1 Yr#
MeowZeDung
1 Yr#
I certainly won't be going the completionist route on any of the games if I go for it. I clocked in at roughly +10hrs from the HLTB Main Story time on FFXII, but below the Main + Extras time. If that trend holds true, more or less, I'm looking at around 35-40 hours per game for FFI - FFVI, and longer for X, X-2, and XIII. I'd ball park those 9 games at a total of ~375 hours at my pace, which is about 80% of what my gaming hours in 2024 have been so far. It was a slow year for work though, so I very well may get less gaming time in 2025. Long story short, I could probably knock out what I haven't played in the series up to XIV - which is all I'm particularly interested in at this point - in one year if I choose to not replay VII, VIII, IX, and XII and pretty much ignore all other video games. I'm glad you brought it up because it forced me to work out the math. I think the sensible thing is to just aim for completing 4-5 of them in 2025 and then the rest in 2026. I'll have to mull it over.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #21 - The Ravages of War
It was an equal parts frustrating and satisfying week of vidya for ol' MZD.
As for the frustration - I've decided to retire SubNautica after 28 hours. I was going to do a full write up about it given the time I sunk into it, but it just wouldn't have felt right since I didn't actually complete the game. It is such a gorgeous and enchanting game. Exploration was so gratifying and downright cool for the first dozen hours or so. The story had some excellent hooks, drama, and mystery. It seems like a recipe for completion, eh? Well, I have this odd relationship with sandbox, survival, resource gathering, crafting, open world games where I always seem to hit a wall of tedium and irritability. It happened to me with Minecraft, Starbound, and Terraria in just the same way. I get well established after I get the hang of things - a nice base set up with some decent storage, a plan for exploration and expansion, and enough curiosity about the world or lore to carry on - but then one hang-up or bad beat sucks the fun out of all of it.
In SubNautica's case there were two main fun-destroying incidents. First, after one of my play sessions I apparently didn't wait for the Alterra logo that shows up on screen when you save to finish spinning and go away, so I lost a good chunk of progress to that and was mighty tilted. During that session I had collected some PDAs from the Degasi habitat in the Jellyshroom cave, and when I picked back up on my old save they were no longer there, but the info was not in my databank. Long story short, it seems I confused the game with my saving failure and as a result didn't have a beacon to the next degasi habitat and had to search online. With my frustration at a boiling point, the second incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I had recovered quite nicely, built a couple new habitats in strategic locations, and progressed the story a good bit but then went on one particular venture into the depths with my fully upgraded SeaMoth. At my destination there were some nasty creatures best avoided, which I did for the most part, but one Warper had my number and that jackwagon warped me out of my SeaMoth at least three times and got out of the way before I could stasis him every time. Blah blah blah, I died and this game respawns you back at a base but leaves your SeaMoth where it's at. So I had to make the long swim back to the SeaMoth, barely made it with a few seconds of oxygen left, then discovered that inside the structure I came to explore I needed a particular item to open a door. Fine, I'll go back to my base to get it and then return. Well, it turns out I was in a massive cave system and didn't realize it. At some point I must have entered through a narrow entrance in the roof or walls and didn't realize it because 99% of everything is dark. So, I starve to death trying to find my way out. I'll just set my hair on fire if that's alright.
Part of me wanted to grit my teeth and press on since I recognize that me and my lack of skills are the problems and not the game. The other part of me, however, is just really tired of still having to scavenge for more titanium and copper after over twenty hours in this game. Even the basics of food and water are just a chore to me because the "automation" you can develop for them in this game still requires upkeep. The result is that it's hard for me to just focus on progressing the story, because I have to stop being immersed in it in order to harvest material A and B, so that I can manufacture component X, so that I can upgrade module N, which unlocks the ability to harvest material C, so that I can manufacture component Y, so that I can upgrade module M, which unlocks... and so on.
The resource gathering and crafting fatigue plus the save and death fails just pushed me over the edge and I realized that for quality of life purposes I ought to just watch a Let's Play of this game, because it is a great game and I want to experience the full story. I simply can not bear the gather and craft and explore game loop beyond a certain point. I chalk it up to me being a newb, but either way, my sanity and joy are more important to me than sweating through a game. I started watching a good LP of it during slow times at work and I'm much happier for it.
As for the story, I had reached the point where the Sunbeam was shot down, I knew I was infected and needed to be cured before I could shut down the gun, there's stuff on the Aurora that I need to make a new ship, something is hunting me, and the aliens that lived here had been studying some sort of sea dragon that messed them up bad. My frustrating deaths happened at the 800m disease research facility where the sea dragon egg and skeleton are at. I didn't have my purple tablet on me, so I don't know what was behind the force field. Presumably my cure? Sigh.
Oh well. You can't win them all.
This week was certainly not all frustration though. On to greener pastures!
---------------------
Completion!
Bastion
Main Story: 5H 30M
Rating: 8/10
Bastion is a great reminder that games don't have to be huge, long commitments in order to be great. This one was punchy and quick, but compelling and with plenty of room for customization and replayability.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 8/10
The cartoonish art style in any game is usually not my preference, but it was really well done here. Especially with the cool way the world sort of assembles itself in front of you as you travel. It also fits the low tech almost-but-not-quite steampunk look it seems they were going for with lots of sprockets and rope and trinkets.
The music is fantastic. "Bynn the Breaker" had been on my playlist long before I knew anything about this game, but it turns out the whole soundtrack is excellent.
The voice acting was well done, although pretty corny in my opinion. Nevertheless, I recognize the quality and artistry.
---------------------
Gameplay: 9/10
Point and click hack and slash is definitely fun. I think it would get old in a longer game, but it's just right for a shorter one like Bastion.
The level design was just right. None of the areas were too long, and they all featured a twist or a sub-boss, which was cool.
The customization options with tonics, weapons, and the proving grounds is where this game truly shines in my opinion. I focused on upgrading only my hammer and bow until I could no longer, then upgraded the musket, machete, and fire bellows. They were all fun to experiment with in different combinations, and they all had great special skills. I love when games do this with skills or gear because it sets you up for an awesome replay if it's a game you loved. I could see replaying this game and focusing on the dueling pistols, repeater, and mortar instead for a fresh experience. It reminds me of the BioShock games weapon loadouts and upgrades.
There were also a few "extra" areas: the proving grounds as I mentioned, and the "who knows where" reflection challenges. I didn't push through all of these, but again this is a wonderful set up for a replay where the player who wants to can go deeper into completionist territory and lore dumps. Excellent design in my opinion. Same with the shrine and idols as a sort of difficulty knob with a high degree of customization. It's reminiscent of Halo skulls.
Some of the platforming, dodging, and blocking is annoying with W, A, S, D movement controls, and it could be frustrating coming on a pack of enemies and not having an ideal loadout for dealing with them. As for the former, playing with a controller is probably a smoother experience, and the latter makes me wish they would have scattered some more arsenals throughout levels. These are nitpicks though.
---------------------
Narrative: 7/10
The story is simple, but really well executed. I did struggle to get past the corny narration as I mentioned above, but I appreciated it as an effective tool to feed the player lore without slowing down gameplay at all.
The setting of Caelondia is a little confusing. I could never quite tell if it was in the sky or not, which seems very odd to say but it's true. Unless I missed something, the reasons for conflict with the Ura are vague also. These murky aspects are smoothed over pretty well though as the place looks cool, feels exotic, and keeps unfolding as you explore it.
The boiled down plot is that of a young man on a quest to rescue civilization from destruction at it's own hands. It uses a map and travelogue to establish progress and gives decent enough reasons for a continuous macguffin hunt. Each area reveals a bit more of the civilization's history and culture, as well as that of their rival's. There's a good dose of "two steps forward, one step back" to add tension and drama without crossing the line into arbitrarily drawing out the length of the story.
Characters are simple and not too fleshed out since the story is more plot driven. There is just enough character development of the player character and Zulf, the antagonist, to juice up the narrative. Those two essentially have mirrored arcs where they see the destruction wrought by the calamity, learn more about it, and respond very differently: one by fighting to restore, and the other by fighting for revenge. I would say that therein lies the primary conflict and theme of the game. The answer to the question, "How should one respond to the destructive actions of their predecessors?" is what is being explored in my opinion. Zulf woke up and chose violence in the name of personal catharsis, while the main character is trying to undo the harm for the benefit of all. When I finished, the story left me with the message that building is always worthwhile, even if others are continuously tearing things down. It was done quite elegantly.
There were two major decision points that I would be interested in exploring if I replay the game because I imagine they change this discussion quite a bit. I chose to rescue and carry Zulf then to restore the Bastion, but there didn't seem to be a "bad" choice. Still more reason this game was so well designed as to be replayed.
---------------------
I am glad I had the quick game to flush out the feel bads from my rough SubNautica experience so that I'm in a good mindset moving forward with my next vidya game: Mass Effect! I am pumped. A series of story driven old school BioWare RPGs that, based on everything I've heard, rivals or exceeds KotOR and Dragon Age: Origins? Sign me up.
Until next time nerds!
It was an equal parts frustrating and satisfying week of vidya for ol' MZD.
As for the frustration - I've decided to retire SubNautica after 28 hours. I was going to do a full write up about it given the time I sunk into it, but it just wouldn't have felt right since I didn't actually complete the game. It is such a gorgeous and enchanting game. Exploration was so gratifying and downright cool for the first dozen hours or so. The story had some excellent hooks, drama, and mystery. It seems like a recipe for completion, eh? Well, I have this odd relationship with sandbox, survival, resource gathering, crafting, open world games where I always seem to hit a wall of tedium and irritability. It happened to me with Minecraft, Starbound, and Terraria in just the same way. I get well established after I get the hang of things - a nice base set up with some decent storage, a plan for exploration and expansion, and enough curiosity about the world or lore to carry on - but then one hang-up or bad beat sucks the fun out of all of it.
In SubNautica's case there were two main fun-destroying incidents. First, after one of my play sessions I apparently didn't wait for the Alterra logo that shows up on screen when you save to finish spinning and go away, so I lost a good chunk of progress to that and was mighty tilted. During that session I had collected some PDAs from the Degasi habitat in the Jellyshroom cave, and when I picked back up on my old save they were no longer there, but the info was not in my databank. Long story short, it seems I confused the game with my saving failure and as a result didn't have a beacon to the next degasi habitat and had to search online. With my frustration at a boiling point, the second incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I had recovered quite nicely, built a couple new habitats in strategic locations, and progressed the story a good bit but then went on one particular venture into the depths with my fully upgraded SeaMoth. At my destination there were some nasty creatures best avoided, which I did for the most part, but one Warper had my number and that jackwagon warped me out of my SeaMoth at least three times and got out of the way before I could stasis him every time. Blah blah blah, I died and this game respawns you back at a base but leaves your SeaMoth where it's at. So I had to make the long swim back to the SeaMoth, barely made it with a few seconds of oxygen left, then discovered that inside the structure I came to explore I needed a particular item to open a door. Fine, I'll go back to my base to get it and then return. Well, it turns out I was in a massive cave system and didn't realize it. At some point I must have entered through a narrow entrance in the roof or walls and didn't realize it because 99% of everything is dark. So, I starve to death trying to find my way out. I'll just set my hair on fire if that's alright.
Part of me wanted to grit my teeth and press on since I recognize that me and my lack of skills are the problems and not the game. The other part of me, however, is just really tired of still having to scavenge for more titanium and copper after over twenty hours in this game. Even the basics of food and water are just a chore to me because the "automation" you can develop for them in this game still requires upkeep. The result is that it's hard for me to just focus on progressing the story, because I have to stop being immersed in it in order to harvest material A and B, so that I can manufacture component X, so that I can upgrade module N, which unlocks the ability to harvest material C, so that I can manufacture component Y, so that I can upgrade module M, which unlocks... and so on.
The resource gathering and crafting fatigue plus the save and death fails just pushed me over the edge and I realized that for quality of life purposes I ought to just watch a Let's Play of this game, because it is a great game and I want to experience the full story. I simply can not bear the gather and craft and explore game loop beyond a certain point. I chalk it up to me being a newb, but either way, my sanity and joy are more important to me than sweating through a game. I started watching a good LP of it during slow times at work and I'm much happier for it.
As for the story, I had reached the point where the Sunbeam was shot down, I knew I was infected and needed to be cured before I could shut down the gun, there's stuff on the Aurora that I need to make a new ship, something is hunting me, and the aliens that lived here had been studying some sort of sea dragon that messed them up bad. My frustrating deaths happened at the 800m disease research facility where the sea dragon egg and skeleton are at. I didn't have my purple tablet on me, so I don't know what was behind the force field. Presumably my cure? Sigh.
Oh well. You can't win them all.
This week was certainly not all frustration though. On to greener pastures!
---------------------
Completion!
Bastion
Main Story: 5H 30M
Rating: 8/10
Bastion is a great reminder that games don't have to be huge, long commitments in order to be great. This one was punchy and quick, but compelling and with plenty of room for customization and replayability.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 8/10
The cartoonish art style in any game is usually not my preference, but it was really well done here. Especially with the cool way the world sort of assembles itself in front of you as you travel. It also fits the low tech almost-but-not-quite steampunk look it seems they were going for with lots of sprockets and rope and trinkets.
The music is fantastic. "Bynn the Breaker" had been on my playlist long before I knew anything about this game, but it turns out the whole soundtrack is excellent.
The voice acting was well done, although pretty corny in my opinion. Nevertheless, I recognize the quality and artistry.
---------------------
Gameplay: 9/10
Point and click hack and slash is definitely fun. I think it would get old in a longer game, but it's just right for a shorter one like Bastion.
The level design was just right. None of the areas were too long, and they all featured a twist or a sub-boss, which was cool.
The customization options with tonics, weapons, and the proving grounds is where this game truly shines in my opinion. I focused on upgrading only my hammer and bow until I could no longer, then upgraded the musket, machete, and fire bellows. They were all fun to experiment with in different combinations, and they all had great special skills. I love when games do this with skills or gear because it sets you up for an awesome replay if it's a game you loved. I could see replaying this game and focusing on the dueling pistols, repeater, and mortar instead for a fresh experience. It reminds me of the BioShock games weapon loadouts and upgrades.
There were also a few "extra" areas: the proving grounds as I mentioned, and the "who knows where" reflection challenges. I didn't push through all of these, but again this is a wonderful set up for a replay where the player who wants to can go deeper into completionist territory and lore dumps. Excellent design in my opinion. Same with the shrine and idols as a sort of difficulty knob with a high degree of customization. It's reminiscent of Halo skulls.
Some of the platforming, dodging, and blocking is annoying with W, A, S, D movement controls, and it could be frustrating coming on a pack of enemies and not having an ideal loadout for dealing with them. As for the former, playing with a controller is probably a smoother experience, and the latter makes me wish they would have scattered some more arsenals throughout levels. These are nitpicks though.
---------------------
Narrative: 7/10
The story is simple, but really well executed. I did struggle to get past the corny narration as I mentioned above, but I appreciated it as an effective tool to feed the player lore without slowing down gameplay at all.
The setting of Caelondia is a little confusing. I could never quite tell if it was in the sky or not, which seems very odd to say but it's true. Unless I missed something, the reasons for conflict with the Ura are vague also. These murky aspects are smoothed over pretty well though as the place looks cool, feels exotic, and keeps unfolding as you explore it.
The boiled down plot is that of a young man on a quest to rescue civilization from destruction at it's own hands. It uses a map and travelogue to establish progress and gives decent enough reasons for a continuous macguffin hunt. Each area reveals a bit more of the civilization's history and culture, as well as that of their rival's. There's a good dose of "two steps forward, one step back" to add tension and drama without crossing the line into arbitrarily drawing out the length of the story.
Characters are simple and not too fleshed out since the story is more plot driven. There is just enough character development of the player character and Zulf, the antagonist, to juice up the narrative. Those two essentially have mirrored arcs where they see the destruction wrought by the calamity, learn more about it, and respond very differently: one by fighting to restore, and the other by fighting for revenge. I would say that therein lies the primary conflict and theme of the game. The answer to the question, "How should one respond to the destructive actions of their predecessors?" is what is being explored in my opinion. Zulf woke up and chose violence in the name of personal catharsis, while the main character is trying to undo the harm for the benefit of all. When I finished, the story left me with the message that building is always worthwhile, even if others are continuously tearing things down. It was done quite elegantly.
There were two major decision points that I would be interested in exploring if I replay the game because I imagine they change this discussion quite a bit. I chose to rescue and carry Zulf then to restore the Bastion, but there didn't seem to be a "bad" choice. Still more reason this game was so well designed as to be replayed.
---------------------
I am glad I had the quick game to flush out the feel bads from my rough SubNautica experience so that I'm in a good mindset moving forward with my next vidya game: Mass Effect! I am pumped. A series of story driven old school BioWare RPGs that, based on everything I've heard, rivals or exceeds KotOR and Dragon Age: Origins? Sign me up.
Until next time nerds!
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #22 - Tactical Space Opera
I began Mass Effect and my initial impression is that it is great. Much like my experience with the BioShock and Halo series earlier this year, the pros massively outweigh the cons of the game to the point that I can come pretty close to ignoring those cons entirely - but not quite. The story is a bit of a "chosen one" and ensemble of misfits cliche so far, but those are what worked with KotOR and Dragon Age so I don't blame BioWare for running it back.
Thus far I have survived Eden Prime, thoroughly explored The Citadel, become a Spectre, rescued Liara, and explored and completed a bunch of side quests. I have just landed on Feros to progress the main story events. The narrative is fairly straightforward up to this point: Shepard is one of humanity's best and brightest and it's up to him to outrace the human-hating antagonist in a search for the Conduit, an artifact that will allow said baddy to assemble an unstoppable death machine of ancient synthetic evil. I'm going to make my prediction now so I can have a good laugh when I'm totally wrong: I think Shepard will succeed in locating the Conduit just so the big bad can then step out of the shadows, thank Shepard for doing all the leg work for him, then call forth his robot army and progressively complicate the plot.
There are certainly rough edges to Mass Effect, but I think by this point I've gotten a decent feel for what the game expects of the player and what doesn't work well - through some painful trial and error.
The combat system was absolutely brutal until I'd gone through quite a bit of a learning curve. Essentially, the game tricked me into thinking it was going to approach combat as if it were a shooter since you have to manually target shots. The joke was on me. This is not Halo. Despite having armor and a shield, a decent percentage of enemies can drop Shepard in 2-3 shots, and some can even one shot him. I can't tell you how many times I had whittled enemy forces down to one last straggler during an encounter only to have that enemy be a sniper or rocketeer that promptly dropped Shepard like a bag of rocks. If a squad mate falls you can finish combat and they will revive, but if Shepard falls it's game over. I wasn't expecting that because my brain was in Dragon Age and KotOR mode, but ME not allowing direct control of squad mates is a very different feel. I get to issue commands to them, but it feels hit or miss. The cherry on top is that it seems grenades barely tickle enemies, and they're tough to throw accurately. All of this adds up to ME combat playing much more like a tactics game than a shooter. When I shifted my brain into XCom mode I started having better success. Basically, there's a whole lot of holding a defensive position and being patient, like so:
It can be frustrating to go through this song and dance when you just want to storm in and end the fight, but it almost feels necessary given how punishing taking even a couple of shots is. Squad mates die fast in some encounters - real fast. Leap frogging each other in full cover and leveraging combat, biotic, and tech abilities while taking pot shots seems to be the way to go. It's just slow.
