End of Hiatus

I'm happy to say that I've finished my vacation and am back to keep manically devouring Mass Effect and other games!

Stay tuned for more posts!

Mass Effect: Awwwright, I can see myself liking this.

I stayed up until the ungodly hours of dawn last night (or this morning, rather) playing Mass Effect. I understand it now. Now that I'm used to the controls (still worse than ME2 default controls, but I know them now so it's alright) I'm pretty good at it. I also set it on Casual difficulty, liiiike a wimp. I didn't have to for ME2, but hey, I'm in it for the plot. And actually, I meant to set it back to Normal, but forgot. This was after one particularly tough battle (in the mission to get Liara T'Soni, I believe).

My Shepard continues to be mostly Paragon. In all seriousness, though, all I want is to get that up to max, then I'm Renegade alllll over. My Charm skill is maxed already. I'd say I'm about level 15, though I didn't check before I went to bed.

And things happened. Like I found Garrus (YAY!) and Tali (who I seriously fan-squealed about. I don't know why no one likes quarians, because I could spaz about them all day). Unfortunately, with me an Adept (100% biotic) and Garrus a something-or-other that's 50% tech and 50% combat, Tali (100% tech) just isn't cutting it for my play style, so instead of her I'm using Ashley (100% combat).

Same deal for Liara T'Soni. Since she's also an Adept, I can't use her on my team. Foo.

And of course, before all of that, Tali provided some evidence for the Council and I was crowned made the first human Spectre. Insert me doing a lot of fanart.

I finally got a hand on the land rover, Mako. Its control schemes are... mildly irritating, but I've learned to deal with them.

Thus far I've completed the mission to find Liara and the mission in which there is a massive plant infecting all of the people, on... Feros, I believe it's called.

Sorry for the brief, emotionless update. I'm about to go on vacation until the 29th. That also means that there will be an update hiatus.

Mass Effect: Oh god what is this

Mass Effect is... so much harder than Mass Effect 2. Goddamnit.

It was like this with Dragon Age 2, as well. DA:O was so hard, even on Casual mode (at least for my wimpy self), but I breezed through DA2 in a week. Conquered that game so hard on Normal (sometimes Hard when I was bored). Well, I played ME2 first, and loved it. The control scheme was so intuitive that it made the game feel so smooth and clean; the graphics, gorgeous; the premise and story, made me vomit happy rainbows.

Well, I want into ME for the story... but with the horrid clunky controls, repulsive tutorial system, and difficulty curve (?) I can't even get past the first level.

Also, you know what's ridiculous? Husks. Husks are fucking ridiculous. In ME2 they were an occasional fear, that scary thing that makes you think "oh god not these again, please not these again," but in this one apparently they mind-rape you right from the start. Those things creep me the fuck out. And in this game they have shields! Wtf?!

And your health and shields! Your health doesn't auto-regenerate...? You can't revive people in the middle of a battle...? The teammate controls are so clunky and unresponsive! And my goddamn teammate AI. They're standing around a wall and I tell them to target a goddamn Husk and they're like I DON'T HAVE A CLEAR SHOT! I'm like THEN STEP AROUND THE WALL, YOU GREAT USELESS ASSHATS!

Then I die, 'cause they don't.

Jesus. I hate Husks.

And I see Ashley and Kaiden... yeah, I know what happens to these two. Or one of them, at least. Thank you, ME2, for telling me. My favorite "returning" characters from ME2 (not that I would have known had they not told me) were Tali and Garrus, but... eh. Hoping they pop up soon. (All these turians and no Garrus! The heresy!)

Maybe it's just late. Iiiiiii need some sleep. Or maybe someone to play this game for me so that I can watch and make decisions. Alas.

IF: Emily Short's "Bronze"

I've been playing a bit of Emily Short lately, one of my favorite IF (interactive fiction) authors. If you have the patience for that sort of thing, maybe you'd like to check out Bronze? Not as famous (or, debatably, fun) as Alabaster, not as short 'n' sweet as Glass, but it depicts her writing style quite nicely.

Since obviously screenshots won't work on a text adventure, I don't have any. I didn't copy any quotes either. Boo-hoo. (Hint: use "look" repetitively in the Dining Hall for extra plottage.)

Dragon Age 2: Blam. I win.

Spoiler heavy.

Yep: within the span of less than a week, I've conquered Dragon Age 2. My Hawke became the most badass of badasses. My party hit level 20-21 right near the end.

