What I Played Today: March 9

Mass Effect, Final Fantasy XIII

I beat Mass Effect tonight. It was pretty satisfying. I shot the big bad in the face a couple hundred times, a lot of shit WENT DOWN, and in the end, everything turned out, if not great, at least awesomely, and I was posing in front of a planet in the depths of space. Hell, yes. What a satisfying conclusion. It wraps up the conflict of the first while at the same time hinting at potential problems in the future. Well written, entertaining, nothing more to say except that I can’t wait to get the sequel.

I also started playing Final Fantasy 13 tonight, and I am hesitate to make any initial observations. I’ve heard all the complaints going into it; the overly-linear gameplay, the cookie-cutter characters, the non-traditional combat system, and any other fanboyish whiny little things that any jerk on the Internet can say before actually playing the game. I’ve been unfazed by most of it, because really I find half of it to be kneejerk reactions to previews people don’t get, and half of it actually sounds great. Linear gameplay? No more dicking around trying to find what I have to do? Sign me up!

Anyway, the game starts in medias res on a train, with a resistance force beating up the soldiers of the government, which doesn’t sound familiar at all! Okay, it’s obviously a homage to FF7, which is just fine, but man I have no idea what’s going on. Luckily there’s a datalog, which tells me exactly what’s going on, and man is that nice. I mean, I can just push a button and know what happened in the past ten minutes. I can complain about storytelling or something, but nope! I’m staying positive.

A couple of moments of note. When we first see Snow, we see his crew, and I spent about a full minute laughing hysterically because of this guy! Look at his hair! He looks ridiculous! With his big blue coiffeur! All the other members of NORA are just as silly-looking, from the guy with the Heatmiser haircut to the whiny nerd with a big dumb mess of blond on his head. I really hope they all don’t die horribly, but I know that they will. Poor guys. Also, every weapon in this game was apparently designed by Leatherman. Everything folds up, including the neat but stupid “fishing pole” weapon that Vanille conveniently finds right before she needs to fight. It’s a weird design decision.

What I Played Today: March 8

Mass Effect

I played the hell out of some Mass Effect tonight, mainly because it got really good. This particular mission is probably my favorite, even though it made me make some difficult and kinda stupid decisions. But there was the right amount of tension, the right amount of interesting locales, the right number of combat encounters, none too hard, but none too easy. And the cinematics at the end were really impressive. It made me glad that I’ve decided to play this far, and I can’t wait to finish it. Once I get those damn badges.

My biggest challenge besides the damn driving missions (what, everything else I own levels up, yet I’m expected to take on ever-increasing road challenges in my level 1 busted-ass hotness?) is the fact that I’m constantly chasing after achievements. Mass Effect comes with six achievements that are difficult to complete and requires dozens of hours of gameplay and three playthroughs to complete, and I’ve basically been doing every damn sidequest because I want to get those achievements. I don’t HAVE a reason to want to get those achievements, it just seems like something I’ve got to do. I’ve even taken a detour from the end of the game because I got the achievement for one of my allies, but not the other. So I’m cleaning up some final sidequests before fighting the big bad, so that I don’t feel I’ve wasted my time by missing this particular achievement.

Also, in some spoiler-free ranting, I love this big bad. You don’t expect it coming, but it’s still given the right amount of foreshadowing, and he’s just the right amount of cunning and terrifying. It’s a legitimate threat and I have no idea how the team is going to defeat it. So, yeah, good work there.

I also went to a midnight opening to pick up Final Fantasy XIII. I am too tired to start up and try to get through the hour it’ll take before the first save point, however, so I’ll just let that wait until tomorrow. Why I needed it tonight? Frankly, because it would be time I would have spent sleeping anyway.

What I Played Today: March 7

Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts: 386/2 Days, Shadow Complex

Keep on plugging with Mass Effect, still haven’t gotten to where I want to be, and I’m in trouble because a game I know I’m going to want to play a lot comes out on Tuesday. But I’m getting into the late third of the game, so hopefully I can blaze through it sometime this week. I’ve also noticed a ridiculous trend in pretty much every mission. It’s always running around and shooting alien races that shouldn’t exist. The Geth, the Thorian, the Rachni, these are races that have either been completely extinct or supposedly living in regions of space that nobody goes to. Why are they everywhere? Yeah, yeah, the futile and terrible curiosity of man, but could we please shoot people that have a good reason to be there? Like...pirates. Okay, there are a couple of pirates, but not nearly as many as those damn Rachni. What assholes those guys are.

