atolnon: (Default)
( Jun. 19th, 2014 02:38 pm)
I finished playing through the Mass Effect series kind of a while ago. There's a lot going on in the series, and it's long, so between the varied gameplay mechanics, the general romance options that are pretty important to people, the overall plot, the much-derided ending, ect, et al, I didn't know what to focus on and kind of gave up commenting until shit settled like sediment and I could get an idea of what I wanted to say about what.

But really, what always happens is that the moment gets lost and I'm left holding a much vaguer, more generalized attitude about the game more suitable for a somewhat gauzy press-release statement than critical commentary. I've got the time, though, and I don't want to totally just flake on it, so I figured I'd go ahead and spit something out, considering that it's been over a week since I've posted anything here.

First, the trilogy is pretty huge. 1 and 2 are fairly quick, though I have to admit that I landed on literally every planet that Mass Effect 1 would let me land on. Three was probably about as long as 1 and 2 put together with the DLC, especially the ending and the Citadel DLC. I missed free DLC for ME1 and regret it. I think that I got the Kasumi DLC and Katie got the Leviathan, From the Ashes, ending, and Citadel DLC for ME3 and Lair of the Shadow Broker for ME2. The fact that some of it is free now is great. The content is really good, but if I had just purchased the trilogy instead of having them on the shelf for literally as long as I've been here, I'd probably feel pretty frustrated at having to pay anything extra for important content.

Through the whole play through, I couldn't really imagine wanting to play Renegade and I'm pretty indifferent to most romance options presented in most games that I play. ME is one of those games where if you go about it correctly, you can almost always have your cake and eat it, too, so there's nothing that I think I'd really feel I have to go back to the game to experience. The gameplay is consistently good across the series, and really smooth in 3, so that I could pretty easily see going back to the games for the gameplay aspect, to play different DLC and spotlight different characters in my party while playing a different class and making slightly different decisions for funsies. Even after I'm done playing it, I have absolutely no qualms about keeping it on my shelf. The world building is likewise pretty top-notch (even though the beginning of ME1 is awkward and almost a little nonsensical).

Like I said, though, it tends to be pretty long. In reading terms, it's like tackling a few Iain Banks novels in a row. Certainly possible, and even enjoyable, but if you have a huge gaming, literary, and movie queue, it can be kind of hard to justify going back to a 160+ hour series. But if you dig RPGs and science fiction, I feel like it's something you'd do well to aim for at least once.
atolnon: (Default)
( Jun. 7th, 2014 10:25 am)
I'm pretty much doing some clean up, today. This entry is going to look a lot like a list of things I've kind of wrapped up already and a little bit of my very next steps in what I'm planning in the next few days. I've put off really digging into new gaming mechanics for about a week since there's not much that needs to be done right away - the projects have been on hiatus for probably about a year since I was kind of hoping to compare my notes to Exalted 3 realty - so I figured they could wait just a little longer while I wrapped up some stuff that needed doing around here.

There's a lot of stuff that needs doing with our yard to get it to where we'll want it to be. We're basically starting in at ground zero now, after the work I've done on the front and back. When Katie got the house several years ago, nobody really mentioned how much of a problem some of this stuff was gonna be. 'Decorative' creeping vines in a plot in the front, crabgrass in the decorative rock beds near untended bushes in the front, pokeberry vines that come up every year in the back. The last shed foundation is a wreck, and had a lot of wooden debris. Sticks, yeah, but also old gardening beds and stuff. We've been out there daily cutting back pokeberry to nothing, tearing up the roots, removing debris, cutting back, bagging, and then digging up vines to create space for flowers, and using a little from our marginal spending money to build a few small gardening plots which are working fairly well.

Probably the only success we'll see in terms of gardening is some good herb growth, especially cilantro, sage, and mint, and some very nice looking bean plants. The tomato plants look okay, but I don't know how we'll they'll do in the long term. They look much better than when we first purchased them, though. I'm only planning one more planter box this year, and that's around the apple tree in back, and it's only to contain mulch and earth, so as the tree gradually gets larger, the box will probably eventually come down. However, everything after that will be set for the next step again in yardscaping plans.

Everything is in from me in regards to applying for grad school at SIUE. I feel pretty hopeful about it, but I'm going to call them on Tuesday when I'm off to see what they've received and if I need to do anything else. I'm trying to make projections, but the data is still pretty nonexistent, so I have very little idea what to expect from this situation in the long term. At this point, I'm not even really what you'd call hopeful or anxious. I'm just in 'wait and see' mode.

I just finished Mass Effect 3, by the way, which brings me to the end of a huge gaming cycle. Of the three games, I think Mass Effect 2 was probably the best executed of the lot, but there's enough going on with the entirety of the series that it probably deserves a few different posts to break down my thoughts on different aspects of what was going on, from the ending, to the mandatory DLC/multiplayer, romance options, mechanical differences between games, et al. I finished a really small indie game called 'To the Moon' last night, which was a gift from Jenna, and I guess that might get a post. I'm tackling 'Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid' in earnest, which doesn't come naturally to me, but I'm at about 180 pages in of, like 700.

I'm still waiting for Exalted 3 to come out. I'm dying to run a game for our group out here, because I haven't really played a good game in... well, over a year. Getting Mikey, Frank, and The J-Man around a table for some dice rolling sounds pretty good, but it's really going to depend on scheduling and interest. In terms of other gaming projects, you'll no doubt here about that, too.
 
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