ESO First Impressions

ESO seems like the trendy thing to be discussing lately on the Internets.  Will it fail?  Is it really an ESO game?  Will it fail?  And so on.  Unfortunately I appear to have a somewhat unpopular opinion based on the people I've interacted with, and that is that its a flawed but ultimately incredibly fun game that's worth the money I spent on it.

Most of the complaints I've heard are from other Elder Scrolls fans who think its too much like an MMO and not enough like Elder Scrolls.  I don't particularly feel that way myself, but I can understand the sentiment.  There are some things I like doing in Elder Scrolls games that I can't do in ESO, most of them involving the physics engine and random items - I've mentioned before my Skyrim character is a cheese-obsessed klepto.  I also (at this point) can't own a house wherein I lovingly and painstakingly arrange all the random crap I've picked up along the way.  I can't go through a dungeon and pick up every single rake and pile them at the entrance.  These things would require a level of interactivity that's not possible in a multiplayer experience as far as I can see.  At the very least elements like this would be prohibitively complicated to code in a multiplayer environment, so I can completely understand the designers not including them.  After all, there are other parts of the game to enjoy beyond rake-piles.

There's a lot of character customization possible, but admittedly it is not as much as single player Elder Scrolls games.  You only have 4 classes to choose from, but those classes have a staggering amount of variability because of the various weapon, armor, and class skill options.  Unlike other MMOs, you are not locked into a certain type of equipment based on your class - if you pick it up and you're high enough level you can use it.  So if you want to make a heavy armor-wearing sorcerer with a giant axe, you can.  Even within the same class there's several ways to make your character unique.  Its not the same as single player for sure, but I think Bethesda did a great job with the skill trees.  I will admit I miss being able to Frenzy a group of enemies until there's only one left for me to deal with, there are other things about combat I find very nearly as fun.  And that's a tactic that's not really possible in a multiplayer environment anyway.  Its not as though you can yell at people coming by to not attack because you're about to do something really cool.  Or you could, but I guarantee no one would heed your words.

On the topic of bugs, I have found a couple that are a little irritating.  The first has to do with grouping.  As far as I can tell the way ESO is built your character, while walking around the same world, might occupy a different "world state" than other characters based on what quests you were doing and how far into them you were.  This causes a big problem when you're grouped with someone who happens to be in a difference world state, as you will disappear from each others' sight whenever you enter an area in which you have temporal dissonance.  For people who always group and play the game together this isn't an issue, but not everybody does that.  This is really the only bug I hope they come up with a solution for soon, the others are minor annoyances.

I probably should say however that some of the things I consider to be minor annoyances others might consider to be game-breaking rage machines.  Probably the most irritating was the bug I came across when I got to the third zone in the Aldmeri Dominion and needed to complete a quest before I could fully access the starting town.  I wasn't able to finish it because there were too many people trying to finish it at once and so the final boss zone was having trouble resetting.  However, from this particular bug came one of the most hilarious trolls I have ever seen.

So the quest is called Unsafe Haven, and to finish it you need to stop some invading pirates and necromancers from doing a ritual to summon zombies all over the town.  I got through the sewers and into the keep and entered the place where the ritual was supposed to happen.  Nothing was there.  On my way to this area other players were yelling things like "DO NOT GO IN ROOM, DO NOT PULL MOBS" and "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET OUT OF THAT ROOM".  Very puzzling, until I got to the empty ritual area and found a bunch of players hiding out in front of this side room waiting for some NPCs to spawn.  Somehow word had gotten around that to complete the quest you had to wait for 3 specific NPCs to spawn in this room and then kill them.  Of course people are terrible at waiting, or didn't know what was going on, so someone would run into the room before the third NPC could spawn and rage flowed like a river of continuous invective.  I actually believed the nonsense about waiting outside the room for a hot minute but got bored quickly and logged out to do something else until the zone wasn't so crowded.  Some people waiting outside that room for hours.  Turns out the quest has nothing to do with that room at all - as an awesome Twitch streamer named Antpile pointed out - but only that the zone was having trouble resetting because of the traffic.  You can fix this by relogging over and over until you get an instance that isn't bugged, or if you're a sane person you can do what I did.  Which is something bloody else and come back later.  I came back at 6am because I like to get up early and game before work and finished the quest right away.  So all those people crouching outside that stupid room were actually inhibiting the zone from resetting by just being there.  Like I said, brilliant troll if that is indeed what it was.

The conclusion I came to from that experience was reinforced what I said at the beginning; even though ESO is a flawed game, I am enjoying it quite a bit.  I don't feel like I've wasted money and I plan to continue my subscription after my free time ends.  Because even though there are bugs that for a while make part of the game worth playing, there are hundreds of other things to do, other characters to explore, and areas to discover.  And hell, if I can't finish something because of a bug I have faith that the development team wants the game to succeed and will work to fix it.  Until they do I can always log off and do one of the zillion other activities vying for my free time.

