New Year’s* resolution: I promise to have a more positive outlook on games and not just bitch about them all the time.
Link (YouTube) |
Blast it. Well, that resolution didn’t last long, did it?
Maybe next year. Happy new year anyway.
* So, what are we calling this decade? I know we called the previous decade the “aughts”, which was awkward and difficult to the point where people tried to avoid calling it anything at all. Eventually we’ll just call this decade the “teens”, but that feels like we’re getting ahead of ourselves because eleven is not a teen. We shouldn’t call it that until at least 2013. In the interim, I’ve suggested calling the decade “Herbert” but this idea isn’t catching on.
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Crash Dot Com

Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
The onesies:
http://survivingtheworld.net/Lesson324.html
I read most of those a long time ago. Don’t remember where I heard about them.. Should catch up.
Warlord is probably the Krogan title that is closest to mad scientist, it would fit if all their titles of respect have something to do with killing or war of being angry.
Yeah, their recruiting him for his knowledge of the Collectors. I guess Cerberus expected him to be Mordin v2. But with him gone, having the Collector technology inside Grunt is still useful – The Illusive Man mentions later that he understands [or doesn’t; it’s been a while] why you made the decision – he also says it’s your responsibility to take him down if he goes rogue. And in classic “enhancement of humanity” talk, he also notes that he wants the body if you kill Grunt – the technology could help The Illusive Man – I mean, Humanity.
Speaking of which, I’m sure there’s some Mordin/Grunt fanfiction by now. You can’t un-think it; you know it to be true.
“TANK BRED’S HAVE URGES TO” on google.
Can’t be unread.
I found it. I read the whole damn thing.
OH GOD, WHY? NOTHING MORE, JUST… WHY!? WHY!?
…Wow.
Author was bizarrely fond of the word “bundle,” huh?
“The tens” sounds good to me. But 2011 is not the start of a new decade; 2010 was.
This is one of those wonderful culture vs logic debates that nerds love to argue about. Logically, 2010 is the end of a decade spanning 2001-2010. Why? Because the first decade spanned from 1-10.
Culturally, we tend to span our decades with similar numbers. 1990-1999 is a decade since they are all 199*, rather than dropping 1990 for the different 2000. We also like to end things on nice round numbers, so ending decades in years with a final zero appeals to us.
Of course not that any of this has any sort of real practical application. This is mostly just arguing for the sake of argument.
A couple of days ago I saw a TV station promo stating “Welcome to the new decade”, of course this was the same station that 11 years ago celebrated the new millennium on New Year’s Day 2000.
Way to be consistent.
Holy crap, has it been 10 years since the new millennium already!!
Perhaps we’re currently in the Pre-Teens and maybe by 2015 or 2016 we’ll fianlly be in the Teens?
Or maybe we can just go with the pop-child-psychology-magazine vernacular and call it the “tweens” until 2013.
It doesn’t get really bad until 2015, when the millenia’s finally old enough to get it’s driver’s permit.
Side rant: I see this every time we change the decade. I imagine it’s been going on since the Gregorian calendar was adopted. It is, as far as I can tell, griefing through pedantry.
When we talk about “the eighties” or “the seventies” it’s pretty clear which years we’re talking about.
EDIT: Edited for clarity.
Shamus said: rant: I see this every time we change the decade.
Dude! You know you are old when you start ranting about decades.
No kidding, I’ve only seen this phenomena once before this. Though to be fair to the old Gen X’s, it strikes me as silly too.
I certainly wasn’t trying to be pendantic. I’ve actually never known anyone to argue that “the decades” span NNN1-NN(N+1)0, rather than NNN0-NNN9. Thus, I was confused as to why you’d bring up the name of this decade now. By your own comments you seem to agree with the NNN0-NNN9 model.
In 2000, I thought it was appropriate to celebrate the millennium. After all, if you are going to yell when the digits of the calendar change, you might as well yell when all four change (1999-2000), not when just one changes (2000-2001.) And there was Y2K to worry about.