The exception to this rule is the gimmick that I decided to build my soldier class Shepard around before I understood all of this about ME combat. Basically, I decided he was going to go all out on Armor, Fitness, Shotguns, and Combat Training so I could wear the heaviest armors, pop the damage immunity skill, use the shield recharge as needed, and sprint in to use my Shotgun carnage skill at point blank range. It's really effective if there are only a couple of foes since they can't burst down Shepard through the immunity skill as he sprints in, and carnage is usually a one hit kill up to this point in the game. I'll probably start using the weapon mods that give an increase to melee attacks as well. I guess I will find out if this strategy remains viable beyond the early game. Sometimes it can still be hard to hit shots at close range since some enemies are very mobile. Some of these dudes can charge right into the middle of me and my two squad mates, wreck face for a few seconds, then retreat all before I've had a chance to properly target them with the full squad. It's tough to explain better than that, but it will suffice to say that close quarters ME combat is clunky and frustrating. It's almost like having a dream where you're in a fight or running for your life, but you move like you're in a tub of syrup.
I have read that ME2 and ME3 combat is much better. I'm glad to read that because my first several hours of ME combat were not fun at all. I am optimistic it will be better now that I have sort of figured things out: initiate combat, quickly retreat to the best defensive position, then slowly creep forward and claim the battlefield a couple of meters at a time.
My only other major critique up to this point is that there is a good deal of bloat and repetition built into the exploration in ME. One quest required me to travel back to the Citadel, leave the ship to go talk to a lady, return to the ship, go do a thing on a distant planet, then return to the Citadel, and leave the ship to go talk to the lady again to turn in the quest. I ask: Why? Especially when several other quests have gotten around this unnecessary legwork by having Shepard and the quest giver talk via comms. Similarly, when I show up in a new star system there's always 4-5 planets, and usually 2 of them are pointless, 2 can be surveyed for side quest maguffins, and only 1 can be landed on and explored, generally for quest purposes. I wish they would have just done away with the planets that can't be surveyed or explored. Why make the player cycle through the nothingness to get to the goods?
Then, when I land on a planet the game changes from ME to Twisted Metal. I can't be that upset, the Mako is sweet. The overworld exploration is a bit boring though. So far all the worlds are inhospitable wastelands with 3-4 things to see - usually some ore, a bit of wreckage, and a facility or mining camp of some sort. This seems to fit the immersion alright, but it's just lame to spend ten minutes driving around empty terrain to visit these 3-4 spots on each planet. There have been some cool exceptions to the bland time-wasting drives around these planets. The first time I had a massive sand wurm pop out of the ground right under my tires was... invigorating, and every now and then I get a cool view like this:
That's enough criticism for now, especially since the best thing about old school BioWare games is present in ME: cool characters. I'm growing particularly fond of this jolly fellow:
I get similar vibes with Wrex as I did with Oghren in DA:O. He's a loyal, blunt, lovable oaf to provide muscle and comic relief. I'm a fan.
One thing I am picking up on with the ME characters is that the writers did a good job of layering conflict in each of their budding storylines. They all have some depth and complexity to their baggage or history:
- Ashley isn't just apprehensive about humans allying with aliens - she's loyal to her military heritage, a mother figure to her kid sisters, and growing sweet on Shepard.
- Wrex isn't just a mopey, sterile slab of alien beef - he's a Krogan chieftan's son who saw his people's traditions violated by his own Father who betrayed him, and a survivor of Saren's machinations.
- Liara isn't just a socially awkward scientist obsessed with Prothean relics - she's the estranged daughter of a Matriarch that is also the big-bad's partner in crime, and she is also growing sweet on Shepard.
- Tali isn't just a nomad borg looking to scavenge something useful to take back to the Quarian Flotilla - she's a brilliant engineer wrestling with the expectations, and pitfalls, that come with being what amounts to royalty in her race.
- Garrus isn't just a Turian cop looking to bust the bad guy - he's a morally complex (or compromising - depending on your point of view) problem solver who always has his thoughts on some trolley problem or "greater good" morass. This is his big clashing point with his father, a "by the book" lawful good sort of character.
- Kaidan isn't just a victim of experimentation and turbo cancer space magic - he's... okay Kaidan is pretty boring so far. I'll get back to him once his arc has developed more.
None of this is complicated narrative stuff, but layering every character's conflicts like this makes them seem real and it's incredibly effective at making the audience care about the characters.
Tl; dr - ME is pretty great so far. I'm excited to start really exploding Geth heads in earnest as the plot progresses and I learn more about Saren, his Matriarch sidekick, the Council, the Protheans, and the Reapers.
I began Mass Effect and my initial impression is that it is great. Much like my experience with the BioShock and Halo series earlier this year, the pros massively outweigh the cons of the game to the point that I can come pretty close to ignoring those cons entirely - but not quite. The story is a bit of a "chosen one" and ensemble of misfits cliche so far, but those are what worked with KotOR and Dragon Age so I don't blame BioWare for running it back.
Thus far I have survived Eden Prime, thoroughly explored The Citadel, become a Spectre, rescued Liara, and explored and completed a bunch of side quests. I have just landed on Feros to progress the main story events. The narrative is fairly straightforward up to this point: Shepard is one of humanity's best and brightest and it's up to him to outrace the human-hating antagonist in a search for the Conduit, an artifact that will allow said baddy to assemble an unstoppable death machine of ancient synthetic evil. I'm going to make my prediction now so I can have a good laugh when I'm totally wrong: I think Shepard will succeed in locating the Conduit just so the big bad can then step out of the shadows, thank Shepard for doing all the leg work for him, then call forth his robot army and progressively complicate the plot.
There are certainly rough edges to Mass Effect, but I think by this point I've gotten a decent feel for what the game expects of the player and what doesn't work well - through some painful trial and error.
The combat system was absolutely brutal until I'd gone through quite a bit of a learning curve. Essentially, the game tricked me into thinking it was going to approach combat as if it were a shooter since you have to manually target shots. The joke was on me. This is not Halo. Despite having armor and a shield, a decent percentage of enemies can drop Shepard in 2-3 shots, and some can even one shot him. I can't tell you how many times I had whittled enemy forces down to one last straggler during an encounter only to have that enemy be a sniper or rocketeer that promptly dropped Shepard like a bag of rocks. If a squad mate falls you can finish combat and they will revive, but if Shepard falls it's game over. I wasn't expecting that because my brain was in Dragon Age and KotOR mode, but ME not allowing direct control of squad mates is a very different feel. I get to issue commands to them, but it feels hit or miss. The cherry on top is that it seems grenades barely tickle enemies, and they're tough to throw accurately. All of this adds up to ME combat playing much more like a tactics game than a shooter. When I shifted my brain into XCom mode I started having better success. Basically, there's a whole lot of holding a defensive position and being patient, like so:
It can be frustrating to go through this song and dance when you just want to storm in and end the fight, but it almost feels necessary given how punishing taking even a couple of shots is. Squad mates die fast in some encounters - real fast. Leap frogging each other in full cover and leveraging combat, biotic, and tech abilities while taking pot shots seems to be the way to go. It's just slow.
The exception to this rule is the gimmick that I decided to build my soldier class Shepard around before I understood all of this about ME combat. Basically, I decided he was going to go all out on Armor, Fitness, Shotguns, and Combat Training so I could wear the heaviest armors, pop the damage immunity skill, use the shield recharge as needed, and sprint in to use my Shotgun carnage skill at point blank range. It's really effective if there are only a couple of foes since they can't burst down Shepard through the immunity skill as he sprints in, and carnage is usually a one hit kill up to this point in the game. I'll probably start using the weapon mods that give an increase to melee attacks as well. I guess I will find out if this strategy remains viable beyond the early game. Sometimes it can still be hard to hit shots at close range since some enemies are very mobile. Some of these dudes can charge right into the middle of me and my two squad mates, wreck face for a few seconds, then retreat all before I've had a chance to properly target them with the full squad. It's tough to explain better than that, but it will suffice to say that close quarters ME combat is clunky and frustrating. It's almost like having a dream where you're in a fight or running for your life, but you move like you're in a tub of syrup.
I have read that ME2 and ME3 combat is much better. I'm glad to read that because my first several hours of ME combat were not fun at all. I am optimistic it will be better now that I have sort of figured things out: initiate combat, quickly retreat to the best defensive position, then slowly creep forward and claim the battlefield a couple of meters at a time.
My only other major critique up to this point is that there is a good deal of bloat and repetition built into the exploration in ME. One quest required me to travel back to the Citadel, leave the ship to go talk to a lady, return to the ship, go do a thing on a distant planet, then return to the Citadel, and leave the ship to go talk to the lady again to turn in the quest. I ask: Why? Especially when several other quests have gotten around this unnecessary legwork by having Shepard and the quest giver talk via comms. Similarly, when I show up in a new star system there's always 4-5 planets, and usually 2 of them are pointless, 2 can be surveyed for side quest maguffins, and only 1 can be landed on and explored, generally for quest purposes. I wish they would have just done away with the planets that can't be surveyed or explored. Why make the player cycle through the nothingness to get to the goods?
Then, when I land on a planet the game changes from ME to Twisted Metal. I can't be that upset, the Mako is sweet. The overworld exploration is a bit boring though. So far all the worlds are inhospitable wastelands with 3-4 things to see - usually some ore, a bit of wreckage, and a facility or mining camp of some sort. This seems to fit the immersion alright, but it's just lame to spend ten minutes driving around empty terrain to visit these 3-4 spots on each planet. There have been some cool exceptions to the bland time-wasting drives around these planets. The first time I had a massive sand wurm pop out of the ground right under my tires was... invigorating, and every now and then I get a cool view like this:
That's enough criticism for now, especially since the best thing about old school BioWare games is present in ME: cool characters. I'm growing particularly fond of this jolly fellow:
I get similar vibes with Wrex as I did with Oghren in DA:O. He's a loyal, blunt, lovable oaf to provide muscle and comic relief. I'm a fan.
One thing I am picking up on with the ME characters is that the writers did a good job of layering conflict in each of their budding storylines. They all have some depth and complexity to their baggage or history:
- Ashley isn't just apprehensive about humans allying with aliens - she's loyal to her military heritage, a mother figure to her kid sisters, and growing sweet on Shepard.
- Wrex isn't just a mopey, sterile slab of alien beef - he's a Krogan chieftan's son who saw his people's traditions violated by his own Father who betrayed him, and a survivor of Saren's machinations.
- Liara isn't just a socially awkward scientist obsessed with Prothean relics - she's the estranged daughter of a Matriarch that is also the big-bad's partner in crime, and she is also growing sweet on Shepard.
- Tali isn't just a nomad borg looking to scavenge something useful to take back to the Quarian Flotilla - she's a brilliant engineer wrestling with the expectations, and pitfalls, that come with being what amounts to royalty in her race.
- Garrus isn't just a Turian cop looking to bust the bad guy - he's a morally complex (or compromising - depending on your point of view) problem solver who always has his thoughts on some trolley problem or "greater good" morass. This is his big clashing point with his father, a "by the book" lawful good sort of character.
- Kaidan isn't just a victim of experimentation and turbo cancer space magic - he's... okay Kaidan is pretty boring so far. I'll get back to him once his arc has developed more.
None of this is complicated narrative stuff, but layering every character's conflicts like this makes them seem real and it's incredibly effective at making the audience care about the characters.
Tl; dr - ME is pretty great so far. I'm excited to start really exploding Geth heads in earnest as the plot progresses and I learn more about Saren, his Matriarch sidekick, the Council, the Protheans, and the Reapers.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #23 - ChristMass Effect
My family and I had a wonderful Christmas this year. It didn't feature much in the vidya department other than a Nintendo Online + Expansion Pack that I gifted the kids. My oldest is well on his way in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time already. The younger two have been messing about with some of the older Mario Party games and Mario 64. I imagine there will be a good deal of Kirby being played in our house soon. Personally, I'm eyeing Paper Mario - which I somehow never played - and some old RPGs.
With the extra time off work I powered through Mass Effect and I'm already a healthy part of the way through ME2.
---------------------
Completion!
Mass Effect
Main Story + Extras: 28H 48M
Rating: 9.5/10
That's a vidya game right there! ME is not without it's flaws - pretty significant ones - but I'm rating it so highly because everything great about the game is weighted toward my preferences and everything not great about the game is weighted towards stuff I barely care about anyhow. I can safely say this one will get a few replays out of me in the years to come.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 10/10
Per usual, I am effectively discounting the game's age and engines because that's not what I care about in a game's look, feel, and sound. Instead I am asking if the game's visual and sound design is effective at capturing the mood of the story, regardless of how outdated it is. ME hits it out of the park in my opinion and it really fosters some strong immersion in the game's world.
I suppose I should note that it's very obvious that ME is borrowing heavily from Star Wars, but it really is seamless. Exploring the Citadel is a very Mos Eisley spaceport or Coruscant feeling - especially in the nightclubs - but the various alien races have a lot of interesting depth and character to them. Discovering the differences between Elcor, Volus, Salarian, Asari, Turian, Krogan, and all their various histories and interrelations was fascinating. Top notch worldbuilding supported by some creative alien design. There is the universal problem faced by almost all alien sci-fi stories, which is that the aliens are almost always somewhat humanoid - and this effects parts of the story and how the player is supposed to feel about them as I'll touch on later. Most of the races in ME are bipedal and symmetrical, but I can't say that is somehow not creative since designing an alien that the audience will care about and not just be revolted by almost necessitates it.
The spacefaring aesthetic of ME is also very well done. The Normandy is a memorable and cool ship. All the holographic keyboards and screens and the starmap crank up the futurism. The human uniforms feel more appropriate for space travel than, say, the iconic Star Trek uniforms. I mentioned in my previous post that I feel like ME missed on some of the exploration gameplay with the Mako, but there's no denying that you can get some really cool views while exploring.
The music is subtle and atmospheric, but perfect for this game. The soundtrack needed to be a little subdued to allow the story take precedence, and I think ME succeeded in finding the right balance.
The voice acting was top notch, and some of the cool filtered effects they layerd on to alien voices like Garrus and Tali were a great touch. The performance for Liara's voice stood out as really well done with the very formal diction but gentle and relaxed tone to establish her character. Wrex, Anderson, Tali, and Sovereign were the best performances though. So good.
---------------------
Gameplay: 8/10
I went into detail about some of the gears I had to grind with ME gameplay in my last post - especially the combat early on and planetary exploration - so I will keep it shorter here. It will suffice to say that the combat in ME takes getting used to. Once I "got it" there was no issue, but "getting it" took longer than it should have. That could very well be a "me" issue, but I think a fair criticism of the game is that it doesn't explain combat very well or have an effective tutorial. I think this will vary from gamer to gamer, and selecting a different class and skills likely changes the experience in a big way. Additionally, I think the game scales in such a way that the player is supposed to feel a bit underpowered early on, but massively overpowered by about two-thirds of the way in. I felt the same way in the KotOR games, and I love that design because it plays right into the power fantasy that works so well in Sci-Fi and Fantasy RPGs. Omnislash vibes. If you know, you know.
Level design for the main story missions was excellently paced. It was very linear, but that's perfect for a shooter, and the focus is on the story anyhow. None of it was too repetitive or tedious, and there was always some hook or narrative drive that made me want to progress through the mission without getting bogged down or bored.
There was a lot of bloat in re-used assets and filler in the star system and planetary exploration mechanics, but all in all nothing too egregious. They could be time wasters, yes, but thankfully in very small doses. Best of all that part of the game is almost entirely optional, so it only really detracts from the experience in a 100% playthrough.
The real highlight of the gameplay is actually the story, which isn't a cop out in BioWare games because experiencing more depth in the story IS the gameplay. Dialogue was always worthwhile, and I'm the type of nerd that goes through every option I possibly can on the dialogue wheel. The codex is massive, but I learned my lesson from getting burnt out on Dragon Age: Origins and didn't attempt to comb through every line of it. Instead, I used it as a reference for specific points of interest and clarification and found it to be superbly done.
I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the morality system. This is always a thing in BioWare games, but it really lacks subtlety here. It made sense in KotOR because you were either a Jedi or a Sith, although the "evil" options were almost always cartoonish there. Dragon Age probably did it best because the choices weren't a straight up good or evil dichotomy, but rather were based on companion sentiment, so I could really customize my party and companion's sentiment toward me. Paragon and Renegade aren't as clear a dichotomy as Jedi and Sith, so it really plays out more like Normal Person vs Jerk. I sprinkled a few Renegade responses through my playthrough where they made sense or were particularly funny, but I probably went 95% Paragon.
The equipment and inventory management system was another part of the game I didn't love. Like the combat, it was tedious and clunky at first, but once I "got it" and figured out what actually mattered it wasn't a problem. There is just so much excess crap that is completely unnecessary. I can already tell from what little of ME2 I've already played that the devs dramatically improved on this aspect of the game.
My character build was an Earthborn, Sole Survivor, Soldier and I focused on Shotguns and Heavy Armor. I fell in love with the combination of Immunity > storm sprint in > Carnage shot at point blank > Recharge Shields > Adrenaline Rush > repeat. It essentially one shotted everything but Krogan, Geth Colossi and Armatures, and bosses.
ME gameplay is walking the line between shooter and RPG, and it is definitely a better RPG than it is a shooter. That suits my tastes just fine.
---------------------
Narrative: 10/10
The story of ME is where it truly shines. Per usual with the games I like to play, I can't go too in depth or else this will just be a wall of spoiler text, so I'm really going to narrow down what I write here to just what ME did exceptionally well.
I've touched on the stellar world building and deep characters, but what really knocked my socks off was how well ME established and raised stakes narratively and how it treated various themes. From the opening lines of the game the stakes are established and a superficial theme of galactic heroism is introduced with the central dramatic question: Can Shepard save the galaxy? Those are pretty big stakes and a lot of mystery is instantly provoked. What exactly am I saving the galaxy from? The unfolding of a layered answer to this question is the brilliant driving force of the ME narrative.
I get my answer fairly early on: Saren and his Geth army have it out for humanity, and Shepard needs to beat him to the punch. Then, quite possibly one of the coolest vidya game sequences I've ever experienced takes place when we encounter the hologram of Sovereign at the beacon on Virmire. Sovereign is legitimately one of the coolest, most ominous antagonists in any story I've heard. The tension and stakes of the ME story practically quadruple at this point and the hook and mystery of how exactly the good guys can deal with this is incredible.
Another incredible vidya game moment awaits on Ilos when the party encounters Vigil and gets a huge exposition dump about the Protheans and how they succeeded in putting a chink in the armor of Sovereign and the Reapers. This provokes a whole new dramatic question, which is really just a more focused version of the initial question, "Can Shepard save the galaxy?" The way all of this is delivered is a delightful surprise and the onion layers are peeled back progressively upping the ante to jaw dropping effect.
Not only are there stakes on a galactic scale, but ME does a phenomenal job of maximizing the stakes on an interpersonal level. First, there's Wrex at the Salarian camp on Virmire, then there's the gut punch of choosing Ashley or Kaidan.
ME is also a great example of weaving universal and resonant themes throughout a narrative.
Determinism vs. Free Will is a big one and is examined with Saren and indoctrination, and it's right there in the name with Sovereign. Is humanity - or all organic life in the case of ME - controlling it's own destiny, or is a greater power at work guiding everything and rendering our vaunted autonomy null? The game is pretty clearly constructed on a presupposition of materialistic naturalism, but it is nevertheless a treatment of deep teleological and theological inquiry that has been going on for millennia now.
The nature of scarcity and competition are thoroughly examined in several story threads. The Rachni wars made me think of the book Starship Troopers or Ender's Game where humanity is in an existential crisis of expansion and competition with a hive minded race of bug-like creatures and only one can win at the expense of the other. The advancement of the Krogan is the answer the council races put forth to the problem, but it just introduces a whole new problem around scarcity and competition in the galaxy which demands another solution. The Genophage is that solution, and it is meant to be a real gut punch of a moral conundrum. It didn't quite hit that way with me, because it feels more like dealing with an invasive species of grouchy, aggressive, militaristic frogs, but as I mentioned earlier all of the alien species are treated the same as humans morally speaking in ME. Now, humans as the new species on the galactic block introduce an additional layer of complexity in the race for territory, resources, power, and influence as they begin expanding, colonizing, and jockeying for position on the council. ME's story is examining the age old human drive to be fruitful and multiply and exercise dominion but on a galactic scale, and it raises interesting questions. The pinnacle of course is right in the name of the Reapers who are essentially exploiting all organic life and territory in the galaxy as "crops" and "farmland".
