The Canadian Videogame Awards

Mat Paget

We spent this past weekend in Vancouver, where we attended the 4th Annual Canadian Videogame Awards on Saturday night. The show was hosted by Elias Toufexis and had guest appearances by the likes of David Hayter, Jennifer Hale, Michael Mando, and even Nolan North. And although the humour didn’t always hit in the same way–Michael Mando never failed to make us laugh–, it continued to be an entertaining show throughout its duration. You’ll be able to see it for yourself on CityTV on April 27 from 9-11pm PT.

 For now, here are the categories, nominees, and winners.

Best Visual Arts

The Winner: Far Cry 3

Nominees: Assassin’s Creed III, Incredipede, Mark of the Ninja, Mass Effect 3

Best Writing

The Winner: Mass Effect 3

Nominees: Far Cry 3, Mark of the Ninja, Assassin’s Creed III, Sleeping Dogs

Best Technology

The Winner: Assassin’s Creed III

Nominees: Mark of the Ninja, Mechwarrior Online, Prototype 2, SSX

Best Original Music

The Winner: Mass Effect 3 “Leaving Earth”

Nominees: Assassin’s Creed III, Papo & Yo, Sleeping Dogs, Sound Shapes

Best New Character

The Winner: Far Cry 3 — Vaas

Nominees: Nun Attack — The Nun Squad, Papo & Yo — Quico, Prototype 2 — James Heller, Sleeping Dogs — Wei Shen

Best Indie Game

The Winner: Mark of the Ninja

Nominees: Papo & Yo, Sound Shapes, Shank 2, Waveform

Best Game Innovation

The Winner: Sound Shapes

Nominees: Far Cry 3, Papo & Yo, Mark of the Ninja, Waveform

Best Game Design

The Winner: Far Cry 3

Nominees: Mark of the Ninja, Assassin’s Creed III, Mass Effect 3, Sound Shapes

Best Audio

The Winner: Assassin’s Creed III

Nominees: Incredipede, Mark of the Ninja, My Singing Monsters, Sound Shapes

Best Animation

The Winner: Far Cry 3

Nominees: Mark of the Ninja, Prototype 2, Shank 2, Sleeping Dogs

Best Social/Casual Game

The Winner: The Secret World

Nominees: i saw her standing there, Jurassic Park Builder, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, Rubber Tacos

Best Game On The Go

The Winner: Sound Shapes

Nominees: Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, My Singing Monsters, Shellrazer, The Bard’s Tale

Best Downloadable Game

The Winner: Mark of the Ninja

Nominees: Incredipede, MechWarrior Online, Shank 2, Waveform

Best Console Game

The Winner: Mass Effect 3

Nominees: Assassin’s Creed III, Far Cry 3, FIFA Soccer 13, Sleeping Dogs

Future Shop Fans’ Choice Award

The Winner: Far Cry 3

Nominees: Assassin’s Creed III, Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition, Mark of the Ninja, Mass Effect 3, Papo & Yo, Prototype 2, Sleeping Dogs, Sound Shapes, Waveform

Game Of The Year

The Winner: Far Cry 3

Nominees: Assassin’s Creed III, Mark of the Ninja, Mass Effect 3, Papo & Yo

The Mass Effect 3 Controversies – The Five Worst Things To Happen To Gaming In 2012

Callum Petch

Hello, again!  GameSparked’s countdown of the worst things to happen to gaming in 2012 continues rumbling on, getting us all hot and bothered and face-palmy and stuff.  Today, we’re going to closely examine how the highly-anticipated finale of a well-regarded trilogy managed to piss everybody off before, during, and after its release, and tank its developer’s reputation thanks to their desire to try and appease their unappeasable fanbase.

3. Mass Effect 3 & BioWare prove why catering to every “fan”’s desire is a terrible idea.

If I’ve learnt anything in 2012, it’s that there is no such thing as a BioWare fan anymore.  There are no fans who are simply able to trust in Bioware’s ability to deliver a great game, there are no fans who will simply accept certain minor flaws or changes without kicking up a huge storm over it, and there are no fans who won’t whine and whine and whine and complain whenever BioWare does something that they don’t like.  Those people do not exist anymore.  They’re wiped out; extinct, like the dinosaur or the dodo.

In their place are BioWare “fans” who do pretty much everything I listed above.  And yet, they still buy their products, they still play them to death, and they will still be first in line for the next one.  It’s an extremely expensive version of hate-watching.  It’s people wasting money on something that they have forced themselves to believe that they won’t enjoy just so that they can complain about it on the Internet.

That’s kind of how I felt about the Internet’s reaction to Mass Effect 3.  BioWare were being belittled and insulted over every little decision they made in an effort to appease their clearly unappeasable fanbase, whilst simultaneously being accused of not listening to them enough.  The biggest problem is that neither party came out of Mass Effect 3looking good.  In fact, I’m going to go about taking each major controversy related to Mass Effect 3 and try to explain why both parties were equally in the wrong.  Equal opportunities belittling! 

