When the world finally learned that the Mass Effect series was in fact getting multiplayer, just as many people were concerned as were elated.

“Get yer Call of Duty outta my Mass Effect!!”  The roleplayers cried.

However, when Commander Shepard himself (in the form of series producer Casey Hudson) explained that the game would only be getting co-op and not some CoDified competitive multiplayer, people clammed down a bit.

“Co-op?  Oh, well that’s cool, everyone likes co-op”

Indeed.  Pretty much everyone does like co-op, and thanks to the wonders of wi-fi, even people without friends can enjoy the co-op in Mass Effect 3.

I recently sat down and got to enjoy some ME3 co-op and I’m going to tell you why I think it’s a good thing and why you’ll probably like it as well… or hate it… or be indifferent.

Come With Me If You Want To Live.

In this new “Galaxy at War” mode you and three friends will push onward to victory as you fight off the Geth and other intergalactic bad things that want to kill you.  First up you’ll pick your race and class.  All the notable races and classes are present here so yes, you can be an Asari Biotic and finally feel what it’s like to play as Liara… woo…

Anyhow, I decided to go in as a human soldier becuase when youve only got a 40 minute press demo, it helps to go with what you know.  Hooyah!

Once everyone is locked and loaded we’re tasked with objectives to push, the only problem is there’s baddies who want to push back.  Capture objectives, kill things, that’s the jist of it.  Waves of enemies will come at you while you try to push for said objectives and yes, it feels a bit like Gears of War’s Horde mode – which isn’t a bad thing.  In fact, if you’re familiar with Horde mode, you’ll feel right at home here.  It didn’t feel quite as polished as Gears, but the game obviously isn’t finished and something something alpha, beta, omega builds are not the final product something something grain of salt.

Come At Me Bro

That’s not to say it’s easy.  Even with my Soldier’s concussive shot leveled rather high I was having my ass handed to me by hard to avoid snipers and footsoldiers alike.  I was constantly being revived by and having to revive my teammates until we eventually all died and failed on what was one of the final waves.  We did eventually make it past said wave on a second playthrough, only to be killed by a giant mecha-boss which totally wasn’t my fault for running in and trying to stab it with my omni-blade.  Such is the life of an interstellar spec ops group NOT led by commander Shepard.  But I digress…

Even when you die, your experience will be carried over.  This means that every time you play, your life will be a bit easier.  The gameplay feels just as it does in single player, except that in single player your NPC teammates won’t go and try to stab the boss with their omni blade or accidentally throw a grenade at you.  But that’s what co-op is all about really, yelling at your friends because they suck and are single-handedly causing the galaxy to implode.

As Usual, the Salarians Are No Help...

Now, what people seem to be the most worried about is that the co-op will detract from the single player experience or that since you can increase your “Galactic Readiness” level by participating in the co-op, that you have to play it.  Well, you don’t.  You can, and it will help get your galatic troops ready for the final battle with the reapers sooner, but you can also completely ignore the co-op and get the exact same end game results just by playing the single player.  Think of it like a paid transaction in a F2P MMO… that you don’t have to pay for.  Sure, you can buy your way (or in this case fight your way) to better unlocks, but you could also just grind them out.  You can take the donkey to the top of the rim, or you can take the tram.  It is the same price.

Think about it, would you rather play some Horde mode to help increase Shepard’s “Galactic Readiness” levels or would you rather scan and probe planets for hours on end?  If you said scan and probe planets I hate you by the way…

People also seem to be irriatated by the thought that this mode is what delayed Mass Effect 3 and that it’s taking valuable resources and manpower away from the single player game.  I hope these people know that two different studios are working on the game at this point.  The main team (led by Commander Hudson) is at BioWare Edmonton and a completely separate team is developing the multiplayer at BioWare Montreal.  There’s actually another team developing Mass Effect 4 at BioWare Mordor, but they’re not talking about that yet.

We're All Gonna Die...

What it all boils down to is this:

If you like this sort of thing, it’s there for you and your friends and it will add to your single player experience.

If this just isn’t your bag, you can completely ignore it and you will be no worse for wear.

However, this one believes the Hanar should be a playable race… just sayin.

Mass Effect 3 brings the war home on March 6th, 2012.

For more, check out our interview with series producer Casey Hudson.

• Casey Hudson Explains Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer In New Trailer
• How and Why I Spent 36 Hours Playing Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Super Double Confirmed
• Dungeon Masters Rejoice! Roleplaying in Mass Effect 3 Is Deeper Than Ever
• Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Component Confirmed
• Mass Effect 3 Will Allow You to “Tweak” Your Imported ME2 Character

That’s right – Garrett is back.  Eidos has been playtesting Thief 4 up in Montreal and posted a shot of some lucky gamer getting hands on.  We are jealous.  You are now jealous too.

Very little is known about Thief 4 at this point – rumours abound that more news will come out of the GDC.  I’ll be there to find out.  Let’s hope rope arrows are back . . . those were awesome.  ^__^

Source: [SI]

• New Tomb Raider Info Released – Plot, Gameplay, and Setting Details
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• Hands on Mass Effect 3 Co-Op, Why it’s a Good Thing
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• Ghost in the Shell: Human Revolution – You Asked For This

After playing Assassin’s Creed last year and playing Prince of Persia: Sands of Time a few years back, I was pretty stoked about playing the latest installment of the Prince of Persia series. Sadly, I was stoked only until I actually played the game because it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.

