Just a quick post today:
Hit up this site for a bunch of clever Pong variants, some of which will have you giggling out loud.
Then, check out Ancient Greek Punishment. It’s worth it. No, really.
Mass Effect 3 to get ending DLC
You’ve most likely already heard about this, but I thought I would share some of our thoughts about the situation anyway. As you may recall I’ve written at some length about the endings as they stand, so I won’t retread that here. And it wouldn’t be a revelation on the scale of Saint John’s to say I hope they do it well, though I am somewhat skeptical as it sounds like they are just adding to the cinematics rather than doing the work that I suspect needs to really be done in order to fix this up properly.
Still, there is something about this all that is very heartening. There has been a lot of talk about “artistic integrity” and whatnot in relation to the ending – that BioWare shouldn’t change the ending because of fan dissatisfaction. To some extent this is a fair point, as otherwise we would no doubt have all kinds of nonsense like Square trying to make games more like FFIX instead of, you know, good FFs. Nonetheless the attitude that fans are ‘entitled’ is bizarre, for a great number of reasons. First, yes we are. We’re entitled to getting our money’s worth and if a product, for whatever reason, doesn’t deliver that then we are perfectly within our rights to demand improvement. Maybe not to expect it, but to want it, certainly. If I buy a car and some aspect of it doesn’t function properly it’s not unreasonable to want that to be fixed, whether it’s something trivial or vital to the car’s functioning. Second, and our dear Pike can elaborate on this with far greater insight and expertise than I can, it is a pretty well-established notion when you create a creative work and put it out for people to consume, it becomes the property of the consumers. I’m a writer. I dread the idea of someone taking my work and finding it so thoroughly flawed that they want big changes made. But if that does happen, I sincerely hope I have the humility and integrity to sit down and consider the complaints on their own merits – and if they do indeed have merit, to see how a solution can be incorporated. When Pike first explained that to me I was somewhat horrified. “It’s mine!” I cried, “I can do what I want with it!” Well, yes. I can. That doesn’t make it wise to do so, and it may demonstrate great disrespect for the people who are sharing this work with me.
The more interesting aspect here is that they’ve been willing to do this. To whatever extent they do make changes, to go back and change a fictional work once it’s done is fairly unusual. Yes you have, say, director’s cuts in movies when they’re out on DVD, and remixes of music tracks, but those aren’t really the same thing as making a change to the canonical version of the thing itself. The only real precedent I can think of, and Pike and I tried for some time to come up with something, was the Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3. But even that was a small change, a simple “Oh you survived after all” and the ability to carry on after finishing the main quest, as it should be. And it was paid. The ME3 DLC is to be free, and at least has the potential to make significant, even sweeping, changes to the canon of the series.
What are your thoughts on this, readers? Are you hopeful, or do you despair about BW’s caving to angry mobs? Does this bode well or ill for the industry? Tell us what you think in the comments!
School of Games
I recently had a thought which arose when I was having a discussion with people about various forms of entertainment and how educational/not educational they are. Most people seemed to agree that games, as a whole, are not educational. Now this instantly drove me into defensive mode because after all, I am Pike, Tireless Defender of the Vidya. But then I got to thinking and realized that perhaps my experience is different from others. After all, most of the games that I play are historical strategy games or simulation games, which are educational by nature.
I realized that this had given me a different view on games than other people might have. I’m a hands-on learner and so I’ve learned more about, say, historical geography from Paradox games than anything else ever. This is an interesting experience that maybe not everyone has had. So maybe other people have a point when they say that games aren’t very educational for them. Huh.
…of course, then I went back to being Pike, Tireless Defender of the Vidya. Hey, someone’s got to be.
Multiple copies
A couple of days ago, my co-blogger Pike found herself with a modest sum of extra money. She duly went to her local videogaming emporium in order to acquire a new one to play. And what, you ask, did she come away with?
