Well, that was good stuff.
Itās a bug, then. Itās a bit sad, because The Binding of Isaac is one of those games where having lots of small extra goals to achieve actually would add to the experience (instead of the much too general you-beat-the-first-level! type of achievements). Not that Iām not having a ton of fun with it anyway, and I love how it keeps a track of all the secrets and endings and items youāve found. Iāve unlocked all the characters except for the mystery one, yay! Such an addictive little game.
I just started playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, only 10 years too late (not that I actually care, I play games that are over 20 years old all the time, latest graphics are nice but just not very important for me), and it is just as amazing as Iāve always heard. Itās like Mass Effectās Star Wars -fanboy dad (Shepard, I am your faaatheeer). I had just been thinking about starting Mass Effect 2 but now that this came along I can hold that off for a while because Iāve got my regular fix of BioWare awesomeness set.
I got Knights of the Old Republic from the current Star Wars themes Hundle Bundle, which has unbelievably good 3 āstarterā games (the other two are Jedi Academy and Dark Forces). I only paid 1ā¬, because Iām poor as crap, but I got what I most wanted. There are some other good Star Wars games there too; you get 9 more (so 12 total) games if you pay 12 dollars. A good deal, no matter what you pay.
On other news, I kind of want to buy a Wii U, mostly because then I could play my old Wii games on it (I only ever had time to play the first of the Metroid Prime trilogy 
) and finally play Wind Waker. I used to have a Wii but my sister 'lost" it (kind of like how she no longer has a NDS or PS2 for some reason - thank god Wii is the only console weāve shared). Plus the new Super Smash Bros.
Oooohhh, thatās gonna be so fun! I loved Mass Effect. ME3 has its limitations (detailed at length on various online fora), but ME2 is almost pure, unadulterated joy.
Iām no fighting-game fan, so I canāt speak to SSB. But Mario Kart 8 is buckets of fun. Swell for 2-player if you can get your BF to play.
Iām Donald Petersen, and this is my favorite comment on The Citadel.
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Well then maybe you can help me solve my dilemma!
Iāve understood that when you start ME2, you can transfer your choices from the first game. What things matter, and how much do their mattering matter or is a fresh game just as good?
I really donāt like the choices I ended up making in ME1. I thought it was going to have a more nuanced morality system and tried to be neither good or bad but somewhere in the middle - kind of chaotic neutral but leaning more on the side of Paragon (Iām a complicated person, or so I tell myself). Well, turns out that it was completely pointless and not completely committing to either side meant I missed a side mission and a big achievement. On top of that, in the end, I just wasnāt that happy with the choices I had made and the person Iād became.
So thatās why Iāve been thinking about replaying the game before starting ME2 (itās been at least a year since I played it, so I would certainly enjoy it and get a bunch of new achievements at the same time, but obviously there are many new games I could be playing); to get the transferable character and game world choice changes I want. But is it really worth it? Or is it more gimmicky, where most of your past choices donāt matter anyway when you start a new game?
Sex, now that weāre speaking of choices (got your attention now? so did BioWare), I do have to say that I was very happy to be able to have a cool-looking bisexual female character and choose a relationship with another woman (even if it was one of those cliched mono-gender everone-is-a-hot-blue-boob-alien species, which is a cop out but still worth something) and most important of all, make that choice because that particular character felt the most compatible with my character. To me, thatās relatable, and that matters. Take notes, game devs, matters of self-identification are very important - though you wouldnāt know that if you only listened to those men who say that itās okay for all main characters to be general white men because RPGs are all about role playing, and if women arenāt willing to assume another role that isnāt female in a fantasy setting, then why are they even playing video games (yes, Iāve heard this exact thing be said without a drop of self-irony).
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I played ME1 on Xbox, and ME2 on PC, so I had no choice but to start ME2 without ME1 history. If my story arc was diminished in some way, it was imperceptible to me. Surely, in ME1 there may have been some characters that died that mysteriously show up alive in ME2 (or vice versa), but like I said it didnāt detract.
Also, stick with FemShep, the one true Shep.
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This. Which reminds me, both ME1 & 2 are both due a replay. And I should really get around to 3 one day.
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FemShep is the best Shep. Mark Meerās voice acting was very good, but Jennifer Haleās voice acting for the Mass Effect series is the best voice acting Iāve ever heard. I saw a clip from a panel with the game designers, where they took a poll on the preference of the fans, and the preference for FemShep was overwhelming.
Some choices carry over from ME1 to ME2, the most important of which are which romance option you followed, and what you chose on Virmire. Some other choices are referenced, but donāt have that much impact on gameplay. The storyline with Liara is significantly more developed throughout the story.
Ironically, I finally got to playing ME1 and ME2 because of the controversy about the ending of ME3 ā I saw some clips from the prior games, and thought they looked really appealing. So I was playing through ME1 and ME2 while in contact with fans who were petitioning for Bioware to fix the ending of ME3. Iād recommend just not touching ME3 at all, and possibly avoiding the ME2 DLC, Arrival ā the gameplay is good, but I think itās where the narrative started going horribly wrong. The other DLC are good, though. And getting the total success ending for ME2 was one of the best feelings Iāve had in playing a CRPG ā it was a really emotionally satisfying victory.
Speaking of the fans, and the Asari: on one of the fan message boards, there was a thread for fan art about the Asari, most of the participants in which were young women who described themselves as homosexual or bisexual. I felt a bit like I was intruding on a private conversation, so I only looked at that thread a few times. But I remember one post, in which a young woman from, I think, Venezuela, talked about her fantasy of living on the Asari homeworld ā and then talked about how she was starting to apply to universities, and hoped to go to one abroad, maybe near San Francisco, so she could go to a club and go dancing with other women and not be afraid. I get pretty choked up whenever I remember that. Itās a pretty strong reminder to me of why fantasy narratives matter.
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Anyone trying Evolve? @funruly @Donald_Petersen?
I have played a bit with my brother-in-law and it seems like it is fun but will take some real time invested to learn levels and weapons, as well as movement characteristics of all the humans and monsters.
Maybe the game needs a bit more homogeneity for beginner players.
Concept is really good. Hunting the monster seems to be a bit like just running around looking for it tho. Once the fighting starts it is GOOD. The team must support one another or the monster WINS. If you are a pure solo play person who hates team work, be the monster.
Playing the monster seems too hard and too easy at time, no in-between. I assume as players learn their weapons Iāll need to learn the monster far better.
So far I gave up on playing anything but one human to try and get that character down. I chose Assault as it seems the most basic ā that may not be true. They are all KEY to making the team work.
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Not yet. Keeping my eye on it, but unlikely to be a full price purchase. I did quite like L4D.
Yeah, that is why I gave them my money. It is L4D-like but you have to level up a bit it seems and really learn the classes. L4D was really all 1 character as a survivor.
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From what FoolishOwl has said, it sounds like itās more about if you want to keep being the person you have been. The story canāt be affected too much (except by a few character deaths), or else it would be all over the place.
Does the morality not carry over much? The romance is the one part I want to keep, as is the appearance of my character, but Iād like to change some of the choices that created my characterās personality; that is, the back story and morality choices (there might have been other choices I was unhappy with but I canāt remember how important they were to the story or to me). The Virmire choice is not an important factor in this case.
It now feels embarrassing to say that Iāve been waiting to forget the details of ME1 so I can replay it. Even though itās definitely worth a replay (or several), itās seems like such a silly reason to hold off playing more of that Mass Effect awesomeness when thatās what my heart is desiring (though now KotoR has swooped in to fill that hole with a little Star Wars -themed band-aid). Yeah, itās just a game, but Mass Effect is a game where I actually cared about what choices I was making (even if I now regret some of them) and the person that my Shepard was becoming. I didnāt just choose to do good to get Paragon points (though apparently the game thinks I shouldāveā¦ mumblemumble).
Could I just start a new game and develop a relationship with Liara again, or would it not be the same thing as having already developed it in the first game? Maybe I should treat it like life - you can change some things, but in many cases you just have to live with the consequences.