I’m finished with Kingdom Hearts. Not done, by any means, but I’ve seen enough, and I’ve gotten to a puzzle level, which is just obnoxious on such a small screen with limited movement options. Translating a game straight from a PS2 onto a Nintendo DS is a stupid prospect, because the graphics suffer greatly (to make it almost laughable) and the storyline just gets stupider in time, mainly because the dialogue seems to be written by a 15-year-old whose having trouble at school. So, back it goes.

I also jumped around a lot more in Shadow Complex. It’s mostly leveling at this point, and trying to collect more treasures. The fights are a lot harder on this harder difficulty, so I’m constantly getting frustrated and quitting. I’m pretty deep in the second playthrough now, having rescued the lady, but I’ve gotten to a stupid bossfight whose weakness I don’t even understand. I’m supposed to use the hookshot to pull off...something, but I can never find it. Whatever.

What I Played Today: March 4

Mass Effect

The march towards potential completion of this game that everyone loves continues, as I moved further into the plot. I shot some more scary aliens and found some people, like an entire community worth of people, which was a bit odd considering the location, but I had way too many items, so I was glad to have someone to sell my garbage too. There was a lot of people and talking and boring, and I managed to skip up the event triggers so that I suddenly realize I’m being backstabbed by someone I hadn’t actually met yet. How dare you, person I don’t know!? How could you do this to me?

I’ve also gotten to the point where I’ve leveled up enough that any threat isn’t really one. I’m just walking through it the fights now, which is great, because the fights are the biggest obstacles to actually enjoying the game. I have to find the dude that shooting at me, targeting him with my sniper rifle, and then pull the trigger and hope he dies? What a pain! Luckily I have two bionic allies so that half the time my opponents are being tossed to the ground with great force so that I don’t have to track a moving target. Now I can just fly through the game and learn about what’s going on in the universe.

There was also this surreal moment when I apparently met all the requirements to start a relationship with the 1's and 0's that make up Ashley Williams. She suddenly starts telling me that I’m the best person in the universe, and that she will gladly jump my bones when the mission is over, despite the fact that we’d had maybe two conversations before then, one of which she told me she was a terrible racist, and the next where she talked about the time her sister beat up a dude for assuming sex existed. But I guess killing bugs is the same as months of meaningful intercourse. I’ll have to keep that in mind in the future.

What I Played Today: March 3

SimCity 4, Mass Effect

I played a small amount of SimCity 4 today, making a pretty pointless small farming town and then giving up. I like the fact that they made farmland a thing you could create in SimCity 4, the only problem is that there is so little bang for your buck. Farmland takes up a lot of space, and at most provide maybe two or three jobs, so there’s very little income. Considering what resources you need to get a city moving (education, police, hospitals, power, roads, water), it’s pretty pointless to try to make a city based on farms. I really want to enjoy SimCity 4, but it’s so hard to get started. Maybe I can download a city offline.

I also played through a couple of fights in Mass Effect, to find the mysterious alien human race that provides so many tasty experience points, yum yum. Seriously, one shot, 60 exp, in the bucket. I also notice that I run into a lot of krogans on my path. I understand that they are a mercenary race, but jeez guys. Evil robots that the universe hasn’t seen for 100 years are your friends on the battlefield? Are you...at all suspicious? These are the worst things on earth, only concerned with killing every living thing in the universe! You’re going to get killed at some point! It’s inevitable!

That’s about it. I’m trying to write more, but it’s tough of weekdays, because I can’t even start playing games until 6:30, and once I get playing I can only have so many thoughts before it’s time for bed. I’ll...figure something out, I’m sure.

What I Played Today: March 1

Plants vs. Zombies, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Mass Effect

I played a bit of Plants vs. Zombies on the train, getting through the 3rd stage and getting to the stage where the game starts to fall apart. The latest stage is identical to the last, with the huge pool in the middle that you can’t use regular plants on. Now it’s dark, so there’s no free resources falling from the sky (although I can use mushrooms, as good as that does me), and now the entire right side of the screen is obstructed by fog, so I can’t see the zombies coming at me. It’s officially become a chore...but I’m going to plug through it so that I can get to the roof level and see what that’s all about.

