The Lamer Gamer

4th of July.  Up way too early on a holiday.  Got in an 8 mile run before 9AM.  That should count double or something.

Considering I haven’t fired up the Xbox in 4-5 days, I’ve banked a good amount of play time.  I think I’ve nearly given up on Alpha Protocol anyway.  It’s really annoying trying to figure out how to get certain outcomes over the course of the game and even with my OCD I find it unlikely that I’ll get 1000/1000 out of this one.

Made a slight mistake in grabbing Alpha Protocol.  It’s not that it sucked bad in general, but it did suck bad at being an RPG.  About the only thing that they get right is the abundant talking.  Other than that, it tries to be a Mass Effect-ish action RPG and it’s just not well executed.  The inventory customization bit fails as the weapons just don’t feel very different when customized and aside from the Endurance/Damage Reduction bonuses on armor, nothing else feels like it has a huge effect (e.g. hacking bonus).

On to another pet peeve I have.  Without reloading saves at critical points 3+ play throughs are necessary to get all of the achievements.  I know I’m just achievement whoring at this point, as enjoyed my one play through but am now fast forwarding through all the dialog and  at the same time trying to pay enough attention to it to sway one NPC or another into doing what I need for the achievement.

On the plus side, since this game isn’t so awesome and I already sent back Red Dead, I’ve been getting a little more exercise.  about 10+ miles this week.  Nothing ridiculous, but still good for me.

Lego Harry Potter on its way.  Gotta get something family friendly once in a while.

I can’t really put my finger on why, but I never got into Grand Theft Auto.  I like mob movies, love sandbox games, tried most of the GTA games in the last 5-10 years and they just never grabbed me. 

So for me, Red Dead Redemption was a bit of a risk.  I might play it a bit and the lose interest just like with all the rest of its more modern ilk.  Yet after a few hours I was legitimately hooked.  The game is beautiful, vast, the characters deep, and gunfights abound.  The combat system is great, though I still don’t have Expert targeting down just yet.  There’s so much to do in Red Dead that it’s hard to get bored.  Skin some bears, hunt some boars, fight a few duels, haul in a few bounties, all in a day’s work.  Single player took to around 1.75-2 days play time.  Not bad.

Multiplayer is better than I thought it would be, though worse in some ways too.  Playing coop through gang hideouts is plenty fun, and the Outlaws to the End hasn’t even been released yet (plus it’s free DLC, gotta love that).  On the down side, it’s a little too easy to get bullied by higher ranked players who just feel like constantly shooting you in the dome.  Since the weapons get significantly better as you rank up, as opposed to MW2 where in general there’s a lot of parity, you can be held at the mercy of a guy that just lives to give you a hard time as he’s harder to kill with your cattleman’s revolver than you are with his high power pistol.  I’ve blown a few hours being harassed in that way already.  They can follow you if you go to a different Free Roam session too, so that kind of adds to it.  The PvP modes don’t appeal to me much.  Played some Gold Rush, thought it was okay.  Maybe the experience there is better with a bigger crowd of friends.

All in all it’s a great experience.  Well worth the current rental, likely to a buy in the not so distant future.  Before Red Dead becomes too much of a time sink, I need to get into Alpha Protocol.

Finished up playing through Mass Effect 2, went back for a second play through to get some achievements.  Had a good time.  I’ve been reading a lot of praise for ME2, I’ve also read many complaints.  The simplified (dummed down) combat/inventory system, length of the game, music, etc., etc.

I completely agree with the criticism of the combat and inventory.  There is less customization and points assignment for each character, which takes away from some of the elements I enjoyed in ME1 combat.  Your squad has less powers than in ME1, which makes it sort of obvious which of their abilities you’ll be using ALL THE TIME.  The inventory system in ME1 was terrible, BUT, customizing weapons and the breadth of choice was a great strength.  Now I get 2 choices for each weapon, the crappy one, or the upgraded one.  So, um, yeah, there’s that.  The idea of having ammo now instead of heat buildup, was just a bad idea.  I figure they could have sorted out inventory without removing it entirely.  Just as a note, I feel the AI in combat is pretty bad for the enemy, but pretty good on your side.

The length of the game wasn’t bad.  I think there is a perception problem caused by the bulk of the gameplay time being taken up by the Build the Team, and Loyalty missions, whereas the Collector Ship and Reaper missions are fairly short.   Still, I did virtually every side quest and it took me around 40 hours on the first play through.  That’s reasonable I think.  There is a related issue of scale. Scanning planets (which is essentially avoidable if you don’t care about upgrades) in ME2 does not take the same amount of time I spent in ME1 driving around in the Mako on some random planet.  I don’t know why everyone was so down on the Mako.  It made the worlds feel huge.  Now every planetside mission takes place in roughly the space of a city block.  Another scale issue I didn’t like was that the Citadel was confined to a much smaller playable area.

I don’t know what anyone is complaining about with regard to the music.   I found it fitting, and with some well placed throwbacks to ME1.

Oh, if I had to make one other minor complaint.  The Romance scenes, forced.  And the love scene, meh.  At least the love scene in ME1 had some side-boob.

Brief article with some of the same points http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=17055

Okay, I NEVER do this sort of thing, but my Dr Pepper the other day had a code under the cap for some Mass Effect 2 thing and I figured, “What the heck, why not?”

So after having to register for a DrPepper.com account, and an EA.com account (had one already), I find that I can get some armor add-on that gives 5% up to health,power or damage.  So that’s fine, I can deal with some free crap.  But then prompts me to have to register for an account on the bioware site too.  You have got to be shitting me right?  All this for some dinky add-on .  Kinda funny.  I gave up once I got the Bioware account.

