So, I just finished the final draft of Memories of What Never Was, and if you feel the great urge to read it, you can do so for free at the bottom of this page.
So, about 20 years ago, I was writing my first novel length story. It was crap. The less said about it the better. And I was coming up with what would be my second novel length story at the time. That one was also crap. But while writing that second story I did a lot of thought on the backstory and how everything came to be in the world of that second novel length story. So naturally, I wrote a story that takes thousands of years later next, instead of the backstory for my third novel length story. It was REALLY crap. And then I came back to the backstory for that second novel length story and thought, yeah, I could do that one. So I wrote it out, and I called it Beyond the Lost Horizon. This was about fifteen or sixteen years ago. At the time, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't. It was crap.
I had big plans for that book. It was a massive tome, almost 350k words. And it was to be the first book of a six book series. I even wrote a rough draft of what would have been the second book. Which was craaaaaaaaap. Anyway, I tried to sell that one. I tried HARD to sell it. I probably sent submissions in to about 300 different literary agents and publishers. I got one bite, but it turned out to be a scam in the end. Defeated, I set it aside, and went to work on my next project, which was the original version of Spires of Infinity. Which was actually not that bad, but did have some serious problems with it.
Once I finished Spires of Infinity, I looked back on Beyond the Lost Horizon, and thought to myself, you know what, self? I can do better. I really liked the world in which the story took place, but the characters were pretty bland and generic, and the story was cliche, generic, and just plain terrible, and the writing wasn't great either. I thought to myself, this world, and these characters deserve better than what I'd given them the first time around. So I set to rewriting the entire thing from scratch. I developed a TON of new lore, and gave the characters new, and better motivations. And I started writing it. And it turned out crap. So I set it aside again, and went to work on my next novel length story I Am Nobody, which, again, wasn't terrible, but wasn't great either. And all while working on that one, I was thinking how I could fix Beyond the Lost Horizon to make it work.
And so, about 5 years ago I started work on the current version. The original story was way, WAY too long at 350k words. I wanted something that was more in the 130k-170k range. So I took what was about the first third of the original Beyond the Lost Horizon story and completely reworked it with all the new lore, and basically completely new characters that just happened to have the same names, and I called it Memories of What Never Was, which would be the first book of the Beyond the Lost Horizon trilogy.
There was a lot of work that needed to be put into it to get it just right. I rewrote it probably three times before I came up with a first draft of something that I actually felt good about. And I had to put it on hold for long stretches due to burnout at my job with the Post Office, and needing to work through some story elements that weren't quite working before continuing. It's taken me about 5 years to get Memories of What Never Was to the point where I actually feel like it's finished, on top of all the other versions and incarnations that this story has been through before it. I've rewritten this book so many times I should get a medal for keeping my sanity.
I really like this version of the story, and of the characters. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of it. I'm actually pretty proud of the FINALLY completed book. I've been working on this thing, in some form or another, off and on, for half of my entire life now. And it's finally in a form that I feel ISN'T crap. ........and it's only 1/3 of the story....... *sigh* The good news is that I have the characters, the world, and the lore all figured out. It really took some doing to put it together and get it to this point, but the foundation is already there instead of being built from scratch, so hopefully, I don't take another 40 years to write the next two volumes.
Anyway, if you feel the great urge to check out the product of my blood, sweat, and tears, again, you can read it at the bottom of this page And a reminder that it is in manuscript format, which means 12 point courier font, double spaced, and all italics are underlined instead. Also, copyright, etc. I own it. It's mine. Don't steal it. I worked on it for twenty freaking years.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Friday, April 17, 2020
Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
In 1997 Final Fantasy 7 came out. A friend of mine bought it and a Playstation on the release day, and we spend all night long playing through the Midgar section of the game. We were blown away by the graphics, and the characters, and the story. The game pulled us in, and only when it was like 3 or 4 AM did we stop for some much needed sleep.
I, like the genius that I was, had spent my money on a N64, rather than a Playstation, expecting the Nintendo console to continue to be where JRPGs were headed, and was not able to afford a Playstation for almost another year. (by selling my N64 to that same friend) I became obsessed with this game. When I finally got a copy of my own, I played it every single day for an entire year, looking for all of the little secrets held within. In my opinion, it is the last truly good game in the Final Fantasy series. The series never again reached the same scope and height that it did in Final Fantasy 7. Looking back, it's not my favorite Final Fantasy game, that would be 6, but it's the game in the series that most captivated my interest upon release.
