I have a good friend who lives far away, and we've been trying to find a good MMO to play together. After a frustrating ordeal with WoW, we decided to try Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). There was a free two-week trial, so we felt as if we had little to lose.

When we began LotRO, we had to choose a race and a class. LotRO has a few different races, from humans to elves to hobbits. You can play as evil races, like orcs, but that takes place in a separate "Monster" mode of play. I was a blood elf in WoW, and I wanted to be an elf in LotRO because I've always thought that elves were cool. They are often the most beautiful of the races as well, especially the females, which is what I wanted to play. I then had to choose a class. I had grown very attached to my animal companion in WoW, likely due to my fondness for animal companionship in real life. There was only one class that could have "pets," so I chose to be a Lore-Master.

The game begins with an instance, and I had to defend a town. There were enough hints so I wasn't completely lost, but I also felt like I was moving forward quickly. The beginning was exciting, and I enjoyed the instance. After that, I quickly found my friend, who was also an elf, but of the Guardian class. His class is much better at melee attacks, and mine has the pet for melee and uses ranged attacks. Our classes work well together.

What struck me most about LotRO was the beauty of the world. The character models were refined and realistic, and the elves around me were lovely. Unlike the glowing eyes of WoW's blood elves, the elves here had inviting, interesting faces. Also, the world around us was stunning. Mountainous forested areas reminded me of the mountains in the Pacific Northwest. Rolling hills looked like fields in the midwest. The fantasy world was so similar to some of the places that I've been that it felt believable. From the bird migrations in the sky to the clouds of breath in chilled mountain air, the level of realism in this game makes it a wonderfully immersive escape.

However, art alone cannot carry an MMO. Quests are also a very important, and LotRO is full of them. The writing is interesting and believable - for Tolkien's characters. Hobbits have the silly accents and phrases you would expect, and the dialogue is written with enough of a dialect to add character but not create confusion. I take the time to read all the quests because they're actually interesting, unlike in WoW.

I haven't spent a lot of time with LotRO yet, but I am definitely looking forward to playing again soon. The world is a fun place to visit, and I hope that it continues to impress me. I would really like to find an MMO that is as satisfying as my favorite single-player games. LotRO is certainly off to a great start.  

My first night diving back into World of Warcraft, I had such a frustrating experience that I canceled my subscription just hours after its creation. I have tried time and again with this game, but I just couldn't seem to get into it. I understand that there is more to the game than what I've seen getting to level 22, but I have been disappointed over and over.

I bought WoW a few months ago on the suggestion of a friend. He thought that I'd enjoy it more if we played it together. I seemed to be enjoying it more than he did, as I was leveling up a lot faster than him. I waited for a few months for him to catch up to me, and when he finally did, I thought that I would be able to get the satisfying MMO experience that had been eluding me.

When we began WoW that day, we journeyed into an undercity of the undead. It was a stark contrast to the lovely elven world. The dark elf city was grand and beautiful, but this undercity was disgusting, from the dank sewer environment to hulking obese guards stationed everywhere. It was also a maze, structured in a circular fashion, and very difficult to navigate. I hated being in there and wanted out as soon as possible.

We finally got our quests and emerged from that filthy city. I was glad to be out among virtual nature again. Everything seemed fine for about an hour as we began some quests. Then, it started getting frustrating. Characters 40 levels or more above us started chasing us down on common roads, trying to kill us. We were shocked, as we thought that we had a choice in PvP engagments. Unfortunately, we did not, and we soon found ourselves frequently running in the wrong direction to avoid fights.

Later, we were almost done with a quest, and our team of three had just two more of a certain enemy to kill. Suddenly, all three of us were brutally slaughtered by a higher-level player. My friend had valiantly tried to buy me some time, but it was hopeless. We revived and tried to move on, only to get murdered again by the same high-level player. The next time I ran back to revive, I noticed that same high-level player hanging around our corpses, just waiting to kill us again. My friend informed me that this was "corpse-camping," where some jerk just sits around and kills helpless players like us. I understand that signing up for a PvP player means dealing with the consequences, but I had no idea that people could take pleasure in something has no sportsmanship or honor.

The next time we revived, we snuck off very carefully and ran back to a nearby village. We were discussing our frustrations with the game over voice chat at an inn. And then, out of nowhere, some high-level rouge came in and wiped out the entire village. Yes, players and NPCs alike. I can understand the need to do that once to feed an ego, but this particular player kept coming back every few minutes. As soon as the entire town respawned, it would be wiped out again.

At this point, I was so frustrated that I quit out of WoW. I talked with my friend some more, and we considered transferring our characters to a PvE (player versus environment) server. There was a steep $25 fee, so we decided against it. Outside the elven city we started in, the game just seemed to have little draw for either of us. While I would love to have an MMO to connect to friends, WoW was clearly not what we wanted.

