The Second-to-Last Straw

I give up! You win. I'll never play console-ports again.

Last night I came to the (sad) conclusion that whenever it comes to pc games that you'll (see: me) always encounter weird problems that you'll rarely have if you just bought it for a console instead. Sure, it'll play better, have better graphics and integration.. but the convenience of knowing it will work is starting to become a big factor.


Take Skyrim for example; when I first blogged about it, I was trying to decide whether I should get it for the pc or 360. I had at the end chosen the 360 because I knew that there would be no problems at all. I did have the very rare crash which had me very paranoid causing me to save every 5 minutes. In my defense though, you can do alot in 5 minutes. 


Then you try it on the pc with the first obstacle of installation; it was like jumping through hoops and it took forever (7hours), unlike the 5ish minutes of installing it to the harddrive of the 360. Almost like day and night, playing the game with a mouse/keyboard configuration was much more convenient and accurate. Hot keys for weapons, spells and potions made combat much easier. Then came the familiar gray screen of death; sometimes coming after a meer 30 minutes of gameplay.. othertimes after 2 hours. I saved even more frequently but gave up last night. Trying to go to safe mode crashed my pc. Deleting registries and reinstalling drivers didn't work.


So I then tried to play some Mass Effect 3, because it worked without ever a glitch, right? WRONG.
Somewhere between the new dlc and all the deletion of registries, updating my drivers, I lost the PhysX driver.. which I prevented the game from loading. I found and reinstalled it from the internet but no luck. Maybe re-incarnation is real and I was a bad bad hacker in my last life and in this life i'm meant to suffer with unending pc issues.


I'll probably try to get a new video card (got mine second-hand from my cousin)and see whether that fixes everything. But it makes me realize how much effort I put into gaming and how it could be better invested into other areas like personal fitness or photography. I've decided (at this point) that from now on, if there is a game that is both on the pc and consoles, ill get the console version. 


Maybe board games... they don't crash.

Mass Effect 3: DLC Coming Soon

After 7 hours of installing.. playing Skyrim on my pc is totally worth it.


So Mass Effect 3 is doing a rather good job at keeping players playing their game by providing weekly incentives to play multiplayer, whether it be by providing extra experience, chances to buy special gear packs. Very mmo-ish. Love it. They need to do this more with non-mmo games.
So while alot of people hated the ending (it wasn't 'that bad' people) and the day one DLC, they are making it up with a free dlc next week.

Ooo interesting races to play.. and Krogan Vanguard? Yes please!

Think Day 1 DLC is evil though?
A senior producer at Gearbox (Borderlands), doesn't think so.
I guessss thats one way to put it.

I may not like day 1 dlc, but with screenshots like this... it'll ensure I get Borderlands 2 on day 1 ;)

Missing: Wrex

I thought that I could make it through Mass Effect 1 all the way to 3 so that I could see the different characters than my first playthrough with a pregenerated charcter.... no. Even my love of Wrex can't make me go through the horri-bad gameplay in ME1. Sure, four years ago this was amazing, an over the shoulder a-la Gears of War  game that was also more sci-fi and an rpg game. But as technology progresses, our tastes in gaming evolves and we expect more.

Things that needed change:
- No reloading? Oh yeah, forgot about the lore about how ammo is all based on heat and that ammo is little shavings that essentially is unlimited. That didn't help when I kept pressing R to reload.. and instead always threw a grenade.. right at my squad members..

- No dodging. Oh man.. it is painful.. even in GoW1 I believe there was dodging/rolling. It wasn't a smooth transition between being in cover and not. I absolutely hated the cover combat system that ME1 has; small differences (smoothness, the ability to jump from cover to cover, not needing to crouch) made ALL the difference.

- Limited sprinting. So used to ME3 unlimited sprinting, it made being a Vanguard much easier at earlier levels when your melee style abilities had you vulnerable.

- Slow ability recharge. I created an engineer and remembered why I played a Sentinel before; abilities recharge too slowly! 1 minute recharge? What, are we living in the middle ages? In the beginning onslaught in ME3 while you wait for the Normandy to pick up you and Anderson, I could cast Incinerate every 1.5 seconds!

- Long elevator rides. I thought the long elevator rides in ME1 was just because my computer/processor at the time was slow.. but it was actually designed that way. Yuck.

- Driving the Mako.. lordie.. annoying.. and on the planet where you find Liara, it doesn't autosave in correct spots, so when I died from a mini-boss battle, I started at the beginning of the planet again.


We may complain about the loose ends in ME3, but the game has come a LONG way and is an incredible jump in gameplay experience than the original.

Unexpected Choices

!!!Spoiler Warning!!!


Note: Everything below may have happened(and things may have not happened) b/c I wasn't able to connect to the EA servers


First off, I had this impression of something horrible happening at the end of Mass Effect 3 that would make me instantly rage quit.. it didn't happen. I was treated to a long cutscene.. and was left with a bit of confusion.. and mild disappointment.


Confusion b/c there didn't seem to be any resolution to my choices in the game; normally they have a prologue of your choices and how that affected the galaxy, instead its just your crew having crash landed on a planet.. all safe.. despite the fact that 2 of them with you on the final assault that left everyone dead and Shepard crippled.


So the biggest spoiler is right here, and Shepard 'dies.' But! Is he/she really dead? Do you remember the movie X-Men: The Last Stand? Magneto is injected with the serum that makes him lose his mutant powers, and at the end he's playing chess against himself in the park. You see in the brief moment at the end how he's still able to use his powers when he moves the chess piece. Cut to black. Just like that movie, the same is done in ME3 in that you see Shepard's crippled body and in that brief moment you see/hear him gasp.


