Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part Five

THE FINAL CHAPTER

And so we finally come to the end of this dissection of BioWare’s vomit-inducingly disappointing finale to the Mass Effect  series.  While I may not have covered every single gripe, complaint and nauseatingly awful aspect of the game, I feel that I have detailed the core problems and hopefully successfully shown you all that BioWare has been tainted by the virus-like corruption that is EA Games.  (Think “Uroboros” and we’ll be pretty much on the same page.)

But I’m not quite done yet, as there are two final problems I would like to highlight that, for me, ruined the entire experience, to the point that I am contemplating suicide at the very thought that I even inserted these games into my console in the past.  The fact that I enjoyed everything about these games in the past has been negated by everything this blog has discussed, and I now resent the fact that BioWare tricked me into enjoying something so obviously bad.  I have been duped by Corporate Bastards, and I am Not Happy.

14. Shepard’s Acceptance of The End

So you’re Commander Shepard and you’ve fought, struggled and hauled yourself to the game’s finale.  Throughout your life you have striven to do what’s right, battled evil and corruption wherever it reared its ugly head.  You have defeated the wicked, befriended the noble, overcome all challenges and are faced with one final choice: Red, Green or Blue.

That’s an oversimplification, of course: the actual choices are slightly more nuanced.  You can choose to destroy the reapers, plus all synthetic life in the galaxy (which seems a bit harsh to the Geth), you can choose the Synthesis option, in which all organic and synthetic life in the galaxy smooshes together into some kind of race of cosmic Terminators, or you can choose to Control the Reapers, whereby nothing changes except for the fact that the Reapers stop creaming all life in the galaxy.

That’s it.  Those are your options.  No Renegade option.  No Paragon option.  Just those three choices.

But hang on a fucking minute!  This is Commander Shepard!  There should be other options!  Shepard has always been given other options for important decisions.  Where’s my Renegade and Paragon choices?

If I was a Renegade then I’d draw my pistol and shoot that little VI bastard right through the head, which wouldn’t do anything to it since it is no more than a projection of photons, and Shepard has no idea where the source of the VI is, but it would sure as shit make Shepard feel better.  Then he’d grab a fire ax and start smashing up the console, refusing to select any of these choices.  As a Renegade, Shepard would say, “Fuck You!!!  I reject your choices!  I’m going to destroy the Crucible so that I don’t have to listen to this shit. Yeah!  And when the Crucible’s gone, you just see if you can force me into a decision-making process, fucker!!  So what if the Crucible is our only hope to defeat the Reapers?  I’ll dash those hopes into the vacuum of space and then float out there and take on the fucking Reapers myself.  Yeah, I’ll wrestle those bedbug-looking motherfuckers right into the ground.  You can’t defeat me!  I am invincible!!!!!”

That’s what should happen: the Crucible explodes, Shepard is thrown from the explosion, tumbles through the inky blackness of space, expertly dodging laser fire, until he lands on the big red eye of a Reaper, and using his Biotic powers and a really Big Fucking Gun he rips that deadly beam right out of the Reapers ugly fucking face.  And when that Reaper’s down he pushes off and drifts right on over to the next one and does the same thing.  I’d happily accept a sequence of QTE’s just to see that fucking ending.  I’d take those bastards down single-fucking-handed.  You just watch me!

Alternatively, you could take the Paragon option.  In this ending, Shepard would sit down and, through an hour-long series of discussions, explanations and dialogue-wheels, I’d convince the VI that his three choices suck.  Despite the fact that the VI is stuck in an artificial cycle of false logic, I’d break through that confusion and explain how synthetic life can be good and how it should be preserved.  Finally, after much negotiation, the little VI would turn around and say, “you know what, Shepard?  I was only kidding – there’s actually other choices, since the Crucible can be infinitely calibrated to produce any outcome you wish.  I was only fucking around when I said that there were just those three options.  If I press this button right here,” (he presses a button on the console, even though he’s just a light projection and not a real corporeal being), “we can access the Rose Petals and Perfume option, in which the Reapers are suffocated by a beautiful shower of blossom and floral scents.  Then, if we press this button next,” (he inexplicably presses another button on the console), “Earth is magically rebuilt, better than it was before, and the Galactic Fleet is returned to its homeworlds.  And finally, because you’re such a wonderful person who has shown me the light and explained the inexplicable, I shall press the ‘Make Shepard Immortal’ button, so that you can never die and you can live in peace, harmony and tranquility with <insert romance option here>.”

That’s what BioWare should have done.  Anything else is bullshit.

15. Similarity of Endings

By now we have established just how abhorrent this game is, but the icing on the cake is the fact that, even with these three retarded options, the endings are all fundamentally the same anyway, differing only, fundamentally, in the color of the beam that is dispersed among the Mass Relays.  It’s almost as if the writers are making a mockery of the entire concept of Choice in their video game, because at the end of the day we find that, despite all our choices, all our decisions, all our relationships, friendships and alliances, what it all comes down to is “Mass Relays destroyed, Galaxy gets Royally Fucked.”

It’s almost as if there are some things, especially Big things, that are inevitable, and our choices make no difference.  It’s like saying that, in Real Life, there are some things that we just can’t change.  What a ludicrous assertion!  In Real Life, my decision to befriend John Smith from Basingstoke, rekindle a friendship between him and Frank McDonald, start a romance with Becky Riley and have bacon and eggs for breakfast could quite legitimately have a bearing on whether or not WalMart goes into receivership.  To deny this possibility is to deny the nature of the very webs we weave as we wander through our daily lives.

Why, for example, and as we have already touched on, does it make no real difference how many War Assets we have accumulated?  Surely, if we gather every available asset then we should be able to take on the Reapers by ourselves, without the aid of the Crucible?  Or are they implying that even the amassed fleet of the Galaxy won’t be able to stop them?  Madness!

Also, if Liara is able to access the plans for the Crucible, and Shepard is able to understand Prothean doodads, why does having a relationship with her not result in your ability to make the Crucible work better?  I have some of my best ideas just after a good, hard sex marathon, so it stands to reason that Shepard and Liara could have some sweaty, vigorous shagathons followed by a good old-fashioned brainstorming session.  I bet that if we really put our heads together we could create that “Rose Petals and Perfume” beam.

If Shepard were to have a romance with Garrus I bet that, together, we could calibrate the shit out of the Crucible.  With Miranda, we could use our Biotics to defeat the galactic threat; with Samara, we could Jusitcar their butts off; with Jacob we could overload their systems with the ambiguous promise of some kind of Prize.

By reuniting the Quarians with their creations, the Geth, we could show the Reapers that co-existence is possible.  We could get a Quarian and a Geth to present them with a symbolic wreath, along with a plaque etched with phrases of togetherness and co-operation.

When all is said and done, my disappointment reinforces a long-held belief that I have about life – it’s all about the destination: fuck the journey.  If the destination is not exactly what I want and expect it to be then the journey, no matter how creative, inspiring or enjoyable, suddenly becomes completely worthless, an irritating distraction worthy only of my ridicule, hatred, spite and derision.

BioWare have spent the past several years constructing an immersive, thought-provoking universe in which you play as a character who can embody the player’s own hopes, desires and dreams within a fantastical world full of possibility.  You confront issues and dilemmas that parallel real-world problems; you are made to face metaphorical and allegorical quandries, put into a situation where you have to consider things beyond your own experience, your own comfort-zone and beyond your own life; they make you think of others, think of consequences and side-effects; they give you the opportunity to be good or bad, honest or deceitful, and to see the way these decisions affect other people.

BioWare have made a deep and brilliant series of video games that ends with an uncomfortable ultimate decision, a decision which wrenches at every fibre of your being because you know – you absolutely know – that these are truly the only real options open to you.  That final decision took me several minutes to make.  The consequences of each one, the possibility that I am being deceived by a higher intelligence, the weight on my shoulders of making a decision by myself that will affect the entire galaxy, and the belief that I should try making the absolutely best one, selflessly, for I will not survive beyond that choice.

Fuck you, BioWare.  Fuck you for making me think and feel and emote and empathize.  Fuck you for making me use my imagination, for making me immerse myself in the incredibly deep and complex world of relationships, politics and moral dilemmas.  Fuck you for giving me over a hundred hours of pleasure and enjoyment, for giving me a sense of achievement, for making me enjoy myself.

Fuck you very much.

Mass Effect Sucks Arse – Part 1

Mass Effect Sucks Arse – Part 2

Mass Effect Sucks Arse – Part 3

Mass Effect Sucks Arse – Part 4

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part Four

“The Ghostbusters are at it again, this time at the fashionable dance club, “The Rose”.  The boys in grey slugged it out with a pretty pesky poltergeist, then stayed on to dance the night away with some of the lovely ladies who witnessed the disturbance.  This is Casey Kasem…”

...and now, on with the countdown…

11. No Closure

So we’ve struggled through three games, put in around 100 hours of effort and met a whole host of other characters, only to find that at the end of the trilogy we don’t know what happens to any of them.  How many of them died in the final assault?  Did Garrus finally get his beer on a beach in Paradise?  Did Samantha Traynor buy the house with the white picket fence?  Did Liara get eaten by another Yahg?  Does Shepard’s model ship collection survive the Normandy’s crash landing?  Will Aria T’Loak ever lighten the fuck up?

