Mini Review: 2009

What They Call The “Real Life”

• 2008 ended with me getting unemployed. The decision being made for me was a catalyst to finally make my move. I was planning to get out of employment in 2009 anyways, so, you know. Thank you, Yahoo!.
• Early in the year I went freelance. As mentioned, I had played with the idea for a while by then, so that was pretty cool. And scary.
• Got a few clients, and managed to keep a good “client work vs. own projects” ratio. I’m not getting rich working like this, but I’d like to be truly happy in my job for once, so it’s important for me to keep the balance there.
• My first freelance project, a WoW-related site named CharPool, was a personal success, but failed nonetheless. About a month after launching it other sites with similar functionality came out and kind of crushed it. I guess I had waited too long to act on the idea for the site. So, in December, I’ve turned the server off. Well, live and learn.
• Speaking of learning, I’ve learned a boatload of new things this year. Lots of Ruby-related things, of course, but also a lot of *nix stuff. Fun!
• Among other things, I rewrote my Twitter contact management site TwerpScan — and had the chance to give a quick talk about it for a mixed audience here in Munich. Another first for me, and I’ve enjoyed it.
• Got myself two ebook readers, a Bookeen Cybook Gen3 and a Amazon Kindle 2. Both nice, but the latter wins, hands down. What a refined piece of technology!
• I’m currently knee-deep in RubyCocoa code, which I consider a road to MacRuby, which I need for my next big project… Loving it!
• Finally got me an iPhone.

Friends & Family

• In August, I had the honor of being best man for M & E. Beautiful, beautiful wedding. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend. I love you guys. :)
• We went up to Northern Germany for a nice vacation, including hooking up with my man Hendrik who showed us his hellhole of a city the (mostly) pretty parts of Hamburg ;), and a visit to the BUGA 2009 (i.e. the annual “German Federal Horticultural Show”).

Games & Movies

• Biggest surprises this year: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Assassin’s Creed II. Both games I knew about but didn’t have much interest in, until Mike would lend them to me, and then… I really didn’t see them coming, but they hit me hard. Good stuff. :)
• Also notable this year: the two GTA IV DLC packs, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Wars.
• Avatar — holy shit. That movie really hit the spot for me. Also great: District 9. A good year for scifi, methinks.

Verdict

• Awesome year. Really, really good. :)

Here’s to 2010. May it be as good as 2009 was.

CharPool Has Launched: There’s A New WoW Site In Town

Over the last few years, I have always wondered why there was no site that would allow me to track my progress in World of Warcraft. Sure, there’s the WoW Armory and sites like Raptr, but all these places take more of a “your char right now!” approach which never came close to what I had in mind. And those that did go into the direction I was thinking didn’t click with me.

But what exactly did I have in mind? This is where it gets a bit complicated. I was looking for a site that would automatically keep track of my characters for me, make daily snapshots, let me upload images and notes… Give me a timeline of their progress… In short, something that would allow me to document the “life” of my toons. Maybe something that would give me a bit more, with “more” still being a very diffuse idea.

Anyways, I always felt this was strange there was no such site, as I believe there’s an audience for that. So many people do invest so many hours, so much energy and money into the game, I can’t possibly be the only one wanting.

I ended up firing up TextMate and starting to code, and only a short while °cough° later, I had something I deemed good enough to release as a beta.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you CharPool.

The site does exactly what I’ve described a few paragraphs ago, but it also throws in (in my opinion) funky Twitter support, whereas you can tweet in the name of your characters, and these tweets will show up on the chars timeline, together with your achievements and screenshots etc. It also has feeds.

There’s also a page which shows you the WoW-related tweets of your guild mates and also of the people you are following on CharPool. The guild support is still rather rudimentary, and at the moment is mostly just a hint at things to come. Again, it’s Twitter-based, because I’ve read somewhere on AOL that it is what the “cool cats” are “digging” right now.¹

So, I am having plans for CharPool. Big plans. But it’s still in its infancy, there’re a few rough edges, and I’ll need testers to take a look, poke around, and give me feedback. Preferrably WoW players, because, you see, without active characters the site is rather pointless. :)

I’ve opened up 250 beta slots which are given away on a “first come, first serve” basis. I’d appreciate it if you could take a look if WoW is your cup o’ tea. If not, maybe you know someone who is a player? Then you could pass him a note.

Thank you very much in advance.

Fritz, Interview, Podcast!