When they remade the opening cinematic to show off what the PS3 was capable of, I freaked out over the prospect of getting a remake of the game with modern graphics and voice acting. I was sooooooo disappointed when I found that there were no actual plans for it. I bought a PSP just so I could play Crisis Core when it came out, and I played through Dirge of Cerberus when it was released. I jury rigged my laptop to hook up to my TV (that wasn't a thing back then) so that I could watch Advent Children the day it was released in Japan with fansubs. And I was generally disappointed by all of them except for Crisis Core. They just weren't the same, and seemed to have walked back all of the character development that the characters went through during the second half of the original game.
Anyway, fast forward to when they announced the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I was very excited. But with each subsequent news update on the project I became more and more apprehensive. The game would be serialized. The first game would only be the Midgar section of the original. Despite all of the fond memories I have of that all-nighter my friend and I spent playing through the Midgar section, it's kind of the most boring part of the game. It's a prologue that drags on FOREVER before the actual story begins.
But FF7 fanboy that I am, even in my 40s, I was, of course, going to buy it no matter what. And I did. And I was pleasantly surprised by it. The graphics are amazing. The English voice cast do a pretty great job. The music is a mix of completely new tracks and reimagined old tracks, some of which have several different versions, like the original fight music, or the bombing mission music. And there is this completely epic medley of, basically, all of my favorite tracks from the original game that plays during the amazingly cinematic motorcycle chase at the end of the game. I felt the combat was a little clunky, but eventually got the hang of it when I realized that you could keybind abilities. I played through on normal difficulty, and on that difficulty level there were some bosses that were exceptionally hard to beat. One of them I did end up lowering the difficulty to easy to be able to get through.
The story has been fleshed out, and we get to spend a lot more time with all of the characters to better learn who they are as people. I like what they did with the characters, for the most part, and I also really liked that we got to spend more time with Biggs, Wedge and Jessie, to build them up as people, rather than those NPCs that don't really have much going for them at the beginning of the original. Mostly, the additions to the story are pretty good, but I don't really like the Kingdom Hearts-ization of the story much, with those annoying Whisper things. I DO NOT enjoy Kingdom Hearts AT ALL, and I felt that Nomura's trying to force some of its BS into Final Fantasy 7 was not great, especially in the ending. While I do like the ending, I'm also a bit afraid of what it might mean for the rest of the FF7 remake series. Because to me, it seems as though it was meant to be a, we broke the ties of fate, and now this story can go off in a completely different direction and leave the old game behind so we don't have to tell the same story again, sort of thing. I really, REALLY hope that they do not decide to go that route, because if the rest of the story of the original gets the same treatment that the Midgar section did in this first game of the remake, I will completely love them. If they go off in a completely new direction, I may like it, but I will probably be a bit angry that I am not getting what I was promised all those years ago when they announced that they were, in fact, remaking the game.
So, all in all, I really enjoyed it, and I hope that the rest of the remake episodes are handled as well as this one. If you like the original, and were maybe a bit on the fence on whether or not you wanted to spend the time and money on the remake, I'd say go for it. It's not an exceptionally long game, I finished in just under 40 hours, but at the same time I did not even come close to 100%ing it. I do feel that I got my money's worth out of it, and look forward to the next, with the hopes that they do not do what I'm fearing that they will with it.
I, like the genius that I was, had spent my money on a N64, rather than a Playstation, expecting the Nintendo console to continue to be where JRPGs were headed, and was not able to afford a Playstation for almost another year. (by selling my N64 to that same friend) I became obsessed with this game. When I finally got a copy of my own, I played it every single day for an entire year, looking for all of the little secrets held within. In my opinion, it is the last truly good game in the Final Fantasy series. The series never again reached the same scope and height that it did in Final Fantasy 7. Looking back, it's not my favorite Final Fantasy game, that would be 6, but it's the game in the series that most captivated my interest upon release.
When they remade the opening cinematic to show off what the PS3 was capable of, I freaked out over the prospect of getting a remake of the game with modern graphics and voice acting. I was sooooooo disappointed when I found that there were no actual plans for it. I bought a PSP just so I could play Crisis Core when it came out, and I played through Dirge of Cerberus when it was released. I jury rigged my laptop to hook up to my TV (that wasn't a thing back then) so that I could watch Advent Children the day it was released in Japan with fansubs. And I was generally disappointed by all of them except for Crisis Core. They just weren't the same, and seemed to have walked back all of the character development that the characters went through during the second half of the original game.
Anyway, fast forward to when they announced the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I was very excited. But with each subsequent news update on the project I became more and more apprehensive. The game would be serialized. The first game would only be the Midgar section of the original. Despite all of the fond memories I have of that all-nighter my friend and I spent playing through the Midgar section, it's kind of the most boring part of the game. It's a prologue that drags on FOREVER before the actual story begins.