An update since the last post: when I finally went on the Deep Roads expedition, I ended up taking myself (obviously), Varric (required), Bethany, and Anders. The latter because I may have peeked in the guide for companion help and accidentally seen something very important about whether my sister was going to live or die in the Deep Roads. Anyway, my sister became a Grey Warden (like old times! Wish I could live through the golden age of the Wardens, not just the Blight where there were three of us).

Through the rest of the story, I never saw Flemeth again, which surprised me a tad. I like Flemeth, and her presence in the story was so emphasized... It made me a bit sad, to be honest.

My favorite party became Hawke (tank) + Merrill (damage) + Isabela (damage) + Anders (heal). Early on Isabela was replaced by Varric. I maintained full friendship with Isabela, Anders, Merrill, and Varric and moderate (above 50) friendship with Aveline and Fenris, but Fenris left in the end and battled me. It made me sad. Not because I particularly liked him (my favorite part about him was either his voice or his hair), but because I had to kill one of my friends. I mean, come on.

And Anders. Jesus, Anders turned out to be this huge jackass. I didn't want him to rejoin the party. He wouldn't have been in the party had I not needed a healer badly. I would have executed him. So. Hard. Because Jesus, Anders, you are such a goddamn extremist. Blowing things up is not the answer. I do not condone terrorism.

Anyway. Thanks to Stupid Anders, Meredith invoked the Right of Annulment (basically said that all of the mages in the Circle were going to be executed). So I took the mages' side because I'm an avid supporter of freedom and blah blah yada yada. Turns out Meredith was an evil bitch who had been possessed by that artifact from WAY BACK in Act 1, in the Deep Roads. Oh, and Orsino turned into a huge evil abomination that we had to fight (lucky us). The first time I fought that fight, it glitched up halfway through and he didn't "respawn" when we killed little-evil-Orsino, so I had to reload it and do it all over again. Yay.

The final battle with Meredith was pretty awesome. I hadn't expected her to go insane. It was bloody amazing. When Cullen decided to fight with us, I got so excited. And when the statues jumped off the walls and decided to punch through us with enormous stone fists! Impressive. Hehehe.

I have to say, though: having played a Mass Effect game all of the way through (2), and a Dragon Age game all of the way through (2), I prefer... Mass Effect. Less strategy, more badassery, thank you. Don't get me wrong, I love strategy, but I love it even more when I don't get stuck again and again on one battle.

In Dragon Age 2, I did end up switching to casual. The three times I remember doing so were 1) in the duel with the Qunari leader (and that only because it was taking bloody forever to whittle down his massive health bar and I was losing patience, especially with me being a tank and having no damage output and all), 2) in the battle with the High Dragon in Mine Massacre (bloody hell! Didn't even finish that one), and 3) in a really tough battle during The Last Straw in the Docks (with a lot of shades and a Blood Mage and a Pride Demon). After the last one, I realized that actually it wasn't the difficulty itself keeping me down, it was the fact that I needed to wipe that Blood Mage out quick. But I did end up slaughtering Meredith and her statue slaves on Normal difficulty, much to my cheer and delight.

Romance-wise, my Hawke did in fact eventually become a lesbian. It's not my fault. It's the fault of Anders and his horrid extremism. It's the fault of Fenris and his anti-mage campaign. Varric is in no way romance-y. He is one of those friend people that it just does not occur to you to flirt with. And then all of the girls are fascinating with these awesome personalities and back stories! It's like begging me to swing the other way. They were begging me. So Isabela and I hit it off and my uncle Gamlen made some crude remarks about it.

Next time, I'm totally going for Merrill. Heheheh.

I didn't score any maximum rivalries, but I'm going to next time. Maybe with Fenris, or Isabela.

Post-game rating: 4.5 stars where 5 is impossibly perfect.

Dragon Age 2: EXCITEMENT.

SO after months of salivation over this game, I finally got it for my birthday (it's my birthday, just by the way). It's delicious and easy on the soul. To entertain myself, I started out on Hard mode. That didn't last long. (I am NOT good at these games. Can you say "tactical fallacy"?)

In another effort to try something different, I went for a Warrior this time. Oddly... I absolutely love it so far, to be honest (no matter what this stupid game guide says about it not being fun). What does upset me is that there's no way I can do the two-handed tree, and let's be honest here, I want the two-handed tree because it is awesome looking. What can I say? I'm vain.

Anyway, let's just say my Hard mode encounter began to end once I hit up the first boss. Heh...

