Friday, May 18, 2012
Curse you, Summer Cold!
So I'm about 1,800 words into The Bottom Five of Mass Effect 3. The trouble is I've been dealing with a real nasty cold the past few days and it's interfering with my ability to be snarky. Hopefully, I'll be able to muster at least a 7 on the snarkometer tomorrow morning. If not, then God help us all.
Friday, May 4, 2012
May the Fourth Be With You
Brian King and I successfully watched all three Star Wars movies today. And yes there are only three. Those stupid movies that came out last decade were just high budget rip-offs that are not in-canon. I finally watched my BluRay High-Definition But Irrevocably Scarred by George Lucas's Undying Affection for CGI Edition. The HDBISbGLUAfCGIE was great. The CGI was pretty terrible one Tatooine, which meant it suffered a lot in the early part of a New Hope and Return of the Jedi. I don't get why Lucas feels the urge to always clutter the scenes. The good news is Empire Strikes Back is virtually untouched and they do a better job with "Han Shot First". Greedo still fires, but I felt like he was dead by the time his shot went off, which explains why it went wide right. Anyways, during Empire, Brian and I developed a drinking game. For optimal results, I would advise using a large pizza and have at least 4 beers at your disposal. Without further ado, the Star Wars Drinking Game:
- Take a drink every time Han cracks a one liner.
- Take a drink every time Luke is annoying.
- Take a drink every time 3PO calculates odds.
- Take a drink every time Lando's line could be ended with "Awww yeah".
- Take a drink whenever Leia is bossy.
- Take a drink whenever Leia looks longingly at Han.
- Take a drink every time Vader kills someone.
- Take a drink every time there is an iconic line.
- Take a drink every time R2 uses his USB thingie.
- Take a drink every time an AT-AT is destroyed.
Patent Pending
So tonight, a discussion with some of my Econ friends led me to the decision to invent a new type of restaurant genre: Dude Food. Dude Food is primarily burgers, wings, and pizza. I may yet open a restaurant called Dude Food which specializes in those three things. There could even be a lucrative sponsorship deal: The English Muffin Power Hour, brought to you by Dude Food.
In other news, I am now the #7 suggestion when you type in "English Muffin" on Google. This is awesome!
In other news, I am now the #7 suggestion when you type in "English Muffin" on Google. This is awesome!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
What Happened to April?
How is it already April 28th? My silence this month is directly a result of Crusader Kings 2, a game I now simultaneously love and hate. I love it because it is literally the closest thing to Game of Thrones the game as you can get, mixed in with a healthy dose of medieval history, but I hate it because it has swallowed all my spare time. Tonight, I've got lined up with other stuff to do, but I'm going to begin writing my concluding thoughts on Mass Effect 3 and some other stuff.
Oh, also, I guess Master's courses are to blame, but that is for quitters! The real villain is the King Gerard the Bold, ruler of twelve kingdoms. If he would just hurry up and let Gerard II, Duke of Damietta succeed him, I could get back to work. Also, in the interim, blogger has changed their interface. I am afraid now!
Oh, also, I guess Master's courses are to blame, but that is for quitters! The real villain is the King Gerard the Bold, ruler of twelve kingdoms. If he would just hurry up and let Gerard II, Duke of Damietta succeed him, I could get back to work. Also, in the interim, blogger has changed their interface. I am afraid now!
Monday, April 2, 2012
The Top Five Things in Mass Effect 3
First, let me begin with a sincere apology to all the fine honeys who read this blog and don't play Mass Effect. You ladies have really missed out. I'll tell you what, I'll make it up to you by talking about the Hunger Games next and how that girl you hated in high school is exactly like Clove. But for now, we're going to talk more about interstellar politics, spaceships, aliens, guns, and explosions. Hurray!
Like I alluded to yesterday, the best way for me to handle Mass Effect 3 is to break it up into composite parts. I know it can be hard to tell, but I really like this game. If you're the type of person who puts stock into numbers, I'd give it 4.75 English Muffins out of 5. Someone burned a bit of the last muffin, but you can scrape off the black stuff and still enjoy its nooks and crannies. I feel the real measure of a game is talking about the things you liked and the things you didn't like. It gives a clearer picture of what people would like about the game than just a raw score and rambling.
5. Squadmate Closure OR They Should Call It Terminus Graffiti
Going into Mass Effect 3, I thought it would be easy to release a revised "Top Whatever Squadmates". The wheat would be separated from the chaff and it would confirm my every complaint about the poorly written characters. But I wasn't permitted to be that lazy. With the exception of Jacob Taylor (more on that later), every other squadmate had significant and meaningful closure to their story. More than that, it also improved my opinion of every non-Jacob character. Best of all, their involvement in the story never felt cliche or forced, but rather an organic growth from the story.
No one did anything that felt out of character or that looked like three separate kinds of impossible. Not everyone survived, but not everyone died either. It honestly kept you guessing. The ones who did die died in an awesome way, which is how characters we care about should die. No one wants to see Darth Vader die from a complication in his breathing machine. They want to see him die from a complication in his breathing machine, caused by Force Lightning after he threw the Emperor off the Death Star!