It seems likely that we’ll never know the answers to these questions, and that stinks.  After that much effort, I want the final cutscene to be an hour and a half long.  I want some popcorn and a few beers of my own to sup on while I watch a fittingly epic conclusion to the game.  What kind of abject moron would end a story without closure?

And don’t give me any of that “some of the best movies have cliffhanger endings” shit.  No decent movie ends without explaining precisely what happens to all of the major cast members.  Except for John Carpenter’s The Thing.  And Inception.  And the original The Italian Job.  But, aside from them – and a load of other great movies – it’s never done, and do you want to know why?  Because it sucks.  What am I supposed to do – use my imagination?  If I wanted to use my imagination I would have written a book – I play games because I want to turn my brain off and stop all cognitive processes for long periods of time.  I demand to be spoon-fed information.  But thanks to BioWare I now have to write my own ending in my head!  I forked out good money, under great duress, only to have to write the finale myself?  Damn them for creating characters and a world that I became fully invested in, only to end it, much like Real Life, without full details of what happens to everybody else.

I demand that BioWare give me an 8-hour epic movie, which chronicles the complete life of all the characters.  I want it in HD, on Blu-Ray, mailed to my house, and I want that popcorn and beer, or else I shall never buy another BioWare game ever again.

12. No Way to Get a Happy Ending.

After everything I’ve gone through, after all that effort, BioWare don’t even have the decency – the common courtesy – to give me a happy ending.  Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate entertainment that ends on a bittersweet note, or even ends with depressive doom and gloom, but in a game series that prides itself on giving you choice I find it unacceptable that I couldn’t choose a happy ending.

Forget the fact that the Earth – and many dozens of other major planets in the galaxy – is now just a smoking pile of rubble.  Forget the millions or billions of deaths that have occurred throughout the series.  What this game needed was a nice ending, where everything became shiny and wonderful again.

There should have been at least one more option in that final sequence, and here’s what I recommend: another beam (preferably purple…I like purple) that fires down the Mass Relays and sends everyone back in time to before the Reapers ever got there, but with full knowledge of what was going to happen.  Then we could sort the Reaper shit out before it even knocked on our door.  The end sequence could echo the end of Independence Day, with people the world over jumping up and down in joy and cheering.  The final scene could have Garrus and Shepard sitting in sunloungers on that beach, bluebirds flitting about their shoulders, deer and foxes and other woodland creatures emerging from the undergrowth, then coming up and nuzzling the Savior of Humanity as if to say “I appreciate everything you did to save me and all my woodland friends – we shall all live in harmony now.”  It could end with a scene of a Lion and a Polar Bear shaking hands and then hugging.

Instead, BioWare gave us “Bad”, “Worse”, and “What-In-The-Name-Of-Fuck?” endings.  It’s ridiculous to think that this outcome could have been avoided if only they had put in one quick phonecall to Pixar.

13. Deus Ex Machina and Retarded Logic

So we finally stagger up to the Citadel, we defeat The Illusive Man (which leads me to believe that the writers were huge Monty Python fans) and we’re about to save the world, when what should happen?  A fucking glowing kid shows up!  And it’s the stupid fucking brat that you tried to save on Earth at the beginning of the game, who’d still be alive if a) he’d come with you when you fucking told him to, or b) got in the fucking shuttle straight away rather than standing in the middle of the carnage looking up at the very monsters that were about to kill him.  What a little asshole.

So why is he there?  I’m going to assume that the “alien” has read Shepard’s thoughts and has presented itself to him/her in a form that he/she recognizes – a form that is readily present in the forefront of Shepard’s mind.  No problem with that.  But what the fuck is this thing?  Is it some kind of VI or some kind of AI or is it an actual alien being, perhaps made of energy?  (It certainly looks a lot like the Prothean VI, with the flickering light and all, so I’m willing to bet that it’s a VI.)

But what is it?  What race created it?  Does that race even exist any more?  He says that he created the reapers – he makes it sound like he created them by himself.  So did he create them before or after his race died out, assuming they died out, of course, which they probably did because they’re not there in person.

And what about his reasons for creating the Reapers?  His logic is retarded.  “I made these synthetics to wipe out organics before synthetics come and wipe out the organics that created them first.  And I’m doing it to protect you organics from your own creations.”  That’s the logic of a mental patient.

Now I’ve heard all the counter-arguments and I refuse to listen to them because I’m right and they’re wrong and it doesn’t matter what they have to say.  When they say stuff like, “well, we all knew that somebody created the Reapers, so it stands to reason that the ones who created the Reapers would reveal themselves, so it’s not entirely Deus Ex Machina because this isn’t some completely Unknown Entity,” I just put my fingers in my ears and say “La-la la-la- la-la-laaa!”

When they point out that maybe the creator(s) of the Reapers became so desperate in their attempts to stop synthetics from threatening organic life that they went too far, created the Reapers and were killed by their own creations, leaving only that VI implanted in the Citadel which, in a desperate attempt to justify its race’s actions, constructed an argument which seemed logical on the surface but was riddled with flaws, circular reasoning and a surplus of tautological nonsense, I just say, “HA!  MORON!”

And when they say, “Why don’t you use your own goddamned fucking imagination and work it out for yourself, you arrogant, obnoxious, knee-jerk reactionary dickface?” I just laugh with incredulity and say, “Imagination?!  I can’t do that!  What do you think I paid BioWare for?!”

You’ll be pleased to hear that we are finally nearing the end of this little blog.  I think just one more part will be sufficient to finish off the last few niggles (and by “niggle” I obviously mean “Huge Fucking Problem That Renders The Game Virtually Unplayable”), so stay tuned for the epic finale to the Ultimate Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse blog.

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 1

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 2

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 3

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 5

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part Three

Back once again (I’m on a roll) and blazing a new trail into uncharted territory, here is the unprecedented third (!) installment of the definitive Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse blog.  There’s so very much to get through that, as yet, I don’t know whether or not this will be the final installment, so sit down, strap yourselves in and let’s get straight into the thick of it.

First, of course:

*** SPOILERS ***

Here we go….

8. Destruction of the Mass Relays

I’m pretty sure that everyone and his dog paid for and downloaded the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2 – even those people who hate and resent DLC.  I, for example, have vowed to boycott all DLC and make sure that PSN never gets any of my money, which is why I only have 314 items on my Download List under Account Management.  That may sound contradictory, but bear in mind that the majority of those are Rock Band songs, costume packs, expansion packs and overpriced 3rd party games and you’ll see that it’s really not that bad.  Almost 20 of those downloads were free, so I can sleep easy knowing how I’ve ripped off those fucks at Sony.

Anyhoo, I digress.

In Arrival, as I’m sure you are all aware, you are charged with the task of destroying a Mass Relay in Batarian space by slamming an asteroid into it.  The main NPC in the mission, a Dr Kenson, tells you that the Relay will explode like a Supernova and destroy all life in the system (which is a particular bummer because of a large Batarian colony on a nearby planet).

At the end of Mass Effect 3, your ultimate choice will result in the destruction of all the Mass Relays in the galaxy, so it stands to reason that every one of those relays will explode like a Supernova and wipe out all life in the galaxy – no happy ending here.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this is bullshit of the highest order, that the writers of the Mass Effect finale were very probably high on Methamphetamine, and that they have less of a clue than the patrons of a Creationists’ Convention.

Okay, so some people might argue that there’s a difference between destroying a relay with a controlled pulse of directed energy – that probably drains the Mass Effect core, sapping its energy and thereby reducing the resulting explosion by a factor of a gagillion – and smacking it with a rock, but that’s clearly a mountainous pile of steaming donkey dung.  Obviously the Crucible, which was expertly designed by the highly intelligent Protheans some 50,000 years previously, was created with the intention of dispersing a fatal blast across the galaxy.  That just stands to reason.  After wiping out the Reapers, why would the Protheans want, or even expect, to live?  Far better to cobble together a device that sterilizes the entire Milky Way.

I would further point to the wide-angle shot of the galaxy as the beam fires from one relay to the next, and highlight the vastness of the enormous shockwaves that emanate from the Relay explosions.  Those who insist on calling the game’s ending “Good” (shudder) try to shrug this off as merely the dispersal of the Destroy/Control/Synthesis wave that we see enveloping the Earth during the cutscene, but that’s crap because I know what a shockwave looks like – I’ve watched more shockwaves in movies than I care to count, so I know exactly what one looks like – and those expanding rings are definitely shockwaves.  “Dispersal of Energy” my arse.

…or so the argument goes….