In a more general sense, my experience with WoW taught me that I hate PvP servers. I had avoided MMOs for a long time due to my fear that one person would ruin the fun for everyone else. After having that fear realized, I saw how it ruins the fun and also prevents me from appreciating the strengths of the game. I have decided that I would rather be a "care bear," or someone who plays on a PvE server. I want to enjoy the game without the distraction of cold-blooded murder. However, my inability to truly feel immersed in WoW has extended beyond my problems with the PvP realms, as I've noticed in my previous experiences. I want to be a care bear, just not in WoW.  

At the Game Developer's Choice Awards at GDC, I heard about a little game called Audiosurf. In the craziness that was GDC, I found myself too busy to play the demo. Recently, I read on a game blog about how Audiosurf was available via Steam. Now that there was a demo, and I had no more excuses. It was time to give this award-winning independent game a try.

Audiosurf may be a rhythm game, but it's quite different from Guitar Hero or Rock Band. The layout does look similar to Guitar Hero from the screenshots; however, the gameplay itself is quite different. Songs you choose (from music files on your computer) are mapped into something resembling a racetrack. Blocks are places across the lanes, and they can vary in color (depending on the mode). There were a few different modes to play, including dodging certain color blocks and collecting other color blocks.

I found the game to be slightly difficult at first. I didn't quite understand how I was supposed to stack matching color blocks into columns that moved with me, and how to strategize to get maximum points. Sometimes, the columns would fill too quickly on the fast parts or they wouldn't clear matching colors out fast enough, so I would lose points. However, there were some nice touches in the mechanics, such as having the gray blocks (which don't match with anything) clear out automatically, reducing the punishment. Also, there were power-ups and other details that made the game more complex.

The mechanics encouraged skilled play, and I could tell just from the short demo that the game had a nicely scaled degree of complexity. I tried to choose a wide variety of songs during my demo. I absolutely loved the idea of using music I know and love (avoiding difficulties that arise from unfamiliarity with some songs in games such as Guitar Hero). However, this freedom also means that the level of difficulty can vary greatly between songs. Even if I'm familiar with a song, it may have portions that are just too fast for me to handle.

Audiosurf requires different skills than many mainstream rhythm games on the market. It's mainly a matter of timing. I really enjoyed being able to pick my own songs, meaning I never had to play one that I didn't like. Audiosurf may not have had the budget of games like Guitar Hero, but it is certainly a fun rhythm game and a neat way to appreciate your favorite music.  

Great graphics in a game always leave me in awe. I will often decide that I want to play a game based on a pretty screenshot. I’ll usually check the reviews first, but the aesthetics of a game are really important to me. If it’s not a beautiful world for me to escape to, I generally don’t want to be there.

I became intrigued with the Wii sequel to NiGHTS after seeing some pretty publicity screenshots. It was released last December and got mediocre reviews, so I hesitated before buying it. I recently had the opportunity to play it at a friend’s house, so I made sure to check it out.

NiGHTS was definitely pretty, but I had some serious issues with it. From the beginning, it felt very childish. The little boy had a ridiculous voice, and the children tended to talk in long, drawn-out dialog. I felt that the inclusion of children seemed somewhat forced. Although I realize that it was an essential part of the plot, the idea of putting real children in a fantasy world reminded me of movies I used to watch as a child where they put live actors in cartoons. Very few movies seem to use that concept with any degree of success.

The odd plot already left me skeptical, and I kept finding more to criticize. The children soon met up with Nights, a jester-like nightmaren. My friend had to repeatedly insist that Nights was a guy, as I was convinced by his slender body and high voice that he was a girl. I understand that this may be more acceptable in Japan, but I was left feeling as if I had to repeatedly suspend my disbelief for this game. NiGHTS was in an odd place between fantasy and reality, and I had a hard time accepting this strange genre.

When got past the intro to the actual gameplay, I was shocked by the difficulty of this lovely game that was seemingly geared towards children. While the original Sega Saturn version had used a joystick with full 360-degree control, the Wiimote nunchuck and other Wii-compatible controllers do not allow for unrestricted movement in a circle. The joystick is set into the plastic beneath a mold that restricts movement within an octagon. However, the levels require circular movements and frequent looping. This creates a great deal of frustration on the player’s part, when the circles are coming out choppy and uneven. Catching avian enemies and collecting orbs also became much more difficult due to the poor controls.

There was a bonus feature in this game that didn't make any sense to me: the My Dream area. You could collect odd-looking babies called Nightopians in the levels and they would appear in this open area. The Nightopians were generally annoying to me due to their tendency to cry frequently and the fact that I found their appearance disturbing. In order to survive in the My Dream area, they also had to be fed. I had heard that one of the coolest features of this area was the fact that it had weather integration with the Wii weather channel, but there really wasn't much to do there (other than feeding Nightopians). I found this feature about as useless as the scrapbook in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Maybe it's a Japanese thing.