The real genius of this set-up is the squadmates' stories are interwoven into side quests and other areas of otherwise non-essential importance. Each person is in a believable scenario, and it's just as believable that Shepard would run into them there. The side quest would still make sense if the former teammate wasn't there, but the end result wouldn't be as good. It rewards your hard work for keeping people alive (except Jacob). Honestly, I could do a whole separate update on just how great each and every one of these moments was (and I just might). For now, it's enough to say that these quests which were pretty boring in prior Mass Effect games provided an absolute roller coaster of emotions. I'm going to close this entry out with the best moment from the Former Squadmate Quests: The Conclusion to Grunt's Investigation of the Rachni.
4.The Search & Rescue system
In a vacuum, the Search & Rescue system is merely adequate. But this review is not in a vacuum, it's in the context of all other Mass Effect games (even the terrible iOS game). The absolute worst non-Kaidan, non-Jacob part of every Mass Effect game has been gathering resources. In Mass Effect, it revolved around methodically clicking on every planet and/or asteroid and hoping the game asked you to press A a second time. If you were real fortunate, you'd have to go down to the surface on the Mako and navigate the seemingly randomly generated terrain to get to spare resources. God help you if it's not immediately clear if you should go up the side of the hill in your ATV.
In Mass Effect 2, they decided the solution would be to force you to meticulously scan every square inch of every planet from space, hunting for four different kinds of resource in the hundreds of thousands of... um... whatever the standard unit for video games is. I don't have to say anything about this, the sheer slowness of the scanning and silliness of the concept has been a running joke on the internet for two years now.
In Mass Effect 3, instead of hunting for resources, Shepard now uses the Normandy's stealth engines to perform interstellar search and rescue for vital war assets (think way ward capital ships, stranded spec ops teams, etc.) in Reaper-space. This is balanced against the fact that scanning for resources draws the attention of the Reapers, who will destroy you if they catch you. This gives the entire affair a feeling of tension prior resource gathering mini-games lack. This does have the unintended consequence of making you outrun the Reapers often, which undermines them as a threat. But even though it's not perfect, the fact that resource gathering is no longer the worst part of Mass Effect is a minor miracle.
Like I alluded to yesterday, the best way for me to handle Mass Effect 3 is to break it up into composite parts. I know it can be hard to tell, but I really like this game. If you're the type of person who puts stock into numbers, I'd give it 4.75 English Muffins out of 5. Someone burned a bit of the last muffin, but you can scrape off the black stuff and still enjoy its nooks and crannies. I feel the real measure of a game is talking about the things you liked and the things you didn't like. It gives a clearer picture of what people would like about the game than just a raw score and rambling.
5. Squadmate Closure OR They Should Call It Terminus Graffiti
Going into Mass Effect 3, I thought it would be easy to release a revised "Top Whatever Squadmates". The wheat would be separated from the chaff and it would confirm my every complaint about the poorly written characters. But I wasn't permitted to be that lazy. With the exception of Jacob Taylor (more on that later), every other squadmate had significant and meaningful closure to their story. More than that, it also improved my opinion of every non-Jacob character. Best of all, their involvement in the story never felt cliche or forced, but rather an organic growth from the story.
 |
| Jack became an effective & caring teacher for biotic teenagers, rather than a selfish nihilist. As a non-Jacob, she saw growth as a character. Is this what you'd call a "character arc"? It feels good! |
No one did anything that felt out of character or that looked like three separate kinds of impossible. Not everyone survived, but not everyone died either. It honestly kept you guessing. The ones who did die died in an awesome way, which is how characters we care about should die. No one wants to see Darth Vader die from a complication in his breathing machine. They want to see him die from a complication in his breathing machine, caused by Force Lightning after he threw the Emperor off the Death Star!
The real genius of this set-up is the squadmates' stories are interwoven into side quests and other areas of otherwise non-essential importance. Each person is in a believable scenario, and it's just as believable that Shepard would run into them there. The side quest would still make sense if the former teammate wasn't there, but the end result wouldn't be as good. It rewards your hard work for keeping people alive (except Jacob). Honestly, I could do a whole separate update on just how great each and every one of these moments was (and I just might). For now, it's enough to say that these quests which were pretty boring in prior Mass Effect games provided an absolute roller coaster of emotions. I'm going to close this entry out with the best moment from the Former Squadmate Quests: The Conclusion to Grunt's Investigation of the Rachni.
4.The Search & Rescue system
In a vacuum, the Search & Rescue system is merely adequate. But this review is not in a vacuum, it's in the context of all other Mass Effect games (even the terrible iOS game). The absolute worst non-Kaidan, non-Jacob part of every Mass Effect game has been gathering resources. In Mass Effect, it revolved around methodically clicking on every planet and/or asteroid and hoping the game asked you to press A a second time. If you were real fortunate, you'd have to go down to the surface on the Mako and navigate the seemingly randomly generated terrain to get to spare resources. God help you if it's not immediately clear if you should go up the side of the hill in your ATV.
 |
| I'm 73% sure I can go the rest of the way up! |
In Mass Effect 3, instead of hunting for resources, Shepard now uses the Normandy's stealth engines to perform interstellar search and rescue for vital war assets (think way ward capital ships, stranded spec ops teams, etc.) in Reaper-space. This is balanced against the fact that scanning for resources draws the attention of the Reapers, who will destroy you if they catch you. This gives the entire affair a feeling of tension prior resource gathering mini-games lack. This does have the unintended consequence of making you outrun the Reapers often, which undermines them as a threat. But even though it's not perfect, the fact that resource gathering is no longer the worst part of Mass Effect is a minor miracle.
