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Old 05-14-2013, 01:56 AM   #181
Sonic Johnny
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I haven't played New Vegas but I got pretty Into Fallout. Sleeping Dogs is one i've been meaning to check out - it's pretty much just GTA with Arkham Asylum combat isn't it?

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 02:05 AM   #182
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i haven't played arkham asylum but i thought the combat in sleeping dogs was more of a throwback to old school brawlers like final fight and such. i didnt care for the combat later in the game as the combos got more complicated and less responsive ... so i never finished the main storyline. but it was fun as far as GTA clones go. i personally enjoyed it more than red dead redemption

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 02:32 AM   #183
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sleeping dogs was aight. got enough enjoyment from it that i ultimately felt it was worth the money i paid for it. i've been playing arkham city and i'm having a much harder time with the combat than i did with sleeping dogs.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 02:57 AM   #184
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arkham city combat is pretty damn fun

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 03:36 AM   #185
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i'm still pretty early in the game, but i feel incompetent playing it.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 03:57 AM   #186
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I set it on hard for some reason and it kicked my ass. I never really could master the combat, so I just kept upgrading everything else.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 04:01 AM   #187
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Got darksiders 2 for wiiU the other day...p fucking fun. Next up dead island riptide. Then I'm sitting back and waiting for next gen titles.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 04:06 AM   #188
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Totally going to get watch dogs for the wiiU cause I feel like the gamepad is the perfect companion.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 12:28 PM   #189
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Originally Posted by Sonic Johnny View Post
Mass Effect 3 (i'm hesitant to start it cause I never played any of the other games - should I play it on its own or go from the start later?), RAGE (which I played on PC and was pretty nonplussed by),
Hated Rage. Poor man's Borderlands mixed with Fallout. Disappointment.

Play all three ME games. 3 won't make much sense otherwise. Though they do have that comic or whatever at the start of the game that will get you up to speed at the beginning, playing through the games is more fun.

I'm finally playing through Heart of the Swarm...kinda been disappointed with it so far. Fortunately, the Zerg are always fun to play.

Still haven't picked up Bioshock Infinite yet. I just broke my cell phone, so once again, that might have to be put on the backburner. Sucks...I've been pining for that game since it came out.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 01:11 PM   #190
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https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.n...11537259_n.png

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 02:40 PM   #191
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Finished my Mass Effect trilogy playthrough. (spoilers forthcoming)

ME1 was, as I've stated before, better than the sum of its parts. It had the overall best plotline of the series and a sense of wonder that the other two games lacked as the series became progressively more streamlined and linear. Still, there was this permeating feeling throughout the game that the developers took the spaghetti approach when it came to developing the game: i.e.: they threw everything at the wall and waited until the game was finished to see what stuck. As a result, you had drawn-out vehicle sequences that weren't much fun, an awful inventory system, cookie-cutter sidequests, buggy gameplay, and interesting but mostly one-dimensional characters. In other words, a lot of what was there seemed half-baked, even the good aspects of the game. It didn't stop the game from being addictive, however, in large part due to an interesting story arc, the freedom you had in creating and developing your own version of the hero character, the whole Paragon/Renegade angle, and of course the romance nonsense.

ME2 was probably my favorite game of the series. A good mix of the sense of wonder and exploration of the first game and the heavy-handed space opera nonsense of the third game. Combat was tightened up, the inventory system was overhauled, the repetitiveness of the first game's sidequests were removed, the writing was tightened up, the voice acting was improved and the character development was much better. I agree with what Trots said earlier in this thread; Mordin is about as good a character as you'll find in a video game. If they ever go through with a Mass Effect movie (though I think the franchise would work better as a TV series) I think David Tennant should play him. Legion was sweet too: I wish you didn't get him so late in the game. He's pretty awesome, and he in turn helps make Tali's story a lot more interesting (the Quarians, who on the surface seem like a largely sympathetic people in this game's universe, have a serious dark side, which is further explored in ME3).

I disagree with Trots on Jack, however; I liked her a lot. While her persona did get obnoxious at times, she can be funny, and if you romance her, she winds up being one of the most well-rounded characters in the series, which leads to her character's biggest problem; if you don't romance her or you are a FemShep, her character development pretty much stops at some point. Lazy writing on BioWare's part, IMHO. Still, she was more interesting than, say, Miranda (bubble-butt fanboy pandering, boring character), Grunt (double-boring), or Jacob (triple-boring). Kasumi was kinda goofy too. Loved Carrie-Ann Moss and Martin Sheen voicing characters in the game.

