Mass Effect was my personal Game of the Year for 2007, above and beyond the enormous wealth of other top-tier games that year. It certainly had some problems, most of them technical – a bad case of texture pop-in, an often somewhat sluggish framerate, and the infamously lengthy elevator rides, for example – but as well as ultimately overcoming its flaws to become an enjoyable and thrilling game, it also spawned what has rapidly become my favorite science-fiction universe. Sure, it’s extremely derivative (take your pick from Star Wars, Star Trek, the original Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, and any number of others) but its somewhat retro aesthetic means it’s also happy to wear these influences on its sleeve rather than trying to conceal them. The spectacular John Carpenter-esque, synth-heavy soundtrack also demonstrates the designers’ love for late-’70s to early-’80s space opera, and the in-game codex offers a colossal amount of backstory for those who care to get drawn into it. Fittingly, the game’s limited collector’s edition included a pair of remarkably extensive books: an art book detailing further the game’s beautiful design; and a backstory book, presented as a guide issued to a human visiting the Citadel, the central hub of the galactic community, for the first time. Also included was a second DVD which expands on both the art and the creation of the game and its setting.

Drew Karpyshyn's two Mass Effect novels

Thankfully, after crafting such a vast, intricate and surprisingly believable universe, BioWare weren’t going to let it end there. Mass Effect is the first of a planned trilogy of games (Mass Effect 2 is on course for an early 2010 release date and garnered a huge amount of praise when it was shown at this year’s E3 expo), but there’s more besides. Lead writer Drew Karpyshyn – whose enviable resumé also includes three Star Wars books, the novelization of Baldur’s Gate II, and the seminal 2003 BioWare game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – has also written a pair of Mass Effect novels: Revelation, which covers both the backstory of humanity’s growth into a spacefaring race and subsequently their becoming part of the larger galactic community (including the problems this caused with the four-eyed batarians), and the history between David Anderson and Saren Arterius, which essentially sets the central plot of the first game in motion; and Ascension, which explores the xenophobic human black-ops organization Cerberus as well as investigating in more detail the unfortunate quarian race, exiled to their ramshackle Migrant Fleet after their creation of the geth, the antagonist race from the first game. Both books expand on the universe greatly, and are also available as unabridged audiobooks, read by the excellent David Colacci, who conveys perfectly the characters and drama of the stories.

Somewhat less successful was the spin-off iPhone/iPod Touch game, Mass Effect Galaxy, which provides a backstory on one of the companion characters set to be featured in Mass Effect 2. The game was poorly reviewed, and unfortunately I can’t offer my own thoughts on it as I don’t have access to the necessary hardware to play it. Still, thus far it remains the only negative blip on a very strong body of work.

Given BioWare’s generally high standards so far at expanding on the universe of Mass Effect, as well as Dark Horse’s own great reputation, I have no doubt that the Redemption comic series will match up to what’s gone before. It’s a shame, really, that the available fiction will never be quite as vast a library as something like Star Wars enjoys, but it’s still a huge credit to BioWare that despite their universe being so obviously derivative, it stands on its own as well as it does; and I for one hope that as the trilogy of games ultimately winds up, there’ll be more of the Mass Effect expanded universe to dive into. One fairly sizeable concern on this front is that Drew Karpyshyn is relocating from BioWare’s Edmonton studio to their Austin studio to focus on the forthcoming MMO game Star Wars: The Old Republic. With any luck, though, we’ll see much more of this superlative IP.

Let’s start with Ikaruga itself. It’s a top-down scrolling shoot-’em-up of the very old school variety, as one would expect from developer Treasure, but with a couple of twists. After twenty-something years of learning to avoid all enemy fire in games of this ilk, Ikaruga actually expects you to unlearn this extremely base impulse. At the press of a button, you can change your ship from white to black and back again, and you’ll immediately notice that every enemy is based on one of these colors also – and their shots will match their color. The trick is that enemy fire the opposite color to you is lethal, but the same color is actually beneficial, charging up your only power-up weapon as you collect the energy of these shots. Also, you deal double damage to enemies the opposite color to you. The first couple of minutes of the game introduces this unique mechanic simply enough, but it’s not long before the game bombards you with both black and white at the same time; and after the first level it will demand of you very accurate and fast color-switching just to survive. In HD on the Xbox 360 the game’s visuals – 3D despite its 2D gameplay – look absolutely incredible, and it was pretty enough to begin with in its older incarnations in arcades and on the Dreamcast in Japan, and latterly on the Gamecube worldwide. It’s a savagely hard but extremely satisfying game that really puts an interesting spin on one of gaming’s oldest styles of gameplay.