Yes, a few of these were from 2011, but I feel that they are indicative of my overall point, so I’m going to talk about them anyway.

If only they’d put this much effort into the ending.  HA!

The FemShep Default Design Facebook Contest

Why BioWare Are In The Wrong: Commander Shepard is loved because she (not he, for there is only Female Shepard, and Jennifer Hale and I will fight you if you say otherwise) feels, in several cases, like a real person.  She’s strong, willing to make the difficult decisions, and has actual relationships with the characters in the universe.  Her looks barely factor into it.  We didn’t grow attached to her because she looked like a supermodel.

By making the strategy for deciding her default design for Mass Effect 3’s publicity material be “get all of the fans to pick which of the six designs we’ve posted on Facebook they like the best” cheapens that.  It turns it into a popularity contest based entirely upon the shallow decision of looks and beauty.  Why couldn’t you have just cooked something up yourselves, BioWare?  You have the artists with the talent to whip something capable enough up in an hour; use them.  Or, alternatively, just use the default option on the character creation screen!  It’s not hard.  You didn’t have to cheapen your lead character by making her default appearance be decided by a fashion show of who has the whitest skin and the nicest hair.

Why The Fans Are In The Wrong: Let’s skip the high horse reason of “you people propagated this by voting along with it in the first place” because I don’t see that as a legitimate enough avenue of complaint.  Instead, let’s deal with the reaction to the reveal of the winner.  Initially, the winner was due to be BlondeShep, having clearly gotten the highest number of Facebook likes.  However, not five hours after this announcement had been made did shit hit the fan.  “Shepard can’t be blonde!  Blonde is the colour of stupid bimbo whores!” the Internet cried like a bunch of pathetic teenagers.

So BioWare re-opened the polls and, lo and behold, our new winner was the white girl with red hair — the Internet’s new flavour of the month.  BioWare’s “fans” literally got their knickers in a twist because they could not picture a blonde woman saving the world; failing to realise that we were only voting for the default look.  This was not a royal decree that, once voted in, would cause everybody’s FemShep to magically turn into this new default character.  It was just for the marketing.  They were making mountains out of molehills; something that would be repeated to a much darker degree in our next controversy.

The absolute worst thing in the whole of human everything ever.  Clearly.

Giving MaleShep The Option To Have A Relationship With Another Man

Why BioWare Are In The Wrong: Ha!  Fooled you!  They aren’t in the wrong.  At all.  It’s a mature decision that will hopefully lead to more such relationships cropping up in AAA games.  Of this list, this and the next entry are the two things that BioWare aren’t in any way, shape or form wrong about.

Why The Fans Are In The Wrong: Oh my, was this whole thing ugly or what?  You see, nobody has any legitimate complaints about the inclusion of male gay romances.  The only legitimate one of how poorly they were handled applies to pretty much every single non-Liara romance in the Mass Effect universe anyway.  Plus, if they did have that reason, they didn’t get it across well.  Essentially, instead of having legitimate complaints, the move turned into the Internet shouting homophobic remarks at Bioware which was, in all honesty, just plain disgusting.

The worst part is that homosexual relationships already exist in the Mass Effect universe if you roleplay as a FemShep and romance Liara (let’s just call a spade a spade for this article, folks), so this entirely comes off as “fans” hating the concept of two men making love to one another, but finding two women doing the same thing “hot.”  It’s despicable behaviour that everyone involved should be ashamed of.  It is 2012. Grow up.

Completely deserved.

The Metacritic Review Bombing

Why BioWare Are In The Wrong: I’m… trying to come up with something here, but I can’t think of anything.  Er… maybe not have released such a “crappy” game?

Why The Fans Are In The Wrong: You know, folks, some people actually use Metacritic to decide on their game purchases.  Now whether or not that’s a sound idea is not for discussion in this article, but it’s a simple fact, nonetheless.  They’re looking for well-written and well-reasoned reviews that can help them decide whether or not they should drop money on a game.  They are not looking for a thousand extreme 0 scores not 4 hours after the game came out slamming it over including multiplayer, gay romances, the ending you couldn’t possibly have reached yet, the length of the game that you clearly didn’t play properly, or just the fact that BioWare sold their soul to the EA devil.

It’s childish, for one thing; petty, for another; and a waste of time, at least.  How many people do you think even played five minutes of the finished game that they were trashing?  It’s the equivalent of the VUE website where people score films that haven’t even been released yet 5 stars because “it looks kool” or 0 stars because “WHY NO VUE BWING MOVIE TO MY CINEMAAAH!”  Seriously. Grow up.

The Ending.  Sweet Mother Maker, The Ending

Why BioWare Are In The Wrong: To be honest, though I liked the ending, BioWare set themselves up for this fall ever since they started hyping Mass Effect way back in 2005.  You can’t promise your players total control over a story all of the way up to, and including, the ending where all of your decisions, be they major or minor, will have huge ramifications and consequences because that’s simply not possible.  Game design will not allow it, let alone modern hardware.  And by repeatedly shouting it from the rooftop, BioWare promised something that they had no hope of delivering.  They could have turned in the greatest ending in the history of mankind that included a cure for cancer and the secret to world peace and it still would not have been enough.