ME3 was probably the most fun to play due to the changes in the combat system, the ability to mod weapons, the somewhat more challenging gameplay, and some of the unique monsters (Banshees and Atlases are a bitch on Insanity difficulty). Still, it left me wanting, and I'm not referring to the "ending" everyone was going on about (more on that in a sec). The game began taking itself too seriously. Much of the game seemed so heavy-handed, though I appreciated the sense of scope and dread the developers employed throughout the game. One of the reasons I liked the Citadel DLC so much is that it gave the game the sense of humor that it had previously been lacking. (The fact that it brought Wrex back as a squadmate didn't hurt either). I also didn't like the fact that you basically needed to use a guide to find all the stupid war asset side quest stuff because scanning systems was a chore in the game. Still, I liked it. Fun to play (horrible galactic travel aside), great voice acting (Freddie Prize Jr. as some buffed up Latino badass? And it actually works? Wow.), solid combat, solid side-plots (romantic and otherwise), and the aforementioned sense of scope and vision. It makes my inner ultra-nerd smile.

As for the "ending": I downloaded the Extended Cut before I played the game, so in fairness I never saw the original ending that everyone felt the need to bitch about. That said, the ending was just fine. Would I have liked to see my Shepard walk into the sunset with Liara and have a bunch of blue tentacle-haired children? Sure. And if you choose the Destroy ending (the only one where Shepard apparently lives), who's to say you can't head-canon that shit? (The idea of sacrificing EDI and the geth kinda sucks, but I like the Destroy ending the best because I like the idea of the galaxy finally being free of any Reaper influence, which the other endings deny you. That and the Synthesis ending to me seems like horseshit; Reaper code + sentient organic life = HUSKS, not space magic).

But the ending worked. It wrapped things up fairly well (I can live with the plot holes and space magic) while being just ambiguous enough for me to wonder, what direction will the ME universe take next? I'm hoping for a true sequel, set centuries or even millennia after the game (if they go prequel for the next game I'm going to be disappointed because that would be very lazy and unambitious of BioWare, but it'd be a guaranteed moneymaker, so who knows?).

Mordin, Liara, Garrus, Legion, Tali, Wrex and Jack are my favorite characters in the series. EDI, Joker and James aren't too far behind them.

Buying the trilogy was probably the best $50 I've spent on video games in awhile. I'm just now starting to get sick of them after buying them this past Christmas. Time to move on to Bioshock: Infinite finally. Maybe one day I'll do that Renegade playthrough.


TL; DR, I know.

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Old 05-14-2013, 05:08 PM   #192
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Rage was fun except the ending...pretty fucking lame.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 05:14 PM   #193
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Been playing a lot of Hot Shots Golf Out of Bounds. Bought it for like 10 bucks and it's a great party game.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 05:27 PM   #194
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http://www.virtualatari.org/

A good chunk of my office down time is spent on this website. Good old Atari 2600 nostalgia.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 06:18 PM   #195
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Originally Posted by Tchocky View Post
Finished my Mass Effect trilogy playthrough. (spoilers forthcoming)

ME1 was, as I've stated before, better than the sum of its parts. It had the overall best plotline of the series and a sense of wonder that the other two games lacked as the series became progressively more streamlined and linear.
Definitely in agreement here. Not sure why we can't have streamlined gameplay and exploration

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Originally Posted by Tchocky View Post
As for the "ending": I downloaded the Extended Cut before I played the game, so in fairness I never saw the original ending that everyone felt the need to bitch about. That said, the ending was just fine. Would I have liked to see my Shepard walk into the sunset with Liara and have a bunch of blue tentacle-haired children? Sure. And if you choose the Destroy ending (the only one where Shepard apparently lives), who's to say you can't head-canon that shit? (The idea of sacrificing EDI and the geth kinda sucks, but I like the Destroy ending the best because I like the idea of the galaxy finally being free of any Reaper influence, which the other endings deny you. That and the Synthesis ending to me seems like horseshit; Reaper code + sentient organic life = HUSKS, not space magic).

