T w e n t y S i d e d

“Don’t try what you’re about to see us do at home.”

“We’re what you call ‘idiots’.”

If you want to know a bit more about Mumbles, check out the post on her blog where she talks about joining the cast of Spoiler Warning and gives a bit of her gaming background.

I tease the other cast members about how they make me feel old. When you can’t see someone, you’re not constantly thinking about their age and background. I’ve never met any of them in person, and they’re all fairly mature. So I forget how old they are and treat them like same-age peers most of the time. But then suddenly one of them will mention something crazy, like how they were a kid when the Nintendo 64 came out, and I’ll suddenly be reminded of our huge age differential. (Not as huge as some, but still.) So I keep saying annoying old-man things to them.

“Hey, I met my wife the year you were born.”

“So wait, you’re YOUNGER than Tetris?!?”

“Please tell my you’re joking about not seeing Back to the Future.”

“My oldest daughter turns 13 in about a week. You’re closer to her age than to mine.”

They’re all good sports about my sudden revelations regarding my own mortality. And I had a point to all of this but I’ve forgotten it now.

Oh, right. Mythbusters is awesome.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So they filled the dialog in the game with irrational confrontational hostility. I suppose that’s easier that familiarizing themselves with the first game and learning characterization. (I totally need a fanboy rage emoticon. Pretend I do, and that I used it here.)

On the upside, an old foe returns in this episode, and you’ll never geth who it is.

I have to say I liked the bright sunlight mechanic. I wouldn’t want to put up with it for the whole game, and of course your AI companions aren’t actually properly programed to deal with it (I really hope they’re immune) but I thought it was a worthwhile idea for mixing things up. If you compare Mass Effect 2 to a lot of cover-based shooters, it’s actually a pretty smart game. Compare it to the mind-enema that is Kayne & Lynch to see how monotonous it could have been.

I’m really curious how BioWare views their play for the shooter market. Was this imposed by EA? Did it work to their satisfaction? Are they going to veer back towards more RPG elements now that they’ve “hooked” this new audience, or are they thinking they’ve hooked us RPG players (which, okay, they totally have) and can keep courting the Gears of Kayne & Killzone fans? I know a lot of us raged against this game, but did they even notice? Do they even see the thematic shift of the series as something that needs to be fixed, or are they saying, “Sales are good, keep doing what we’re doing”. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at one of their meetings.

Or, I guess, just employed there. Actually that would be way better because then I wouldn’t be a fly.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

You know, I don’t hate this game nearly as much as Fallout 3, although you couldn’t tell that from our conversation. For the record, Fallout 3 was a vortex of mind-numbing stupidity where the setting, the characters, the premise, and the story were irritating and infantile. Mass Effect 2 was merely a disappointment. Really, I wouldn’t have been nearly as irate with the game if its predecessor hadn’t been so good. If the next Gears of War game aspired to the Mass Effect 2 level of storytelling, I’d be overjoyed.

Sadly, you can’t really modulate criticism to account for this. We either comment on something or we don’t.

Oh, now that you’ve watched the show I guess I should point out that there was a pretty heavy Jade Empire spoiler in there. So I hope you skipped over that. Yeah. Someone spoiled the plot of Jade Empire. I don’t remember who. I think it was Rutskarn.

Yeah, pretty sure it was Rutskarn.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

You know what they say about assuming control. It makes and ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘the writers’. Or something. I actually forget how that one is supposed to go.

Also, Rutskarn has proven his mastery of all stirge-related subject matter. You guys aren’t going to let him out-nerd you like that, are you? NERD?

I can’t help but wonder about that giant sun behind the illusive man. I like to think there’s some site on the galactic web that just has all of these holographic themes you can use for your orbital doom station. Last week he was scheming in front of a waterfall. Before that it was hot air balloons. This week it’s a red sun. Next week it’ll be Elcor Girls of 2185.

And people say he doesn’t like aliens.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.