But FF7 fanboy that I am, even in my 40s, I was, of course, going to buy it no matter what. And I did. And I was pleasantly surprised by it. The graphics are amazing. The English voice cast do a pretty great job. The music is a mix of completely new tracks and reimagined old tracks, some of which have several different versions, like the original fight music, or the bombing mission music. And there is this completely epic medley of, basically, all of my favorite tracks from the original game that plays during the amazingly cinematic motorcycle chase at the end of the game. I felt the combat was a little clunky, but eventually got the hang of it when I realized that you could keybind abilities. I played through on normal difficulty, and on that difficulty level there were some bosses that were exceptionally hard to beat. One of them I did end up lowering the difficulty to easy to be able to get through.
The story has been fleshed out, and we get to spend a lot more time with all of the characters to better learn who they are as people. I like what they did with the characters, for the most part, and I also really liked that we got to spend more time with Biggs, Wedge and Jessie, to build them up as people, rather than those NPCs that don't really have much going for them at the beginning of the original. Mostly, the additions to the story are pretty good, but I don't really like the Kingdom Hearts-ization of the story much, with those annoying Whisper things. I DO NOT enjoy Kingdom Hearts AT ALL, and I felt that Nomura's trying to force some of its BS into Final Fantasy 7 was not great, especially in the ending. While I do like the ending, I'm also a bit afraid of what it might mean for the rest of the FF7 remake series. Because to me, it seems as though it was meant to be a, we broke the ties of fate, and now this story can go off in a completely different direction and leave the old game behind so we don't have to tell the same story again, sort of thing. I really, REALLY hope that they do not decide to go that route, because if the rest of the story of the original gets the same treatment that the Midgar section did in this first game of the remake, I will completely love them. If they go off in a completely new direction, I may like it, but I will probably be a bit angry that I am not getting what I was promised all those years ago when they announced that they were, in fact, remaking the game.
So, all in all, I really enjoyed it, and I hope that the rest of the remake episodes are handled as well as this one. If you like the original, and were maybe a bit on the fence on whether or not you wanted to spend the time and money on the remake, I'd say go for it. It's not an exceptionally long game, I finished in just under 40 hours, but at the same time I did not even come close to 100%ing it. I do feel that I got my money's worth out of it, and look forward to the next, with the hopes that they do not do what I'm fearing that they will with it.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Memories of What Never Was Draft I forget what number I'm up to
Okay, so, even though it's April, I'm still feeling burnt out from Christmas. It was THAT BAD last year. As a mail man, my job is considered to be an essential service, so I am still out working, while everyone else is working from home, or losing their jobs. I am very grateful that I still have a job, don't get me wrong, but I could really use a month or so off to recover from Christmas.
So, being so burnt out, it's really hard to find motivation to do much of anything, which is why I've taken so long to get back to work on Memories of What Never Was. But I've been forcing myself to do it over the last few weeks and have finished another draft of it. I forget what number I'm up to. It's 7 or 8... or maybe 9. Something else that had me dragging my feet was that this draft was a very tedious one to get through, because it's the one where I was fixing all of my sentence structure, to make sure I don't have too many sentences with the same structure in a row. And doing that can be extremely mind-numbing.
There were also a few character changes I wanted to make with Kriss. This is a story about her overcoming her past, and learning to live with it. And I felt that she didn't have enough agency in that, so I've done some big changes regarding her. I also felt that her redemption at the end felt a little forced and anti-climactic, and needed both a more conscious decision on her part to move on and be better, and a little more of something to push her toward it. This required rearranging a few of the events during the ending, and rewriting a few of her earlier introductory chapters, as well as an almost entirely rewritten climax.
Anyway, I have one draft left to do, which is basically just a read through to make sure everything jives correctly, and I didn't miss any big grammar mistakes, or create any new ones with my changes. Once that's over with, I'll be done, and since that'll only take a week or two, I'll post the finished thing then, on my crappy little website, instead of the latest draft now.
So, being so burnt out, it's really hard to find motivation to do much of anything, which is why I've taken so long to get back to work on Memories of What Never Was. But I've been forcing myself to do it over the last few weeks and have finished another draft of it. I forget what number I'm up to. It's 7 or 8... or maybe 9. Something else that had me dragging my feet was that this draft was a very tedious one to get through, because it's the one where I was fixing all of my sentence structure, to make sure I don't have too many sentences with the same structure in a row. And doing that can be extremely mind-numbing.
