Finished Mass Effect 3

I posted on here a while ago characterizing my opinion of the game through the first five hours as STRONGLY DISLIKE and I think I eventually got into what the game was about to just say MOSTLY DISLIKE. Like I enjoyed it as much as I can enjoy CALL OF DUTY or whatever when I am in the mood to just push buttons on a controller and watch shit inexplicably blow up. Probably this is to some extent my dysfunction as I found Mass Effect 2 usually pretty interesting and engaging with a generally acceptable self-image, while this game really actively reverted back to a lot of the shit that the first game in the series did wrong, leaving me pretty infuriated that it was a lot more empty and distant than it needed to be. I found myself in this corrupted state of deja vu where I recognize fucking everything in the game, feel like I'm genuinely experiencing the same shit over again, yet I hate it this time around. I don't really think this is entirely my fault, as I'm pretty sure a big part of Mass Effect 2 was just fleshing out characters and getting inside everybody's head to some extent(which is INTERESTING STUFF), while this game is really all about cramming absolutely everything into some cheap Call of Duty-type game and expecting you to do all the footwork as far as involvement goes.

This game can really only be enjoyed superficially. You very quickly get completely desensitized to the horrors of war motif that makes up the totality of the game's palette, and there's so little truly direct involvement between the player and what's truly happening in the war that the game takes on this dull documentary feel. I think I actually liked the last level of the game more than most of the repetitive fetch quests because I felt like I actually lost control of the story to the war that they've been telling me about the whole fucking game. For thirty-some hours you're just rushing to get the nearest war amputee a glass of water, but there's something at least superficially real about slowly dragging your near-death avatar through the battlefield, piles of your comrades limbs all around you. Actually, I guess calling it a Call of Duty-type game is factually incorrect, as at least Call of Duty makes a conscious effort to make you feel like you're legitimately at the center of the war. I guess that's one of the things I really disliked about Mass Effect 1 & 3: It's really just AMBASSADOR RPG, with every single fucking person in the universe constantly going out of their way to remind you that Shepard is literally the greatest person that has ever existed. I guess Mass Effect 2 had it a little easier because it really wasn't about making large important groups of people happy with you or doing any of that kind of shit; You're just this renegade doing stuff even though everybody was telling you not to. There's not a lot of room for interesting storytelling in the former, but I guess with being the outsider you aren't as tightly shackled to the larger Mass Effect story(which could not possibly be any less interesting btw).

I dunno, not a whole lot more to say about the game. It's pretty fucking bland. I didn't hate it as much as I did the first one, but I felt most everything in it was just uninspired. The game looks nice and some of the locations are fairly interesting, but they rarely did anything productive with it all as far as the narrative goes, which is supposed to be the whole fucking point of these stupid games. The one Clint Mansell song that they play all the damn time was pretty good but I know enough about Mansell and the process of making music to know that the song couldn't possibly have possibly taken him more than an hour to make.

Oh, and the fact that the masses are OUTRAGED about the ending of this game says a lot about the type of fucking idiots whose fire is really lit by these games. The ending really wasn't particularly good, but neither was anything else in the game.

ffffffffff accidentally doubleposted while editing my post so i will just write here about another game i played:

gravity bone

i don't know if this game was a BIG DEAL or something a few years back(i kinda get that impression) but i just now found this somehow and loved the hell out of it. it's the sort of game that's just ambiguous and weird enough to get people to try talking intelligently about it, but as far as i can tell the guy who made it was more or less just fucking around, so i won't get into some inner dialogue about meaning or effectiveness or whatever, but the game has a pretty simple premise that hits the mark unusually well. worth a try if you've got 15-20 minutes and want to spend it on a pretty memorable videogame.

yess!!!!! thank J.E.N.O.V.A.H. for the hundley double posts... 2;47
edit yeah i played the bone the babe - game. you are right if we talk about ARTISTIC (ugh art in games) merit of the game but i think there was a lot of interesting things in the game. that specific/special half-life 1 feeling/control of the world, the kinda indie game esthetics that really pulls of the ending well/gets beyond pretty esthetics with uh representation of life if you understand what i mean. i can't be too much specific without spoiling for others. but i also like that the uh fallout 3/indie game esthetics kinda at times veered into the little big adventure 2 side of things! and that was pretty interesting and i guess revealing. sorry, i'm not saying too much (maybe too tired for proper analyze?) but y e s you are totally right with that post.

I started playing Arkham City. So far I think I prefer Asylum, but it's pretty good. I think I like doing sidequests a lot more than the main story. I wish there were like 30 short sidequests instead of like 9 long ones but I'm still enjoying them. I think the Catwoman parts aren't as fun. The extra speed is nice but I don't get the same bone-crunching brutal feeling during the brawls (which so far appears to take up a lot more real estate in this one than in Asylum.) I also think they tried too hard to shoe-horn in every single popular Batman villain. It seems like five minutes after you were chasing one it moves on to the next one and I think if they cut some of them the story would be more effective.

Don't get me wrong though, after like a year of primarily playing western RPGs it's nice to relax with a good action game every now and then.

been playing peace walker this morning. base management! miller! cool!

I beat Arkham City and the ending left me with very mixed feelings. Like, if it were not based upon characters that are used in every form of storytelling medium it would have been a great ending. It just felt way too complete for a Batman story. I really enjoyed the game though. I thought the story was way too jam packed with characters and could use a bit more structure, but it still was a very enjoyable game. Still think I'll give the nod to Arkham Asylum though, it just seemed a lot more fresh and focused.

Diablo 3: Modern Rapid Password Input Combat. GotY 2012. 10/10.

peace walker update: i haven't been so enamoured with a new game in a long time (without counting stuff like football manager which comes round every year), there's a lot of cool stuff to do and i'm having a lot of fun

I got in last night at like 1am or something (I wasn't planning on staying up to play because I don't care that much about playing DAY ONE OMGG, but I was just awake so I figured i'd try to log in after the inevitable DDoS), played with some guy up just barely past where the beta ended (we beat the skeleton king then warped to an area then went to town and logged). Not much to say I mean it's basically the same as the beta, the game runs well once you were able to log in, I think it seemed like there was a few new enemy types running around and I'm not 100% but I think some skills/runes shifted or changed a bit from the beta.

Hey I also bought Starcraft 2 last weekend and I've been playing a little bit against computers and shit, just trying to learn the basics and stuff. Anybody that sucks and wants to play with me that'd be awesome. I haven't even played more than 1 game in the practice league or whatever so I'm still very terrible. I think the game is awesome though and I really wish I would have gotten into it earlier.

I'd play both of those games with you sometime if you want. I'm actually not-sucky at Starcraft 2, although it has been a while since I played much (I think I was in Diamond 1v1 a few months ago.)