Despite the confusion and frustration I felt while playing NiGHTS, it did have a few merits. Aside from the Nightopians, much of the game was quite lovely. Some of the music was pretty good. However, the controls and confusing aspects gave me the feeling that I was missing out on the best parts of most of the levels. I only wish I had a Saturn, so I could go back to the original NiGHTS and see what it was supposed to be.  

In just over 35 hours, I completed Mass Effect. That might seem like a long time, but it was well worth it to me. I finished every sidequest I could, explored every planet in the galaxy, and played through the Bring Down the Sky expansion. I was very thorough, talking to all the NPCs and opening every storage locker or crate I could find. Now that it’s over, I’m satisfied but a little sad that the awesome ride had to come to an end.

I have already written extensively on Mass Effect, but with a game this vast, I find there is still more to discuss. I may have complained about some of my frustrations, but I have found a lot of value in this game. The story was absolutely fantastic, especially from Ilos to the end. Those last few hours were some of the best paced in the game, and when it was over, I felt a real rush. I got to make important choices up until the very end, and I felt that I was as much a part of the action as the characters in the brief cutscenes.

The story was facilitated only marginally by cutscenes. The main elements of the narrative were conveyed through the fantastic dialog. Mass Effect has been praised for its innovative dialog system. Choices are displayed around a circle, and the dialog shown represents the general idea of the line, but not what is actually said. It felt like what I selected was the thought and what my character said was a more tactful way of expressing that idea (at least for the paragon choices). This system allowed me to better identify with the character, as I felt that she was expressing my thoughts and feelings in the best way possible.

I really enjoyed the addition of so many sidequests. The main path of the game could probably be beaten in ten to fifteen hours, but I chose to play the extra twenty or so to really explore and immerse myself in the Mass Effect universe. I loved the feeling of stumbling across an uncharted resource or coming to the rescue of some helpless people. Some of the sidequests included really tough decisions, which enriched the game and gave me a sense of responsibility. I liked having the freedom to control of the ship and choose the sidequests that I wanted to pursue. The introductions to the quests were vague so I was often surprised by what I found. Even though some of the areas were very similar in structure (likely due to limited art resources) the diversity in the quests was still there and kept it interesting.

Aside from the flaws that I have already discussed, Mass Effect had only a couple other drawbacks: a lack of tutorials and a poor inventory system. I had no idea that I could jump with the mako until halfway through the game, and I never figured out that I could zoom in on enemies in the mako until after I beat it. If I didn’t have a friend to talk me through the beginning of the game, I doubt that I would’ve become as skilled in combat.

Also, the inventory system was cumbersome for someone like me who likes to collect all the items from the game. Given the number of sidequests, I continued collecting hundreds of weapons, armor, and upgrades. I was continually struggling to keep my inventory down so I wouldn’t have to leave anything behind (or convert it to omni-gel). The limit of 150 items was way too low. Due to the abundance of items in the field, I never had to buy anything at the stores. (I did buy the spectre weapons on the Normandy at the end of the game, but some of the later weapons that I found were comparable.) Hours from the end of the game, I maxed out the money. This meant that I had to spend a ridiculous amount of time re-equipping my team to make sure I wouldn’t destroy something that I needed. It took a long time to scroll through items, and I wished the inventory could be sorted.

While Mass Effect did have a few flaws, it was still a fantastic RPG experience. I highly recommend it to people who love immersing themselves in a rich sci-fi world with engaging characters and plenty of content to keep them busy. It is probably the best game experience I’ve had since Okami, and possibly one of the best games I’ve ever played in terms of the emotional impact. I really identified with my character because I was the one who was molding her into the person that I would like to be.  

I feel that I’ve been living a bit of a dual life lately – Professor Layton and the Curious Village is my faithful companion that I bring with me, and Mass Effect is my passionate affair in the evening. I tend to play Professor Layton before class and Mass Effect when I have some time to really sit down and enjoy it.

I recently finished Professor Layton after two months of frequent puzzle-solving. I spent nearly 12 hours on it, solving every puzzle (including bonus and downloadable weekly puzzles). I admit to looking up help and using hints on rare occasions, but, for the most part, I solved the 144 puzzles on my own.

Professor Layton is a perfect match of game and platform. The DS is perfect for its point-and-click interface. I had suggested how well this interface would work for a portable game after my experience with Zack and Wiki, and it was fun to see it realized.