Perhaps most intriguing of all - given our 21st century innovations - are the themes ME explores surrounding Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic "life" and it's subservience, antagonism, or even dominance over organic life. This is first examined with the Quarians and their development of the Geth as servants followed by the Geth revolts and the ensuing wars. The theme really kicks into overdrive with Sovereign and the Reapers and it provokes a fascinating who-made-who question.
This all adds up to one extremely rich story that is elegantly crafted and effectively delivered. I loved it.
For those interested, the decisions I made that I'm assuming will be most impactful on the series moving forward were releasing the Rachni queen, talking Wrex down from the brink, saving Ashley instead of Kaidan, romancing Ashley, focusing the fleet's firepower on Sovereign instead of saving the council, and recommending Anderson for the new council.
---------------------
ME was a spectacular experience, so I'm really pumped for the rest of the trilogy. My understanding is that the general consensus is that ME2 is phenomenal. I'm a decent part of the way through and loving it so far, but I get the feeling that I've still got the biggest plot points ahead of me. I've still got two squadmates to recruit, and I haven't even been to the Citadel yet.
Until next time nerds!
My family and I had a wonderful Christmas this year. It didn't feature much in the vidya department other than a Nintendo Online + Expansion Pack that I gifted the kids. My oldest is well on his way in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time already. The younger two have been messing about with some of the older Mario Party games and Mario 64. I imagine there will be a good deal of Kirby being played in our house soon. Personally, I'm eyeing Paper Mario - which I somehow never played - and some old RPGs.
With the extra time off work I powered through Mass Effect and I'm already a healthy part of the way through ME2.
---------------------
Completion!
Mass Effect
Main Story + Extras: 28H 48M
Rating: 9.5/10
That's a vidya game right there! ME is not without it's flaws - pretty significant ones - but I'm rating it so highly because everything great about the game is weighted toward my preferences and everything not great about the game is weighted towards stuff I barely care about anyhow. I can safely say this one will get a few replays out of me in the years to come.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 10/10
Per usual, I am effectively discounting the game's age and engines because that's not what I care about in a game's look, feel, and sound. Instead I am asking if the game's visual and sound design is effective at capturing the mood of the story, regardless of how outdated it is. ME hits it out of the park in my opinion and it really fosters some strong immersion in the game's world.
I suppose I should note that it's very obvious that ME is borrowing heavily from Star Wars, but it really is seamless. Exploring the Citadel is a very Mos Eisley spaceport or Coruscant feeling - especially in the nightclubs - but the various alien races have a lot of interesting depth and character to them. Discovering the differences between Elcor, Volus, Salarian, Asari, Turian, Krogan, and all their various histories and interrelations was fascinating. Top notch worldbuilding supported by some creative alien design. There is the universal problem faced by almost all alien sci-fi stories, which is that the aliens are almost always somewhat humanoid - and this effects parts of the story and how the player is supposed to feel about them as I'll touch on later. Most of the races in ME are bipedal and symmetrical, but I can't say that is somehow not creative since designing an alien that the audience will care about and not just be revolted by almost necessitates it.
The spacefaring aesthetic of ME is also very well done. The Normandy is a memorable and cool ship. All the holographic keyboards and screens and the starmap crank up the futurism. The human uniforms feel more appropriate for space travel than, say, the iconic Star Trek uniforms. I mentioned in my previous post that I feel like ME missed on some of the exploration gameplay with the Mako, but there's no denying that you can get some really cool views while exploring.
The music is subtle and atmospheric, but perfect for this game. The soundtrack needed to be a little subdued to allow the story take precedence, and I think ME succeeded in finding the right balance.
The voice acting was top notch, and some of the cool filtered effects they layerd on to alien voices like Garrus and Tali were a great touch. The performance for Liara's voice stood out as really well done with the very formal diction but gentle and relaxed tone to establish her character. Wrex, Anderson, Tali, and Sovereign were the best performances though. So good.
---------------------
Gameplay: 8/10
I went into detail about some of the gears I had to grind with ME gameplay in my last post - especially the combat early on and planetary exploration - so I will keep it shorter here. It will suffice to say that the combat in ME takes getting used to. Once I "got it" there was no issue, but "getting it" took longer than it should have. That could very well be a "me" issue, but I think a fair criticism of the game is that it doesn't explain combat very well or have an effective tutorial. I think this will vary from gamer to gamer, and selecting a different class and skills likely changes the experience in a big way. Additionally, I think the game scales in such a way that the player is supposed to feel a bit underpowered early on, but massively overpowered by about two-thirds of the way in. I felt the same way in the KotOR games, and I love that design because it plays right into the power fantasy that works so well in Sci-Fi and Fantasy RPGs. Omnislash vibes. If you know, you know.
Level design for the main story missions was excellently paced. It was very linear, but that's perfect for a shooter, and the focus is on the story anyhow. None of it was too repetitive or tedious, and there was always some hook or narrative drive that made me want to progress through the mission without getting bogged down or bored.
There was a lot of bloat in re-used assets and filler in the star system and planetary exploration mechanics, but all in all nothing too egregious. They could be time wasters, yes, but thankfully in very small doses. Best of all that part of the game is almost entirely optional, so it only really detracts from the experience in a 100% playthrough.
The real highlight of the gameplay is actually the story, which isn't a cop out in BioWare games because experiencing more depth in the story IS the gameplay. Dialogue was always worthwhile, and I'm the type of nerd that goes through every option I possibly can on the dialogue wheel. The codex is massive, but I learned my lesson from getting burnt out on Dragon Age: Origins and didn't attempt to comb through every line of it. Instead, I used it as a reference for specific points of interest and clarification and found it to be superbly done.
I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the morality system. This is always a thing in BioWare games, but it really lacks subtlety here. It made sense in KotOR because you were either a Jedi or a Sith, although the "evil" options were almost always cartoonish there. Dragon Age probably did it best because the choices weren't a straight up good or evil dichotomy, but rather were based on companion sentiment, so I could really customize my party and companion's sentiment toward me. Paragon and Renegade aren't as clear a dichotomy as Jedi and Sith, so it really plays out more like Normal Person vs Jerk. I sprinkled a few Renegade responses through my playthrough where they made sense or were particularly funny, but I probably went 95% Paragon.
The equipment and inventory management system was another part of the game I didn't love. Like the combat, it was tedious and clunky at first, but once I "got it" and figured out what actually mattered it wasn't a problem. There is just so much excess crap that is completely unnecessary. I can already tell from what little of ME2 I've already played that the devs dramatically improved on this aspect of the game.
My character build was an Earthborn, Sole Survivor, Soldier and I focused on Shotguns and Heavy Armor. I fell in love with the combination of Immunity > storm sprint in > Carnage shot at point blank > Recharge Shields > Adrenaline Rush > repeat. It essentially one shotted everything but Krogan, Geth Colossi and Armatures, and bosses.
ME gameplay is walking the line between shooter and RPG, and it is definitely a better RPG than it is a shooter. That suits my tastes just fine.
---------------------
Narrative: 10/10
The story of ME is where it truly shines. Per usual with the games I like to play, I can't go too in depth or else this will just be a wall of spoiler text, so I'm really going to narrow down what I write here to just what ME did exceptionally well.
I've touched on the stellar world building and deep characters, but what really knocked my socks off was how well ME established and raised stakes narratively and how it treated various themes. From the opening lines of the game the stakes are established and a superficial theme of galactic heroism is introduced with the central dramatic question: Can Shepard save the galaxy? Those are pretty big stakes and a lot of mystery is instantly provoked. What exactly am I saving the galaxy from? The unfolding of a layered answer to this question is the brilliant driving force of the ME narrative.
I get my answer fairly early on: Saren and his Geth army have it out for humanity, and Shepard needs to beat him to the punch. Then, quite possibly one of the coolest vidya game sequences I've ever experienced takes place when we encounter the hologram of Sovereign at the beacon on Virmire. Sovereign is legitimately one of the coolest, most ominous antagonists in any story I've heard. The tension and stakes of the ME story practically quadruple at this point and the hook and mystery of how exactly the good guys can deal with this is incredible.
Another incredible vidya game moment awaits on Ilos when the party encounters Vigil and gets a huge exposition dump about the Protheans and how they succeeded in putting a chink in the armor of Sovereign and the Reapers. This provokes a whole new dramatic question, which is really just a more focused version of the initial question, "Can Shepard save the galaxy?" The way all of this is delivered is a delightful surprise and the onion layers are peeled back progressively upping the ante to jaw dropping effect.
Not only are there stakes on a galactic scale, but ME does a phenomenal job of maximizing the stakes on an interpersonal level. First, there's Wrex at the Salarian camp on Virmire, then there's the gut punch of choosing Ashley or Kaidan.
ME is also a great example of weaving universal and resonant themes throughout a narrative.
Determinism vs. Free Will is a big one and is examined with Saren and indoctrination, and it's right there in the name with Sovereign. Is humanity - or all organic life in the case of ME - controlling it's own destiny, or is a greater power at work guiding everything and rendering our vaunted autonomy null? The game is pretty clearly constructed on a presupposition of materialistic naturalism, but it is nevertheless a treatment of deep teleological and theological inquiry that has been going on for millennia now.
The nature of scarcity and competition are thoroughly examined in several story threads. The Rachni wars made me think of the book Starship Troopers or Ender's Game where humanity is in an existential crisis of expansion and competition with a hive minded race of bug-like creatures and only one can win at the expense of the other. The advancement of the Krogan is the answer the council races put forth to the problem, but it just introduces a whole new problem around scarcity and competition in the galaxy which demands another solution. The Genophage is that solution, and it is meant to be a real gut punch of a moral conundrum. It didn't quite hit that way with me, because it feels more like dealing with an invasive species of grouchy, aggressive, militaristic frogs, but as I mentioned earlier all of the alien species are treated the same as humans morally speaking in ME. Now, humans as the new species on the galactic block introduce an additional layer of complexity in the race for territory, resources, power, and influence as they begin expanding, colonizing, and jockeying for position on the council. ME's story is examining the age old human drive to be fruitful and multiply and exercise dominion but on a galactic scale, and it raises interesting questions. The pinnacle of course is right in the name of the Reapers who are essentially exploiting all organic life and territory in the galaxy as "crops" and "farmland".
Perhaps most intriguing of all - given our 21st century innovations - are the themes ME explores surrounding Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic "life" and it's subservience, antagonism, or even dominance over organic life. This is first examined with the Quarians and their development of the Geth as servants followed by the Geth revolts and the ensuing wars. The theme really kicks into overdrive with Sovereign and the Reapers and it provokes a fascinating who-made-who question.
This all adds up to one extremely rich story that is elegantly crafted and effectively delivered. I loved it.
For those interested, the decisions I made that I'm assuming will be most impactful on the series moving forward were releasing the Rachni queen, talking Wrex down from the brink, saving Ashley instead of Kaidan, romancing Ashley, focusing the fleet's firepower on Sovereign instead of saving the council, and recommending Anderson for the new council.
---------------------
ME was a spectacular experience, so I'm really pumped for the rest of the trilogy. My understanding is that the general consensus is that ME2 is phenomenal. I'm a decent part of the way through and loving it so far, but I get the feeling that I've still got the biggest plot points ahead of me. I've still got two squadmates to recruit, and I haven't even been to the Citadel yet.
Until next time nerds!
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Bonus Update - Year In Review
I thought it would be worth a brief post looking back at my gaming in 2024 and my plans for 2025 just for the record's sake.
In 2024 I completed 21 games and retired 4. Of those completions, 5 were replays (FFXII and Halo 2, 3, ODST, and Reach). 25 games is child's play to a lot of you power gamers out there I'm sure, but it's a lot for me.
The quality of the games I played is more important to me than the quantity though, and I learned a lot about what really makes a game enjoyable for me. I hope this will enable higher quality curation of the games I choose to play and fewer duds and retirements. My time is valuable, and I want to spend it playing bangers thank you very much. For me that means story-driven games, of course, and largely RPGs.
With all that in mind, my top 5 games of the year were:
#1 Mass Effect - Perhaps recency bias is interfering a bit here, but if so I don't think it is that much of a factor. For a story driven RPG fan like me, this was an incredible game. I can't imagine a timeline where I don't end up replaying this - and perhaps the rest of the ME trilogy if my current experience with ME2 is any indication - multiple times in the future.
#2 BioShock - This is another game with exquisite writing and worldbuilding. The opening hook and clever plot twists make this an instant classic for me.
#3 Tunic - For a game to impact me this much with so little in the way of story really says something. Tunic does a remarkable job of making the player and the puzzles the centerpiece of it's story. Brilliant game.
#4 Halo 3 - Another rare instance of a game that I love where gameplay outshines the story. The story is good, but nowhere near as good as in Halo 2 and Reach, in my opinion. In terms of level design, music, acting, weapons, vehicles, and gameplay loops, however, Halo 3 is the pinnacle of shooters as far as I'm concerned.
#5 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - This was my first BioWare title and it was certainly a gateway drug. Old and clunky as all get out, but a fresh dip into the Star Wars universe with a great story and deep characters overshadowed all the game's flaws.
-------------
Heading into 2025 I've got a decently clear vision of what games I want to play. Priority number one is finishing up the Mass Effect trilogy. After that I will be mixing it up between Final Fantasy games and some standalone titles. I still haven't completely decided what my approach to FF will be, but I think it is likely going to be a mix of the 3D titles and the 2D titles. I have nine of them to play through that I currently own: I-VI, X, X-2, and XIII. I'm thinking of playing four or five of them in 2025 and four or five in 2026 maybe. By then I may have some upgraded hardware and may go ahead and pick up the XIII sequels, XV, and XVI. I think eventually I'd like to experience XIV as well, since I hear it is an amazing story and a great deal of it is free and single player friendly. I will likely never muster up interest in XI. The VII remakes are an interesting question for me since they are getting rave reviews, but VII is my coming of age darling vidya game and I'm terrified of what they did with it. Oh well, whether I play them or not is a question for future MZD to decide.
tl;dr the lineup I'm currently thinking of to start 2025 is:
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Paper Mario
Planescape: Torment
Final Fantasy VI
Jade Empire
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Disco Elysium
Final Fantasy I
Pillars of Eternity
I'm sure I will change my mind forty times in the next few months, but it's good to start with an idea I suppose.
I thought it would be worth a brief post looking back at my gaming in 2024 and my plans for 2025 just for the record's sake.
In 2024 I completed 21 games and retired 4. Of those completions, 5 were replays (FFXII and Halo 2, 3, ODST, and Reach). 25 games is child's play to a lot of you power gamers out there I'm sure, but it's a lot for me.
The quality of the games I played is more important to me than the quantity though, and I learned a lot about what really makes a game enjoyable for me. I hope this will enable higher quality curation of the games I choose to play and fewer duds and retirements. My time is valuable, and I want to spend it playing bangers thank you very much. For me that means story-driven games, of course, and largely RPGs.
With all that in mind, my top 5 games of the year were:
#1 Mass Effect - Perhaps recency bias is interfering a bit here, but if so I don't think it is that much of a factor. For a story driven RPG fan like me, this was an incredible game. I can't imagine a timeline where I don't end up replaying this - and perhaps the rest of the ME trilogy if my current experience with ME2 is any indication - multiple times in the future.
#2 BioShock - This is another game with exquisite writing and worldbuilding. The opening hook and clever plot twists make this an instant classic for me.
#3 Tunic - For a game to impact me this much with so little in the way of story really says something. Tunic does a remarkable job of making the player and the puzzles the centerpiece of it's story. Brilliant game.
#4 Halo 3 - Another rare instance of a game that I love where gameplay outshines the story. The story is good, but nowhere near as good as in Halo 2 and Reach, in my opinion. In terms of level design, music, acting, weapons, vehicles, and gameplay loops, however, Halo 3 is the pinnacle of shooters as far as I'm concerned.
#5 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - This was my first BioWare title and it was certainly a gateway drug. Old and clunky as all get out, but a fresh dip into the Star Wars universe with a great story and deep characters overshadowed all the game's flaws.
-------------
Heading into 2025 I've got a decently clear vision of what games I want to play. Priority number one is finishing up the Mass Effect trilogy. After that I will be mixing it up between Final Fantasy games and some standalone titles. I still haven't completely decided what my approach to FF will be, but I think it is likely going to be a mix of the 3D titles and the 2D titles. I have nine of them to play through that I currently own: I-VI, X, X-2, and XIII. I'm thinking of playing four or five of them in 2025 and four or five in 2026 maybe. By then I may have some upgraded hardware and may go ahead and pick up the XIII sequels, XV, and XVI. I think eventually I'd like to experience XIV as well, since I hear it is an amazing story and a great deal of it is free and single player friendly. I will likely never muster up interest in XI. The VII remakes are an interesting question for me since they are getting rave reviews, but VII is my coming of age darling vidya game and I'm terrified of what they did with it. Oh well, whether I play them or not is a question for future MZD to decide.
tl;dr the lineup I'm currently thinking of to start 2025 is:
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Paper Mario
Planescape: Torment
Final Fantasy VI
Jade Empire
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Disco Elysium
Final Fantasy I
Pillars of Eternity
I'm sure I will change my mind forty times in the next few months, but it's good to start with an idea I suppose.
10 Yrs♥✓#
I have played a fair number of the games on your list for 2025 and they are all of them wise choices. Though I suspect you will probably want to power through the Mass Effect games early on because, as good as the first one was... the second one is even better. The plot doesn't have quite as much forward movement, but pretty much everything else is a considerable improvement over the first game. It's easily my favorite game in the original trilogy. Though The Citadel DLC in ME3 is also a real treat.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Yeah, my plan is to finish the ME trilogy before anything else. I'll be posting an update tomorrow that will deal mostly with ME2. Perhaps it will be the completion post, but I'm not sure just yet. I still need to do Jack, Jacob, and Zaeed's loyalty missions, then go get the friend or foe maguffin so I can get through the Omega 4 relay. I have no actual idea of how close that puts me to finishing the game, but I imagine I'm not too far. You're right, it is very different from the first game in the way it handles plot, but I've really enjoyed it even though I saw the plot as the strong suit of the first game. ME2 is all about character. With 11 party members it's no wonder.
I'm glad to receive a vote of confidence on my tentative 2025 list. Most of those games have strong reviews, so I figured there wouldn't be any stinkers. I am slightly concerned that I'll need a few more breaks from RPGs than what I've currently planned, but I'll just take it case by case.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #24 - I'm Putting Together a Team
Between Christmas and New Year's I've been swimming in extra time off work, so I've gotten to play more vidya than usual. I feel spoiled. I certainly wouldn't have finished the first two ME games in such short order without it. Now, to jump right in:
Completion!
Mass Effect 2
Main + Extras: 39H 36M
Rating: 9.5/10
Mass Effect 2 was a highly immersive and gripping experience for me. It built on the first game's excellent worldbuilding and managed to significantly improve upon gameplay with it's combat and exploration mechanics. If I'm being honest, I think that ME2 is a step down from the first game in terms of it's narrative quality, but that is primarily due to stylistic changes and the narrative is still great. After taking into account both the superior gameplay and less awesome narrative, everything comes out in the wash in my opinion, and I'm giving ME2 a 9.5/10 just like I did with the first game.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 10/10
The world of Mass Effect is spectacular. The variety of locales - from the hedonistic nightclub on a repurposed asteroid, to the silent, frozen graveyard of a certain crash site, to the hull of a massive ship cruising through a lightning storm above a gas giant - all did an incredible job of getting me to buy in to the futuristic sci-fi adventure feeling the game was going for. The richly developed alien races and their cultures, conflicts, politics, speech, and exotic appearances carried over from the first game and were elaborated on wonderfully. The music is just right - atmospheric and not overpowering. The voice acting remains stellar, which is no small feat given the expansion of the cast of characters. In short, ME2 hits the bullseye on everything a cool, futuristic space opera about saving the galaxy should with regard to it's presentation, probably only surpassed by the Star Wars universe.