Then there is a conversation of man and child of (what I guess) was Shepard's story. Whether the older person is actually Shepard or not, we don't know. The retelling of the story ends, and the child wants to hear another story. The man goes on to say how there is another story.. and it then goes to Shepard, back on the Normandy in the CIC.


-----


When I heard it would be a dark ending I admired Bioware for having the courage to take it that way, but being able to continue to play after the ending really broke immersion. If you're dead, you're dead. Even with the last gasp.. the galaxy is saved. Done. Closed story.


I'll be playing Mass Effect from the beginning all the way to number 3 again.. but after going back to Skyrim (200 game hours later..)


-----


What happened in your version of ME3?
- Shot Ashley b/c she didn't believe me
- Let the Geth beat the Quarians and couldn't save Tali
- Mordin released the cure for the genophage but died as well
- Shot the Illusive Man
- Slept with Liara

Mass Effect 3 Spoiler - That Singular Moment

Have you ever played a game that made you cry out in surprise or horror? Normally we are cursing or screaming when we die or are in an unfair situation, but to evoke emotion from the plot, is quite impressive. And that is exactly what Bioware did today.


!Spoiler Warning!


You've read alot about how people are unhappy with the ending of the game, how they is a petition to change it. People are upset that you've won the game, but the ending isn't that Shepard is alive and the super hero that he was in the previous two games. Its something much much different. Something alot of people cannot accept because it has never really happened in a game.


There are alot of people that die in this game. Brave, selfless people, sacrifice themselves to protect those that they love from a menace of unfathomable power and evil. 


I saw a turian commander, manually disarm a planetary bomb but fall to his death with it. He save millions of lives but is gone. Or a krogan commander distract a group of modified rachni to save his own troops and Shepard, only to be ripped apart. Shepard even needed to kill a dear friend to save councilors from an insidious plot.


On a most dangerous mission, we needed to disperse a pathogen into the atmosphere that would allow the Krogan to be able to breed again. But the tower that would do so was self destructing. You kinda guessed at the back of your mind what would happen.. but one of your favorite characters was still in it. He was going to release the pathogen and become a hero. He rushes into the tower's top floor, cracks the code, shuts down the hidden traps and releases the pathogen. He did it. He smiles. Blink.


BOOM.


And you cry out.
No!
You stare hard at the screen, wide-eyed in disbelief... he didn't make it.
He's gone.
And then there is only grief and sadness; another great person.. gone.


I realized at that moment, that is ME3, is a very different game than anything else i've ever seen. Its dark. Noir. And also that Bioware must be commended; there was only one other time I can think of a game that evoked an emotion as powerful as grief, and that was Wolfenstein (when the zombies started coming through the walls; fear). Fear is easy to evoke, grief and shock is something totally different. Its not a good feeling at all.

Shepard has a few really messed up dreams which shows his state of mind. He grieves for all the innocent people that have died. The comrades that have sacrificed themselves for the greater good. And how he is lives with survivors guilt. You've never seen this before in a game. But you understand what he's going through. You feel it, deep inside.

I kind of am afraid of what is to come; if great people like that scientist will die.. who else will. What else will Bioware make me feel? 

Mass Effect 3 - 3 Reasons to Buy it

Is it a bit too late for my take on ME3?

Perhaps.

But maybe there are alot of people on the fence on whether they should start a game that is the third of a series. Kinda like watching the last movie of the Lord of the Rings.. wouldn't it make more sense to watch the previous two first to understand whats happening?

First off:

If you like Gears of War TYPE of combat which is real time, fast paced, CLOSE over-the-shoulder view, slightly futuristic, with great cutscenes, then this game may be for you.

Whats interesting is in this latest iteration, they have 3 different modes; not the usual, easy, normal and hard modes, but Action, Roleplay and Cinematic, to cater to the type of player.

What GoW players may not be used to is the assigning skill points.. something us mmorpg players are accustomed to.

Second:
New melee moves which cater to people (me) that like to get up close and personal with enemies with classes such as the Vanguard. Countless times i'd biotic charge into a group of enemies, not defeat them all and rely on my shotgun to defeat them all. Its ok if your squad members fall, as you can revive them, but when you fall, the mission fails.


Third:
Increased Replayability via a multiplayer mode. Once again taking a page out of GoW or even Halo ODST, you and 3 other players can join up and defeat 11 waves of enemies.


There is a slew of customization options granted from earning credits (completing various objectives during those waves) that allow you to buy 3 different levels of chests which hold 'health potions' to 'one time use upgrades' , new weapons, cosmetic upgrades, etc.


It is also different each time you play with different maps, different enemy groupings (human commando, monstrosities, reapers) and different objectives that one will encounter. Objectives such as search and destroy, capture the flag-ish (maybe more like king of the hill vs enemies), and the always fun, last round in which you have to hold off endless enemies while you wait for your shuttle to pick you up.


There are flaws (obviously) with the game *coughOriginInstallationcough*, but we can leave it for another day. Those are the 3 biggest improvements and reasons I can give to giving it a try now instead of 1 year later (tho your friends may still be playing it).

Rare Jewel

Or sometimes we're even luckier and then play with us too.

The Search Continues

Ugh. I can't think of anything to write about these days.
                                   
Searching searching... searching.. for something..

Been playing Wakfu.. thats about it.

A Mass Effect planet?

Video Day!

Some interesting videos you may or may not have seen for some games i'm looking forward to:

A video on exercise that I like: