Wrecking Ball

November 25th, 2007Blog0 comments

There’s a new Doughboys in Hollywood a few blocks from my friend’s place. We went there last night.

The place is known for its comfort food — I had the Beefy Mac and Cheese, which is kind of like a really good Hamburger Helper. Then I ate a mini red velvet cake. Those are the specialty there, and for good reason. There was an instance where I went to DBs and had one of these cakes by itself for lunch. They are crave-able.

Capsule Review: Mass Effect for the Xbox 360

I’m a huge sucker for Bioware RPGs. KOTOR 1 and 2, Jade Empire, these were must-plays for me. Why: Open-ended world, lots of branching quest lines. Mass Effect is the clear successor to both these series — the standard Bioware touches can be found throughout.

There are some neat technical advancements here — really good facial animation for the talking heads. They got the embarrassed WINCE down. The visuals are pretty amazing, although the combat doesn’t seem as tight as the previous Bioware products. Doing ranged combat in an RPG is a tricky venture.

There are also quite a few bugs — freezes, a LOT of texture pop-in, and some odd moments where your character stops moving and you have to reload the game. The industry is getting into Patch Mania — allowing some bugs to slip through the release with the intention of patching them later. I do understand though that as games get more complex, this becomes more of a necessity.

Some neat trivia: The voiceover work is phenomenal. Keith David, most recently known for narrating Ken Burns’ The War, does a great job here. That guy has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard — full of gravel and character. Seth Green from Family Guy is in here along with Mila Kunis. Yes, this is the lady that does Meg’s voice on Family Guy. I have no problem with this but it’s also kind of distracting in a humorous way. Especially when the character she voices is so completely different.

More later on all of this once I get deeper into the game.

Looking at the LA Animal Shelter’s Adoptable Dogs web site is like flipping through pictures of really, really happy people. Sadly, ironically happy. And every eighth or ninth photograph is the concerned, worried face of someone who really knows what the hell’s going on.