I was sick Friday night, all day Saturday, and finally starting to feel better Sunday. The only good thing about being sick is you can't do much but read or play games. I took the time to finally start Mass Effect, I played more Oblivion, and also picked up Civilization Revolution.

I'd talk about ME first, but lets start with Oblivion. I finally finished the Thieves Guild quest-line as well as the Fighters Guild quest-line. I swear I never had to sleep to have the thieves guild quests show up, but I sat around waiting forever for it to happen this time. I finally slept and bingo. The last mission took forever too.

Next up will be the Mages guild, which I have to be inducted into again after the thieves guild quest where I killed a mage... and I guess I can get back to the actual plot line again. I'm saving the dark brotherhood for last seeming I think it will cause some side quests and other stuff of that nature to disappear.

I didn't bother buying the expansions and I'm pretty sure I'll be done with the game by the time I finish up the last three main quest lines. One question for all you people out there though... can I finished the main quest line and close the Oblivion gates afterwards? I have put off the main quest line because I just haven't had time to close all the oblivion gates around and they have some pretty cool stuff in them.

Now, Mass Effect. I haven't played much of it, so this is mainly a first impression sort of thing... Is this game nothing more than a blatant rip of every good sci-fi franchise ever made? I'm serious. In the first mission I have been introduced the Turians, AKA the Klingons; the Geth, AKA the Borg; Spectures, AKA Jedi (heck they even do orders directly from a 'council'); and the Protheans, AKA The Precussors (from Star Control) or the Rakatans (from Knights of the old republic).

From an game 'culture' perspective it appears to be similar to Star Trek Enterprise. Yep, those poor disgusting humans are finally allowed out and about in the galaxy and are going to make trouble.

From a technology standpoint, the reason there is star travel is because of some 'magically' extinct super-race called the Protheans leaving around all their artifacts before 'disappearing'.

And last, the plot appears to be driven very similar to KOTOR where a 'vision' is what will be making your main character go all over the place.

From a graphical aspect the details on the characters are amazing including the face captures and what not. Now if only someone could figure out how to not make the eyes look like 'glass'. It looks worse than "the Polar Express" when it comes to character animation. And wtf is up with the poor lipsynching? The characters look good as 'stills', but once they start moving all of that just seems out of place. Kind of like a "Who let the rest of this crap into my movie?!!" sort of complaint.

I'll admit I haven't put a lot of time into the controls either, but I find them quite unintuitive right off the bat. I haven't found a good way to have my companions do anything useful yet... And generic play controls, like turning around, is about as un-fluid as possible. I swear I feel like Mario running on ice the whole game.

In short... It better improve and quickly. I'll probably read the manual now so I can learn the controls and such. As for the story and environment though, I'm pretty sure those that haven't been exposed to all of these elements hundreds of times in other games, movies, or books will find it fascinating, but to me it seems too 'copied'. I don't feel like investing a bunch of time to learn the new names of all the sci-fi I have already watched or read about from different franchises. So there better be something different show up soon.

Well, with that rant about my few hours of ME time... I ended up picking up Civilization Revolution and I LOVE IT! So far it is basically Civilization without all the unnecessary micromanagement. There is still a lot of micromanagement to be had to maximize everything, every turn, but for the most part it is hidden enough to make it fun. Especially late in the game. Every turn in the last 200 years doesn't take an hour in and of itself anymore... read that as 'no fiddling with workers 'fixing' land through the globe'. I think it is great! However...

They could have fixed a few things. Like 'Turn off Advisors' or 'Turn off animations' in the options menu. A better zoom out function and larger environments. I could also do without the 'cute' color scheme, though it doesn't bother me as much as most games found on the Wii right now. With options to keep the cartoony AI and Advisors from popping up all the time it wouldn't be that bad really.

But I would have to say I find this game quite fun... though I haven't tried playing on modes where the computer will most likely start cheating A LOT. Developers out there... take a hint from Galactic Civilizations and make a good AI that does NOT cheat to win and I would appreciate it.

So that was my weekend. I easily played 20 hours just Saturday and Sunday alone. It was good to have a vacation... now if I wouldn't have been throwing up the whole time (from being sick not the games), I think it would have been perfect.

PS: I'm double posting this on GS until I can decide which blog to use as my 'real' blog. Though it will probably be GB.