---------------------
Gameplay: 9/10
ME2 made great strides in improved gameplay over the first game, and that was most noticeable in combat. The first Mass Effect threw me through a loop for a while as I tried to figure out if it was meant to be played as a shooter or a tactics game, and although I eventually got the hang of it, it's identity was a little murky. There was no such issue with ME2. I played it straight through as a real time with pause tactics game and loved it. ME2 does a great job of throwing challenges at the player in the form of different enemy types and their layers of protection in the form of Shields, Barriers, Armor - somehow all different things believe it or not - and Health, but also gives the player a buffet of potential solutions with all the gear and powers available and a plethora of squad mates to choose from.
The permutations of gear and skill synergy between all the different squad mates and whatever class the player chooses are nearly endless, and once I found some good synergy to work with the combat was incredibly satisfying. I chose to play as a Vanguard because - like in the first game - I wanted to focus on getting up close with shotguns. In the first game I had to sprint up to my targets with my immunity skill active. In ME2, the Vanguard gets an ability called charge, and boy is it good. It is essentially an instant teleport to a target that knocks them in the air, deals big damage, and slows time upon impact giving the player a chance to issue commands, take a free shot or two, or figure out how to get to cover. It gets better though. Since charge launches the target in the air, any abilities that do additional damage to an airborne opponent make for a great follow up to charge. One of the biotic abilities - warp - does just that, and a couple of squad mates come with it. It gets even better still. As a Vanguard I had access to a biotic ability called pull - which sends an enemy airborne from range - so I could essentially leverage the same warp synergy at any range. I can't express just how satisfying this made combat. I was able to dominate the field, but it didn't feel cheap and easy as if the game handed it to me. ME2 makes you feel clever and tactical by giving you a combat puzzle to solve, but plenty of pieces to solve it. I look forward to future replays where I can devastate alien baddies in new and interesting ways.
In my opinion, ME2 also improves upon exploration of uncharted planets. The Mako from the first game was cool, but the planets all blended together eventually and there was a lot of dead time driving around doing nothing. I much prefer the streamlined mineral scanning system in ME2.
BioWare games heavily feature dialogue and NPC interaction as not just a narrative tool, but an integral part of the gameplay too, and ME2 excels at it with some minor hiccups. The game is very customizable in the sense that the player could choose to barely interact at all and just beeline missions and plot points, but it is very rewarding to exhaust most dialogue options. Arguably one of the primary features of ME2 is that you get to "choose your adventure" by pandering to some characters while ignoring or actively antagonizing others. This is also apparent with the same Paragon and Renegade morality system from the first game being carried over. I still can't say I'm a huge fan of the polarity since sometimes the "good" option is unrealistic or foolish and the "bad" option is pitchfork, horns, and a tail level of cartoonish evil, but overall it was fine. I ended up going for a mix of them both but erred toward Paragon, and it was not difficult in the slightest to max out my Paragon level.
---------------------
Narrative: 9/10
Mass Effect was a fantastic example of how to craft a plot with high stakes that escalate even more with an ominous and terrifying antagonist, but ME2 is far less plot driven and is instead character driven. The bulk of the game is not spent actively advancing the plot of the main story, but rather experiencing lots of smaller stories about recruiting exceptional individuals into an ensemble and gaining their loyalty before pursuing the ultimate goal. For what it is - a primarily character driven story - the execution is top notch. Although, I do have to say that it felt strange at first since I went into ME2 while riding the high of the first game's plot of galactic peril and was quickly brought down to a much more granular level of story. Stylistically I preferred Mass Effect's treatment of a space game with a plot of massive scope rather than a focus on individual character backstories, and I'm curious what made the writers and developers choose to shift gears for ME2.
The opening hook of ME2 did exactly what a good hook should by making my jaw drop, provoking dramatic questions, and introducing difficulty for the characters to overcome. The plot point that ME2 utilizes also does a good job of resetting some of the dramatic tension that ME ended with so that ME2 could rebuild the intensity. That said, even though resurrecting Shepard sort of passes the sniff test of feasibility in a futuristic high tech sci-fi world, it was a little odd that the story just kind of breezes past it without ever dealing with the huge number of implications that bringing a dead man back to life would have for humanity.
There is a definite and deliberate lowering of the stakes from ME as the plot shifts from what can be done about an army of reapers in dark space bent on the destruction of all organic life in the galaxy to what can be done about some mass disappearances in human colonies. It isn't immediately obvious how the two are related, and while the connections are eventually made, it was a weird feeling at the beginning of ME2 to experience such a jarring de-escalation. Another strange feeling is that there were several decisions I made in ME that seemed to have huge implications, but as far as I can tell had almost no effect on my ME2 experience. For example saving the Rachni queen, saving Ashley instead of Kaidan, and letting the council die all seemed to have no real impact. Perhaps they will in ME3? At any rate, the disorienting feeling subsided for me quickly enough though, and the game got me to buy in to the squad character profiles and loyalty missions.
ME2's greatest narrative strength can be summed up in a single word: characterization. Writing characters with a lot of depth and gradually revealing all of the facets of their personality through behavior, speech, and mannerisms unique to them ensures that they will be emotionally resonant and memorable, and ME2 has the formula down pat. Each squad member feels distinct and worth caring about, which is what makes digging into their personal stories rather than moving forward with that whole save the galaxy thing seem worthwhile.
While most of the characters themselves feel well rounded and generate interest, I think some aspects of the writing in their individual backstory plots was weak. Up to seven of them, depending on how you slice it, have backstories that could be summarized simply as "daddy issues", although the flavor of each is different. Two of them are shallow revenge stories. I just think there could have been more variety to the characters' backstory drama when there was a whole galaxy and a really well built world to work with.
In light of this being such a character driven game, I feel obligated to give my own power ranking of the squad of ME2, so here it goes:
Tali - She has the best loyalty mission in my opinion and is the most agreeable character of the bunch. Daddy issues.
Mordin - He has hilarious dialogue and mannerisms, one of the most exotic and memorable looks, and his loyalty mission poses compelling questions.
Jack - One of the most disagreeable characters ever, but her backstory makes it clear why she is the way she is and makes me feel all the compassion in the world for her. She has such a heartbreaking and infuriating loyalty mission. Daddy issues.
Thane - I loved both his recruitment mission and loyalty mission, and he was my preferred squad mate in combat because of his sniping against armor and his warp and throw abilities. Daddy issues with a plot twist - he's the daddy.
Kasumi - I enjoyed her loyalty mission quite a bit, and even though her dialogue is limited it is quite funny and made me like her personality.
Legion - He was my last recruit and I played with him the least, but his loyalty mission was fun and the implications of a geth ally and rewriting the heretic geth is really cool for the story.
Garrus - He was my second favorite squad mate in combat, but his loyalty mission is a boring revenge plot. The Archangel recruitment mission was excellent though.
Grunt - He's not Wrex, but he is funny and has an interesting premise to his backstory. Daddy issues.
Samara - Her recruitment mission was ok, but it made her seem way more powerful than she actually is. Daddy issues with a plot twist - (s)he's the daddy???
Jacob - He's quite boring, but his loyalty mission had an interesting premise at least. Daddy issues.
Miranda - Ah, the fan service silhouette. When she's not ice cold or uptight she's staggeringly boring. Daddy issues.
Zaeed - He's got some humorous dialogue, but the hardened merc bent on revenge at any expense thing is dumb.
Honorable mentions for Joker and EDI's working relationship and banter and the two crew members down in the engineering bay for their great comments.
While ME2 is mostly about character, there is no denying that the final mission and it's outcomes drive the plot in a big way. Quite honestly, it's one of the best final missions in any game I've ever played. It features tough, dramatic choices in a great space battle environment. I really enjoyed fighting through collectors while Samara held up a biotic barrier against the swarming insect things and thought it was a cool touch of level design. The "boss" had an excellent design and big implications for the plot, but was extremely easy to beat. I really took my time with the recruitment and loyalty aspects of the game, so I'm pretty sure I got the "good" ending, especially since the last mission is called the "suicide" mission, but nobody died. It was a good bit of catharsis to see all my work throughout the game pay off.
The major choices I made in ME2 that I assume will carry over to ME3 are romancing Tali, helping Liara become the Shadow Broker, convincing Mordin to hold on to the research for the genophage cure, waking up Grunt, activating Legion, rewriting the heretic geth, and blowing up the collector base against the Ilusive Man's wishes.
My biggest questions going into ME3 are:
1) What exactly is going on with this Ilusive Man? His eyes had that weird iris design all game until the last cutscene where it appears they had changed after the collector base was destroyed. The color of the weird light source out his window had also changed if I'm not mistaken.
2) How exactly did the reapers suddenly return from dark space? The game just casually shows a fleet of them arrive at the very end with no preamble or explanation.
3) Who was Harbinger? The game indicates that he's the general of the collectors and that he can possess the body of any collector at will, but never elaborates beyond that. I suspect Harbinger is a Reaper that is focusing indoctrination on individual collectors, but the game never really says unless I missed it.
---------------------
I'm really impressed with the first two games of the ME trilogy. They have certainly lived up to the hype. I see no reason to slow down and pivot to a pallete cleanse game, so I'll be plowing straight on ahead with ME3 next.
Until next time nerds!
Between Christmas and New Year's I've been swimming in extra time off work, so I've gotten to play more vidya than usual. I feel spoiled. I certainly wouldn't have finished the first two ME games in such short order without it. Now, to jump right in:
Completion!
Mass Effect 2
Main + Extras: 39H 36M
Rating: 9.5/10
Mass Effect 2 was a highly immersive and gripping experience for me. It built on the first game's excellent worldbuilding and managed to significantly improve upon gameplay with it's combat and exploration mechanics. If I'm being honest, I think that ME2 is a step down from the first game in terms of it's narrative quality, but that is primarily due to stylistic changes and the narrative is still great. After taking into account both the superior gameplay and less awesome narrative, everything comes out in the wash in my opinion, and I'm giving ME2 a 9.5/10 just like I did with the first game.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 10/10
The world of Mass Effect is spectacular. The variety of locales - from the hedonistic nightclub on a repurposed asteroid, to the silent, frozen graveyard of a certain crash site, to the hull of a massive ship cruising through a lightning storm above a gas giant - all did an incredible job of getting me to buy in to the futuristic sci-fi adventure feeling the game was going for. The richly developed alien races and their cultures, conflicts, politics, speech, and exotic appearances carried over from the first game and were elaborated on wonderfully. The music is just right - atmospheric and not overpowering. The voice acting remains stellar, which is no small feat given the expansion of the cast of characters. In short, ME2 hits the bullseye on everything a cool, futuristic space opera about saving the galaxy should with regard to it's presentation, probably only surpassed by the Star Wars universe.
---------------------
Gameplay: 9/10
ME2 made great strides in improved gameplay over the first game, and that was most noticeable in combat. The first Mass Effect threw me through a loop for a while as I tried to figure out if it was meant to be played as a shooter or a tactics game, and although I eventually got the hang of it, it's identity was a little murky. There was no such issue with ME2. I played it straight through as a real time with pause tactics game and loved it. ME2 does a great job of throwing challenges at the player in the form of different enemy types and their layers of protection in the form of Shields, Barriers, Armor - somehow all different things believe it or not - and Health, but also gives the player a buffet of potential solutions with all the gear and powers available and a plethora of squad mates to choose from.
The permutations of gear and skill synergy between all the different squad mates and whatever class the player chooses are nearly endless, and once I found some good synergy to work with the combat was incredibly satisfying. I chose to play as a Vanguard because - like in the first game - I wanted to focus on getting up close with shotguns. In the first game I had to sprint up to my targets with my immunity skill active. In ME2, the Vanguard gets an ability called charge, and boy is it good. It is essentially an instant teleport to a target that knocks them in the air, deals big damage, and slows time upon impact giving the player a chance to issue commands, take a free shot or two, or figure out how to get to cover. It gets better though. Since charge launches the target in the air, any abilities that do additional damage to an airborne opponent make for a great follow up to charge. One of the biotic abilities - warp - does just that, and a couple of squad mates come with it. It gets even better still. As a Vanguard I had access to a biotic ability called pull - which sends an enemy airborne from range - so I could essentially leverage the same warp synergy at any range. I can't express just how satisfying this made combat. I was able to dominate the field, but it didn't feel cheap and easy as if the game handed it to me. ME2 makes you feel clever and tactical by giving you a combat puzzle to solve, but plenty of pieces to solve it. I look forward to future replays where I can devastate alien baddies in new and interesting ways.
In my opinion, ME2 also improves upon exploration of uncharted planets. The Mako from the first game was cool, but the planets all blended together eventually and there was a lot of dead time driving around doing nothing. I much prefer the streamlined mineral scanning system in ME2.
BioWare games heavily feature dialogue and NPC interaction as not just a narrative tool, but an integral part of the gameplay too, and ME2 excels at it with some minor hiccups. The game is very customizable in the sense that the player could choose to barely interact at all and just beeline missions and plot points, but it is very rewarding to exhaust most dialogue options. Arguably one of the primary features of ME2 is that you get to "choose your adventure" by pandering to some characters while ignoring or actively antagonizing others. This is also apparent with the same Paragon and Renegade morality system from the first game being carried over. I still can't say I'm a huge fan of the polarity since sometimes the "good" option is unrealistic or foolish and the "bad" option is pitchfork, horns, and a tail level of cartoonish evil, but overall it was fine. I ended up going for a mix of them both but erred toward Paragon, and it was not difficult in the slightest to max out my Paragon level.
---------------------
Narrative: 9/10
Mass Effect was a fantastic example of how to craft a plot with high stakes that escalate even more with an ominous and terrifying antagonist, but ME2 is far less plot driven and is instead character driven. The bulk of the game is not spent actively advancing the plot of the main story, but rather experiencing lots of smaller stories about recruiting exceptional individuals into an ensemble and gaining their loyalty before pursuing the ultimate goal. For what it is - a primarily character driven story - the execution is top notch. Although, I do have to say that it felt strange at first since I went into ME2 while riding the high of the first game's plot of galactic peril and was quickly brought down to a much more granular level of story. Stylistically I preferred Mass Effect's treatment of a space game with a plot of massive scope rather than a focus on individual character backstories, and I'm curious what made the writers and developers choose to shift gears for ME2.
The opening hook of ME2 did exactly what a good hook should by making my jaw drop, provoking dramatic questions, and introducing difficulty for the characters to overcome. The plot point that ME2 utilizes also does a good job of resetting some of the dramatic tension that ME ended with so that ME2 could rebuild the intensity. That said, even though resurrecting Shepard sort of passes the sniff test of feasibility in a futuristic high tech sci-fi world, it was a little odd that the story just kind of breezes past it without ever dealing with the huge number of implications that bringing a dead man back to life would have for humanity.
There is a definite and deliberate lowering of the stakes from ME as the plot shifts from what can be done about an army of reapers in dark space bent on the destruction of all organic life in the galaxy to what can be done about some mass disappearances in human colonies. It isn't immediately obvious how the two are related, and while the connections are eventually made, it was a weird feeling at the beginning of ME2 to experience such a jarring de-escalation. Another strange feeling is that there were several decisions I made in ME that seemed to have huge implications, but as far as I can tell had almost no effect on my ME2 experience. For example saving the Rachni queen, saving Ashley instead of Kaidan, and letting the council die all seemed to have no real impact. Perhaps they will in ME3? At any rate, the disorienting feeling subsided for me quickly enough though, and the game got me to buy in to the squad character profiles and loyalty missions.
ME2's greatest narrative strength can be summed up in a single word: characterization. Writing characters with a lot of depth and gradually revealing all of the facets of their personality through behavior, speech, and mannerisms unique to them ensures that they will be emotionally resonant and memorable, and ME2 has the formula down pat. Each squad member feels distinct and worth caring about, which is what makes digging into their personal stories rather than moving forward with that whole save the galaxy thing seem worthwhile.
While most of the characters themselves feel well rounded and generate interest, I think some aspects of the writing in their individual backstory plots was weak. Up to seven of them, depending on how you slice it, have backstories that could be summarized simply as "daddy issues", although the flavor of each is different. Two of them are shallow revenge stories. I just think there could have been more variety to the characters' backstory drama when there was a whole galaxy and a really well built world to work with.
In light of this being such a character driven game, I feel obligated to give my own power ranking of the squad of ME2, so here it goes:
Tali - She has the best loyalty mission in my opinion and is the most agreeable character of the bunch. Daddy issues.
Mordin - He has hilarious dialogue and mannerisms, one of the most exotic and memorable looks, and his loyalty mission poses compelling questions.
Jack - One of the most disagreeable characters ever, but her backstory makes it clear why she is the way she is and makes me feel all the compassion in the world for her. She has such a heartbreaking and infuriating loyalty mission. Daddy issues.
Thane - I loved both his recruitment mission and loyalty mission, and he was my preferred squad mate in combat because of his sniping against armor and his warp and throw abilities. Daddy issues with a plot twist - he's the daddy.
Kasumi - I enjoyed her loyalty mission quite a bit, and even though her dialogue is limited it is quite funny and made me like her personality.
Legion - He was my last recruit and I played with him the least, but his loyalty mission was fun and the implications of a geth ally and rewriting the heretic geth is really cool for the story.
Garrus - He was my second favorite squad mate in combat, but his loyalty mission is a boring revenge plot. The Archangel recruitment mission was excellent though.
Grunt - He's not Wrex, but he is funny and has an interesting premise to his backstory. Daddy issues.
Samara - Her recruitment mission was ok, but it made her seem way more powerful than she actually is. Daddy issues with a plot twist - (s)he's the daddy???
Jacob - He's quite boring, but his loyalty mission had an interesting premise at least. Daddy issues.
Miranda - Ah, the fan service silhouette. When she's not ice cold or uptight she's staggeringly boring. Daddy issues.
Zaeed - He's got some humorous dialogue, but the hardened merc bent on revenge at any expense thing is dumb.
Honorable mentions for Joker and EDI's working relationship and banter and the two crew members down in the engineering bay for their great comments.
While ME2 is mostly about character, there is no denying that the final mission and it's outcomes drive the plot in a big way. Quite honestly, it's one of the best final missions in any game I've ever played. It features tough, dramatic choices in a great space battle environment. I really enjoyed fighting through collectors while Samara held up a biotic barrier against the swarming insect things and thought it was a cool touch of level design. The "boss" had an excellent design and big implications for the plot, but was extremely easy to beat. I really took my time with the recruitment and loyalty aspects of the game, so I'm pretty sure I got the "good" ending, especially since the last mission is called the "suicide" mission, but nobody died. It was a good bit of catharsis to see all my work throughout the game pay off.
The major choices I made in ME2 that I assume will carry over to ME3 are romancing Tali, helping Liara become the Shadow Broker, convincing Mordin to hold on to the research for the genophage cure, waking up Grunt, activating Legion, rewriting the heretic geth, and blowing up the collector base against the Ilusive Man's wishes.
My biggest questions going into ME3 are:
1) What exactly is going on with this Ilusive Man? His eyes had that weird iris design all game until the last cutscene where it appears they had changed after the collector base was destroyed. The color of the weird light source out his window had also changed if I'm not mistaken.
2) How exactly did the reapers suddenly return from dark space? The game just casually shows a fleet of them arrive at the very end with no preamble or explanation.
3) Who was Harbinger? The game indicates that he's the general of the collectors and that he can possess the body of any collector at will, but never elaborates beyond that. I suspect Harbinger is a Reaper that is focusing indoctrination on individual collectors, but the game never really says unless I missed it.
---------------------
I'm really impressed with the first two games of the ME trilogy. They have certainly lived up to the hype. I see no reason to slow down and pivot to a pallete cleanse game, so I'll be plowing straight on ahead with ME3 next.
