Tag Archives: Mass Effect

Superior Realities Enters the Terrible Twos

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Two years ago today, I joined WordPress and made my first post here at Superior Realities. Back then, I was just starting to dip my toes into the worlds of blogging and professional writing. I knew nothing about the fine art of bloggery, and I had no professional writing credits to my name.

My blog's bannerOne year later, I had become comfortable with the medium of blogging, with dozens of posts to my name, and I was a professional writer who had been published in magazines and taken honors in the Blizzard fan fiction contest.

Overall, I don’t think this year has been as eventful as the last one was. At least not in regards to topics relevant to this blog. I’ve had a very eventful and fairly unpleasant year when it comes to my personal life, but Superior Realities is about escaping the mundane.

When it comes to this blog, I think this has been a good year. I look back at regrets from the first year, and I’ve managed to largely avoid making the same mistakes this year. I wanted to focus less on Warcraft and put a bit more effort towards posts about writing, and I’ve managed to achieve both of those things.

Gaming:

As I said, I’ve had less of a fixation on World of Warcraft this year, so I’ve been able to put more time towards other games.

Of course, there have still been plenty of WoW posts. I’ve taken a tour of Pandaria, ranted about the current expansion’s endgame, and I’ve put on my tinfoil hat and theorized about the lore.

My Pandaren shaman on the Wandering IsleBut I have found myself somewhat bored with Warcraft this year. I’m not sure how much of it is due to mistakes on Blizzard’s part and how much is burnout on my part, but I’ve found myself drawn to other games much more.

For a time, I jumped on the Guild Wars 2 hype train, but over the long haul, it lost its luster, and I haven’t been back in months. I still think it’s a great game in many ways, but I find there are better ways to get my gaming fix.

The problem with Guild Wars 2 was its terrible story and lore. Those are the most important things to me in games. And that brings me to The Secret World.

The Secret World is a game that has absolutely blown me away with its intense combat, challenging content, open-ended character customization, horizontal progression, and fantastic story. I’ve made post after post praising its brilliance.

Speaking of story, this year has also seen me get into the Mass Effect games. I’ve had a fairly tempestuous relationship with them, sometimes being horribly disappointed and other times being completely blown away. Expect another post to sum up my thoughts on the series soon.

My Hell Raised group in The Secret WorldI’ve also done some posts on more general gaming topics. I thought the question of whether we as gamers have “ideal” characters was interesting.

Writing:

In terms of my freelancing, this hasn’t been a very eventful year. I’ve picked up a few new clients, but nothing truly groundbreaking. Working for ADANAI has been fun, at least. They give me interesting topics to chew on.

I’ve also succeeded in doing more posts about writing on Superior Realities. Aside from the usual updates on my latest articles, I’ve mused on topics such as likable versus sympathetic characters and my favourite word.

I’ve also posted more of my fiction. I’ve dug up the ghosts of contests past, and I’ve told you all the tale of the Forest God’s child.

Of course, there is one piece of big writing news this year: Yesterday’s launch of the World Spectrum novels. Looking back, I was hinting at this even back at the first anniversary of Superior Realities. That should give you an idea of how much preparation went into releasing these things.

It all seems a bit much just to tell the tale of a crazy girl who beats up giant robots.

Dancing on the Lion's Arch lighthouseOther thoughts:

There have been a few other highlights on Superior Realities this year. I’ve had some epic rants on topics from Warcraft novels to Star Trek. I also expanded the purview of the blog in interesting ways, such as musing on the concept of fantasy music.

I don’t have many regrets about this year’s blogging. I feel I’ve let the concept of retro reviews fall by the wayside a little too much, and it’d be nice to get back to singing the praises of the old and the obscure a bit more.

It’s not necessarily directly related to this blog, but I somewhat regret not doing much GIMP art recently, either. This is largely due to how time-consuming it is coupled with a lack of good reason to make any. I’ve left GalacticaBBS, so I’m not entering their graphics contests anymore.

My plan for the coming year is mainly to continue as I have. I am considering creating more crossover between the World Spectrum site and Superior Realities, but I’m not sure what form that will take. As I said, doing more retro reviews would be nice. It’d be nice to do more epic rants, too, but those can’t really be planned for.

What of you, dear readers? What did you enjoy from Superior Realities this year, and what would you likely to see me give more attention to in future?