The ending that we got, which, again, I did like (probably because I reached it a month after hearing about how it was the worst thing in the history of ever), did feel insanely rushed and tried to bring back one of the most blatant pieces of emotional manipulation from the start of the game (and, in a year that gave us Clementine, there is no excuse for the blatant attempt at manipulation that that bit at the start of ME3 had) in a way that’s supposed to make the game feel like it had come full circle, but just felt “meh.”  BioWare could have tried a little harder and, if you look at it the way that I am, did kind of bring a lot of the backlash on themselves.

Why The Fans Are In The Wrong: We live in an age where if we don’t like something, we can (mostly) complain about it and get it changed to something we like.  This is pretty much how talent shows work, after all.  It’s an age of unprecedented consumer control over products and works of art.  Honestly?  That scares me.  Call me old-fashioned, but I like seeing what the artist’s vision is — how they want to finish their work, what they think the direction should be, and leaving it at that.  Yes, sometimes you’ll get a bit of crap and something that goes off the rails (hello, Glee-after-the-first-13-episodes) and sometimes you’ll get something that’s great and works spectacularly (anyone who complains about the more dramatic direction Daria took in its final two seasons needs to line up so that I can shoot you), but that’s how it works.  You take a chance, but you see their vision and how they wanted to end it.  You should respect their right to do that, if nothing else.

I’m not banning complaining.  If you see something that you think is bullsh*t, you have a right to call the people responsible for that bullsh*t out.  What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t force the artist to alter their product to suit your needs just because it didn’t go how you wanted it.  And that’s how a lot of the complaints about the ending went.  Most of them came across as “fans” butt-hurt about how the game didn’t get a happy ending or the ending that they specifically wanted.  News flash: art doesn’t work like that.  You can’t please everyone all of the time.

There are legitimate complaints here, and I respect them.  What I can’t respect is this sense of entitlement.  This idea that the fans “deserve” a better ending.  That the ending was so utterly dreadful that it renders the previous sixty odd hours that you spent playing and loving the series, and the five years you’ve spent as a dedicated member of the fandom, retroactively awful and wasted.  You want a better ending?  There’s this thing called Fan Fiction.  Try that, if you’re so inclined.  Pretend the game ends once you board The Crucible.  You don’t need Bioware to go back and change the ending in order to validate your beliefs.

BioWare Releases “The Extended Cut”

Why BioWare Are In The Wrong: They caved, plain and simple.  Again, I’m old-fashioned and I prefer to see the artist deliver the vision that they wanted to.  BioWare wanted an ambiguous, bittersweet ending for you to interpret how you wanted.  The fans demanded that BioWare give them a new ending.  What they gave as a result satisfied few.  It wasn’t the new ending that the fans wanted; merely an extension, essentially flat-out telling you that EVERYTHING WAS THEN FINE, OK?!!  Imagine if the ending of The Sopranos lasted a bit longer so that you could see what actually happened to Tony.  It’s like that.  Artistic integrity was shown to mean nothing.  Sure, you may have complaints about the ending, but BioWare should have had a right to that “stupid” ending.  It’s their series, and their vision, and they are entitled to end it how they want.  But they chose not to because they wanted to satisfy their unsatisfiable fans.

I could go on, and in fact, I would love to go on but this is getting a bit long and I’m getting a headache from anger, so allow me to sum up.  Ultimately, the worst part about Mass Effect 3 is that it’s a fantastic game (or, at the very least, a solid and well-made game) that was overshadowed by controversy after controversy and BioWare’s constant attempts to please the unpleasable (with the one time that they defended a decision, truly defended a decision, being the time when it was, morally, the right thing to do).  And by caving on the ending, they sank their reputation in the eyes of a lot of people by demonstrating that there was almost nothing that they wouldn’t do in order to win back the fans who hate them anyway.

BioWare recently sent out a tweet asking where we’d like Mass Effect 4 to take place in the Mass Effect canon.  Clearly, they haven’t learnt a thing if they’re leaving the decision up to us.  I’ll see you back here in 2015 to do this dance all over again, yeah?

Join us tomorrow for number 2 on our bile-filled countdown!

[GOTY] Who Won on Day Four? — Game of the Year Breakdown

The GameSparked Team
GOTY 2012

BEWARE! POTENTIAL SPOILERS!

Biggest Buzz-kill

Winner: Larry (The Walking Dead)
There were a lot of different types of buzzkill up for the Biggest Buzzkill award. There were some annoying guys we would avoid like the plague, some real dicks, and then there was Larry. Larry is the most malicious asshole this year, with such charming moments as knocking us on our backs and leaving us for dead in a zombie infested room minutes after we saved his life. Really, you could argue some good things about Larry if you really tried, but this guy would still be a total buzzkill through and through, and we wouldn’t have anything to do with him given the choice.