I think we’ll look back at 2011 and call it one of the depression years, like 1930.
Funny you mention that,but in my city there was this “millennium” clock that was built in the late 2000,a few days before the new year,and when the time came,it switched from 2000 to 1901,and stayed like that for about 20 minutes,before they managed to fix it.
There was a clock on our school website that changed from 1999 to 19100. That was amusing.
Showing clear signs of lazy programming there.
Obviously it was easier to just have the first two digits fixed rather than have the date as a single variable.
Computers didn’t break at least, which is what the media seemed to want to everyone to believe would happen, they just did very weird things.
Nested Disgaea avatars!
I actually saw that. Maybe a breakthrough in my programming logic :D
… Though that actually seems harder to me…
Darn, we can’t make more than three together here!
Though does it only count as two as two are of the same character?
That’s because in Javascript “Date.getYear()” returns the *years since 1900* (so the year 2000 returns 100). Later fixed with “Date.getFullYear()”. In a variation, pasting together text uses “+” as well, so it’s super easy to type ‘”The year is “+1900+now.getYear()’, which gives you “The year is 190011”, but at least you saw that problem before 2000, so it doesn’t get released to the public.
That’s awesome. Its sole purpose was to roll in the new millennium and they biffed the date conversion?
Even funnier(or scarier,if you want)was the fact that no one from media even dared to mention that,nor did they even mention the clock that they were praising for days before the day came.So only those that were celebrating at the square new what a screw up it was.
The National Bureau of Economic Research wants us to believe the recession ended in June 2009…
http://www.nber.org/cycles/sept2010.html
… but the rest of the country scoffs.
Meanwhile, my Amazon stock keeps going up.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to argue with you, I was just going off on a side-subject that had been needling me.
My personal feeling is that we’re in the second year of the “teens” despite the year not ending in “-teen” for two more years. Most of the decade is teens.
Some people are slow on getting the memo about decade changes. It was bad enough when someone would slip and refer to last year as “oh ten” like “oh nine” and “oh eight” before that, but I saw someone say “oh eleven” for this year. Seriously?
the funny part would be if it caught on and we kept doing that for the entire century, then the next century would be the “one XX’s”
2011
Apparently, both are correct.
I haven’t heard “aughts” before, and I can’t say I’m a fan. I’ve heard it called “the noughties” however (generally by Australian TV personalities), which seems to fit the theme so far (if a little ambiguous when spoken).
Onesies, Tensies, whatever. It’ll probably be someone else’s job to name them in ten years time.
2000-2008: the Bush years or Bushies for short. Of course, this may not mean much to people living outside the US.
I haven’t heard it called the aughts before, but it makes sense.
We don’t HAVE to call it the aughts. That’s what 1900-1909 was called, because that’s how people pronounced the zero back then (If you know anything about guns, the 30-06 cartridge is pronounced ‘thirty aught six’ because is was introduced in 1906). Nowadays I think the preferred pronounciation is ‘oh’, like, ‘Way back in Oh Eight, when Obama was elected…,’ though I could see that being different by country.
That being said, I think calling it the ‘Ohs’ sounds silly. Maybe ‘The turn of the millenium’? ‘The 2Ks?’
Don’t say “way back in oh-eight.” It makes me feel old, and I’m only 25 :(
I just don’t call the last decade anything at all. Most of it is best forgotten anyway ;)
This decade is “The Onsies”.
The problem is that last time around everyone was too busy dieing in the great war to name the decade.
Actually, I don’t think anyone bothered naming decades until they wanted to recapture turn of the century optimism after that big mess with the Serbian assassin.
I’m going to nominate Decade 21.2 for this second decade of the twenty-first century.
I totally second the motion to call this decade ‘Herbert’. :D
But its name is Bob!
Yeah, but I like calling it Herbert.
