Falling Asleep With My Eyes Open

That's how spectacularly boring my life is and how tired I am from a week of workouts and lack of sleep. Who knew building muscle and losing weight would be such hard work? Actually, I sort of lied there, my life isn't actually all that boring, I'm just being melodramatic for the sake of it. Since we last spoke, I have given serious consideration to where my time is going and I have yet to make any progress on why it slips through my fingers. But at least I'm analyzing the data. You know what, this isn't really how this was going to start, let's get some coffee and a pre-workout shake and let's do this! My Note; This post may contain spoilers (including ending) to Mass Effect 1-3, The Walking Dead Ep. 1 and Journey.

The Conclusion of Effective Mass

I took my sweet sweet time, but eventually there was no denying I had to rip the band-aid off and finish Mass Effect 3. I had probably done a majority of the things available to you in the game, except perhaps buying the Black Widow sniper rifle because that sucker was expensive and in a weak moment I bought fish and armor pieces I never used that set me back a few thousand credits. But at least pew-pew those who stood against me with my slow-ass Javelin. And my trusty side-arm that shoots sticky balls of exploding electricity. God, those fucking Banshees. The game had a lot of very emotional and badass moments, I wish some characters got more room and I wish some got less. But let's be honest here, Garrus is the goddamn.. man? Whatever. Bro for eternity. One thing I really enjoyed about this final game was that it brought back a lot of the features I liked from the original Mass Effect but seemingly through Mass Effect 2 polish.

My paragon Shepard has been through some shit, and I have done my best to role-play while at the same time control the outcome. This is something I realized in Mass Effect 2 when I sort of wanted to go rouge and Renegade as a "pay-back" to the uptight blind Council. But I realized just as fast that there is no way the game would understand my disconnected projection of my own thoughts onto this game, so I had to temper my actions so that I didn't mess up how I felt Shepard was, as opposed to how I wish he was.

My biggest issue with Mass Effect 3, and maybe Mass Effect in general, is that leaders are all written to seem stupid and bureaucratic to a fault, wearing blindfolds and listening to their own voices. So many events could have been avoided had basic common sense reigned. And why does everyone throughout Mass Effect franchise, at least from the political side, treat Shepard like he aint' no thing? Daaahhh Reapers? I never saw any huge ship enter citadel space, you might have dreamt that, Shepard. Hell, the Illusive Man in all his grand narcissism even treated Shepard with some dignity. Come Mass Effect 3 and suddenly "Woah, that Shepard dude knew some shit. Let's bring him back from retirement because he saved us so we reprimanded him." WHAT?

I am sure the fiction of Cerberus and Council and all that jazz goes deeper than that, but I don't think Bioware really made Cerberus look as questionable as the game wanted you to think. Up to a point. Council on the other hand has continually looked like self-centered morons who seem to make life difficult just for the sake of it. The more I write, the more I wish the reapers would harvest these idiots. Sort of like how the whole Geth vs Qurian debacle feels like a "Hey, we need more missions, let's start some shit." I did really enjoy the Geth Server mission, I mean, it was dumb but the fiction that was revealed there was pretty awesome. But let's not get specific or this blog will take forever.

And so, I finally got to see the much debated ending. It was dumb. Dumb. But as I read somewhere, if you look at it as forms of extreme take on the different morality aspects of your character, it's pretty fitting. My major complaint was not so much the ambiguity of the ending but the fact that what was left, aside from the event was one small scene? Really? After that long-assed final mission you abruptly end on me with little closure? Fuck you, those characters deserved better.

But, overall I really enjoyed my time with Mass Effect 3.

Hammer Face, you so pretty

I haven't read The Walking Dead, nor seen the tv-series. So my comparison is.. well.. other adventure games and Dead Island, since it's the only Zombie related thing I've liked lately. Dude, goddamn, I liked this. There are many aspects of the game that I enjoyed, the timed answers give the situation some actual tense decision making but it also really puts you on the spot. I remember playing KULT back in the pen-and-paper RPG days when our GM would do that and it just added a layer of complexity and creative thinking on our part and the game was a lot more enjoyable as a result. The interaction between characters are interesting and I never felt any discussion ever really dragged out and outstayed it's welcome. The game has a really nice atmosphere, it's borderline cozy, if you could call smashing a girls face in with a hammer cozy, I wouldn't know. But equally well built suspense. But, it's certainly not a very hard game, one puzzle had me scratching my brain but overall I think most of the game's value, at least this episode, was just the establishing of characters and getting to know your own.

Really quite looking forward to Episode 2.

Sand, sand, sand and some fabric

My first Playstation store purchase since.. I don't know when, maybe the last thing I bought on Playstation 3 was thatgamecompany's other game, Flower. Initially I was a bit underwhelmed, it didn't look quite as good as I had imagined it to, that's not to argue it was ugly, far from it. It was a beautiful looking game, just a matter of overblown expectations. The actual "journey" of playing the game was a serene and relaxing experience. Some moments you just had to take a moment and soak in the surroundings and other times things moved so fast you wish you could stop. And then, like that, it was all over. And unlike Mass Effect 3, the ending wasn't abrupt, in retrospect the game felt abrupt. I was always moving forward and before I knew it, there was no more. I never tried playing it online, not sure what that would have added as far as enjoyment of the game is concerned. I think my main problem with the game was my own approach, I "played" it more than I "experienced" it and I've in retrospect realized it's a poor way of going about it.

Still, Journey handled the ending sequence and ending in general better than Mass Effect 3 handled the ending, proportionally speaking of course.

Let's get self-centered

On a completely game-unrelated-but-related note, I've been steadily hitting the gym 3-4 times per week and with a new way of eating I've lost weight and gained muscle. It's fantastic. I used to work out a lot some years ago and I remember being pretty strong at work, I have since then sort of been letting myself go quite a bit. But, no more I say! My goal, or reward if you will, is if I get in decent shape by the end of the summer I'm going to start training MMA. It's something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and I think I have the right mentality for it. Granted, I am a complete social-phobia personality when it comes to entering into new situations so going somewhere to train for the first time will be gut-wrenchingly horrible. So, games, yeah I'm also trying to write more (but that is proving to be difficult as I tend to lose track of time doing other things) and all this and some economics of life I have realized games are costing a lot of time. So I'm trying my best to temper my gaming lately, maybe get a bit more selective and buy fewer games. It feels like an odd thing to say, especially when there are some killer games coming soon, I am already behind on buying some games that have been released. But sometimes you just got to try and add some measure of priorities. And I fucking suck at that. So, who knows, maybe by the end of the summer I own all the games and I'm fat. But let's hope not, at least the fat part.

PS. This was a fairly ordinary blog-post. How boring. Next time I'll add suspense, surrealism and.. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

Just kidding, Sovereign for president!