The game carries on from the original game and you can import your character. Beware though as Bioware have seriously fucked up this process on the Xbox 360 by hiding away the file you need so unless you have the original memory/hard drive you saved onto you will not be able to import your character even if you kept your save games. If you still have the original Mass Effect to hand you can play through the final battle again and cause the game to recreate this hidden file so you can import your character, otherwise you are screwed. How Bioware managed to make such a hash of this I don’t know. Luckily I managed to locate my original 20gb hard drive. After a semi-interactive opening sequence the game takes a 2 year game time break and sends you off on another mission to save the Galaxy. Naturally even Commander Shepard can’t save the galaxy all alone so your first task is to recruit a new team. Some characters from the original game return, mainly as NPCs but a few can be added to your team. Seems in Shepard’s 2 year absence they have carried on with their lives. As before you can go on side missions (which are thankfully more varied than Mass Effect), help out your companions and indulge in romance with your team members.

My Commander Shepard

Some of the changes that have improved the game play have sadly had negative consequences. Everything in the sequel seems that little bit smaller and less epic than the first. Partly due to the difference in the plot and partly because game areas have been reduced in size to minimise running backwards and forwards. It feels odd that the enhanced Normandy now feels bigger than some of the game locations and if it wasn’t for the some times spectacular background vistas the game would feel very small. Shoring up the combats seems to have made the game much easier and I would recommend laying at a level of difficulty one higher than you would usually play. The final battle alone is way to easy and feels a bit of an anti-climax after playing through the game. However the set-up for the Mass Effect 3 more than makes up for the lack of epic-ness of this title. It also seems a little short compared to similar recent titles like Dragon Age or Fallout 3. I blew though it the first time in 36 hours, I did the main plot, some side quests and all the team member missions. I still have some star systems unexplored so I doubt I have covered everything but still.

Mass Effect 2 is more polished than its predecessor but the side effects of this polish make it slightly less in some areas than the original. It all comes out in the wash though and I think the two titles are pretty much on a equal standing in the end. I look forward to a second play through and the DLC. I give 4 out of 5 just like I did Mass Effect. A very good game but not as good as Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware are still the kings of RPGs in my book.

The British version of GTA would be called TWOC. This stands for ‘Taking Without Owners Consent’ which is official British police speak for nicking cars and pretty typical of the understated nature of British culture.  ’Grand Theft Auto’ is just too aggressive and sounds rather serious. That just won’t do for a nation not prone to complaining. ‘The central character could still be an Eastern European illegal immigrant looking for a brighter future and falling in with criminals. The in game comedy could come from humorously over the top stories from a mad right-wing newspaper called ‘The Daily Times” and amusingly left-wing silliness from a nationally funded TV station called ‘The BTC’. There will be numerous radio stations but 90% of them will be nothing but adverts the others will be by ‘The BTC’ DJed by a mix of 5o years old who speak like black teenagers and pensioners who should have retired a decade a go. We recommend getting Terry Wogan to provide the voice for one station, probably get him cheap if you tell him it is for Children in Need.

Some of the biggest changes would be to the cars and driving. Streets would be much narrower than GTA but that would be okay as most cars would be smaller too. Why zoom around the wide streets of a US style city in a sports car when you can bomb around the back streets of a UK style city in Citroen Saxon? Cars however would not handle like hippos in a mud bath but the wheel will drop off if you hit a kerb. Back end sliding would be virtually non-existent as most European cars are front wheel drive. Taxis will all be black cabs despite most people using Mini-cabs these days. Like GTA there will be a high number of 70/80s vehicles to drive as well as new ones so cars like Cortinas, Granadas, Minis, Metros, Caviliers, Escorts and Allegros will be available to drive. All non German or Japanese vehicles will break down at random.

Weapons are another element that would need significant changes to better represent British culture. Most available guns will be air rifles, converted blank firers that have a 10% chance of exploding your face, WWII era revolvers and sawn-off shotguns. Though crossbows will also be available. Bosses would be equipped with more modern weapons but like everyone else in the game they would have no idea how to fire them. Ammo will be rare to the point of making guns useless. On the flip side their would be many more knives and swords in the game. Explosives would be replaced almost completely with illegal fireworks but the odd WWII hand grenade would be also be available. The standard police will never carry firearms but armoured police officers can turn up with 30mins notice. Most police officers walking the streets will actually be Community Police Officers or Special Police Officers who will run off at the first sign of danger to go find a real Police Officer.

When captured by the Police you will not be taken to the Police station before being let go without charge after bribing the officers as in GTA. This has been deemed too realistic and might ruin the fiction of the game. Instead you character will be able to claim asylum and have a large group of do-gooders come to his aid and post bail. The government will then give your character a free house, car and money every week to help you resist committing crimes for money.