More Kingdom Hearts today; the game has finally opened up after a couple more introduction missions, and it’s...Kingdom Hearts. It plays exactly the same, just with a different leveling up system and a different set of allies, now completely from the Final Fantasy side of this screwed-up hybrid. I still haven’t got a clue what’s going on, or when exactly this is supposed to be taking place (I think inbetween the first and second game, but I cannot be sure.) But it’s jumping, slashing, and being confused by the most ridiculous mythos I’ve yet seen. (So...we get hearts from the Heartless? But...they’re heartless. They don’t have hearts! It’s in their name!)

Also got a little further in Mass Effect, going to the ice planet to convince some jerks to let me borrow the car and visit some chick at her secret laboratory. There’s a lot of corporate intrigue and I remember it being really boring when I watched my friend play through it the first time. I was right. I pretty much sprinted through it, doing everything I could to get the most ‘good’ points. Luckily it didn’t take very long, and after some driving I got to Peak 15, where I was immediately killed. So...yeah, I’ll get back to that later.

What I Played Today: February 28

Professor Layton and the Diabolic Box, Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days

I got through Professor Layton a bit fast then I expected, still took a while, but I just plugged through it. Once you get near the end it’s pretty straightforward, just follow the path and bat away all those puzzles they throw at you. All the mysteries got solved in time, and there was my favorite part, where Professor Layton does something awesome that you can’t participate in at all, and then everything gets tied up in a bow. The big reveal wasn’t as ridiculous as the last game, but it was still pretty weird.

I’m almost convinced that Layton is gay, and that the gentlemen’s code that he follows is specifically designed to prevent him ever being near a women in a romantic manner. I know it’s a cheap joke, but this game doesn’t even try to create a single moment of attraction with him. There’s one point where a woman that’s actually close to his age is on the screen and he seems completely uninterested, instead trying to keep his young protégé away from her. It’s just...give us less fuel, guys.

I finally said screw it to the sidequests in Mass Effect, and managed to get a fair distance on the story tracking, getting through an entire chapter and shooting a great deal of geth. I had made it through 10 hours of gameplay before accidently finding out that I have a missile launcher on the vehicle that I’m forced to drive on all the planets. That would have been nice to know...pretty much anytime. I’m reminded of hearing that someone couldn’t figure out you could apply upgrades to weapons, despite that 60% of the loot you get is upgrades. But it was a lot more entertaining when I was following the story, even if it did feel exactly like an episode of Star Trek.

I started Kingdom Hearts 368/2 Days, which is probably the stupidest title for a game I’ve heard in a while. As far as I can tell, it follows the 368 days in which Roxas, Sora’s Nobody, is active as gets dragged into the Organization, and I really do not know who this game is for. I can guess; they wear a lot of black and listen to MCR, whoever the hell they are, but it definitely isn’t a game for me. So far every time the main character has opened his mouth, he’s had his chin buried in his forearm, for christ’s sake. This is an emo-ass game, and I’m really not sure why I rented it. An unusual adherence to a ridiculous franchise that’s gone terribly astray, maybe, despite the fact that I’ve no real reason to like it? I shrug lightly, and will continue to play because of forces that I cannot begin to understand.

What I Played Today: February 23

Mass Effect

I didn’t make it to game night tonight, so the only thing of note I played tonight was Mass Effect, doing more sidequests. I got to destroy some kind of virtual intelligence on the moon, which somehow, SOMEHOW, managed to rebel against humanity and started killing people. There’s a lot of that in this game; killing robots. So much that the game makes a big deal that’s there a law against smart robots, and maybe half the sidequests I’ve done have involved the senseless murder of uppity machines. It’s almost as if humans are scared of technology.

One thing unusual about the moon quest (besides the fact that the Sol system has way more planets than every other system) is that after I completed it, I suddenly gained access to a new statistic, which wasn’t at all introduced naturally. I see some variant code from a dying AI and suddenly I know how to train in such a way that increases damage to all my weapons. An interesting way to introduce that.

