Armada - Ernest Cline

Want to enjoy this book the same way I did? Click here!

Welcome back, everyone!  It's good to return to writing about things I love...and hate.  Today's review is going to be of the latter variety, unfortunately.  I absolutely adore Ready Player One.  It's a terrific book with great characters, a fun story, and lots of references to things I've heard of before.  Since I listened to it as an audio book I was also treated to Wil Wheaton's terrific performance.  So let's get to it.  As always, **SPOILERS** abound ahead. You have been warned!

Rating: 2/10

Expected Rating 9/10

The Good:

Once again Mr. Cline creates (or seems to create) a memorable cast of characters. From the pair of Mikes that serve as our protagonist's best friends at the beginning, to the charming programmer/mech pilot Lex, to the varied group of pilots that Zack meets on his way to the moon. In fact, the only truly terrible character is Zack himself.

The concept is interesting to any video game nerds out there, it starts out as a variation on The Last Starfighter's plot: someone uses video games to train pilots to fight in a war for survival. The execution lacked quite a bit, but it was nice to have that concept updated a bit.

Once again, I enjoyed the audio book, and once again Wil Wheaton did a terrific job emoting and narrating as necessary. This book would honestly have gotten 1/10 from me if it was not for Mr. Wheaton's quality performance.

The Bad:

Zack Lightman is not an interesting character. Early in the novel it's mentioned that he has a severe temper problem and once blacked out and beat a guy into unconsciousness, as a teenager. We never see his temper flare up to anything near that degree again.  He gets angry a lot, and a lot of times when it seems either excessive or entirely unnecessary; but the dangerous terrifying rage that was hinted at never even peeks out at us. He's just your average moody teen, and not even close to in an interesting way/

The pacing is way too fast, and the other characters barely get to contribute. Whenever a fight occurs, Zack quickly destroys a dozen or so ships and if Lex is present, she'll take out a couple mechs, maybe the other pilots get a couple kills. And then a lot of nothing happens.  There's rarely any true tension, and most of Zack's allies die as useless cannon fodder to give him time to escape whatever dilemma he's in so he can go to the next problem.

Speaking of characters doing things seemingly only motivated by moving Zack on to the next plot point instead of being driven by their own priorities, let's talk about Admiral Vance and the defense of the Earth Defense Alliance headquarters near the beginning of the book.  As you'll recall, after defeating all but one of the enemy Glaive fighters, the lone survivor took off toward the launch silos for the good guy ships.  Zack was ordered to let it go so the automated defenses could handle it, but he ignored the command because he was so sure he knew more than everyone else.  Including Admiral Vance, aka Viper, aka the second best pilot according to the Armada rankings. Because his disobeys repeated orders to break off pursuit, the alien vessel does not encounter the defenses and is able to self-destruct in the landing bay. 

(Let's pause here for a second and note two terrible inconsistencies: the defenses didn't activate because they might have damaged/destroyed the good guy ship in close pursuit of the alien. However, since the good guys fly their ships remotely such a safety feature seems like extremely poor planning considering the cost of one fighter vs an entire hangar bay full of them.  Beyond that, once the alien exploded, which was entirely Zack's fault, it completely destroyed a hangar and caused cave-ins throughout the base. And somehow didn't kill anyone.  The odds that no techs were in the hangar bay working on any of the fighters and that the cave-ins only occurred in somehow empty areas of the base seem exceptionally remote, to me)

Admiral Vance dresses down Zack, but then not only does not kick him out of the EDA, he also does not even demote him (skill gets you rank in the EDA, so Zack became a high ranking officer just for signing up, which completely defies the entire purpose of a military hierarchy). He then proceeds to give him the most prestigious assignment possible, merely because Zack's dad is another high-ranking officer and requested it. When a person drastically damages your entire already-doomed war effort, don't you have to do SOMETHING?  Even a slap on the wrist.  But nothing happens, he just gets sent on his way so he can continue being awesome.