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I leave you now with a picture I’ve been trying to find an excuse to post for months. Courtesy of The Secret World, please enjoy this image of Gangnam Style as performed by an undead Mayan priest.

Zombie Mayan style!Zombie Mayan style!

Mass Effect: Better Late Than Never + New Article

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If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you’ll recall that I bought the original Mass Effect many moons ago but was unable to play due to compatibility issues with Windows 7. This enraged me and nearly soured me on Bioware’s games permanently, but I did finally get around to playing the later games in the series.

Saren Arterius in Mass EffectThat left me wondering what the original was like, so when I got my new computer, I decided to see if I could get it working. And to my surprise, I was able to.

I’m not sure why I wasn’t able to on the old computer. The fix I used was a little convoluted to execute, but it was not hard to find, and I can’t believe I wouldn’t have found it before. Maybe the fix to get it working on Windows 7 hadn’t been released yet when I looked the first time?

Anyway, the point is I was able to play through the original Mass Effect without issues.

I’m not quite sure how to rate this game. If I had to describe it in a word, it would be, “wonky.” Not bad, per se. Just wonky.

Firstly, the game reeks of “console port” in the worst way possible. It’s blatantly obvious the control scheme was not originally designed with the PC in mind, so it’s sloppy and awkward at the best of times.

There are also a lot of weird mechanics that just… don’t feel right. For instance, the overheat mechanic just feels weird in comparison to a more traditional reload option. And why the bloody hell does Shepard move so slowly?

The Prothean ruins of Ilos in Mass EffectThe pacing is all over the map, too. Much of the character development and optional content is front-loaded onto the first half of the game. As a result, the early parts of the game feel too slow, and the last half feels too rushed.

Mass Effect does feel a bit more like a game, and not a “choose your adventure” novel, than the later installments, but not necessarily in a good way. The gameplay of later ME titles may be shallow and minimalistic, but at least it’s functional. Aside from the issues I’ve already mentioned, the original is bogged down by a lot of what I like to call “RPG BS.”

For instance, this time around, I rolled a class primarily based on fighting with a sniper rifle. But it took me until at least halfway through the game to train up my sniper rifle skill to the point where it was actually useful for anything.

I can’t believe idiotic mechanics like this ever existed in the first place, let alone that they didn’t die the death they so richly deserve back in the ’90s.

I do try to make allowances for the game’s age, but even so, there’s a lot about Mass Effect that just feels awkward and… indefinably wrong somehow.

It was disappointingly short, too. At least the later games were pretty meaty in the content they offered. I blew through this one in just a few days.

My new Shepard in Mass EffectBut don’t let all those complaints give you the impression I didn’t like the game. It still had a lot going for it. The story, while occasionally inconsistent, is pretty good, and it has all the great character development I’ve come to expect from the Mass Effect series.

I found it interesting to see how the characters had changed and evolved since the beginning. I’m inclined to say that Tali and Wrex changed the most as time went on, while Garrus changed the least. Shoot ’em all and let the spirits sort ’em out, eh, Garrus?

Liara actually displayed some personality this time around, even if it was just that of the blushing damsel in distress waiting to be swept off her feet by Shepard. She’s still easily the least interesting squad member, in my view.

Some missions suffered from pacing issues, but a few were very fun. The Virmire mission is definitely going down as one of the better moments from the entire trilogy.

This game feels a bit more organic than the later installments, too. The maps are a bit bigger and less linear, and I much prefer the elevator rides to endless load screens.

I’m going to do a full play-through of all three games in order, making all different choices this time around. I’ve only played one class and made mostly the same choices so far, so I’m going to try to be as different as possible this time. For instance, I’ve only ever played the later games with Ashley, so this time I chose to save Kaidan. Turns out he’s a pretty cool guy, but I still think I might like Ashley slightly better.

The Battle of the Citadel in Mass EffectI feel like I should go full renegade this time since I only ever play paragon, but I just never enjoy being the bad guy. I also considered being a male Shepard this time around, but I still really dislike that guy’s voice acting. And it doesn’t really make much of a difference anyway. Male Shepard gets better romance options, but it’s not worth putting up with his monotone for three games.

I’ll probably do another post on my thoughts on the series as a whole once I complete the play through.

New article:

My latest article at ADANAI is Gamer Demographics Dispel Stereotypes.

Yes, girls do, in fact, play video games. In large numbers.