[Seldon]

Replayed Mass Effect (the first one) again. It's one of the best movies I've ever played.

I tried a class I didn't use before, but mostly I just wanted to critique the narrative now that the sheen has worn off a bit.

The intro was fairly well put together. I mean, it's already established you're some kind of war hero, so when you started asking people for some expository information to get your bearings, it was done in such a way so that your player character wouldn't come off as uncharacteristically ignorant; e.g. when you (the player) ask about the Protheans, Shepard opens with the line "I thought the Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago" and the good captain fills in some extra blanks. Dialogs with other crew members, at least at the outset, tend to do the same thing.

Once you arrive on the Citadel, information is delivered to you rather bluntly. In one place you enter the embassy of the volus and elcor, who for some reason have to share their space (despite the fact that there seems to be plenty of it on the Presidium as is), probably to suggest that neither species is really held in great esteem. You go in, and there are the diplomats, ready and willing to converse with some random human dude they've never met before. You then have the opportunity of asking very broad, non-specific questions about their species ("Tell me about your culture."). If some alien asked you to describe human culture and history in a nutshell, where would you even start? Also, what kind of diplomat would describe his own people as "tribal by nature", let alone chat up some random stranger from a species he obviously resents? I mean, sure, Shepard probably isn't acquainted with this sort of environment, and maybe it's implied from context that this is an okay question to ask, in light of having to work with aliens, but it feels overly expository. You'd think he'd just read the Codex more or something.

Also, the paragon/renegade scale is loosely affiliated with an unofficial "collaborationist/isolationist" spectrum that pops up here and there. You'd think that a borderline xenophobic/anthropocentric Shepard would alienate practically everyone. Which is probably why this was changed in the sequels.

[Seldon]

Now I'm in ME2, and my main beef with the morality system here is that occasionally the game offers you a choice where either you get +2 Paragon points for saying something that would be polite or appropriate, or +2 Renegade for deliberately going out of your way to be rude (e.g. constantly asserting "this is my ship, I am boss man"). Renegade interrupts are usually rather satisfying, however.

[Seldon]

[Seldon]

On another note, I also continued my Bioshock game for an hour or two, then realized I dislike the game way too much to see it to completion.

[Seldon]

[Seldon]

Now I'm playing Grand Theft Horse.

(I refuse to call it Red Dead Redemption. That name's too pretentious.)

It plays just like GTA, except it's set in the Wild West, with some of it in Mexico during their civil war. The main quest involves shooting some bad dudes or something.

Plenty of stuff to do, usually. Scenery is nice. And it's plenty more fun to ride around the world on a horse than by jacking a car.

The controls are somewhat clumsy. For instance, you can't walk backwards, you have to do a full 180. You generally can't shoot stuff without the snap-to-target feature or Dead Eye mode. And so on. I guess there's only so much you can do with a console third-person shooter. Or maybe I just don't like consoles. Also, not a fan of the collectathon missions.

Anyway, it's still mostly a fun game. Not Game of the Year material, maybe, but still rather enjoyable.

[Seldon]

[Seldon]

Assassin's Creed 2.

This game was obviously optimized for consoles. There's snap-to-everything mechanics, and the movement feels like it was meant to be played on a dual-stick controller. Also, in the beginning it didn't explain what the "high profile", "unarmed hand", "head", and other buttons were right away. Confusing, but not much of a learning curve since most actions only require 3 or 4 buttons anyway.

It's a beautiful game, but it feels so awfully contrived at times. Obstacle courses follow one predetermined path. Every so often when you explore a Templar dungeon you end up chasing a dude as he closes gates behind you, presumably to kill him before he alerts the rest of his buddies, but he always manages to get to the end anyway. (The game actually disables ranged weapons during this sequence, too.) Wanted posters of you are affixed to the wall using arrows and are on rooftops. Also, the game likes to make it clear that the Templars are Unambiguously Bad Dudes. The people you hunt down are liars, cheats, traitors, murderers, psychopaths, etc. There is no control/free will dichotomy or anything like that, it's classic good vs. evil; hell, some of them are even marked in red shirts for you just in case you start thinking about it.

The story so far, as I can tell, is that The Templars Are Planning Bad Things. Every major player in history is either on the side of the Assassins or the Templars and they've been fighting a war ever since way back when. Or something like that. Hell, I'm not even sure where anything begins or ends; maybe that's the point, or maybe it just provides enough fodder for missions.

Overall, it's enjoyable but I'm not particularly impressed with it. Reconstructing past worlds is great and all, but reframing every historical event as the manifestation of an age-old dialectical conflict cheapens the experience.

[Seldon]

Nothing wrong with being an elitist really. Anyway, played several games since last time I posted here, all of them bought during the Steam holiday sale, which is the only time I'd really purchase any game anyway.

- CS:GO. Not my cup of tea. It's just CS: Source with prettier textures and better shaders. Also, I'm too used to aim-down-sight to give it up now.

- Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Very rich, detailed environments (at least over standard fare), the stealth element was enjoyable when I didn't dwell on how contrived it was (re: vent shafts that lead only from one room to the adjoining one, etc.), and the cover system was cool even though it was disorienting at first to switch between 1st and 3rd person perspectives. The hacking minigame wasn't too bad, but I wish it took up a smaller fraction of play time. Interesting variety of weapons, but automatics had limited utility due to scarcity of ammo, and laser/plasma rifles didn't show up until very late game. They should really have done away with the pre-rendered cutscenes; they don't look very good on a 1920x1080 monitor and there was one for practically every major plot point. The story was somewhat interesting, as it raised questions about the ethics of transhumanism/augmentation, but of course simplified and framed them in a way so that even a five year old child could grasp. I rolled my eyes at the Illuminati/FEMA camp crap, but didn't really pay too much attention to it. Still, fairly decent game overall.

- Shogun 2. Campaign maps in the Total War series were always terrible: economic micromanagement is really time-sucking and the diplomacy always boils down to "declare war on everyone/everyone always declares war on you" regardless of alliances or whatever. Battles are way too quick, given the really long load times and setup beforehand; what's the point of fussing over formations if it's just going to boil down to troop quality/numbers/firepower in the end and be over in 30 seconds? Sieges are fun, but just feels like a more refined version of a tower defense game since the enemy usually throws everything it has at you instead of doing the sensible thing and retreating. You take much less casualties if you auto-resolve everything where you have favorable odds. There are way too many DLCs; even worse, some of them just unlock factions which are already in the game (in previous TW titles, almost all factions were playable, and even if one wasn't, someone would have made a mod to allow you to play as them anyway). On a positive note, ship combat is extremely fun to watch, especially in Fall of the Samurai, and the soundtrack is excellent.