Until next time nerds!
10 Yrs♥✓#
Did you play The Arrival DLC? I feel like that better explained the Reapers'... well, arrival. Or not, it has been a few years since I played through the Legendary Edition. In any case, if you want consequences that carry over into ME3, that's the mission. 🤣
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Is that the one where Hackett wants you to go rescue one of his people that have been compromised? Unfortunately that was one of the few things I didn't do. By the time I'd done all the companion quests, I was just ready to move on with the story and quit pursuing extras. Plus, It wasn't always clear which side quests were dlc and which weren't, and even then not all dlc is worthwhile. Oh well, I've already gotten through the intro sequence of ME3, so I'm over the suddenness of it. I'll have to prioritize it on future playthroughs.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #25 - Had To Be Me. Someone Else Might Have Gotten It Wrong.
I suppose technically this is a bi-weekly update this time around since I skipped last weekend. Life got busy, and there wouldn't have been much of an update anyhow as I was simply chugging my way through Mass Effect 3. I just finished it last night, and boy howdy do I have thoughts about this game and the Mass Effect trilogy overall.
Completion!
Mass Effect 3
Main + Extras: 38H 35M
Rating: 9/10
ME3 is a tough game to evaluate on it's own because it's just so inextricably attached to the first two games on every level, so a lot of the impressions I have about the third installment are really just feelings about the trilogy overall. I've tried to parse my opinions of 3 and the trilogy into two separate categories in my mind, and the best conclusion I can really come to is that, in a vacuum, I think ME3 is just a touch weaker than it's predecessors, but still a fitting conclusion to a wonderful gaming experience.
WARNING: Since discussing ME3 necessitates discussing the whole trilogy, I'm not going to bother with spoiler tags on anything below this point, so THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING if you've never played ME1, ME2, or ME3.
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Aesthetics: 10/10
There's not much for me to add here that I didn't already include in my reviews of ME1 and ME2. The worldbuilding in the Mass Effect universe is spectacular, and as a result the immersion is mostly air tight. I really got invested in this sci-fi conception of humanity's future and the Milky Way galaxy at large. The creativity and wide array of personality infused in the various alien races and environments throughout the game are truly special.
I really only have two tiny complaints, and their impact on my experience was basically negligible. First, I found ME3 to be the weakest musically of the trilogy, but that is only by way of comparison. Second, there was some noticeable "samey" feelings with the various industrial and space laboratory settings, but that could just be mild burnout from 90ish hours sunk in this trilogy over the last two months.
Where ME3 hits an absolute grand slam environmentally and emotionally is with the way it presents the prevailing sense of despair, fear, hopelessness, and desperation that is rippling throughout the galaxy as the story unfolds. The game opens with Earth getting absolutely wrecked, and the devastation doesn't stop no matter where you go as the game progresses. Every time I open up the galaxy map, another system is visually tagged as under reaper control. Every time I visit the citadel, there are more refugees and more ambient conversations to listen in on and experience their plights. After every couple of hours of gameplay, someone significant to the overall ME experience dies. Overall, ME3 did a sensational job of using it's visual and audio components to amplify the feelings that fit with the story.
Furthermore, I just want to say that the Reapers are a really cool design. They're like weird cyborg cockroach Godzilla's, but actually scary:
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Gameplay: 9/10
I felt there was very little difference between ME2 and ME3 in terms of combat, exploration, and navigating RPG elements like dialogue, skills and stats, inventory, etc., so I'm going to leave my rating the same.
The combat is smooth, intuitive, fun, and a big upgrade over ME1. Once again I played as a Vanguard and went all in on Charge + Shotguns, but in ME3 there were new melee buffs which added some more aggressive goodness. Breaking enemy shields, barriers, and armor was once again the name of the game, but I was given plenty of tools to take care of business in a variety of ways. Garrus and Liara ended up being my most used crew for Garrus's Overload and Concussive Shot and Liara's Stasis, Warp, and Singularity. My only gripe is that on PC it was frequently too easy to take cover in the wrong place or at the wrong time when you meant to sprint, or vice versa. It rarely happened, but when it did happen it sucked. I suppose playing on console or even on the PC's legendary edition that might not be an issue, but I'm not sure. Ok, I lied, I have a second gripe: Banshees really were a pain to fight.
I approve of the decision to change ME2's planet scanning for minerals to ME3's generic asset scanning in each system. That was a big time saver with little to no loss of fun. Although, I can't say I understood the War Assets mechanic and map hardly at all. I gained a ton of assets and filled the military power bar all the way up before launching the final mission, but it always said I was at 50% readiness. I'm not sure if that's a fixed setting or not meant to convey the story point that this is all a huge shot in the dark with the Crucible and all, but either way it wasn't explained well.
ME3 streamlined dialogue with squadmates a bit by making it clear when a character didn't have anything new to say instead of me needing to initiate the dialogue wheel to check in between every mission. I highly approve of this in such a dialogue heavy game, and time wasters in games are bad period. Any time developers clean those things up is a win in my eyes.
I think I preferred ME1 and ME2's skill and stat allocation systems, but ME3's is not bad by any means. On the other hand, ME3 has the best inventory and weapon loadout system in my opinion, so these factors are a wash for me.
The level design continued to be excellent in ME3 for the most part. There were obviously excellent outliers, such as Tuchanka, Rannoch, and the final mission, but very few if any that I would consider duds. The suicide mission in ME2 is still probably the best in the series, but Tuchanka and a couple of the moments in the final mission give it a run for it's money.
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Narrative: 8.5/10
If one objective of plot is to outline a story in terms of promises, progress, and payoffs, then the Mass Effect trilogy pretty neatly exemplifies the idea by having ME1 promise a sci-fi adventure with high stakes on a galactic scale, ME2 progressing the narrative with incredible characterization and mini arcs to give the world and it's inhabitants emotional resonance, and ME3 supplying payoffs in droves. Of course, ME3 has it's own promises and progress, but the highlight of this game is by far the payoffs to the overarching story of Mass Effect. I would say that all in all, ME3 nails it, but neatly wrapping up such a huge story is a monster of a task and it certainly wasn't flawlessly executed. I dutifully avoided anything resembling a spoiler, but I couldn't avoid the general opinion that the ME3 ending "sucks". I disagree. It certainly isn't as awful as so many web denizens seem to enjoy shouting from their digital rooftops, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't strike me as just a little off. These places where the ME3 story and it's narrative felt a little incongruous is the only thing that keeps me from putting it on the same level as ME1 and ME2 in my own personal evaluation.
The Crucible is weirdly kept as the big secret maguffin throughout the first ninety percent of the game, and all the characters are just kind of crossing their fingers and putting all their hope in it to neutralize the Reapers with no real evidence that it will do so, which feels a bit contrived and "off". Then, when the game introduced the progressive complication of needing the Catalyst - yet another weird big secret maguffin - so late in the story it felt kind of bad. When the big reveal that the Catalyst is actually the Citadel hits, it was deja vu of ME1 with the Citadel being the Conduit and a mass relay, and that felt kind of lame and unoriginal. But then, when the game drops the really big reveal that the Citadel is only a part of the Catalyst - which is actually an ancient AI that created the reapers to maintain balance between organic and synthetic life per it's programming - it actually feels pretty good. It fits with the storyline of ME1 with the Protheans, Keepers, and especially Sovereign and it's monologue about how it is a part of something beyond the scope of human understanding and concerns. Most of all though, it fits like a glove with the Leviathan DLC, although if I'm understanding correctly that might have been a retcon by BioWare to salvage things. If that's the case then bravo, I'd say they succeeded.
When given the three potential resolutions to the story at the very end, I chose to fire the Crucible and destroy the Reapers and, by extension, all other synthetic "lifeforms". In my opinion, this choice best fit what a paragon Shepard would do, although one might argue that the "synthesis" resolution would be fitting. Ultimately though, I think paragon Shepard would stick with what the races of the galaxy set out to do from the start of the game, which is to eliminate the Reaper threat, not "play God" with civilizational advancement. I was tempted to immediately go watch the other endings on YouTube, but I'm going to intentionally leave those unspoiled for myself and my future playthroughs.
The conclusion to the main story is not the only big payoff in ME3 though. Nearly every character that was ever in my squad got some kind of story arc resolution, whether big or small. I won't cover them all here, but there a few that were particularly commendable.
Mordin Solus was a truly great character. Well done to all of the folks who worked on his design and story arc. The design of Salarians in general is a fun expression of an alien race, and the voice acting is distinct and well done on all of them, but especially Mordin. He's a brilliant scientist that thinks in terms of pure logic and the modelled projections of laboratory results. He doesn't hesitate to tweak the genetic knobs of an entire species for the "greater good", but then he is slowly brought to bear on the moral dilemma of his actions. That is inescapably compelling, no matter how the player feels about the Krogan and the genophage. Everybody likes a competent character -whatever that looks like given their expertise - and in several ways Mordin fits the bill. Everybody likes a character haunted by their past who wrestles with how they can make things right, and Mordin fits the bill. Everybody likes a character that is selfless and will sacrifice for the good of others, and Mordin fits the bill. Everybody likes a character that is likable - "which I know is a tautology" - and Mordin fits the bill. His quirk of speaking in incomplete, rapid-fire sentences ("like a hamster on coffee"), then stopping to close his eyes and breathe deep before reaching a conclusion is downright charming. His almost child-like affinity for silly songs and beaches contrasted with his hyper-genius biological knowledge make him even more likable. His final scene might have been the best moment in the series to be honest. It's all so brilliantly executed, from his confidence and competence, to the tremble in his voice, to the chaos all around him, to the smile upon success, and of course the singing. In short, he is the very model of a-
Tali Zorah also has a satisfying arc from naive Quarian on pilgrimage to the voice of reason for her species and one of the primary causes of their resolved conflict with the Geth and re-establishment on their homeworld. I remember finishing ME1 and thinking how much I wanted to learn more about the Quarians and see their fleet. While I never got to see the flotilla or much more depth into how the Quarians lived as space nomads, ME2 and 3 together did a bang up job of developing and resolving the Quarian story. Tali herself is easily one of the top two or three most likable squadmates and I'm glad I chose to pursue the romance option with her. I'm generally not a fan of romance in video games because it's always so over the top horny and desperate, but the Tali romance was sweet and subdued - though there is the whole weirdness of the interspecies nature of it. When she let Shepard know that she left a gift in his cabin for him and I saw that it was a picture of her without the mask, I found it very touching.
I thought Samara's story was just ok in ME 2, but I need to amend that now that I've played ME3. In ME2 Samara comes across as unfeeling and a little boring with the whole Justicar living by "the code" shtick. When she shared that her daughter is a genetically aberrant killer and two other daughters are secluded so they don't become the same, it felt kind of strange since she hadn't seen them in hundreds of years and had since become a Justicar. There seemed to be a disconnect between her desire to resolve the problem of her daughter Morinth on the loose and her profession as a Justicar who, like a Jedi, is supposed to be separated from all emotional ties. It wasn't until going to the Ardat Yakshi monastery in ME3 that I had the aha moment and realized that it was precisely because of the trouble with Morinth that Samara became a Justicar in the first place. She needed the Justicar's code in order to kill her own daughter - which justice demanded - without the hesitation or debilitating sorrow that being a mother in such a circumstance demanded. For dealing with Morinth, this ultimately worked out, but for dealing with her other daughter's it backfired. With the monastery destroyed she finds herself in the troubling position of having the code demand that she now kill another Ardat Yakshi daughter, but this one is innocent. She quickly realizes it and decides that rather than follow the code to her daughter's detriment, it would be preferable to do away with the Justicar. Thankfully, Shepard gets to do hero stuff and intervene. Overall, the added context to Samara's character arc helped me see that in ME2 she wasn't just a boring biotic space Paladin that is lawful good to a fault, but rather a complex character looking to do the impossible by doling out justice on a wicked daughter who she nevertheless loves. As a parent, I really resonated with Samara's finished arc.
Thematically I see the entirety of the Mass Effect trilogy pointing towards two main ideas: artificial intelligence or synthetic "life", and playing God.
The AI themes are fairly obvious from the beginning as the galactic systems of governance forbid development of AI beyond a certain point, the synthetic Geth are the foot soldiers of the enemy in ME1, and the revelation of the Reapers - a "race" of unimaginably powerful synthetic beings - is both ominous and terrifying. However, the writers are using the narrative to shift opinion toward synthetic "life" as the story progresses in a number of ways.
First, the introduction of the Normandy's onboard AI, "EDI", and it's juxtaposition with the highly likable character of Joker. He is initially suspicious of an AI on his ship, hostile even. However, the writers seem to really want to get their point about AI across because not only do they make the highly sympathetic character of Joker change his opinion of EDI as an onboard AI, but they make the two of them fall in love and begin a romantic relationship. Moreover, the writers made it as downright sweet and endearing as possible, almost as if to say, "How could anyone possibly be opposed to AI after seeing these lovebirds?" EDI herself is shifted from an "it" to a "she" in just about every character's viewpoint. In this day and age this theme is, of course, highly relevant. So, feel free to go out there and start dating Siri or Alexa. That was a joke.
A second way this theme is treated is through the narrative arcs of the Geth and Legion. ME2 and ME3 gradually reveal that it was not all Geth that joined with Sovereign and the Reapers in their bid for galactic domination, but only those who were corrupted. This evokes sympathy for the Geth, much like indoctrination evoked sympathy for Saren at the end of ME1. Furthermore, it is made clear that the Geth's war with the Quarians was not one of conquest or even rebellion, but self defense. This is all revealed by Legion, who has already saved Shepard's life, helped the cause against the Reapers, and developed a personality of sorts. This unit has a soul.
Lastly, the theme is explicitly dealt with between Shepard and the Catalyst at the end of the game. Shepard is undeniably synthetic to at least some extent due to his resurrection in the Lazarus project. The Catalyst and the Reaper collective consciousness, conveniently presented as no less a sympathetic figure than a human child, sees its function as that of preventing inevitable conflict between synthetics and organics... by initiating periodic galaxy wide conflict between synthetics and organics. Shepard is of course seeking an end to the conflict, and is given the ultimate ideal solution of synthesis.
As I mentioned earlier, I did not choose synthesis, but rather to destroy the reapers and other synthetics. This is my natural conclusion to finding this theme and it's conclusions as presented by the game's writers as ultimately contrived and incorrect. I reckon humanity should not go the cyborg path with robot girlfriends, thanks for asking though. However, I can't deny that Mass Effect does a really good job of treating this theme and making one point of view much more sympathetic than the other. I mean, it hurt making the choice I did knowing that it was going to kill EDI, the Geth, and Shepard (or did it...). It took me back to when I first read I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, one of my very favorite books. If a storyteller can make me feel emotions for a robot, they have done something well.
Lastly, Mass Effect is dealing a lot with the theme of playing God. It first shows up when the player learns about the genophage and the Turian and Salarian efforts to limit the reproduction and expansion of a species in order to preserve balance. The games keep pushing the question of whether this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the face of Krogan aggression, or if it was morally reprehensible. Of course, as with the AI theme, the writers carefully craft the narrative so that all nudging of the player is in one direction. Namely, that creating the genophage was wrong and playing God with the reproductive capabilities of another species was wrong. This theme and it's treatment in ME is weird in my opinion, because it only works if you regard the Krogan the same as you would a human. For purposes of the game it works, but the analogy falls apart if you really think about it. For example, in the west it's generally regarded that the correct and humane thing to do is to neuter and spay dogs and cats. Are we monsters for reducing the birth rates of these species? The Rachni are a bit of a foil to this idea as well. There's a great argument to be made for not saving the Rachni queen and unleashing cockroaches of doom upon the galaxy, but would doing so be somehow less morally reprehensible than developing the genophage? In fact, what are the Reapers doing all along if not executing a genophage on a grander scale?
ME also deals with the idea of playing God through the characters of Saren and The Ilusive Man, who are remarkably similar. Both are ruthless and will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, both have remarkable resources at their disposal, both are endangering the galaxy through their twisted ideals, and both are ultimately revealed to be indoctrinated. Saren seeks to play God by disrupting the Reaper cycle in a small way - preserving some small percentage of organic life from the reaping, if only as slaves. The Ilusive Man seeks to play God by disrupting the Reaper cycle in a massive way - preserving some small percentage of organic life from the reaping by dominating the reapers themselves. Obviously, both fail and are canonically antagonists, so the story writers seem to be saying that playing God is generally a bad thing.
This gets muddled by the ending, in my opinion. Two of the three options given to Shepard - synthesis and control - are quite obviously playing God. So, what exactly are the writers trying to get me to think about playing God through this story? I'm not sure, I want to think about it more. I'll just say that it's obviously a theme of this trilogy in a big way.
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That was a spectacular ride. I'm very glad that I picked up the Mass Effect trilogy and I can guarantee I will fire these games up again sometime. I'm excited to try an Infiltrator, Engineer, or Adept playthrough and make some of the big decisions of the story differently.
As far as moving forward with vidya, I definitely need a day or two to just come down from the high of that experience. I'll plod forward with Paper Mario after that just as a light, fun, low-stakes game that doesn't involve galactic death. After that, I'll see if I'm feeling another RPG right out of the gate - probably Planescape: Torment or FFVI - or a little more palette cleansing with Death's Door.
Until next time nerds!
I suppose technically this is a bi-weekly update this time around since I skipped last weekend. Life got busy, and there wouldn't have been much of an update anyhow as I was simply chugging my way through Mass Effect 3. I just finished it last night, and boy howdy do I have thoughts about this game and the Mass Effect trilogy overall.
Completion!
Mass Effect 3
Main + Extras: 38H 35M
Rating: 9/10
ME3 is a tough game to evaluate on it's own because it's just so inextricably attached to the first two games on every level, so a lot of the impressions I have about the third installment are really just feelings about the trilogy overall. I've tried to parse my opinions of 3 and the trilogy into two separate categories in my mind, and the best conclusion I can really come to is that, in a vacuum, I think ME3 is just a touch weaker than it's predecessors, but still a fitting conclusion to a wonderful gaming experience.
WARNING: Since discussing ME3 necessitates discussing the whole trilogy, I'm not going to bother with spoiler tags on anything below this point, so THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING if you've never played ME1, ME2, or ME3.
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Aesthetics: 10/10
There's not much for me to add here that I didn't already include in my reviews of ME1 and ME2. The worldbuilding in the Mass Effect universe is spectacular, and as a result the immersion is mostly air tight. I really got invested in this sci-fi conception of humanity's future and the Milky Way galaxy at large. The creativity and wide array of personality infused in the various alien races and environments throughout the game are truly special.
I really only have two tiny complaints, and their impact on my experience was basically negligible. First, I found ME3 to be the weakest musically of the trilogy, but that is only by way of comparison. Second, there was some noticeable "samey" feelings with the various industrial and space laboratory settings, but that could just be mild burnout from 90ish hours sunk in this trilogy over the last two months.
Where ME3 hits an absolute grand slam environmentally and emotionally is with the way it presents the prevailing sense of despair, fear, hopelessness, and desperation that is rippling throughout the galaxy as the story unfolds. The game opens with Earth getting absolutely wrecked, and the devastation doesn't stop no matter where you go as the game progresses. Every time I open up the galaxy map, another system is visually tagged as under reaper control. Every time I visit the citadel, there are more refugees and more ambient conversations to listen in on and experience their plights. After every couple of hours of gameplay, someone significant to the overall ME experience dies. Overall, ME3 did a sensational job of using it's visual and audio components to amplify the feelings that fit with the story.
Furthermore, I just want to say that the Reapers are a really cool design. They're like weird cyborg cockroach Godzilla's, but actually scary:
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Gameplay: 9/10
I felt there was very little difference between ME2 and ME3 in terms of combat, exploration, and navigating RPG elements like dialogue, skills and stats, inventory, etc., so I'm going to leave my rating the same.