The Ugly:

Ready Player One was noted for its heavy use of 80's pop culture nostalgia.  The references in that book, however, were part of puzzles to be solved and frequently contributed directly to the plot.  In Armada there are EVEN MORE REFERENCES. And they mostly contribute nothing other than to make sure you know that Mr. Cline still remembers every single thing that happened in the 80's. This comes to a complete disaster of a head when the game Armada is described for the reader/listener.  It's pages/minutes of references to directors, actors, composers, and writers.  If they've done something in the last 20-30 years to make nerds happy, they're name-dropped. Music? John Williams. Special Effects? Peter Jackson. pre-game scene narration? Morgan Freeman. On and on and on. It completely defies reason and belief to the point that even my willing and hopeful Suspension of Disbelief was subverted. It reminded me that this was just a book, and would never be real. And that should never be the goal of a story. You may have heard the term "Mary Sue".  This term refers to any character who is too perfect to be real, usually found in fan-fiction.  In the book Armada, the game Armada is the closest thing to a Mary Sue inanimate object that I have ever seen.

That problem isn't contained to just the description of the game, either. Zack goes on and on at length when he discovers that Carl Sagan narrates the introductory video for new EDA recruits. He refers to his mother as an Ellen Ripley type, without giving any context for how that might be true. It's all throughout the book, and it's not fun it's just entirely overwhelming.

The big reveal.  If you haven't read the book, and you still think you might want to, do not read ANY FURTHER.  YOU SHALL NOT PASS! (See, I can do it, too!) 

About halfway through the book Zack meets his dad who eventually explains that all may not be as it seems with the alien conflict. The aliens have been sending messages to earth, and those messages are clips of movies and tv shows that show humans not co-existing with aliens. He also points out the very video-gamey way the aliens fight.  They always fly in the same patterns, to the point that shooting your guns to the rhythm of certain songs scores kills every time. They also sent their ships in ever-difficulty-increasing waves for the past 50 years. Beyond that, they always build their fleets in full view of earth telescopes so that the humans can see what's coming and when. When they created a new 'boss type' enemy ship that's nearly impossible to destroy, they gave it a single weakness where if a human appears to sacrifice their life the otherwise impenetrable shields will stay down long enough for the ship to be destroyed. The aliens also allowed their technology to fall into human hands early on so that humans would have a fighting chance in the upcoming war. So...this is a test of some sort, right?  Gotta be!  Well...what are they testing.  Well since they remind us of video games, what is the point of video games of these genres?  To survive, to excel, to defeat the enemy faster and better every time.  So surely that must the plan. Humans just have to keep winning the game until the aliens give up and say they're good enough? Right?  NO! Of course not, silly logic using human. The aliens made it look like a video game so the humans would know it wasn't real! That way the humans would know that they should be seeking out peace instead of war. Does it make sense now?  No? Too bad. Our protagonist and his father figured it out all the same.

They determine that the only way to survive the final wave that's coming at them is to convince the aliens not to use it. And the way they plan to do this is to stop Admiral Vance from deploying the planet buster weapon on Jupiter's moon, Europa, the perceived home world of their enemies. Let's just list off the final set of inconsistencies present here:

1.) Xavier Lightman's distraction. He attacks the new EDA headquarters to distract Vance and his cronies to give Zack a fighting chance to stop them. He does this by taking some mechs into the flight control area and setting them to self-destruct, Vance and co. can't stop him so they evacuate.  At this point Zack's dad SHOULD have stopped the self destruct for 2 reasons: Because it would have forced Vance to wonder why, and because the character had already been thought to be dead only to miraculously come back twice. Had he aborted the self-destruct, Vance would have been forced to investigate what Xavier was doing in his control room, which would have given Zack even more time to deal with the fighters out in space. He could have turned it on and off several times until it was too late for Vance to do anything to stop Zack. As for the other, I guess third time is the charm but it seems pretty tacky to me to kill a character 3 times in the same book.

2.) The aliens accept Zack destroying the planet buster as evidence that humans are no longer a threat to other intelligent space-faring species.  Sorry mister alien, but a handful of people working against their entire race for the cause of peace shows the POTENTIAL for peaceful interaction, but definitely does not prove they're all ready for it RIGHT NOW.