There were also a few character changes I wanted to make with Kriss. This is a story about her overcoming her past, and learning to live with it. And I felt that she didn't have enough agency in that, so I've done some big changes regarding her. I also felt that her redemption at the end felt a little forced and anti-climactic, and needed both a more conscious decision on her part to move on and be better, and a little more of something to push her toward it. This required rearranging a few of the events during the ending, and rewriting a few of her earlier introductory chapters, as well as an almost entirely rewritten climax.
Anyway, I have one draft left to do, which is basically just a read through to make sure everything jives correctly, and I didn't miss any big grammar mistakes, or create any new ones with my changes. Once that's over with, I'll be done, and since that'll only take a week or two, I'll post the finished thing then, on my crappy little website, instead of the latest draft now.
Monday, January 13, 2020
Mass Effect 3
Well, I finished Mass Effect 3. I’ve been vaguely aware since this game came out that people were disappointed with it. I have to ask, what the hell is their problem? This game is BY FAR the best of the series. It completely blows all others away. There isn’t even a question of competition here. This is the game that I was expecting Mass Effect 2 to be. Imagine my disappointment when it was Mass Effect 2 instead.
This is the only game in the original trilogy that actually feels like a story, rather than a collection of things that happen. The whole thing feels sufficiently apocalyptic and epic in scope. Even the side quests feel like they’re a part of the greater story, and serving the overall narrative. Right from the beginning it starts off with a bang in the Reaper invasion of Earth, and you head through, resolving the conflicts of the people who have been with you from the beginning to pull everyone together to fight in the last battle to save all life in the galaxy. I loved it. Despite being the shortest game in the series—I didn’t even break 20 hours of gameplay on it—this was a GREAT end to a story that has been kind of mediocre up to now, if I’m being honest.
The combat and leveling systems are a step up from the previous games, and this is the first game in the series where I really noticed the music, which was really good. My only real complaint is that the character and facial animations are horrible in this game. It’s like they took a huge step backward from the previous game in that regard. People make fun of Mass Effect Andromeda for the character and facial animations, but anyone who does must not have ever played Mass Effect 3.
I did not play any of the DLC for the game, though I did get the free extended cut. I just didn’t want to pay double what the game costs to be able to play three stories that are probably pretty short and not worth the money. If they ever cut the price on them, maybe I’ll pick ‘em up, but until then I’ve got better things to spend my money on.
Anyway here’s my rankings for the series, best to worst:
1.) Mass Effect 3 - The story, in my opinion, is the best of the bunch, and I liked the narrower focus on a smaller group of characters. It gave the game the time and room it needed to flesh them out more than previous games.
2.) Mass Effect Andromeda - A very good open world game with a crapton of things to do, the best combat of the entire series, an interesting story, and some good characters.
3.) Mass Effect - Though the characters are pretty wooden and one dimensional, and the controls are pretty broken, once you get a good team put together with enough abilities, you can pretty much just overpower your way through the deficiencies in the gameplay. While the story feels less a story and more a collection of random things that happen, it had a great villain, a pretty epic climax, and was a good setup for things to come.
4.) Mass Effect 2 - Yes, that’s right, everyone’s little darling is my least favorite game in the series. Why? IT’S FREAKING BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Too many characters. Not enough story. The game doesn’t even have a villain. It’s 5 hours of story, and 30 hours of playing psychiatrist to boring people I just don’t care about. While the combat, controls and visuals are better than the first game, the more I think about it the less I actually liked it. For all the choices and consequences for those choices there are in the game, it just didn’t have a story to back it up with.
Okay, there. Now I can say I’ve played the Mass Effect series. Now people can stop harassing me about it. I played your stupid games, now leave me alone!
This is the only game in the original trilogy that actually feels like a story, rather than a collection of things that happen. The whole thing feels sufficiently apocalyptic and epic in scope. Even the side quests feel like they’re a part of the greater story, and serving the overall narrative. Right from the beginning it starts off with a bang in the Reaper invasion of Earth, and you head through, resolving the conflicts of the people who have been with you from the beginning to pull everyone together to fight in the last battle to save all life in the galaxy. I loved it. Despite being the shortest game in the series—I didn’t even break 20 hours of gameplay on it—this was a GREAT end to a story that has been kind of mediocre up to now, if I’m being honest.
The combat and leveling systems are a step up from the previous games, and this is the first game in the series where I really noticed the music, which was really good. My only real complaint is that the character and facial animations are horrible in this game. It’s like they took a huge step backward from the previous game in that regard. People make fun of Mass Effect Andromeda for the character and facial animations, but anyone who does must not have ever played Mass Effect 3.
I did not play any of the DLC for the game, though I did get the free extended cut. I just didn’t want to pay double what the game costs to be able to play three stories that are probably pretty short and not worth the money. If they ever cut the price on them, maybe I’ll pick ‘em up, but until then I’ve got better things to spend my money on.