Mein Child’s Play-Interview in Trackback auf Radio Fritz war ein voller Erfolg, zumindest in dem Sinne, dass ich mich nicht komplett blamiert habe …denke ich zumindest. Dana meinte zwar, ich hätte allen den Stoiber gemacht — meine “Äh…”-Frequenz war wohl höher, als ich selbst gemerkt habe —, aber ich glaube, das ist okay. Niemand in Berlin kennt Stoiber, oder?

Die Sendung vom Samstag gibts auch als Podcast, als MP3-Direktdownload und zum Gleich-auf-der-Seite-Anhören. Das Interview geht bei ca. 11:05 min los. Der Rest der Sendung ist natürlich auch cool; generell ist Trackback als Podcast ohnehin wunderbar geeignet, um Bus- und Bahnfahrten mit Kurzweil zu überstehen. :)

Vielen, vielen Dank nochmals an Marcus für die Plattform! Jetzt hoffe ich mal, dass mehr als nur wir zwei an der Child’s Play-in-Deutschland-Idee interessiert sind. Daumen drücken!

Child’s Play in Deutschland, Update

Wer hätte das gedacht, mein letzter Post hat Interesse bei einigen Leuten geweckt. Anscheinend war die Idee, Child’s Play nach Deutschland zu holen, doch nicht so absurd. Freude!

Ein alter Bekannter von mir, Marcus, hat mich kurz nach der Veröffentlichung angepingt und gefragt, ob ich Interesse an einem kurzen Interview für seine Radio-Sendung Trackback hätte. Natürlich hatte ich — wenn alles klappt, wirds was morgen zwischen ab 18:00 und 20:00 Uhr.

Also, Lauscher aufstellen. :)

Ansonsten würde ich mich darüber freuen, wenn Ihr für die Idee ein wenig die Werbetrommel rühren könntet. Verbreitet den Link zur Child’s Play-Kategorie auf carlo.log, oder lest nach, was Ihr sonst noch machen könnt (in diesem Post, unter “Child’s Play 2009”).

Update: Marcus lässt ausrichten, dass Fritz auch einen Livestream hat. Hurra!

Child’s Play 2008: Deutschland

(This is a post in German. Are you looking for the English language version?)

Child’s Play 2008 ist gestartet. Gamer in vielen Ländern geben Geld oder kaufen Spielzeuge, Games und andere Geschenke für Kinderkrankenhäuser und -stationen und ihre kleinen Patienten; Partner-Kliniken in den US, Großbritannien, Kanada, Neuseeland, Australien und Ägypten freuen sich über vielen Spenden.

Die Frage

Aber warum nicht hier in Deutschland? Die Frage kam mir während des Sommer immer wieder in den Kopf. Wieso gibt es keine deutschen Kliniken, die mit Child’s Play zusammenarbeiten? Im Juli fragte ich dann bei Kristin Lindsay, der Projektmanagerin im Hause Penny Arcade, nach und bot präventiv meine Dienste als “freiwilliger Verbindungsoffizier” an.

Die Antwort kam nach ein paar Tagen: “Der Grund ist: Wir sprechen kein Deutsch, was die Kontaktaufnahme ziemlich erschwert. Dein Angebot nehmen wir gern an!”

Die Aufgabe

Im Prinzip geht es nur darum, den initialen Kontakt zwischen Child’s Play und interessierten Kliniken herzustellen. CP kennt keine deutschen Einrichtungen. Woher auch? Sie brauchen Gamer vor Ort, i.e. uns, wie in allen anderen Ländern auch. Die Verantwortlichen in den Krankenhäusern haben Fragen, und es schafft mehr Vertrauen, wenn diese von lokalen Ansprechpartnern in Landessprache beantwortet werden.

Rechtlich gesehen sind die Freiwilligen außen vor. Wenn sich eine Einrichtung entschließt, ein sog. Partnerhospital zu werden, wird eine rechtliche Vereinbarung direkt zwischen ihr und der Charity in den USA geschlossen. Child’s Play arbeitet dabei aber nur mit sog. non-profit organizations zusammen: z.B. mit öffentlichen Kliniken oder auch entsprechenden Stiftungen.

Wir, die Freiwilligen, kommen erst wieder ins Spiel, wenn das Krankenhaus evtl. Hilfe beim Erstellen seines Wunschzettels benötigt. Der Kauf und die Lieferung erfolgt komplett über Amazon.

