1/28/2008 12:00:00 AM,Video Games,Dean,
That being said, I became so engrossed in this title that I haven't been able to play anything else since I started it.
I received this title as a Christmas gift, and knew that I would be playing it, but with fresh copies of Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box, this one ended up staying shrink-wrapped until sometime in January.
One of the first things that you must do in the game is create your profile. I did my best to make it look like me, but gave up after a while. I have never been very good at that, and my WII character looks pretty lame as well as my Tiger Woods profile.
Once in the game, I began the quest and got bored pretty quickly. Walking around the planet was difficult until I figured out how the map worked, and eventually I ended up in a firefight with some bad guys. That was fairly easy, but the controls are pretty sub par compared to a first person shooter. After a couple more minor skirmishes, there is a door that needs to be unlocked which requires you to complete a micro-game of entering in a 5 digit code using the 360 controller. If you make a mistake or are not quick enough, you must use "Omni-Gel". I muffed up my code, and since I was just getting started in the game I did not have any Omni-Gel. I ended up putting down the game for about 2 weeks at this point, since I could not figure out how to get into the room.
Two weeks later, I sucked it up and played back from the beginning. I also made a point of learning how to save my progress, and made sure to do that more often. This time I got through the micro game easily.
The story picks up here, and the main plot begins to take shape. The next few weeks I was busy exploring planets using the coolest map of the Galaxy since "Stellar Cartography" on Star Trek. The landscapes on the planets was very well done, and some were downright stunning visually. The terrain is pretty much the same on all the planets, but the color schemes and climate change greatly. I explored buildings, fought bad guys, made decisions that affected the outcome, and ultimately finished the game after about 22hours.