If you're actually following this thing I apologize for not updating in...well, however long it's been since I last updated. I must admit, writing a blog didn't end up as appealing to myself as I'd hoped, and so I find it a bit challenging to sit down and actually give this thing some love. Either way, I'm well past the 24-hour mark since I've last slept and I don't feel an onset of much-needed drowsiness coming on anytime soon, and so here's my review of (as you may have guessed by the terrible pun in the title) Mass Effect.
Mass Effect is what I would consider the perfect game for me to review. Don't take that as any suggestion that the game itself is in any way perfect, god no. What I mean by that is, it's a double-whammy of pleasure on my end. Playing through it, it was an overall good, maybe even exceptional gaming experience that I enjoyed and into which I ended up clocking 100-some odd hours...but it's leaking bugs and poor design choices out the proverbial ass. Meaning, I get to play a fun game that keeps me occupied for a long time...but there's still so much to bitch about! And man, do I love to bitch. Nit-picking, for me, is like waking up every afternoon after 15 hours of sleep, taking a bath in a massive and freshly-filled tub of cash and then kicking a crocodile in the face while rescuing a promiscuously-clad dame with each arm.
Right, Mass Effect.
The player is thrown into a universe in which all-English-speaking humans have recently made contact with all-English-speaking aliens and joined their all-English-speaking space colony and are fighting for their right to move into more planets already inhabited by gigantic flesh-eating subterranean burrow-worms. You play as Space Commander Shepherd (you're given the opportunity to choose Shepherd's first name and gender but you may as well be named Nippledicks as far as the game is concerned, everyone's just going to conveniently call you Shepherd anyway), who within 20 minutes of gameplay is given a privileged position in the Citadel military that he had previously never heard of before. Surely enough, a mission to save the galaxy ensues, and you can even choose to follow it when you're not headed off to random planets to prospect rare metals and do "Kill everything that moves in this base" side missions.
Before Mass Effect came out, it promised a fully customizable character and important game-altering dialogue choices to be made by the player, all set in a Massive, fully-explorable galaxy.
Well, Shepherd is going to end up looking ugly as fuck no matter how many different ways you slide the millions of bars that customize his eyebrows alone. He's going to have dark, short hair no matter which of the 7 or 8 different hairstyles and colors you choose from, and honestly, who didn't pick the big jagged scar running across the eye? To be fair I hadn't tried anything with customizing a female character, but judging by the in-game NPC models I wouldn't have fared much better there either.
It's strikingly similar with the dialogue choices as well. With every conversation, you have the option to be a complete dick, a bleeding-heart pussy, or a completely neutral stoic with no strong feelings this way or that. No matter which you pick, the storyline is still going to progress whichever way it damn well pleases, with the only difference being you can get an achievement for being extra extra nice, and one for being extra extra grouchy. For example, if someone asks you to go to the other side of the Milky Way to murder someone they're having a disagreement with, you can respond "HELLS YEAH, LOCK AND LOAD MOTHERFUCKERS!" if your character has an asshole-ish disposition. And off you go to murder someone. If you're a huggy-bear of a man who greets everyone with a smile and a complementary handy, you'll exclaim, "Goodness, no! That would be illegal!" The quest-giver will then promptly bully you into taking the mission anyway. Either way, you can choose to do or not do the mission in the first place, but no matter how friendly or dickly you are, you're still going to end up with the mission in your journal, and if you choose to do it, it's not going to affect your nice or mean points anyway.
And about the expansive universe? You spend all of your time fast-travelling from system to system doing missions and exploring, but there's still only 1 planet per system you can actually land on to rush off and do something other than study your galactic map. And each planet is embarrassingly small...for being a game so interested in space exploration, I find it mind-boggling that Mass Effect stills buys into the whole idea of planets being flat, presumably because the Catholic Church keeps mailing it Cease and Desist letters and threatening it with house arrest. If you drive your space-buggy shopping cart too far off of the designated 2'x2' square of terrain dubbed worthy of exploring, your cripple spaceship pilot will slap you on the wrist, pick you up, and throw you back to where you started. It really takes away from the idea of the game being massive when you really have somewhere around 20 small levels to play on. It's kind of like Mass Effect spent its time claiming to have the world's biggest penny, only on release day to hold the penny very close up to our eyes. Sure Lincoln's gonna look pretty big, but as soon as he gets pulled away he's still the size of your fingernail.
What I'm trying to get at is that Mass Effect is a very misleading game. It wants you to feel like you have more freedom than you really do. There are plenty of pointless side quests to take care of, but truthfully the game is just as linear as any other action-RPG, and it's borderline infuriating when you realize that the wool's been pulled over your eyes, and BioWare didn't even do a very good job of convincing you that it was just trying to keep your head warm.