Die Geschichte

Eine gute Woche später, Anfang August, war ich wegen einer Untersuchung als potentieller Knochenmarkspender im Klinikum München-Neuperlach. Ich fragte mich zum Sozialdienst durch, wo ich erfuhr, dass Neuperlach keine Kinderstation hat. Knüller! Dafür bekam ich aber vom freundlichen Chef des Dienstes Namen und Telefonnummern von Ansprechpartnern in den Kliniken in München-Harlaching und München-Schwabing. Sehr gut!

Nun, ich hatte nicht wirklich erwartet, dass sich die Leute darum reissen, mich anzuhören. Trotzdem begann ich frohen Mutes meinen Telefondienst. Meine zwei Kontakte waren freundlich und hilfreich, aber nicht die Personen, die Charities betreuen. Ich bekam immer neue Namen von anderen Klinik-Mitarbeitern, die sich “um derlei Anfragen” kümmern, und nach einigen Umwegen hatte ich auch tatsächlich Menschen am Apparat, die mir zumindest Auskünfte und richtige Namen geben konnten. Nur half das nicht wirklich weiter: “Der Verantwortliche heisst [XYZ], aber er/sie ist krank/im Urlaub/auf Reisen”.

Die nächsten zwei Monate verbrachte ich dann viel, viel Zeit am Telefon. Ich sprach mit netten und ehrlich interessiert wirkenden Klinikmitarbeitern, die um Infomaterial baten und Fragen hatten. Bei einigen dieser Fragen musste ich bei Kristin Lindsay nachfragen, weil ich die Antworten selbst nicht kannte. Aber hey, leben und lernen! :) Kristin half mir weiter, und ich gab die Informationen auf Deutsch an meine Kontakte in den Einrichtungen. Ich rief im Wochenrhythmus an, fragte nach Neuigkeiten und Entscheidungen. Aber Bürokratie braucht seine Zeit. Ich hakte nach… hakte nach… hakte nach.

Kurzgesagt, ich tat das, wofür ich als Freiwilliger “angeheuert” hatte.

Ende erster Akt

Ende Oktober kam dann aber leider das Aus (für dieses Jahr). Die Städtischen Kliniken München ließen mich in einer kurzen Mail wissen, dass sie Child’s Play interessant fänden, ich aber bitte Verständnis dafür haben sollte, dass man nicht Partnerhospital werden möchte. Schade.

Mir blieb nichts weiter übrig, als mich für die Info zu bedanken, und darauf hinzuweisen, dass 2008 sicherlich nicht das letzte CP-Jahr gewesen sein wird.

Tja, und das ist der Grund, warum es zumindest dieses Jahr keine Child’s Play-Aktionen in Deutschland gibt.

Die Nachbesprechung

Ich finde es bedauerlich, klar. Und im Nachhinein denke ich mir, dass ich eventuell mehr als nur zwei Kliniken hätte anschreiben müssen. Die Chancen auf einen Erfolg wären klar größer gewesen. Aber ich hatte so etwas noch nie gemacht, und hatte keine Ahnung, wieviel Aufwand auf mich zukommen würde. Ich wollte klein anfangen, und im nächsten Jahr darauf aufbauen. Nach oben hin ist schließlich immer alles offen; aber beim ersten Mal zu versuchen, 10 Kliniken gleichzeitig zu jonglieren, und dann zu versagen, Leute zu enttäuschen, den Ruf von Child’s Play aufs Spiel zu setzen — das erschien mir kein guter Ansatz.

Child’s Play 2009

Nächstes Jahr werde ich früher anfangen, nach Krankenhäusern zu suchen. Und ich verändere meinen Ansatz: ich werde die Kliniksuche “outsourcen”. :)

Und zwar an Euch.

Kennt Ihr ein Kinderkrankenhaus oder eine Klinik mit pediatrischer Station, das u.U. generelles Interesse an einer Zusammenarbeit mit Child’s Play hat? Fragt bei der Klinikleitung oder beim Sozialdienst an — lasst sie wissen, dass es CP überhaupt gibt. Ich wage zu behaupten, dass die wenigsten Einrichtungen in Deutschland davon wissen. Wenn sie Interesse zeigen, habt Ihr drei Möglichkeiten:

• Ihr schickt sie direkt zu CP’s Kristin Lindsay.
• Ihr gebt Ihnen meine Kontaktdaten.
• Ihr kümmert Euch selbst darum. :)

Ich kann nichts versprechen, außer, dass ich jede Anfrage beantworten werde.