Runner-Ups: Dr. Tan (Dance Central 3), The Prepper (ZombiU)

—–

Best In-Game NPC Dialogue

Winner: Hitman: Absolution

There is a lot to complain about in Hitman: Absolution, but the conversations that are held by the game’s NPCs are definitely not one of those things. With stealth games, there is a lot of waiting, watching, and surveying the area, and Hitman: Absolution makes those moments of patience-testing a million times better by filling the world with characters that can hold interesting, well-written, or downright hilarious conversations. Some of the most memorable In-Game NPC Dialogue came from Agent 47’s latest romp, and that’s why it wins this award.

Runner-Ups: The Darkness II, Lollipop Chainsaw

—–

Best Ending

Winner: The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead felt like a game that was impossible to end well. The bar was set so incredibly high by the events of preceding episodes that finishing off in a satisfying way would have been exceedingly difficult. But not only did The Walking Dead deliver a shocking twist and a mournful, but powerful, ending, it went above and beyond by teasing us in a way that left us chomping on the bit for more. We’re more excited than ever to see where Telltale will take us.

Runner-Ups: Spec Ops: The Line, XCOM: Enemy Unknown

—–

Worst Ending

Winner: Asura’s Wrath
Asura’s Wrath earned this “award” not only because of its crappy ending. It earned this “award” because it had a perfectly serviceable ending that it decided just wasn’t enough, and tacked on a nonsense, out from nowhere cliffhanger. Anyone who wanted to resolve the cliffhanger ending had to pay up for DLC. This is a real dick move that gave us all a very sour taste in our mouths.

Runner-Ups: Assassin’s Creed III, Mass Effect 3

—–

Thanks For Reminding Us

Winner: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

XCOM: Enemy Unknown brought back faint memories of a fantastic, imagination-inducing strategy game. Not only did it bring those memories back, but it was an infinitely better experience. It rekindled our love for everything extraterrestrial, and had us digging deeper and deeper into the game’s universe and sciences. It’s safe to say that we are more than happy with the return of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and we thank it for reminding us of a simpler time–when it comes to playing videogames–for all of us.

Runner-Ups: NFL Blitz, Retro City Rampage

Day Four of The GameSparked Game of the Year Debates 2012

The GameSparked Team
GOTY 2012

The GameSparked GotY Debate contains naughty words, and inappropriate content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Things start to get heated as the Team nears the end of the debates. The awards discussed today are Biggest Buzz-kill, Best In-Game NPC Dialogue, Best Ending, Worst Ending, and the “Thanks For Reminding Us” Award. Who wins what? Find out by listening below!


BEWARE! POTENTIAL SPOILERS!





Download Link (Right Click, Save As)

Original Intro/Outro by Cody DeBoer

The DubSparked Remix by Kevin Madden

[GOTY] Callum’s Top 5 Games Of The Year

Callum Petch
GOTY 2012

2012, in all honesty, has been a good year for gaming.  As good as 2011?  No, don’t be ridiculous, but it’s been good all the same and a very noteworthy one, too, for one simple reason: quality, single-player focused experiences came back with a vengeance.  Yes, we’ve had several moves towards an always-on, socially-connected, online focused medium (look at the Wii U for how such a thing has been done right), but the bulk of the best games were, at heart, single-player focused.  And lemme tell ya, as a preferred fan of quality single-player experiences, that pleases me to absolutely no end.

Which is why my Game Of The Year list almost entirely comprises of single-player focused games.  Games that put the value of a well-told story above all else.  Games that put the benefit of precision design of outstanding and tightly crafted set pieces and arcs over the blind panic of trying to shoot someone in the face whilst simultaneously battling lag.  Games that remember that, sometimes, you just want to play a game without having both your sexuality and your mother’s sexuality questioned every five seconds whilst somebody blares obnoxiously awful hip-hop music in the background.

Now, before we get into the list, a brief disclaimer.  I have not played every single game that came out this year.  In fact, I haven’t played too many games this year and even less far enough to gather a conclusive opinion on them.  There are a lot of gaps in my gaming year, for I am a poor British young adult without the money to experience them all.  Ones that I’m particularly gutted to miss out on are Lollipop Chainsaw and Far Cry 3, in particular.  Nevertheless, I stand by my list and definitely don’t see anything unseating the Top 2.  So, in descending order, here are my Top 5 Games Of 2012.

5. Catherine

Getting its UK release in February of this year, Catherineis a highly-flawed game, but one that I am extremely happy and satisfied to have played thanks to, above all else, its story.  Yes, you could easily mark it down thanks to neither of the two titular characters who lead character Vincent has to choose between being particularly well-defined or, for the most part, likeable; but I choose not to dwell on that.  Catherine tells a simple story, but it tells it well with a very mature tone (especially shocking considering the provocative box-art) and well-drawn, likeable, and relatable characters who are great to hang out with.