Friday, March 30, 2012
March Disappointments: Specifically, Mass Effect Disappointments
First and foremost, I'd like to issue an apology to the blogging community. The Mass Effect 3 ending was so devastatingly bad that I sorta shut down and tried to forget it ever happened. As a result, I only have a measly three entries for the month of March. I intend to double that over the course of the next two days. I blame seeing actual friends and grad school for this decline in posting. In fairness, I did just grapple with an Excel spreadsheet which had approximately 5.2 million cells of data and had to answer approximately 300 questions about that.
Also, I finished the Hunger Games trilogy and introduced my parents to the amazingness of Game of Thrones, both of which I really want to go into in more detail. Basically, what I'm trying to say is I've generated enough ideas for the English Muffin Power Hour to last until June, excluding any new developments.
However, March 2011 has been my most popular month ever and I feel like I've betrayed my new readers. My older readers know to expect long droughts of content, but I don't believe this should be acceptable. Going forward, I will continue to blog regularly. After all, a 17 day hiatus is downright tame compared to what I normally subject you to.
I've been discussing with myself the best way to discuss just every way the last 15 minutes of Mass Effect 3 has been a terrible disappointment. I was tempted to discuss my beliefs about the ending (I completely subscribe to the Indoctrination Theory, by the way), but honestly, this video said everything I wanted to point out and then some. Obviously, if you're name is Pimpmaster Doug or if you're one of the dozen or so other Mass Effect fans who haven't finished ME3 because of their infant sons or attendance in Medical School, don't watch this video.
I would like to add that the Catalyst also frames your choices in the way that would make destroying the Reapers seem least appealing, which would make sense if the Catalyst was just a Reaper illusion. If you do the right thing and destroy the galactic menace which is older than time itself, you'll also destroy your friendsL the recently sentient Geth (who are now totally cool with the Quarians) and EDI (who is on your squad now). It's a classic manipulation technique known as "framing the question". Your choices aren't presented as "Try the crazy man's idea, fuse with the enemy, or destroy them outright". It's "Show how strong willed you are by controlling the Reapers, forge a new path in history by synthesizing organic and synthetic life, or be a total jerkwad and destroy all synthetic life." The person posing the question really doesn't want you to pick the last option. Because that's the only way the Reapers all die.
But I'm going off on a rant. I feel the best way to proceed about Mass Effect 3 is to discuss the things it did really well and the things it really screwed up (obviously, the ending, but there are other things). So tonight, I will return with the Top Five Things about Mass Effect 3.
Also, I finished the Hunger Games trilogy and introduced my parents to the amazingness of Game of Thrones, both of which I really want to go into in more detail. Basically, what I'm trying to say is I've generated enough ideas for the English Muffin Power Hour to last until June, excluding any new developments.
However, March 2011 has been my most popular month ever and I feel like I've betrayed my new readers. My older readers know to expect long droughts of content, but I don't believe this should be acceptable. Going forward, I will continue to blog regularly. After all, a 17 day hiatus is downright tame compared to what I normally subject you to.
I've been discussing with myself the best way to discuss just every way the last 15 minutes of Mass Effect 3 has been a terrible disappointment. I was tempted to discuss my beliefs about the ending (I completely subscribe to the Indoctrination Theory, by the way), but honestly, this video said everything I wanted to point out and then some. Obviously, if you're name is Pimpmaster Doug or if you're one of the dozen or so other Mass Effect fans who haven't finished ME3 because of their infant sons or attendance in Medical School, don't watch this video.
I would like to add that the Catalyst also frames your choices in the way that would make destroying the Reapers seem least appealing, which would make sense if the Catalyst was just a Reaper illusion. If you do the right thing and destroy the galactic menace which is older than time itself, you'll also destroy your friendsL the recently sentient Geth (who are now totally cool with the Quarians) and EDI (who is on your squad now). It's a classic manipulation technique known as "framing the question". Your choices aren't presented as "Try the crazy man's idea, fuse with the enemy, or destroy them outright". It's "Show how strong willed you are by controlling the Reapers, forge a new path in history by synthesizing organic and synthetic life, or be a total jerkwad and destroy all synthetic life." The person posing the question really doesn't want you to pick the last option. Because that's the only way the Reapers all die.
But I'm going off on a rant. I feel the best way to proceed about Mass Effect 3 is to discuss the things it did really well and the things it really screwed up (obviously, the ending, but there are other things). So tonight, I will return with the Top Five Things about Mass Effect 3.
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