No, the writers of Mass Effect 3’s ending are clearly closet terrorists who dream of wiping out all life, but in the absence of their ability to actually fulfill this task they have chosen instead to merely create a clever simulation of it and try to tell us that it’s all right, we’ll be fine.

Bastards.

9. Galactic Fleet stranded at Earth

Once again, so much for Happy Endings.  You’ve spent the entire game amassing a fleet of thousands of ships from every conceivable race in the galaxy – Turians, Quarians, Batarians, Krogan, Geth, Asari and a whole host of others, as well as groups of interstellar thugs, bounty hunters and other assorted douchebags – and when it’s all over none of them can get back home thanks to your destruction of the Mass Relays.  What are they all going to eat?  Each other?

I don’t know about you, but I’m deeply unsettled about the idea of Earth having to become a refugee camp for the occupants of hundreds of other planets, especially since it has now become a rubble-strewn compost heap, but there seems to be no other choice.  It’s not like the galactic fleet can use their FTL drives to just fly to neighboring systems which, while not their own homes, might provide them with suitable accommodation, is it?  After all, there’s almost certainly no other inhabitable planets in our entire area of space, despite the fact that the advanced technology of the future can clearly help to build colonies on otherwise inhospitable worlds.

I think it’s terrible that the creators of this game could leave so many millions (indeed billions) of people having to struggle to survive when the clearly much better option was to have them all be killed by the Reapers.  I’d rather die than have to try to make a contingency plan or – God Forbid – do some actual work.  How we’re expected to believe that these highly advanced, technologically superior races could actually survive this outcome is beyond me.  It’s not like they can just build stuff.

10. Why did we spend so much time collecting those War Assets?

Oh dear, we’re into double figures here, that’s how very deeply, embarrassingly bad this game is.  I’ve heard this question asked around the Interweb and I find myself agreeing: what exactly was the point of collecting all those war assets for the final assault if, when all is said and done, you’re bullied into making the same three choices.

Okay, so if you don’t have the war assets then your choices become limited to the point that, if you are too lacking, you are forced into a one-way street where you only have a single option.  And, of course, that the entire game is about collecting war assets, so if you don’t collect any then it’s a really short game.  And forget about the fact that accumulating war assets is extremely fun and satisfying – we don’t play games for fun and satisfaction, do we?  No, we play games for fucking results, and this particular game fails to deliver those results.

I think a better option for BioWare would have been to release Mass Effect 3 not as a video game, but rather as a 4-frame comic strip, like Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes.  If they could pad it out a bit then they could do an 8-frame one, like you get in the Sunday funny pages.  Then it could be in color, too.

or….

Well, much to my amazement (and yours too, I should imagine), I have run out of space once again.  A fourth part to this epic blog is now required, such is this game’s bum-clenching shiteness.  I shall return with Part 4 soon, unless I succumb to the allure of my razor blade and slash my wrists over this travesty of a game.  It may be the only way to redeem myself.

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 1

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 2

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 4

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 5

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part Two

And so on to Part 2 of this blog, the definitive run-down of Mass Effect 3’s Arse-Suckiness.  But, before I begin, I shall quote the words of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick:

Thar Be Spoilers Ahead!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

3. Load Times and Other Oddities

Last time I checked, it was the 21st Century and games were capable of loading in fairly short order, but Mass Effect 3’s load times exceed those even of the old, coal-fired, steam-driven home computers of yore.  It can take in excess of thirty seconds to travel from the Normandy’s airlock to the Citadel’s airlock – a time period that, in these modern days of microseconds, nanoseconds and picoseconds, is quite simply unacceptable.  Bear in mind that this is a period of time during which not only can you not play any games, but you also don’t get a glimpse of any skin-tight leather-clad breasts or bottoms.  Instead, Bioware have seen fit to thrust upon you an essentially static image of one ship or other against a background of distinctly non-sexually-arousing stars with an irritating icon on the bottom right-hand corner that smugly taunts you with its simple message of “Loading”.

But what really grinds my gears is the scanner on the Normandy between the CIC and the War Room.  I’m Commander Shepard, for Christ’s sake!  Surely I should be allowed to travel freely about my own fucking spaceship?!  Okay, okay, so the War Room is the most sensitive area of the ship, occasionally housing some of the most valuable people in the galaxy and maintaining secure communications with Earth, whilst simultaneously giving access to every major council in the galaxy, and as such is a place that certainly requires top-notch security….but I’m Commander Shepard and I don’t see why the rules should have to apply to me.  I have to stand under a glowing blue light while two members of crew spout mindless inanities at one another in front of their senior officer (and let me tell you that, when this is all over and we get back to Earth, I’m thinking there might be a court martial or two to look forward to).

And no “Twiddle Thumbs” option while you wait.  Seriously, Bioware, you’re missing opportunities left, right and center here.

THERE, Grumpy, I fixed it for you! Are you happy now? Are you? ARE YOU?!! =D

4. The Prize

Jacob mentions it when you enter into a relationship with him in Mass Effect 2, but what is it?  I was hoping Mass Effect 3 would answer this important question, but it’s just one of many that BioWare have evaded in the conclusion to this epic tale.

5. Play Modes

The Mass Effect series has always been a Roleplaying Game first and everything else second, except for the intense 3rd-person shooter mechanics and the limited leveling-up that define RPGs as a whole.  So for BioWare to kowtow to non-RPG fans with their pathetically shallow alternative play styles – namely “Action” and “Story” modes – is a slap in the face for Real Fans of the Mass Effect games.

Let’s be honest here: what would happen if a long-time RPG fan were to accidentally play through Mass Effect as an action game?  They might turn into an action game fan, turn their back on RPGs and never play one again.  Worse still, if they were to play in Story Mode they might give up on video games altogether and just spend their lives watching movies.  These are concerns that BioWare hadn’t even thought through!  They could be shooting themselves in the foot here – if RPG fans leave in droves then what happens to BioWare’s fanbase?

Hell, it’s like Mass Effect isn’t even an RPG any more, except for the fact that Roleplaying Mode still exists and plays exactly like any previous installment in the Mass Effect franchise.  Damn BioWare for giving gamers extra options.  How dare they?

6. Main Cast Deaths

Major spoiler coming up, but did you know that Tali commits suicide?  I’ve spent two-and-a-half games romancing the living shit out of that masked space-chick, and BioWare have not just slapped me in the face but also shat on my head with this “plot twist” that left me saddened and angry.  Why does anybody have to die in the game?  I mean, despite the fact that there’s a major war going on, the entire galaxy is under threat and there’s some seriously heavy shit going on throughout the entire gameplay experience, BioWare have to add insult to injury by having characters die?  That’s just not fair, and I feel robbed – had I known that Tali was a mentally frail nutjob I would have fucked Ashley or Liara, or Miranda in ME2.  In fact I almost ditched Tali for Miranda, because I’m fickle and – hey – it’s not like it’s a real relationship anyway, but I didn’t.  I stuck with Tali, and this is how she repays me.  Bitch.

Of course, I’ve only heard about Tali’s suicide from other players – in my playthrough she actually survived all the way through to the final cutscenes, but that’s not the point.

7. The Normandy’s “Escape”

And so we finally drag ourselves to the first of the major issues with the Mass Effect 3 Ending.  From here on out the spoilers get bigger, louder and more annoying for anyone who hasn’t finished the game.

In the end sequence for Mass Effect 3, we see the Normandy escaping the destruction of a Mass Relay, but the big question is, “Why was the Normandy in the Mass Relay in the first place?” plus the associated question of how the teammates who were with me on Earth end up on the Normandy.  This is clearly ludicrous, cheap, poor writing and Plot Hole City.  It’s as if the writing team for the series was taken out back and shot, then the Wachowski Brothers were brought in to fuck it up for everyone.

Now before anyone starts on at me, I know that Shepard falls unconscious at least twice during the final sequence on the Citadel, so we have no idea how much time has passed between the last time we saw the Normandy and the final shot of its escape from the relay, but that’s not the point!  There’s no way that Joker might have sent a team to check Shepard’s last known location for survivors and pick up any of his beloved shipmates who may have been injured during the final push for the beam.  When contact was lost with the ground team he would obviously have shrugged and said “Fuck ’em,” so the idea that they might have been saved is clearly insane.

As for the Mass Relay, if there’s one character in the whole Mass Effect series I know well, it’s Joker, even though I only spoke to him a few times and am aware that he often hides his true nature behind a shield of disarming quips and gags.  When the Crucible is fired and the huge ball of energy emerges from it, I can assure you that there’s no way that Joker might have feared that it could cripple the ship, performed an evasive manoeuvre , outrun the blast with his FTL drive and entered the Mass Relay in an attempt to escape with his crew intact.  No way!  He’d have stayed, clung on to his control yoke, closed his eyes, held his breath and waited for his seemingly inevitable death.  Hell, he’d probably have flown straight toward the Crucible, just to make sure!  This is Joker we’re talking about here – think about it.

And once again I find myself beyond my self-imposed blog length limit.  Stay tuned for the next part of this series, in which I explain how the Mass Relays would have destroyed the whole galaxy, discuss the implications of the Fleet left stranded around Earth, complain about the obvious Deus Ex Machina bullshit at the end, and rail against the lack of closure, while simultaneously counting the number of tears I have collected in my special Mass Effect Tear Jar.

Until next time…

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 1

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 3

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 4

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 5 

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part One

The last of my original Sucks Arse blogs became so expansive that I ended up writing it in five parts.  The game garnered such venomous spite from gamers across the internet that I simply couldn’t call them all douchebags in just one post.  The posts came thick and fast and, for the first time in Sucks Arse history, five Sucks Arse blogs were posted on each of five consecutive days, from April 24th to April 28th 2012.  Such was the blog’s popularity that pictures from and links to it were posted by random users on the Bioware forum pages, much to my amusement and horror (here’s still, to this day, hoping that the folks at Bioware, if they read those posts, have a damn good sense of humor).  So, without further ado, and with no more comment from me on parts two to five, here is my magnum opus, Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse…

Oh yes, you all knew this day was coming and finally it is here.  The Interweb has been aflame with controversy over Bioware’s latest offering, Mass Effect 3, but now it is time to put all controversy to bed with the definitive explanation of exactly how and why the conclusion of the sci-fi trilogy sucks arse.  (I realize that there are dozens of web pages and YouTube videos that claim to be the definitive explanation, but that’s bullshit and you know it.)

Before I begin, I’d better say the necessary:

***SPOILERS***

There.  That makes me feel better.

So you’ve probably figured that this whole blog is about the ending(s) to Mass Effect 3.  Well, the majority of it focuses on the ending(s), but there are a few points to make about the game as a whole, things so Earth-shatteringly important that they may very well be the reason the Reapers decided to wipe out all human life in the first place, so I shall start with them.

(NB – I’m going to bullet-point the shit out of this bitch.)

1 – Day One DLC

There are few things as brain-haemmorhagingly awful as extra content that comes out on the same day that the game is released.  Let’s face it, if I’ve spent $60 (£40) on a game then I don’t want to be spending an extra $10 (£7.99) on DLC (DownLoadable Content) on the same day (24-hour period) that I (me) purchased (bought) the game (audio-visual entertainment software).

This issue is clearly all EA’s fault, because they’re devil-children, suckers of Satan’s pecker and, officially (in some online poll) the Worst Company In America (yeah – fuck the bankers, a videogame company trumps those assholes every time).  I mean, I’m sure that BioWare worked hard on Mass Effect 3, only to be hamstrung by the corporate monsters at Electronic Arts.  I’m sure that, during the down-time between finishing the main game and it being put on store shelves, the BioWare crew felt that they would selflessly put many hours of unpaid work into creating an expansive add-on for a videogame, releasing it for free to the masses with an abject apology that it wasn’t in the final release of the game.  Because, you know, game designers don’t need to earn money – they can sustain themselves on a diet consisting exclusively of digital data (ever wonder where the phrase “Having a Byte To Eat” came from?  Well, now you know.).

And if we’re being honest, Mass Effect 3 is completely unplayable without the Prothean character, Javik.  I mean, his occasional comments on certain elements of the game are absolutely crucial to our understanding and enjoyment of every aspect of the Mass Effect Universe.  How would we ever have the vaguest clue what is going on if his character were not there?  We’d have to, like, pay attention and shit.  Maybe even use some inference and deductive reasoning, and nobody wants that in a deep and intellectual video game series that forces you to confront real-life issues and make important decisions based upon limited knowledge and/or understanding.

No, I’m sure we can all agree that we should have been given that content on-disc and for free, plus maybe a 2-liter bottle of Cola, a bag of popcorn and a large-breasted blonde prostitute who could blow us while we played.  (I demanded this in a recent letter to EA, who responded by telling me that I’d still have to pay for the DLC, they weren’t allowed to distribute foodstuffs for legal reasons, but that they had at least booked me an appointment with a hooker.  Something about “needing to get laid” or something.)

2 – Jessica Chobot and Freddie Prinze Jr.

Seriously, BioWare.  Why?  Freddie Prinze Jr has been clearly identified in the past as the Prince of Darkness – the very one whose pecker it is that EA sucks – so why sully what could have been a masterpiece by employing this man as a voice actor in ME3.  The fact that he is a fine actor who brought a new character to life in a way that nobody else could have achieved is neither here nor there.  Nor is the fact that his character had a naturalism and likability that is so very rarely found in video games.  You really should listen to all the arrogant, obnoxious fuckfaces  of the world who hate a guy for no very good reason when making your casting decisions.  Then, perhaps, you would suffer less vengeful wrath from large numbers of douchey twat-fungi.

And as for Jessica Chobot, what was your reason for casting her in that role? She’s not a voice-actress.  Her relatively shallow but well-performed character isn’t even essential to the game – she just stands there in her little room giving news reports.  It was a major oversight to not give this small role a deep and complex back-story, but it is unforgivable that she is the one character whose romance option does not reward you with the Paramour trophy/achievement.  Oh yes, my ire was greatly invoked when I found that I couldn’t have a full-on relationship with a character I hated.  Worse yet, when I did try to have sex with her, all I got was a little kiss that wasn’t even finished by the time the screen faded to black!  This is unacceptable, BioWare.  If you’re going to put an attractive woman into a videogame, you could at least throw in a vigorous sex scene, preferably showing nipples (hers, not Shepard’s…unless you’re playing as FemShep), thrusting and maybe an orgasm or two.

(On a side-note, after enjoying a full-on lesbian relationship with Samantha Traynor, it occurs to me that the women of the future must be extremely frustrated and unhappy with the fact that there is, apparently, only one style and color of brassiere available in their time.  Or is that official, standard-issue N7 underwear?)

(On another side-note, why is it that, in a game that prides itself on giving you options at every turn, not once in the whole trilogy are you given the choice to tear off your love-interest’s panties with your teeth?  Shame on you, BioWare.)

“Don’t be upset – maybe we can design a new bra *together*…”

And all this in addition to the fact that Ms Chobot’s appearance dragged me, kicking and screaming, out of the game.  The second I saw her I thought, “hey!  That’s Jessica Chobot, the chick from IGN that a small but vocal subsection of the gaming community hates with an irrational and hyperbolic passion.  Diana Allers my arse!  How am I going to immerse myself fully into the fictional sci-fi world now that I’ve realized that the voice-actors in this game are real people who are merely pretending to be the characters that they portray in this piece of fantastical entertainment?”

This is the exact same problem I had with Jurassic Park when I recognized Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern, Bob Peck, Sam Neill and Samuel L. Jackson, not to mention movies such as the Matrix, in which I identified Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne.  And The Fugitive, whenever Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones and Andreas Katsulas showed up on screen.  And, much as I am looking forward to the forthcoming Men In Black 3, I can’t help but worry that the whole experience will be ruined for me by the inclusion of Will Smith, an actor whom I love, but sadly also recognize.

As this blog descends into the dark and terrifying realm of TL;DR, I shall sign off, but I urge you to keep an eye on the airwaves for Part 2 of this epic dissection of 2012’s biggest game, coming soon to a blog near you.

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 2

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 3

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 4

Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 5

Resident Evil 5 Sucks Arse

On March 13th 2011 I dropped this Sucks Arse bombshell on an unsuspecting world.  The criticisms of RE5 were too much for me to bear and I just had to speak out.  Trying to be tasteful about the racism arguments proved too much for me and, looking back now, perhaps I overstepped the mark, but the comment about Sheva not being “black enough” is a real comment from some board or forum somewhere on the web that I happened to stumble upon (I regret not having taken down a URL to prove this fact).  The sexism arguments are similarly real, but sexism arguments in video games are commonplace so they’re not actually as surprising as I make them out to be…

Resident Evil 5, the most controversial entry in the series, is controversial for a number of reasons.  There’s the Racism issue.  There’s the Having-A-Partner issue.  There’s the Dumb-Fucking-AI issue.  There’s the Whatever-Happened-To-Zombies-And-Who-Are-These-Majini-Fucks issue.  There’s the When-Did-Wesker-Become-Slightly-Gay issue.  And let’s not forget the Why-Can’t-I-See-Anything-With-This-Goddamned-Minigun-Strapped-To-My-Back issue.

 

Whoa – What happened to my screen?!

Well, as ever, I have an opinion on all of these issues, and I’m going to share that opinion whether you like it or not, because that’s what I do.  In the paragraphs that follow, I am going to show you everything that is wrong with Resident Evil 5, how they’ve destroyed the franchise irrevocably, and why Capcom is just a bunch of big fat poo-poo heads.

ROOTS, BLOODY ROOTS

Let’s start by taking a look at the origin of the Resident Evil franchise and what made it great.  It’s easy to forget, in the intervening 16 years, that the series began life with some simple, core elements: Bad graphics, terrible voice-acting, interminably dull gameplay and a story that hung together by withered strands of seaweed and snot.  The driving force behind the idea was that you, as a gamer, were supposed to enjoy it for the experience and for nothing else.  It was certainly not a visual or auditory treat, so something had to make it worth playing, right?

