T w e n t y S i d e d
Link (YouTube) |
I think of all the ways your Star Wars adventure can end, “Killed in a popup” is perhaps the lamest. Come on, BioWare. At least show us a shitty animation. Or put some flavor text in the box. Something.
Half Time CH8: Elf Esteem
Nobody could possibly predict how humiliating this match was going to become. Not even me.
Next to my beside table, a dozen fresh red rosesâ€"broken at the base of the stems. Thinking of you. Love, the guys. Beneath that is the name of every loan shark on the seaboard and the card of a local apothecary.
Just when you start to think no-one cares.
My trousers are only half-on when my hand, operating on its own sound judgment and muscle memory, finds a bottleneck. But my brain cell is still in charge–and it votes to leave the liquor be and go up there to face this incredibly unfortunate day sober. After all, my team is counting on me. I haven’t been able to fix that yet.
It’s a long climb up the stairs to the locker room, where my team has been having a last-minute pregame clambake. Wide, moist eyes look up from an improvised and building-code-violating ersatz coalpit. Did I have a speech prepared? I did? Well, screw that. This was not a morning for last night’s speeches. If I was going to face this sober, so were they.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Half Time CH8: Elf Esteem”
Experienced Points: The Fallout 4 Intro Is A Mess
My column this week is on the completely patronizing intro for Fallout 4. It doesn’t talk about anything we haven’t already seen in a trailer, it should be safe to read even for the spoiler-shy.
A more complete (and spoiler-heavy) overview of the intro follows: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: The Fallout 4 Intro Is A Mess”
Diecast #129: Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4
Direct link to this episode.
Hosts: Josh, Shamus, Mumbles. Episode edited by Rachel.
Whoops. Rachel left about four minutes of dead air on the tail end of the podcast. In her defense, she edited the show while sick, and her computer crashed and forced her to start over at the halfway point. I figured it was better to let it slide than to wake her up and make her re-encode the whole thing. You understand.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #129: Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4”
Knights of the Old Republic EP30: Is it Naked Time Already?
Link (YouTube) |
I love the entire conversation with the sand people. It wouldn’t be terribly interesting if we could just talk to him directly, but HK-47 is able to give this layer of meta-commentary about what things are touchy subjects and what concepts would be hard for the other side to comprehend. The HK dialog is doing triple duty: It characterizes HK, it does some Sand People worldbuilding, and it relates the details and rationale of your next task.
Knights of the Old Republic EP29: 30 Repair Parts!
Link (YouTube) |
Man, I just never got the hate for this philandering hunter. The game seems to think you’ll relish killing him / letting him die. Bastila is even down for killing him, and I’m not sure why. Is she THAT into monogamy?
You could say this option is there for Sith characters, but this sort of leads into just how lame and petty the Sith options are in this game. Can you imagine (say) Darth Maul or Vader showing up and choosing to let this guy die because he’s an unrepentant cad? Or maybe Count Dooku saying, “THIS is what you get for being unfaithful to your own wife!” That’s just weird.
Then again, you’re kind of supposed to bump into this guy in town before you come out here, and I don’t remember doing so as a female character. It’s possible he comes off as such an awful creep that you WISH you could attack him, thus setting up this moment of evil catharsis? I don’t know.
Also, the credits list me as being from “Space-Ireland”, but it turns out I’m actually a city in Iran somehow?
Mass Effect Retrospective 22: Under New Management
Mass Effect 2 is a strange game. As the previous entries made clear, some of the writing is smart, witty, and interesting, and other parts of it are appallingly clumsy, idiotic, and tone-deaf. It’s not that the quality follows a broad gradient, it’s that the quality is incredibly modal. If you’re in a bad scene, then everything is generally bad: Characters can’t maintain a consistent personality or motivation, the player dialog becomes railroading and doesn’t line up with the prompts on the dialog wheel, established rules are discarded carelessly, and important details go unexplained. Then you get to the next scene and suddenly the characters behave sensibly, your dialog wheel is useful, the universe stops contradicting itself, and your actions are given proper context and justification.
It’s like having slices of Michael Bay’s Transformers interspersed with scenes from Gattaca, or Moon. It’s maddening.
We’re going to look over the main plot of Mass Effect 2, but instead of viewing facts in isolation as a first-time player would be forced to do, we’re going to examine them in light of things that are revealed later. We’re also going to examine the plot missions in order, instead of doing them with a half-dozen recruitment and loyalty missions between them.
Also, we’re probably going to re-tread a couple of things I said about the opening of Mass Effect 2 in previous entries, because I really want the through-line of the plot all in one place. Sorry about that. I’ve been editing this as I published it, but I can’t go back and re-arrange stuff that’s already published. (Well, I could, but it would be chaos.) Hopefully this isn’t too annoying or distracting.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 22: Under New Management”
From The Archives:
Could Have Been Great
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Resident Evil 4
Who is this imbecile and why is he wandering around Europe unsupervised?
Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
DM of the Rings
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
Borderlands Series
A look at the main Borderlands games. What works, what doesn't, and where the series can go from here.
Zenimax vs. Facebook
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
Artless in Alderaan
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
Stolen Pixels
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.