To its credit though, the game does have a fairly compelling, if a bit cliched story, and the characters are generally more than likable (except Ashley). The action is solid even if it is in dire need of a lock-on system, and despite the fact that your character insists on standing on an anchored boat while the tide rises every time he zooms in to snipe. There's a fair amount of gear, upgrades and different classes to choose from that can keep you busy for a while and let you do an admirable amount of customization to your style of gameplay (until you buy all the licenses to the Specter Prototype weapons anyway. At that point all the other weapons can just fuck off).
Like I said in the beginning, it's an enjoyable game despite all its flaws, and even those can add to the fun - make a sidequest out of discovering all the not quite game breaking flaws during your playthrough.
I'd recommend it for at least a rent.
7.5/10
Please excuse any typos, grammatical errors, or horrendously offensive racial slurs that may have slipped by. I haven't slept in a while. (honkeys)
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Introduction
Ah, the old blog. An interesting byproduct of the information age; we've got the entire world and all of its collective knowledge at our fingertips, limitless entertainment and media of all forms, and yet most of us still want to take pictures of ourselves at flattering angles and write about what a dick the homeroom teacher is. Everyone's computer suddenly becomes a grand theater in which we are the cast, crew, and producer...yet our only audience seems to be people we already know to and Internet pedophiles. The blogging age is one of trends and deceptions: Livejournal was the end-all be-all, now no one would be caught dead there. Xanga had a run, then was shoved aside by the blogging giant MySpace, which subsequently succumbed to the world's biggest collage of frat boys in pre-frayed baseballs caps wielding beer bongs: Facebook. That seems to be where we sit in recent times, and I'm almost interested to see if we've finally settled on a permanent alpha-blog, or if something previously unnoticed will scramble to the top of the steaming pile of Internet jargon and text smileys we call the blogosphere.
You're probably wondering why, if I have so much criticism for blogs in general, am I starting one? Well, fine, you're probably not wondering that, but it would be really convenient for me in writing this exposition if you were wondering it, so if you could do me a favor and start wondering, I'd really appreciate it.
Wondering yet?
Good.
So, back to the question at hand. Why am I creating a blog? Well, I'm glad I asked. I've always had a penchant for writing, as cruel a mistress as she may be. Writing is a hobby I want back in my life, no matter how many times she's left me cold and alone in bed while she was out "just having a good time with my girlfriends," but I know she's probably just fucking Painting while Pottery films it. I've spent enough time in the fields of dicking around, working retail, and World of Warcraft, and now I think that I should go back to that which I consider the most productive.
Unfortunately, I've never been out of writing so long, and I'm yet not quite sure if it's like riding a bicycle, or if it's like riding a bicycle. Allow me to elaborate.
The common phrase "like riding a bike" refers to a skill that cannot be forgotten once learned; it becomes second instinct to the practitioner. I hope this is the case. On the other hand, there are professional bikers. People who outrace cheetahs on a Huffy, with or without several diagnoses of cancer. These people, people in peak physical condition...if they were to suddenly quit biking, exorcising, and eating healthy, and spent 14 hours a day sleeping and the remaining 10 shoveling processed fat and corn oil in the form of snack chips in between rounds of furious masturbation...I get the feeling that they won't be taking part in the next Tour de France (I swear this run-on sentence isn't biographical). Likely, that same biker will barely be able to heft their massive frame onto their bike, let alone do any kind of traveling on it.
So which am I...the young adult that blows the dust off of the seat of their old two-wheeled childhood companion and finds the experience all the same? Or am I the former racing champ who can barely lift himself out of his recliner? Am I the mental portion of riding a bike, or am I the physical? Do I have it, or is it gone? Simply put, the purpose of this blog is to find out.
I suppose the introductory post is as good a post as any to get some exposition out of the way. My name's Nick, I'm an early-20's deadbeat with no real passion in life and a mean game of Super Smash Brothers Melee. If you plan on reading this blog, you should mostly be expecting video game and movie reviews (mostly in retrospect), rantings on current events or trends, and mentionings and commentary on the goings-on of the Internet. I should also mention that I have a certain fascination with zombies.
Now, I wouldn't call myself a zombie expert. In all honesty, I don't think anyone could be an expert on zombies. They're a too fluid and ever-changing subject. You can define them any number of ways; Romero's original Dead trilogy consisted strictly of slow-moving, moaning zombies that overwhelmed their victims with sheer numbers. Cut to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, and suddenly the zombies are fast-moving shriekers that can easily outrun a human target. Zombie purists believe that these aren't true zombies; zombies can't be fast. However, I found it a very necessary, not to mention compelling, change. Things that were scary in the 70's would barely phase a toddler of this day and age. Fast-moving zombies are a much bigger, much more convincing threat than a pile of shambling corpses that you can only escape with the speed of a brisk power walk. Take the zombies in 28 Days/Weeks Later. They're technically not undead, carriers of the disease haven't died. Does that technically exclude them from the title of Zombie? The movies follow all other requirements and guidelines of a zombie movie, only the anatomy of the threat has been changed. In some entries, zombies undergo mutations and behavior adaptations to provide more variety for the audience. And where do zombies come from? Is it a virus that was developed in a lab and accidentally set loose on the unsuspecting population? Has an ancient evil awoken? Is there no more room in hell? Was it aliens?