3.) The alien insists that this has been a test from the beginning, going so far as to say they created a 'standard first contact scenario'.  Let's review that first contact scenario, shall we?  The aliens dyed or carved or otherwise modified the ice on Europa to create a giant swastika, since their intelligence gathering indicated that there was no symbol more likely to cause distress among the humans.  So aliens not only having any of the same arbitrary symbols as each other, those symbols meaning something horrible to the discovering species, and the discovered species creating giant replicas of those symbols in the most attention-getting way possible happens often, does it?  

4.) Once the aliens decide humanity gets to live after all, the warships that were all heading to earth turn out to have a dual purpose as technology upgraders.  They provide new sources of power, medicine, and more to allow humanity to advance in basically every single way. So how come humanity didn't find that tech in the wreckage of previous attacking forces?  The aliens couldn't have known THIS time that the humans would give in to peace. The only logical conclusion is that all of their warships have been outfitted for this dual purpose just in case the humans chose peace at any point before this.  But it shouldn't have been possible to 100% conceal all this stuff, especially when the humans must have been desperately combing over every inch of every piece of scrap from every engagement hoping to find something to help them survive the next fight.

Those aren't even all the inconsistencies, just the most egregious ones.

All in all, I think I might have enjoyed this book, even with its flaws, had it not been for that nonsense ending.

So tell me, have you read the book yet?  Did you enjoy it?  Why or why not.  Talk to me in the comments below.

The Triumphant Return of the Hawk

I'll be back soon, with a lot more tales to spin...

Mass Effect 2

The sequel to the best game for the XBOX 360. It improves on every flaw, perceived or real, from the first game but introduces a handful of new ones.

Rating: 9/10

Expected Rating: 10/10

Pros: Another amazing soundtrack, terrific voice acting, good story with interesting twists, fun gameplay

Cons: Weapons have been 'upgraded', inventory system basically removed, resource system makes gathering resources into a pain and can be quite restrictive, text (especially smaller fonts used for codex/journal) are almost unreadable on SDTVs.

This game is a good follow-up to the original Mass Effect. BioWare truly listened to it's consumer base when creating this game. The main villain of this game makes appearances through-out, there are no tank missions, the elevators sequences have been removed in favor of load screens, the inventory system was cleaned up (and by cleaned up, I mean removed, more on that in a minute), landscapes are tremendously different, there has already been a greater variety and amount of DLC with promises for even more in the future, the combat system was also revamped.

While all of those things are great, the game still is not quite perfect. Among the combat system revamps are the introduction of limited ammunition for weapons. They explain this as an upgrade, and reading through the codex entries one can discover that research was done which indicated battles were often determined by who could put rounds down the field fastest. Further research determined that fighters who were permitted to fire as fast as possible and had to reload were able to put more rounds down field faster than those who had to moderate their firing to allow the weapon to cool down. That might be plausible, but if I was a soldier in a small squad situation that often involved running gun fights, I'd rather have a weapon that never ran out of ammunition than one I could fire slightly faster.

The user-unfriendly inventory system was removed in favor of a system that uses far less inventory. Armor, outside of DLC, now consists of a modular unit for which you can purchase upgrades at various stores. Through DLC and various special offers, you can/could have acquired several other sets of armor with various beneficial bonuses, but none of that armor seems as good as the basic set with a few upgrade purchases. There are more types of guns in this game, but only 2-3 varieties of each gun meaning you won't be upgrading your weapons very often. Add this to the fact that you only get experience for quest and mission completions, and I often felt that I wasn't being rewarded as strongly as I was in the first game for the effort put forth.

The biggest problem with the game, and believe you me if this is the biggest problem a game faces, it's in good shape is the resource mining system. With the XBOX 360 version you orbit a planet and start up the scanner. Once that's done you must hold down the left trigger to keep the scanner actually working, when you find a resource deposit you pull the right trigger to launch a probe and collect the resources. These resources are the required currency for researching upgrades to weapons, armor and the ship. Unlike the first Mass Effect, credits can be incredibly hard to come by. After my first playthrough, as complete as I could make it considering the DLC and original material present I was unable to acquire enough credits to purchase all upgrades that could be found in stores. So if you're preparing to play through this game for the first time, make sure you focus on the upgrades you really want as a priority before purchasing more.

Other than those small things, the game is still incredibly good. The story moves along well, pointing out a flaw one might not have even noticed in the original; that it skipped a bit much. There are far more vital missions to be had in this game versus the original, allowing for smaller plot jumps with each mission completed.