Let’s just compromise and call it “Bob Herbert”.
Actually, that sounds like the name of an advanced AI that will take over the Frank Herbert series of Dune books some day in the future and find more [redacted] directions to take the series.
It’s actually a reference to Fallout 2 (and 3, since Bethesda stole Harold outright). The tree growing out of Harold’s head is named Bob, but Harold calls it Herbert.
Ah yes. That dude was awesome. Fallout 3 didn’t quite come close to beginning to capture it.
Getting senile in my old age.
If only there was a krogan warlord shepard knew from before,even saved his life a few times,wouldnt that be great?
And really,there is someone who looked at your average regular krogan and thought “He just inst enough of a soldier,I need to make a better one”.
Funny thing about grunt being genetically “manufactured” like miranda,he act much more like it,and is overall a more interesting character.
Wrex ain’t canon, son.
Not saying he shouldn’t be, but a certain somebody shot him. At least he’s canon in Spoiler-Warning-continuity.
Further breaking news: A Teenage Mutant Soldier Turtle [sic] is more interesting and engaging than Miranda’s huge tracts of land (because there certainly is nothing else memorable about her character).
I thought the comment about Miranda and Grunt being supposed “perfection” was interesting in that you could probably apply it to almost all the companions. Thane’s been trained since youth as the ultimate assassin, Jack is described as the most powerful human biotic, Samara has hundreds of years of discipline, Legion is some kind of super-geth, Tali is said to be gifted at engineering even for a Quarian, and Garrus is Batman.
Poor Jacob. He never had a chance.
(This is in contrast to your companions in Dragon Age: A nearly novice Grey Warden, an apostate, a poet, a disgraced Qunari, an abomination, a failed assassin, a drunk, and a faulty golem. Yet oddly, I probably like all of them more than most of the ME2 characters.)
But Jacob does have a specialty, he’s the only black guy in space! (Provided you don’t count that one ambiguously brown council guy.)
I’m pretty sure the council guy is Indian.
The whole galaxy is indian!Think about it,yah?Krogan have overpopulated their home planet – indian!Asari have practically invented a new way to do sex,which everyone else wants to try now – indian!Quarians are thought by everyone to be master techs,and they live with their families forever – indian!
The stereotypes burn my brain.
Yet Jacob can stand toe to toe with all of those guys. Maybe he is supposed to be there as the perfect Bad Ass Normal.
I’m guessing there would be a lot more in whatever it was that he was introduced in. Don’t remember what it was, book, comic… iPhone game? *shrug* too lazy to ME Wiki it.
iPhone game. And no, there’s not a lot more there. He’s basically “Shepard Lite (Renegade flavor!)” in that, though you get some nominal options in how far that taste goes in dialogue options.
To be fair, that’s kinda the point. Shepard is trying to build “The ultimate team.” So it makes sense that Cerberus would find you all these ultimate killing machines with high profiles and a well treated history.
And yet she doesn’t recruit Wrex, who is obviously the perfect Krogan, since he’s saving the whole dang species and all.
It’s not that she doesn’t, but that she can’t. Wrex is too busy unifying and entire species on Tuchanka.
Exactly. There’s even a dialogue option where you can ask him to come with you and he turns you down.
Just like Kaiden/Ashley and Liara, as it happens. At least he’s got a genuinely good reason, though. And Liara does get revisited in the newest DLC in a satisfying way.
Yes,here we have a person capable of convincing saren to kill himself,yet they cant convince someone who theyve saved and/or who loves them to come with them and help save the galaxy once more.
It’s easier to persuade your worst enemy than your lover? That sounds pretty realistic, actually.
I, for one, am not looking forward to that particular Rutskarn’s fanfiction.
Also, Mumbles sounds a bit grumpy in this vid… Still hangovers from New year’s, I guess.
