Gaming... s'not for girls.

[susie_flo]

A couple of weeks ago I read this mildly amusing article by Charlie Brooker  about how Mass Effect 3 allows you to be gay in space.

Why am I mentioning this now?  Because, like the sad, old, completist dinosaur that I am, I have finally bitten the bullet and completed Ye Olde Mass Effect 1,  so that I have the back story to go on and play games 2 and 3.  This, alongside raising a baby?  Yes.  I am a superhero. 

Anyway, I'm guessing that the writing must have have moved on somewhat by game 3, because I appear to have broken game 1 with some of my 'wacky' life choices.   Brace yourselves for the insanity:  I completed the entire of ME1 using an all-girl team.  Led by me, Miranda Sawyer.   (Alright, I was  Commander Shepard really - but facially indistinguishable from  Miranda Sawyer.  (Seriously I spent the entire game looking like I'm sucking a lemon ).  

As gameplay went, being female posed no problems.  (It's not like Fallout 3 where I was plagued by hookers coming onto me and telling me what "a big strong guy" I was).  Plus every time I went on a mission I was able to choose my two favoured crew members to accompany me - which meant that my faithful, ass-kicking hench-soldier Ashley   and my foxy, blue intellectual pal Liara  (who I think looks a bit like rosamicula) became my lifelong entourage.  Unfortunately for my male crew members, they were left to spend the entire game languishing on the spaceship, staring into space, doing the occasional bit of admin such as passing me messages.  (Shades of Buffy, anyone?)

So, all good.  EXCEPT...  the game clearly does not expect this to happen.  Having made it about 4/5 of the way to the end, with my hench-ladies levelled up to near-superhero, ninjy, gun-slinging brilliance, I suddenly get an enraging cut scene in which Liara has been replaced without warning or explanation by a male nonentity called Kaiden , who's now doing ALL OF THE TALKING, as if he's been involved in a single one of my missions.  Then I am forced to make an (apparently gut-wrenching) Sophie's Choice in which I must sacrifice either Kaiden or Ashley on a suicide mission.   Um.  Well.  That was difficult.  Not.   (So... Kaiden's now dead, apparently.  Kaiden.  You know...  Kaiden?  No?  Oh, well. Quiet type. He stood near the back of the upper deck for approx 16 hours of gameplay.  Yeah, him.)  Feh.  

Anyway, once past this aberration, I get my girls back and we save the universe and all is well again. 

UNTIL...   

In a fit of impatience last night I downloaded a demo of game 2 so that I could have a little runaround.  The first thing it does is ask me if I am male or female.  I answer female.  Then it proceeds to show me an enormous cutscene that fills me in on my personal history.  It shows me how I, Commander Shepard, saved the universe from Geth and Reapers.  But apparently not before I had had retrospective gender realignment surgery.  Because I appear to be doing a fine job of filling my MALE uniform with some convincing man-bits. Sigh. Then game 2 begins properly and I appear to be a woman again.  However... brace yourselves.   Kaidan is still alive!  Apparently amid the realms of probability and difficult coding decisions, I was reckoned most likely to have sacrificed Ashley.  Effing Kaidan.  Alive.  Does this mean that Ashley's dead?  I swear to god when I get control of game 2 I am putting him straight onto boot-polishing detail.

And as for being allowed to be gay in ME3, I have to say that this does not bode well at all for me.  I really can't be doing with getting into romantic relationships in games.  I've got the universe to save, FFS.   Do I look like I want to play The SIMS? 

Pah.

(Ok, I sound like I'm moaning but I'm actually gagging for game 2 really)

Comments

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

This week I'm going to play Wipeout and Tomb Raider Anniversary! It's 1997 week! I'm gonna watch Titanic and listen to the Spice Girls! Yeah!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh - Tomb Raider Anniversary! Lara Croft remains my first love. I hate that almost all FPS games make you play in a stupid, clumsy, galumphing male body. How is it ever supposed to compare with the gazelle-like grace of Lara, shooting T-Rexes upside-down, with both pistols, while doing a triple back-flip?

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

TR remains the only game I've called in sick to play (when I was a temp and no work meant no money).

Has there been anything as atmospheric? With such lovely music?

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

The Assassins Creed games come close on scenery and breathtaking beauty. But yes the Lara music was something special.

I was reminiscing about Tomb Raider Chronicles the other day... specifically recalling the amazing atmosphere of playing her in flashback as a young teen in rainy rural Ireland.

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

I don't think I played that one. Or I started it but didn't finish.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Chronicles was really just a set of four unconnected mini-missions, a cash cow marketed at an addicted public for a fix between major games. I rather enjoyed it though.

Meanwhile I am not sure whether to be excited about this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_(2012_video_game) (Might have to wait for the reviews.)

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

I hope it's good. One of them changed the format and controls though, it put me off.

I've been put off a lot of new games because they give me motion sickness.

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Do you play on Xbox? I got annoyed with ME1 because I got into a situation where I didn't have enough ammo or anything to escape, so kept dying and didn't have an older save to go back to. That pissed me off so much I gave up on it, despite it being very much my kind of game.

Still loving Skyrim though!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Yes I'm on Xbox. I wonder if it was Matriarch Benezia that did you in... I tried fighting her and her hordes of Asari commandos about 1/3 of the way into the game and kept dying and got very frustrated by the difficulty and lack of checkpoints. (Eventually I had a tantrum and them came back the next day and sussed it) but from then on I made sure I was mega-levelled up by doing a load of errand-bitching for people before I took on any more big bads. Once my skills were levelled up to a certain level I pretty much skipped through the second half of the game with gay abandon.

I'm still planning to play Skyrim. I think it is a v similar style of gameplay, so I suspect you would probably love the ME games if you ever saw fit to give it a second chance. People keep telling me that they get better and that the third game is amazing.

[dexypunk.livejournal.com]

I hated ME, did not 'get' it, but Skyrim's a blast!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I was totally prejudiced against ME and had to be nagged into playing it my my other half. In retrospect I enjoyed it, but the first hour or so of gameplay was v. dull and took ages to get going. Also it suffered from a lot of repetitive-looking locations. But everyone insists that the follow on games are brilliant so I wanted to get the back story. I really must give Skyrim a go soon though. I might like it better,