Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Oct 3, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 40 comments

 Mass Effect EP5: Failure is the Only OptionPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP7: The Gate's Guarded, Time for Corporate Espionage! 

Remember back in Mass Effect The First, when BioWare made annoying characters and then gave you the means to show your disdain for them? You could try to reason with the council, or you could hang up on them and laugh. How much better would it have been to be able to hang up on The Illusive Man in Mass Effect 3? You have a few annoying conversations with him, but it’s obvious the writer has just pinned you in place so you can listen to TIM talk about himself for a couple of minutes. If they’re feeling really generous, the writers give you a chance to say, “Nuh-uh!” every once in a while.

Gah! Now my Mass Effect 3 complaints are creeping into our Mass Effect 1 series. Someone help me!

Okay. As a way of reconciliation, I’m going to name one thing that ME3 does better than ME1: There’s no sadly excused Tower of Hanoi puzzle.

A small housekeeping matter: Does anyone remember the title of the next episode? Josh titled all of the episodes in Viddler, but at the time I was posting them here as “Episode N”, probably due to laziness. Now Viddler is holding our videos hostage for $lolnowai, and we don’t have the title for the next one. It’s no big deal. We can just give it a new name if we want, but if anyone remembers the original feel free to post it in the comments.

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.

 Mass Effect EP5: Failure is the Only OptionPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP7: The Gate's Guarded, Time for Corporate Espionage! 

40 comments

Oops.

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 2, 2012

Filed under: Notices 38 comments

 Various AnnouncementsPrevious Post

Next PostSpoiler Warning: Now With Playlist! 

I had another post about Guild Wars 2 up for about ten minutes. It was a draft, no screenshots, no wrap-up, no proofing. It’s not going up until Thursday-ish, but instead of hitting “save draft” I hit “publish”, because I’ve only been doing this for seven years and I’m apparently still learning the ropes.

Anyway. Sorry for the confusion and for the three comments that probably got deleted in the process.

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.

 Various AnnouncementsPrevious Post

Next PostSpoiler Warning: Now With Playlist! 

38 comments

Mass Effect EP5: Failure is the Only Option

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 2, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 51 comments

 Mass Effect 3 EP19: Walk it OffPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP6: And if That Don't Work, Use More Gun 

Close your eyes and imagine a graphics card. Picture a nice, high-end card, preferably something in red. Perhaps it’s inside a computer, humming along, the fan spinning, processing gig-pixels and rendering bling-mapped ray tracings or whatever it is those things do. Can you see it? Good. Now imagine the same card, except on fire. You will notice that the card no longer runs Crysis at max settings. You may also notice that your computer no longer works right and you can’t edit Spoiler Warning episodes this week.

I don’t know what Josh did, but his graphics card is borked and he’s waiting for the replacement to arrive. In the meantime, we’ll just re-post old episodes from season one. Those are just as good, right?

Link (YouTube)

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect EP5: Failure is the Only Option”

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.

 Mass Effect 3 EP19: Walk it OffPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP6: And if That Don't Work, Use More Gun 

51 comments

FTL: Random vs. Skill

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 2, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 148 comments

 FTLPrevious Post

Next PostGuild Wars 2: Story Time 

In my previous post on FTL, I said the game was “dominated” by randomness. More than one person has pointed out that they can win 100% of the time, or nearly so. These comments don’t have the stench of strutting troll-swagger, so I’m sure these players are genuine. So the game isn’t dominated by random chance. Instead, I’ll say that the random noise is so loud that it drowns out the mechanics that a new player is trying to learn.

Part of my problem with the game is the apparent lack of choices. I can’t customize my ship at the outset. This makes starting a new game very boring to me. If I start a new game of Civilization or Master of Orion, I can spend time customizing my faction or picking a good start location. In FTL, you just begin with the same stupid ship* and go back to making the same arbitrary “right or left?” navigation choices. You’ve got to play for a while before you can get back to doing interesting stuff and testing your theories. “Is this strategy right? Am I doing better? Or was I just lucky this time? I guess I’ll just play six more games before I find out how wrong I am!”

* Until you unlock other, fixed-layout ships.

So the game isn’t random. If you play long enough you’ll discover it’s just grossly unfair, it doesn’t teach you what you need to know, and the difficulty switch should have a little trollface.jpg next to it.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “FTL: Random vs. Skill”

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.

 FTLPrevious Post

Next PostGuild Wars 2: Story Time 

148 comments

FTL

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 1, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 207 comments

 Guild Wars 2: Your First 10 LevelsPrevious Post

Next PostFTL: Random vs. Skill 

In the past I’ve talked about my love for Starflight. To this day, I still habitually type the name as starflt, because that’s what the DOS executable was called. It’s what you had to type to run the game, back in the days when you had to do things like type words to make a computer do something. I’ve spent years thinking about how the design could be updated and improved. As luck would have it, FTL ends up looking a lot like that mental design document.

And yet, I can’t stand it. I really can’t.

Note that a lot of people love this game. Josh and Jarenth talked about it almost constantly, even while we were playing Guild Wars 2 together. If you’re susceptible to the particular charms of this game you ought to be able to enjoy a prolonged period of obsession like they did. I wanted to like it. The game is a labor of love by a two-person team with some seriously retro sensibilities. Normally that’s the short route to my heart.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “FTL”

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.

 Guild Wars 2: Your First 10 LevelsPrevious Post

Next PostFTL: Random vs. Skill 

207 comments

Experienced Points: Tropes vs. Women Protagonists

By Shamus Posted Sunday Sep 30, 2012

Filed under: Column 285 comments

 Experienced Points: How Massive Multiplayer Should WorkPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Procedural Stories 

In my column this week, I gently criticized the proposed Tropes vs. Women video series. This is a very touchy subject. It shouldn’t be. Sarkeesian herself has become a lightning rod and a lot of the discussion about her Kickstarter revolves around trying to discredit her. To be fair, not all of her critics are hate-filled troll monsters. Some of them are very reasonable and calm.

I don’t think the debate should be about her for the same reason that I never wanted the DRM debate to be about me. We’re talking about ideas, and that interests me. Even if Anita Sarkeesian is every bit the fraud her critics claim, it doesn’t really invalidate the debate itself. It’s just another Ad Hominem attack in a debate that’s already got way too much Ad Hominem vs. argumentum ad verecundiam.

This column was my own attempt to move the spotlight from her and her critics to the ideas I find so interesting. This is also why I try to keep the conversation positive. I’m not accusing anyone of of being outright misogynist. I’m pointing to a problem and hoping we can have a discussion that revolves around solutions.

The usual excuse – and I’ve already gotten a few responses to this effect – is that action games aren’t made for women because women don’t want to play action games. Everyone knows that anecdotes are the most reliable form of scientific study, so here’s mine:

A few night ago, my daughter was playing Left 4 Dead the other night with her friends. The gender breakdown of the players was 3 females and 1 male. Most of her gaming time is spent with other females. So females are playing, but they’re mostly playing with each other.

I’m not saying the split is 50/50, I’m saying the split is unknown and nobody has a really good way of finding out. And we have no way of knowing how much more even the split would be if online interactions weren’t so poisonously hostile and crude. And it might be better still if most action games weren’t stories where a man gets to be the big hero and the women are relegated to secondary importance. And no, I’m not saying those stories are invalid or that they shouldn’t be made. And obviously I’m not saying games need to be split 50/50. I’m just suggesting that there might be an untapped market out there. Instead of making another attempt to capture the same 18-30 male demo everyone is fighting over, it’s entirely possible that the right AAA game could open some new doors for the hobby.

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.

 Experienced Points: How Massive Multiplayer Should WorkPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Procedural Stories 

285 comments

Mass Effect 3 EP19: Walk it Off

By Josh Posted Saturday Sep 29, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 163 comments

 Mass Effect 3 EP18: Our Buddy HackettPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP5: Failure is the Only Option 

Link (YouTube)

Wherein Bailey survives a gunshot wound by being TOO BUSY TO DIE. Also, Shepard is an owl and Cerberus attacks the center of galactic government with shuttles.

Welcome to the Stupid. Enjoy your stay.

So, spoilers, Udina wants to take over the Citadel and declare himself dictator so he can circumvent the bickering, useless council and actually save the galaxy. Not necessarily an ignoble goal, especially with how terribly useless the council has been, even if he’s using Cerberus to get what he needs.

Though why anyone would rely on Cerberus for anything is a completely different problem.

I didn’t necessarily have a problem with this turn for his character (aside from relying on Cerberus, which is just dumb), and it was even foreshadowed early on if you talk to him after the initial council meeting. He’ll mention how his political clout “can move mountains” but even that won’t be enough to save earth. It makes sense that he might attempt more drastic action given the apocalyptic circumstances. Of course Cerberus can’t run a hotdog stand without everyone dying so that still doesn’t make sense, but I actually rather liked the idea behind this development, even if the execution was lousy. In my mind, it made him a much grayer shade in what is otherwise a tsunami of black and white.

A bit like Saren, actually.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP19: Walk it Off”

Josh Viel is the primary editor and producer of the Spoiler Warning video series. You can support the show by backing the Patreon.