Anyway here’s my rankings for the series, best to worst:
1.) Mass Effect 3 - The story, in my opinion, is the best of the bunch, and I liked the narrower focus on a smaller group of characters. It gave the game the time and room it needed to flesh them out more than previous games.
2.) Mass Effect Andromeda - A very good open world game with a crapton of things to do, the best combat of the entire series, an interesting story, and some good characters.
3.) Mass Effect - Though the characters are pretty wooden and one dimensional, and the controls are pretty broken, once you get a good team put together with enough abilities, you can pretty much just overpower your way through the deficiencies in the gameplay. While the story feels less a story and more a collection of random things that happen, it had a great villain, a pretty epic climax, and was a good setup for things to come.
4.) Mass Effect 2 - Yes, that’s right, everyone’s little darling is my least favorite game in the series. Why? IT’S FREAKING BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Too many characters. Not enough story. The game doesn’t even have a villain. It’s 5 hours of story, and 30 hours of playing psychiatrist to boring people I just don’t care about. While the combat, controls and visuals are better than the first game, the more I think about it the less I actually liked it. For all the choices and consequences for those choices there are in the game, it just didn’t have a story to back it up with.
Okay, there. Now I can say I’ve played the Mass Effect series. Now people can stop harassing me about it. I played your stupid games, now leave me alone!
Friday, January 10, 2020
Mass Effect 2
So, finished Mass Effect 2. Right from the beginning it is a much, much better game than the first one. It has a pretty awesome cinematic beginning, followed by a pretty good opening mission. The combat is a vast improvement, the graphics and level design are a lot more detailed. The controls aren’t a complete dumpster fire. I mean, you can actually utilize cover without having to bash the cover button 73 times before giving up and just charging in guns blazing like in the first game. The camera controls actually work correctly, and there’s no horrible vehicle or even worse vehicle combat. Shepard has a lot more personality this time around. Although, I think that might be due to my dialog choices. The first game I played straight paragon, and holy crap was paragon Shepard boring. This time I played straight renegade and I had a heck of a lot more fun with it being evil and ruthless.
But with all of the improvements over the first game, I still found myself a bit disappointed by it. I suppose that’s what I get for listening to everyone tell he how great this game is, and how it’s the best thing Bioware has ever made, and blah blah blah. There are 4 story missions. 4. That’s it. 4. And they’re all pretty short too, ranging from 30-45 mins each. What do you do for the rest of the game? Well, you go gather characters, survey planets for resources, upgrade your ship, and then you go spend a good 20 hours of the game playing psychiatrist to all of your peeps. Some of them are pretty good. I quite enjoyed Kasumi, Jack, Tali and Mordin’s. I think the best part of the game wasn’t even originally part of the game. The Liara DLC was probably my favorite story of the entire game. It has a lot of cinematic chases and fights, and tells a great story. Why couldn’t the rest of the game have been like that? But most of them range from mediocre to adequate. The problem with this game is that it has way, WAY too many characters. And even though each of them has an introduction mission, and a story mission to earn their loyalty, there’s just so many of them that if you’re not regularly using the characters, they might as well be invisible for the rest of the game. I don’t know how anyone else does it, but in games where you choose a team from a group of characters for each mission, I tend to find a few favorites, and only use them. From all that I heard about this game before playing it, I expected this huge epic story, and it wasn’t. It just felt like I was running around babysitting instead of taking part in a big, epic story. It wasn’t bad, but I still kind of liked Mass Effect Andromeda more. My brother about dropped dead when I told him that. You’d think I’d just murdered his children and pissed on their graves by his reaction. I’m sorry, I just don’t find running all over the galaxy doing glorified side quests to be very fun or interesting. In any other game I’d have just skipped a good 30 hours of my 35 hours of gameplay, but I wanted everyone to live at the end. I’m not much of a side-questy kind of guy. Also, I really, really dislike the leveling up system. Rather than getting xp from everything you kill, you get a certain amount of xp for each mission, that usually does not equal what you have to do to get it.
So yeah, it was okay, but it doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it.
Also, I started playing Mass Effect 3 today. Anyone out there complaining about the character and facial animations in Mass Effect Andromeda, have y’all played Mass Effect 3? HOLY CRAP!!! Hypocrisy much?
