T w e n t y S i d e d
For those of you sick of the elevator & loading screen discussion, you’ll be glad to know that we’re back to slagging the Mako instead. Also, chest-high walls, plot-driven doors forcefields, and blackjack-style number puzzles make an appearance. It’s like the all-star edition of gaming tropes!
Spec Ops: The Line
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
Control
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
Mass Effect Retrospective
A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
Game at the Bottom
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Mass Effect 2 doesn’t let you change gender when you import a character. It does let you change class.
Gender is the only thing that you set BEFORE the first scene in ME2, because Shephard talks. You don’t get to look at him/her due to clever helmet placement, but you get to hear him/her.
So your gender is set in stone before you get to the part where you can fiddle with stuff.
That being said, there are plenty of female Renegades available for download online.
Compared to elevator jokes, the Mako humor is top floor!
I read that, paused, read it again and then gave an AUDIBLE GROAN.
What can I say, bad humor really gives my spirits a lift.
SEE?
You’re really taking it to a new level with the puns, though.
STOP ENCOURAGING HIM!
But I want to see how high we can raise the bar! Besides punning is such an elevating experience, it does indeed lift the soul.
I can see this is pushing buttons, so I think I’ll stop before I get the shaft.
Your puns have created a one-way drop in the quality of the comment pages. (kidding).
The cargo bay door pressure puzzle: I remember this basic puzzle at least as far back as the Zork series (at least Zork 2, might have been some version in Zork 1.)
King’s Quest 3 also featured a variation of it.
“That’s what should be in this game: Samuel L. Jackson”: SLJ should be in everything. I am firmly convinced that everything is better with Samuel L. Jackson.
Tali’s tool: She’s a Quarian. She’s going to hack into my power armour’s environmental system and make me breathe sulphuric acid!
Not enough grenades: Melee attacks are equally effective at taking out the crazed colonists as grenades are. I actually tend to save grenades for clusters of creepers, who are insta-killed by the Anti-Thorian gas grenades.
@Tali’s tool: That is a tech power I could really go for.
My first Shepard was Samuel Shepard, who basically looked like SLJ. It was quite awesome.
This was a rather boring episode, but that’s mostly for the boring stuff you have to do in Feros. It’s mostly driving around in the Mako, and there’s only so much bitching you can do. But we seem to agree on the episode’s highlight :)
Also, kudos to Factoid for the “vertical alteration device”, that really made me laugh.
nah, it was funnier than the last episode. There were more than a few funny comments. I liked it
Agreed on it being funnier than the last one. I think the quality of the episodes depends largely on the content of the game, for me for example the most boring episode was the one where basically all they did was go around the ship getting through all the conversations with the hitchhikers they’d picked up.
Which is odd, because for me those were the most interesting parts of the game.
Finally, I had rewatched the episode where Randy pilots the Mako for the first time right before watching this — I think a lot of my amusement can be attributed to that.
I need to spend some time this week practicing driving the mako so I can be back to good at driving it for virmire
Even though Virmire is like the easiest Mako section in the game. Wide open spaces, no instant death chasms you can just drive into (although if you jump over the rocks you can drown in the ocean), no crazy physics objects to send you flying…
No pillars to do front flips into for no apparent reason whatsoever…
Tali’s Threatening Omni-Tool: Liara threatens them by glowing an aggressive shade of blue. It’s awesome.
Talking Jeong down: The only reason it’s even vaguely worth it is the reactions of your crew members. And a bunch of Paragon (or Renegade, if you’re into that) points, I guess; you don’t get anything but satisfaction from killing him. On the other hand, if you can Charm/Intimidate him, you probably don’t really need the extra points anyway. (Oddly, you get more Renegade points for Intimidating him into not dying than you do for murdering the asari the Thorian tried to eat.)
Grenades vs. Colonists: I *never* use grenades, outside of raiding the colony on Feros, so I always go in with the max and have no reason to hold back (afterward, they’re just going to sit in my inventory and rot), plus you can pick up a few more about halfway through. The main reason I don’t care for that segment is worrying about collateral damage.
By the way, are you going to do Bring Down the Sky?
“(Oddly, you get more Renegade points for Intimidating him into not dying than you do for murdering the asari the Thorian tried to eat.)”
In a way that makes sense to me. Jeong is this thick-headed greedy bastard that’s very hard to manipulate your way, and you’d have to be perfect at intimidating to cut him down figuratively, instead of literally. While the Thorian’s asari thrall accepts her death without any resistance or even so much as a complaint.
you guys do realize that editor extraordinaire is spelled wrong, yeah?
cuz i keep thinking its part of the joke, how he’s the editor and hasn’t spell-checked.
but im not sure.
so.
yeah.
anyways, feros is the worst mako driving spot in the entire game, i think, cuz its so easy to run off the edge of that highway thing.
there are some moments when you all pause and just sorta sit in silence in the videos lately, which is a bit annoying.
but thats a minor nitpick, the videos are only improving with mako front-flips and such!
XD
Why on earth would I use spell check? It’s not like I write for an online magazine or anything ridiculous like that!
*ehem*
But yes, sarcasm aside, I do like to have little creative credit bits in each episode, but I always seem to have more trouble coming up with ones for myself than for Shamus and Randy, and that’s my fallback credit. So yeah, consider it part of the joke.
sweet as :P
also, if you had played that section, would you have gone renegade on jeong, too?
i dont recall if you stated it in the video or not…
Loving the Evil
On the gender-bender issue. You can’t change the sex of the imported character at the start of ME2, though appearance and class you can futz with.