Mit etwas Glück wirds in 2009 ein größerer Erfolg, und die Presse hat mal etwas Anderes zu vermelden als “OMG KILLARSPIELE”. :)

Das Kleingedruckte

Ich bin kein Mitarbeiter von Child’s Play. Ich spreche nicht für die Organisation, und ich vertrete sie nicht. Ich bin lediglich ein freiwilliger Helfer, der sich auf eigene Faust und Kosten für Child’s Play in Deutschland stark macht. Alle Aussagen zu legalen Gegebenheiten wurden nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen gemacht, können aber trotzdem großer Unfug sein.

Child’s Play 2008: Germany

(Dies ist die englische Version eines ursprünglich deutschsprachigen Artikels.)

Child’s Play 2008 is on. Gamers in many countries of the world give money or buy toys, games or other gifts for child hospitals and stations and their little patients; partner hospitals in the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Egypt are delighted about all the donations.

The Question

But where’s Germany? This question popped up in my head more than once during the summer. Why aren’t there any German hospitals participating in Child’s Play? In July, I’ve asked Kristin Lindsay (Penny Arcade’s project manager) about this, and preventively offered my help as “voluntary liason officer”.

Her answer arrived after a few days: “We currently have no partners there simply because none of us speak German. If you’d like to help out to get your local facility involved, that would be fantastic!”

The Job

In a nutshell, the volunteers are needed to make the initial contact between Child’s Play and potential partner hospitals. CP doesn’t know about these local facilities. How should they? They need local gamers, i.e. us, just like in all the other countries. Die people in charge in these clinics have questions, and it helps building trust in the idea when there are local contacts answering these questions in the local language.

From a legal point of view, the volunteers are not really involved. When a facility decides to become a so-called partner hospital, then there’ll be a legal agreement with the US charity itself. Child’s Play only works with so-called non-profit organizations, tho, this can be either the hospital directly, their volunteer guild or the hospital foundation, whichever is applicable.

We, the volunteers, come back into play later, if at all; for example when the clinic may require assistance in building a wish list. The business side of the charity, i.e. sales and shipping, is handled by Amazon.

The Story

About a week later, early August, I went to the hospital Munich Neuperlach. After my appointment I’ve asked around and found the social services office, where I was told that the clinic didn’t have a pediatric station. Bummer! But the friendly head of the office gave me names and phone numbers of people in two other, applicable local hospitals, Munich Harlaching und Munich Schwabing. Excellent!

Well, I didn’t quite expect to see people falling over each other to hear my case. Nonetheless I started doing my rounds on the phone. My two contacts were friendly and helpful, but not the people responsible for dealing with charities. Over and over I was given new names of other clinic personnel which would take care of “requests like yours”, and after a few detours I’ve ended up talking to people who at least could give me some information and the right names. It just didn’t really help right away: “The person you want to talk to is [XYZ], but he/she is sick/on vacation/on a business trip”.

During the next two months I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone. I’ve talked with nice hospital employees who appeared to be seriously interested, who asked for more information. Some of them had questions I couldn’t answer; luckily there was Kristin Lindsay. :) I’ve relayed Kristin’s answers in German to my contacts. I’ve called them on a weekly basis, asked for news and whether a decision had been made yet. But bureaucracy being what it is, this took some time, so I’ve called them again… and again… and again.

In short, I’ve done what I’ve “signed up for” when asking whether they would need a local volunteer.

End of Season One

But then, end of October, all of a sudden it was over (at least for this run). The administration of the Munich Municipal Hospitals told me in a short mail that while they found Child’s Play to be an interesting charity, they’ve ultimately decided against participating. A pity.

In the end there was nothing left to do for me but to thank them for the notice, and reminding them that 2008 very likely isn’t going to be the last year of CP.

Well, and that is the reason why there are no Child’s Play hospitals in Germany in 2008.

Debriefing

Personally, I think it’s a sad outcome, yes. I ponder whether I should’ve contacted more than just two clinics. The chances for success would’ve been much higher, of course. But this was the first time I’ve done something like this, and I had no idea what to expect or how much work it would entail. I figured I’d rather start out small, and increase the numbers in the next year. The sky’s the limit, sure; but trying to deal with 10 facilities at once in the first run, and running the risk of failure, of letting people down, of screwing with the reputation of Child’s Play — that didn’t look like a solid plan.

Child’s Play 2009

Next year I’m going to start out earlier in the year. Also, I’ve decided to change my approach: I’ll “outsource” the search for applicable and interested hospitals.