There are also more squad members to be recruited in this game, and they all have as much or more to say than their compatriots from the first game. This game also makes you feel as if you have even more control over the results of the game. Earning the loyalty of your squad and upgrading your ship are just two of the things you will have to do if you want to survive the mission that everyone tells you is suicidal from the very beginning.

If you liked the first game, if you even saw potential in it Mass Effect, or if you love a good story Mass Effect 2 is a great game to play.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is easily in my top 5 video games of all time. It's easily the top game I've yet played for XBOX 360 (And that includes Mass Effect 2). I look forward to playing it over and over and over again. My biggest regret is that it didn't have more DLC.

Rating: 10/10

Expected Rating: 10/10

Pros: Great story, amazing sound track, very good voice acting, Decent graphics with interesting landscapes, good blend of RPG/Shooter genres, really makes you feel like your choices make a difference unlike any game I've ever encountered.

Cons: The Mako tank does not drive as easily as it might have been, Saren is a relatively aloof villain, team mates don't have enough interaction.


Mass Effect was the second game I ever played on XBOX 360, but it was the first one I bought and it was one of, if not the reason I bought the console. I was first introduced to Mass Effect when I went to see a Video Games Live concert (conducted by none other than Jack Wall, one of the primary composers for the Mass Effect Soundtrack) and they performed the Mass Effect theme song. As I sat listening to that song I realized it was probably my favorite theme I'd ever heard for a video game. Better than Final Fantasy X, Halo, Kingdom Hearts, Advent Rising or any others I could name. I had to play this game. As soon as I got home I looked it up to see what console it was on, and I was disappointed to realize it was the XBOX 360. However, when the opportunity arose for me to purchase that console, I bought Mass Effect the week before so I would have it.

I had heard almost nothing about Mass Effect before I played the game. It came out before the XBOX 360 was even on my radar, given my status as a poor college student I knew I couldn't afford to get the newest generation of consoles as they came out, and I also knew that avoiding XBOX 360 information was in my best interest, because it would only make me want more what I could not have. When I first discovered that Mass Effect had a good theme, but was on the XBOX 360, I didn't seek any more information on the subject. Again, I didn't want to know more about something I knew I couldn't have.

Even so, when I went to put that game in the console for the first time, I was worried it would not live up to the Hype my mind had created for it based solely on that theme song I had heard at VGL. It's safe to say that it did.

There are many complaints about the game I've heard and read, I'd like to address them one by one here.

Elevator rides: Many people complain about the long elevator rides present in the game. From my perspective, these elevator rides are present mostly as a screen to cover load screens. I found these mostly entertaining trips to be far more preferable to a dull loading screen. I also think it's important to note that elevator rides only occur in three varieties, those found on the Citadel (By far the vast majority), one elevator on the Normandy and elevators on major plot worlds. The ones of the worlds and the ship are quite short, and the ones on the Citadel are filled with cheesy elevator music, news reports and interesting conversations between squad members. Perhaps once those conversations and news reports start repeating themselves, it becomes less fun, but by that time you can use the fast transport network built in to the Citadel to jump from place to place without the elevators, only requiring the one from the station to where your ship is docked.

Mako handling: I read many reports of bugs where the Mako would become undrivable or get stuck in terrain or some such. I never experienced a problem, I suppose if I had I would have been upset by such things. My only concern was that the Mako was not always really easy to steer, but as a veteran of the Halo series, I find it far easier to control than a Warthog.

Saren's lack of visibility: Saren is the main villain in the game, but you don't see him after the prologue missions until near the end. I know I complained about not seeing major villains in Dragon Age, but I feel the difference here is that while you're not directly confronting Saren on a regular basis, you are at least learning more about him and his goals. In Dragon Age, I felt like you never actually grew to understand the motivations behind your villain, or what he was trying to accomplish. In Mass Effect, you're racing around the galaxy trying to get ahead of the bad guy. In Dragon Age, you're running in a hamster wheel while the villain sits back and waits for you to show up, content to do almost nothing.