There's too much gray area and too much room for debate with no clear correct answer in order for anyone to dub anyone else an expert on zombies. As soon as zombies invade our real world, then we can name some experts. For now though, we have only people well-versed in a topic that has no clear definition. I'm sure there are experts in other such fields, but I still maintain that if somebody knows everything there is to know about every iteration of zombie culture and media, then they're still not an expert on zombies. They're an expert on the ambiguity of zombies.
I've probably already given a long enough diatribe to describe more than I originally wanted to in my first post. So I guess I'll end it here. I've got a few things in mind that I'd like to review, so stay tuned. I aim to inform and entertain. It's infotainment, you ignorant bitch.
.Nick out.
You're probably wondering why, if I have so much criticism for blogs in general, am I starting one? Well, fine, you're probably not wondering that, but it would be really convenient for me in writing this exposition if you were wondering it, so if you could do me a favor and start wondering, I'd really appreciate it.
Wondering yet?
Good.
So, back to the question at hand. Why am I creating a blog? Well, I'm glad I asked. I've always had a penchant for writing, as cruel a mistress as she may be. Writing is a hobby I want back in my life, no matter how many times she's left me cold and alone in bed while she was out "just having a good time with my girlfriends," but I know she's probably just fucking Painting while Pottery films it. I've spent enough time in the fields of dicking around, working retail, and World of Warcraft, and now I think that I should go back to that which I consider the most productive.
Unfortunately, I've never been out of writing so long, and I'm yet not quite sure if it's like riding a bicycle, or if it's like riding a bicycle. Allow me to elaborate.
The common phrase "like riding a bike" refers to a skill that cannot be forgotten once learned; it becomes second instinct to the practitioner. I hope this is the case. On the other hand, there are professional bikers. People who outrace cheetahs on a Huffy, with or without several diagnoses of cancer. These people, people in peak physical condition...if they were to suddenly quit biking, exorcising, and eating healthy, and spent 14 hours a day sleeping and the remaining 10 shoveling processed fat and corn oil in the form of snack chips in between rounds of furious masturbation...I get the feeling that they won't be taking part in the next Tour de France (I swear this run-on sentence isn't biographical). Likely, that same biker will barely be able to heft their massive frame onto their bike, let alone do any kind of traveling on it.
So which am I...the young adult that blows the dust off of the seat of their old two-wheeled childhood companion and finds the experience all the same? Or am I the former racing champ who can barely lift himself out of his recliner? Am I the mental portion of riding a bike, or am I the physical? Do I have it, or is it gone? Simply put, the purpose of this blog is to find out.
I suppose the introductory post is as good a post as any to get some exposition out of the way. My name's Nick, I'm an early-20's deadbeat with no real passion in life and a mean game of Super Smash Brothers Melee. If you plan on reading this blog, you should mostly be expecting video game and movie reviews (mostly in retrospect), rantings on current events or trends, and mentionings and commentary on the goings-on of the Internet. I should also mention that I have a certain fascination with zombies.
Now, I wouldn't call myself a zombie expert. In all honesty, I don't think anyone could be an expert on zombies. They're a too fluid and ever-changing subject. You can define them any number of ways; Romero's original Dead trilogy consisted strictly of slow-moving, moaning zombies that overwhelmed their victims with sheer numbers. Cut to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, and suddenly the zombies are fast-moving shriekers that can easily outrun a human target. Zombie purists believe that these aren't true zombies; zombies can't be fast. However, I found it a very necessary, not to mention compelling, change. Things that were scary in the 70's would barely phase a toddler of this day and age. Fast-moving zombies are a much bigger, much more convincing threat than a pile of shambling corpses that you can only escape with the speed of a brisk power walk. Take the zombies in 28 Days/Weeks Later. They're technically not undead, carriers of the disease haven't died. Does that technically exclude them from the title of Zombie? The movies follow all other requirements and guidelines of a zombie movie, only the anatomy of the threat has been changed. In some entries, zombies undergo mutations and behavior adaptations to provide more variety for the audience. And where do zombies come from? Is it a virus that was developed in a lab and accidentally set loose on the unsuspecting population? Has an ancient evil awoken? Is there no more room in hell? Was it aliens?
There's too much gray area and too much room for debate with no clear correct answer in order for anyone to dub anyone else an expert on zombies. As soon as zombies invade our real world, then we can name some experts. For now though, we have only people well-versed in a topic that has no clear definition. I'm sure there are experts in other such fields, but I still maintain that if somebody knows everything there is to know about every iteration of zombie culture and media, then they're still not an expert on zombies. They're an expert on the ambiguity of zombies.
I've probably already given a long enough diatribe to describe more than I originally wanted to in my first post. So I guess I'll end it here. I've got a few things in mind that I'd like to review, so stay tuned. I aim to inform and entertain. It's infotainment, you ignorant bitch.
.Nick out.
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