But the ending worked. It wrapped things up fairly well (I can live with the plot holes and space magic) while being just ambiguous enough for me to wonder, what direction will the ME universe take next? I'm hoping for a true sequel, set centuries or even millennia after the game (if they go prequel for the next game I'm going to be disappointed because that would be very lazy and unambitious of BioWare, but it'd be a guaranteed moneymaker, so who knows?).
I'm done talking about the storyline for ME3, but suffice to say I had no motivation to play any DLC or extended cut after finishing the game the first time, in stark contrast to ME1 and 2. I didn't even hate the ending like many folks, but there was zero payoff. The gameplay is fluid and streamlined, but there are plenty of fine-tuned shooters out there, and 20-40 hours is a lot of time to devote to something.

On the subject of writing endings, Vince of Breaking Bad:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vince Gilligan
I think it’s implicit when you write a story that you want to write a satisfying ending, but satisfaction is really removed from emotion – in a sense it operates independently from ideas of happy or sad. Some of the most satisfying endings can be very sad indeed or conversely very happy.It was complicated ending the stories of such a great number of characters though because you want to pay them all off.
The lack of a "walking off into the sunset" is not the issue with ME3. There's a difference between tone and payoff.

Also, I'm not sure how much the following factors in, but you were well-prepared to brace yourself for a lackluster ending and therefore likely lowered your expectations to some degree. I'm currently in the fifth season of The Sopranos and am well aware that plenty of folks were unsatisfied with the series finale. This is inevitably going to affect my overall impression of the finale, because I know not to expect payoff.

In any case, Mass Effect is a fine series. I am however extremely wary of the streamlined, simplified approach Bioware has adopted for its recent games and will hold off on trying further Dragon Age,ME, or KOTOR (maybe? with the recent acquisition?) titles until reviews roll in

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 06:37 PM   #196
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Been playing Lemmings on an Acorn Archimedes emulator.

 
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Old 05-14-2013, 06:56 PM   #197
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Originally Posted by killtrocity View Post
Definitely in agreement here. Not sure why we can't have streamlined gameplay and exploration



I'm done talking about the storyline for ME3, but suffice to say I had no motivation to play any DLC or extended cut after finishing the game the first time, in stark contrast to ME1 and 2. I didn't even hate the ending like many folks, but there was zero payoff. The gameplay is fluid and streamlined, but there are plenty of fine-tuned shooters out there, and 20-40 hours is a lot of time to devote to something.

On the subject of writing endings, Vince of Breaking Bad:

The lack of a "walking off into the sunset" is not the issue with ME3. There's a difference between tone and payoff.

Also, I'm not sure how much the following factors in, but you were well-prepared to brace yourself for a lackluster ending and therefore likely lowered your expectations to some degree. I'm currently in the fifth season of The Sopranos and am well aware that plenty of folks were unsatisfied with the series finale. This is inevitably going to affect my overall impression of the finale, because I know not to expect payoff.

In any case, Mass Effect is a fine series. I am however extremely wary of the streamlined, simplified approach Bioware has adopted for its recent games and will hold off on trying further Dragon Age,ME, or KOTOR (maybe? with the recent acquisition?) titles until reviews roll in



What, exactly, would qualify as adequate "payoff"? I'm really not sure what you were expecting, aside from maybe an epic final boss fight, which I wasn't expecting (and I wasn't expecting one even before I read the spoilers).

ME suffers from Lost Syndrome. The storylines of both Lost and Mass Effect were about personal journeys, and people mistakenly believed they were about some elaborate mythology of their respective universes. The reality is, the mythology was just window dressing. In fact, both Lost and Mass Effect started to lose steam when their respective stories started to focus more and more on the mythology and less on the characters. The reason for this is, the mythology of both was never the core strength of either; in fact, it was likely the biggest weakness of each. Emphasizing this only made the deficiencies more glaring.

Some people will blame that on a lack of vision and creativity of the writers, and to an extent I agree with that (the writers of both clearly wrote themselves into corners at places), but again, the mythology was never the core focus of either Lost or Mass Effect.

In the end, yes, ME3 (as well as the last season of Lost) was a bit rushed and could have been done a little better, but fans who perceived the series as something it wasn't are as much to blame for the alleged "disappointment" that was the ending because they were expecting something that the series wasn't.

The ending was fine, "payoff" or otherwise.

And Vince Gilligan was one of the main writers for The X-Files. He's in no position to talk about payoff (or lack thereof) in a series.

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 12:39 AM   #198
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Mass Effect 3 (i'm hesitant to start it cause I never played any of the other games - should I play it on its own or go from the start later?)
uhhhhhhhhhhh well i mean it would be very much like watching return of the jedi first, i suppose. the ewoks will be stupid and a lot of it won't make sense but it'll probably be fun. You'll also miss a lot of the overblown nerdrage about the end since it won't matter to you all that much.

