I didn’t want to go the neutral route, even though the conversation trees allow for that.  I’m not sure if there is a “neutral” ending, but it’s probably boring if it exists.  I’m happy enough with the two that I’ve already seen.  I guess that I’m done with Mass Effect until Bioware releases more downloadable content!

“Bring Down The Sky“, the expansion content for Mass Effect, was good for a few hours of new gameplay.  It starts as soon as you get aboard the Normandy and head out into space from the “Citadel”.  Once you investigate a new asteroid on the “Stellar Map”, you are treated to a nice cutscene (one of many in the new content) of the rock hurtling towards Terra Nova, and its millions of human citizens, powered by three huge thrusters.  The antagonists, Batarians, are evil slavers that kill people for fun and profit.  It might have been wiser to hold off on this mission until I had built up some experience and better gear, but I dove straight in anyway.

It turns out that there are human survivors from the science team on the asteroid.  One of them talks me through the mission by radio, until the Batarians find her hiding spot.  There is plenty to do on the asteroid, but I got saving people to do!  The bulk of the new content is driving the Mako to each of the three thrusters and disabling them.  The installations are the same throughout the galaxy, so nothing new there.  At the last thruster, I am confronted by the Batarian lieutenant.  I used the “Charm” skill on him to negotiate rather than killing him outright because I’m playing a good guy.  It was surprisingly easy to convince to give up his superior to save his own butt.

The problem with playing as a “Paragon” is that sometimes you would rather knock off the bad guy.  He’s really really evil; he deserves it!  Batarians suck, and they sick Varren monster-dogs on you!  But because my character is “Lawful Good”, I let the lieutenant and his two sidekicks go, with his blessing to kill his boss.  Once I catch up to the Boss, after killing countless Batarians in his base, he wants to talk.  Of course. It seems that he has planted bombs all over the place, right near his human hostages.  Mass Effect is all about moral crossroads: I can kill him (let the scientists die) or let him go (run to defuse the bombs).  Good guys defuse bombs.

I’d like to know what happens when you decide to chase after the Batarian leader instead.  But in this case, since they all lived to talk about the event, one of the hostages gives me a choice of rewards: light/medium/heavy human armor, Quarian armor, or a tech tool.  I’m playing a tech/soldier, so I chose the tech tool, and it’s easily the best one in the game (and I got it right in the beginning!).  Overall, “Bring Down The Sky” is pretty nice for a freebie.  Although a goodly chunk of it is “more of the same”, Bioware managed to introduce a new race, provide more rich background story, and provide a good couple of hours of new gameplay.

I beat the Titan Quest expansion pack last night.  The big villain of the game, “Hades”, was kicking my butt repeatedly, but I came back fresh and took him out.  I didn’t want to stop playing on Saturday night, since I would have to clear a path back to his throne room again if I did, but it was 2AM and I couldn’t stay up any longer. Besides, I love the loot, and getting there is like strolling a path strewn with Gigantes armor.

Hades has three separate forms, which threw me for a loop because I wasn’t expecting him to upgrade.  Only one other enemy, Charon, had ever upgraded before.  Hades’ first form is like a very tall and scary humanoid, kind of like Dracula.  Once you bring him to about half of his life bar, he turns into what I call his “Resident Evil” form, taller and uglier with a huge tentacled arm.  Once that version is defeated, he turns into a huge blue cloud monster with very powerful attacks.

Once I had 32 skill points in Warfare (fighter skills), I moved about ten points from the “Battle Rage” tree into the “Ancestral Horn” skill.  This allows you to summon three ghostly figures to fight by your side.  It starts off fairly weak, but at tenth level I had five very beefy fighters on my side.  The downside is that they only last for 24 seconds, and there is a pretty long cooldown period. This spell is integral to my patented “Ride the Lightning” technique.

This technique involves a “Sky’s Rage” scroll, which summons a huge lightning storm that deals massive amounts of damage for fifteen seconds and, in most cases, paralyzes your enemy.  They’re pricey at 300,000 gold, but well worth it.  Employ the scroll, summon your Ancestral Horn buddies, and commence to whaling on your boss enemy with melee attacks.  I used this method on all of the Machae Generals and Vault Stone Empusas without fail.