You know, other than space and RPG, the word āFemShepā was the first thing I specifically heard about Mass Effect (devoid of context, just generally floating around internet being a popular tag) and when I started playing the first game I was really surprised to learn that 1) it was not a space sheep herding simulator and 2) I could choose to be female in the first game! I had thought this āFemShepā was a new, hyped addition to the third game - turns out itās just this feature that the franchise and similar games have had for quite a while, called basic character customization.
I donāt know if the big deal was supposed to be that people were actually playing as female (especially since, in the first game, many probably did just to see that super hardcore lesbian alien sex they were promised). I have a hard time believing BioWare didnāt know people cared about female characters, because KotoR seems pretty progressive when it comes to such things, and it predates ME1 by 4 years.
I understand the importance of default gender in game marketing and I think BioWare was trying to do some good there (while naturally making tons of money off of it) when they so prominently featured āFemShepā in ME3 marketing, but I think that by putting so much emphasis on āFemShepā (by both BioWare and the fans), gender was put on a pedestal instead of being seen as less important in the world of gaming. My character is just Shepard, you know? Last, but not least, the word āFemShepā sounds terrible.
I think itās interesting that when I was younger, I almost exclusively played as male characters and used male-sounding names (Iām a woman, if that wasnāt clear by now). I definitely avoided all pink and girly looking characters like the plague. Of course, I think games have progressed a bit so that at least āgirlā is no longer considered a general character type/class of itās own (which most people naturally expected us women to choose, no matter what the game). But Iāve changed, too; Iām much more likelier to pick a character of my own gender now that Iām older. If you can choose from a set of choices, I choose female maybe 50% of the time - male choices still tend to be more varied, but I find more and more female characters I like and want to play us.
If itās free character customization, I create a female character 85% of the time, because then itās not about considering how the character fits the world, itās about role-playing and how I as that character fit the world. My female character usually has very short hair, someone whoās a little rough around the edges, slender, androgynous, non-human if possible. Never a straight-up soldier, but rather a thief, assassin or some sort of ranger. Intelligence, indirectness, magical or technological abilities but always mixed with combat. A mix of the actual and fantastical me. Isnāt that what we all do, what role-playing is all about? Exploring who we are, who we would like to be - or exactly the opposite of that?
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@FoolishOwl has the right of it. Iād say go ahead and start over, simply because just thinking youāre regretting past decisions that might have resulted in a better outcome down the road will unnecessarily drag down your experience of the game. FemShep is, indeed, the superior Shep in my opinion, but whichever you play, make that Shep your Shep, with the best decisions you can make at the time. And dig deep into each game. A buddy of mine rushed the game a tad, went into a big battle somewhat less than perfectly preparedā¦ and a whole lotta people died, much to his later disappointment. Take your time, play each game to the hilt.
Amen. My FemShep pursued romances of both genders during the three games, and always with whomever felt the most compatible, as you say. Definitely the right way to play, and Biowareās writing got progressively better in each subsequent game, I felt, in that regard.
I disagree. I found most of ME3 to be excellent. The only real problem is the ending, and by the time you get there, youāve had all the fun anyway. Itās not really a plot spoiler the way I describe it, but Iāll spoilerize the fundamental problem with the ME3 endgame mechanic here just in case you donāt want to know anything about it: One of my favorite things about the Mass Effect series is how decisions you make in one game can really affect events down the line in that same game, and also in later games. If a companion dies in ME1, they stay dead and unavailable in ME2 and ME3, even if they might have been useful later on. Itās never game-breaking, but if you did like my buddy did and enter a certain big battle before everything is appropriately leveled up, youāll lose a lot of squadmates, and probably regret that. But at the very end of ME3, no matter how you played the three games up to that point, you are presented with the same three choices, which lead to three outcomes. Doesnāt matter if you were full Paragon or full Renegade, doesnāt matter who lived and who died, your choices at the very end come down to the same three options. And that seems to betray the very spirit of the whole series up to that point.
