Recently

Finally took the dive and started playing Minecraft. It turns out that if you set it to peaceful, it’s way more fun to start off. I’ll turn the monsters back on once I’m satisfied I’m not going to just lose everything, but for now I’m content to explore and collect the things that are lying around. It’s a little unfortunate that the dungeons and things are just sitting around empty on peaceful, but I won’t let that stop me from collecting my less-than-hard-won reward for walking to the ends of them. I think it’s a bit of a balance issue. If you don’t start the game with a tutorial in hand, you just won’t ever get anything done, and when the first night comes, you’re out of luck. Then if you decide to try to build something, you’ll have to constantly race against the clock so you’re not in a bad position when night falls. And you could just lose everything. Not much fun, that way.

I’ve also begun playing Mass Effect. Well, I say begun–I got the game ages ago and played a little of it, but I didn’t get far, and I just sort of forgot about it. When Mass Effect 3 came out a couple of months ago, I promised myself that I would finally get through the first game, and maybe, if I liked it, I could continue the series. It’s a little embarrassing being so far out of date with the series, but that’s how things usually are with me–I don’t like to buy games when they’re new, since they’re way out of my budget, so it takes me a few years to catch up. Enough about that, though–the question is: how good is the game?

Quite good, in fact. The story is reasonably good, if not groundbreaking, and the setting is interesting. I’m really enjoying it. I usually don’t have the patience for Western RPGs–even the good ones usually leave me feeling like I should be spending my time elsewhere. There are a few that have captured my attention–Diablo, Fallout, and Mordor, for example, and one day I plan to play the Ultima series–but mostly I just avoid them. Well, we can add Mass Effect to that list.

I think that the setting is really what carries the game for me. I’m a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and world-building is something I particularly appreciate. Though Mass Effect’s battles weren’t that much fun, the assignments revealed enough information about the setting that I did feel rewarded for completing them. It’s kept me moving through the game.

Although I said I enjoy the setting of the game, I mean the setting writ large–the universe and history. The physical locations in which the game takes place are a bit disappointing. In each system, you can land on one planet, and explore only a relatively tiny area, which is often barren and uninteresting. Oh, there’s the odd cliff with a nice view, but the scenery is usually dull. The indoor areas are even worse. The citadel is nice, but the hundred or so random buildings you go into for assignments are all very much the same, inside and out. Enemy-free entry room, short hallway, enemy-filled big room with crates, side rooms. Pretty much every time. After a dozen or two assignments, these just felt like grinding. If it weren’t for the bits of exposition, I’d have started ignoring assignments early on.

I’ve not yet finished the game, so maybe I shouldn’t comment on this yet, but: I’m a bit disappointed by the treatment of AI in the game. Except for a few lines in certain dialogue trees, AI are just treated as Always Chaotic Evil and it’s left at that. Granted, given the history of the Mass Effect universe, it’s reasonable for people to be suspicious of AI, but since we, the players of the game, don’t come from that universe, you’ve got to expect that we’ll want to look into this a bit further. There’s plenty in the game to the effect that ‘aliens are people too’, but that doesn’t really seem to apply to AI, for the most part. If the game were a bit more artsy and less shooty, I might conclude that this unremarked upon double standard was intended to make the player think about the issue without the game’s guidance, but I kind of think that would be reading too much into this particular game.

Well, this has turned into more of a review than I usually post here, so I think I’ll leave it at this, for now. Once I’ve finished the game, I’ll try to collect my thoughts into a post or three on TMFT. I’ve got enough posts held as drafts for weeks of fresh material, and yet I haven’t actually posted anything publicly in over a year. Maybe this will get me back to writing about games. The muse comes and goes, I guess.