Sonic Classic Collection for the Nintendo DS. If I recall what she told me correctly, this is the fourth copy of the first few Sonic games she now possesses. It’s quite silly! Yet it serves a purpose, of course; none of her other editions are portable, so they cannot be easily played in bed, or at all in other rooms or while on a lunch break at work, and so forth.
I, meanwhile, have three copies of UFO: Enemy Unknown. The thing with older games like this is that there you are, wanting to play it but not wanting to mess with all the stuff you need to do to get it running on a modern OS, when suddenly it gets released on Steam, or on GoG, or what have you, and it’s very easy to just pay a few bucks to get a new working copy. Likewise I have three copies of Deus Ex, and I’m sure there are a couple of others!
Do you folks out there have similar experiences? Owning several copies of the same game? Perhaps for different platforms, perhaps updated rereleases, perhaps you lost one, bought another, then found the first one? Do tell us in the comments!
Konnichiwaaaaa~~~
Hello readers, it’s time we had a talk.
Pike and I have been discussing things regarding the blog and where it is going, and we have decided that in order to achieve our fiscal goals going forward we need to make some changes. Therefore The Android’s Closet is going to be undergoing an overhaul over the next week or two. Here are just some of the changes you can expect to see!
The blog’s name will be changing to Sephiroth and Naruto Discuss Japan;
Our focus will change away from any Western-made videogames, though we will still talk about Japanese ones of course;
We will be discussing all aspects of Japanese culture, from their ancient and venerable traditions to the perfect warriors that are samurai, who have never been defeated by baka gaijin in a fair fight!
We will no longer be using images from inferior gaijin shows such as My Little Pony, as they lack the art and beauty of traditional hand-painted Japanese anime;
We will now be beginning a special feature on weekends where we examine our favorite furry and babyfur fanart!
And hopefully soon, your hosts xXSephirothXx and NekoNekoKawaii~=^.^= will be actually moving to the best country in the world, Japan, in order to be a part of their superior and ancient culture!
And here is a sample list of topics you can expect to see discussed soon:
Why Sephy-sama is the greatest character ever written in videogames, and why we want a game about The Adventures of Sephy-sama!
Why sushi and other Japanese cuisine is the only acceptable type of food!
Remaking Katawa Shoujo, but including girls from our favorite animes like Naruto, Lucky*Star, Battle Royale, and Bleach!
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in reading about, you can buy a Sephiroth and Naruto Discuss Japan pass for just 59.99 USD, and gain exclusive access to each subsequent post for just 2.99 USD per post! And if you preorder now you get to choose whether you view the posts in red, blue, or green text!
Everyone Needs to be Aware that Sonic 2 HD is a Thing that Exists
Have you ever thought “Man, I’d love to play a version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that is exactly like the original except with updated graphics and great reimaginings of the music?”
If so, you’re in luck. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD is a fan project that is setting out to do exactly that, and judging by the alpha demo released yesterday they’re going to succeed. All fans of classic Sonic the Hedgehog need to download this demo right the heck now. Being an alpha, there are a couple of bugs and glitches here and there, and only Emerald Hill Zone is available, but if you’re anything like me you won’t care and you’ll just play it over and over.
Okay, so maybe I’m a little overly enthusiastic about this thing. Maybe I’ve done nothing but play old Sonic games for the last week so I’m all hyped about it. But seriously, check it out. aslkgh;aslkhg;lakha I can’t wait for Chemical Plant Zone.
Unexpected games
We’ve been going for about a year now (Huzzah!) and in that time I’m sure you’ve become familiar with the content of this blog, because said content is eminently predictable (it is a blog about spergy strategy videogames). Still we’ve all got surprises up our sleeves, I am sure. For example, the game I have been playing a lot of this past week?
Football Manager.
Now I suppose I should clarify that I’m not a Sports Guy. I’ve never been a big fan of sports, and that’s largely because no matter what I try I’ve never been very good at sports. Partly because I’m blind in my left eye, which messes my depth perception right up and means anything like baseball and tennis is right out, and partly because I’m just crap at them anyway, so they never held much interest and I developed my interests in other directions. Yet I got a little bit of an itch, the idea of management like FM provides is… appealing.