A note about the statistics: there are like 12 to 14 of them, and three of them are absolutely essential to get access to the whole game. Electronics, decryption, and some form of either charm or angryface. You just can’t crack all the text files, pick up all the artifacts, or get the best reputation points without them, so you end up with a character who’s completely damn pointless in combat. Unfortunately, I took the unconventional strategy of making myself that guy, so I end up with one too many situations where I’m watching my horrible ragdoll splayed on the ground while some intense, terrible bass tells me that I’m required to start over because the game cannot go on without me. The same problem as you see in Persona 3, but for some reason nobody even complains about it here. Harrumph.

What I Played Today: February 20

Mass Effect, Shadow Complex, Contact, Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2

It had a long day, so there was a lot of switching on and off from various games. I know when I’m getting bored when I play a game for about five minutes and then quit when I can’t get past the challenge that’s presented and just go to a different game instead of trying again. It was a moment of this, a moment of that, and then giving up entirely and watching some show or something.

I started with a little Dance Dance to get some exercise. I like Dance Dance, although not to the level I liked it during that one summer in college when it was my only real opportunity to get out of the house. (Yeah, that’s a really boring story.) I never really liked the console versions of Dance Dance, just because the J-Pop is a major factor in the original experience, and the console replaces those iconic songs with a bunch of English-language raps. So, I only really play when there’s not a space available at the complex’s fitness room, but it’s still a pretty good time, if a bit exhausting.

Then, it was an endless cycle of playing Mass Effect, giving up, and then playing Shadow Complex and giving up, and back again. In Mass Effect is was mostly sidequests, going to places, doing some stuff, and then realizing, “Oh, the quest is over. Well, that’s silly.” There was a quest on a spaceship, and I started a conversation in the middle of a combat, which ended up being pretty ridiculous, because why on earth would the conversations be in real time? Pause the game, seriously. Because there is not a easy way to exit a conversation. But I’m stuck in a part where a bunch of pirates are hanging out to shoot me, and they do so almost immediately. And why does a nuclear bomb have three different points that need to be hacked before it shuts down? And also, why does some random jackass hold a grudge against my main character for defending himself against a fullscale assault against his village? How petty are these villains?

I started a new game in Shadow Complex at a higher difficulty, because the internet suggested it, and I realize now that’s it was a bad idea. The combats are harder, which I hate, because now I’m wasting my time on the part of the game I don’t like. I have to be more cautious whenever a guy who can damage me is on screen, able to take out a good 33% of my health with one volley, and since I restarted the game primarily to get more experience points, it makes it obnoxious when each combat has the potential to kill me unless I take cover and wait. Waiting in combat does not make it interesting, it makes it dull.

There was also a few minutes of Contact, when I realized that the Grasshopper experience makes the game more boring than interesting. I was ready to sail to another island...for some reason, and I was off! Only to find out that I had to wait for the boat to actually arrive at the island, which meant I had to dick around until the game decided it was time for me to do something fun again. Ridiculous. I don’t care how “innovative” this game is; when it wastes my time before I get the chance to do something exciting, it is not a good game. No More Heroes somehow got a pass from me, but this is just kinda stupid.

What I Played Today: February 18

Mass Effect, Shadow Complex

Yeah, didn’t play anything different today. Some more time jumping around and cursing this ridiculous puzzle in Shadow Complex. It requires me to perfectly time my jump and attach my “hookshot” (Yeah, they actually gave me a hookshot. What the hell guys?) to the wall without touching the floor which will instantly kill me. It’s a pain, and I have to do it twice, perfectly, and it’s obnoxious because I can’t just try again immediately, I have to reload and walk back to the room to be disappointed by not being perfect again. Pain in the ass.

I also played more Mass Effect, went into a pirate hideout and shot some pirates, then had some guy insult me to my face about twenty times and then convinced some girl to not commit suicide. This game sure does rubberband your emotions a lot. And a lot of times in situations that aren’t actually gameplay extensive. The whole “convincing a girl not to commit suicide” thing? It was all dialogue driven. All I had to do was decided when and what I was going to say next. Because I had high enough charm, I was going to use the blue option each time, because it was obviously the best one. There was no actual game here. It was all storytelling, and it was all touching, but it was not a game. It’s just interesting that you have an huge, successful game that’s based mostly on dicking around and talking to dudes. The majority of the quests are just going to point B and saying “hi!” Not sure if that’s neat or not, since I’m still engaged, but just thought I’d bring it up.