The newest Prince of Persia is a totally different game than the Prince of Persia: Sand of Time, Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones trilogy.  Hell, even the Prince is different — he’s a total douche in this game and quite annoying when he talks (voiced by the actor from Uncharted, actually). The story starts off with the Prince searching for his donkey when he suddenly bumps into a girl, Elika, running away from some guards. He eventually pursues Elika and saves her from the guards and her father, the King, who has destroyed the Tree of Life and released the evil god, Ahriman.

Once the Prince finds out that Elika is a Princess and on a mission to stop her father and Ahriman from corrupting the lands with evil, the Prince decides to help her. Elika explains that she and the Prince must reach and heal the multiple fertile grounds in the area in order to give the tree of life power once again, imprisoning Ahriman. Obviously, the story goes on but any more about it and I’d be spoiling it for you.

The gameplay is quite similar to the past Prince games, with tons of wall-running and acrobatic moves, but this time there aren’t distinct levels, but an actual free-roaming, open world. In this new Prince of Persia, players aren’t just flying through the level wall-running and jumping to the next part, but must actually take their time to find their way from one point to another, which worked well with the open world. This is actually one of the best things about the game, but was also one of the game’s miscues.

I think the open world was a great idea, but it seemed to me like the developers over at Ubisoft Montreal wanted to make the game much longer than it had to be because they had an open world. This led to many repetitive missions, going from healing one fertile land to another, and continuing this same process. To me this became really boring, but at least the combat somewhat made up for it.

The combat system in the game definitely made up for some of the repetition in the open world. Unlike the hordes of enemies and button-mashing combat from the previous Prince games, the combat in this new Prince of Persia is set to 1-on-1 at all times and has a slower pace, using guard breaks and a combo system to add strategic elements. The combat also boasts some pretty nice attacks with aerial attacks and drawn out combos, leading to some great cinematic presentations with stunning finishing moves.

Although the combat may be better in this game, the acrobatic and aerial movements are no match to that of last-gen’s Prince. Most of the time the movements actually feel like they are on autopilot, seeming more like a scripted animation. The previous Prince of Persia games had smooth and quick gameplay elements, focusing on players skillfully executing aerial movements to continue on, whereas this new Prince really slowed the pace down and made the player think with different sorts of puzzles and contraptions to work with to proceed.

Oh, and did I mention you can’t die in this game? Yep, your new girlfriend Elika has all these strange powers and with them she keeps you from dying, whether it be falling to your death, being swallowed up by the evil corruption, or just being stabbed by a baddie. This part kind of reminds me of Sands of Time when you used the Dagger of Time to stop and go back in time and keep yourself from dying. Not being able to die isn’t necessarily a bad thing because essentially it’s just a restart point, and if you die, you’d restart anyway.

Graphically, the game is gorgeous, and I love the new direction of the art style Ubisoft Montreal went with. The Prince, Elika, and all other characters in the game are extremely detailed and the open world is just stunning. The graphics are definitely one of the game’s finer points.

Prince of Persia has been overly hyped and highly praised, but I really don’t see why. The game is repetitive, pretty easy, way too long and, well, kind of boring. But with all the bad there’s still some good in this game, just not enough. I’d say it’s a rental rather than a buy — have fun with it for a few hours, then return it… unless you like it more than I did.

• British Retailer Lists Prince of Persia HD Trilogy with 3D Support
• Ripten Review: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Dated for May
• Ubisoft Announces New Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands Game, May 2010 Release
• The Prince Is Back: Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia Title Ships Today
• New Next-Gen Prince of Persia Acrobatics and Combat Video Interviews

Far Cry 2 was on show for the select few at Play.com Live.  A full preview will be on its way, but before that the game’s narrative designer, Patrick Redding, let us know when we can get our dirty little mits on it.

We got to experience an impressive PC build in a darkened private room, and though the framerate was slightly dodgy, Ubisoft Montreal have until early autumn to get it all fixed up.  That includes the console versions, since Far Cry 2 will see a simultaneous release on all platforms not long after the first Oak tree has shed its first leaf.

Sadly we were also informed that there will not be a pre-release demo, since this would take too much time away from the game’s development.  This is especially true when they are aiming for a comparable game on consoles as on the PC.

*Update* - Producer LP confirms this directly from the development team, and he shows off some new gameplay footage. The game will ship simultaneously on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 and will be polished on all platforms so the quality and features of each will be top-notch.

[youtube width="480" height="378"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnOgtjxgGq0&eurl=http://blog.ubi.com/farcry2/article.php?content_id=7506[/youtube]

• PS3/360 Review: Prince of Persia
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• New I Am Alive Trailer Gives Survival Tips
• A Brief History of First Impressions
• Ubisoft Servers Offline Next Week, Some PC Games Unplayable During Transition
• Ubisoft Releases First Gameplay Trailer for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier “Only The Dead Fight Fair.”