Gradius V, on the PlayStation 2, is another example of an old-style 2D shoot-’em-up with 3D graphics, this time a side-scroller and part of one of the most storied and venerable franchises in that genre. Coincidentally, like Ikaruga, it was also developed by Treasure. Mechanically, though, it’s far more traditional – anyone who’s played any of the older Gradius games will be instantly at home with the game’s classic power-up system, where you get to pick and choose what to get as you go along with a mere button-press at the right time. Gradius V also is slightly more forgiving than its predecessors, allowing you to re-collect your Multiples (glowing indestructible orbs that follow your ship’s movement and mimic your shots for extra firepower) when you die. The Multiples – called Options in the Japanese release and older games in the series – also have an extra use determined by your choice of power-up array when you start the game or use a continue: they can be held in place, rotate their shots, be assigned a fixed formation, and more. The genius level design, which takes a lot of cues from its predecessors, makes all these variants useful if you keep a clear head, especially since your ship is always facing to the right but threats can come at you from any direction in some places. Gradius V is, again, an extremely hard game, but it plays fair; you initially start with three continues, and every hour you play, it unlocks another continue for you to use when you’re out of lives. When it hits 15, it unlocks free play, so you have unlimited continues. The level design is also so good that you never feel like the game’s actually being unfairly hard; you know that when you died, it’s because you screwed up, and you know how you could make it through next time; and make it through you will, progressing further and further into its ever more challenging levels. It’s a PS2-exclusive game so far, but hopefully it will come to one or more of the modern consoles’ download services eventually – its already beautiful graphics would look fantastic in HD. It also sports a phenomenal soundtrack that complements the action perfectly.

Unreal Tournament is a name known to most gamers with even a passing knowledge of first-person shooters. Originally a spin-off from Unreal, and released in late 1999 to compete with Quake III Arena, UT ditched the story mode completely and focused entirely on multiplayer. Okay, that’s not strictly true – it does have a rudimentary campaign that involves playing a series of matches with and against AI bots, but it’s totally optional since the only unlock is the character model of the final boss character. The bots, essentially NPCs or AI players, are actually one of UT’s standout features. Whereas many similar games – Quake III included – only ever seemed to ramp up the bots’ accuracy with guns as you turned their skill up, UT’s bots actually get smarter; varying their tactics, defending themselves more carefully, running different paths around the levels but never quite being infallible. Not far off human opponents, at least by the genre’s standards. And make no mistake, this is a game about sheer, unadulterated carnage. Throw out your tactical plans and cover mechanics, and warm up that twitch instinct. Looking back on UT, it’s amazing how well it’s aged. The first incarnation of the now-ubiquitous Unreal Engine, upgraded from the first Unreal game, is not only extremely efficient in its use of power (a 200MHz Pentium with no 3D acceleration at all can actually run the game quite playably, albeit in a low resolution, so rest assured it will run on almost literally anything – good news for netbook owners wanting to shoot stuff), but also scales well to look pretty decent even now, happily playing with any graphics hardware you can find at any resolution or aspect ratio with nary a hiccup. You won’t mistake it for Crysis, say, but it looks good; much credit is due to both its art style – the best Epic have ever had, in my opinion – and its pioneering use of translucent detail textures (enable them by delving into the hidden preferences menu, accessed by hitting the tilde key and typing “preferences” into the console) that can still put some modern games to shame. The action is perfectly tuned and absolutely relentless, the weapon selection is spectacular, the vast number of maps are also consistently brilliant (as seen by how often many have been revisited in subsequent UT games), the game modes are all great fun and can be heavily tweaked by a huge array of “mutators”, control is spot-on and there are a ton of mods and new maps to be had for free online that the game makes a snap to install. Whether you play it alone (with bots) or as it was truly intended with up to fifteen other people online or over a LAN, the original UT – on PC, not one of the watered-down console ports – still holds up as one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made, and still for me it remains Epic’s finest game.