What I Played Today: February 17

Mass Effect, Shadow Complex

I completed Shadow Complex today. The ending came sooner than I expected, mainly because the final boss fight didn’t actually require any skills that I had acquired throughout the game, but rather to stand in six different areas and push B while avoiding all the shit that’s going down around you. An expected route, I suppose, but you just showed us the Big Bad! Put him a big suit with a large knife or something and then I can shoot at him. For ten minutes! That would be...actually, no, that wouldn’t be fun. Whatever. Now it’s time to wander around and find all the items, which should be fun enough, mainly because the map system makes it obvious where I should go to search for them. Um...hurray.

I also got past the big obstacle that stopped me playing Mass Effect the first time (strategy: oh shit run away! Okay, okay, we’re good. Oh shit run away again!). I saved the asari woman from the forces of geth and the exploding volcano, and we chatted for a bit, and man did it become obvious that this was Tolkien in space with blue tits. The asari are sexy blue lady elves, the krogans are dwarves that happen to be taller than everyone instead of shorter, and turians are rangers with crazy faces. I know it’s hard to wander away from the usual traits, because there are only so many and trying to be different for difference’s sake is just as bad an offense, but I really wish we didn’t have to do the scene where the long-living race and/or alien has to explain to the poor simple humans what it’s like to live a long time. It’s boring, and I think everyone whose been around long enough already knows about the “perils of immortality” and all that nonsense. We get it. We, as humans, cannot comprehend such things, even though it is, in fact, humans writing this so we actually have no damn idea so the big lessons usually rings pretty hollow.

Sorry, got off a bit off base there. Let’s just say, it’s getting a bit exciting now, and I should try to get through this as best I can before I need to return it to its rightful owner in late March, which means that it’ll be a while before I pull out the other game I got from Gamefly, Dragon Age, because it’s going to be more of the same, but in fantasyland, and I don’t really want to play the same game twice at the same time. So it looks like I have a project. Hopefully nobody gets bored when I talk about Mass Effect every day.

What I Played Today: February 15

Mass Effect, Mega Man 9, Various

I had a bit of trouble getting anywhere in games today. Trapped between a rock and an asshole in Shadow Complex, and accidently got to the part in Mass Effect that made me stop playing, because for some reason the game thinks I can kill 15 geth in one instance without a chance to get behind cover. Hopefully I can cope and find whatever it is I’m looking for on this lava planet, I think it’s some blue chick.

Mega Man 9 is still hard as hell, mainly because I can’t get used to the constant jump puzzles they are putting me through. I did manage to get to Magma Man, only to have him stomp me to death. I’m coming to the realization that I’m going to need to spend some coins for some upgrades that’ll save me from the holes that I’m going to inevitably jump straight into. I also cannot figure out what that dog is supposed to do. I can summon him, sure, but no idea what I should do after that. Also, why is everything a damn robot?

What I Played Today: February 14

Mass Effect, MegaMan 9, Shadow Complex, Summoner Wars, At the Gates of Loyang, Rock Band

Gorram, I play a lot of video games on my day off. I’m going to plow through this because there are six games listed up there and I want to go to bed sometime today.

Played some more of Mass Effect, got on the Normandy, did some more fapping about. I really cannot believe how balls-stupid the vehicle physics are. I understand these are hostile planets that don’t have paved roads, but being juked about like I’m driving down the side of a rockclimbing wall on a planet covered in lava isn’t fun, it’s frustrating. Also do not understand why I have to drive a full minute before encountering anything on a given planet. What I’m saying is...stop with the needless getting-to-point-B busy work. If the only obstacle between me and the other side is your poorly designed movement mechanics, then there is a problem.

More Shadow Complex, more power-ups that I suddenly need for no reason. This time I picked up some fast running power...which is bullshit because it apparently takes a good five seconds of straight running before it’ll turn on and allow me to crash through stuff, which seems a bit much in an environment consisting almost entirely of caves and factory floors. I also got a missile launcher, which does exactly what you think it does, and is the only thing capable of putting holes in strong metal walls that the areas I need to go suddenly all have. Anyone, it’s good to have the full assortment of stuffs now, so I can crashing through all the obstacles now.