As for Grunt – great character, good modelling, very decent voice acting. I am surprised why Grunt’s bottom isn’t the one taking up all the camera spotlight, as opposed to Miranda’s.
Especially since Krogans have those cute little tails.
Mumbles is grumpy because she just saw the pictures of Rutskarn and Garrus under the mistletoe.
I was pretty hung over. The night before I was taking shots of tequila and acing “Video Killed the Radio Star” on karaoke.
Speaking of hung over…I decided, since I’m that kind of guy that has nothing to do on NYE, I would full out do the Drinking Game for last seasons episode “This Ends Prematu” with vodka, and I was so hung over on New Years day.
Not even I am that brave.
Sounds weirdly Awesome.
Explains quite a bit of your post-New Year’s Twitter feed, too.
if you would name Grunt something what would that be i,m thinking Hercules.
I’d go with “Shirley.” Kind of a “Boy Named Sue” kind of thing. He won’t understand it, but he’ll stay pissed off when people laugh at him. And I can keep hoping for someone to say, “Surely you’re not working with Sheppard?” So he can answer, “Yes I am, and how did you know my name?”
in regards to the video comment about the Predators collecting skulls for advancement; yes. or at least prestige. thats what samurai did.
Actually they collected the heads because their lords would pay them for it after the battle was over. The lord kept the head.
It’s the easiest way to collect the material for the “big pile of skulls” any self-respecting overlord needs to have.
Do you hate the hacking minigame so much that you’re willing to sabotage yourself?
The research terminal that you saw but decided to skip had a pretty hefty health upgrade for Grunt.
Yeah, pretty much. I looked at it and was like “Well… no.”
Hey, hacking is decent enough. Bypassing, though, now that’s a pain.
I still find both a vast improvement over the hell that is ME1 hacking and bypassing. At least I am not stuck with Tali through the whole game.
You know that, if you don’t like Tali, both Garrus and Liara can provide decryption and electronics skill?
The minigames, especially Hacking, are much more annoying in 2, IMO. And the ability to bypass with Omnigel, even if didn’t make much sense, was convenient.
Speaking of hacking minigames, I feel there was no more appropriate reintroduction to ME2 than the 20 solid seconds at the beginning where we all wait for the piece of code Josh needs to crawl its agonizingly slow way up onto the screen.
That’s some quality gameplay design right there fellas.
Hey Josh, you should take advantage of the exploding canisters/containers/tanks littered around.
When you move the mouse/sight around yellow boxes will appear, shot at those and things should go boom and do some nice damage.
There was one particular bit where there’s a giant explosive rectangle and he went instead for fine tuning his aim on the much smaller (and less yellow) target of the actual person.
Remember: Dust off and nuke the site from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure. *
* – NOTE: Dusting off is optional. Nuking the site from the site is a perfectly valid way to go.
that would be why Shepard’s almost done that before. Virmire = awesome.
Know what would have been awesome? If Mordin and Grunt had their own loyalty-clack like Legion/Tali and Miranda/Jack.
I mean really, it’d make sense that Mordin, who had a hand in making sure the Genophage works properly, and Grunt, a Krogan bred to be “immune” to it would probably have some sort of confrontation.
If only…
Grunt doesn’t even know about the Genophage, and when he learns of it, he doesn’t care, because he was bred not to care. He was bred to ignore the genophage, so such a scene wouldn’t really make sense.
Now, had the Krogan you recruited been Wrex like it would have been had the game been made by professionals, the scene would be perfect.
Any conversation at all between Wrex and Mordin would be extremely interesting – they have almost opposite approaches and outlooks, plus the whole genophage thing.
And they’re both awesome, so that helps.
True, but that doesn’t mean Mordin would just sit around and not care that a Krogan thats bred to ignore the genophage is sitting right under him. Well 2 floors down from him, but still.
There are references to a conflict in the dialogue files.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMHCuaVrW1I
Bioware just never finished it, and the actual argument’s missing.
