Get a life and a headache!
So, a week ago last weekend, I went out and got a life. It wasn’t a planned thing; I just somehow ended up out drinking all weekend. And of course I had a wicked hangover Sunday that made band practice into an act of pure willpower.
I don’t really like to drink that much–well technically this is a lie. I love to drink, but there’s the whole “death” thing that takes the fun out of it. But, man, there’s nothing else to do. Why is it that 100% of the people out “having a life” are drunk? “Having a life” seems very similar to “being an alcoholic”. If they are, in fact, the same, I can drink at home and save on cab fare, with the added bonus that I’ve greatly reduced the risk of waking up with a hangover next to a spectacularly unattractive woman.
So, this weekend, when I wasn’t standing around in a cold converted garage going deaf as part of my lifelong strategy to be an international rock star, I tried to finish Mass Effect. Naturally, I still haven’t finished, and I’ve clocked something like 60 hours and 250 saves. That’s 10 hours of gameplay, 10 hours of conversation, and 40 hours of walking. What game does this remind you of? Baldur’s gate!
Not since the original Baldur’s Gate have I spent so much time walking. And Baldur’s Gate was great, in its own way, just as this game is, but there was so much more plot in BG, whereas Mass Effect is, well, when you set aside the Visual Splendour(TM), the game’s pretty simple:
- Plot
- Inventory Management
- Shooting Things
- Driving a 6-wheeled RC rock-climbing vehicle
- Inventory Management
Ah, inventory management. Not since Dungeon Seige 1 has there been a game that makes inventory so boring. In old-school, D&D style games, inventory management used to be fun and easy, and getting new gear was sometimes actually exciting. If you have a +1 short sword, and you find a +2 Short Sword, that’s fun. Wow, now I have +2. If you find another +2 Short Sword, that’s uninteresting. In Mass Effect, it’s like you find a +1.9 Short Sword, and a +2.03 Short Swort, and a +1.99 Short Sword and you have to look at the three attributes of each one to decide whether it’s good. By the time you find an actual +3 Short Sword it’s not really that exciting. You can’t escape noticing that what drops is always almost exactly the same as what you’re currently using (ala Oblivion), and viola!: you’ve successfully removed the fun of having cool weapons. Of course, there aren’t any swords in Mass Effect, but really that’s not the point. Combine this with being totally sick nd tired of driving a toy six-wheeled car around on nearly impassible terrain, and you’ve got everything bad. And yet now I’m into the plot far enough that I want to see the rest. And I will power my way through to the end, at which point I will with great pleasure turn off the hoover..um, I mean the X360 and remove this game from my life.
At this point, I realize I have sat through almost an entire work week of filler. Bioware, I hate you.