I also downloaded MegaMan 9 out a sense of thinking I like MegaMan, and as it turns out I find it difficult. Almost pointlessly so. There’s not a lot coming at you, but those things that do are difficult to dodge because the Blue Bomber doesn’t move very well, and instant death holes are everywhere. I did kill Galaxy Man, who looks ridiculous, and I’m digging the fact that the game looks like it was made 20 years ago, because it’s cleancut and colorful, and I hope I can actually make it through another level of this damn game.

I also went to a friend’s place to play a couple of two-player games, one of which I picked up recently, Summoner Wars. The internet has been on fire about this game, saying that it is a great experience, and after a look that made me say “um...” and a play that made me say “hmm...”, I just don’t think this is the innovation that the tubes are saying. It’s just a war game with cards, a simple one at that, with the word “general” replaced with “summoner,” and the word “adjacent” replaced with a term that feels counterintuitive. There’s really nothing here that impresses me, and throwing in CCG elements into a wargame has been tried and has failed many, many times before. I’m pretty sure the majority of the hype is behind the art and ignoring the gameplay.

We then played a game of At the Gates of Loyang, the latest from Superstar designer Uwe Rosenberg, and I like this game a lot. It’s a crunchy economy game, where you don’t have nearly enough time or resources as you want. The resources available to you change a lot because of the central deck, which is the only source from which you can get money, which creates a weird attempt to keep your vegetables growing as work with the cards dealt to you each turn. The game was tight, him taking an early lead and only getting tripped up when his money engine fell apart, and he seemed intent on stealing my resources whenever he could. I managed to pull ahead somehow, couldn’t tell you exactly, and it was a fun time.

Then we played some Rock Band, because Rock Band rocks no matter what. We’ve taken to playing guitar and singing at the same time, and it’s a good challenge, although able to really wear on your throat and your fingers and you try to concentrate on both. I’ve not yet gotten the chops to really tear it up, but I enjoy the challenge. I’m really hoping that there is a Rock Band 3 announcement that adds the harmonies from Beatles Rock Band soon, because there are a lot of songs available now with the vocal harmonies apparent.

What I Played Today: February 13

Shadow Complex, Mass Effect, Balloon in a Wasteland, Various

A long day of gaming today, and a lot of skipping around between many games. Three in particular stand out.

I finally got past the choke point in Shadow Complex, and managed to get three major upgrades, finally getting the ability to double-jump and breathe underwater, as well as the particularly pointless but essential foam weapon, which is the only weapon that can destroy fans. Don’t you go assuming that normal grenades could do it. Only explosive foam.

The game is a pretty fun Metroidvania, a genre that is slowly growing on me. The only problem the game has is it’s a 2D game with a 3D environment. (No, I will not call it 2.5D. That means nothing.) Which is great for making the game look good, but the fact that there are often enemies hanging out in the space behind you. Way too often, in fact, which makes it impossible to know how exactly to shoot them. I think you hold up, but sometimes this causes the boring brown-haired hero to look straight up, which is hardly helpful. Not to mention the background characters are invincible to the most powerful weapons, the grenades, which makes them a tough kill. There is a cool thing that shouldn’t possibly work; some pipes have openings, and if you fire a grenade into it, fire shoots out of pipes in the background, taking out any jerks back there. Ridiculous.

I also got a bit further in Mass Effect; I had completely forgotten about this big fight scene to save some girl alien. It wasn’t very difficult, but it did add some excitement to the running around and helping random aliens with all their problems, and I became a Spectre, so that’s great. I didn’t realize how much I had done the first time I played, because I keep finding myself with a sense of deja vu, making it easy to find all the sidequests, but also having a sense of “yes, get on with it!”

I also find it hard for me to act like a jerk in these games. I know that it’s going to be necessary to get the achievements, if I want them, but it just seems insincere to be an asshole. You’re supposed to be a military hero, and you don’t get that way by yelling at people and being irrational. I just think that someone in Comm. Shepard’s position would have a little restraint. (Shrug)

I also played a flash game, Balloon in a Wasteland, a few times, the latest from a designer that I admire, jmtb02, the man behind the fairly meta elephant games. This is a really easy survival game, where you have to shoot a bunch of blobs and can build a fort and try to repair a downed balloon to escape the wasteland. It’s fair, spacing out when you get certain upgrades, but the only problem is once you’ve built a fort...you don’t ever have to worry. If you can’t handle a particular wave of enemies, you just climb up the ladder and they will completely ignore you. It’s almost not a challenge, and the majority of the upgrades you won’t be able to afford unless you intentionally don’t try to end the game. The hosting site also didn’t do a very good job supporting the game.