But with all of the improvements over the first game, I still found myself a bit disappointed by it. I suppose that’s what I get for listening to everyone tell he how great this game is, and how it’s the best thing Bioware has ever made, and blah blah blah. There are 4 story missions. 4. That’s it. 4. And they’re all pretty short too, ranging from 30-45 mins each. What do you do for the rest of the game? Well, you go gather characters, survey planets for resources, upgrade your ship, and then you go spend a good 20 hours of the game playing psychiatrist to all of your peeps. Some of them are pretty good. I quite enjoyed Kasumi, Jack, Tali and Mordin’s. I think the best part of the game wasn’t even originally part of the game. The Liara DLC was probably my favorite story of the entire game. It has a lot of cinematic chases and fights, and tells a great story. Why couldn’t the rest of the game have been like that? But most of them range from mediocre to adequate. The problem with this game is that it has way, WAY too many characters. And even though each of them has an introduction mission, and a story mission to earn their loyalty, there’s just so many of them that if you’re not regularly using the characters, they might as well be invisible for the rest of the game. I don’t know how anyone else does it, but in games where you choose a team from a group of characters for each mission, I tend to find a few favorites, and only use them. From all that I heard about this game before playing it, I expected this huge epic story, and it wasn’t. It just felt like I was running around babysitting instead of taking part in a big, epic story. It wasn’t bad, but I still kind of liked Mass Effect Andromeda more. My brother about dropped dead when I told him that. You’d think I’d just murdered his children and pissed on their graves by his reaction. I’m sorry, I just don’t find running all over the galaxy doing glorified side quests to be very fun or interesting. In any other game I’d have just skipped a good 30 hours of my 35 hours of gameplay, but I wanted everyone to live at the end. I’m not much of a side-questy kind of guy. Also, I really, really dislike the leveling up system. Rather than getting xp from everything you kill, you get a certain amount of xp for each mission, that usually does not equal what you have to do to get it.
So yeah, it was okay, but it doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it.
Also, I started playing Mass Effect 3 today. Anyone out there complaining about the character and facial animations in Mass Effect Andromeda, have y’all played Mass Effect 3? HOLY CRAP!!! Hypocrisy much?
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Mass Effect
So I've now played through the original Mass Effect. And, uh, Mass Effect Andromeda is kind of a better game. Anyone that says otherwise is probably looking back through nostalgia goggles. The top three criticisms I see against Andromeda is the story isn't as good, the characters aren't as good, and the facial animation/graphical glitches. Please. Anyone saying that Mass Effect is better than Mass Effect Andromeda, go back and play it. The characters are not really all that fleshed out. I kept talking to them, trying to get some personality out of them, but all they do is speak entirely in exposition, and never feel like actual people. Shepard is a piece of wood without a personality. And the story feels more like a collection of side quests rather than an actual story. It does have a pretty cool ending, and the villain is better than the one in Andromeda. I ran into way more graphical errors and glitches in this game than I ever say in Andromeda. The facial animations are pretty good even by today's standards though, so there is that.
Anyway, this game is just not very fun to play. The controls are pretty broken. Oh, you want to turn the camera to the right? You can't do that, there's a wall 12 feet behind you blocking the camera's movement, so sorry. The combat is kind of bleh, again, I don't really like shooters all that much, which is why I've avoided this series until now, but the combat in this game is really, really clunky. Where it kind of grew on me in Andromeda, I was constantly fighting the controls in this game to do even the simplest of things. It makes a game that would otherwise have been okay just a chore to get through. And omg, the freaking mako. Just, holy crap, the controls on that thing are sooooooo freaking broken, so are the physics. The thing feels like it weighs nothing as you attempt to drive it around.
This is the shortest Bioware RPG I've ever played. I finished in less than 23 hours, and I did every side quest that came up, and surveyed every planet.
The variety of planetary environments are pretty imaginative, but the actual maps themselves are all pretty copy and pasted. The planets that are story related are a lot bigger with a lot more to explore, but at the same time, all of the imagination is pretty much gone from the environments. Kind of a sad little trade off there.
Anyway. I didn't hate the game. I enjoyed the story well enough, though it did feel less like a story and more a collection of things that happen. Like with Andromeda, this game kind of feels like a big, glorified prologue to a more interesting story to come later. If you can get past that terrible controls and not very enjoyable gameplay, the story isn't bad, but holy crap, I can't believe anyone ever bothered to pick up the second game on release after playing through this thing.
So yeah, my probably unpopular opinion: Mass Effect Andromeda is a far superior game to the original Mass Effect. Playing them back to back as I did really illustrated how much better the gameplay and all of Andromeda was. I'm glad I played this one, and I'll be happy never to play it again.