I should further clarify that Football Manager is still a game about sperging over spreadsheets, and you could probably say it’s “strategy” inasmuch as you have a bunch of goals (Ha!) and you must concoct and execute long-term plans in order to meet them, all whilst opponents are trying to stop you. Nonetheless there is no arguing that tone and content matter greatly, and this game definitely doesn’t contain the slaying of monsters, nuking of foreigners, or militarily-enforced agglomeration of foreigners into the Glorious Worker’s Republic of Transcascadia. No, this is a game of spherekick (As opposed to handegg). But damned if it’s not compelling! I’ve just come away from a string of defeats and finally yelled at my team, locked them in the locker room after the last game, and then drew up a new formation, new first XI squad, and new training regimen for them. The first game since these changes is just underway and it’s gripping me. More than most games do, even in genres I very publicly adore.
Of course, sports games of the more typical kind have one great strength, which is multiplayer. Great as many games are in that regard few things compare for small-scale, couch competitive gaming, as a game of Virtua Tennis, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, or John Madden. In any event this really detailed side of things is hugely fun, much more than I would have guessed when I caved into a strange hunch and gave it a shot.
Readers, tell us in the comments about any games you’re a fan of that people around you might not expect!
Gotta Go Fast!
I really can’t get over how great Sonic the Hedgehog is. As some of you may know, I was mostly a Nintendo kid growing up, but we had a next-door neighbor with a Genesis and I’d go over there and play his games for hours. Sonic 2 is a game I can still go back to, and which has not only aged gracefully but seems to get better each time I play it. I can’t decide what, exactly, makes it so great, but it might be that perfect balance between speed and careful exploration that it somehow managed to strike.
Now back in the day Sonic used to be considered “cool”, but these days the poor hedgehog has rather lost his luster. Sonic is now the realm of horrifying fanart and failed attempts at comebacks. I know that some of his new games are pretty good, but it still feels like he hasn’t yet made a truly triumphant return. I miss when Sonic was cool and when Sonic 2 was basically the pinnacle of human achievement.
Who else feels similarly?
The power of nostalgia compels you!
You ever have that irresistible urge to play something you’ve not played in forever? I’m not even talking about a personal favorite or anything. For example, it’s no surprise that every now and then I sit down and play through Suikoden II, because it’s my favorite game ever and I personally rate it somewhere between ascending to Godhood and living in a world populated only by uncontrollably horny clones of Christina Hendricks. Similarly there are games like WoW which have a habit of sucking one back in every now and then, even when you know you should know better.
Sometimes though the game you feel compelled to play is something you acclaim quite a bit less, or something that while you like it, you’ve not touched it for many years and there is no reason whatsoever for it to pop into your head as something that needs to be played right now. I’ve recently been feeling the need to play Front Mission 3, and I remember once absolutely having to play Vagrant Story – a game I don’t even like very much! – a feeling that didn’t go away until I bought a copy of the thing and played it.
Do you guys ever have weird compulsions to play games, perhaps ones you’ve not touched in years or weren’t terribly impressed by?
Mass Effect 3 Ending Discussion
I shall warn you now: This is going to be a long post, and it is also going to contain an overabundance of spoilers, not only for the very end of ME3 but plot points throughout the series. Therefore if you are not interested in having it spoilt for you, do not read beyond this point!
