Richard's Online Journal
Miss Effect
IMPORTANT! Mass Effect 2 is now out in North America, and coming to Europe later this week. Yet despite many warnings, Bioware has completely failed to address a glaring error on the box, as spotted by roughly millions of people.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix. All you’ll need is the ability to take screenshots, an existing Mass Effect savegame, a pair of scissors, and some sticky tape.
Fixed! Shephard is a girl, damnit...
For best effect, print off hundreds of them and sneak into your local boutique of electronics using whatever means or biotics you deem appropriate to ensure nobody else falls afoul of this shocking lapse in standards. As for you, Bioware, we’ll forgive it this time — but watch yourselves in the next sequel…
Richard’s Games of 2009
Yes, with the year pretty much over, and because the alternative is something I’ve been putting off all weekend, it’s time for a fun look back at my favourite games of the year. It’s exciting, because I’m on the internet and I’m typing words.
Dragon Age (PC)
“What, is there something stuck in my teeth?”
Thirty-seven hours. That’s longer than I’ve spent with a game in what feels like forever, and here’s the thing: I barely noticed it. Some individual bits are a bit tiresome, and I wish that Bioware had embraced the chance to create a whole new world instead of just their own version of the Forgotten Realms and every other RPG ever, but on the smaller scale, this has some of the best plotting and writing around.
Three things in particular stand out. First, its mages are phenomenal. Plate-armour wearing dealers of so much death (with the right Specialisation), they make the poxy meat-shields look like the worthless non-mages they so definitely are. Second, it features one of the best romances in gaming history — the romance between a female PC and team comic relief Alistair bouncing effortlessly from genuinely moving to genuinely heartbreaking in ways that make perfect narrative sense, even if there’s no way you could have predicted them. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice to say that it’s not over when the (incredibly bad) sex scene plays. I actually felt upset when (in one possible ending) he suddenly broke up with me.
With Vasha! My mage! I meant with my mage!
Fallout 3
After Ending Report: Except for one of the most staggeringly poorly thought out endings in the history of all things — I’d explain more, but I need to go finish that short story about a fish who was frightened of drowning — it’s good. The main plot is depressingly predictable, especially if you’ve wandered through these wastelands before, and many of the areas badly needed a smack with the design stick, but there’s so much cool stuff to experience, I doubt you’ll care. What’s missing is sadly what I expected — the breakdown of the different towns demonstrating I was doing more than standard RPG quest-bitch duties, and that any of my decisions mattered outside of their individual tasks. Right. Back to the past…
War. War never changes. Unless you count it changing from an isometric tactical RPG to a big AAA FPS hybrid from a different development team with a totally different design style. Then it does. Quite a lot, actually…
Wrath of the Licking
In which Richard gets access to the beta, and Blizzard discovers that it’s not the best idea to include the game’s scariest baddie as a standard named NPC.
I thought his Wrath was something about the Scourge and divine retribution. But no. Just revenge against those damn RPG geeks…