ME1 is a hard playthru though it's pretty clunky.

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Skyrim (which I am choosing not to play cause I lost like 40 hours of my life to it on PC).
only 40?


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NBA2k13
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS *FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP*

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 12:40 AM   #199
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I play the everloving shit out of NBA2k13, in fact i'm glad it doesn't keep track of hours played because i'm sure it would be profoundly embarassing

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 12:42 AM   #200
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In the end, yes, ME3 (as well as the last season of Lost) was a bit rushed and could have been done a little better, but fans who perceived the series as something it wasn't are as much to blame for the alleged "disappointment" that was the ending because they were expecting something that the series wasn't.

The ending was fine, "payoff" or otherwise.
combat was perfect on me3. too much margin of error and stuck behind Chest High Walls in ME2 (I probably played the hardest/most satisfying class though: Vanguard), just kind of bargain bin shitty shooter on ME1. But yeah ME3 combat syatem and the guns and armour inventory system are all completely perfect.

reapers are dumb always were dumb, i repeatedly said the game was a trashy soap since day one. i wasn't expecting some kind of visionary statement and we got a fairly artistic one, really. But there were issues but I blame Cerberus EA rushing development and forcing multiplayer (although ironically i think this is exactly why the combat is far superior than any of the other games in the series).

femshep is the greatest female heroine in the history of nerd culture

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Old 05-15-2013, 12:51 AM   #201
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(Freddie Prize Jr. as some buffed up Latino badass? And it actually works? Wow.),
i know right

james vega was one of the only things about ME3 that retained the sense of humor

the bits in leviathan re: the screaming husk head had me in stitches because i was already poking it all the time before he even showed up so Jinette Shepard was totally on board with taking the thing to her cabin

but yeah ME3 is really a pretty bad case of Y SO SRS? and it's because of the baddies that are just WAY TOO BIG. i mean they just wrote an unsolvable problem, i don't care what you think. they practically made it so the McGuffin would have to destroy it because there was no way out of it otherwise. I mean if you toned it down a bit, i had an idea bout galactic space locusts that migrate between the dark space between galaxies. but making them ancient supermachines of such magnitude was a serious error from jump

i picked control because well Jinette doesn't think anyone in the galaxy should have that kind of power but she's sure convinced she'd use it wisely and for the greater good and for justice (spoiler: she wouldn't). I played it out that she'd become this gestalt consciousness that would basically rule the universe and violate all kinds of personal rights in the interests of the greater good and justice and etc. Hell I'd go so far as to launch ME4 on the idea that the Shepard is basically the collected remnants of the reapers that function as brutal state police. THE SHEPARD IS WATCHING and all that, right? Everything is sparkly and peaceful and clean and people behave themselves but it's completely totalitarian and inherently unfree. Would be dope. And you'd fight it/them but i'd make it/them less invincible, for sure.

however, they should have had some of the renegade responses to TIM run in this direction, and they most certainly didn't. You know the kind of "YOU SUCK BUT I'M TOTALLY FINE I CAN DO IT FUCK YOU GUY" response that someone completely doomed to be a totalitarian dictator "for the greater good." But, like i said. There were jackboots on their backs throughout the dev process, it's very obvious.

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Old 05-15-2013, 12:56 AM   #202
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In any case, Mass Effect is a fine series. I am however extremely wary of the streamlined, simplified approach Bioware has adopted for its recent games and will hold off on trying further Dragon Age,ME, or KOTOR (maybe? with the recent acquisition?) titles until reviews roll in
i dunno if ME3 is necessarily "streamlined" it seems rushed, there's so many elements that seem like somewhere in the dev cycle EA was like "why are you wasting our money with this shit, get to work on multiplayer and fuck the endings we're not throwing cash at developing 17 endings."

also as far as reviews are concerned, part of the nerdrage about the ending of ME3 was because the reviews glowed about it because they play about 10-20 hours of it or whatever and then write something for cash while sippin kool-aid out of the Liara T'Soni promotional tumbler they got from EA earlier that week.

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 10:26 AM   #203
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I'm not huge into basketball, but NBA 2K13 is a blast. Fun, fun game, one of my favorite sports games ever.