So even though the ātotal success endingā as FoolishOwl describes it at the end of ME2 is probably the best moment overall, I do think that ME3 is worth playing. One of these days Iāll play the whole series again, if time ever permits.
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Not that I can recall ā your Paragon/Renegade score doesnāt carry over, and I donāt think thereās any direct reference to it, just to some of the narrative decisions you made.
If you import from ME1 to ME2, there will be references to the romance in the previous game, when you meet the subject of that romance. But they donāt accompany you through ME2 ā except in the ME2 DLC, Lair of the Shadow Broker, where you work with Liara.
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So, if I carry over the data, my previous relationship will be referenced but not carried over (do I at least get some extra brownie points? :D), and most decisions donāt matter except Virmire which I donāt care about in this situation? Gotcha .I think Iām importing my save data.
That sounds awesome, and not very surprising. Despite making fun of their cliched nature, I like the way the Asari are represented in the game; theyāre female yet agender, very intelligent and respected yet attractive. Transgender, genderqueer, lesbian, androgynousā¦ many people can identify with them. Iād like to think their appearance wasnāt created just the male gaze in mind, but the dance club scene speaks tones (though this woman certainly sat on that chair an awfully long time - itās not like it served any other purpose).
I think a lot of LGBT people, including myself, found some real solace in the fact that they could form this kind of relationship in a video game. The ālesbianā relationship is certainly not just eye candy, you have to invest 30+ hours into the game as a female character, and actually make an effort on the relationship, to see a 2 second clip of a very soft love scene; most who do so either are LGBT or their allies and simply find Shepard and Liara a natural combination. The men who made those choices only for the sex probably learned something about female representation in game, so thatās a win (the rest watched it on Youtube and forgot about it in-game).
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ME 3 spoiler alert:
I admit I felt bad in turning down Cortez, but letās face it even the most Renegade Shep wouldnāt try cheating on The Shadow Broker.
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Not gonna read it, for what itās worth - I donāt know if you were expecting a response or whether your reply was solely directed at me, but at least you know I can resist temptation. Against @FoolishOwlās advice, I also donāt care if the ending ruins me and all my possible pasts forever, Iāll eventually play ME3 all the way to the end. If it is as worthy of hate as most think, then let my future groans of frustration be heard all the way back here so we can share them.
It sounds like Monster Hunter mixed with L4D? I see people are hating it on Steam for day-one DLC and other launch-related crap, which I can get behind because people should oppose such bad practises, but itās giving me no easy indication of the quality of the game. Not that Iāll be buying anything that new, but just curious.
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Iāve been totally out of the loop on the BBS for a variety of reasonsā¦ now we have a book club, weāre writing a movie, and potentially leading towards a future where we play video games cooperatively. Pretty great.
I have to say though that I am not an RPG player. They just never hold my interest - the exceptions being Fallout 3/NV. I tried a demo of Mass Effect (not sure which one) and it didnāt appeal to me. Iāve heard so much about it from people I know and like and I can definitely see how it would be appealing, but it just didnāt do it for me.
Glad to know my opinion of Destiny is shared, although I barely lasted a couple hours trying it (the free to play time-limited version I was able to download to my PS3). I didnāt actually know anything about it or that it was from the Halo people; I never got into the Halo games either.
So far, all Iāve mentioned is games I donāt like or havenāt played or havenāt gotten into. Itās kind of a weird time for me. I used to be really into games - I grew up on LucasArts adventures (and all the early, great Star Wars games) and early-90s shareware sidescrollers; later got into tactical FPS games like the Rainbow Six series, and combat flight simulators etc. - but the past several years gaming just hasnāt been attractive to me. Not that I even spend my free time doing anything more productive! Of course, there are exceptions - both Portal games were great, as well as the Fallout games I already mentioned. Iāve played a handful of indie sidescrollers and puzzle games and whatever which were fun (though I wouldnāt bother going back to them).