The setting will a fictional British city called Newchester which will be non-descriptively ‘northern’, though a disproportionate number of characters will have Cockney or Plum accents to help the game crack the US market. At least one character should claim to be from Birmingham but the voice actor who provides his voice should be Australian. Important characters will be hilarious stereotypes with voices provided by Jim Davidson wherever possible. In addition their will be a great number of jokes about bad teeth and dentists again to help break the US market. I also suggest working Mr. Bean and Benny Hill into the game if possible again to amuse Americans and keep that British culture flowing. Landmarks from all over the UK will be incorporated with the play area inexplicably surrounded by water.

It will rain most of the time and a blue Police Box will be spotted in random locations all around the city.

Missions will be similar to GTA but banks, museums and nightclubs will be replaced with bookies, Post Offices and local pubs. Local pubs will also act as weapons shops allowing you to purchase items like lock knives and starter pistols. High powered speedboats will be replaced by rowing boats, sailing dinghies and the occasional 80s built power boat. At least on mission should involve a Narrow-boat chase through the canals. Another mission should be a homage to the original Italian job film.

I think if we make this game and some how involve Morris Dancers then Rockstar will be assured a tax break. Maybe.

A PC Gamer’s Wet Dream

PC Gamers are engima wrapped up in a mystery. Okay not really. They are just bunch of easily led automotons who are suckers for a gimmick but I didn’t want to start the flaming in the first sentance. But what drives them to do the things they do? Well other than the fact most of them are either teenagers or if not actual teenagers have never emotionally/intellectually matured past that point anyway.

On Mice and Keyboards

Mice and keyboards are, according to PC Gamers the most used part of a computer.  I agree totally. After the power supply, CPU, memory, hard drive, monitor and all most every other part of the computer other than the speakers the keyboard and mouse undergo the most constant strain. Thus spending that ‘little bit extra’ on good quality input peripherals really makes a difference. Well it does if by quality you mean well made a resilient and not made of acres of black plastic, containing 600 buttons and some funky blue light emitting diodes. You see PC Gamers are all about perception so if you slap the words ‘gamers’ or ‘gaming’ into the name or description of your mouse then they will pay double the normal price you could ask for. Stick a few blue LEDs in there and then you can pretty count on triple. And hell give it a name like ‘Razer Deathadder’ and you can pretty much charge what you want and PC Gamers will buy them by the dozen. Make some ludicrous claim about DPI and ‘outshining the competition’ and every wannabe World Champion Quake player (am I showing my age here?) will dream about owning your product. Doesn’t matter if exactly the same mouse is available in grey, without the LEDs and ‘gamer’ tag for £10 at PC World.

PC Gamers also like their input peripherals to have 3 year warranties. Why? Who keeps a PC for 3 years let alone the keyboard and mouse?  Not gamers as they cycle their PC components on a 6 monthly basis to keep up with the new technology. Lets skip over the part about manufacturers only offering a warranty when they know 99.9% of their product will last well beyond that time anyway and ask what are they doing to their keyboards and mice that need what amounts to 3 years of insurance? Personally I don’t want to know. And to be honest unless you have access to an autoclave you should be getting rid of your keyboard every 12 months otherwise you risk starting a new plague, especially if you are a fat greasy gamer.

On Graphics Cards and Frame Rates

These two actually do make a difference to PC Gaming but only to a point. If you don’t have a Graphics card meaty enough to play the game on full detail and in a high resolution you are going to be disappointed. But again only to a point. Ideally a game needs to run around 60 frames per second (lower if not an action orientated game) so it can easily cope with quick turns and the like. Sure the human eye can only see up to around 25fps but a  quick 180 turn can look like a slide show at those kinds of frame rates. At the moment unless you have a PC copy of GTA IV or a monitor the size of Wales all your games will work perfectly adequately on a good graphics card you purchased last year. This isn’t enough for PC Gamers though, oh no. All PC Gamers dream of having a quad SLI gaming rig (yes they call their PCs rigs like they are some kind of big truck or something). Now what does this mean? Well put simply this means 4 graphics cards daisy chained together into what amounts so a small supercomputer cluster. Why? Well on a computer with 4 high end graphics cards you can pretty much run the game ‘Crysis’ at a frame rate higher than the monitor can refresh. How awesome is that? Not very when you consider that each graphics card in this chain will cost, ideally, in the range of £350. PC Gamers will pay upwards of £1000 just for their graphics cards despite not having the games nor other hardware available to see the benefits.

Frame rates are the main source of kudos in PC Gaming. PC Gamers will sound hours and £1000s getting their frame rates as high as possible. They will buy the best CPUs, SLI Graphics setups, hard drives, memory and other parts to up their frame rates. Ideally memory should be installed in matched pairs. A matched pair is two stick of RAM that is from the same production batch and paired with a partner that most closely matches its performance levels. They should naturally be put in opposite memory slots for maximum gain. This will make all of 2 fps difference if you are lucky. Hard drives are vastly losing out the Solid State Drives these days as the read speeds are much higher. Sadly SSDs cost 4-5x the amount a hard drive does for 4-5x less storage space. Some even go to the expense of buying network cards (£100+) that have their own processor on board so another few FPS can be squeezed out from saving the CPU from dealing with network traffic.

PC Gamers will also spend hours optimising their PC to drag every extra frame out of their ‘rig’ and run testing tools that automatically upload their results up to website so they can brag. You know hours they could spend playing PC games.

On Overclocking, Case Modding and Water Cooling.

Eventually PC Gamers get to the point that optimising just isn’t enough. Then they move into overclocking. This basically involves reducing your CPU or graphics cards functional lifetime by a factor of 10 for every extra few 100mhz you get out of your computer. See the Red Dwarf episode ‘White Hole‘ for reference.  This of course improves your frame rates. What you do is force your CPU or GPU to run faster that it was designed to do. It also often requires you to pump more power into the component than it was designed to take. Think of the things Scotty used to do to the Enterprise to get it up an extra 0.1 warp and how well that usually worked for the poor old ship. Anyway, more power means more heat. Too much heat means the Klingons catch up with you and make the Enterprise explode. So you need to cool down your rig. The coolers that come with the CPU and graphics cards are no usually up to the task so this means paying some serious dollar for new coolers and fans. What you end up with is the inside of a PC that looks like a cross between a H.R. Giger fantasy and a industrial ventilation system. The plus point is all that hot air your PC pushes out into the room means you don’t need a heater in winter.

You will get to the point that good old fashioned air cooling will not keep your PC components below melting point. The natural progression for the PC Gamer is to move to water cooling. After all even Porche water cools their cars these days and your PC isn’t a Volkswagen Beetle is it? As your parents no doubt told you water and electricity don’t mix. That is not true, they mix very well indeed which is the main problem. So mixing water pumps and tubing in with the wires of your PC is a daunting prospect. Actually it isn’t. Any half-wit with a modicum of common sense could install an off the shelf kit without any problems. You would think this would rule out most PC Gamers but it seems being less than a half-wit is no set back seeing as how easy water cooling systems can be installed. Its just plugging tubes into holes and filling up a tank with water for pities sake but PC Gamers make it out to be some kind of challenge. Maybe it is for them. Therefore no self respecting gamer buys an off the shelf kit. They buy each component individually at a greatly inflated cost so that they can shift just that little more heat and up the overclock just that little bit more. In fact Water cooling is getting so close to mainstream that they real PC Gamers are moving to new and exciting cooling systems involving oil immersion, liquid gases and the heat death of alternate universes.

Case modding starts for PC gamers as cutting large holes in their PC to let all the damned heat out. It has got to the point you can now buy PC cases without the actual case. How you keep wildlife and sloughed skins cells out of that only the gods know. Holes in your PC look nasty so PC games try to disguise them with laser cut fan guards and LEDs bright enough to blind helicopter pilots. If you are particularly proud of the mess inside your PC case you might have a perspex window on the side and install cathode ray tubes inside. After all they purchased a power supply powerful enough to power their fridge freezer so they might as well use it for something. Hard core games use black light tubes so they can show off their dandruff too.

How do they afford all this?

Well most of them don’t because they are teenagers on limited means .i.e pocket money or paper rounds. Thus 90% of PC gamers lie about their PC setup to impress people on discussion forums. It is like the gaming equivalent of anorexia. The ones that can afford it are either men-children or teenagers with rich parents. In fact it lack of money that initially drove the adoption of overclocking. As a PC Gamer If you can’t afford the latest best CPU you buy a cheap one and make damn sure it is as almost as fast as the expensive one even if that means it would only last 6 months and that you have to spend more money than the difference between the two processors on cooling equipment.

The PC Gaming Culture

I might have already mentioned PC Gamers are either teenagers or just act like them. Once or twice maybe? Thus PC Gaming culture (I use the term in the loosest possible sense) is juvenile and immature. All conversation take place in a mixture of ‘txtspeak’ and ‘leetspeak’. So plenty of ‘LOL’, ’1337′ and ‘OMG’ will be peppered in their pseudo English forum posts. Oh my! How very Anglo-centric of me, I of course mean’t to refer to whatever language they usually converse in. Leetspeak the gamers borrowed from Hacker culture because they dream of being cool anti-establishment heroes like Angelina Jolie. Thusly conversing with a PC Gamer is like holding a conversation with your next door neighbour’s semi-retarded teenage son. They never use ‘thusly’ for example even though it is a horrible Americanism designed to make people look more intelligent than they are. Lack of knowledge is seen as weakness in PC Gaming circles and will cause you do be derided by PC Gamers. Favourite insults include calling people ‘noobs’ or ‘newbies’ therefore focusing on the apparent lack of knowledge. Other popular insults are ‘ghey’ or other euphemisms for homosexuality because thinking you might be gay is the only thing that terrifies a teenage boy PC Gamer more than seeming stupid (to their peers at least). That and having a shower.

Conclusions

PC Gamers are mostly idiots who waste money.

Well that’s the end of this article as I can’t stand to be next to my rig anymore because it is a hot day and it is pumping out tons of heat thanks to the new fan I screwed onto my CPU cooler yesterday. It is also getting a little noisy so I’m going to have to get a water cooling kit at some point. What?