Topic Shenanigans

Every so often, I like to vent stupid on Gamefaqs.com. It starts off innocently enough. I go there to try and help people out with some of my favorite games. My "good deed of the day" if video game advice counted for that....

But the longer I stay, the more stupid I end up reading. And by virtue of what I am reading, I become stupid myself. (Hell if they aren't gonna take this seriously why should I?)

example:

I'm on the dragon age board and a TC (Topic creator) states. "That dragon looks like a wyvern to me." Now it takes a special type of nerd to enjoy dragon age. A type I am proud to be. The type that can name all the different dragon types from memory. (Oh like there is any difference memorizing dragon families and memorizing baseball stats :/) we are the Tolkien Nerd. Those guys that could recite The Fellowship of the Ring (Book or movie) or recite the Canticle of the Lance. We go nuts for things like Dragon age and spit fiery venom at things like Eragon. So you would think someone who was a fan of DA:O would Know what the hell they where talking about when it comes to dragons.

So, with that, I assumed the TC was just making a joke and decided to go along for the ride. And this list of dragon types popped out of my brain.

• Dragon: 4 legs, set of wings



• Drake: 4 legs, no wings




• Wyvern: 2 legs, set of wings, no arms




• Wyrm: no legs, no wings




• JRPG: 4 legs, set of wings, plasma cannon, may or may not have eyes, gigantic floating symbol on back, feathers (wtf?), may or may not have a young girl in a mini skirt on back or in arms.




• Western Developers: 3 legs 1 is way bigger than the rest, 1 wing, 4 eyes, mask of another dragons face on shoulder, chains(srsly wtf?), maybe a motorcycle built into it's body depending on how high artist was at the time, tail with a mouth on it.

Now I'm currently playing FFXIII And seriously can't wait to see what Bahamut looks like. It's a long standing, spoiler free tradition of mine that harkens back to FFVI. Sometimes I'm disappointed (ff10, where I got most of my JRPG jab from) sometimes I think he bleeds awesome (ff8,9 and 11) sometimes I think he is over doing it (ff7, Orbital beam much?) and sometimes I worry about Square-enix in general. (ff12)

I hope to hell he doesn't look like (or turn into) a train or some nonsense.

Also, in case you thought I pulled the JRPG description out of my ass. (Wouldn't blame you since JRPG's get a lot of needless Flak these days.)
I'm at least fare in my assessments.

Mass Effect 2 - Full Review - 8.9/10

Summary

Kinda like Oceans Eleven Dirty Dozen Gears of War err... an RPG in space.

Gameplay 93/100

I was going to write about how people need to stop complaining about inventory screens. Changed my mind half way when I re-read what I had and realized how much venom was posted in that. I also realized these people are obviously deficient in some mental faculty and therefore I should "be nice". I'll just leave it at "If you can't read properly, don't make life worse for those who can" and call it a day.

That being said, I like what BioWare did to the inventory system :D ....almost. Part of the problem with ME1's inventory was people who needed more realism in their video games. You know, the ones that complain about monsters dropping loose change. So RPG developers have been coming up with all sorts of gimmicks to explain how you are getting your money. Body parts, gear, items you can later craft into more expensive doodads. The list goes on and on.

And it's working... Almost. ME1's system was born of this mindset. Get weapons, ammo and armor drops from mobs and sell them back for credits. Problems arose from the sheer number of drops you got. Often times this clogged up your inventory, not allowing you to pick up anything new. And Jumping Jesus on a Jackhammer was it a bitch and a half to clear out your inventory when this happened. Especially ammo... (Do I need this? Should I gel it? What the hell was I just looking at 3 items ago?) So instead of trying to fix the mess effect (OK feel dirty now -_-) of the old inventory system, they just 86 the whole thing and start from scratch.

Sounds good... And I'm sure some focus group was involved with the new system. (Question one, how do you feel about inventory systems in video games: "Durp Hurt brain make words do Durp"{Smash head into clipboard till it's pried out of their hands by Volunteers At EA headquarters.}) So ya, we get a handful of weapons now and we get to upgrade them. Which is perfectly fine.... BUT CAN I PLEASE SEE WHAT THE HELL I JUST UPGRADED BIOWARE? PLEASE? WITH A GODDAMN CHERRY ON TOP? Would the durpapods seriously complained if each weapon had a status screen? They're probably too stupid to find the weapon locker on the ship anyway.(Remember "Be nice")
Yes I know they have an upgrade tab on your private terminal but it's an unsortable mess after you get 15-20 upgrades. Besides, doesn't actually show the stats of the weapons now doe's it?

Oddly enough though, I really have very little problem with the other changes made by BioWare. The streamlining of the XP system, the removal of the "HillClimber: Get up that Goddamn hill" Mini game (Yes the Mako) or the way they present the story like chapters in a book.(nice mix of linear and free form story telling there) It's obvious they realized they had a much better action game than RPG there. (Stat based aiming in realtime = fail) and adding RPG elements to an action game works just fine. Hell you can add RPG elements to anything and it will work.

The gameplay itself is constantly compared to Gears of War. (Cover based shooter) And fans tend to take serious offense at this. Which is silly if you think about it. Not like GoW was a bad game. And it's not like every game is new and original. We wouldn't have Silent Hill, Saint's Row or Half Life if the industry had an aversion to improving on previous ideas. It's probably the decades long polarization of RPG and Shooter fans. And since the industry is constantly mixing the two genres. We, as fans, should probably knock that Super Silly Shat off.

So yes, I (mostly) love the changes to the gameplay from ME1. Love the cover based gameplay ripped from GoW. :p And love the absence of having to slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly climb hills in the mako. They did replace the latter with a probing minigame...... OK so it's not all good. I guess probing was added to make even "1xp per mob, 10k xp to next level" grinders bored out of there skulls. Is this a preamble for excuses for further removal of RPGness from ME3? (Remember probing ya biatches? This is why we took this other thing out.) Or a halfhearted attempt to please ME1 fans? Only time will tell.