I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

With Mass Effect 3 behind me, it's time to get down to business here at Hackett Out - I've started to chart a route through that backlog. A post every couple of weeks should do it. I won't have much time in front of the TV but 14 days should be long enough to get stuck into any game. And, hopefully, there'll be something interesting to say at the end of it.

I'm beset by reminders of the triple-A releases I'm missing out on - Max Payne 3 is calling to me. There's nothing for it but to launch into some old-school action to cleanse my pallet. 


I grew up without videogames. The PlayStation had launched by the time I convinced my parents to invest. I got my hands on a heavily discounted Sega Mega Drive when I was 11 or 12. I moved on to Sony's console a couple of years later. As a result, Nintendo's golden era passed me by. My first Mario game was Mario 64 and my first Zelda - Ocarina of Time. I've never played Super Metroid, A Link to the Past or Yoshi's Island. I have lots of homework to do on the Nintendo front - if only to figure out why the American press seems so obsessed with those games.

It's all rainbows and chip-tunes in Bit.Trip: Runner

The past few weeks, I've been playing a little Bit Trip: Runner on Steam. A subtle blend of euphoric platforming perfection and teeth-grinding, rage-inducing horror. It's got me pumped for yet more 2D challenge. So I'm going right back to the source. My first task here on Hackett Out will be to complete Super Mario Brothers. 

Only 27 years late!

The Mass Effect Effect

How can the loss of a Mass Effect game-save lead to so much strife? Well, there are two reasons. And the first is simple, I love my Shepard. I didn't want to lose him. The second has to do with the appallingly small world of videogame journalism. And it's highlighted one unsettling problem that a 'year off gaming' might present.


Now that the old PS3 has received a new lease of life (thanks to my trusty hair dryer), I’m back in business with Mass Effect 3. Catastrophe averted. 

Losing a game save shouldn't be such a problem, right? The gameplay in ME3 is unrelentingly satisfying. I’d have been only too happy to play through those opening 12 hours again. Combat has real heft - although things can still get hairy, it's only too easy to dominate each encounter. It's crowd-control and it's fun.

Controlled chaos in Mass Effect 3

The game also benefits from a serious presentational facelift. Looking just as good as ever, it seems that developers Bioware finally hired a foley artist and/or sound engineer to bring the quality of their audio up to match their visuals. Weapons pop and the iconic sounds of the mass relays and reapers are pitch perfect. And those bizarre moments of silence that peppered previous games? Few and far between.

Most importantly, the game feels like a sequel to the original, rather than to its 2010 follow-up. I've been known to ramble on about how much I love (and hate) the first game so I won't labor the point here. With this third release in the series, Bioware have struck a careful balance between the original’s storytelling and its sequel's focus on combat. Shepard’s back in the thick of the action in this one. 

So if the experience of Mass Effect is all good, what exactly is my problem? And no, it's not the obvious one.