Over the years DICE (developers of the series) experimented with different features but for the most part every game kept getting more complicated.  By the same token more and more options were given to strategize with your teammates because of this complexity.  Battlefield 2 (which was actually the third game in the series) added the ability to be in Squads with your friends as well as being able to play in a Commander roll for you team which allowed you to call down air strikes, UAV runs, and radar points from a face down map screen showing the battle.  Battlefield 2142 took this concept even further (and years into the future) giving Squad Commanders and Team Commanders even more options as well as adding new games modes to the game and making a better use of vertical space (ie. capturing a point hundreds of meters above you by using rocket pods to shoot up to them).  BF2 and 2142 also offered detailed statistics tracking with ranks and badges and awards and unlockables, most of which  was all accessible through websites where you could compare yourself to your friends and try to earn bragging rights.  The Battlefield series really was a prime example of the complexity and broadness that a PC game can have, something you couldn’t do on a console.   Of course DICE still tried.

Between the time Battlefield 2 and 2142 came out  released Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.  A Console exclusive game for the Xbox and PS2 (and later ported to the 360) that tried to capture the feel of BF2 on the PC.  Unfortunately it wasn’t a port but instead a completely new game from the ground up.  Although a decent enough multiplayer experience on the console anybody trying it who had played the previous 3 games on the PC found it to be severely lacking.  There wasn’t as much strategy, features were missing, it just wasn’t as good.  (I tried to trade the 360 version into Futureshop a couple of months ago the the retailer wouldn’t even take it!)  With Modern Combat being somewhat of a disaster DICE went back to the drawing board and just last year Battlefield: Bad Company was released exclusively for consoles.  Unlike previous Battlefield games it had a full on single player campaign but the real action was in the multiplayer.  The game was modern, looked great, controlled pretty well, and was sort of like playing a newer version of Battlefield 2, sort of.  The old school Conquest game mode was not included with the game (although it was later patched in due to high demand) and the commander role was nowhere to be seen.  The game was decent enough though and a sequel is on the way but something was definitely missing.

That brings us to today where I think whatever was missing is now finally here.  On Tuesday Battlefield: 1943 was released onto Xbox Live and the next day it was released onto Playstation Network.  The game is a remaking of the Pacific campaign from the original 1942 game with the modern Bad Company engine.   DICE has really come a long way here, everything that worked in Bad Company has been injected into 1942 while leaving what hasn’t worked in the various versions out.  1943 is a game that I’ve been craving without even realizing it.  The complexity of the series has been stripped out.  There are 3 classes, 3 maps (next week a 4th map will be released), lots of vehicles, no Commander system and it’s classic Conquest mode all the time, and I love it.  The Squad system started in Battlefield 2 has been refined and is now present in this game.  Anytime you die if anybody else in your squad is alive you can spawn on them instead of only being able to spawn on the squad commander which is fantastic.  This really speeds up the game and accross the board in general everything has been sped up.  The awesome environmental damage from Bad Company is now present in these classic maps which really makes them fresh.   You can be capturing a point hiding behind cover when all of a sudden, boom, the wall you werehiding behind is completely obliterated forcing you to move.  In fact everything about the game really forces you to be on the move all the time.  A anti-tank RPG can now take out a tank with one solid well placed hit from behind so you always need to be aware, always need to be moving.  The defining moment for me came yesterday while playing in a squad with 3 friends we were leaving our aircraft carrier in a boat and I was manning the 50cal machine gun.  A enemy Zero plane was flying in towards us making a strafing run.  Bullets are hitting all around us, I open up on the Zero (as do the two guys in the front of the boat with their normal guns) and as the plane reaches directly above us it explodes sending fiery shrapnel raining all around us as we drive through it, land on the beach, and capture a conquest point.  All of the other great features of BF2/2142 are in this as well, ranking systems, awards, a web interface to compare your soldier to your friends.  Everything great that has been added to the Battlefield series over the past 6 years is now back in the original game without adding any of the bloat.  If you sunk a decent amount of time into 1942 at all you will love this game, it scratches that Battlefield itch in all the right places.

Sure the game is a little more arcadey than it used to be but none of the strategy has been lost, in fact since it’s now almost easier to die and faster paced you have to be even more on your toes, thinking up plans, trying to outflank the enemy, winning the battle.  This game really epitomizes the changes that I’ve gone through in my own gaming habits over the past few years.  In September a PC version of 1943 will be released but will most likely be a little slower paced without some of the arcadey additions of this version (regenerative health and ammo, etc) but for the first time in a long time I think I’m going to stick with the console version.  I’m not sure what exactly DICE have hit on here but whatever it is it’s an incredible amount of fun and I highly recommend it.