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For the company that dominates in the video game industry, Microsoft tucks itself in the back corner. But after making your way through gaping fanboys, you arrive at the impressive two story structure where Microsoft holds its booth tours. The two games we were most interested in seeing at Microsoft were Mass Effect and Gears of War.
Mass Effect is a new third-person shooter RPG where players play as Commander Shepard. Shepard can be customized as male or female depending on the player’s preference. The player gets to choose his squad and back story when he begins the game. The basic plot of the game is that the galaxy the characters live in was once populated by a race that was destroyed by machines. As the player learns more, they discover that the machines come in a cycle to destroy the race and the same thing is going to happen again if you don’t stop it. In order to stop the machines, a player can fight alongside his team or given them specific orders to carry out other missions. He must also interact with other characters in the game with dialogue choices. For instance, if a character has information he won’t share with you, you can choose to threaten him or coax him into giving it to you. Your choices in interacting with the characters determine their reactions. To be honest, the game looked cool but it wasn’t impressive enough to have us jumping up and down for joy when we left the demonstration. The game is projected to be out this winter.
Microsoft had Gears of War playable in their booth. They had sixteen computers set up for two games of four-on-four gameplay. The thing we can’t emphasize most about this game is the number of weapons that you can choose from to mutilate the other characters. A small sampling of these weapons includes a chainsaw, shotgun, sniper rifle, boon shoot, rocket launcher, and smoke grenade. The game allows for some pretty gruesome deaths (the chainsaw being by far the goriest). It also allows you to revive your teammates if you see that they are going to die. One developer told us they were shooting for the Fall of 2006 to release this game. We will keep you posted as we learn more.