MMmmmmmmm – Lo-Res….

Flash forward 13 years to the release of RE5 in 2009 and what have we got?  A beautifully-rendered, well-acted, zombie slug-fest with intuitive controls, awesome storytelling and gameplay so compelling that you won’t put the controller down until your thumbs have atrophied and the controller has literally fallen from your feeble, desiccated hands.  What the fuck?  Have they taken leave of their senses?!  Have they forgotten their core market?  Do they not care about their fans?!

Not once in RE5 – NOT ONCE!! – does Chris claim that his partner was “almost a Sheva sandwich”.  The thinly-veiled homoeroticism and clunky double-entendres are gone completely!  It’s all been replaced with good dialogue between characters that are almost believable!  Its one saving grace is that at least Albert Wesker is still a cardboard-cutout villain, but even he has succumbed to the whole “compelling backstory” and “good voice acting” sickness that plagues this game (a plague that I shall call the Good-, or G-Virus).

CONTROLS

What other mainstays of the original have been cast by the wayside?  Well, if my memory does not deceive me (and I don’t believe it does) the controls in the original game were utterly atrocious.  Back in the days before dual analog sticks, gamers were at the mercy of the D-Pad, an unsatisfying cross of wobbly plastic that taunted players with its promises of in-game control, but instead delivered a shockingly stilted and frustrating gaming experience.  Just the way we liked it.  It used to be nigh-on impossible to walk and turn at the same time, requiring you to walk in a straight line, then swivel on the spot before continuing in your desired direction.  You know: exactly like you move in real life!  Well, Capcom saw fit to dispose of these controls, which served the franchise well and nobly all the way up to Resident Evil 4, and replace them instead with a well-conceived, flexible and easy-to-use left-analog-stick control mechanism that makes maneuvering while walking an absolute breeze.  Who the hell asked for that?  When I’m running away from zombies, I want to be constantly frustrated and upstaged by a movement mechanism that stymies every attempt I make to escape from the horde.

Of course, to balance this problem out, they’ve made zombies that run, thereby taking away the “benefit” (if you can call it that) of a slick control mechanic.  But hang on a goddamned minute!  Zombies that run?  What in the name of Good Fuck is that all about?  I mean, I know that RE4 had the chainsaw guy in it, who was quite a nippy fellow, but I always had my suspicions that he wasn’t actually a zombie at all, but rather a grotesquely ugly man who was simply mad at the world for shunning him and forcing him to wear a paper bag over his head – a theory, you’ll notice, that side-steps the awkward issue of fast-moving zombies.

But the makers of RE5 are shifty and underhanded and have “resolved” this issue by doing away with zombies and calling the “Zombie-like Creatures” Majini, which, my in-depth knowledge of Swahili (Wikipedia) tells me, means “Wicked People”.  So, at some point we’ve gone from killing zombies to just killing people who are a bit naughty.  Really?  Really, Capcom?

RACISM

And this segues neatly into that big issue of Racism.  Yes: with a capital R.  Has anybody noticed how all the people you are killing are black?!  In AFRICA?!!  I know – pretty horrific, isn’t it?  Let’s think about this for a minute.  The people at Capcom are clearly telling us that black people are bad and should be used for target practice.  I mean, forget the fact that Capcom have been killing white people in videogames for the last 20 years, forget the fact that the masterminds – notably Albert Wesker and Excella Gionne,  – are white people, and that they have foisted this plague upon the unwitting citizens of a small African town.  The bottom line is that you’re left slaughtering black people!  I know that those of you who haven’t played RE5 are now sitting there with your jaws hanging open, horrified and disgusted that such a thing can be allowed to make it to the videogame market, but I’m just telling it like it is.

Capcom have tried to balance this Racism issue by giving Chris a black partner, in the guise of Sheva Alomar, but it’s too little, too late.  For a start, Sheva is only a bit black, appearing on-screen as much more coffee-colored than the majini (who, in all fairness, are looking a bit pasty after being infected with Las Plagas, which is either a new name for the virus or else a large gambling community somewhere in Nevada).  Yes, despite having black parents Sheva’s just not black enough.  I hasten to add that this is not, itself, a Racist comment: it’s either black or white – there can be no coffee-colored area.

SEXISM

To add further to their pathetic cries of “We’re balanced”, Capcom have played the “Sexual Equality” card, because not only is Sheva black, she’s also a woman.  But this is hardly sexual equality, because she’s wearing a tight, revealing top and has lovely breasts.  This is exploitation of the very worst kind.  Capcom are practically crying out to bring back slavery.  Not to mention the fact that not only is Sheva a woman, but many of the Majini you meet are women as well.  Yes, Capcom have you gunning down poor, weak women.  Misogyny incarnate.  Women in this game serve two purposes: they’re either sex objects or targets of violence, and that is disgusting and should not be tolerated.

Revealing clothes, Skin-tight Lycra, Nipples. Misogyny Incarnate.

Just to ram home this point, Capcom have even turned Jill Valentine – a classic Resident Evil character – into a  blonde.  A blonde who is wearing a skin-tight lycra outfit and who has been brainwashed by the Big Bad Man, Albert Wesker, and made to do his bidding, thereby reinforcing both the “Dumb Blonde” stereotype and the very core concept of Slavery.  And, to make matters worse, when you first meet her you have to beat her up!  Jill Valentine is both a Sex Object and a Target of Violence.  It just doesn’t get any worse than that, does it?  Not least because she’s a white woman.  That isn’t a Racist statement either, I can assure you.  No Racism here.  This is a Racism-Free Zone.  Really.  Yes, Really.

There is so much more I could rant and rave on about with regards this game that I may even have to make a second part to this post at some point, but since I am rapidly entering the TL;DR region of blogging I think it is best to call it a day, before my gorge rises any further, escapes my body and starts to make a life for itself somewhere out in the mountains of northern China.  To sum up, all I can say is that Capcom have revolted, disgusted and appalled me with Resident Evil 5 for a whole slew of different reasons: they are Racists, they are Sexists and they have ruined a once-great franchise by unnecessarily adding compelling gameplay, exquisite visuals, three-dimensional characters and a story that would make Paul W.S. Anderson shit himself from inadequacy.

All I can hope for now is that Resident Evil 6 returns to its roots by bringing back terrible voice-acting, blocky graphics, frustratingly bad controls, flat characters, appalling script, slow and tedious storytelling and a plot so thin that you can make out the individual pixels on screen at all times.

Roll on November.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Sucks Arse

It wasn’t until 25th March 2012 that another Sucks Arse blog came along.  This one was structured a little differently from previous entries, foregoing both the captions below the pictures and the by-now-standard disclaimer at the bottom.  Perhaps the reason for this was that I did kinda-sorta have these questions myself.  Furthermore, this was the first Sucks Arse blog about a game that didn’t really receive much negativity; I just really liked the game and wanted to blog about it and this was the best way I knew how.

Zombies might eat your brain, but first they remove it by making you play this game.  After about 6 hours you will find your grey matter pouring liberally out of your ears and you’ll be screaming at Mr John Marston to give up and succumb to the hordes of moaning undead.  Here’s a question for you: when zombies finally take over the world and there are no humans left, what do they consume for sustenance?  With fresh brains a thing of the past they will have to resort to eating each other and, frankly, I think that Zombie Brains will probably be far from satisfying.

 

This, among a host of other problems, plague Rockstar Games’ epic expansion pack.  Why, for example, do the dead rise from their graves when they haven’t been bitten, and hence infected, by the zombie plague?  Why do some characters look gnarlier than others (Abraham Reyes, I’m looking at you – and instantly regretting it)?  And why is it that Aztecs cause so many problems?  Is this all merely Spanish Conquistador propaganda?  When we least expect it, the Spanish will launch a new armada and take over the world – this game is merely laying the groundwork.

Another question: Why is it that the heavily-armed, dug-in and numerous survivors are incapable of keeping a small town defended?  Why does John Marston have to single-handedly save each and every town?  Having to do it once underlines the panic and confusion of the terrified townsfolk; doing it twice just shows them up to be hick morons, incapable of telling the difference between the comfortable and dangerous ends of the firearms they are using.  Here’s an idea: after the town is saved, how about the townsfolk take some fucking shooting lessons?

If flesh is constantly dripping off the shanks of the horse of Pestilence, why does it never run out?  How does the personification of War spread terrible conflict throughout the four corners of the globe if his horse is so dumb-fuck stupid that it runs, willy-nilly, into rivers and over mountaintops?  Why is is that Death’s horse, which can kill anything with the slightest touch, is perfectly safe for John to ride?  And if the last horse is called Famine, where does it get the energy to run away from my damned lasso?