I really am THAT lazy.  Also, what’s up the the Cerberus Network thing?  Since I’ve only rented ME2, I don’t have the code to activate that portion of the game.  I’m sure that whatever you get from it (and it can’t be a full DLC), it can’t be worth the 1200 points ($15) that they want for it separately.

UPDATE
Awwwww… Way too lame.  So unless you have the Cerberus Network, the Dr Pepper freebies can’t be downloaded.  That’s too f’ing lame.  All I got was the Recon Hood anyway, so no biggie.  Plus I’m basically finished with the game.  The only thing I didn’t do was complete the romance, which I’m not even sure I care to witness.  The really forced dialogue is laughable, so I’d at least get a kick out of it.

Spent the weekend plowing though Mass Effect 2.  Since I started the game on Insanity, it’s been an uphill battle, but my char is finally getting to the point where she isn’t getting murdalized every 30 seconds.

Insanity isn’t really that hard, at least not by itself.  But the cover system is glitchy, and the way in which your allies use abilities, and more specifically, how you direct those abilities has some quirkiness.

What I found more odd and sore-thumbish is that “bitch” is repeated over and over during the cut-scenes and even more during combat as a taunt (I think it’s Jack who repeats it, but it might be the enemies).

I’m not bothered by profanity (obviously), so it’s not detracting from the experience, just found it odd.

I’d say I’m about 25% done in total, maybe closer to 50% in the story.  The mining/probing/upgrading thing is cool if a little annoying as it gets old mining planets after the 3rd or 4th one.   Still have no idea what NPC my my char is going to get jiggy with.

So on the +s and -s:

Pluses

• I head-butted a Krogan!
• Combat system is improved, though enemy AI is terrible, even on Insane.
• System of upgrades is interesting.
• No more buying/scavenging/selling armor and weapons, that was too annoying for words.
• Story seems longer than ME1, though I’m not done yet, so I could be wrong.  There are 2 discs.
• Importing character leads to throwback sidequests, past decisions affect the present.

Minuses

• I miss the Mako…
• Insanity is only accurate as a description of how annoyed you’ll be trying to play at that difficulty.  Most enemies are still not tough, aside from Scions and uber Collectors, those however, are hard as balls.
• Cover system is glitchy.  You drop out of cover randomly it seems when using abilities, thus leading to rapid death on Insanity.
• Load times still seem to suck, even with game discs installed, but hey, no long elevator rides listening to the news.
• Character import unpleasantness, I also don’t think you get very much from the import except as mentioned above.

For some odd reason, Bioware decided to hide the “Campaign complete” save files in a hidden area on the Xbox hard drive, and so when I upgraded mine, I couldn’t see them or move them to my new one.

Actually the story goes more like this.

1. Fire up ME2
2. Attempt import
3. No save files found (huh?)
4. Check hard drive, sure enough no save files, must have left them on old drive.
5. Swap out new HD for old HD,
6. Attempt to copy ME1 save data, says it can’t since I’m not signed in to my profile.  (profile is on new HD)
7. Swap drives back
8. Move profile to Memory Unit
9. Swap drives again
10. Sign-in and copy ME1 save data to MU
11. Swap drives again
12. Move data from MU to new HD
13. Fire up ME2
14. Attempt Import (still says no save data)
15. Begin to wonder if I’m insane…
16. Search interweb, find problem is that the campaign completed data is hidden, and presumably can’t be moved.
17. Swap drives, AGAIN!
18. Fire up ME2
19. Attempt import
20. Yay! Finally it sees my characters.
21. Save new data on MU
22. Set for Insane Difficulty, why not, I’m already there…

Since I let LIVE gold lapse recently I’ve been making time for games other than MW2, and along with Halo Wars (again), I’ve been sucked into Borderlands.  I’d missed out on Fallout 3, and I’m guessing that a close comparison.  The online stuff looks way fun, but even the solo setup is great with all the sidequests and such. I was spending way to much time trying to unlock all of the Title and Emblems in MW2, so now I’ve just switched to finishing every side quest in Borderlands. The controls being very similar to MW2 is a bonus since I always got messed up going back and forth between shooters Halo3 and CoD4.

The variety of weapons and skills isn’t that great, and the vehicle combat blows in single player (I bet it sucks in multiplayer too), but the game is goofy, and fun to look at (previously mentioned, soft spot for Cell Shading.

But what’s with all the open air toilets, where someone supposedly crapped out a box of shotgun ammo? And they’re freakin’ everywhere.  Well at least if I need to relieve myself I don’t have to run far.

Maybe it’s simply vanity but I love making avatars.  Well it’s not strictly vanity as I made Miis for everyone I knew when I got the Wii.

One of the cooler, but less overall useful features of Mass Effect was the character customization.  It had such depth that I spent upwards of an hour one night trying make myself a life-like avatar.  The above result only looks good from the angle shown, but I’d say it’s recognizable.  It’s so trivial, but for ME2 I’d love it if they enhanced character creation even just a little  further.  This is the sort of thing that doesn’t mean so much when no one else can see it, since it isn’t a multiplayer game, but I don’t care.

Maybe along with this they can make a less scary looking female model for Shepard.  The male version was fine, maybe just put a wig on him.

Or at least so says the Mass Effect 2 teaser trailer up at http://masseffect.bioware.com/teaser/index.html

Aside from the KIA bit there’s not much of substance to be seen, but hey they haven’t shown anything else yet.  Plot wise I wonder where they’re gonna go from the original, but more living monster ships would be cool.