The game tackles weighty themes with a surprisingly deft hand (it says a lot that the scariest and most unsettling part of the game for me was the scene where Catherine mercilessly beats Vincent in the bar toilets) and builds to a great series of conclusions with a set of multiple endings where each one feels, for once, acceptable and earned.  Plus, Catherine doesn’t skimp on the gameplay either with a unique and fiercely challenging puzzle set-up that is also fair and rewarding of patience and thinking.  Catherine is flawed (making the game be about choosing between two women and having neither of them be particularly desirable until the final third is a major issue), but it’s unique and I’m really glad that I played it.

Plus, it’s made me want to get into the Personaseries and, in the end, isn’t that worth giving this a spot on the list all by itself?

4. Rock Band Blitz

Fun Fact: I still play Rock Band.  I still play it once every week, in fact.  I still spend crap tonnes on DLC for it every month, in fact.  It is probably the defining game series of my life.  So, naturally, you would assume that I would hate Rock Band Blitz because it’s different and plays so little like the series it spawned from.  You would be wrong, because Blitz is the Amplitude sequel that I had been waiting all of my life for.  Yes, it’s a lot simpler than Amplitude and it’s even less of a game than Amplitude (you can’t fail and there’s nothing to unlock after the first 45 minutes), but it still works.

The game’s lack of structure and overarching goals work to keep its focus to the barest essentials: “just one more song!” and “Must beat friends!”  And those essentials work.  Blitzis fast, frantic, fun, and a great game to blow a few spare minutes with… before those “minutes” turn into “an hour” without you knowing.  Months down the line from its release, I’m buying my Rock Band DLC based on how well it’ll play in Blitz and not just for how well it’ll work for regular Rock Band.  It’s as much a part of my weekly gaming routine as the parent series it spawned from and is probably the game I have sunk the most amount of time into this year.

The fact that Cult Of Personality is on the soundtrack has absolutely nothing to do with this game’s position on the list…

3. Mass Effect 3

I liked the ending.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, Mass Effect 3 was, for me, most everything that I wanted from it.  Other than the slow start and the really sloggy time back on Earth (until you get to the last “defend this position” objective), the game constantly had its hooks in me.  It told an extremely good story with a literal army of well-written, interesting, and lovable characters.  It managed to make seemingly minor decisions that I had made throughout the series come back to both reward and bite me in both major and subtle ways.  It had super funny scenes (“eeeeemergency induction port!”), super awesome scenes (suck it, Kai Leng!), super heartbreaking scenes (farewell, Mordin), and super heart-warming scenes (“I wish we had more time…”).  It’s pretty much a how-to guide for writing character-focused games.

And to top it all off, the combat was better than it had ever been.  Challenging but fair and very tactical on the higher settings; when everything is going right, it truly made me feel like Commander Shepard, Ultra Badass of the Galaxy.  Sure, a lot of the game involved going through a routine, but I didn’t care.  Until I reached the finale, I just wanted to spend even more time in the Mass Effect universe, with its interesting mythology and unique worlds and amazing characters.  But when the credits finally rolled, I was satisfied.  I don’t want to go back because I was satisfied with how it wrapped up.  It’s over and to return would be to risk sullying the memory.

Mass Effect 3 was most everything I wanted from the game and, in the end, that is what makes it one of my favourite games of the whole decade.

2. The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead is not a fun experience.  But it didn’t need to be, for The Walking Dead managed to do the impossible multiple times over.  Over the course of five episodes and 6 long, torturous months, it crafted an exceptionally well-told story that hooks you from the word “go” and almost never lets up.  It wrote a collection of amazing characters who you felt for and rooted for in the face of overwhelming odds.  It shocked by having its “shocking moments” actually mean something rather than just be in there for shock value.  It managed to revitalize the episodic gaming format as a genuine outlet for releases.  It showed that you don’t need to make a zombie game be about endless slaughtering of said zombies to be entertaining.

But, most of all, it managed to pull off the legitimately impossible feat of writing a genuinely strong female child character who you cared for more than anything else in the whole world.  Clementine is, quite simply, the absolute best character that I have ever interacted with in any videogame ever.  She is smart, naive, cute, precious, and in the hands of literally any other developer would be the usual insufferable, know-it-all nitwit that children usually are in videogames.  But Telltale pulled it off (do not ask me, because I haven’t a clue how) and, consequently, the entire final episode is one long, emotionally-draining endurance fest on your heart.  And it is friggin’ perfect.

But you don’t need me to tell you any of that.  Hundreds of other journalists will have said what I wanted to say about this game and they’ll have said it a thousand times better than me.  Most of you reading this, yourselves, will understand thanks to having played the game already.  Acquaintances who are casual game players, people who only play shooters, even partners who don’t play games and just sat next to you experiencing it… they know what I mean.  The Walking Dead is 2012’s breakout hit and proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that a quality single-player focused, story-driven game can succeed in today’s market.

For Clementine.