On Mumbles’ point about Miranda and Grunt both being engineered to be perfect, Jack probably falls into that as well. After all, Cerberus were trying to make her the perfect biotic. What interests me, though, is how they have three characters with similar stories, but they manage to tell that same concept in such different ways.
Miranda was raised by a tyrannical father who cared only about having her as a sort of trophy.
Jack was tortured into existence by a morally bankrupt terrorist organisation wanting the ultimate beserker.
Grunt was grown by a mad scientist/genius who wanted to bring back the proud warriors of his dying race.
Miranda is driven by her experience to try and help others (her sister/clone) to escape it.
Jack was driven mad by it and just wants to forget and/or destroy everything.
Grunt, judging by his loyalty mission, is mentally just a normal, presuambly intelligent, krogan adolescent, despite being physically perfect.
Same concept told in three different, interesting ways, so that at a first glance you don’t notice the similarities. I’m impressed, Bioware.
The difference is Jack wasn’t genetically engineered like the other two.
Grunt isn’t quite normal, either. He, especially at first, lacks the experiences and motivations of a “normal” Krogan… causes some issues.
Grunt’s scene irritated me in a different way. You see, I picked the Renegade option in the prior conversation, meaning the plan was to vent the hold to space. It made me very angry that Shepard neglected to wear a spacesuit
Lousy thing never worked for her anyway…
Don’t worry, if Shepard gets vented into space with Grunt they can just put her back together again. I just hope they’re not passing by some ice planet in low orbit again when they vent it though.
But wearing a spacesuit isn’t cool.
See: Every single person on your team(except Garrus/Tali). All they do is wear breath-masks. And so long as you have a breath mask, your safe from [i]everything[/i] in space. And on inhospitable planets.
Shepard, Mordin and Grunt also have full helmets.
I just saw Mording with a neckbrace-looking thing whenever I took him to space/toxic planets.
Grunt I’m willing to look away since Krogan can survive in plenty of awful conditions, so I’ll let that pass.
As for Shepard, well I was referring to the team, not Shepard.
Grunt wears a full helmet. He still leaves his arms exposed, but, you know, Krogan. Garrus and Tali (obviously) wear full suits, as does Shepard, and Legion should be fine.
Mordin’s and Zaeed’s at least cover their eyes as well as their nose and mouth, but they’re still leaving skin exposed. And everyone else is just stupid.
Mumbles had a nice insightful literary structure comment on the lack of the salute. I watch you guys for the amusement and the way that you find the various plot flaws with these games and just generally have fun.
Nice to see the random small subtle good things pointed out in a game that spectacularly got the big picture wrong.
Just wondering, since Shamus brought up the “show Miranda’s butt for no good reason” drinking add-on, what would BE a good reason to show it? Aside from bizarre medical condition or wound I can’t come up with a story relevant reason to show someone’s rear.
The oft-sought but seldom-achieved non-gratuitous sex scene?
to be fair, Bioware is usually pretty good about that, and definitely ahead of the curve.
Bioware – good at sex scenes? You must be joking. I still have memories of my Grey Warden trying to ‘get it on’ with Leliana while in full plate armour.
I think that’s a bug. Everyone’s supposed to strip down to their underwear during sex scenes.
I think he meant ‘good at making sex scenes that are not gratuitous’, ie have a point beyond ‘hey look, teh hot!’.
And I don’t think Bioware was that good at it. They used to not even show kisses (mostly because they couldn’t, I guess). And now they have achievements like ‘yeah, you did it with all of them! Woot!’. So no, I don’t think Bioware is very good at keeping sex non gratuitous. But they’re not alone in that.
Hmmm…I remember there was one in fahrenheit*,and thats it.I dont remember any other non-gratuitous ones.And though there are some good places for these in bioware games,they usually opt for the fade to black.Which is why I found dragon age and mass effect ones to be out of place.But Im torn about dragon age though.Some of the romances do make sense,and are satisfying to pursue.
