Mass Effect | Superior Realities

As my regular readers know, I’ve become something of a game hopper as of late, but this new habit has reached extreme levels over the past few weeks, with me stumbling drunkenly between nearly half a dozen different games — not entirely by choice.

I’ve considered doing posts on each game, but I don’t have a huge amount to say about all of them, so I’ll just do a quick rundown on what games I’ve been playing, and how I’m currently feeling about them.

World of Warcraft: The Blunder King

I’ve been dipping in and out of WoW, but to be honest, I’m having trouble getting excited about it. Part of this is good honest burnout, but part of this is due to how thoroughly unimpressed I am by the new content in 5.2.

I considered doing an entire post on the Isle of Thunder and the new rep grind, but I believe if you can’t say anything nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all.

I have only myself to blame for slogging my way all the way to exalted, but I’m a sucker for Blood Elf lore, and I thought there might be a good story quest at the end.

I thought wrong.

The new raid isn’t really doing it for me, either — to be fair, I’ve only done the first half. It’s not bad, but it’s nothing spectacular. Seems to me like Blizzard just wanted to see how many shades of blue they could cram in a single instance.

The warlock green fire chain was sort of interesting, but the last boss massacred me, and I don’t want to go back until I have better gear — if I bother at all. Truth be told, I never really cared what colour my fire is.

Actually, the chain sort of reminded me of The Secret World. The stealth elements, as well as the need to be creative and utilize every tool in the box, were very reminiscent of some of the trickier missions in TSW.

Speaking of which…

The Secret World: You don’t make this easy, Funcom

It says something to how utterly brilliant I think TSW is that I’m willing to put up with all the crap it’s thrown my way.

I learned to live with the constant lag. I leveled up my Templar to avoid that jumping puzzle that stumped my Dragon, and just as I was finally getting close to finishing the main story, the 1.6 patch introduced a bug causing repeated crashes.

Sigh.

I could still play if I really wanted to, but the crashes every 15 minutes or so are just too frustrating. If this were still a subscription game, I’d be out of mind with rage, but as it is, I’m just kind of vexed.

The bug’s been going on for a couple of weeks now, though, and it’s getting ridiculous. Even considering that a relatively small number of players are effected, and even considering the chaos created by Funcom’s restructuring, this is unacceptable.

But I’ll still go back once it’s finally fixed. This is too good a game to give up on. But boy, they don’t make it easy to be dedicated.

Mirror’s Edge: A bitter disappointment

With WoW boring me and TSW on the fritz, I next turned to Mirror’s Edge, a game I bought during a Steam sale several months ago but hadn’t gotten around to playing. I normally don’t buy games if I can’t play a demo first, but it was cheap, and the parkour-inspired gameplay looked absolutely mind-blowing.

This game breaks my heart. Everything I saw of the game was awesome: beautiful graphics, thrilling and unique gameplay, an intriguing story, some of the best sound effects I’ve ever heard…

But I can’t play it. I just don’t have the skills. I’ve always been terrible at jumping puzzles, and I just don’t have the reflexes or dexterity for a game like Mirror’s Edge. It only took me until the second mission to get irreparably stuck.

I place the blame for this entirely on myself. I’m sure it’s an excellent game for those more skilled than I.

So it was time to move on again.

Mass Effect 3: Okay, I get it now

This brings me to my latest pick: Mass Effect 3. As you may remember, my feelings on the series to date are lukewarm at best, and I’ve heard nothing but bad things about ME3, so my expectations were low. I was curious enough about how the story ended to pick it up on sale at Origin, though.

And to my great surprise, I’m actually enjoying it a fair bit. I’m not done yet, so there’s still time for it to piss me off, but thus far, it’s proving pretty engaging.

ME2 was a brilliant game strangled by a vast amount of filler and busywork. ME3 largely solves that by taking out most — though not quite all — of the filler. The irritating grind of recruitment and loyalty missions is gone, and scanning planets doesn’t even make me want to punch kittens anymore.

Better yet, virtually every mission is tied into the main story in some way. Where ME2 was scattered and rambling, ME3 is focused and epic.

Not to say that I don’t still have complaints. I do get the impression Bioware designed a “choose your own adventure” novel, not a game, and I still don’t like the decision system. It’s too opaque, and too all or nothing. I have on more than one occasion made a decision I did not want to because I misunderstood the nature of the choice.

Considering the whole point of the game is to choose your own path and decide your own story, that’s a pretty big flaw.
Also, as a blogger, the inability to take screenshots is annoying. I worked very hard to make my Shepard look as much like Nova Terra as possible. I want to show her off, dagnabbit.

I’ll probably do a more detailed post on ME3 once I finish it.

Writing news:

My second article for ADANAI has gone up: Top Ten PC Games of All Time. It was difficult to strike a balance between my own personal opinions and the prevailing feelings of the gaming community. After all, it’s top ten, not my favourite ten, but I couldn’t ignore my own views completely.

Also, if you missed it, I’m putting out a few books soon. Make sure to follow Worlspectrum.net for all the latest updates on the World Spectrum series, as well as exclusive lore, stories, and excerpts.