1. Spec Ops: The Line

I have already written a good 2,100 words on Spec Ops: The Line.  I could write a good 12,000 more.  Easily.  Much like The Cabin In The Woods (incidentally, my favourite film of 2012), Spec Ops: The Line is a game that presents itself, on the surface, as the most generic videogame to come along since Bodycount.  And, initially, it is.  You take cover, you issue orders to your two squadmates, you shoot at men in turbans who yell at you in a foreign language…  Until you don’t.  As pretty much everybody on the frakkin’ planet has told you by now, Spec Opsis all about the rug-pull and, once it pulls that rug, there is no going back.

However, Spec Ops does have a lot of negative points about it.  Graphically, the game is not in the slightest bit pretty to look at with textures looking extremely muddy and animations being particularly rough (upon further reflection, this actually adds to the brilliantly oppressive atmosphere!  Gorram, this game is amazing).  The difficulty has some extremely unfair spikes at certain points.  It’s short.  Really rather short, the campaign should last you barely 6 hours on Normal.  And the multiplayer is hot, steaming garbage that directly flies in the face of everything that the single-player stands for.

So, even in the face of all of those fairly hefty flaws that would sink any other game’s chances at being the Best Game of the Year, why am I giving GOTY to Spec Ops?  Three very simple reasons, folks.  1] It has now been 3 full months since I played and finished Spec Ops and I am still thinking about it.  That never happens to me anymore.  2] As soon as I finished playing this game I immediately hopped online to have a full discussion with as many people as I could find who had played it to the end.  I needed to talk about this game.  And I kept insisting to all of my real-life friends that they needed to play it (none have taken me up on the offer, because all of my friends suck).  This never happens to me anymore.

3] Spec Ops gave me an experience that I had never gone on before.  I had never felt the way that I had felt on my first run-through the game (I played it in full three times the week that I rented it).  This game hit me and it hit me hard.  And the more that I think about it, the more I love it and the more that I want to write about it (Fun Fact: I had to physically restrain myself from writing and adding more to my original article).  Spec Ops: The Line is an imperfect masterpiece that everybody needs to experience from start to finish and is one of the top five best games that I have ever played.

Go and play it now.

[GOTY] Worst Ending (Before DLC) Nominees

The GameSparked Team
GOTY 2012

Nothing sticks out quite like a bad ending. A bad ending can ruin everything before it (and anything came after), or just leave you bitter. This year had a few notable bad endings, but which one was the worst? Here are our nominees for Worst Ending (Before DLC) of 2012.

Assassin’s Creed III
I’d like you, dear reader, to think of some of the most heroic sacrifices you’ve ever experienced in a work of fiction. I’m guessing they were emotional; after all, when you’re with a character for so long, you grow attached to them, right? I bet they were also pretty climactic; a good story wouldn’t let such an important character die with so little fanfare, after all. Now I want you to think of the exact opposite to all these things, and you have Assassin’s Creed III’s ending: the main character dying in an anticlimactic way for stupid reasons, which may or may not involve aliens and 2012.

Asura’s Wrath

The ending to Asura’s Wrath is a perfect example of attempting to fix what wasn’t broken. Upon completing the game, you are presented with a perfectly serviceable ending that pretty much concludes the story; the big evil monster is dead and Asura is reunited with his daughter and all will be well — except it won’t. Upon seeing this ending, the player is presented with a message explaining to them that the story isn’t over yet. When you complete the game again, now having gotten the requisite number of S ranks, you are presented with a completely ridiculous cliffhanger in which a mysterious helper character is transformed into the ultimate big bad without warning. Wow! Do you wanna see where the hell this goes? Well too bad, because the rest of the ending is locked behind $7 DLC.

Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2 lost its surprise bait-and-switch ending before it even started. We all know that vaults have horrible alien monsters inside of them, so when it comes time to finish off the second game in the series, what surprise do we have waiting at the climax? Why, that there are many, many more vaults for you to find, of course! It kind of makes the entire exercise feel pointless after the fact. There are thousands of vaults in the universe, apparently, so why bother with Pandora at all? If Jack found out about the one on Pandora what was stopping him from just abandoning the crimson raiders on their craphole and going to a place without a gang of hunters trying to stop him? It’s a terrible cliffhanger and a poor way to finish off an otherwise excellent game.

I Am Alive
The ending of I Am Alive was another rushed, abrupt ending. It not only proved the game’s rough development cycle, but it also confirms the many plotholes that are presented throughout the course of the game. Skip to 17:00 to see one of the reasons we’re talking about.

Mass Effect 3
Imagine yourself in an epic space opera, of which you are the main character. Imagine travelling through a vast galaxy, getting into physically and emotionally harrowing situations, and encountering some of the most interesting and unique life-forms you’ll ever meet. Imagine making thousands of decisions, each of which impact the galaxy, be they big or small. You also have a notion lingering in the back of your head: these decisions, which go beyond defining you as a person, will one day have some effect, like a butterfly that flaps its wings and creates a hurricane. Now imagine yourself at the end of your adventure, where you stand on the precipice of saving the galaxy from imminent destruction. What have all your decisions led to? A choice between three differently coloured explosions.