Anyway, this game is just not very fun to play. The controls are pretty broken. Oh, you want to turn the camera to the right? You can't do that, there's a wall 12 feet behind you blocking the camera's movement, so sorry. The combat is kind of bleh, again, I don't really like shooters all that much, which is why I've avoided this series until now, but the combat in this game is really, really clunky. Where it kind of grew on me in Andromeda, I was constantly fighting the controls in this game to do even the simplest of things. It makes a game that would otherwise have been okay just a chore to get through. And omg, the freaking mako. Just, holy crap, the controls on that thing are sooooooo freaking broken, so are the physics. The thing feels like it weighs nothing as you attempt to drive it around.
This is the shortest Bioware RPG I've ever played. I finished in less than 23 hours, and I did every side quest that came up, and surveyed every planet.
The variety of planetary environments are pretty imaginative, but the actual maps themselves are all pretty copy and pasted. The planets that are story related are a lot bigger with a lot more to explore, but at the same time, all of the imagination is pretty much gone from the environments. Kind of a sad little trade off there.
Anyway. I didn't hate the game. I enjoyed the story well enough, though it did feel less like a story and more a collection of things that happen. Like with Andromeda, this game kind of feels like a big, glorified prologue to a more interesting story to come later. If you can get past that terrible controls and not very enjoyable gameplay, the story isn't bad, but holy crap, I can't believe anyone ever bothered to pick up the second game on release after playing through this thing.
So yeah, my probably unpopular opinion: Mass Effect Andromeda is a far superior game to the original Mass Effect. Playing them back to back as I did really illustrated how much better the gameplay and all of Andromeda was. I'm glad I played this one, and I'll be happy never to play it again.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Mass Effect Andromeda
So, I have never played any of the Mass Effect games before. I hear they're great. But I just don't really care for shooters. Never have. Probably never will. They're just not fun to me. My brother, a Mass Effect fanatic has been trying to get me to play the games for years now. So this year, for Christmas, he got me all 4. So I guess that means I now have to play them, whether I want to or not.
So, my brother suggested that I start with Andromeda as it isn't really connected story-wise to the trilogy, and it's also the worst one, so best to get it out of the way first. So, I follow video game news every now and then. I don't really have a huge amount of time for games these days, so I like to see what's coming, and what kind of reviews it's getting when it comes out, so I can pick and choose which games I'll spend my limited time and money on. I also find epic failures by AAA game studios to be somewhat amusing. So when Mass Effect Andromeda came out and had all kinds of graphical glitches, and hilariously bad facial animations, I watched videos of how bad things were, chuckled to myself, and moved on with my life. This game seems to be just universally hated by everyone, not just for not living up to the Mass Effect name, but also for being a broken, unfinished mess.
Now, I played this game 2 years after release, and when I popped the disc into my PS4 I had to download a 6 GB patch before I could play. This suggests to me that a lot of the graphical errors and nightmare fuel facial animations have been patched, as I didn't notice many as I played through the game. There were still a few bugs. I had some freezing errors, and the game crashed on me once while I was fighting the last boss. Every now and then a character will be looking off in a weird direction during a conversation. And one time while talking to a character all dialog options that did not lead to a sex scene were grayed out so I was forced by the game to have sex with my least favorite character. Hurray. But I saw none of the horrifically bad crap that people made videos about in the beginning. For the most part, the game ran pretty smoothly, and the facial animations we pretty on par with other AAA games I've played this console generation.
So, that being said, and a reminder that this is the ONLY Mass Effect game I have played. I LOVED IT!!! I seriously do not know why this game gets so much hatred. It's one of the better open world games I've ever played. As good as The Witcher 3 might be, I've never finished it. I'll play a bit, get bored and do something else, come back, play a bit, get bored and go do something else. Mass Effect Andromeda I played straight through without feeling bored at all. I took the week between Christmas and New Years off to recover from working through Christmas, and I've done very little this week but play through this game.
I was expecting an unfinished, broken mess of a game that was devoid of content. But what I got was a pretty fun to play open world game that just bombards you with things to do. My biggest complaint about most open world games is that it's a huge open world with nothing to do in it. That was NOT the case here. I was just playing through the story and talking to the people in my crew at first, then I looked at my quest long, and just doing that I had literally dozens of side quests flagged that I could do. The exploration actually plays a part in the story. There are a lot of fun puzzles to solve. A lot of the side quests that I completed had interesting and fun stories. I enjoyed the snarkiness of the main character, and had fun with a few of the crew members that you collect. One I found unbearably annoying, and a couple sort of just faded into the background, but I generally liked the ones I played with most. While I don't really care for shooters, the combat was pretty straightforward and fun enough, I guess. Again, not really my thing, but it played well enough that I didn't mind so much. Also, the game has an easy mode, which I played on to make up for my natural lack of aptitude with shooters. The visuals are pretty great, even if the character animations are a bit wonky sometimes, and your character runs like he/she has something stuffed up his/her butt. The worlds, the transitions of your ship flying around, all of the cutscenes, the graphics were pretty darn good.