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 01:12 PM   #204
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i know right

james vega was one of the only things about ME3 that retained the sense of humor

the bits in leviathan re: the screaming husk head had me in stitches because i was already poking it all the time before he even showed up so Jinette Shepard was totally on board with taking the thing to her cabin
Play the Citadel DLC if you haven't. Yes, it's fan service to the point of irritation at times, but it's good and can be funny at times. One of the two best DLC packs in the series (the other being ME2's Lair of the Shadow Broker).

Quote:
but yeah ME3 is really a pretty bad case of Y SO SRS? and it's because of the baddies that are just WAY TOO BIG. i mean they just wrote an unsolvable problem, i don't care what you think. they practically made it so the McGuffin would have to destroy it because there was no way out of it otherwise. I mean if you toned it down a bit, i had an idea bout galactic space locusts that migrate between the dark space between galaxies. but making them ancient supermachines of such magnitude was a serious error from jump
They wrote themselves into a corner with the Reapers, for sure. I have a feeling, had the developers had more time to polish the storyline, that the ending would not have come down to some MacGuffin machine. Working on deadline, they had to go with ideas as they came, and a MacGuffin was probably the most workable idea they could come up with on such a tight deadline. Also:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mass Effect 3 Wikipedia page
One of the writers of the Mass Effect series, Patrick Weekes, posted a message on gaming website Penny Arcade critical of BioWare executive producer Casey Hudson and lead writer Mac Walters' handling of the creative process surrounding the ending. According to Weekes, who posted on the Penny Arcade forums using his well-known and attributed personal account "Takyris", Hudson and Walters locked him and the other writers out of production of the ending, personally chose the ending they preferred and refused to allow peer review (as had been done with previous chapters of the storyline) once the details of the planned ending were selected. Weekes stated that the ending was "entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself", who decided "they didn’t need to be peer-reviewed", with Weekes concluding "It shows."[166]
Stress of working on deadline, or a false sense of security on the part of the devs? Who knows.

Quote:
reapers are dumb always were dumb
They (along with the geth) were a poor man's Borg. (The geth/Quarian storyline was pretty interesting though)

Quote:
i wasn't expecting some kind of visionary statement
...which, unfortunately, is what many gamers apparently wanted/were expecting. Again, similar to the reaction to the end of Lost.

Quote:
Cerberus EA
Larry Probst is, indeed, the Illusive Man of video games.

Quote:
i picked control because well Jinette doesn't think anyone in the galaxy should have that kind of power but she's sure convinced she'd use it wisely and for the greater good and for justice (spoiler: she wouldn't). I played it out that she'd become this gestalt consciousness that would basically rule the universe and violate all kinds of personal rights in the interests of the greater good and justice and etc. Hell I'd go so far as to launch ME4 on the idea that the Shepard is basically the collected remnants of the reapers that function as brutal state police. THE SHEPARD IS WATCHING and all that, right? Everything is sparkly and peaceful and clean and people behave themselves but it's completely totalitarian and inherently unfree. Would be dope. And you'd fight it/them but i'd make it/them less invincible, for sure.
Not a fan of the Control ending (again, I want no Reaper influence in my galaxy once and for all; plus it would make me sick to my stomach if my Paragon Shep went through with the option that the guy he's been fighting against wanted to do)...but I have to admit, this would be pretty friggin' sweet. I just figured another Mass Effect game, if it were a sequel, would involve the Council building new Mass Relays and exploring beyond the galaxy or something...but your idea would kick ass and present an interesting twist in the mythos. The devs have hinted that they may develop the next ME game in a matter in which your choices in the original trilogy may carry influence into what happens in the new game, so who knows?

Playing these games makes me want to get back into writing.

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Old 05-15-2013, 01:17 PM   #205
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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4L09sU9jE0...n-murray-4.jpg

This is Jillian Murray, the face/body model for Liara.


 
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Old 05-15-2013, 02:26 PM   #206
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I'm not huge into basketball, but NBA 2K13 is a blast. Fun, fun game, one of my favorite sports games ever.
i'm pretty convinced it's the best sports game ever period

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 02:29 PM   #207
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They (along with the geth) were a poor man's Borg. (The geth/Quarian storyline was pretty interesting though)
bullshit the geth are far more sympathetic and therefore interesting than the borg could ever be.

the most fiercely independent and isolationist race in the galaxy are the formerly enslaved synthetics? one of those genius moments that lifts the series out of its trashy, soapy baseness.

i don't recall any lore about where the borg came from or why they do what they do.