*Not the zombie one,that was simply weird and disgusting.Nor the minigame one with the girlfriend,which was a good and emotional part,but couldve been much better without the minigame,so its on the verge.I meant the one with the cop and his wife.
A monumental fart maybe?
I wonder what a genetically modified fart looks like.Maybe it was designed to be a last resort weapon.Silent but literally deadly?
Miranda’s BEEhind is character development.
right after that she (possibly someone else) says that there is no good reason.
Just a little thing I picked up on regarding Miranda’s accent.
A lot of Americans seem to have trouble differentiating between Australian and English accents. To a Brit she sounds Australian, I’m assuming to an Australian she would sound English.
She’s probably going for Australian seeing as how that’s Yvonne Strahovski’s (awesome name) natural accent.
Her accent seems quite australian to me (just generic european here).. But most americans, I’m afraid, aren’t able to tell an aussie accent unless it’s loaded to the brim with ‘mate’ and ‘barbie’ >.>
To a New Zealander, who are quite familiar with the Australian accent, Miranda is absolutely 1000% Australian. Gratingly, abusively over-the-top Australian. Full offence meant to any Australians :).
To an American, the Aussie/Kiwi rivalry is hilarious to see in action. :D
I’m sure they feel the same way about the ribbing USians and Canadians give each other.
and now in turn I, a European, am amused by the term “USians”..
It’s an Australian accent. A terrible, northern-Queensland Australian accent.
It’s an Australian accent. A Sexy, oh so Sexy Australian accent.
She doesn’t sound british to me, but then I’m not really familiar with any non cliche British accents (strangely enough there aren’t that many here in the land of Oz.)
Also, if you ever write that fanfiction, you have to post it here, so we can all do Spoiler Warning style commentary on it.
Guys, guys, guys. Predators take skulls because they’re all playing World of Predquest. And the only thing the collect quests want are skulls.
This is why it doesn’t have very many subscribers.
Occasionally they want spines as well.
Hey there Shamus,
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and have recently started watching Spoiler Warning as well; even going back and watching through previous seasons. Fallout was a very….long season.
Just thought I’d stop and say that I really enjoy your writing and these productions, keep up the good work!
“doesthisbugyoudoesthisbugyou?”
*Grunt’s eyes suddenly snap open, his hand smashes through the glass and crushes Shepard’s skull*
“Yes.”
Wow, that was the best worst episode ever!
Side Note: Mumbles, I hate you forever now!
was it the boob punch comment? cause i aint taking that back.
Those things probably have the consistency of concrete. You’d break your hand!
Miranda would make a horrible half-ninja, though.
I like Cracked.com’s suggestion of “The Dorkade”. I guess this decade will be the “Tens”? “Teens?”
I always thought it was “naughts” as in naught, 0.
When playing the game I never actually released Grunt. I was trying to roleplay and releasing some unknown engineered superkrogan seemed like a really, really, stupid idea.
I really hope that choice pays off in Mass Effect 3 somehow.
I wish that was the case but I imagine that it won’t. When saving an entire race from extinction only earned a passing comment (and in the ‘official’ new game you killed them) freeing one character will probably just be hand waved.
It’s the last one in the trilogy, so there’s nothing stopping them from going crazy with all the storyline alternatives as preserving future continuity isn’t a problem anymore.
Please don’t call this decade ‘The Noughties’. Then in 30 years, everyone will think it was the Porn Decade.
It wasn’t?
Nope,that was the 70s.
Wow, I called the last decade the “two-thousands,” but I think I’ll call this one the “Herbert” just because that made me laugh so.
…you folks called the last decade the aughts?
Wish that’s what it’d been called everywhere. I’ve had to live with people calling it the “noughties”, which was a sickeningly poor name. sickening!
I wanted to see a sign on Grunt’s tank that says “Do not tap on glass.”