The Mass Effect 2 cinematic trailer was released yesterday. I watched it via xbox live only because I wanted to experience the trailer in surround sound, and damn that was a good decision. Though I'm sure my neighbor might not have thought so when I watched it twice.

After I first beat Mass Effect, I could not wait for Mass Effect 2 to come out. I read Mass Effect: Ascension as soon as it came out, and that only hyped me up more for it.

Then I heard about Subject Zero. Then I watched a trailer dedicated to Subject Zero. And my infatuation dimmed, other games came out, and I became more excited for Dragon Age: Origins instead. (Another amazing game.)

But then I read this article followed by this article and my excitement was revived.

I love that they killed Shepard off, and that Cerberus -- of all the unlikely allies -- brings Shepard back after 2 years. It's also an excellent way for bioware to compensate for integration of save data from Mass Effect. If Shepard died, was revived and is now part cyborg, of course he/she needs new badass skills. It also sounds like the enemy in Mass Effect 2 will be the collectors -- an alien race referred to in the second Mass Effect book. I'm not sure on the veracity of this claim, so take that with a grain of salt. It kind of makes sense to me, however, because Shepard needs to unite all of the alien races to combat the reapers -- and the collectors appear to answer to no man.

The weapons have also been improved substantially. I was not a fan of the overheating in the first game and went out of my way to locate and obtain the frictionless materials mod for myself and all of my party members -- to the exclusion of other weapon mods. I'm glad that the bioware team axed that, and added clips instead. That feels more natural to me, and was a hard habit to kick from my counter-strike days -- the reload. The addition of the heavy pistol that adepts and engineers can use is also nice, because pistols are not nearly as cool as shotguns -- and nothing tops the rocket launcher Shepard uses in the trailer below.

From what I've heard, read, and gleaned, it sounds like Mass Effect 2 is going to one awesome game. Dare I say, better than the first. I sincerely hope that that renegade//paragon paths (if they're still included) provide a bit more variation to the game. Mass Effect's use of that tree and the consequences of your decisions was pretty nice when it first came out. But once I played Dragon Age, it was obvious that Mass Effect's was weak tea in comparison. A lot of my other "hope it's better in the sequel" items seem like they might actually be better. Months ago, I watched some video interviews of the bioware team working on the graphics, talking about the improvements they were making to the character modelling, weapons, armor, and battle animations. Now all I need is the game, so I can play the crap out of it.

Needless to say, after reading many recent reviews, watching lots of interviews and videos, then topping it off with this trailer, I'm pretty damned excited for the release of Mass Effect 2.

The last shot of the space ship reminded me of The Fifth Element when the Mondoshawan ship lands in front of the tomb to collect the weapon capable of defeating the Great Evil.

This article is a great read: Eight Myths about Video Game Play.

Video game playing has been attacked by the media (among others) as something which promotes violence in youth. This is just wrong. If you look at the statistics, far more non-violent people play video games than do violent people. Or rather, most of the people who play video games are not violent people and most likely won't bring a gun to school and shoot up their friends because Counterstrike made them believe it was cool.

It irks me when the media blames violence on media. I also find it ironic.

This post won't exactly deal with psychology (if at all), but instead Too Human, which I started playing recently. And by recently, I mean 2 days ago.

I haven't finished the game yet, so I don't know how it ends. So far, however, I have found the plot to be adequate. There are some things which, if you don't pay close enough attention, may confuse you later in the game. The premise of the game isn't stated too clearly, and I didn't really know that I was participating in an ongoing war until about an hour in the game. You start out in middle (end?) of the war. However, despite that, it's decent as far as plot goes and I have enjoyed it. It's not as in depth as one of my most favorite games Mass Effect, but it's more than a lot of games seem to have. One of my selling points for games is the depth and intricacy of the plot. Otherwise, I feel like I'm simply playing a hack 'n slash and while those can be fun, they're not exactly stimulating. I like games that make me think.

One thing that irks me is the camera system. I simply don't like it. The player has no control over the camera aside from how close to the character they want it to be. Other than that, the angle (which is the more important aspect IMO) is essentially uncontrollable. It could be that I'm so used to controlling my camera angle and simply cannot handle not being able to control it. For the most part, the game is fairly decent at giving you a good angle. But sometimes, it flies way out to some funky angle or goes in front of you.

I'm obviously not a big fan of not being able to control me view. However, I think it's that much worse in Too Human because the game decides the angle for you. In Diablo II for instance, I am able to tolerate the lack of camera control because it's a static camera. If I can't control the camera, I'd rather have it static than move about of its own accord.

I recognize that this is slightly nit-picky.

Other than that little bit, I've found the game to be overall enjoyable. The difficulty can be taxing sometimes when it seems like the only way to defeat an enemy is to pound him till you die, then come back and pound some more. However, learning some combat strategies can help mitigate that. I do love that there is an achievement for dying 100 times.

Hopefully, the good plot continues to the end. Though apparently it's going to be a trilogy? I heard that somewhere, and I could be wrong.

I'm still waiting for Mass Effect II to come out.