Mass Effect 3 EP25: Finally, Some Action!

By Shamus Posted Thursday Oct 25, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 177 comments


Link (YouTube)

So the Reapers are invading homeworlds. They’re aiding or augmenting the Geth. The galaxy is allegedly running low on resources. This is the worst possible moment for the Quarians to attempt to retake their homeworld.

After reading what other people are saying about this plot, I have to say that the problem isn’t how stupid the Quarians are. As others have pointed out, lots of wars are started for stupid, short-sighted reasons. Perhaps even most of them. I think the problem isn’t that the Quarians are being stupid, it’s that the game isn’t properly justifying this stupid and allowing the player to respond. Shepard just says that this is terrible timing.

What we needed was an argument where the player can express these frustrations:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP25: Finally, Some Action!”

 


 

Mass Effect 3 EP24: Logic is for Sissies!

By Josh Posted Wednesday Oct 24, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 210 comments


Link (YouTube)

Remember that one time where the one species in the galaxy with any kind of proper defense against the Reapers (in the form of being able to just leave) decided to recolonize their lost home world that’s crawling with Cylons (sorry, Geth) because the Council was too busy getting its ass kicked by the Reapers to smack sanctions on them even though galactic trade has broken down on account of Reapers?

I hate you Bioware. I hate you so much.

 


 

Trusting the System

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Oct 24, 2012

Filed under: Game Design 207 comments

In the coming week of Spoiler Warning, we have a conversation about how gradual some of the upgrades are in Mass Effect 3. I’m talking about the things that give 10% more damage, or increase the radius of area damage by half a meter, or other baby-step upgrades. This conversation reminded me of another problem with complex damage systems. As a programmer, this is something that’s been bothering me for ages.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Trusting the System”

 


 

Mass Effect 3 EP23: Dead Civilians for Breakfast

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 23, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 236 comments


Link (YouTube)

Really Hacket? Killing civilians isn’t the M.O. of Cerberus? This is a preposterous claim that goes against every single thing the game has ever shown us about Cerberus, across all three games. Hackett seemed like the last sane man in the galaxy. Now he too has turned into a Plot Zombie, mindlessly believing things that the writers demand without regard to what the game itself has shown us.

They were shooting civilians on Mars. They fed colonists to a thresher maw to test the scientific effects of feeding colonists to thresher maws. They invaded the Citadel and went out of their way to pointlessly shoot up the mall even though the place had no strategic value. They murdered a bunch of people in Mass Effect 1. They tortured and murdered children to make a better biotic. They dumped a bunch of scientists into a dead reaper and didn’t bother checking up on them until the whole team had been turned into husks. In Jacob’s Mass Effect 3 mission (which I think we’re skipping) they’re trying to kill a bunch of of scientists and their families because they want to leave Cerberus, and they want to leave Cerberus because Cerberus is the kind of place that would kill you and your whole family for trying to quit.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP23: Dead Civilians for Breakfast”

 


 

Spoiler Warning: Synergy Part 1

By Shamus Posted Sunday Oct 21, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 73 comments

If you’ve ever wondered what Spoiler Warning would look like without my steady hand on the wheel, this is your chance to find out. Last week I told the crew I was sick, and asked them to go on without me. So they decided to act like… well, you’ll see.


Link (YouTube)

The “Part 1” business makes me think that there might be MORE of this idiocy? I don’t know. Maybe that’s just Josh trolling us on another level? I have no idea. If things go to plan then we’ll be returning to Mass Effect 3 in the coming week.

If you really need something more analytic and less spastic, then check out the new Errant Signal, which is on Photorealism.

 


 

Guild Wars 2: Dungeon Crawl

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Oct 17, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 326 comments

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A while back I talked about how infuriatingly stupid the faction heroes are in Guild Wars 2. I was referring to the story missions, but looking back I realize their really offensive behavior isn’t in the personal quest line, it’s in the dungeons. Their erratic and obnoxious behavior is a side-effect of an overarching problem that plagues Guild Wars 2, which is that the dungeons are awful.

The conventional wisdom is that the dungeons are “too hard”. I hate to say that without qualifiers, because the game is in such an extreme state of flux. Three weeks ago the Ascalonian Catacombs were brutally unfair and senselessly hard. Then I played through it again a couple of nights ago and it had been changed and it was basically tolerable now.

On October 5th, 2012 I got together with this party:

Some of us are naked because our armor has broken from repeated deaths. There’s a cap on how much repairs can cost, so it’s more economical to wait until you’ve got multiple damaged items before fixing them.
Some of us are naked because our armor has broken from repeated deaths. There’s a cap on how much repairs can cost, so it’s more economical to wait until you’ve got multiple damaged items before fixing them.

We had an enjoyably miserable time running face-first into the wall-shaped difficulty spikes, and as part of this bonding experience we all agreed that we should write about it. Here was our group, from left to right:

Jarenth – Level 69 Charr Engineer
Hoffenbachager – Level 80 Norn Mesmer
Myself – Level 80 Human Warrior
JPH – Level 80 Asura Warrior
Krellen – Charr Engineer, later swapped for level 42 Norn Guardian (pictured)

Click on them to read their thoughts on why the dungeon system is broken. Everyone has a slightly different take on it, and they all make for an interesting read. They do a pretty good job of outlining why the dungeon was broken, stupid and unfair, and why most of us aren’t wearing pants, so I’m not going to go over all of that again.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Guild Wars 2: Dungeon Crawl”

 


 

What Women Want – The Mary Sue

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 16, 2012

Filed under: Video Games 291 comments

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You might remember a couple of weeks ago I wrote the column Tropes vs. Women Protagonists. This led to a lot of interesting discussions. It’s a fractally huge subject that creeps into gender politics, marketing, game funding, game design, writing, and platform / market demographics. You could write about this for months and still wind up with uncharted areas of discussion. With this in mind, I posed a few questions at the end of my column, asking, basically, what women wanted.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “What Women Want – The Mary Sue”