I’ll outsource them to you.

Do you know a German children’s hospital or a clinic with a pediatric station which might be interested in a contact to Child’s Play? Just ask the administration or the social services people — just tell them about CP. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say most clinics in Germany have no idea the charity exists. If they’re showing interest, you’ll have three options:

• You send them to CP’s Kristin Lindsay.
• You give them my contact data if they want to talk to a German.
• You handle them yourself. :)

Please keep in mind that I can’t promise anything, except that I’ll answer each request.

And with a bit of luck we’ll have more success in 2009, so the press might talk about something else than “OMG MURDAR SIMULATOR GAMSE”. :)

The Fineprint

I am not affiliated with Child’s Play. I do not speak for the organisation, and I am not their representative. All I am is a freelance volunteer who thinks the idea of having Child’s Play partner hospitals in Germany is a really neat one. All statements regarding legal conditions and practices have been made to the best of my knowledge, but still they might be poppycock.

Using Yahoo! Pipes: Steam Achievements in Friendfeed

During the last few weeks, I’ve built a couple of pipes I want to share. (“Pipe”, in this context, means an application built in Yahoo! Pipes.)

Here’s one of them.

Steam Achievements

A few weeks ago, I’ve first tested and then bought the excellent CrossOver Games. It’s an emulator (basically a highly specialized version of WINE) which allows me to play a slate of Windows games, old and new, under OSX. So, that’s how I’ve spent big chunks of my spare time during the last few weeks: playing through the wonderful Portal and the great Half-Life 2 games. (On a related note, I’ve noticed the World of Goo demo is running flawlessly in CXG. Awesome!)

I’ve got the games via Steam, and was both delighted and highly annoyed to learn that newer Steam games offer achievements. You see, I am a sucker for achievements. I love them, even though they aren’t good for anything. I usually spend too much time trying to get this or that achievement. These meaningless little pixel badges are “awarded” for different things you manage to do in different games. You can get achievements in various games, on various platforms. For example on Xbox Live, or, as mentioned, on Steam.

So, being a male gamer in his mid-30s, I naturally like to use these superfluous thingies to brag about my mediocre gaming skills. Meaning, I want them to show up on my Friendfeed profile.

Thus, I wrote a pipe which grabs the achievements from any (public) Steam ID page (here’s mine), spitting them out in an usable format — in Friendfeed’s case, that’d be RSS. (Pipes also returns the data as JSON if you want, or even as a handy HTML badge you can put on your blog or whereever.)

I’ve then added the RSS URL of the finished pipe as new service (type: “Blog”¹) to Friendfeed.

So, that’s all there is to it. Maybe I am the only one caring about this type of thing, maybe not. If you have questions or suggestions, sound off in the comments. :)

• Yahoo! Pipes: Steam Achievements
• Friendfeed: the result — my Steam achievements as added service.

Pleasant Memories Of Times Past

Trying to keep track of the last one or two weeks…

• Running again! Avoiding tarmac, thank God there are many forest roads around. Using light weights on my hands now, too. Fun. The most interesting part of the down period was that I was actually missing my runs, and that I was looking forward to start running again. I think it’s official: I like it.
• Found out I can watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart & The Colbert Report freely and legally on the web,OMG. Thank you, Comedy Central. Too bad there isn’t an RSS feed. Or is there?
• Jeremy Zawodny is leaving Yahoo! – and so is JR Conlin. Bummer, two of my personal heroes gone. Well, I guess ~9 years at the same company is enough for anyone. All the best, guys!
• Using FriendFeed now. It’s not bad, really; then again, I mostly use it to have a single place where all my loose threads come together. I really like the stalking helper imaginary friends feature. Makes it easy to keep track of pals who don’t use FriendFeed themselves. I’ve tried subscribing to the combined feed of all the people I’ve subscribed to on the site, but it’s like being fed by a firehose. Unusable, sorry. As I’ve said before, the idea to build a social network on top of peoples’ lifestreams is a bit too meta for me.
• Discovered Goodreads. Nice.
• I love GTA IV. Incredible game. So many lovingly crafted details, amazing.
• New iPhones! Dope. Want. And a revamped .mac! Let’s hope it works as good as it looks in the presentations. The current .mac web implementation is useless for me. It just doesn’t cut it.