Now we’ve all seen the great hullabaloo surrounding the ending of Mass Effect 3 – RPS provides a good summation of the current state of affairs – and that lets us launch into one of the core points that needs to be made explicit right from the beginning. People are invested in this game, this series, and deeply so. Mass Effect has been going for five years now, encompasses three vast games, and a number of other media like books and comics. A core concept of creative endeavor is that the creator and the consumer of it are engaged in a compact – at the very simplest level this compact is that the reader/player/watching agrees to suspend disbelief, while the creator agrees to deliver a satisfying story. The suspension of disbelief is vital. When you find the story coherent and internally consistent, you’ve got yourself a stew going. When you encounter something that is obviously nonsensical, contradictory, or the like, your ability to suspend disbelief is harmed, perhaps even shattered, and that makes your ability to enjoy the tale weaker. You can read a fairly excellent summation of this whole concept here, although the last bulletpoint may not apply!
In short this does matter. It’s not just the ending of a game, it’s the ending of something that people have invested in. Invested their money, their time, and their emotions. If anything the outrage is a testament to BioWare. Nobody gets too worked up about something they don’t care much about, but when we do get attached to things we naturally have expectations.
The problem, therefore, is not that the ending was anything in particular. It’s not that it was sad or happy or bitter-sweet or anything in-between. There’s nothing wrong with any particular ending, but it does have to have thematic ties, foreshadowing, and when it purports to be the ending of a series, it needs to provide satisfaction. Mass Effect 3 only succeeds on the first two in a very shaky fashion, and falls down on the third entirely.
The three choices given at the end of the game, by Magical Star Child von Ex Machina III, are roughly as follows – you can choose to either Destroy the Reapers, to Control the Reapers, or to merge all organic and synthetic life in the galaxy. The first of these options is fine – you’ve been trying to do that all game. The second is problematic. You’ve been specifically trying to stop the Illusive Man from figuring out how to control them throughout the game, and it’s pretty much outright stated that it’s not possible to control them. It turns out they can be, but you’re never given much reason to think it’s a good idea. In previous ME games choices like that were always given context and meaning. In the original game at the end you are presented with a choice of whether to charge in to save the Galactic Council, or hang back as it will help you fight more effectively. Sacrificing them has another purpose however – throughout the game you’ve seen humanity’s place in the galaxy, and how they are not given the due they feel they deserve. Failing to save the Council would propel your species to a position of power, as the new Council would be built around the people who saved the Citadel itself.
Conversely, although the possibility is raised in ME3 of controlling the Reapers, it’s never highlighted as a serious proposition. It’s something a madman is doing, something that the Reapers themselves have suggested to him in order to divide humanity’s efforts.
But at least that has some measure of foreshadowing, hamfisted as it is. The third option, “Synthesis”, comes right out of left field. Now, let’s be clear, I am an ardent transhumanist in the real world and fully desire ascension to becoming cybernetic. However, in this game it is completely insane to think Shep would choose that in the state he reaches the end in. He’s seen synthesis – it’s how the Reapers get their ground forces. There would need to be a HELL of a lot more in the way of setting this up beforehand for it to be remotely palatable.
The third problem with the choices given is that Shepard is not the kind of person who just accepts the choices given. The series is about defying the inevitable fate others have prescribed, and it doesn’t just come through in the big picture. A lot of small quests throughout the game can have an alternative option that Shepard figures out where nobody else could. At this point he should absolutely be able to say “Fuck you, we’re done playing by your rules.” as a Renegade, and “But look at the evidence” as a Paragon. And then what you have done in the series to date has an effect on what happens next.
How you have played should totally influence how the endings work out. Here’s how I envision things: You have brought peace to the Geth and Quarian, and present this to the Catalyst as evidence. It responds by saying “Yes, temporary peace has been achieved. Only through our presence. We have seen this in preceding cycles.” and they give you a long list where it has occurred. Then you can offer “EDI and Joker are in love.” as evidence, and the Catalyst says something like “Interesting. We do not have enough reference points to determine the outcome of this eventuality.” and then you have speech checks to convince the Catalyst to at least give the galaxy a chance to see if it can work. Alternatively you can choose to fight on, and then the battle just plays out. The outcome is determined by your War Assets – you should entirely be able to lose everything here! That would be a really great bad ending that made sense. And either of this would put things in the player’s hands, and made the choices over the game and series fundamentally matter. You could have three tiers of outcome – victory, a close defeat that is a Pyrrhic Victory for the Reapers and gives hope that the remaining galactic powers might be able to muster enough force to survive (or at least that the next cycle will), and total, crushing defeat.
