Videogames?

VIDEOGAMES!

Wahey. Jokes. But more on that later.

Borderlands 2 is still taking up most of my gaming time, which is to say, I am still enjoying it. Me and Harriet drifted apart level-wise, so we both started new Mechromancer characters together. There's something wonderfully cathartic about watching a pair of  giant floating robot torsos tear into a nearby pack of marauders. I really should at least finish the game once at some point, since I'm told the ending is worth seeing.

Another thing I have been playing is this;

This is sort of like Mario's private island.
With its own chalet and... giant statue of the owner

Diamond Ponies and Double Barrels

Right. Hard talk here for a second.

Tediore is the obvious choice for shotguns on Pandora. The super fast reload, combined with the explosive damage caused when you do, makes them an absolute winner. Hyperion weapons get more accurate over time, which is useless for a gun with only four shots and a spread projectile pattern. Dahl weapons have burst fire, which is moot. Maliwan weapons have the elemental edge but reload pretty slowly. And Torgue weapons make it IMPOSSIBLE to hit anything. So clearly, Tediore. It's the way forward.

Ahh. Good to get that knot of geekery off my chest. On to the game at hand.

You're god damn right it is

One Choice is No Choice; How TellTale Did Morality Right

Here's a weird admission. Up until recently, the most effective and difficult moral choice I've ever had to make in a game was in Fable III. At the beginning, the king offers you a choice of who to kill; some villagers or your childhood sweetheart. If you take too long, the king suddenly starts counting down from ten, at which point he will have both parties executed.

It's almost the perfect example of what a moral choice can be. Often in games, when presented with moral choices, we play tactically. We don't go with our gut, we try and "game" the system and play tactically. The moral decisions in BioShock, for example, aren't really about ethics, they're about whether or not you want upgrades now or later.

Sticking the time limit on a moral choice that doesn't immediately offer any advantages either way is a fantastic way of giving a moral choice weight. It worked in that first bit of Fable III and by god does it work in The Walking Dead game.

Point and Click and Meet and Greet

Well, what a world, aye? One minute you're talking about a game dev and how much you love his games about ghosts on your blog, and the next you're meeting him and another (BAFTA winning) adventure game dev in a pub full of indies.

AS ONE DOES.

But anyway, I leap ahead of myself. Video games I have been playing...

...are mostly members of the point and click adventure genre. Mostly, in fact, of the Broken Sword genre.

Nothing witty, just a reminder that Broken Sword is really pretty.

Ghosts and Guns: Blackwell and Borderlands

Well it's been well over a month since I last wrote anything g so HERE WE GOOOOOO

What's my favourite genre of game, I hear you ask? You didn't? Well, shut up I'm telling you anyway. It's point and click adventure games. As of recently though, nothing has managed to encaptivate (that's a word right?) quite like the halycon days of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. I mean granted, that's because there's never really been anything quite like Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, but you see the point.
All of the TellTale games have never quite sat right, being enjoyable but not particularly memorable. Machinarium, made by the irrepressible and often incomprehensible Amanita Design, was beautiful to look at but felt very modular in its puzzle format.

Enter Wadjet Eye Games, run by Dave Gilbert (who I like to imagine as an adventure game creator amalgamation of Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman) and his ongoing AGS series of Blackwell Games. It's about ghosts and solving ghost crime, sort of, and if that's not enough to get you playing it, then I don't know what else to do.

VIDEOGAME VACATION

The astute of you might notice I haven't blogged for a while. In fact, I haven't done anything for two months.

Actually, no, I've done plenty. Final exams, moving home, Mass Effect, summer job, exam results, more job, job training, starting job, graduation, Mass Effect 2 and then remembering about my blog. There we go. The last two months nicely summed up.

So yeah, I graduated. That was fun. Look, here I am wearing a funny hat! I'm the one on the left. I think.

I'm going back in September to do a Masters in Science, Communication and Society. Won't that be fun?

Yes, hopefully.

SO MASS EFFECT 2 IS A THING AS WELL

To Boldly Re-Go

Blog post times! I'm currently at home for a couple of days, after finishing my dissertation and such. I'm having a well earned break (hah) before going back to Canterbury for a month or two to revise like some kind of manic revision demon for my final final exams. I'm making the most of my time back home and playing a game that came out in 2007.

In my original blog post about Mass Effect, I complained about the combat being poor, and I stand by that statement. The combat isn't great. The enemy AI often runs around in a mad panic, confusing both themselves, your team-mates and me. However, I'm playing as an Infiltrator this time around, rather than a Vanguard, which means I have access to a bunch of tech-based powers, the use of all which result my enemies exploding. I had planned to use the sniper rifle as my primary weapon, but I am next to useless with the damn thing. Until I invest a few more points into sniper rifles, I'm having to rely on my pistol most of the time. It has poisonous bullets. I think my Shepard should nicknamed "The Viper" or something.

In a slight change to my original playthrough, I'm actually playing as a female Shepard (or FemShep, if you must). I can honestly say there's really not a vast amount of difference between playing with or without a Y chromosome. Conrad Verner's fandom takes a slightly weirder note, but apart from that, it's pretty much the same. I've never really like either of the voice actors for Shepard, so really, it's just a cosmetic change, with the plot rattling along as ever. Not that I'm really doing anything plot related. In fact, I'm making an effort to ignore it. I missed quite a few of the side quests in my first playthrough, so I'm not going to let that happen this time. Scanning planets and doing side quests has raised me to level 21 without going near Virmire, Feros, Noveria, or the other one.

And also, more Mako sections, because
fuck anyone who didn't like the Mako