Turning our attention to the main game itself for a moment, why is it considered a greater challenge to skin 5 skunks, 5 foxes and 5 raccoons than it is to kill 2 cougars with your melee knife?  Unless the skunks are 8 feet tall and capable of spraying you to death, I’d take them over the cougars any day of the fucking week.  For that matter, why is collecting herbs considered a survival skill?  And when I get to the level 10 challenge, why, after collecting 10 of those violet fucking snowdrop things do I then have to trawl about the Wild West collecting 2 more of every fucking herb I’ve already fucking collected?  Why didn’t it just get me to pick two more of each one as their respective challenge came up if it was so goddamned important?  And why is it that, once you’ve become a master survivalist, the tonic you can make from the herbs is so shit?  After all that, I’d want the tonic to turn me into fucking Popeye or something.

Why is Jack Marston always calling his horse “Bastard”?  “C’mon, Bastard” he yells at the top of his lungs as he digs his spurs into the horse’s flanks.  That seems a little disrespectful, considering all the trouble his horse gets him out of as he wanders aimlessly about the wilderness, continuing his father’s pointless work.  Also, since both John and Abigail are relatively good-looking folk, why is Jack such a grotesquely unattractive character.  And why can he not fuck prostitutes?  Sure, his dad refused because he was married, but Jack surely has no such scruples.  Here’s a guy who’d just as much shoot you as look at you and he gets all coy around the ladyfolk?  Really?

Why is it that the gangs of the Wild West, having been repeatedly evicted from their hideouts by one man, constantly descend upon their old haunts, only to be slaughtered by that self-same man only a few days later?  Are gang members really that dumb?  Judging by the way they scamper about like foggy-minded chipmunks, yes they are.

Why is it that I can be playing in a high-stakes poker game and have two clubs in my hand with three more on the table and yet when I crank up the pot I get beaten by a guy with a pair of twos just because the fucking game hasn’t noticed that five cards of the same suit is a fucking flush?  And why can I sometimes have a straight, but lose a hand because the game thinks that my best choice is to go for a high card (often an 8 or 9)?  In fact the real question is how much the game would like to kiss my arse.

Why does a suit look perfectly tailored after I’ve spent seventeen hours collecting the scraps for it?  Shouldn’t it look like a patchwork quilt?  Is John (or Jack) Marston really that good a seamstress?  Or is that why he frequents the whorehouses – for their sewing skills?

All in all, Red Dead Redemption (and its add-on) was a game that was spoiled by a list of pointless and arbitrary Whys and Wherefores as long as my 9-seater sofa.  Rockstar games should return to doing what they always did best: mailing you an Uzi and telling you to kill your congressman.

Skyrim Sucks Arse

After a protracted absence, I finally got back to writing my Sucks Arse blogs.  This one, published on 8th December 2011, led ultimately to a major falling-out with one of my IGN buddies because I kind of took the piss out of some of her arguments against the game (in my defense, I did it because I thought her arguments against the game were dumb).  Still, some time later I realized that I don’t really care and I have plenty of other buddies who are actually capable of taking a fucking joke.

Again, this post is copied and pasted…edited for typos…yadda, yadda, yadda…

That’s right: you heard me.  Skyrim sucks arse, balls and donkey dick, and in this incisive, eloquent and detailed review I will tell you all exactly why and how, and what must be done to Bethesda to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

First of all, let me give you a bit of background on the developers and on the game itself.  Bethesda Softworks is a company that releases nothing but BROKEN games – that’s right; games that come out of the box broken.  You actually have to slip in the individual pieces of shattered DVD or Blu-Ray in order to load it up.  Not only that, but if you want any hope whatsoever of actually playing the game, you need to feed these small shards of plastic into your console in the right order!  Just to add insult to injury, Bethesda have failed to number the seven-hundred individual pieces, so it’s a fairly hit-and-miss process to even get this far in playing the game.  I’ve heard anecdotal evidence to suggest that some people who bought the game on the day of release have, as yet, been unable to even correctly insert the first hundred and fifty shards, and in frustration have written polite messages to Bethesda insisting that “it’s just not on.”

Bethesda Quality Control – this image was taken part way through final testing.

The pictured disc was one of 7000 shipped to Atlanta, GA.

Bethesda have a long and proud history of releasing games in this state.  One only needs to look at Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas to see this is true.  Nobody on the planet has, to date, managed to successfully play either of those games all the way through or get their platinum trophy, so it’s easy to see the extent of the problem.  And of course these are the only games that Bethesda makes.  They could be forgiven if they could make a game as solid as, for example, Brink or Rage or WET, but they insist on releasing nothing but the same tired old game every year or so, with nothing but a vague and tedious makeover to disguise its true form.  Hell, I’d even be happy if they made a game even half as good as Star Trek: Legacy.

Just two of the many games that Bethesda could have been involved with,

if they hadn’t wasted so much time, effort and money on the risible piece of shit that was Skyrim.

So that’s Bethesda, in a nutshell, but what about the IP?  Skyrim, for those of you who don’t know, is a continuation of the Elder Scrolls series, which last graced our consoles in the form of 2006’s Epic Fail, Oblivion, a game that was very nearly as bad as Skyrim in almost every conceivable way.  Hell, it didn’t even win any Game Of The Year awards or anything, so it’s no wonder that it made virtually no impact on the game market and, to be frank, disappeared from gaming history without so much as a whimper.

This was to be the front cover of the “Game Of The Year” edition of Oblivion,

had it actually managed to win any awards at all.

In Skyrim you can play as a guy or a girl of any one of numerous races of being, and this is where the problems start.  Playing as a Nord is all well and good (though, with their blond hair and blue eyes it is all-too-easy to see parallels with the Nazis’ ideal of an Aryan Race, which leads me to believe that Bethesda are Fascist Sympathizers who probably deny the Holocaust), but the Elves are a real problem.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Wood Elf, a High Elf, a Dark Elf or even an Orc (which, in Bethesda’s retarded little world, are also a type of elf), you can’t make them look attractive.  The fact that it’s a first-person perspective game is neither here nor there – if my main character isn’t gorgeous enough to give me a raging stiffy then I’m not going to be satisfied at any stage in the proceedings.  And, honestly, who wants to play as a cat or a lizard?  Did Bioware give me the ability to play through Dragon Age as Ser Pounce-A-Lot?  No, because they realized that it would be silly, a waste of time and, if you could make the character attractive enough to give you a raging stiffy, borderline bestiality.

Admit it: you’d bang a Nord and you might consider an Imperial, Redguard or Breton, but the “exotic” races?

I’ve seen more exotic things growing in my fridge that I’d rather fuck.

That said, let’s discuss the game itself, which clearly has so many issues that even if you can get all the shattered splinters of game-disc to swirl in the right direction inside your console you will want to extract them all within five minutes and snap the disc in half.  Which of course you can’t do, due to the fact that the disc is already shattered, thereby adding yet another dimension of frustration to Bethesda’s latest “masterpiece”.

The game looks horrible. Really.  It’s an affront to the visual receptors, causing physical sensations anywhere between Collywobbles and Violent Nausea.  The beautiful undulating landscape, interspersed with gushing rivers, tumbling waterfalls and majestic snowcapped peaks is utterly vomit-inducing.  I actually tore out one of my own eyeballs before my wife was able to rush into the room and stop me.  (A quick trip to the emergency room reattached the offending article.  When asked what had happened, and I explained that I had been playing Skyrim, the doctor nodded sagely and patted me comfortingly on the shoulder.)  The visual effects during the night portions of the game are a nice touch, but the cascading ribbons of softly-colored light, gently rippling in the crisp night air made my gorge rise again and I had to immediately dash for the nearest cave, just for a break.

As this picture illustrates, the graphics in Skyrim are substandard grotesqueries

and not worthy of 21st century gaming.

As for bugs…don’t get me started on bugs!  I’ve played the game now for over 90 hours – some 70 hours longer than most other games I own – and I’ve had the game crash on me twice.  Twice!!  This is unacceptable, and the QA team at Bethesda should clearly be taken outside the building, stripped naked, chained upside-down to lampposts and whipped mercilessly until they die from pain and blood loss.  In fact, given that I’ve also had some framerate drops, from 60fps to a shocking 50fps (!), I think that this punishment might be too good for them.  I suggest adding salt and TCP to their wounds.

What other things are there about the game that raise my hackles?  Well, the voice acting makes me want to puncture my own eardrums, and the dialogue is so inane that I wouldn’t even bother switching on the subtitles afterwards.  I’d far rather play through the game blind and deaf, possibly even foregoing the traditional controller setup and playing it with my feet.  The voice acting is so awful that I couldn’t even understand the words that came out of their mouths.  How Max Von Sydow and Christopher Plummer ever became household names is beyond me, since they clearly couldn’t act their way out of a Spice Girls movie.  If those two have ever won any awards in their long and storied careers, I would recommend breaking into their houses and taking the statuettes back, since they clearly don’t deserve them.