I think you should change Conan to female for ME2 just to mix it up. That means using a save editor. Since you’re romancing Liara in ME1 it works well in that regard too.
Maybe it’d because my first shep in ME1 was female, but I really prefer the female one — especially the voice acting.
Ah I enjoyed this so much. I REALLY can’t wait for next episode. I’ve always played through as a paragon, so not only is it interesting to see what the renegade options look like, the coming massacre will be my vicarious revenge on all those damn colonists I had to gas-grenade and knock out with my rifle butt. (Rifle butting them is way easier than using the grenades, btw, you just have to make sure you’re close enough so you don’t accidentally shoot them instead.)
Are you guys planning to continue the Spoiler Warning series after ME? Any idea what game you’d do next if so?
Oh, we may have a few ideas on where to go next…
Like Dragon Age: Origins?
I mean, a game where you can do a threesome in a bordello with cross-dressing somethings is bound to have a lot of laughs elsewhere too ;)
Kinda funny how DA:O is more “mature” in that sense than ME, although ME2 kinda raises the bar for the ME series.
Oh and DA:O has plenty chances of being a major asshole heh…(slaughtering a village of elves comes to mind), TAKE THAT LEGOLAS!
And with the lack of PC voice acting they can read out the dialogue lines with and extra helping of HAM.
Edit: is Brian Blessed available?
Great episode, gentlemen!
With respect to your gas grenades to stun the colonists, you are aware that when you reenter the colony proper, there is a container filled with extra grenades, right?
WARNING: Melee attack knocks out colonists without killing them.
yeah, I was wondering about that. Never ran out of grenades here before.
Wrex, white and orange is SO not your look… At least it’s still better than the Phoenix armor though. (White and pink. White and PINK. On a Krogan.)
On Jeong: Yeah, Jeong is SO a good place to build up Renegade points for a Paragon. He’s one of the few people in ME that TOTALLY deserves a punch to the face/bullet to the groin.
From ME1 to ME2: As others have said, you can’t change your gender when importing a game. (The other is your name.) Although there’s a way to modify your save game so you can change the name that way; don’t know if people have found a way to change gender yet.
I’ve said it before, but Krogan only get really super tough to kill on higher difficulty settings, because they get really high level and have access to Master Immunity, which cuts down all damage to them by 80%. And that’s BEFORE the damage reduction granted by their heavy armor. With MI on, Krogan can end up taking 0 damage from most sources.
On the Scorpion armor: It’s DESERT camo! :P With black stylish highlights.
On the Geth ship falling like a rock: Maybe they diverted the ship’s power to run all those things in the building, so the engines were dead?
On the Mako’s carrying capacity: Dammit! You guys totally made the seating joke I was going to make! >.<
On grenades for the Creepers: As others have pointed out, you can also melee the colonists to knock them out. You guys probably also haven't been buying up all the grenade upgrades. By this point in the game, I had 10 grenades, more than enough for all the colonists. It's still more satisfying to pistol whip all the colonists though. XD
Scorpion armour was probably my favourite in the game in terms of looks next to the end game armour, which was cool since it was… well black.
Also I get the feeling instead of Randy pistol whipping the colonists he’ll be… pistol shooting them right in the face.
The fact that meleeing them knocks them out rather than killing them explains alot…….
Obviously you’ve not read the Mass Effect Guide to the Galaxy where it clearly states that planets without black-sand deserts are very rare, and considered to be bad luck to land on by most civilized races. :)
As you make your way back to the colony, at the bottom of the stairwell and mini-tunnel that leads to it (just after you reenter the colony), you can get more grenades on the right.
Not that anyone cares – because punching the colonists in the face as has been said is such an uplifting experience.
It’s great how you’re going full Chaotic Stupid with this. Soon the galaxy will fall under the bootheels of Conan Shepard!
“And it barely works on a PC.”
Wait, what? Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please, and include the age and robustness of the hardware. I’m running an older Dell with Vista Home Premium, and both ME games have played just fine (beyond gameplay and plot flaws, which are endemic to all versions).
ME was notorious for running poorly, long load times, poor framerates. This was an ongoing issue. Many people commented that ME2 looked better AND ran better.
I don’t know. Maybe hundreds of people were lying just to annoy you.
Maybe they also didn’t come around and make it fail on the hardware I was using. All I’m asking is what “it barely works on a PC” meant as I had no problems that kept me from playing the game.
I also didn’t play ME1 when it was first released, waiting until the big holiday sale on Steam. If they ironed out some bugs, great. If not, well… I can’t help that. Other than the elevator sequences, I didn’t see a whole lot of differences in load times between the two.
Sorry if that ruffled some feathers, but I found it an odd comment as it was just left hanging without any further snarkiness that highlighted specifics. So I’m guessing all of those people who it just didn’t work for never finished the game, then? Is there a relief fund we can donate to or something?
ME1 ran perfectly on my PC too, but then I bought it at the same time you did, which was after I had acquired a computer made of magical obsidian by the proud dwarves of Middle Earth.
I so wanted one of those, but I couldn’t afford the mithril case. :)
And I’m still running Vista 32-bit. I’ve got a Win7 upgrade package, but since I have e-mail, art files, and misc. galore to back up, I want to schedule some possible down time before taking the plunge and getting full use of my RAM and processors.