Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Mass-Effect”
Spending Time as a Female in a Physics Puzzle Game
[caption id=“attachment_6344” align=“alignleft” width=“478”] Chell from Portal[/caption]
Gender is a pretty interesting concept when it comes to video games. Putting aside “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, video games are unique in that the players are active in constructing the narrative. Some games, like puzzle games don’t REALLY have a narrative (but that doesn’t mean my brothers and I didn’t come up with the “story” behind what was going on in Tetris - paragraph seven) But the rest have stories and put the play on a spectrum from games like Mario to games like Mass Effect and all the way to the The Sims franchise in which you have complete control of the narrative through player agency over all the characters in the house. (See here, here, and here) As the player plays, the player takes the character’s story onto him or herself. This is at least partially the rational for the dearth of female protagonists. Everyone “knows” that not only are all the gamers male, but they also couldn’t stand the idea of playing as a female. Off the top of my head the only top tier female protagonists I can think of are Laura Croft and the girl from Heavenly Sword. There’s also Samus Aran, but that’s also a bit of a cheat since she’s nearly always armored and the reveal that she was a woman was one of video games’ first huge reveals. But I know this is untrue - at least among the video game aficionados I know. Dan, members of the Giant Bomb Squad, and others who write about games online played Mass Effect as a female Shepard. Ryan or Jeff (or both, I can’t remember) of Giant Bomb plays as a female every time a video game gives him the option.
2011 in Video Games (and my 2011 Game of the Year)
[caption id=“attachment_5240” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“Team Fortress 2”] [/caption]
Civilization V (75 hrs) - What can I say about this game that I haven’t said already? This is the series that made “One More More Turn…” famous and it still works today. If I were to start a game tonight, I would not go to bed at a reasonable time.
Finishing up First Playthrough of Mass Effect 1
[caption id=“attachment_4997” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Saren is not a believer”] [/caption]
Sorry I took so long to get to this. My last post had me finding out that the Reapers were actually the most ancient species I’ve heard about until now. And after my face off with Saren on Virmire, I thought I’d have to chase him to Ilos to finish the game. But, nope, I was able to do whatever I wanted. This was kinda weird timeline-wise, but I already discussed the disconnect that makes you realize this is a game last time around.
August Video Games
For those who are new readers, I’m keeping track of the games I’m playing monthly (via Raptr) and then writing a little blurb on the games. This is in prep for my year-end blog post.
Team Fortress 2 (4 hrs) – I continue to really enjoy this game. I think of all of non-story-based games I have, this one has one of the fastest completion times for a single game. Civilization 5 can take me a week or longer to finish. And my other games fall somewhere between these two. (With a few exceptions like Pacman CE DX)
First Playthrough of Mass Effect (Part 3)
Last time I blogged about Mass Effect, I had just finished up with a planet where a plant was controlling everyone. After that I did my first real tour of my ship to go talk to all the people who had joined my crew. I got to sneak up on Ash talking to her sister and learned she had a crush on me. I decided to nip that in the bud because I found her personality annoying compared to Liara. I also found out about her background. She was religious, but I wonder if Christianity has survived in the Mass Effect world or it’s something similar to that.
July Video Games
Mass Effect (2 hrs) - Dan tells me that if I don’t go for the optional quests, I could be near the end. After the next major story beat I’m probably going to write up my next Mass Effect blog post. I’m really enjoying the fiction.
Team Fortress 2 (60 hrs) - I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy playing this game. I am not an FPS person. But it recently went free to play so I figured “why not?” I started playing the game and it’s every bit as fun and funny as the “Meet the X” videos. It’s a lot of fun to formulate the strategies for the game. I’m still learning a lot about that. And just when you think you know what to do, there are the extra weapons you earn for getting certain achievements. They don’t throw off the balance because they give with one hand and take with the other. The Heavy’s gun Natasha, for example, has a higher chance of critical hits, but it takes longer to spin up.
June 2011 Video Game Play Time
Just one game this month, it’s been quite a busy month for me!
[caption id=“attachment_4589” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Walking Around in Mass Effect”] [/caption]
Mass Effect (8 hours) - This is a great game that I’d heard about for a long time, but never got around to playing. A recent Steam sale made it cheap enough for me to give it a try and I’m really enjoying it. I’m writing about my playthrough and you can read the first part here and the second part here.
First Playthrough of Mass Effect (Part 2)
Sometimes I think what I want is Mass Effect: The Laserdisc game. I love the story and I love the Codex entries. Just getting completely engrossed in the Mass Effect world. What I don’t enjoy is the fighting. This isn’t because I’m bad at it. My cover-based shooter noob days are long behind me with Uncharted 1. But the story’s so awesome and sometimes I have to wait hours between story beats while I fight my way through the Geth. That gets old pretty quickly.
First Playthough of Mass Effect Part 1
[caption id=“attachment_4589” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Walking Around in Mass Effect”] [/caption]
I recently bought Mass Effect in a Steam sale that knocked the price of Bioware’s RPG to $5. Thanks yet again to the guys at the Giant Bombcast (seriously, this is the second or third I’ve bought because of them and fourth or fifth from podcast recommendations), I’d wanted to play the game, but was waiting for a sale price since I have tons of other games I haven’t even started yet. Having finished Final Fantasy X and the single player mode of Portal 2, I started on Mass Effect.
How Video Games Grew Up When I Wasn't Looking
There was a time when I loved video games. I subscribed to EGM and EGM2. I trolled the nascent World Wide Web looking for video game news. I read IGN religiously. The most powerful systems out there were the Nintendo 64 and the Playstation. Then I discovered girls and dropped the subscriptions. Most of the video games of that time period were still very arcade-y in nature. Or they were platformers like Mario or Tomb Raider that had the flimsiest excuse for a plot. Yo, the princess got kidnapped again. Run through a bunch of levels to get to her. No exposition or reason for anything going on. You just needed to complete these tasks to unlock the final boss fight. Of course, games were starting to have cut scenes between levels to keep the narrative going. And I remember the great FMV flame wars that caused. Were you just working to unlock expository videos? This was better than the Mario case, but there was still just a small correlation between what you were doing to get through the level and what was going on in the story. The biggest exception was the movie tie-in game, but those tended to have gameplay elements that were full of suck.