Repetitive scenery: I actually feel that the indoor scenery should be repetitive. Mass production is always cheaper than individualization. So it only makes sense that as humans attempt to expand across the galaxy as fast as they can that they would do everything they could to speed the process by saving money and mass producing standardized structures. That the mercenaries of the universe seem to have the same technology is easily explained in that the humans are expanding into territory controlled by mercs, who then steal the stuff.

I didn't find the outdoor scenery to be all that repetitive. Especially when I looked to the sky. The sky was almost always a different color, with a different colored sun. There were clouds of various kinds, starscapes looked different. I felt it was pretty amazing that without trying to start from scratch with every different planet they made them look as different as they did. My one complain would be to note that the non-mission-critical planets were mostly devoid of wild-life and fauna. It appears that every planet you land on had only grass and/or rocks to it's name.

Flawed inventory system: This one I'll give to the complainers. The inventory system could be very hard to work with, it was not user friendly. But I enjoyed that after every fight I could look through and see if there were any new weapons or armor or mods I could use to improve myself or my team. Many people also complain about the inventory filling up too easily, only holding 150 items. However, by the time this really became a problem for me, I already had the maximum allowed amount of credits in my bank and could convert everything to omni-gel. All I had to do was clean up my inventory after every major plot world, or after 7-10 non-plot worlds.

Mass Effect has easily the best soundtrack I've ever heard, it might possibly tie with Mass Effect 2 but that's it. There are games I greatly enjoy the music on. Kingdom Hearts, Halo and World of Warcraft to name a few. But none of those soundtracks reaches the benchmark that Mass Effect does. Each of them has at least one track that I either can't stand, or at least don't care for. There isn't a single song in Mass Effect that I don't love, and I find that to be amazing.

The DLC for Mass Effect was a bit weak, despite what developers had originally intimated to the fans. It took a year for the first release and there were only 2 in the end.

Bring Down the Sky was an interesting mission and introduced us to another major species in Mass Effect, the Batarians. However, even doing all of the side missions it took less than an hour to complete.

Pinnacle Station takes a bit longer to complete, at least if you're a shooter noob like myself. However, there is very little story on the station. It is in effect, a futuristic holographic shooting challenge with 4 modes offering 3 terrain variations each. Some reviews have cited the missions to be incredibly easy. If that's so, I'm glad for it. I've never been good at shooters and it took me quite some time to get the top score in all 12 missions. Once you complete those 12, you are permitted to take on a bonus mission in which you must survive for 5 minutes against endless waves of Turians, a re-creation of an important mission from the First Contact War. If you can survive that mission however, the rewards are great. The Admiral of the station gives you his retirement place on a mostly deserted planet. Once you get there, with a little patience and a lot of money or saves, you can buy some of the most advanced gear in the game. On my last playthrough I went to the station fairly early on and was able to make the rest of the game a breeze because I had the best weapons and armor in the game.

If you own an XBOX 360, Mass Effect is worth at least renting. If you enjoy the game, and own it, the DLC is even worth playing. If you like video game music, or synthesized orchestral music, you should buy the soundtrack.

Video Game Reviews

This website is going to be host to my video game reviews. Video games are a huge passion of mine. With an internet game rental subscription, vast experience playing video games, and my plans to begin working on a degree in order to become a video game programmer I feel I am prepared to give an insightful and different view of video games than you will get anywhere else. I'm going to review old games and new, in no particular order.

Before you read any further, there are some things you should realize about me and my view of video games. My first priority in video games is the story. A video game with a good story and poor game-play beats a game with awesome game-play and terrible story every time. That being as it is, my focuses are generally going to be on characters, plots, music, dialogue, etc. Whatever goes in to making a good story in any format will be the priority for me. That being said, I can still tell good game-play mechanics from poor, and I'll try to hit those points as well.

If my perspective on video games intrigues you, than read on. It should be an interesting ride, if nothing else.

Dragon Age: Origins

The first game I have decided to review is Dragon Age: Origins. Why is it first? Because it's the most awesome game ever? Because it's the most recently played? No. Because it's the game I really feel the need to say things about that I haven't seen anyone else saying. I won't intentionally spoil the game for anyone, but all should be warned that talking about a game from a story-telling perspective means it might happen.