I did not even touch the online multiplayer aspect of the game. That is really just not my thing. I don't enjoy shooters, and I definitely do not enjoy shooters where I'm forced to play with other people who are lightyears better at it than I am. I never really got the appeal of that sort of thing. Imagine my sheer annoyance with EA that 2 out of the only 3 Star Wars games to come out in the last 10 years have been online only shooters. Anyway, I can't speak to the quality or lack thereof of that aspect of the game, since I avoid that type of gameplay like the plague.
I really liked the story, and about half of the characters, and I had a lot of fun playing it. I honestly do not know why this game is so hated, because I really, really liked it. If this is the worst game in the series, I can't wait to play the rest of them.
So, my brother suggested that I start with Andromeda as it isn't really connected story-wise to the trilogy, and it's also the worst one, so best to get it out of the way first. So, I follow video game news every now and then. I don't really have a huge amount of time for games these days, so I like to see what's coming, and what kind of reviews it's getting when it comes out, so I can pick and choose which games I'll spend my limited time and money on. I also find epic failures by AAA game studios to be somewhat amusing. So when Mass Effect Andromeda came out and had all kinds of graphical glitches, and hilariously bad facial animations, I watched videos of how bad things were, chuckled to myself, and moved on with my life. This game seems to be just universally hated by everyone, not just for not living up to the Mass Effect name, but also for being a broken, unfinished mess.
Now, I played this game 2 years after release, and when I popped the disc into my PS4 I had to download a 6 GB patch before I could play. This suggests to me that a lot of the graphical errors and nightmare fuel facial animations have been patched, as I didn't notice many as I played through the game. There were still a few bugs. I had some freezing errors, and the game crashed on me once while I was fighting the last boss. Every now and then a character will be looking off in a weird direction during a conversation. And one time while talking to a character all dialog options that did not lead to a sex scene were grayed out so I was forced by the game to have sex with my least favorite character. Hurray. But I saw none of the horrifically bad crap that people made videos about in the beginning. For the most part, the game ran pretty smoothly, and the facial animations we pretty on par with other AAA games I've played this console generation.
So, that being said, and a reminder that this is the ONLY Mass Effect game I have played. I LOVED IT!!! I seriously do not know why this game gets so much hatred. It's one of the better open world games I've ever played. As good as The Witcher 3 might be, I've never finished it. I'll play a bit, get bored and do something else, come back, play a bit, get bored and go do something else. Mass Effect Andromeda I played straight through without feeling bored at all. I took the week between Christmas and New Years off to recover from working through Christmas, and I've done very little this week but play through this game.
I was expecting an unfinished, broken mess of a game that was devoid of content. But what I got was a pretty fun to play open world game that just bombards you with things to do. My biggest complaint about most open world games is that it's a huge open world with nothing to do in it. That was NOT the case here. I was just playing through the story and talking to the people in my crew at first, then I looked at my quest long, and just doing that I had literally dozens of side quests flagged that I could do. The exploration actually plays a part in the story. There are a lot of fun puzzles to solve. A lot of the side quests that I completed had interesting and fun stories. I enjoyed the snarkiness of the main character, and had fun with a few of the crew members that you collect. One I found unbearably annoying, and a couple sort of just faded into the background, but I generally liked the ones I played with most. While I don't really care for shooters, the combat was pretty straightforward and fun enough, I guess. Again, not really my thing, but it played well enough that I didn't mind so much. Also, the game has an easy mode, which I played on to make up for my natural lack of aptitude with shooters. The visuals are pretty great, even if the character animations are a bit wonky sometimes, and your character runs like he/she has something stuffed up his/her butt. The worlds, the transitions of your ship flying around, all of the cutscenes, the graphics were pretty darn good.
I did not even touch the online multiplayer aspect of the game. That is really just not my thing. I don't enjoy shooters, and I definitely do not enjoy shooters where I'm forced to play with other people who are lightyears better at it than I am. I never really got the appeal of that sort of thing. Imagine my sheer annoyance with EA that 2 out of the only 3 Star Wars games to come out in the last 10 years have been online only shooters. Anyway, I can't speak to the quality or lack thereof of that aspect of the game, since I avoid that type of gameplay like the plague.
I really liked the story, and about half of the characters, and I had a lot of fun playing it. I honestly do not know why this game is so hated, because I really, really liked it. If this is the worst game in the series, I can't wait to play the rest of them.
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