I was surprised at how easy Hades’ first two forms were, since his gatekeeper, “Night’s Mistress” (the Empusa with the Soul Stone), was harder to kill than his first and second forms.  I just whaled on those in melee.  His third form was tougher, and that was what I got stuck on last night.  I gave him the old “Ride the Lightning” technique and he went down pretty quickly.  He actually lasted a few seconds longer than the scroll, which was impressive, but I only had a few more hits to kill him.

The credits were pretty cool too.  I watched through two cycles, since the monster models randomly appeared to the left until you cut out.  I didn’t recognize most of them, since I hadn’t been fighting them close up like that.  They’re pretty ugly; the developers did a good job with them.  The “epic” difficulty level was also unlocked.  I might have to pass on that though, since I’ve got other games to get to now.

I installed Titan Quest on Thursday, and I’m glad that I installed the expansion pack along with it.  It’s like Diablo 2, except with Romans.  From the looks of it, all of the features that make it better than Diablo 2 (from a user interface perspective, since I can’t speak to the story yet) come from the expansion pack, “Immortal Throne“.  Stuff like the caravan driver would have been a huge thing in online Diablo.  The caravan driver holds items for you so that you don’t have to keep it in your own inventory. And finally, unlimited arrows!

Unlike Diablo, there are eight different character classes to choose from.  I decided to start with “Warfare” as a skill domain, but you can only choose two skill domains.  You get one to start with, and one more once you hit level 8.  There’s just too many to choose from, and I had a hard time deciding.  So I stuck with “fighter” for the timebeing.  I might enhance it with “Earth” (fire magic) or “Nature” (druid magic) later.  There’s definitely some replay value here, at least, which is better than the first person shooters that I’ve been playing lately. 

The inventory screen is a step up from Diablo as well.  When you move your mouse over an item, the stats for the item are displayed in a box along with the stats of the item that you currently have equipped, so that you can compare the two side-by-side.  When trading with a blacksmith, you have the option to “untrade” before you complete your transaction. I’d really like to be able to carry more, since I love to cart loot back to the villages for cash, and I’ve read that you increase your inventory size periodically in the game.

So far, I’ve gotten to the Spartan camp, cleared out the undead camp just before that, and carried all the loot back to Helos (before I found that there was a blacksmith in the Spartan camp).  There’s no caravan driver there though, so I’ve had to teleport back to Helos to drop off the powerful stuff that I can’t use yet.  Currently, I’m using a spear and a bunch of magic armor.  Not a bad setup for a level 5 guy.  I running around the fields now, trying to find that Centaur boss. We’ll see if this one is as awesome as Diablo 2 was.

I beat the main quest for the Oblivion expansion pack. The story was actually very well done, giving a little more detail with each successful quest. At the end of the quest, the defeated bad guy spills the beans on the whole story and throws a little twist in there too. It was much more satisfying than the “congratulations, you won, but you and your party die” ending in Neverwinter Nights 2.

Although I beat the main quest, there are dungeons and ruins scattered all over the Shivering Isles that I haven’t even touched yet. The main roads are crawling with monsters, so I snuck through the countryside to get around, so I found most of the dungeons (and marked them on my game map) just by following the main quest.

I’ll probably play through a few more side quests in the expansion pack and then give up the game again. I never actually played the main quest in Oblivion, but got to level 35 by playing through all of the non-main quests and dungeons. I could always finish the main quest for Oblivion… However, I hear that the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack is coming out.

I have been anxiously anticipating the release of the Shivering Isles, the new expansion pack for Oblivion from Bethesda Softworks. It took a few weeks to find a copy, but I snatched one up as soon as I could. The problem is that it’s difficult to find time to play you’re working full time and then updating the kitchen or feeding the baby. I have to wait until after Chrissy goes to bed to play the new expansion pack, but it’s worth it.

Bethesda has been releasing small updates over the internet, but these are just additional buildings or objects without much new content. The expansion pack adds on a whole new plane of existence named the Shivering Isles, which is supposed to be about the quarter of the size of the original game. The gameplay is the same (I was a bit rusty at first), but there are new monsters, new terrain, and plenty of new NPCs (and they’re all insane, which is kinda cool).

Bethesda has done a lot of things with the game that could not be previously done. For example, when you first enter the Shivering Isles, you meet a new character named Haskill in a small, dark room. Once you agree to enter the Isles, Haskill walks out of the room, and then the walls turn into butterflies that surround you and fly away, revealing the surrounding landscape. Very cool.