What We Played #45

I could happily write a 1000+ spoiler-filled words on why the Mass Effect 3 ending wasn’t the ending I’d hoped for but the Internet’s seen enough of that lately. God help anyone with an Internet connection still trying to avoid any spoilers. Spoiler-free, my own dislike of the ending was largely down to BioWare’s success in making me care about my character, her friends and the galaxy they inhabit.

In the final moments Leliana Shepard (yes, she had red hair and was named after a certain Orlesian bard whose story was also compelling) could not stay true to some of the values she’d upheld for the last 200+ hours of play across three games but I believe that was the writer’s intention. The questionable continuity in the final two minute cinematic is more troubling but doesn’t significantly diminish ME3′s previous 50+ hours of outstanding gameplay and storytelling.

And it’s BioWare’s story. Should they change anything or be forced to spell out the meaning of the game’s final events in terms a Sun reader could understand instead of leaving it in the realms of mystery and imagination, no. Should referees and football managers change their card decisions and substitutions because the fans demand it and call them names, no.

Should the venomous flaming spittle spewed forth by some Dragon Age “fans” have contributed to BioWare’s decision to scrap the Exalted March expansion to that game, no, but unfortunately on that final point the “fans” have won and Dragon Age 2 is now over.

ME3 sold like a proverbial iPad and a vocal minority seem to want to screw it up for the rest of us. One million day-one copies sold, plus however many more since and protest group Retake Mass Effect (how do you take back something you never owned in the first place?) with its Twitter account with 4,500 followers and Facebook account with 60k likes (at the time of writing) is the core of the “fan” rebellion. Please, that’s 6% of the day-one sales, probably the same 6% flaming every forum in sight.

For once it would be great for the silent majority to stand up and give the vocal minority a damn good slapping. (Admittedly, it’s possible, no matter how unlikely, that only 61k players have so far finished the game.) I just hope that whatever changes or ‘fixes’ BioWare deliver arrive as premium DLC. Then maybe the upset “fans” will become so incandescent with rage for having to pay to have “their” story fixed they’ll spontaneously combust.

Okay, rant over. As you might have guessed I completed Mass Effect 3 this weekend and experienced the ending that Dan last week called “weird”. I can see what he meant and there are certainly questions that BioWare have left hanging at the end of their epic three-volume digital choose-your-own-adventure book. I gather some of you didn’t like the ending much, I can live with it and would have liked to see how BioWare would have progressed the story without unnecessary fan placation. I also played my usual few hours of Gran Turismo 5.

As for Dan, this week he’s been “balls deep in gaming clunge”. His adventures began with Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City a game that “started off fairly average, before becoming rather enjoyable” only for “repetition to set in after that”. Still, it shows promise and as he concluded in his review “with regular updates, it could be a great game”.

After that he moved on to Ninja Gaiden 3 which unfortunately has turned out to be his “biggest disappointment of the year”. Kid Icarus: Uprising with “some awkward controls” failed to “make a great first impression”. However once he’d got to grips with them he found that “a very good little game” opened up. He’s also having trouble putting down his iPad because of Draw Something.

Tuffcub still refuses to become enamoured with Journey saying it was “a nice experience once” and warrants no more than a 7 out of 10 “at a push”. Luckily, playing Super Stardust Delta and “looking at” Assassin’s Creed III have kept the gaming part of his mind occupied.

A self-imposed ban on late-night gaming has left Chris with little time “to pick up a pad” with nothing but a short kick-around on FIFA on his gaming list this week. Going partway towards filling the void is Breaking Bad on Netflix which is Chris’ latest digital crack. Says he, “I may be late to the Breaking Bad party but it’s almost certainly the most awesome thing ever in the whole history of things”.

Time constraints have left Toby in a similar situation with his FIFA-only gaming seeing him trying to get Swindon Town promoted. When he manages to find some time for gaming he tells me that a recently acquired copy of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and Journey are vying for top spot in his to-play list.

Aran played through Rayman 3 HD for us concluding that “it’s a good game and looks great” but is let down by some of the design choices. He singles the camera out as the worst offender. He teamed up with Dan and Blair for some Resident Evil: ORC which was “fun despite the general averageness of the game”.

An attempt to resolve sibling rivalries with Football Manager 2012 hasn’t been entirely successful as his Arsenal could only manage a 2-2 draw against his brother’s Chelsea. Though reasonable cup runs offset against a middling league performance means he hasn’t lost all hope yet. Picking a team that managed to collect at least some silverware in real life might have been a better start though.

Dabbling in some orbital ornithology over the last few days has given Alex some food for thought:

This week I’ve been playing Angry Birds Space. I’ve discovered something, though – despite the furrowed eyebrows and intro cut-scenes suggesting that the title of the game is at least half accurate, I’m sensing nothing but mild annoyance from the eponymous fowl and a willful desire to fling themselves towards the pigs, regardless of the environment. They’re simply not angry, I’m more inclined to think they’re actually just a little bit stupid.

I mean, eggs are eggs, but come on, they’ve been doing this for over two years now and don’t really seem to realise that the best course of action might just be to take a little better care of their unborn offspring. Don’t, for example, have your nest in the middle of a farm apparently occupied by pigs. Green pigs. Stick them up in a tree as generations of gradual evolution have trained you to. Or, if you can build a fancy inter-planetary sling slot, try building a bloody fence.

Far as I’m concerned they get all they deserve.

Making the most of a weekend home from Uni, Blair spent a lot of time with MotorStorm RC on his PS Vita. (Not sure why he spent more time on a portable console because he was at home?) “It’s still great fun”, he says as he slowly ticks off the trophies one by one and closes in on the Platinum.

He has also begun a second play through of Mass Effect 3 insisting that this time he’ll “make no mistakes”. As you’ll have already gathered he was the third member of the triumvirate playing Resident Evil: ORC and he shares a similar “fun but flawed” view of the game.

Last but not least this week we find Peter still choosing and fighting his way through Mass Effect 3. Thoughts that he might be able to enjoy the game more without the pressure of a review deadline turned out to be false. Instead playing the game has simply slipped down his prioritised to-do list.

Besides the main game he also has the companion datapad app for his iPad “which is dreadful, aside from the codex”. The iPad gets some less dreadful exercise due to an, ongoing at the time of asking, marathon game of Draw Something. “We hit 99 turns at the end of last week so the game has stopped counting but we’re still going”. Note to OMGPOP Zynga, Draw Something 2/Else/More should include a turn counter with at least three digits.

That about covers our own gaming escapades, what have you lot been up to?