Sky: Brought Down

This afternoon I’ve finished the first/latest Mass Effect DLC, Bring Down the Sky. It adds a new mission to the game which promises ~90 minutes of gameplay, a new location, a new race and a new XBL achievement (worth 50 gamerpoints). It costs 400 MS Points (€4.80).

The mission was nice, nothing out of the ordinary, tho. Drive around in your Mako, clean out some places, gather “leads” (if you want to call them that) and then face a boss guy. Make some Paragon/Renegade decisions, get a glimpse at a possible new story line to come and be done with it.

The aforementioned new location is an asteroid on a collision course with a colonised planet. The rock itself looks like pretty much like any of the old “lesser” planets from the main game. It’s okay, not more, not less. What makes it special (to me) is the beautiful planet looming overhead — X57, the asteroid, is heading towards Terra Nova, destined to bring doom and destruction. A grim outlook! Still pretty, tho. Seriously, it’s really shiny, but I’m a sucker for stars and planet imagery, so I might take more joy from something like this than other people.

Anyways, why is it heading there? Because of the Batarians, a race of 4-eyed humanoids. Apparently they don’t like the Humans for various historical reasons, and thus use their first on-screen appearance ever for speaking with the protagonists in a resentful manner. And for shooting at them. The audacity!

So, is “Bring Down the Sky” a perfect DLC/addon? No. Bioware’s decision to make this an “in-between mission” is questionable. I can understand it from a storyline point of view — too much is in flux after finishing the main game, what with the Council and all. But unfortunately it means I have to go back to a savegame where I could freely roam the galaxy — i.e. a save that was made prior to visiting Ilos etc. —, and for some people that might be a drawback. A co-worker of mine has no save like that left, and that means he’d have to start over, and therefore he won’t pick up the DLC. So… srsly, not a good decision. (Personally, I was lucky to still have a “good” save, tho.) But the implementation could’ve been smoother. Well, I actually expected it to be smoother.

And what’s with the silent team members? I though Garrus and Kaiden were pissed since they wouldn’t talk to me during the mission. Not even random chatter. Meh. It’s a small issue, tho. Just something I found a bit strange.

All in all, tho, it’s been a nice ride. For the average price of a Döner you get ~90 minutes of additional Mass Effect goodness. A good bargain in my book.

Mini Review: Mass Effect, Xbox 360

Okay, yes, I’m late to the review party. In my defense, it has something to do with this and the fact that I wanted to finish Mass Effect twice before rendering my judgement.

So, my first playthrough on normal difficulty was very thorough. I’ve picked a male (Infiltrator class), took the “good guy” approach (“We have to save the galaxy! — Wait, what’s that, old lady? Your kitten is trapped in this death maze? We’ll help!”), also did pretty much every sidequest I could find, landed on every rock available, and ended up spending -~43- 34 hours or so. Hey, my char even had freaky, slightly awkward (in the build-up) alien sex with that endlessly blabbering blueberry. Dynomite.

The second time around I rolled a female (Soldier class) and played the whole game on hardcore difficulty in a “I have a job to do, get out of my way” kind of way. Short-tempered, gun-in-your-face attitude, not afraid to leave a crater. In short, for the most part I tried to play it like time actually mattered. This time I clocked in around 20 14 hours. And this time, my leading lady ended up ripping the clothes off one of her male subordinates. Oh, and she had freaky, surprising lesbian alien sex with some random NPC, without meaning to.

Shiny.

The game’s not without flaws, tho. The sidequests on the planets are a wee bit repetitive. There are some rather frequent framerate drops and “Halo 2”-style texture pop-in issues after the loading screens. Background noises were sometimes awfully quiet, and it was really, really hard to make them out, which made some surroundings appear a bit sterile in the aural department. The squad NPC pathfinding took a short break from time to time, making me run back to show one of my compadres how to walk around the car. Oh, and Bioware? My wife asks whether for ME2 you could add some more samples to enemy NPCs, I think if she has to hear “I will destroy you!” or “Go! Go! Go!” one more time, she’ll be going postal.

But ultimately, in my book, it’s really a great game. Hey, it’s mostly “Knights of the Old Republic”, albeit with a lot of changes! It might not perfect, but it comes close. The player char’s gender does make a difference every now and then. I liked the majority of the voice acting, the stories and side-quests were mostly laid out well, and the presentation was usually top notch. Especially the last 1-2 hours were mighty fine. Cinematical, even. Wonderful, wonderful build up of tension.

All in all I’ve spent around 60-70 50-60 hours on Mass Effect, and enjoyed those. I recommend it.