The combat is smooth, intuitive, fun, and a big upgrade over ME1. Once again I played as a Vanguard and went all in on Charge + Shotguns, but in ME3 there were new melee buffs which added some more aggressive goodness. Breaking enemy shields, barriers, and armor was once again the name of the game, but I was given plenty of tools to take care of business in a variety of ways. Garrus and Liara ended up being my most used crew for Garrus's Overload and Concussive Shot and Liara's Stasis, Warp, and Singularity. My only gripe is that on PC it was frequently too easy to take cover in the wrong place or at the wrong time when you meant to sprint, or vice versa. It rarely happened, but when it did happen it sucked. I suppose playing on console or even on the PC's legendary edition that might not be an issue, but I'm not sure. Ok, I lied, I have a second gripe: Banshees really were a pain to fight.
I approve of the decision to change ME2's planet scanning for minerals to ME3's generic asset scanning in each system. That was a big time saver with little to no loss of fun. Although, I can't say I understood the War Assets mechanic and map hardly at all. I gained a ton of assets and filled the military power bar all the way up before launching the final mission, but it always said I was at 50% readiness. I'm not sure if that's a fixed setting or not meant to convey the story point that this is all a huge shot in the dark with the Crucible and all, but either way it wasn't explained well.
ME3 streamlined dialogue with squadmates a bit by making it clear when a character didn't have anything new to say instead of me needing to initiate the dialogue wheel to check in between every mission. I highly approve of this in such a dialogue heavy game, and time wasters in games are bad period. Any time developers clean those things up is a win in my eyes.
I think I preferred ME1 and ME2's skill and stat allocation systems, but ME3's is not bad by any means. On the other hand, ME3 has the best inventory and weapon loadout system in my opinion, so these factors are a wash for me.
The level design continued to be excellent in ME3 for the most part. There were obviously excellent outliers, such as Tuchanka, Rannoch, and the final mission, but very few if any that I would consider duds. The suicide mission in ME2 is still probably the best in the series, but Tuchanka and a couple of the moments in the final mission give it a run for it's money.
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Narrative: 8.5/10
If one objective of plot is to outline a story in terms of promises, progress, and payoffs, then the Mass Effect trilogy pretty neatly exemplifies the idea by having ME1 promise a sci-fi adventure with high stakes on a galactic scale, ME2 progressing the narrative with incredible characterization and mini arcs to give the world and it's inhabitants emotional resonance, and ME3 supplying payoffs in droves. Of course, ME3 has it's own promises and progress, but the highlight of this game is by far the payoffs to the overarching story of Mass Effect. I would say that all in all, ME3 nails it, but neatly wrapping up such a huge story is a monster of a task and it certainly wasn't flawlessly executed. I dutifully avoided anything resembling a spoiler, but I couldn't avoid the general opinion that the ME3 ending "sucks". I disagree. It certainly isn't as awful as so many web denizens seem to enjoy shouting from their digital rooftops, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't strike me as just a little off. These places where the ME3 story and it's narrative felt a little incongruous is the only thing that keeps me from putting it on the same level as ME1 and ME2 in my own personal evaluation.
The Crucible is weirdly kept as the big secret maguffin throughout the first ninety percent of the game, and all the characters are just kind of crossing their fingers and putting all their hope in it to neutralize the Reapers with no real evidence that it will do so, which feels a bit contrived and "off". Then, when the game introduced the progressive complication of needing the Catalyst - yet another weird big secret maguffin - so late in the story it felt kind of bad. When the big reveal that the Catalyst is actually the Citadel hits, it was deja vu of ME1 with the Citadel being the Conduit and a mass relay, and that felt kind of lame and unoriginal. But then, when the game drops the really big reveal that the Citadel is only a part of the Catalyst - which is actually an ancient AI that created the reapers to maintain balance between organic and synthetic life per it's programming - it actually feels pretty good. It fits with the storyline of ME1 with the Protheans, Keepers, and especially Sovereign and it's monologue about how it is a part of something beyond the scope of human understanding and concerns. Most of all though, it fits like a glove with the Leviathan DLC, although if I'm understanding correctly that might have been a retcon by BioWare to salvage things. If that's the case then bravo, I'd say they succeeded.
When given the three potential resolutions to the story at the very end, I chose to fire the Crucible and destroy the Reapers and, by extension, all other synthetic "lifeforms". In my opinion, this choice best fit what a paragon Shepard would do, although one might argue that the "synthesis" resolution would be fitting. Ultimately though, I think paragon Shepard would stick with what the races of the galaxy set out to do from the start of the game, which is to eliminate the Reaper threat, not "play God" with civilizational advancement. I was tempted to immediately go watch the other endings on YouTube, but I'm going to intentionally leave those unspoiled for myself and my future playthroughs.
The conclusion to the main story is not the only big payoff in ME3 though. Nearly every character that was ever in my squad got some kind of story arc resolution, whether big or small. I won't cover them all here, but there a few that were particularly commendable.
Mordin Solus was a truly great character. Well done to all of the folks who worked on his design and story arc. The design of Salarians in general is a fun expression of an alien race, and the voice acting is distinct and well done on all of them, but especially Mordin. He's a brilliant scientist that thinks in terms of pure logic and the modelled projections of laboratory results. He doesn't hesitate to tweak the genetic knobs of an entire species for the "greater good", but then he is slowly brought to bear on the moral dilemma of his actions. That is inescapably compelling, no matter how the player feels about the Krogan and the genophage. Everybody likes a competent character -whatever that looks like given their expertise - and in several ways Mordin fits the bill. Everybody likes a character haunted by their past who wrestles with how they can make things right, and Mordin fits the bill. Everybody likes a character that is selfless and will sacrifice for the good of others, and Mordin fits the bill. Everybody likes a character that is likable - "which I know is a tautology" - and Mordin fits the bill. His quirk of speaking in incomplete, rapid-fire sentences ("like a hamster on coffee"), then stopping to close his eyes and breathe deep before reaching a conclusion is downright charming. His almost child-like affinity for silly songs and beaches contrasted with his hyper-genius biological knowledge make him even more likable. His final scene might have been the best moment in the series to be honest. It's all so brilliantly executed, from his confidence and competence, to the tremble in his voice, to the chaos all around him, to the smile upon success, and of course the singing. In short, he is the very model of a-
Tali Zorah also has a satisfying arc from naive Quarian on pilgrimage to the voice of reason for her species and one of the primary causes of their resolved conflict with the Geth and re-establishment on their homeworld. I remember finishing ME1 and thinking how much I wanted to learn more about the Quarians and see their fleet. While I never got to see the flotilla or much more depth into how the Quarians lived as space nomads, ME2 and 3 together did a bang up job of developing and resolving the Quarian story. Tali herself is easily one of the top two or three most likable squadmates and I'm glad I chose to pursue the romance option with her. I'm generally not a fan of romance in video games because it's always so over the top horny and desperate, but the Tali romance was sweet and subdued - though there is the whole weirdness of the interspecies nature of it. When she let Shepard know that she left a gift in his cabin for him and I saw that it was a picture of her without the mask, I found it very touching.
I thought Samara's story was just ok in ME 2, but I need to amend that now that I've played ME3. In ME2 Samara comes across as unfeeling and a little boring with the whole Justicar living by "the code" shtick. When she shared that her daughter is a genetically aberrant killer and two other daughters are secluded so they don't become the same, it felt kind of strange since she hadn't seen them in hundreds of years and had since become a Justicar. There seemed to be a disconnect between her desire to resolve the problem of her daughter Morinth on the loose and her profession as a Justicar who, like a Jedi, is supposed to be separated from all emotional ties. It wasn't until going to the Ardat Yakshi monastery in ME3 that I had the aha moment and realized that it was precisely because of the trouble with Morinth that Samara became a Justicar in the first place. She needed the Justicar's code in order to kill her own daughter - which justice demanded - without the hesitation or debilitating sorrow that being a mother in such a circumstance demanded. For dealing with Morinth, this ultimately worked out, but for dealing with her other daughter's it backfired. With the monastery destroyed she finds herself in the troubling position of having the code demand that she now kill another Ardat Yakshi daughter, but this one is innocent. She quickly realizes it and decides that rather than follow the code to her daughter's detriment, it would be preferable to do away with the Justicar. Thankfully, Shepard gets to do hero stuff and intervene. Overall, the added context to Samara's character arc helped me see that in ME2 she wasn't just a boring biotic space Paladin that is lawful good to a fault, but rather a complex character looking to do the impossible by doling out justice on a wicked daughter who she nevertheless loves. As a parent, I really resonated with Samara's finished arc.
Thematically I see the entirety of the Mass Effect trilogy pointing towards two main ideas: artificial intelligence or synthetic "life", and playing God.
The AI themes are fairly obvious from the beginning as the galactic systems of governance forbid development of AI beyond a certain point, the synthetic Geth are the foot soldiers of the enemy in ME1, and the revelation of the Reapers - a "race" of unimaginably powerful synthetic beings - is both ominous and terrifying. However, the writers are using the narrative to shift opinion toward synthetic "life" as the story progresses in a number of ways.
First, the introduction of the Normandy's onboard AI, "EDI", and it's juxtaposition with the highly likable character of Joker. He is initially suspicious of an AI on his ship, hostile even. However, the writers seem to really want to get their point about AI across because not only do they make the highly sympathetic character of Joker change his opinion of EDI as an onboard AI, but they make the two of them fall in love and begin a romantic relationship. Moreover, the writers made it as downright sweet and endearing as possible, almost as if to say, "How could anyone possibly be opposed to AI after seeing these lovebirds?" EDI herself is shifted from an "it" to a "she" in just about every character's viewpoint. In this day and age this theme is, of course, highly relevant. So, feel free to go out there and start dating Siri or Alexa. That was a joke.
A second way this theme is treated is through the narrative arcs of the Geth and Legion. ME2 and ME3 gradually reveal that it was not all Geth that joined with Sovereign and the Reapers in their bid for galactic domination, but only those who were corrupted. This evokes sympathy for the Geth, much like indoctrination evoked sympathy for Saren at the end of ME1. Furthermore, it is made clear that the Geth's war with the Quarians was not one of conquest or even rebellion, but self defense. This is all revealed by Legion, who has already saved Shepard's life, helped the cause against the Reapers, and developed a personality of sorts. This unit has a soul.
Lastly, the theme is explicitly dealt with between Shepard and the Catalyst at the end of the game. Shepard is undeniably synthetic to at least some extent due to his resurrection in the Lazarus project. The Catalyst and the Reaper collective consciousness, conveniently presented as no less a sympathetic figure than a human child, sees its function as that of preventing inevitable conflict between synthetics and organics... by initiating periodic galaxy wide conflict between synthetics and organics. Shepard is of course seeking an end to the conflict, and is given the ultimate ideal solution of synthesis.
As I mentioned earlier, I did not choose synthesis, but rather to destroy the reapers and other synthetics. This is my natural conclusion to finding this theme and it's conclusions as presented by the game's writers as ultimately contrived and incorrect. I reckon humanity should not go the cyborg path with robot girlfriends, thanks for asking though. However, I can't deny that Mass Effect does a really good job of treating this theme and making one point of view much more sympathetic than the other. I mean, it hurt making the choice I did knowing that it was going to kill EDI, the Geth, and Shepard (or did it...). It took me back to when I first read I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, one of my very favorite books. If a storyteller can make me feel emotions for a robot, they have done something well.
Lastly, Mass Effect is dealing a lot with the theme of playing God. It first shows up when the player learns about the genophage and the Turian and Salarian efforts to limit the reproduction and expansion of a species in order to preserve balance. The games keep pushing the question of whether this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the face of Krogan aggression, or if it was morally reprehensible. Of course, as with the AI theme, the writers carefully craft the narrative so that all nudging of the player is in one direction. Namely, that creating the genophage was wrong and playing God with the reproductive capabilities of another species was wrong. This theme and it's treatment in ME is weird in my opinion, because it only works if you regard the Krogan the same as you would a human. For purposes of the game it works, but the analogy falls apart if you really think about it. For example, in the west it's generally regarded that the correct and humane thing to do is to neuter and spay dogs and cats. Are we monsters for reducing the birth rates of these species? The Rachni are a bit of a foil to this idea as well. There's a great argument to be made for not saving the Rachni queen and unleashing cockroaches of doom upon the galaxy, but would doing so be somehow less morally reprehensible than developing the genophage? In fact, what are the Reapers doing all along if not executing a genophage on a grander scale?
ME also deals with the idea of playing God through the characters of Saren and The Ilusive Man, who are remarkably similar. Both are ruthless and will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, both have remarkable resources at their disposal, both are endangering the galaxy through their twisted ideals, and both are ultimately revealed to be indoctrinated. Saren seeks to play God by disrupting the Reaper cycle in a small way - preserving some small percentage of organic life from the reaping, if only as slaves. The Ilusive Man seeks to play God by disrupting the Reaper cycle in a massive way - preserving some small percentage of organic life from the reaping by dominating the reapers themselves. Obviously, both fail and are canonically antagonists, so the story writers seem to be saying that playing God is generally a bad thing.
This gets muddled by the ending, in my opinion. Two of the three options given to Shepard - synthesis and control - are quite obviously playing God. So, what exactly are the writers trying to get me to think about playing God through this story? I'm not sure, I want to think about it more. I'll just say that it's obviously a theme of this trilogy in a big way.
---------------------
That was a spectacular ride. I'm very glad that I picked up the Mass Effect trilogy and I can guarantee I will fire these games up again sometime. I'm excited to try an Infiltrator, Engineer, or Adept playthrough and make some of the big decisions of the story differently.
As far as moving forward with vidya, I definitely need a day or two to just come down from the high of that experience. I'll plod forward with Paper Mario after that just as a light, fun, low-stakes game that doesn't involve galactic death. After that, I'll see if I'm feeling another RPG right out of the gate - probably Planescape: Torment or FFVI - or a little more palette cleansing with Death's Door.
Until next time nerds!
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #26 - A Mind Controlled Witch, a Treasure Hunter, and a Clown Walk Into a Bar...
After completing the sweeping epic that was the Mass Effect trilogy, I jumped right into Paper Mario. Now that's a contrast.
I really liked the art style - it's downright gorgeous for an N64 title - and it's got a solid foundation of good RPG mechanics with it's combat, items, dungeons, etc. All that having been said, I retired it after completing the second chapter. It seemed pretty clear to me that there wasn't going to be much more story or character development, and I just completely lost interest. I'm not sure what I was expecting from a Mario game, silly me. It's a delightful enough game filled with quaint, child-like humor and moderately challenging but engaging combat and puzzles, but I just can't bring myself to spend any of my limited Vidya time on games without a great story or crazy good gameplay to compensate for the lack of a story.
So, on to Final Fantasy VI and officially kicking off my journey through the FF games that I haven't beaten. I am several hours in and have reached the point where the party splits into three groups after going down the rapids. I followed Sabin's story branch first and fought my way through the phantom forest and train segments with Shadow and Cyan. I'm now back on the world map and headed back to Narshe.
I'm going to reserve a lot of judgement because I know I'm still in the early game, but I do have some initial impressions that really pop out.
Combat is extremely easy so far. The various character skills like Edgar's blasters, Shadow's throw, and Sabin's Blitz all enable one hit kills with no cost or downside. I suppose this is maybe due to the fact that I'm familiar with FF mechanics and turn based combat while SNES gamers in 1994 were not and needed all the help they could get?
There is a strange mixture of silliness in the over the top reactions of characters to certain things and the humor in some of the dialogue when compared to the darkness of the world and the story. It's not "bad", per se, just kind of strange. That's just JRPGs I guess.
The music is overall solid, but the battle theme and boss battle theme are Uematsu magic. They don't edge out the FFVII themes in my book, but it's close.
Lastly, the story is unfolding very slowly. Thus far it's clear that Terra is an amnesiac and the world's only known magic user in over a thousand years, the Gestahlian empire is out for conquest, Kefka is bad news, and there is a resistance group called the returners, and that's about it. I'm intrigued to see where it will go, and my understanding is that FFVI features the largest party of any FF game, so I still have lots of characters to meet.
That's all, nothing too crazy or cool this week.
Until next time nerds!
After completing the sweeping epic that was the Mass Effect trilogy, I jumped right into Paper Mario. Now that's a contrast.
I really liked the art style - it's downright gorgeous for an N64 title - and it's got a solid foundation of good RPG mechanics with it's combat, items, dungeons, etc. All that having been said, I retired it after completing the second chapter. It seemed pretty clear to me that there wasn't going to be much more story or character development, and I just completely lost interest. I'm not sure what I was expecting from a Mario game, silly me. It's a delightful enough game filled with quaint, child-like humor and moderately challenging but engaging combat and puzzles, but I just can't bring myself to spend any of my limited Vidya time on games without a great story or crazy good gameplay to compensate for the lack of a story.
So, on to Final Fantasy VI and officially kicking off my journey through the FF games that I haven't beaten. I am several hours in and have reached the point where the party splits into three groups after going down the rapids. I followed Sabin's story branch first and fought my way through the phantom forest and train segments with Shadow and Cyan. I'm now back on the world map and headed back to Narshe.
I'm going to reserve a lot of judgement because I know I'm still in the early game, but I do have some initial impressions that really pop out.
Combat is extremely easy so far. The various character skills like Edgar's blasters, Shadow's throw, and Sabin's Blitz all enable one hit kills with no cost or downside. I suppose this is maybe due to the fact that I'm familiar with FF mechanics and turn based combat while SNES gamers in 1994 were not and needed all the help they could get?
There is a strange mixture of silliness in the over the top reactions of characters to certain things and the humor in some of the dialogue when compared to the darkness of the world and the story. It's not "bad", per se, just kind of strange. That's just JRPGs I guess.
The music is overall solid, but the battle theme and boss battle theme are Uematsu magic. They don't edge out the FFVII themes in my book, but it's close.
Lastly, the story is unfolding very slowly. Thus far it's clear that Terra is an amnesiac and the world's only known magic user in over a thousand years, the Gestahlian empire is out for conquest, Kefka is bad news, and there is a resistance group called the returners, and that's about it. I'm intrigued to see where it will go, and my understanding is that FFVI features the largest party of any FF game, so I still have lots of characters to meet.
That's all, nothing too crazy or cool this week.
Until next time nerds!
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #27 - What Kind Of Fantasy Are We Talking About Here, Exactly?
I have been on the overtime grind at work, and consequently haven't been blessed with excessive leisure time to dump into vidya. All of the time that I have been able to play has been spent on FFVI, which has been enjoyable for the most part. I have just gotten to the point where the warring triad has wreaked havoc on the planet and Celes awakens on an island with Cid.
I'll reserve most of my commentary for my completion post - hopefully next week - but I will note a few things:
1. Nobuo Uematsu is a beast. It has been delightful hearing many of the seedlings of leitmotifs I grew up listening to and loving in FFVII, VIII, and IX being played in this game. I've added a lot of tracks from this OST to my playlist already.
2. My gosh I forgot how much random encounters can frustrate me. Not from the standpoint of difficulty, but just the sheer annoyance of being interrupted every 10-15 seconds of walking. Moving past random encounters is, by itself, one of the biggest reasons FFXII is criminally underrated as a pioneer of innovation in the series.
3. There is a very strange juxtaposition of dark, dark plot points and absolutely goofy humor in this game. One minute a dude loses everyone he knows and loves, including his wife and son, and the next he's being seduced by a hussy using a nursery rhyme as an entendre. Characters have been coming to grips with the devastating losses and traumas of their pasts, but also using castles as subterranean vehicles, fighting a train while it rumbles down the tracks and fish as they fall down a waterfall, and racing the clock to stop a quirky octopus from pushing a 4 ton weight on their friend. I think this is just a reality of the SNES era of this series, but it is definitely weird. It makes it hard to pinpoint the mood of the game and story. I suppose that's part of it's charm.
4. FFVI needs to go directly to horny jail.
Until next time nerds!