Resident Evil 6
The endings to Resident Evil 6 weren’t rushed, abrupt, or anything like that. They were just really dumb clichés that felt more like the endings to a bad movie than a Resident Evil game. We’ve posted Chris’s ending, as we feel it’s the worst of the bunch.

Thinking With Tay: The New Endings Of Mass Effect 3

Jonathan Tay

Let me start by describing my situation: I have not played Mass Effect 3 in months. After viewing the original ending, as well as the subsequent fan outcry, my copy—a collector’s edition, no less!—was shelved and left to gather dust. This wasn’t done because I found the ending terribly upsetting, but because I didn’t feel the need to play through a game, however good, just to see an ending that Bioware clearly left unfinished.

Now, almost four months later, Bioware has finally released the long anticipated Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut. It’s free, but it’ll take up around 2GB of your hard drive. It’s not really my place to review something that you don’t have to pay money for, so this piece will function mostly as an analysis, with a suggestion of whether or not you should spend your time and bandwidth on this.

Oh, and it should go without saying, but spoilers!

The new content begins, appropriately, once Shepard gets beamed up into the Citadel during the game’s end sequence. New cinematics remove some of the ambiguity surrounding Shepard’s situation: we see Admiral Hackett realizing that Shepard has survived. This seemingly dismisses the famous “Indoctrination Theory” (Google it if you don’t know) right from the get-go.

The next part of the game remains largely unchanged from the original. Shepard and Anderson still confront the Illusive Man, and the latter two still end up in rigor mortis. The crucible still won’t work, and Shepard still ascends to the chamber containing the enigmatic Star Child.

This is where the main meat of the new content lies. Shepard is back to his (or her) usual inquisitive self, and by that, I mean that you can now investigate some of the Star Child’s statements. If you were expecting everything to be neatly wrapped up, prepare to be disappointed. While, for the most part, the big questions are answered, I can’t say that they’ve been answered particularly well. There is an instance when the Star Child almost literally says, “There is not enough time to explain”; the main purpose behind the Reapers seems to be shoehorned, silly, and somewhat paradoxical; the list goes on.

But backstory and exposition aren’t the main reasons we wanted this DLC for, right? The endings are what we’re waiting for. Well, Bioware (somewhat clumsily) explained and expanded on the previous three, and even threw a in a new one. The new ending, which sees Shepard rejecting all three choices and choosing to finish the war on his own terms, is an interesting one, if not short and somewhat disappointing. The extended endings for the standard three, however, tidy up some of the plot holes while simultaneously providing marginally satisfying dénouements. The mass relays are only damaged, not destroyed, while the reason for Joker’s escape is that he was ordered to a rendezvous by Admiral Hackett. The game will then show you a sequence of still pictures with a voice explaining what happens, à la the Fallout series, and ends with your crew mourning your death. If you went with the destroy ending, you’ll get around five seconds of additional footage: Shepard’s body gasping for air among wreckage. It seems that Bioware wasn’t completely content to eradicate all evidence for the Indoctrination Theory.

I *spoilers* the *spoilers* and it *spoilers*!

I must say that this is one of the strangest precedents in media history. Although director’s cuts and alternative endings for movies are quite common, rarely has the actual ending of something been extended. Rarer still is that it was due to fan outrage. Yes, endings can sometimes be catastrophic—LOST comes to mind—but in almost all of those cases, the writers and directors stood behind their decisions. Neon Genesis Evangelion had a follow-up movie, but Anno saw no need to diminish its controversy, or change his message. The story that began in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was eventually concluded, but Kojima didn’t do this by releasing a small downloadable cutscene—he made a full-fledged sequel in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Blade Runnerhas received several different cuts, but only because Ridley Scott never had full control until the final one.  

The ending to Mass Effect 3, on the other hand, is not handled by a new game or film. Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut gives us a bit more dialogue, and adds a few more minutes to the final cutscene. The revelations are not mind-blowing, and everything feels like it could have been there to begin with. This small DLC reveals that Bioware was either a) not confident in their original ending as an artistic product, or b) not confident or unwilling to make a proper, feature length follow-up. Even more mystifying is the time it took them to come up with this. Four months, give or take a few weeks? With the 20-25 minutes of new content, I would think that it would only take them a month—two, if we’re stretching it. And if it really did take four, can we say that it was it worth it? Imagine if you were a programmer, tasked with recoding a section of a game in order to add what amounts to under half an hour’s length to it. Would you consider that four months of your life a productive use of your time? Perhaps we can say that the full Mass Effect team wasn’t behind this. But if that was the case, then what does it tell us about Bioware’s concerns with addressing the ending?

No matter how many ways you slice it, Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut is a prime example of, “too little, too late”. Truth be told, if you’re not intent on replaying Mass Effect 3, then you’re probably better off not dedicating the 2GB of memory required to download this DLC. Find the endings on Youtube, if you must. Your choices still don’t feel like they matter, there are still holes in the plot, and the ending still feels like it will be polarizing.