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 02:33 PM   #208
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The devs have hinted that they may develop the next ME game in a matter in which your choices in the original trilogy may carry influence into what happens in the new game, so who knows?
lol no they need to stop pretending like this shit is possible or even desirable

i would suggest that the next game should have a core cast that you could play as any one of the characters at any time and just abandon this "choose your own adventure" first person illusion, obviously a lot of people bought it and it turned out to be total B.S. I saw it coming since ME1 to ME2 because pretty much everything you do in ME1 has only cosmetic effects on ME2. It's just a dumb gimmick, it's not necessarily part of the game. Customizing a PC only leads to people investing too much of themselves in a story that is finite. Besides when you're spending a lot of devtime on dialogue trees, you're stealing that away from everything else. And if you want to write dialogue trees then maybe they shouldn't be making an FPS.

I mean build-a-shep was fun, but it was definitely binary for the most part "Are you paragon or renegade???" and it was certainly a gimmick not some kind of revolutionary game mechanic that it seemed like at first or that people still seem to think it is.

sides they relentlessly exaggerated the status of ME3 on social media, much to their detriment. I mean I still chuckle when i see the nerdragers screaming bloody murder about how they lied to them, since they were stupid enough not to know it was hype to begin with, but it is pretty perverse to keep leaking this kind of bullshit knowing full well that their track record is less "hype" and more "deliberately misrepresenting the entire project."

Last edited by Trotskilicious : 05-15-2013 at 02:39 PM.

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 02:34 PM   #209
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Originally Posted by Tchocky View Post
What, exactly, would qualify as adequate "payoff"? I'm really not sure what you were expecting, aside from maybe an epic final boss fight, which I wasn't expecting (and I wasn't expecting one even before I read the spoilers).
I was expecting character choices to matter in the end. You know how in ME2, your choices affect whether every main character, including your own, lives or dies? That was incredibly well done. In #3, you spend the game collecting war assets in a very similar manner to collecting squadmates in #2, except that these have zero effect on anything. I think there's a five second cutscene of Shepard breathing or something if you get to some number of war assets and choose the red ending. Sure, certain characters are absent if you let them die throughout the series - but they're simply replaced with analogues filling the same roles. While this is a great story mechanic and does personalize the story as it plays out, collecting war assets and rallying systems to your cause is utterly meaningless, and in that way the suicide mission from #2 stands in stark contrast.


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Originally Posted by Trotskilicious View Post
but yeah ME3 is really a pretty bad case of Y SO SRS? and it's because of the baddies that are just WAY TOO BIG. i mean they just wrote an unsolvable problem, i don't care what you think. they practically made it so the McGuffin would have to destroy it because there was no way out of it otherwise. I mean if you toned it down a bit, i had an idea bout galactic space locusts that migrate between the dark space between galaxies. but making them ancient supermachines of such magnitude was a serious error from jump
You know what would have made a better ending? The reapers win. You didn't unite every race in the galaxy? Then you lose. Everyone dies. Instead, there is no option for failure! It's possible (although difficult) to fail the suicide mission in #2. What is the excuse for not being able to fail the final installment in the series? Actually, having everyone die no matter what choices were made would have been a better ending than the McGuffin pseudo-success. Same goes for War of the Worlds, Stephen Spielberg edition.


What's so grating is that the framework was placed for this mechanic to play out, for war assets to have a purpose aside from being used for an arbitrary calculation that a fourth grader could perform to determine how many extra seconds of cutscene are triggered. It is blatantly obvious that the "ending" was applied to stop the hemorrhaging resulting from an unfinished game forced into release by unrealistic deadlines.

Anyone remember KOTOR 2? That game literally did not have an ending as a result of being released 6 months early for the holidays. ME3 does a better job of applying the tourniquet, but it is essentially a product of the same situation.


And it's interesting that Lost is consistently mentioned in regards to ME3, because there's another similar thread between that show and ME - the developers of ME assured everyone that character choices would impact the story. With Lost, the writers assured everyone that they knew where the story was headed, and of course Lost is now a monument to what happens when the writers make shit up as they go along. In both cases, there were certain expectations based on promises made by the respective creators, and both were left unfulfilled. It's not entirely honest to blame the fans for high expectations for the conclusion to a series which hadn't faltered until the final moments. Matrix 3, on the other hand...

 
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Old 05-15-2013, 02:41 PM   #210
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i never watched lost but i was familiar with its general arc and when people said that they had a plan i just laughed and said "no they don't"

so i guess my cynicism is what keeps me from freaking when the end turns out to be stupid, i just go "well that's about what i expected."

 
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