I also tried a bunch of horrible Arcade games, one which seems like a really transparent Lumines clone, another word game one that is way too easy, and Explosion Man, which I finally got around to trying. It’s interesting, a game with only three buttons, left, right, and EXPLODE! I also like the insane characteristic of the main character...it’s hilarious, and the fact that the scientists explode into actual meat, t-bone steaks and ham haunches, makes the insanity very entertaining to play. I may buy it...still on the fence for no reason, but I’m sure I’ll come around.

What I Played Today: February 12

Various, Mass Effect

Tonight was a slow starter, as I played a couple of cheap games before digging down into something more substantial. I played a game or two of Geometry Wars, a pointless five minutes of Shadow Complex (why would they put a save point there?!), and some stupid time playing on 1 vs. 100, as well as some flash game, some bullshit about drilling, I don’t know. There’s an unwritten rule of gaming, mainly, if a game costs less than 20 dollars at the moment you buy it, it isn’t anything to write home about. This isn’t inaccurate, and while it does suck for certain games that are designed to be cheap, like Braid, it still is a bit of a flighty experience to play a game that doesn’t force you to invest. I don’t understand the rationale, but I still get a sense that when I play a game without a down payment, I’m “wasting my time.” Most of the time, I think, “I thought that was the point,” but I didn’t manage to get into it tonight.

I did get in some more time with Mass Effect, wandering around the Citadel and doing, officially, whatever. I remember this part being very engaging the first time, mainly because the suprisingly humanoid alien races of Mass Effect are still pretty interesting. The writing and voice acting of this game are top notch, a beautiful example of the standard that Bioware holds itself to. I found myself positively enraptured in the voice acting of the receptionist(!) of the Consort. That voice could convince me to spend over a thousand dollars on bullshit.

There are two bullshit fights in the Citadel that they throw in so you didn’t get bored, one time when you run into assassins who are really bad at their jobs and dead, and one time when some asshole mercenaries don’t notice that there’s a damn federal agent in the same room where they are holding a hostage. These “fights” to break up the continuous running around in the most boring part of Act I only gowa to show that Bioware should have really existed in the peak of the adventure game renaissance. But now, now they have to throw in some nonsense to keep the number-centric RPG crowd interested. Ick. If I want numbers, I know where to go. But frankly, with these writers, they should really be allowed to play to their strengths.

Sorry for the slow decrease of word count that seems to be occurring, a rough, uninspiring week at the day job, and it’s only going to get worse until Feb. 28. I’ll try to keep it interesting as best I can.

What I Played Today: February 11

Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times, Mass Effect

It was a long train ride again today, so I played a bit more of Magician’s Quest today. There was a bit of running around, I learned some nonsense spell, got an invitation to hang out that fox girl again...long story short, it’s back in the envelope. I was just not feeling it, there was a lot of stuff that didn't make sense, a lot of things they didn’t tell me how to do so I was confused, and I just didn’t have the patience for it. So, hope that the next game I get sometime next week is more exciting.

So, time for something old. I’ve heard a good deal of great things about Mass Effect 2, and since I hadn’t yet actually played through the first one, it was time to tackle it again. Turns out I did not actually save my file, so I had to start anew. I went with the tech/soldier hybrid, because sniper rifles are fun and I die less that way, and dove in, half paying attention to the story because I’d seen it already, and I watched as that poor sap from the beginning gets shot before he does a thing. Poor Perkins. So easily spooked by gas bags.

I got through the tutorial level before I got bored, and I quickly remembered why I stopped playing. I find the combat system...boring. I’ll have to do a bit of tweeking with it, but man I didn’t enjoy having to kill the gith. The sniper rifle wanders more than a very offensive metaphor, and I couldn’t take more than three shots without being at death’s door.

I got back to town, and now I worry that I won’t be able to crawl through the two-plus hours of wandering around Emerald City. I remember there being a lot of talking. But...I’m sure I’ll pull through.