Rating: 8/10 (This rating is an attempt at objectively analyzing the game as if I had never read or heard anything about it)

Expected Rating: 4/10 (This rating is based on how the game fared against everything I had heard, read, watched, or assumed about the game before playing)

Pros: Fascinating world, diverse starting plot, good combat mechanics, interesting party members.

Cons: Overarching plot vanishes for a large portion of the game, soundtrack is repetitive in the extreme, main character is dull as a rock, complicated skill point system.

Dragon Age: Origins is a good game. No question about it. If you're looking for an RPG fix, you can do a lot worse. That said, I found the game to be a large disappointment; hence the expected rating bomb. I can identify two things off the top of my head that lead me to have much higher expectations for this game. First of all, this is a BioWare game, and in my experience they are the top RPG creators, as good or better than the folks at Square. The second thing is that I had just finished playing Mass Effect when I first popped this game in. That being another BioWare game, and from several years ago, I expected Dragon Age to top it in every way.

My biggest disappointment is that the main character doesn't speak, ever. Mass Effect had raised my story-telling standards so that I now always expect my main character to vocalize the dialogue choices I make. But Dragon age definitely let me down on that point, the main character never speaks, I'm pretty sure he never even had a facial expression change. I played a Dwarf Commoner Rogue, and from the very beginning of the game while being berated by his drunken mother, to slaughtering hordes of undead and Darkspawn, to flirting with the love of his life, he wears the same grim expression he had when I was creating his face before beginning the actual gameplay.

The origin story for my character was actually a good combination of telling the story of the world the story takes place in, introducing the player character's place in that world and teaching me how to control my character. Once I finished the origin story, I felt confident I could play the game successfully and that I knew enough about the world that I would be able to teach myself the rest as I went and I was thrust into the main plot of the game.

Again, the main plot started out quite well. I was recruited to go fight the Darkspawn and hopefully help save all life in Ferelden, the name of the country I was currently inhabiting. The primary threat, or so I was lead to believe, was was a dragon, an old god turned into an Arch-Demon by the hordes of Darkspawn. Unfortunately, I didn't have any interaction with this dragon until quite late in the game. In the mean time, my leader is betrayed by his general, and I vowed vengeance.

Unfortunately, he controls too large an army for me to attack him directly. So I have to go around the world recruiting anyone I can find to my cause, and that's what I spent the majority of the game doing. As interesting a premise as that is, it wasn't effectively implemented. The recruiting missions required going to different areas and convincing the peoples there that they should follow you. For the most part these missions functioned completely independently of the rest of the game. If I recruit the elves, it doesn't mean anything to the world I'm supposed to be engrossed in except that I've completed one more objective towards ending it. This resulted in me feeling that instead of watching a long and interactive movie, I was being given a collection of static pictures. Instead of flowing the story skips and jumps, leaving me with a highlight reel of the important information I needed to complete the game instead of an interesting story weave that made me want to see where the game was going.

The soundtrack was engrossing the first time I heard it. Once every song had repeated seemingly 20 times, it no longer fascinated me. Again, the music probably suffered here in my mind because I had just finished playing Mass Effect. I actually originally became interested in Mass Effect when I heard it's theme performed at a Video Games Live concert, and the rest of it's soundtrack did not disappoint me.

The game does have strengths, the party members you can recruit have very interesting and diverse backgrounds and are quite entertaining to talk to. They're given good dialogue and are well-voiced. The actual game-play as well was quite fun. The inventory system is interesting and diverse, allowing min-maxers quite a bit to do. Though it didn't really seem to scale well and many of the best pieces seemed to be purchasable rather than looted from corpses and towards the end of the game you may find yourself overwhelmed with the amount of loot you've picked up and don't know what to do with. The skill system is very complicated, for RPG veterans this means that there are lots of choices to make that will lead you down many paths. There are only 3 classes, but each class can have points allotted to it in different ways that make them widely different. For relative new-comers the skill system will likely be very intimidating in the large number of choices you have to make, none of which can be changed later.

All in all, Dragon Age: Origins is a good game if you're primarily concerned with the game-play mechanics. Even if you're primarily interested in the story, it's a lot better than many other RPGs out there. It just doesn't seem to quite measure up to BioWare's other creations. I intend to play through it a second time to see if things seem better a second time around and I would still recommend it to anyone who asked me.