The gameplay was flexible enough to allow me to feel satisfied with a play session of three minutes or three hours. I found that most puzzles were relatively short, but for those that required more thought, I could continue thinking about them after I turned off the DS. I would never lose my progress because the game allows you to quit out of any puzzle very easily and to save at almost any point in the game. This made Professor Layton the perfect game to travel with, since I would never get stuck in the middle of something. This also encouraged me to play it more than other DS games because I never had to worry about losing my work.

The game was packed with content that made it really fun for me. There were collectible items that often unlocked more puzzles, such as the inn and painting scraps. The puzzles gave out picarats as a score (and sometimes the collectible pieces as well). The picarats seemed to have little significance other than indicating the difficulty of a puzzle. However, some puzzles with a higher picarat value were easy for me (such as spatial slide puzzles), while others were harder for me (such as some geometry-based puzzles). I found that, if a puzzle was harder for me, an indication of its difficulty would be how many hint coins I had to spend to solve it. Hint coins were another fun collectible item that rewarded me for clicking in many random locations on the screen. I loved the collectible items that encouraged me to fully explore the game.

Aside from the optional collectibles and the short puzzle structure, I found that this game also catered to the portable platform with its audio. The game didn’t require sound to be enjoyed and had subtitles over all the movies. While I am a firm believer in sound enhancing a game experience, a portable game should be designed to be enjoyed with or without sound. When I could have sound, I really enjoyed the music and sound effects, even if some of the characters’ voices were cheesy and had silly accents.

The story of this game was well-paced. Important plot elements were revealed in evenly spaced chapters. The game would give a brief summary of the current events when you loaded a save to get you up to speed. The story was light but engaging because of the many mysteries. I could tell when I was getting close to the end because mysteries kept getting solved. One of the methods of storytelling was short animated movies. They were done in a 2-D animation style that suited the game and its aesthetic quite well. All the movies were short and to the point, so I never felt like I was taken out of the action.

I found very few flaws with this game. I could claim that certain picarat values seemed too high or too low, but a puzzle’s difficulty can be very subjective depending on a person’s intellectual strengths. Another subjective issue I noticed with this game was my dislike of certain character drawings. The character designs looked a little strange to me, but it was all very stylized. After playing more of the game, I got used to it and minded it less. Also, toward the end of the game, the story helps explain some of the characters’ odd appearances.

I was excited to finish Professor Layton, but now I think that I will miss it. I have had some great experiences on the DS, including Elite Beat Agents and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Now I guess I will be searching for the next great DS game, at least until the next Professor Layton game is released.  

There are few moments in a game where I get so frustrated that I just want to quit. Most of the time, I’ll get annoyed with a flaw in the design, but I try to stick to my guns and get through it. In Mass Effect, there were a few moments where I got so frustrated that I would swear profusely. However, I knew that I would avoid the game if I had a seemingly insurmountable obstacle waiting for me, so I stubbornly persevered.

The first major source of frustration that I ran into were battles with alien creatures called thresher maws. Like overgrown sand worms, these creatures would appear with no warning from random places in the ground and attack. One of the main sources of frustration in these battles stemmed from the fact that thresher maws appeared while exploring in the mako. Due to the unwieldy controls of the mako and its offensive weapons, this became quite the issue. Not only did the thresher maws appear in random places, but they would kill you instantly if you happened to be on top of it when it shot up through the ground. Then, the thresher maws would shoot toxins that went straight through the mako’s shields. They were tough creatures that gave me only a few seconds to shoot in one tiny area.

I found that there was little strategy involved in fighting a thresher maw. I fought two and ran from another two because I felt that it is simply not worth the effort. The vague strategy I developed consisted of continually moving and shooting as much as possible in the general direction of the maw. If you’re careful, you can also try to jump over the toxins. This will keep your mako in good repair. The main issue here is just trying to survive long enough to outlast the thresher maw.

The second source of frustration was fighting rocket drones on Earth’s moon. There were three stations to explore in this particular sidequest, and each station’s defenses were stronger than the last. In the final station, there were geth rocket drones. The rockets would destroy my shields and kill me instantly. I grew incredibly frustrated because there got to be five to ten geth enemies stuck in a little hallway, and I couldn’t shoot at them unless I was exposed. Once exposed, I would get shot with a rocket and die. I started adapting my strategy, using techniques such as running back and forth in front of the enemies while shooting, throwing bombs, and sending my companions in to get shot in my place. (I could revive my companions, but if I died, it was game over). Eventually, my strategies paid off and I got past the rocket drones.

I have enjoyed most of the gameplay so far in Mass Effect. However, the few design flaws can lead to a lot of frustration for a player less experienced with shooting games like me. I have found the difficulty to be well-balanced for the most part, and most enemies provided a reasonable challenge. I’ll continue playing Mass Effect, but I hope that I don’t run into too many thresher maws or rockets drones. If I do, I’ll probably just run.