I have been on the overtime grind at work, and consequently haven't been blessed with excessive leisure time to dump into vidya. All of the time that I have been able to play has been spent on FFVI, which has been enjoyable for the most part. I have just gotten to the point where the warring triad has wreaked havoc on the planet and Celes awakens on an island with Cid.
I'll reserve most of my commentary for my completion post - hopefully next week - but I will note a few things:
1. Nobuo Uematsu is a beast. It has been delightful hearing many of the seedlings of leitmotifs I grew up listening to and loving in FFVII, VIII, and IX being played in this game. I've added a lot of tracks from this OST to my playlist already.
2. My gosh I forgot how much random encounters can frustrate me. Not from the standpoint of difficulty, but just the sheer annoyance of being interrupted every 10-15 seconds of walking. Moving past random encounters is, by itself, one of the biggest reasons FFXII is criminally underrated as a pioneer of innovation in the series.
3. There is a very strange juxtaposition of dark, dark plot points and absolutely goofy humor in this game. One minute a dude loses everyone he knows and loves, including his wife and son, and the next he's being seduced by a hussy using a nursery rhyme as an entendre. Characters have been coming to grips with the devastating losses and traumas of their pasts, but also using castles as subterranean vehicles, fighting a train while it rumbles down the tracks and fish as they fall down a waterfall, and racing the clock to stop a quirky octopus from pushing a 4 ton weight on their friend. I think this is just a reality of the SNES era of this series, but it is definitely weird. It makes it hard to pinpoint the mood of the game and story. I suppose that's part of it's charm.
4. FFVI needs to go directly to horny jail.
Until next time nerds!
5 Yrs✓#
GCTuba
5 Yrs✓#
What version of Final Fantasy VI is this? It's weird seeing it in a non-pixel art style.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
PC via Steam. Final fantasy VI (old ver.). I just checked and apparently it's not available on the steam store anymore. Presumably because it was replaced by pixel remaster? I have no point of reference because I've never played any other version, but it looks quite good.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #28 - Searching For Friends and Finding Frustration
I only have a small update this week since there isn't much to say. I haven't had a lot of time to play, and quite frankly I've found it very hard to get invested in FFVI at this point, but I think I'll make it.
Once the World of Ruin phase of the game began I basically found myself on a scavenger hunt with very few breadcrumbs. I found Sabin, Setzer, and Terra quick enough. Edgar and Cyan were a bit more work, but very doable. Somewhere in there I got the airship. Gau was easy once I figured out the gimmick. I saw Strago at the cultist tower, but I can't interact with him.
I couldn't find Relm or Locke anywhere, and in a fairly spacious open world with lots of hidden stuff that isn't immediately obvious on SNES graphics I simply did not have the patience to search high and low for the next breadcrumb. I consulted a guide briefly, which I hate doing, but holy crap the game wasn't giving me anything to go on. So, it tells me I need Relm before I can get Strago. I went and fetched her from the cave she was in, but now I have to wait as she recovers. I'm not sure what triggers her being playable again. My brief minutes in the guide also revealed that there were 3 characters I haven't even met yet, even this late in the game! I went and got Mog because I saw it said he was in Narshe, but I'm going to let the other two remain a mystery for now. I've got to assume one is the Yeti that Mog mentions.
Now I'm in the Phoenix Cave where Locke is supposed to be, and it's quite a difficulty spike - but a surmountable one. I don't know how close I am to the end of it, but after a bunch of party swapping and switch pressing - and very annoying fights with relatively powerful casters and status effects - I finally got to a save point. My party hovers around the lvl 29-35 mark, and the guide I referenced suggested 40+ for going to Kefka's tower, so once I finish getting Locke, Relm, Strago, and anyone else I stumble across, I may have to grind for a bit. Ugh.
I'll spend some time really processing my thoughts on FFVI before my completion post, but the short version is that it is a game of contrasts for me. Awesome music, grand adventure, silly shenanigans, dark storytelling. . . and at times nearly insufferable gameplay.
I've been trying to puzzle out why I hate the random encounters in FFVI so much when I grew up loving FFVII, VIII, and IX despite their random encounters. I think part of the answer is the way the FOV works with the centered camera in a purely 2D setting. Essentially, I can barely tell which direction I want to explore before I start walking, and once I decide, my exploration is promptly interrupted four times before I realize it was the wrong way and I have to backtrack and win or flee (due to impatience, not difficulty) from four more encounters. Feeling punished for exploring is... really crappy. It makes me dread every branch in every hallway in every dungeon. Too many forced encounters, period. It might be different if the combat was a bit more dynamic, but it's very repetitive. Even against trash enemies - like in the outrageously stupid second visit to the Zozo towers - the random encounters are just instant tilt for me. If it weren't for the fact that the battle music is so amazing, I might have rage quit a while ago.
The truth is I very nearly did hang this one up before I decided to consult a guide. SNES games and old RPGs were just built different, I get that. Maybe I have just grown too fond of more modern quality of life features to ever fully love a game like this. It kind of bums me out, because I'm not at all bothered by the other stuff that comes with an older game. I'm fine with the 2D graphics, the goofy soundfont, the lack of voice acting, etc. Everything just hit a big wall for me after the World of Ruin was triggered. The story practically halts after Celes leaves the island (THAT was an awesome scene), or rather turns into a heist movie where I've gotta get the gang back together. The total lack of meaningful plot progression for something like five hours of gameplay now has been rough. I am genuinely looking forward to getting Locke back and going after Kefka though, and I sure hope the payoffs are there.
Until next time nerds!
I only have a small update this week since there isn't much to say. I haven't had a lot of time to play, and quite frankly I've found it very hard to get invested in FFVI at this point, but I think I'll make it.
Once the World of Ruin phase of the game began I basically found myself on a scavenger hunt with very few breadcrumbs. I found Sabin, Setzer, and Terra quick enough. Edgar and Cyan were a bit more work, but very doable. Somewhere in there I got the airship. Gau was easy once I figured out the gimmick. I saw Strago at the cultist tower, but I can't interact with him.
I couldn't find Relm or Locke anywhere, and in a fairly spacious open world with lots of hidden stuff that isn't immediately obvious on SNES graphics I simply did not have the patience to search high and low for the next breadcrumb. I consulted a guide briefly, which I hate doing, but holy crap the game wasn't giving me anything to go on. So, it tells me I need Relm before I can get Strago. I went and fetched her from the cave she was in, but now I have to wait as she recovers. I'm not sure what triggers her being playable again. My brief minutes in the guide also revealed that there were 3 characters I haven't even met yet, even this late in the game! I went and got Mog because I saw it said he was in Narshe, but I'm going to let the other two remain a mystery for now. I've got to assume one is the Yeti that Mog mentions.
Now I'm in the Phoenix Cave where Locke is supposed to be, and it's quite a difficulty spike - but a surmountable one. I don't know how close I am to the end of it, but after a bunch of party swapping and switch pressing - and very annoying fights with relatively powerful casters and status effects - I finally got to a save point. My party hovers around the lvl 29-35 mark, and the guide I referenced suggested 40+ for going to Kefka's tower, so once I finish getting Locke, Relm, Strago, and anyone else I stumble across, I may have to grind for a bit. Ugh.
I'll spend some time really processing my thoughts on FFVI before my completion post, but the short version is that it is a game of contrasts for me. Awesome music, grand adventure, silly shenanigans, dark storytelling. . . and at times nearly insufferable gameplay.
I've been trying to puzzle out why I hate the random encounters in FFVI so much when I grew up loving FFVII, VIII, and IX despite their random encounters. I think part of the answer is the way the FOV works with the centered camera in a purely 2D setting. Essentially, I can barely tell which direction I want to explore before I start walking, and once I decide, my exploration is promptly interrupted four times before I realize it was the wrong way and I have to backtrack and win or flee (due to impatience, not difficulty) from four more encounters. Feeling punished for exploring is... really crappy. It makes me dread every branch in every hallway in every dungeon. Too many forced encounters, period. It might be different if the combat was a bit more dynamic, but it's very repetitive. Even against trash enemies - like in the outrageously stupid second visit to the Zozo towers - the random encounters are just instant tilt for me. If it weren't for the fact that the battle music is so amazing, I might have rage quit a while ago.
The truth is I very nearly did hang this one up before I decided to consult a guide. SNES games and old RPGs were just built different, I get that. Maybe I have just grown too fond of more modern quality of life features to ever fully love a game like this. It kind of bums me out, because I'm not at all bothered by the other stuff that comes with an older game. I'm fine with the 2D graphics, the goofy soundfont, the lack of voice acting, etc. Everything just hit a big wall for me after the World of Ruin was triggered. The story practically halts after Celes leaves the island (THAT was an awesome scene), or rather turns into a heist movie where I've gotta get the gang back together. The total lack of meaningful plot progression for something like five hours of gameplay now has been rough. I am genuinely looking forward to getting Locke back and going after Kefka though, and I sure hope the payoffs are there.
Until next time nerds!
1 Yr✓#
Dorobo
1 Yr✓#
I'm sure it's different but I've been having a somewhat similar experience with FF1, not being able to go anywhere without multiple forced encounters. For me it was fun at first since the combat is enjoyable and I really like the party system, but at a certain point I just want to get on with the game. And I had no issue following the first quest, but as soon as that was over I just got lost, no idea where I'm supposed to go or what to do, which is where I'm currently at so I'll probably find a guide too lol. It's giving me second thoughts about playing through the first 6 games in a row, though the remastered quality has been great for me so far. I hope your journey goes smoother after this though!
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
It was only a slight annoyance until the game opened up completely, then the roadblock was being unable to progress without some esoteric and hidden knowledge of the in game story triggers. Hunting for secrets while dealing with the randos is simply awful. I suppose it's forced leveling and party progression, but that just makes me more irritated that exp wasn't simply scaled better. Ah well, it's an old game and I have to keep that in mind.
I imagine that marching straight through I-VI would try my patience too much. My understanding is that VI is the largest of the classic 2D games, so if I can prevail through VI I will be ok. But my plan is to bounce between older and newer installments to mix it up. My next FF games will probably be X then I, for example.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #29 - I May Have a SNES Curse
It was a curiously frustrating, but also not-really-that-bad-after-all week of vidya for ol' MZD. To get straight to the point: I retired two games. Good games. Feels bad man. I think it was a good decision for me in both cases though. At the end of the day, the reason I play vidya is for fun, not "success" or "accomplishment" or "crushing the backlog". So, despite the juicy dopamine overlord telling me how wonderful seeing credits roll on a game feels, I am very protective of my time and made decisions to pull the plug on these for quality of life reasons which I'll detail below.
Retirement
Final Fantasy VI
Main Story: 25H 10M
Rating: 6.5/10
I grew up absolutely adoring the Playstation 1 & 2 era Final Fantasy games, and I think it's high time I play through the rest of the series. I thought I'd start with FFVI because, from what I had heard, it was the longest and most beloved of the 2D games in the series. I was quite excited to experience this game, and in so many ways it did not disappoint or fall short of the hype. However, where it sucked, it really sucked. I'm not going to back away from saying it no matter how badly I want to love all FF games because the name is attached to my beloved VII, VIII, IX, and XII. Overall, it was an undeniably good game, but I just couldn't bring myself to push through the last leg of it (9 more hours if the HLTB Main Story time is to be believed) because of my hang-ups with the mechanics and gameplay. Rather than grind or resort to heavy use of a guide, I chose to just experience the final dungeon, boss fights, and ending scenes on YouTube. *Sad trombone*
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Aesthetics: 8/10
Nobuo Uematsu gets nearly all the credit for the high marks I give FFVI in this department. That guy is just not human. He's responsible for so much of the iconic music I associate with my childhood, and the soundtrack for this game also slaps. He runs the musical gamut from melancholic, chill, adventurous, chaotic, playful, ominous, hopeless, hopeful, opera, classical, and progressive rock. For a SNES game it is positively ludicrous that it is blessed with such an incredible soundtrack. Some standout tracks for me that went straight on my playlist are Terra's theme, Relm's theme, Gau's theme, The Veldt, and Metamorphosis. Battle and The Decisive Battle are probably the second best battle and boss battle themes in any FF game I've experienced so far, only behind FFVII's Those Who Fight and Fight On in my book. Dancing Mad doesn't go on my playlist because it's 17 minutes long for crying out loud, but holy moly what musicianship. As I said, Uematsu is not human.
I've never been overly fond of NES/SNES era 2D sprite graphics, but it's what they had to work with back in the day, and FFVI does a great job with what they had. I would have appreciated a bit more variety in NPC sprites, and it often felt silly in combat when my characters were still little chibi sprites and the monsters are highly detailed. I suppose both of those things can be chalked up to limited space on the SNES cartridges and the fact that both NPC and combat sprites were animated, but whether that be the case or not I acknowledge that I'm nitpicking a bit.
The world is a pretty generic high fantasy medieval setting of castles, villages, woods, plains, deserts, mountains and so on. There's nothing too remarkable about it, but again SNES era limitations have to be kept in view. The devs did fine with what they had available to them and considering how large they wanted to make the world.
The only other thing that kept me from giving a slightly better score here is some of the outlandish ways the game broke away from suspension of disbelief. It's hard to immerse myself in a world where there's only a single airship (j/k there's two) and people saddle up and ride big chickens, but I'm supposed to be convinced that three dudes with a single diving helmet can swim halfway across the planet in a deep sea trench, or that a castle can tunnel under mountain ranges and the ocean floor, or that the characters would choose to fight a train while running away from it on its tracks that they could just step off of. I'm sure the wackiness is part of what endears this game to a lot of its biggest fans, but I just thought that some of the antics ran too opposite the dark and serious storyline. Not that they weren't funny, just that they felt so out of place.
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Gameplay: 2/10
I'm not entirely sure what to conclude in this part of my review. Maybe I'm just not into RPG gameplay before a certain point in game development history? I was really caught off guard by how much I disliked FFVI's actual gameplay despite enjoying the music, visuals, and story. Generally speaking I can stumble and bumble my way through a game as long as I'm getting the good stuff from the story, but I just kept hitting my tolerance levels for frustration with this one. Even more odd is the fact that this is the case despite how similar, at least on paper, the mechanics of FFVI are to my beloved FFVII which I've sunk a gorillion hours into over the past 25 years. I've already ranted a bit about some of the issues in recent posts, so I'll keep this episode of Old Man Shouts at Cloud reasonably brief.
The combat ruined everything. It seems that it ranged from easy to the point of mind-numbing boredom, or "oh, that thing one shot me" with no in between except for maybe "neat, this boss spams three different status effects".
When the fights were easy and boring, it sucked to get hit with 7 or 8 of them per map screen in a dungeon or between towns on the world map. Fleeing took just as long as winning the easy battles, so there wasn't really any reprieve except for using Chocobos and, in the mid to late game, airships. When the fights were hard, those same random encounters were awful slogs and I could lose between 15 and 45 minutes between save points with a game over (thankfully only happened 2-3 times).
"Wait! I've dealt with this before! There's a simple solution! Rise and grind newb! Get better gear, learn stronger spells, explore the world for exp, summons, treasure, etc.!"
By the time I felt reasonably positioned to do this with my full party available to me, I was just so stinking sick of the frustration of the random encounters in every aspect of the game (exploration, dungeons, getting gil, finding equips, etc.) that I couldn't stomach the thought of pushing through. I knew that, other than optional content and grinding, all I had left was Kefka's tower. So I just saved myself a dozen or so hours of almost completely story-free gaming to get myself prepped for the final dungeon and resorted to YouTube instead. Don't think too poorly of me now. I'm a tired, middle-aged, father of three, who has been working a bunch of overtime lately. I am just not interested in pushing past whatever I deem to be an unreasonable amount of frustration or grinding. If I was 8 and sitting in front of a tube TV on a SNES and had hours of vidya time to splurge with, sure. Not anymore though.
The next biggest offender was how the game left so few clues about what to do next in order to progress the story. To be fair, I don't want games to hold my hand and give me a big pulsating objective marker either, but at least leave more than one or two clues and leave them with someone who stands out more than a random and otherwise unimportant NPCs in a far away village. Whilst searching for clues, I would get served about four thousand random encounters. Great fun.
Anyhow, that's the end of my rant. It genuinely made me sad that I couldn't bring myself to push through it, but QOL is a much bigger deal to me as time marches on.
In the name of fairness I will add that, my approach to character progression, levelling, equipment, espers, and all that good stuff was probably not great. I think the horde of FFVI fans have likely done multiple playthroughs and don't see any of it as clunky or difficult at all because they understand what's optimal in a way that flew right over my head.
---------------------
Narrative: 9/10
With such a big party, FFVI was a bit reminiscent of ME2 which I played recently and had a similar ensemble vibe, though the games themselves are wildly different. Characterization really makes or breaks a story that features no single protagonist, and FFVI rose to the challenge. Really accenting character is tough without modern animation or voice acting, but FFVI did a great job of it just through each character's backstory.
What stood out to me as the highlight of FFVI's narrative was the way it combined characterization with the ensemble cast and the overall theme. It seems to me that the main point the game was driving at is that grief, pain, and loss will absolutely rock your world, but it is worth it to pick up the pieces and move on with life. The theme touches ever major character in a big way:
Terra has lost her memories and is struggling to reconcile the fact that she loathes the empire, but was apparently part of it. Then she has to struggle with the loss of family and identity.
Locke is wrestling with guilt and the loss of Rachel.
Edgar and Sabin grieve the loss of their father, and each other (in a way).
Shadow's got some stuff going on (I'll admit I didn't get much of Shadow's story, just something about losing an old partner in crime).
Cyan loses his king, home, and family in one swift stroke.
Celes is walking the line of betrayal and loss of friendship and even budding romance.
Setzer loses the love of his life and is burying his grief in gambling and crime.
Most of them experience some sort of resolution in their story arcs where they are set free from the pain of their past and encouraged or forced to move on, and they are stronger for it. FFVI does a real good job of leveraging the ensemble cast to present this thematic unity.
Kefka is a great foil to the whole gang because he also has a traumatic past, having been experimented on and broken by the empire. However, as a fitting antagonist to our protagonists, Kefka can not move on from the pain and loss and instead desires to go mega nihilist and inflict pain and loss on everyone universally.
---------------------
Retirement
Super Metroid
Main Story: 6H 43M
Rating: 6/10
I thought I'd get a quick win in after my rough ride through FFVI, so I picked up a shorter game. Of course I hear the genre "metroidvania" bandied about all the time, and even a dummy like me can piece together that the name refers to games that are somehow similar to the NES/SNES classic Metroid and Castlevania games. By this I assumed it was meant that a "metroidvania" heavily features platforming, combat, and powerups. Such was my limited knowledge, so I thought I'd shore it up and actually play one of the classics. Obviously, I did not finish, so my review will be brief and incomplete.
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Aesthetics: 8/10
This game looks slick for a SNES platformer that doesn't have "Mario" in the name and the budget that goes with it. The music, Samus' suit, the cool (for the time period) boss design, and the area diversity do a great job of establishing the atmosphere of an alien experience. There was lots of little visual storytelling bits and bobs throughout that enhanced the feeling as well.
---------------------
Gameplay: 3/10
This is, of course, extremely subjective. I knew going into this that platforming is not really my jam. However, that wasn't the main problem I had with this game's core gameplay loop: It was the exploration.
Clearly the game was ahead of its time and is very wide open and non-linear in its own way. The areas are fun to explore... at first. The problem is that just about every time I acquired some substantial equipment upgrade, I knew I was going to need to backtrack and unlock some very hidden passageway to a new area. I think close to a third of the time I spent in this game was covering ground I had already explored because I simply did not now where to go next or even how I could go anywhere I hadn't already been.
I got fully stuck two or three times and briefly consulted a guide. I reached a point where I could see the writing on the wall and just decided to hang it up rather than spend hours bombing every tile in the game looking for pathways or following a walkthrough. I can absolutely see why the game is beloved though, and I'll bet it's a speedrunning haven. It seems like the type of game that gets better on subsequent playthroughs once the player knows what to do and just wants to do it more skillfully.