As for the story, I only have four words: Who Gives A Fuck?  Dragons, Elves, Humans, swords, magic, mountains, towns, intrigue, a quest to save the world…  How fucking derivative is that?  It’s like they took Lord of the Rings and shat all over it, scooped up the bits and poured them into a videogame.  There isn’t another game developer in the world brazen enough to so willfully steal from another source.  Plagiarism?  I think so.  I mean, face it: there’s even rings in the game, that you can wear and everything!  And don’t give me that “ah, but there’s no Lords” bullshit; they’ve merely disguised them with the “clever” name “Jarls”.  They might as well have called the game Jarl of the Rings.

See? He even *looks* like a Nord. And he’s wearing a Gold Sapphire Ring! What a blatant ripoff.

Seriously, I could go on for hours about how unutterably appalling I find this game.  Did I mention the backwards-flying dragon that you can’t kill?  Unbelievable!  In real life I have never seen an indestructible backwards-flying dragon.  Talk about a game-breaker that drags you, mercilessly, kicking and screaming, from your immersion in a videogame.  When I saw that I threw my controller down in disgust as it was rammed home to me that I wasn’t actually an epic warrior, traversing a vast world, slaying mythical beasts while securing for myself a dozen opulent homes and a fortune that would make Bill Gates blanch.  It just isn’t good enough, Bethesda!

I am going to draw a big fat line under my rant right there, because I can’t go on any more.  My face has turned purple just writing this, and a vein is throbbing dangerously on the side of my head.  I must stop, if only to avoid a burst aneurysm.  So – take a few deep breaths – really, Bethesda, if you continue to churn out games that are this unutterably shite then I will have no choice but to stop buying games off you and turn to your competitor, Tecmo-Koei.

Peace Out.

NOTE WELL!!!  The above post is retarded bullshit, intended as a humorous diatribe, as well as a sarcastic rebuttal to those who disliked Bethesda’s brilliant open-world adventure RPG.  I hope that it is taken in good humor and not as an attack on any person or persons who have perhaps not enjoyed the game as much as I have.  Thank you.  =)

PSN Sucks Arse

This Sucks Arse blog, posted on 22nd April 2011, was about the reaction to Sony’s Playstation Network outage of that year.  For about a month PSN was completely inaccessible following a hack attack which resulted in a panic about the security of the whole system and, finally, an apology to fans by way of three free games off the Playstation Store once the  service had resumed.  I posted this blog only a day or two after the start of the outage, unaware at the time that it would continue for several weeks.  However, I stand by everything I said since we did, in fact, all survive and no nuclear war ensued as a result.

Once again, I have copied and pasted this blog in its original form, save for the fixing of a few typos.  This time I have opted to leave out the Public Service Announcement tacked onto the end of the post because I think you get the picture by now. 

As I’m sure many of you are aware, yesterday the Playstation Network fell foul of an unanticipated “Outage” that has caused “Out(r)age” across the globe (see what I did there?  Pretty clever, huh?).  Well, this Darkfurmatte Special is an opportunity to lend my voice to those outraged motherfuckers around the world, united in their hatred of their beloved console, the PS3.

Rolled on the thighs of virgins

I own a PS3.  This is a fact I was once proud of, but now, after almost 48 hours without the PSN, I am changing my mind, turning on the console, biting the hand that once fed me.  Sure, I rarely game online; sure, I very infrequently shop on the Playstation Store; there’s no denying that this outage affects me very little, if at all.  But to admit that is to overlook the very fact that PSN is my God Damned LIFELINE, and its absence has left an echoing void in my life that nothing else can fill.  And I understand that for those out there who do nothing but wake up in the morning, flip on their PS3 and play MAG or Black Ops with faceless strangers until it’s time to go back to bed, this service blackout must be HELL.  Worse than the Western paranoia post-9/11, more devastating than the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, more life-changing than the Blitz, Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination all rolled into one.

I’ve had my PS3 for about 2 years now, and if I add together all the times PSN has been down then I find that it amounts to an absolutely shocking 0.684% of the time, a fact that I find wholly unacceptable.  Can you imagine any other product in the world that suffers a less than 1% temporary failure rate?  What would happen if this happened with cell phones or computers?  There’d be chaos in the streets: riots, looting, nervous breakdowns and potential global war (but this latter scenario might not be such a big deal, since Black Ops and MAG have been training skilled fighters for years).

Bringing the Battle to Sony HQ

Nevertheless, we are left with the fact that PSN has now been down for over a day – during the Easter holidays, no less! – and gamers in every country of the world are left with nothing to do.  Because let’s face it: we need those game updates NOW; we will wither without that Dead Space 2 DLC that allows us to use different weapons and wear different costumes; life is not worth living if we can’t download that all-important “Urn of Sacred Ashes” HD Dragon Age: Origins trailer that we’ve all seen a hundred times; and don’t even get me started on the repercussions of not being able to play multiplayer co-op or deathmatch on Call of Duty.

The fundamental truth of it all is that Single Player Campaigns suck arse.  Consoles weren’t invented for that shit!  No.  Consoles were invented so that I could play the same scenario over and over and over again with a bunch of dumb-fuck assholes who exploit glitches, n00bs (who I shall pwn) and kids who revel in the opportunity to call me old and question my ability to hold a controller – surely I have arthritis or alzheimers or some other serious age-related condition that may or may not begin with the letter “a”.  And these people must be taught a lesson.  And that is what multiplayer is for.  There are no n00bs in single player campaigns.  There are no arrogant, pre-pubescent dicks cussing me with juvenile, playground put-downs before I pwn their asses.  There are no dumb-fuck assholes.  There is only a computer-controlled opponent who may or may not present me with a challenge.

And that’s the problem.  PSN is the only way that I can feel bigger, smarter, more masculine and more skilled than other people.  PSN is my very being.  And now Sony has taken that away from me.  My rage knows no bounds.  This is why, within five minutes of the network going down, I pledged to throw my PS3 in a dumpster and buy an XBox360, the very console that I have spent years belittling, making fun of and generally treating like dirt.  Yes, the XBox sucks Big Time, crafted as it is from the semen of Beelzebub Himself, designed and constructed by Lucifer’s minions and distributed by Micro$oft sympathizers, cronies and well-bribed suppliers.  But XBL is a service that requires an annual subscription and never goes down.  Except for when it does.  But even then, my research reveals that XBL do an outage properly: no 12-48 hour stoppages for them – when XBL goes down it goes down for a solid two weeks.  That’s how you do an outage.  No half measures for Microsoft, you mark my words.

Who knows how many gamer points that’s worth?

I read a post on a forum by some guy who said that he only had two PS3 games, and both of them were online only.  I can feel that brother’s pain.  Can you imagine forking out $600 for a games console and then having only two games?  And the indignity of them having no capacity for offline play?  I know there are some skeptics and naysayers out there who will call him a dick for wasting that kind of money, who’ll laugh at his narrow-mindedness or the fact that online-only games are, generally, pretty shit, but can you imagine?!   Now all he has is a big black box that can only browse the web and play DVDs and Blu-Rays.  I mean, if he wanted that he could have bought a Blu-Ray player for a lot more money.  Or a computer.  But he got a PS3, and now it’s all wasted because he can’t play his two games.  I’m welling up with tears just thinking about the poor guy – how he can summon the enthusiasm to wake in the morning is beyond me.

I could rant on for hours about this.  I find the whole situation disgusting and appalling.  When I’ve finished here I’m going to put on Wolfenstein, play the single-player campaign and spend my entire afternoon complaining about how I can’t log on to the multiplayer – that is how absolutely furious I am about the whole situation.  So I’d like to finish up with a rally cry to all PS3 users out there to unplug your Playstations, repackage them in the boxes that you have no doubt thrown out, find your receipt that has probably long-since ended up in the garbage, and take them back to the stores from which you bought them, many of which have probably by now gone into administration, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection or just plain vanished from the high street or shopping mall.  Get your money back and put it towards a low-spec XBox360.  Make sure you keep some in reserve to pay for your first year’s subscription to XBL.  Trust me: the Playstation 3 is not worth it.  Keep that 0.684% in mind and realise that Microsoft is the way forward.  Microsoft is your friend.  Microsoft is your whole life.  All hail Microsoft.  All hail Microsoft.  All hail Microsoft.  All hail Microsoft…..

Satan’s Little Helper

 

Grand Theft Auto 4 Sucks Arse

This, the second Sucks Arse blog ever written, was first published on MyIGN on 25th March 2011.  Again, this is posted in its original form, except for a small edit on a couple of typos that, upon reading for the first time in two years, I was deeply embarrassed about.  There goes my job as an indispensable proof-reader for a top publishing house.

I have contained my rage for long enough.  I know this game is three years old now, and more than enough has been said about it online before, but it is time for me to unleash the full torrent of my fury upon Rockstar Games’ atrocious excuse for a video “game”, although the word “game” should probably be replaced with the word “evisceration”, as I would have actually preferred to have had my intestines forcibly removed with a spoon rather than play this piece of excreta masquerading as a next generation console game.

