Middleditch Littlebitch

The galaxy is safe…for now.

Wow.

I am both impressed and disappointed with myself.  I just used every spare moment of my time to play Mass Effect 2 to completion.  Ok, first thing’s first: Bioware, you rule.  You truly do.  It’s so hard to make a game that is not only really fun to play but also so well written that you just have to play the whole thing because you desperately want to see what happens next.  To people who don’t play games, I’ve compared Mass Effect 2 (and other great narrative-based games like it) to watching a great television series.  Without exaggerating, playing a series like Mass Effect is like watching The Wire, or Lost, of the first few seasons of 24, or you name it.  It’s that good.

Video games are not for kiddies, my friends.

And in a game like Mass Effect, you’re reminded of that.  Aside from the occasional F-bomb, Commander Shepard faces multiple sexual options as he roams the galaxy.  It can be casual, it can be romantic, and it’s handled in a way that when you get it, it feels like an accomplishment.  Sad?  Maybe.  But when you finally bag Miranda, a genetically perfect test tube hottie with huge…uhh…biotic abilities…it’s the real deal.  Speaking of titties though, that girl in the last post?  Samara?  I won’t ruin anything by telling you this because this will not happen to everyone, but she didn’t make it back.  Again, that’s not a linear game mechanic, it can and will change for everyone, but for me, the poor woman was eaten alive by bugs.  And it tore me up.  I’m still dwelling on that.

Seriously, the last thing that really made me “dwell” was when I watched The Road, and that was partly me thinking, “dang, it is as good as the book.”  I’d like to see fucking Super Mario Bros. do that.  FUCK YOU NINTENDO!

I still stand by that.  Nintendo lost its soul with the SNES.

What an adventure.  I want to tell so much, I want to share so much, but if there’s a slight chance that one of the two people who read this blog might actually pick up a copy and play this game then I won’t say a word.  I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience.  Trying to recall from memory, as the Xbox is off for the first time in days, my last save game reported around 40 hours of playing time.  That’s nearly two full days.  And that’s not a lot of fucking around.  Granted, there was a bit of grinding to be done, which brings me to my one and only gripe about the game.

The fucking space mining.  Man.  Why do RPGs time and time again insist on some kind of menial task to get money (or in this case minerals used to upgrade things)?  WHY?!  To me, it is the reason I don’t play MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games, like World of Warcraft, etc. for the regular people who don’t waste their time playing video games), and it is the single most annoying thing any game developer can incorporate into their game.  What’s more fucked up is that some people out there actually enjoy doing it.  There’s got to be some little peckerwood out there who just can’t wait to mosey on up to a random planet, then spend the next five minutes slowly scanning it square inch by square inch, pressing the “probe button” to launch some probe that automatically collects whatever mineral is coming through the scanner, and then rinse wash and repeat.  I’m sorry, but while I was down on that moon base getting my ass handed to me by Blue Sun Mercenaries was there no one back on my ship able to do a quick fucking scan and get me some god damned Platinum for a shotgun upgrade?!  I’ve got better things to do, dammit!  Like, I don’t know, save the galaxy from giant robots that kill all life?!

GOD!  Yeah I’m looking at you, Joker!  (Joker is the crippled pilot of my space vessel, The Normandy, voiced by Seth Green — who, near the end, has some genuinely funny dialogue)

Anyway, mining aside, Mass Effect 2 is a game of most extreme epicness.  The action is amazing too.  I’ve kind of glossed over it, but rest assured, when your team is going full steam and you’re shooting baddies up and launching biotic attacks and sending dudes flying, you’re like using The Force but also screaming “headshot!” as you blast heads with your sniper rifle.  You are Luke Skywalker meets Rambo meets Captain James T. mutha fuckin Kirk.

So what now?  Well now I think I’m going to instate my gaming hour cap program.  I wanted to skip it for Mass Effect 2 just to get this game over and done with, but now I believe it’s going to be back on the table.  I’ll move on with real life and most likely, as a result of my binge gaming, will have a spurt of creativity and feel good about myself.  Who knows, I might even acknowledge the presence of that really pretty and caring creature that patiently waits for me to notice her called my shmirlfwend.

But no.  That doesn’t really answer the question “so what now?”  Now?  Now, I think about what happened in the past two days of combined gaming hours.  Now, I wonder if the choice I made at the end of the game was a good one, because in this series your character and choices you made carry on into the next game.  There were tough choices throughout but none carry as much weight as that final fateful decision.  Now I wonder what the Reapers will do when they regroup after I killed their weird embryo giant robot from Terminator.  I want to post a picture of the final boss so bad, but you kind of have to discover it.  It’s awesome but ridiculous.  Now, I count the days until I hear the latest gossip on Mass Effect 3.  I just hope Bioware doesn’t pull a George Lucas and destroy everything I know to be true.

So, for now, I bid you adieu, Commander Shepard…

(my version of Shepard — note the Cro-Magnon facial features and pockmarked skin — he’s no pretty boy in my game)

PS:  For those of you who played both games in the series, I was told that the dude you ran into in the Citadel, the guy who wants your autograph or whatever, shows up in the second one, and how you treated him in the first one effects your interaction in the second and all that.  I don’t think I ever ran into him.  Unless I did and I didn’t realize it.  What does he do in the second one?