But there's no bloody way I'm going to Casual ANY TIME SOON. I made that mistake in my first DA:O runthrough, and let's just say... I, ah, wasn't able to finish it. I got to the final dungeon, literally the final castle before the final boss, and hit a brick wall. Just... like... that. (Did I say I wasn't good at tactics?)

Anyway, my fem Hawke (I used the default appearance, the one with the badass blood smear/suspiciously red birthmark on her nose) is mostly humorous/witty, with a slight tendency toward niceness (because everyone loves a sarcastic girl with a bit of care somewhere hidden deep down in there, perhaps one in every twenty responses). The best part of that is how she comes up with these outrageous jokes.

I'm not a fan of Aveline. That's good since I'm my party's tank, and also because I like sucking all the money I can out of my enemies before I kill them (which Aveline disapproves of). So she's the only one of my companions not in my party right now.

Speaking of which, Bethany survived the Prologue, obviously (me being a warrior and all), and she's my makeshift healer until I get Anders (which is pretty far off). If/when I replay the game, I'm going for healer mage... Dragon Age hasn't been promising with healer AI in the past (cough, WYNNE). But so far, I'm liking this AI. It's noticeably improved, to the point where I paused to make Bethany use a heal spell, only to find that she was in the middle of doing so at that very moment. It made me very happy, to put it lightly.

I also like Merrill, though I suspect none of my companions do or will. She's funny. And she's my damage mage. Some of the ambient dialogue cracks me up. (Varric: Could you please stop going out in Lowtown at night? Merrill: Why? Nothing ever happens. Varric: I know, and that nothing is costing me a fortune...)

And Varric is my rogue. I genuinely like Varric. And I like Bianca. I think it was pretty well-done character design, he and his smart-assery and his awesome named bow and his aesthetics. He's probably one of my favorite characters in the game so far (I'm not attached to any of them much... Bethany is so... childish...? I like Merrill but I just know she'll cause problems in the future, despite the awesomeness of blood mages. I've heard a lot about the trouble Anders stirs up. And I, well, I'm my own snarky, unhelpful, facetious, sarcastic dramallama.)

I have enough money to go on that expedition to the Deep Roads now, but I'm doing every quest I can in Kirkwall first, even though I'm going to take Bethany instead of Anders (which I'm in the middle of the quest to get) so that we can get out of Kirkwall for a little bit and the templars won't find her and yada yada yada.

Also where are all of the romance options. I don't like Anders so far and he's the only one. I'm serious. Except maybe I should give a bisexual/lesbian Hawke a chance because there are a lot of awesome girl characters. See, that's just not fair to all the fem!Hawkes out there who are at least somewhat heterosexual. If I were interested though, and at this point I might be, I would totally go for Isabela. Hot snarky pirate? We go together perfectly! WHAT WHO SAID THAT

 (Also male Hawke looks like a douche)

Anyway, my romantic complaints aside,  I'm liking the plot so far. Though I have to admit, every mention of the "Hero of Ferelden" makes me jealous of myself (or, rather, me as I was in DA:O). Why can't I be a hero? It'd be so much fun to actually have everyone's bloody respect for once! Pffft! But this "Champion" business sounds real interesting.

Man, why do these games have to end. Stupid Mass Effect 2 and it ending way too bloody soon. And I was good at that one, too! Grumble grumble grrrr angst.

Also, my Uncle Gamlen is a horrible person. I am going to kick him out of the house.

And I have the Black Emporium thing that gave me my dog. His name is Jackal.

This has been a nonsensical, rushed post so that I can get back to my game. Cheers!

Flash: Rush by Nitrome

This has been out for a while, but I just now got into Nitrome games. They have this really great pixel style that I find rather addictive... yes, the style.

Even more addictive is this stupid little platformer racing game. The premise is that you flip gravity and either race to be the first to cross the finish, or (in elimination mode) shock your opponents with each lap completed until you're the last one standing.

The music is fitting and smooth, but unfortunately at this point I don't think there's gonna be much replayability with only twenty stages. It's also heavy on multiplayer. To mess around with that, I conned my brother into playing against me. He lost, of course (the poor kid's only ten), but the multiplayer version was more fun if simply because it drew us into paying attention to the other players. (And in elimination mode it's fun when you're the last two standing.)

 

Oh, a word to the wise: something I've learned about Nitrome games is that you really should read the "help" section before you play. Sure, you might not need help, exactly, but if you don't get off of your ego then you'll miss the whole instruction section.

Play it here.