For reference, I had acquired missiles, super missiles, super bombs, morph ball, varia suit, ice beam, spazer, high jump, 4 (I think) energy cells, charge beam, speed boost, and learned to wall jump and turbo jump out of the speed boost. I had fought 4 or 5 bosses/sub-bosses: a pterodactyl, a statue that woke up, a spiky plant spore guy, a godzilla guy, and a lava dinosaur. All of those are the official names, trust me.
---------------------
Narrative: 7/10
I need to figure out a true baseline for games like this, or Zelda games, where the story is so obviously supposed to not be the central focus of the game, but rather a structure to frame the gameplay around. I guess they should start at 7 or 8 out of 10, and I should be hesitant to downgrade them much from that since they clearly weren't designed to be story driven. All that said, I like the core concept of this game. The opening exposition dump was cool, and the idea of space pirates that are really just aliens and a brain in a jar stealing a different species of alien from a science lab and thus putting the galaxy at peril is cool.
Aliens. Pow. Zap. Good clean fun.
Aside from the exposition dump, the narrative of Super Metroid is really one of emergent storytelling through player experience. What order they unlock the upgrades, fight the baddies, explore the zones, etc. Again, good clean fun, but nothing to really write home about.
---------------------
Well, I felt bad retiring two classic games back to back, but I came to grips with it pretty quick. The fact is I'm both glad that I experience those two excellent games, and saved myself a lot of time and headache by not beating my head into a wall of frustration with them.
Don't judge me haters.
Next up, I'll probably tackle the current game of the month: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. After that, I've got Planescape: Torment in my sights.
The only other bit of vidya related news to share is that, on a whim, I decided to fire up a campaign of an old favorite city-builder called Caesar III. I thought that a level or two of a city building campaign between long RPGs could be a nice little palate cleanse. I powered through the first 4 missions between FFVI and Metroid and I've decided on this campaign I'm going to stick to the "dangerous" military focused missions. It's been a blast from my past so far.
Until next time nerds!
It was a curiously frustrating, but also not-really-that-bad-after-all week of vidya for ol' MZD. To get straight to the point: I retired two games. Good games. Feels bad man. I think it was a good decision for me in both cases though. At the end of the day, the reason I play vidya is for fun, not "success" or "accomplishment" or "crushing the backlog". So, despite the juicy dopamine overlord telling me how wonderful seeing credits roll on a game feels, I am very protective of my time and made decisions to pull the plug on these for quality of life reasons which I'll detail below.
Retirement
Final Fantasy VI
Main Story: 25H 10M
Rating: 6.5/10
I grew up absolutely adoring the Playstation 1 & 2 era Final Fantasy games, and I think it's high time I play through the rest of the series. I thought I'd start with FFVI because, from what I had heard, it was the longest and most beloved of the 2D games in the series. I was quite excited to experience this game, and in so many ways it did not disappoint or fall short of the hype. However, where it sucked, it really sucked. I'm not going to back away from saying it no matter how badly I want to love all FF games because the name is attached to my beloved VII, VIII, IX, and XII. Overall, it was an undeniably good game, but I just couldn't bring myself to push through the last leg of it (9 more hours if the HLTB Main Story time is to be believed) because of my hang-ups with the mechanics and gameplay. Rather than grind or resort to heavy use of a guide, I chose to just experience the final dungeon, boss fights, and ending scenes on YouTube. *Sad trombone*
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Aesthetics: 8/10
Nobuo Uematsu gets nearly all the credit for the high marks I give FFVI in this department. That guy is just not human. He's responsible for so much of the iconic music I associate with my childhood, and the soundtrack for this game also slaps. He runs the musical gamut from melancholic, chill, adventurous, chaotic, playful, ominous, hopeless, hopeful, opera, classical, and progressive rock. For a SNES game it is positively ludicrous that it is blessed with such an incredible soundtrack. Some standout tracks for me that went straight on my playlist are Terra's theme, Relm's theme, Gau's theme, The Veldt, and Metamorphosis. Battle and The Decisive Battle are probably the second best battle and boss battle themes in any FF game I've experienced so far, only behind FFVII's Those Who Fight and Fight On in my book. Dancing Mad doesn't go on my playlist because it's 17 minutes long for crying out loud, but holy moly what musicianship. As I said, Uematsu is not human.
I've never been overly fond of NES/SNES era 2D sprite graphics, but it's what they had to work with back in the day, and FFVI does a great job with what they had. I would have appreciated a bit more variety in NPC sprites, and it often felt silly in combat when my characters were still little chibi sprites and the monsters are highly detailed. I suppose both of those things can be chalked up to limited space on the SNES cartridges and the fact that both NPC and combat sprites were animated, but whether that be the case or not I acknowledge that I'm nitpicking a bit.
The world is a pretty generic high fantasy medieval setting of castles, villages, woods, plains, deserts, mountains and so on. There's nothing too remarkable about it, but again SNES era limitations have to be kept in view. The devs did fine with what they had available to them and considering how large they wanted to make the world.
The only other thing that kept me from giving a slightly better score here is some of the outlandish ways the game broke away from suspension of disbelief. It's hard to immerse myself in a world where there's only a single airship (j/k there's two) and people saddle up and ride big chickens, but I'm supposed to be convinced that three dudes with a single diving helmet can swim halfway across the planet in a deep sea trench, or that a castle can tunnel under mountain ranges and the ocean floor, or that the characters would choose to fight a train while running away from it on its tracks that they could just step off of. I'm sure the wackiness is part of what endears this game to a lot of its biggest fans, but I just thought that some of the antics ran too opposite the dark and serious storyline. Not that they weren't funny, just that they felt so out of place.
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Gameplay: 2/10
I'm not entirely sure what to conclude in this part of my review. Maybe I'm just not into RPG gameplay before a certain point in game development history? I was really caught off guard by how much I disliked FFVI's actual gameplay despite enjoying the music, visuals, and story. Generally speaking I can stumble and bumble my way through a game as long as I'm getting the good stuff from the story, but I just kept hitting my tolerance levels for frustration with this one. Even more odd is the fact that this is the case despite how similar, at least on paper, the mechanics of FFVI are to my beloved FFVII which I've sunk a gorillion hours into over the past 25 years. I've already ranted a bit about some of the issues in recent posts, so I'll keep this episode of Old Man Shouts at Cloud reasonably brief.
The combat ruined everything. It seems that it ranged from easy to the point of mind-numbing boredom, or "oh, that thing one shot me" with no in between except for maybe "neat, this boss spams three different status effects".
When the fights were easy and boring, it sucked to get hit with 7 or 8 of them per map screen in a dungeon or between towns on the world map. Fleeing took just as long as winning the easy battles, so there wasn't really any reprieve except for using Chocobos and, in the mid to late game, airships. When the fights were hard, those same random encounters were awful slogs and I could lose between 15 and 45 minutes between save points with a game over (thankfully only happened 2-3 times).
"Wait! I've dealt with this before! There's a simple solution! Rise and grind newb! Get better gear, learn stronger spells, explore the world for exp, summons, treasure, etc.!"
By the time I felt reasonably positioned to do this with my full party available to me, I was just so stinking sick of the frustration of the random encounters in every aspect of the game (exploration, dungeons, getting gil, finding equips, etc.) that I couldn't stomach the thought of pushing through. I knew that, other than optional content and grinding, all I had left was Kefka's tower. So I just saved myself a dozen or so hours of almost completely story-free gaming to get myself prepped for the final dungeon and resorted to YouTube instead. Don't think too poorly of me now. I'm a tired, middle-aged, father of three, who has been working a bunch of overtime lately. I am just not interested in pushing past whatever I deem to be an unreasonable amount of frustration or grinding. If I was 8 and sitting in front of a tube TV on a SNES and had hours of vidya time to splurge with, sure. Not anymore though.
The next biggest offender was how the game left so few clues about what to do next in order to progress the story. To be fair, I don't want games to hold my hand and give me a big pulsating objective marker either, but at least leave more than one or two clues and leave them with someone who stands out more than a random and otherwise unimportant NPCs in a far away village. Whilst searching for clues, I would get served about four thousand random encounters. Great fun.
Anyhow, that's the end of my rant. It genuinely made me sad that I couldn't bring myself to push through it, but QOL is a much bigger deal to me as time marches on.
In the name of fairness I will add that, my approach to character progression, levelling, equipment, espers, and all that good stuff was probably not great. I think the horde of FFVI fans have likely done multiple playthroughs and don't see any of it as clunky or difficult at all because they understand what's optimal in a way that flew right over my head.
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Narrative: 9/10
With such a big party, FFVI was a bit reminiscent of ME2 which I played recently and had a similar ensemble vibe, though the games themselves are wildly different. Characterization really makes or breaks a story that features no single protagonist, and FFVI rose to the challenge. Really accenting character is tough without modern animation or voice acting, but FFVI did a great job of it just through each character's backstory.
What stood out to me as the highlight of FFVI's narrative was the way it combined characterization with the ensemble cast and the overall theme. It seems to me that the main point the game was driving at is that grief, pain, and loss will absolutely rock your world, but it is worth it to pick up the pieces and move on with life. The theme touches ever major character in a big way:
Terra has lost her memories and is struggling to reconcile the fact that she loathes the empire, but was apparently part of it. Then she has to struggle with the loss of family and identity.
Locke is wrestling with guilt and the loss of Rachel.
Edgar and Sabin grieve the loss of their father, and each other (in a way).
Shadow's got some stuff going on (I'll admit I didn't get much of Shadow's story, just something about losing an old partner in crime).
Cyan loses his king, home, and family in one swift stroke.
Celes is walking the line of betrayal and loss of friendship and even budding romance.
Setzer loses the love of his life and is burying his grief in gambling and crime.
Most of them experience some sort of resolution in their story arcs where they are set free from the pain of their past and encouraged or forced to move on, and they are stronger for it. FFVI does a real good job of leveraging the ensemble cast to present this thematic unity.
Kefka is a great foil to the whole gang because he also has a traumatic past, having been experimented on and broken by the empire. However, as a fitting antagonist to our protagonists, Kefka can not move on from the pain and loss and instead desires to go mega nihilist and inflict pain and loss on everyone universally.
---------------------
Retirement
Super Metroid
Main Story: 6H 43M
Rating: 6/10
I thought I'd get a quick win in after my rough ride through FFVI, so I picked up a shorter game. Of course I hear the genre "metroidvania" bandied about all the time, and even a dummy like me can piece together that the name refers to games that are somehow similar to the NES/SNES classic Metroid and Castlevania games. By this I assumed it was meant that a "metroidvania" heavily features platforming, combat, and powerups. Such was my limited knowledge, so I thought I'd shore it up and actually play one of the classics. Obviously, I did not finish, so my review will be brief and incomplete.
---------------------
Aesthetics: 8/10
This game looks slick for a SNES platformer that doesn't have "Mario" in the name and the budget that goes with it. The music, Samus' suit, the cool (for the time period) boss design, and the area diversity do a great job of establishing the atmosphere of an alien experience. There was lots of little visual storytelling bits and bobs throughout that enhanced the feeling as well.
---------------------
Gameplay: 3/10
This is, of course, extremely subjective. I knew going into this that platforming is not really my jam. However, that wasn't the main problem I had with this game's core gameplay loop: It was the exploration.
Clearly the game was ahead of its time and is very wide open and non-linear in its own way. The areas are fun to explore... at first. The problem is that just about every time I acquired some substantial equipment upgrade, I knew I was going to need to backtrack and unlock some very hidden passageway to a new area. I think close to a third of the time I spent in this game was covering ground I had already explored because I simply did not now where to go next or even how I could go anywhere I hadn't already been.
I got fully stuck two or three times and briefly consulted a guide. I reached a point where I could see the writing on the wall and just decided to hang it up rather than spend hours bombing every tile in the game looking for pathways or following a walkthrough. I can absolutely see why the game is beloved though, and I'll bet it's a speedrunning haven. It seems like the type of game that gets better on subsequent playthroughs once the player knows what to do and just wants to do it more skillfully.
For reference, I had acquired missiles, super missiles, super bombs, morph ball, varia suit, ice beam, spazer, high jump, 4 (I think) energy cells, charge beam, speed boost, and learned to wall jump and turbo jump out of the speed boost. I had fought 4 or 5 bosses/sub-bosses: a pterodactyl, a statue that woke up, a spiky plant spore guy, a godzilla guy, and a lava dinosaur. All of those are the official names, trust me.
---------------------
Narrative: 7/10
I need to figure out a true baseline for games like this, or Zelda games, where the story is so obviously supposed to not be the central focus of the game, but rather a structure to frame the gameplay around. I guess they should start at 7 or 8 out of 10, and I should be hesitant to downgrade them much from that since they clearly weren't designed to be story driven. All that said, I like the core concept of this game. The opening exposition dump was cool, and the idea of space pirates that are really just aliens and a brain in a jar stealing a different species of alien from a science lab and thus putting the galaxy at peril is cool.
Aliens. Pow. Zap. Good clean fun.
Aside from the exposition dump, the narrative of Super Metroid is really one of emergent storytelling through player experience. What order they unlock the upgrades, fight the baddies, explore the zones, etc. Again, good clean fun, but nothing to really write home about.
---------------------
Well, I felt bad retiring two classic games back to back, but I came to grips with it pretty quick. The fact is I'm both glad that I experience those two excellent games, and saved myself a lot of time and headache by not beating my head into a wall of frustration with them.
Don't judge me haters.
Next up, I'll probably tackle the current game of the month: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. After that, I've got Planescape: Torment in my sights.
The only other bit of vidya related news to share is that, on a whim, I decided to fire up a campaign of an old favorite city-builder called Caesar III. I thought that a level or two of a city building campaign between long RPGs could be a nice little palate cleanse. I powered through the first 4 missions between FFVI and Metroid and I've decided on this campaign I'm going to stick to the "dangerous" military focused missions. It's been a blast from my past so far.
Until next time nerds!
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Thanks for the kind words! I finished DA:O a while ago. I think you may have only seen the first page of the thread. If you check out the very first post you will see a list of links to all the games I've completed since I started this blog, including links to the posts on this thread where I reviewed each one. So, if you wanted to read about my DA:O experience or any of the others, you can.
1 Yr#
MeowZeDung1 Yr#
Weekly Update #30 - Death and FOMO
I decided to jump straight into Planescape: Torment and hold off on Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion a bit longer. So far I'm enjoying it, although it's not quite what I expected. I suppose I was expecting a typical party based RPG, and - while it certainly is one - it plays more like a visual novel most of the time. I'm a narrative junkie, so I dig it.
Thus far the game seems to be an exploration of what it means to die, or to truly live for that matter. Just about everything in the game is a discourse about death or is death-adjacent. The setting is really unique, being a sort of hub city in the middle of a multiverse of sorts. There are a bunch of factions with different ideologies that range from depressing, to thought provoking, to absolutely insane. I'm not a big fan of the combat, mechanics, or inventory systems, but to be fair I'm still learning them. The dialogue is where it's at in my experience, and the writing is incredibly good. I'm intrigued by where the main storyline could be heading, even if I find some of the philosophical underpinnings of it all a bit overblown up to this point. I have just reached the Alley of Whispering Sighs - or something like that - where my corpse was found and now there's a statue of a face that claims to be "pregnant" needs me to undo some repairs so it can bust open. Wild.
Aside from that, I was stricken with some pretty intense Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) recently and went down the rabbit holes of watching a bunch of "25 best *insert genre here* games you must play" videos in the background while working, combing through my libraries and bemoaning all the stuff I haven't played yet, and - worst of all - shopped some steam sales. These are always bad ideas because they result in a diminishment of enjoyment with the game I'm currently playing. I'd say I recovered pretty well, but it did get me thinking about this blog and my approach to games in general.
I started the blog because I wanted something to help me focus on a single game at a time and manage to actually, you know, finish games. It's a kind of self-imposed accountability on my hobby that keeps it from meandering too much. Where I think I've shot myself in the foot a couple of times is by projecting out ahead of time the next 5-10 games I want to play. In practice such a list seems like just another way to organize things and be disciplined, but in reality it makes a hobby feel a bit like homework. Long story short, I still plan on tackling 3-4 more Final Fantasy games this year, but aside from that - and whatever co-op stuff with my friends, wife, or kids pop up - I'm just going to take things one game at a time and decide in real time what I want to play next immediately after a completion instead of referencing a list I made weeks or months earlier.
Speaking of co-op: a friend and co-worker has convinced me to dip my toe into Warframe. I made it clear to him that I am only going to play it as long as it keeps me interested, and probably only for one or two short-ish sessions a week, but we'll see what happens. I'm very cautious of live service and endless or nearly endless games. So far the world and story are intriguing and I like the fast paced hack and slash shoot 'em up nature of it. I chose Mags as my first frame and I'm just a few hours into the story.
As for those Steam sales - I couldn't resist snagging Deus Ex and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous at a discount. Between Epic games freebies and Steam sales I'll either A) never run out of vidya to play or B) learn restraint and how to say "no".
Until next time nerds!
I decided to jump straight into Planescape: Torment and hold off on Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion a bit longer. So far I'm enjoying it, although it's not quite what I expected. I suppose I was expecting a typical party based RPG, and - while it certainly is one - it plays more like a visual novel most of the time. I'm a narrative junkie, so I dig it.
Thus far the game seems to be an exploration of what it means to die, or to truly live for that matter. Just about everything in the game is a discourse about death or is death-adjacent. The setting is really unique, being a sort of hub city in the middle of a multiverse of sorts. There are a bunch of factions with different ideologies that range from depressing, to thought provoking, to absolutely insane. I'm not a big fan of the combat, mechanics, or inventory systems, but to be fair I'm still learning them. The dialogue is where it's at in my experience, and the writing is incredibly good. I'm intrigued by where the main storyline could be heading, even if I find some of the philosophical underpinnings of it all a bit overblown up to this point. I have just reached the Alley of Whispering Sighs - or something like that - where my corpse was found and now there's a statue of a face that claims to be "pregnant" needs me to undo some repairs so it can bust open. Wild.
Aside from that, I was stricken with some pretty intense Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) recently and went down the rabbit holes of watching a bunch of "25 best *insert genre here* games you must play" videos in the background while working, combing through my libraries and bemoaning all the stuff I haven't played yet, and - worst of all - shopped some steam sales. These are always bad ideas because they result in a diminishment of enjoyment with the game I'm currently playing. I'd say I recovered pretty well, but it did get me thinking about this blog and my approach to games in general.
I started the blog because I wanted something to help me focus on a single game at a time and manage to actually, you know, finish games. It's a kind of self-imposed accountability on my hobby that keeps it from meandering too much. Where I think I've shot myself in the foot a couple of times is by projecting out ahead of time the next 5-10 games I want to play. In practice such a list seems like just another way to organize things and be disciplined, but in reality it makes a hobby feel a bit like homework. Long story short, I still plan on tackling 3-4 more Final Fantasy games this year, but aside from that - and whatever co-op stuff with my friends, wife, or kids pop up - I'm just going to take things one game at a time and decide in real time what I want to play next immediately after a completion instead of referencing a list I made weeks or months earlier.
Speaking of co-op: a friend and co-worker has convinced me to dip my toe into Warframe. I made it clear to him that I am only going to play it as long as it keeps me interested, and probably only for one or two short-ish sessions a week, but we'll see what happens. I'm very cautious of live service and endless or nearly endless games. So far the world and story are intriguing and I like the fast paced hack and slash shoot 'em up nature of it. I chose Mags as my first frame and I'm just a few hours into the story.
As for those Steam sales - I couldn't resist snagging Deus Ex and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous at a discount. Between Epic games freebies and Steam sales I'll either A) never run out of vidya to play or B) learn restraint and how to say "no".
Until next time nerds!