Reaping Day & Reaper Day

Ranking all 16 Squad Members from Mass Effect really took a lot out of me(the whole shooting match was 9,000 words long and covered 25 pages in MS Word!), but it's rapidly becoming one of the most popular pages on the EMPH. So after a brief recess (read: desperately finishing Mass Effect 2), I've picked up the blogging torch and have decided to keep the Mass Effect fortnight rolling... by taking things casual and talking a bit about what I've been up to this week.

What I've Been Reading (well, technically Listening To if you want to be pedantic)

There's Hunger! There are Games! It lives up to what the title promises.

 As a grad student/tutor, I have a spend a lot of time each week commuting to class, with about a 15 minute ride to the parking lot and a 15 minute hike from the parking lot to the actual classroom. And since I'm a grad student in Economics, that means I find all of today's music strange and terrifying.  I decided to switch things up by trying audiobooks courtesy of Linebaugh's eBook system (which has a small library, a long wait list, and a frustrating interface) and Amazon's Audible.com (which has a free 30 day trial and two free audiobooks, and if you try to quit it, they'll offer your three months at $8 a month). Astute readers may figure out that I already listened to the abridged version of World War Z back in January. Last week, I got another credit and decided to see what all the fuss about the Hunger Games is about.

Now, I have a lot I want to talk about today and don't want to end up with another 4,000 word update, so I'll save a more detailed review for later. In short, I really liked The Hunger Games. I thought the main character was interesting, I thought the names were brilliant (so brilliant that it will require an entire separate article to discuss), and that the pacing was very strong. Furthermore, I understand precisely how the author is manipulating me with each new development, but it's done well and it never distracts you from what's going on. I still had an emotional reaction (read: I actually felt the emotion she was going for) when the sweet innocent character might as well have been wearing a t-shirt that says "I will die a slow and painful death". Also, I found out that there's a federal law which stipulates that any book with a female protagonist must have two and precisely two love interests for her to pick between. But those are just nitpicks. I honestly liked The Hunger Games better than Harry Potter, because Suzanne Collins doesn't make up the ending as she goes along ("Magic cannot be used to bring back the dead, Harry. Except Buckbeak. We'll totally use the Time Twister to save Buckbeak." ~Albus Dumbledore)

What I'm Watching

Contrary to The Hunger Games, we're 7 seasons into this and we've yet to meet your mother. Still good.

 If you aren't watching How I Met Your Mother, you must either be in a place without enough electricity to power a television or a grad student who has work and class every week night. If you're the latter, watch the episodes online! If you're the latter, how are you reading this anyways?! HIMYM is tied with 30 Rock for my favorite comedy on TV right now. But unlike most comedy shows, HIMYM never designates one character to be the butt of every joke (like J.D. in Scrubs). There's not one character who's always right (like Elliot in the later seasons of Scrubs) and there's not one character who always ends up on top (like the Janitor in Scrubs). Basically, I'm saying this show is much better than Scrubs. The characters are outlandish enough to be entertaining but grounded enough that you can still relate to them. The most exaggerated character, Neil Patrick Harris's Barney Stinson, has significant abandonment issues and is struggling to be a better person in recent seasons (which also make for some of the most powerful episodes). But most of the time he is trying to sleep with as many women as possible and concocting elaborate schemes to do so. That said, Barney is totally going after a woman who is all wrong for him. DON'T DO IT BARNEY! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME THROUGH THE BLOGOSPHERE! ROBIN IS THE WOMAN FOR YOU!!!!

Man, that's probably the closest I'll ever experience being on Team "Love Interest's Name".

What I'm Playing

Yeah, bet you never would have guessed that.

So I could talk about Mass Effect 2, but I'm worried we'll have Mass Effect overdose. I've already had one dream this week where I was navigating a starship away from the Reaper Invasion. In a nutshell, I got my final "canon" import ready for Mass Effect 3. I've completed all the quests, saved all the people I wanted to save, blown up all the robot space stations I wanted to blow up, gathered all the guns I want to shoot, and introduced this strange emotion we call "love" to all the attractive alien women I wanted to (Captain Kirk style, awwwwww yeah). Bring it on, Mass Effect 3!

Link is trying to slash his way out of the blog. How very meta.

Growing up, I was the biggest Legend of Zelda fan. So I was super excited for Skyward Sword to come out. In fact, I was so excited that once it came out on November 20th, 2011 I set out to beat it right away. I only found time to beat Skyrim, Dawn of War II, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Batman Arkham City, Costume Quest, Total War: Shogun 2, Modern Warfare 3, Halo: Anniversary, and Mass Effect 2 before beating it. Now, one train of thought for this paradox is that it's been five years since the last Zelda game and my tastes have changed over time. Another train of thought is that this game was terribly paced and could really suck the fun out of an afternoon. When Skyward Sword gets it, it's a great game. The final boss fight is incredible and easily the best in the series.

The problem is that this game is on the Wii. Naturally, they had to make the whole gimmick "you swing you wiimote like a sword". That's actually really cool, but the problem is they had no other ideas. Literally 90% of the enemies were defeated by "swinging your sword in the indicated way". The problem is the Wii has just enough lag between swinging your hand and the game responding that the computer blocks almost everything. It turns out the solution is "flail randomly" which is both faster and harder to block. Even enemies who have predetermined blocking patterns are easier to deal with using small movements. Their weak points are always exactly horizontal or exactly vertical, so any small deviation in movement means you won't get a hit. So fighting is an exercise in getting the controls to cooperate rather than a puzzle like in previous Zelda games. The characters were much more likable in this game, especially when compared to Twilight Princess. There's actual character development! Unlike in TP, Zelda's an actual person Link has a relationship to before the plot gets kicked off. That gives us a reason to care about Zelda besides the fact her name is on the box and we had to save her in the other games. But, for some reason, it's still not as much fun as it should be.

After 40 hours, I had accomplished pretty much everything in Ocarina of Time (I think, I last played it in 2000 so the precise numbers are a bit off). After 46 hours, I had done about half of the extra stuff in Skyward Sword. At a glance, it might seem like this makes Skyward Sword the superior title, but it doesn't. It comes back to the idea of pacing and Skyward Sword wants to drag things out as long as possible. Most infamously, there's a scene where they establish that an ancient evil is getting stronger and you're the only hope for the world. So you have to do another three hours worth of "proving yourself" in order to be deemed worthy of the item needed to save the world. I'm sorry powers that be, do you want this world saved or not?! If it takes this much paperwork to stop the end of the world, is it really worth living in?

Oh and one more thing, this joke has been done to death, but your companion who provides you with hints manages to be slow, annoying, and completely useless. In most boss fights, when you'd ask for her advice, she'd give you two pages of lore on the bad guy before saying she has no clue what to do.

Never mind. I think I can guess what this guy's weak-point is.

What I'm Looking Forward To

Monday: New HIMYM
Tuesday: Reaper Day (Mass Effect 3 comes out!)
Wednesday: The Bean Returns
Thursday: IT'S SPRING BREAK!!!!