Mass-Effect

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. King of Fighters XII, yeah that’s still coming out. I’m having a hard time caring without Mai :hint hint: See the episode below to catch the trailer. Explosive Remember last week when I told you all about that Giant Bomb achievements feature? Seems I’m not doing that well. I’ve only got ‘A’s in Mass Effect, Castle Crashers, and Lost Odyssey and a good chunk of my rare achievements are World of Warcraft achievements available only to those who were playing the game way back in the day. That being said, I do have a lot of Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect rare achievements and I think I’m going to ignore the DoA 4 rare since it’s probably the anti-achievement I got for losing tons of matches. ...

Who didn’t love Mass Effect? The game allowed you to explore a hard science fiction world with an intricate backstory, shoot androids, and have hot, steamy (possibly “lesbian”) sex with aliens, for crying out loud! Gamers everywhere rejoiced when they saw the brand new teaser trailer released for ME2. SPOILERS All I can say after seeing that is “WHOA! WTF!?” Commander Shepard is *dead*? What will this mean for ME2? Did they ever intend for us to have use of Shepard in the second game as was implied? Perhaps all that will transfer will be the state that you left the universe in the last game. Any further speculation will lead nowhere, but consider my interest sufficiently piqued. ...

I tell ya, it’s been a good long while since I’ve had to write a post that’s not really about baseball and it’s got me rather at a loss of what to do. Instead of focusing on one topic today, instead let’s look at a variety of things going on that I care about: Peter Molyneux has got a problem. You see, he’s one of the movers and shakers in video game design and his ideas have more or less shaped the industry as a whole. For example, while you can argue that Ultima or Fallout did it first, Peter and his boys at Lionhead popularized the whole good vs. evil aesthetic that so pervades the medium right now with his landmark title Black & White. You can’t really argue that his game made it cool for the visual look of a character to change dynamically with alignment that Bioware eventually used in their epics Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Due to some poor life decisions, I find myself stranded for five weeks without any video games. What’s a guy to do, right? Well, rather than just giving you some of the headlines from the week’s video game news in lieu of what I was planning to be gameplay impressions, reviews, and the like, I’ve instead started a five week “All-Stars” feature. Each week we’re going to look at a video game era and spotlight my top three games from that era. Each of these games will also receive a place setting at the prestigious “Table of Honor” feature that I’m working on. Here’s the weekly plan: ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. Here’s a pretty interesting lecture about sex in videogames. Enjoy! It’s sad that we have to deal with the gratuitously stupid brand of sexual immaturity that game developers just love to throw our way, but I don’t see it all disappearing, even with the supposed maturing of the medium. Think about it for a second, did you see, for example, Transformers? It’s never quite as blatant as Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, but remember that scene with Megan Fox where they’re working on Shia LaBeouf’s car? While you didn’t hear me complaining at all in the theater the night I saw that movie, I always know when I’m being pandered to and I find it mildly insulting. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. So a little game flew in under the radar on Tuesday known as Grand Theft Auto IV. I’m pretty sure none of you have heard of it, but I picked it up and it’s pretty fun so far. Nico Bellic is, by far, the best GTA protagonist I’ve ever played as and the city itself is just so much fun to get around. I told my brother when I first got it, but it’s super eerie to drive around the game’s “Hove Beach” when I’m so used to driving around the real Brighton Beach where my sister-in-law used to live. Correction: it’s so eerie to run over pedestrians and shoot cops around the neighborhood where my sister-in-law used to live. ...