Spoon Not Included

The Grand Theft Auto series of games is one of my personal favorites, starting way back with the original top-down view of 1 & 2, and even GTA: London 1969 (although I thought the transition to London was a ridiculous idea – everyone knows that there’s no cars in London, just dirt track roads, horse-drawn carriages and Penny Farthing bicycles).  I thought that GTA3 was pushing the boundaries in a bad way.  The switch to a third-person perspective was an absurd idea.  What kind of idiot would want to be down there among the action, the guns, the violence, the hookers and the criminal element?  It was much safer looking down from up in the clouds, and bringing it down to ground level was a mistake, in my opinion.

The God-like feeling of playing the original GTA games

But, although it pains me to say it, GTA3 grew on me, like a mold, a rash or a wart.  Its open gameplay – or “sandbox”, as they like to call it – side missions, huge map and hidden quirks made it a positively epic game that no other game could even deem itself worthy to gaze upon.  By the time San Andreas was released, I was about ready to give up on any game that wasn’t called Grand Theft Auto.  I think I actually orgasmed when I first got control of GTA:SA’s central protagonist, CJ.  And then GTA4 came along and RUINED the Whole Damn Thing.

THE STORY is rubbish.  Absolutely nothing happens in this game at any point.  You’re just thrown in at the deep end of nothing, driving people around in a taxi cab owned by your brother or cousin or nephew or uncle or grandfather.  I can’t remember who it was because I found this game so unutterably offensive to my eyes, ears and nose that I didn’t pay the blindest bit of attention to any part of it.  Sometimes you have to get out of your car and endure a cutscene – a pre-animated bit of “entertainment” that supposedly propels the “story” along.  These cutscenes are so lame that I skipped every one of them.  Seriously, the story is that bad.  I would imagine.  I don’t actually know, because I didn’t watch any of the cutscenes.  In fact, I got to the final mission and found myself chasing some guy who was trying to kill me, and I have no idea why.  Who the hell was this Dmitri character anyway?  Was he in one of those cutscenes?  I don’t know.

Who the hell is this guy, and why is he trying to kill me?

CONTROLS Why the hell did they change them all?  Accelerating and braking with the shoulder buttons?  Really?!  What is this – Racedriver: Grid 2?  If I want to play a game with racing game controls then I’ll buy a racing game.  Somebody told me that I can change the controls in the menu, but WHY THE HELL SHOULD I?  Rockstar Games should cater to MY every whim, and MINE ALONE!  And it’s IMPOSSIBLE to turn off the radio.  I tried everything, and I couldn’t do it.  Someone told me that a message comes up on screen early on in the game telling you how to turn off the radio, but who reads those on-screen instructions?  I’m trying to play a game here!  And a shit one, at that.  And when a friend of mine came round my house and tried to turn off the radio they managed to do it, but I couldn’t, so it’s shit.  (And on a side note, in the add-on “Episodes from Liberty City” the radio only played rock music when you were riding a bike, and I hate rock music.  Not being able to turn off the radio OR change the station?  That’s just stupid!  Even though there were plenty of different radio stations that didn’t play rock music.  And a friend of mine was able to switch stations when on a bike.  AND turn the radio off.  But I couldn’t do it, so it’s double-shit.)

SIDE MISSIONS In the GTA3 series you were given all sorts of side missions: taxi driver missions, vigilante missions, fire fighting missions, ambulance missions.  I’m disgusted and appalled that Rockstar saw fit to take all these missions out, despite the fact that I never used to play them because I was crap at them and I found them frustrating, annoying and a waste of time.  But they TOOK THEM OUT!  Why would they do that?  Because they’re ass-munchers, that’s why.  If Rockstar is going to remove arbitrary shit from their games then they deserve all the wrath and ire that is directed at them.  Just knowing that GTA4 is a little bit less than any GTA before it makes it garbage and a waste of time.

GRAPHICS I’m actually going to give Rockstar a little bit of credit here, because the graphics are very good indeed.  However, I have to take issue with them a bit as well, for two main reasons: 1) if they’d spent a little less time sprucing up the graphics and a little more time adding in extra missions then I’d have been a lot happier – where were the “picking up trash” missions, the “street sweeping” missions and the “cleaning up dog poop” missions that they could have oh-so-easily incorporated into the game?  I’ll tell you where – shoved to one side, at the mercy of this obsession with “Next Generation Graphics”.  I’d have preferred GTA4 to have graphics like Pong if it meant I had a billion irrelevant side missions to do.  Except that then I would have complained about the graphics.  2) If I want ultra-realistic visuals when stealing cars, gunning down innocents and receiving blow-jobs from prostitutes then I’ll just damn well go outside and do it all for real.  This game’s meant to be fiction, damn it – if you want reality then there’s a whole world of it just outside your window!  (And I’ve found that prostitutes are surprisingly easy to track down, so no worries there.)  Basically, the graphics were completely wasted on this risible POS, so who cares?

What GTA4 should have been. But I wouldn’t have played it.

PIGEONS! What the hell was that all about?  200 pigeons to track down and shoot?  What a stupid idea!  Where’s my “secret packages” from GTA3?  The ones that some careless delivery guy or mailman has scattered liberally through Liberty City?  Where’s my Red Balloons from GTA:Vice City Stories?  The ones left over from some parade or clown convention, I assume?  Where’s my horseshoes and oysters from GTA:San Andreas?  Why, oh why, would anyone want to hunt pigeons, fer Chrissakes?!  Although I would gladly spend two weeks of my life hunting down hundreds of packages and horseshoes and balloons and oysters and God Knows what else, the idea of spending a similar amount of time hunting pigeons just makes my blood boil!  Damn you, Rockstar Games.  Damn you to Hell.

CHARACTERS Niko Bellic.  What can I say?  Now I’m no racist, but this guy’s Eastern European!  What the hell happened to the good ol’ days where all the badass mo-fo’s were American, God damn it?!  GTA:San Andreas had CJ – American.  GTA:Vice City Stories had Vic Vance – American.  GTA:Liberty City Stories had Toni Cipriani – American.  GTA:Vice City had Tommy Vercetti – American.  And GTA 3 had Claude – American…maybe…or is he French?  Maybe he’s French, then, but the blue-jeans/leather-jacket look is so 1950s Americana that he’s either American or an extra from a French production of Grease. Either way, he’s not Eastern European, is he?  No.  In fact, there’s so few American characters in GTA4 that they should have called it GTA:Slovakia.  Then nobody would buy it.  Except for Slovakians.

Slovak Edition

MULTIPLAYER All us die-hard GTA fans have been crying out for online multiplayer since before the internet even existed, but Rockstar have never seen fit to give console owners the joy and pleasure of a multiplayer mode.  When I heard this had been rectified in GTA4 I got all excited, even going so far as to buy myself a broadband connection, router, wi-fi card, PC, monitor, TV, Playstation 3, and copy of GTA4.  Imagine my disgust, then, when we are presented with Rockstars version of “multiplayer”, in which you play as a character that has nothing to do with the main game who goes around shooting things and driving a lot.  And what’s more, they’ve made it so that if you want the trophies you have to play online.  For hours, days even, at a time.  With friends.  Or people you’ve never met.  Either way, this “mode” is an insult to hardcore GTA fans everywhere, and Rockstar should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

SEX The GTA series has never rested on its laurels as far as courting controversy goes.  Remember the outrage over the “Hot Coffee” minigame in San Andreas?  Well, I was hoping that, having successfully had the ban on Manhunt 2 lifted, Rockstar would go all out in GTA4 and not only have hookers who will fellate you in your car, but full-on sex minigames.  I had even hoped that with the aid of Playstation Move and a Playstation Eye camera you might be able to get fully interactive with your console.  But no.  Not only do the prostitutes remain fully clothed throughout an entire sexual encounter, but the strippers at Honkers don’t even fully strip!  There’s not a nipple to be seen in the entire game!  They’re strippers, for God’s sake!  Now, if I want to have any kind of sexual gratification, I might have to exit my house and actually find a real live girl! What the hell?!

All in all, my disappointment with GTA4 can not be expressed in words alone.  I had expected great things from this game, and instead all I got was a slap in the face, a depleted bank account and the forcible removal of several weeks of my life.  I hated this game, and I loathed every minute that was yanked off my life while I played through it six times to mop up all the trophies.  I swear, if this game had been any worse I might have only completed it five times.  Maybe even four, I really can’t say for certain.  I think that the decent thing for Rockstar games to do is to apologize to all its fans, reimburse everyone’s money, release fifteen separate DLCs for free, upgrade my TV to a 57″ plasma screen and then commit suicide so that nothing like this can ever happen again.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: This post is a continuation of my “Such-and-such-a-game Sucks Arse…” series, and in no way should be taken literally, seriously or orally.  For the record, I loved Grand Theft Auto 4 with a love that was deep, abiding and almost unnatural.  And you should too….

=D