But is it important?

Just as the Star Wars prequels can’t take away your fond memories of the original trilogy, so too can the ending of Mass Effect 3 not take away your feelings for the rest of the series. The fun you’ve had—the emotions you’ve experienced—the lessons you may have learned; no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to erase your time within the rich universe of Mass Effect. Let’s remember the good times we’ve had with the series, and see Shepard off with a smile. One day, the story, characters, and themes of Mass Effect will fade from your memory. But not the feelings—just like the Force, they’ll always be with you.

[NEWS] Here’s What You Need to Know About Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut

Nate Andrews

Even if you’ve moved past the ending of Mass Effect 3 and the hell that the series’ most dedicated fans hath wrought out of frustration at the conclusion, BioWare isn’t finished. They’re answering the call for more clarity regarding the trilogy’s finale with the Extended Cut downloadable content that will be released on June 26th for all platforms.

The information recently released regarding the epilogue content provides some insight into how it’ll work and what players should expect from it. Here’s what you need to know:

• It’s completely free.
• It includes “additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes.”
• You’ll need 1.9 GB of storage to download the content.
• It does NOT change the endings, but rather expands on them.
• Unfortunately, you’ll need to replay the last two missions of the game in order to see the content, as there is no menu option for it. If you don’t have a save before the last two missions, well… I guess you’re out of luck?
• The Extended Cut will apparently read the choices you’ve made throughout the entire Mass Effect series, which addresses a common complaint that people had about their previous choices not affecting Mass Effect 3‘s ending.

It’s been pretty nice since the rage over Mass Effect 3‘s ending died out, so the notion of additional ending content for people to potentially get furious about once again is a little frightening. Hopefully the Extended Cut leaves these people satisfied, even if it does force them to experience the specific moments of the game they despised a second time.

The GameSparked Podcast Apr-10-2012

The GameSparked Team

Mat is missing, but The GameSparked Podcast continues onward. Remember, NOTHING stops The GameSparked Podcast. This week, Jordan is almost done Tales of Abyss, Mr. Platinum likes Lara Croft and DJMax Portable 3, Myles conquers Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Damian attempts to get ALL the space ass, and Mat never asked for this…

THE GAMESPARKED PODCAST!

Intro/Outro by Cody DeBoer

[REVIEW] Mass Effect 3: From Ashes DLC

Damian Turner

(PlayStation 3 [REVIEWED], Xbox 360, PC)

I finally got around to buying Mass Effect 3, and finished the epic trilogy with my Shepard. I went into the PlayStation Store, and saw there was a new character DLC (for $9.99 or 800 MSP) with a dedicated mission set for him. Giving me a brand new character and expanding on the universe that I know and love? How could I say no? From past experiences, the Mass Effect games have always been character-based, so I could see no wrong with this purchase. Let’s just hope that this first DLC is worthy enough to be a part of this fantastic franchise, or we might have to send it back to the deepest parts of the galaxy.

With this DLC, you get to go back to Eden Prime, which will ring bells for most fans, because this is where your Shepard had his/her first mission in the original Mass Effect. The story is that Cerberus has found something very valuable on the planet: a relic from the long lost Protheans. For people who don’t know who the Protheans are, they were a species that had been extinct for 50,000 years by the hands of the Reapers. This mission will give you about an hour of play time. Yes, it is very short, and I do wish it was a lot longer for the price you pay, but what it does right is give you more of the Mass Effect lore you love.

You also get another costume to use with each character. I have to say, they don’t disappoint. They all look very badass, and I found myself using them every time I would go on a mission. The one sad side to this is Shepard does not get any new armour (where’s the Shepard love, BioWare?).

The character you get from this DLC is Javik. He is a Prothean that has survived for all of these years. He is a very unique character — one that you have not seen in any Mass Effect games before. Yes, it’s nice to see fan favourites like Garrus and Ashley come back, but Mass Effect’s characters have usually stayed the same throughout the whole series. With Javik, it felt fresh and new.  I found myself, every time, doing a mission with him and Garrus accompanying me (Garrus is a favourite of mine). It was always neat to see what he had to say on objectives and story pieces. I also liked how other characters reacted to him being there because no one else has seen anyone like him. So, while I was traversing the galaxy, everybody, including myself, got to see a new face.

What would any fan want from DLC? More story! That’s what you get here: a little more of the lore you love hearing from this expansive universe that BioWare has set out for us. Also, there is a character that is unique, and is something that fans haven’t seen before. The mission is a little short, and that is kind of a downer. However, all the countless hours you will get from having Javik in your party, and seeing how everybody reacts to him, is highly intriguing. Just to see what all your favourite characters have to say about him is worth the price of admission. If you are buying Mass Effect 3, or have already beaten the game, this DLC is definitely worth the pickup. I promise you that Javik will be a character that you remember for a long time.