Team Fortress 2 was fun when I knew some people who played, but I ran into this odd thing - at some point on my 2009 macbook pro, the mouse input for TF2 became crazyā¦ you can point basically in cardinal directions only. The cursor jumps at 30 degree intervals. I could never figure out why and deleting and reinstalling, fresh settings profile, several OS X upgrades, several different mice, etcā¦ nothing fixed it and nobody else on the internet seemed to have the problem. So I donāt play that anymore although Iād try it again if there was a BB Steam group who were interested in playing, maybe it will work now.
Anywayā¦ the one game series I have always been able to go back to is Battlefield. The original, Battlefield 1942, was a whole lot of fun and Iāve played each one since. I have a PS3 (which I bought in 2008/2009 basically just for blu-rays) and I play Battlefield 4 now occasionally.
Because there are so many FPS naysayers in here (other than Halo) let me explain why I like it - I should point out first that I really donāt care for most other modern FPS games, nor do I particularly like the Quake or Unreal absurd-fps style games (though they can definitely be fun).
Youāre part of a team and your team has a mission - nothing complicated, usually just holding positions (capturing flags). You really have to work together to accomplish objectives - itās not team deathmatch by any stretch. You are a squad, a small group of players within the team, and you can spawn on your squad members - so if you work together as a squad youāre a force to be reckoned with and you can hold your ground even if some get killed.
There are different character classes, and you level up and unlock better equipment and weapons etc. I generally play as Engineer - you get a repair tool to repair friendly vehicles (or sabotage enemy vehicles), and your choice of rocket launchers, mines, etc. for anti-enemy-vehicle purposes. Itās a support role, but a critical one, because the vehicles are a central feature of the game and are very powerful - but engineers who know what theyāre doing are very much their match. The other classes are Assault (heal and revive killed teammates, powerful assault rifle), Sniper (obvious, but also can laser-designate targets for missiles from other players), and Support (light machine gunner, can supply ammunition to teammates).
So you get these big maps with lots of vehicles (tanks, attack helicopters, various jets, jeeps, gunboats, everything) and objectives to capture and hold (there are other game modes too) and you donāt have to be good at FPS games (Iām not, at least not with a gamepad on the PS3) to rack up a huge score - if youāre really good as an engineer you can top the scoreboard without any kills from your main weapon.
So actually, itās similar to TF2 in many respects, but is not always as fast-paced and fps-twitchy, and the maps are much bigger and with entertaining and powerful vehicles to use (I like the tanks the best).
Well, thatās my spiel for Battlefield. If anyone has Battlefield 4 on the PS3 look me up (penguinchris).
Actually, there were two Star Wars games that were ripoffs of the Battlefield concept - called Star Wars Battlefront (and II) - and they were great. No idea why itās been so long since they did another one of those - they were both for the PS2/Xbox1.
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Damn, itās good to have you back, too!
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When the option is available, I create a female character 100% of the time. If itās a game like Mass Effect, the campaign gameplay and dialogue options arenāt affected at all (only the romance options seem to even notice it). If itās a game like the latter two Fallouts, then certain perks that are gender-specific can open up different dialogue options and result in different outcomes. But itās always more fun and interesting for me to play as a woman. Playing as a male protagonist always seems like the boring, vanilla choice if a choice is to be made, simply because so many protagonists have been solely male for so long.
Hereās a thought that just occurred to me: when a game has āsexytimeā options like Mass Effect or Dragon Age (or, to a somewhat lesser degree, the Bethesda RPGs like Fallout and Elder Scrolls), I find the female perspective of romance more fun to play if only because itās actual roleplaying thatās outside of my RL experience, and not just because of the physical differences. FemShep is not just physically different from me, but sheās also just as assertive and confident as her masculine counterpartā¦ and thatās very different from my own, rather shy and self-effacing demeanor. The female characters Iāve played in Skyrim and Fallout have also been notably more assertive and confident in their own, er, hookups than I would be in real life. It surprises me somewhat to realize that I enjoy playing characters that, while generally on the āParagonā moral plane much more often than not (just as I usually strive to be), are so very different in their interactions than I am.
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