So much for the choices. Let’s move on to the consequences. The choices of the ending are bad, but the outcomes are if anything even worse. Very little makes sense here. You see almost nothing except a few dying repears or whatever, and then the Mass Relays start blowing up (Seriously all it took was ONE LINE from Hackett earlier about how the Crucible’s effects seem to be propagated through the Relay system) while Joker is escaping through one. Why is he running when Shepard isn’t confirmed dead, and indeed the Citadel just opened, so Shep is probably not dead? How did Ashley and Liara get back aboard the Normandy? Who knows! Anyway the advertised multiple endings just plain don’t exist. You get a couple different colors of explosions, and you get a few minor scene changes, and that is that.
Gamers want choices. And we want choices that matter – choices and consequences used to be the watchwords of the RPG genre, and it is something we have sadly come to almost totally lack. One of the reasons Mass Effect was always so exciting was that it promised to oppose this trend – but it hasn’t done anything of the kind. It presented a total copout, in fact. Now, take my suggestions above, and you can see just how disappointing it is. I’ve not been spending forever drafting ideas, I pretty much plucked them out of thin air in the course of a few minutes. And though I’m not going to say I should be writing for videogame (I should totally be writing for videogames) it demonstrates that it would be easy to have come up with alternative endings that made sense. Endings that, as I’ve said but must hammer home, synthesize the gameplay and narrative choices over the course of the series to adjust your final options and their outcomes. This is surely the Holy Grail of games that purport to give the player significant choice – we all make gameplay choices constantly. Who to shoot in which order with which weapons, etc. etc., and how a battle plays out is the consequence thereof. In ME we make narrative choices regularly as well. Combine the two and baby, you’ve got a stew going!
Finally, when it comes to consequences, whatever the outcome we should have seen a lot more about your allies. Mass Effect is really about your other party members and how you interact with them. To see nothing except that they are stranded on an alien world is completely unsatisfying. Fair enough if you had a bad ending where Joker fled the battle once it was totally lost, I suppose, but otherwise just what. Assuming a good ending, like one where you convince the Reapers to leave or your superweapon works as advertised, you should see vignettes of where your comrades are five or ten years down the line. Liara excavating the ruins of Tuchanka. Javik is with her if you convinced him to become a bro, and they are working together to search for other Prothean ruins and perhaps other Protheans who survive in stasis. Garrus is a highup on Palaven helping to organize rebuilding. Wrex is doing the same on Tuchanka, keeping the tribes in line and working to create a new krogan identity. You see others as well, if they’re still alive. And finally you come to a scene maybe thirty years on, where you are older now, and your comrades too, and everyone who survived the series has gathered at the opening of a new Normandy Memorial Museum or something, a definitive and permanent memorial to the Reaper War and its heroes. You see a wall of the lost, as on the Normandy, you listen to your comrades make brief speeches about you, and you get to make a final one yourself about where the galaxy should go now.
That’s only one possibility of course. I understand that we all have our ideas about how everything should be different, too. I’m not trying to say I have all the answers and my ideas are best, but I am hoping to point out that not only is the current situation a bad one, it’s doubly bad because a better ending would not have been difficult to come up with, and given the money invested in the series, it wouldn’t have been an undue strain on resources to implement more.
Fundamentally it’s not disappointing just because of choices ignored, or consequences ignored, but because both are ignored in combination. Add a bit of nonsense and there we are. It’s disappointing not just as series fans, not just as paying customers, but as people who love the medium – because it could have been so much more, with so little extra effort. Maybe even enough to have a very clear way to demonstrate to Ebert that an experience can be enhanced by player agency and control, not diminished.