After years of not playing games and then only playing World of Warcraft, I am now a full member of the gaming community again. I’ve played many games both well-known and obscure in recent months, and there are many more coming down the pipe I’m excited about, but as a true North American, I am never satisfied. There are many other games I would love to play — if only they existed.

Portal 3:

We all want it. Who knows if we’ll ever get it, but if it finally does get announced, it will trigger a tidal wave of nerdgasms the likes of which we have rarely seen.

But what could Portal 3 be about? Chell has finally escaped Aperture Labs. Supposedly, the co-op campaign in Portal 2 hints that there may be other potential test subjects locked up down there, but honestly, Chell is Portal — which is odd when you consider she has no personality whatsoever.

Personally, I’ve always wanted to see a Portal game set in the wider world. The idea of running around a city with a portal gun is just too much fun. Leaving Aperture would be a risk, and there would probably have to be a section of the game where Chell returns there (you’d need to involve GLaDOS somehow), but I want to feel the sun on my face as I sling portals.

Mass Effect: Lost Chapters:

I’m not as big a Mass Effect fan as some, but I’ll agree with the majority that the game did have some very interesting secondary characters. I think an anthology game devoted to telling their stories of their lives pre-Shepard would be very interesting — maybe more interesting than the main ME games.

Potential stories include:

Call of the Sea: A tortured Thane Krios sets out to hunt down his wife’s murderers, while struggling with his guilt over failing to protect her.

Crisis of Faith: A young Mordin Solus attempts to restore the Krogan genophage while struggling with Krogan who seek to stop him, allies who wish him to annihilate the Krogan altogether, and his own internal ethical crisis.

Good Cop: New to C-Sec, Garrus Vakarian investigates a series of brutal crimes, but the farther along he gets, the more the system fights him, and the more disillusioned he becomes.

Etc.

Diablo III: Wrath of Angels:

We all know Diablo III is going to get at least one expansion pack sooner or later, and with all the loose ends left by the ending of the main game, there’s no shortage of plots to pursue.

I hope they get around to completing all of them, but something in particular I was disappointed we didn’t see more of in Diablo III was angels as villains. The material leading up to the game certainly seemed to be building up Imperius and Malthael, in particular, as potential bad guys.

Following the events of Diablo III, Imperius now has more cause to hate humanity than ever, so I could definitely see him going rogue and trying to exterminate mankind. I think it would be a very interesting break from tradition to have a Diablo game focused on battling the forces of Heaven instead of the forces of Hell.

It’s not enough for a whole expansion, but I’d also love to see some more character-driven quests about the followers and the player classes. I want to see Kormac confront the leaders of his order, and I want to see that mage-slayer finally catch up to Li-Ming.

Warcraft IV: Army of the Light:

Warcraft art featuring several races working together as they would in the Army of the Light I’ve previously discussed the Army of the Light and the fact that I don’t see how it could work in a game like WoW. But I do think it would work perfectly for another strategy game. There’s not the same level of game mechanics reliant on war between the factions.

Furthermore, it seems to me that the Burning Legion is really the chief villain of the Warcraft strategy games. Every one of the RTS Warcraft games involved the Legion somehow, whereas only one WoW expansion has given them a central role. I view WoW’s central villain as the Old Gods — a type of villain much more suited to an MMO’s smaller scale of story-telling than are the massive armies of the Legion.

The first few campaigns could deal with uniting the peoples of Azeroth to form the Army, while casting down those individuals who are an obstacle to peace (I’m looking at you, Sylvanas), and the latter half of the game would focus on taking the battle to the Legion and ending their threat once and for all.

It’s unlikely, but I can dream.

Warcraft HD:

A screenshot of the Orc campaign from Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness I honestly can’t believe Blizzard hasn’t already done this. Step one: Remake the early Warcraft strategy games with the Starcraft II engine. Step two: Collect money.

It’s just that simple.

The only real question would be whether to precisely preserve the original storylines or alter them to include the latest retcons. I could see a strong argument for either, honestly.

Dungeon Siege III: Seed of Creation:

I don’t care what the haters say; Dungeon Siege III was a great game. At this point, it’s pretty clear they won’t be doing any expansion or continuation for it, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting one.

There are any number of awesome things a DSIII expansion could focus on, but I would love a game where you can play as the game’s villain, Jeyne Kassynder. Jeyne was a really deep and fascinating character, and one of the game’s greatest strengths.

An expansion could depict Jeyne trying to atone for her past crimes by helping the Tenth Legion rebuild Ehb, while she also searches for the lost power of Creation to fulfill her mother’s mission and resurrect the Creator Gods.

Yes, this would mean ignoring most if not all of the player choices surrounding Jeyne’s fate at the end of the first game, but I don’t care. Jeyne’s just too awesome.

A man can dream…

Honestly, all of these games are pretty unlikely to ever be made, and even less likely to be made how I want them, but speculation is fun. I can dream.

What about you? What are some games you’d love to see made down the line?

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Mass Effect

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