All that being said however, I feel a little trepidatious about the future of ESO.   While I enjoy it greatly, its not blowing my mind in any capacity and I feel like in order for it to continually draw players back it needs to do that at least a little.  Yes, the NPC AI is much richer than any other MMOs I can name, the system itself is quite fun, and exploration in game feels very Elder Scrolls-y to me.  But my feeling is that being just "Elder Scrolls, but ONLINE" isn't enough.  Sure it'll keep the fans like me coming back - but not all of them as I know several Scrolls fans who don't like the game.  And Bethesda seems to me like a company that will do something on their own terms or not at all.  I don't think this game will ever be free to play, I think if its not successful Bethesda will pack it up and go back to single player games.  Or try again, but larger in scope.  Either of these things would be fine with me but it doesn't say great things about this particular game's future.
And of course there will be the ravening hordes wanting their money back.  My outlook is this - the developers will make the game they want to make and I will either enjoy it or I won't.  When I stop enjoying it, I'll stop playing it but I don't feel the time I have spent on any game is wasted.  Did I give up on KoTOR when I lost three hours of gameplay because my character got stuck in a wall?  No.  However, I don't really think that attitude is common to the masses.  So when (or if) ESO gets packed up and filed in the Vault of Forgotten MMOs there might be a bit of backlash for Bethesda.  I'm pretty sure they can handle it though - they kind of have the ultimate trump card.  They make Elder Scrolls games.

Bloodsucking Fiends - Vampires and Feminism what?

It could be said that I like vampires quite a bit.  It could also be said that the sky is a very nice shade of blue today, zebras generally have stripes, and for the most part fish like to be in water.  Are you picking up what I'm laying down, here?  Vampires are pretty much my favorite fictional creature after dragons.  I've tried to pin down why that is, and I've got two possible reasons.  The first is that I am attracted to things that frighten me - I was so afraid of the original Bela Lugosi Dracula when I was a kid that I would hang a glow-in-the-dark rosary over my bed while I was sleeping.  The second is that since I am a heathen and don't particularly believe in an afterlife I have a vested interest in living forever.  There could be a combination of both going on.

So one might imagine that I've read a ton of vampire books, which would be a correct thought so congratulations.  A lot of them I don't like, and many I actively hate for various reasons.  I don't like the Anne Rice vampire books - too languid and "oh pity me I'm an eternal hottie and I'm tortured".  I've never read Twilight, but I've seen some of the movies and known enough people who have read them to hate it simply because of the horrifying messaging.  Give up your ambitions to sublimate yourself to a (way older) dude right out of high school, girls!  Base your whole self image on another person!  Chimo is ok, because bonding!  I don't give a crap if the storytelling is good (which it probably isn't) I hate those books on sheer principal, leaving aside the sparkling.

Ok, I'm getting the Rage, its time for a Goon interlude.

Oh the endless ROFLs!  Spoiler alert, he beats them up.

There are several vampire books I very much enjoy however.  The Nightwatch series is excellent, and of course there's the original Dracula.  But today I would like to talk about a little book called Bloodsucking Fiends by Chrisopher Moore.  Its a comedy like his other books, but it also has one of the most accurate of the female perspective that I've ever seen from a male author.  So its funny and thought provoking!  Warning - I don't consider myself a militant feminist by any means, but I am a lady and I've had some experiences that are unique to those who are ladies.  I'll try to generalize as little as possible and keep this out of "RAAAGHRR all men are idjits!" territory.

Fiction has long been a great way to explore and illuminate social issues through the venue of story.  The main character of this particular story is Jodie, a normal lady with a normal job until she gets singled out and turned into a vampire for the sport of a really bored old-as-dirt vampire.  After that happens, she suddenly finds herself in the unique situation of being a woman who doesn't need to be afraid of anything.

As far as society has come in the last few decades, we ladies still struggle against labels, inconvenient socialization, and fear.  Dr. Nerdlove talks a bit about it in his blog, which is definitely worth a read.  I don't take quite the extreme view that he does - that being that most women instantly evaluate men they meet on a threat-assessment basis.  However I admit the way my brain works gives me a tendency not to care much about personal safety.  I've waited for buses at 2 am in parts of Seattle that really shouldn't be frequented by civilized folk at those times.  

However, there is one thing I've noticed in myself that's really irritating, the socialization to be nice.  I'm not talking about being kind, or noble, or anything like that.  Just being nice.   Not making waves, being accommodating, and polite even when the person on the other side of the conversation really doesn't deserve it.  How many of us have smiled and tried to keep reading on the bus while all you really want is to be left alone, only to have a conversation forced on us?  Giving someone a fake phone number instead of just saying "Sorry I just don't find you attractive" - an instance where the difference between nice and kind really stands out.  I'm not going to say that this experience is unique to women, but I will say that it is more culturally forced upon us than it is upon men.

When Jodie becomes a vampire, she slowly starts to forsake all the socialization she's been subjected to her entire life thanks to a conservative childhood in Carmel.  (Woo!  Monterey Bay FTW!)  It starts with makeup.  Somehow having to survive on blood makes stabbing yourself in the eye with a mascara wand completely irrelevant.  She starts saying exactly what's on her mind, to hilarious effect especially given the super hearing.  Walking around the city at night is exhilarating instead of terrifying.  Its an interesting statement, becoming something inhuman enables her to forget all the rules and fears that society forced upon her.

There are three books in this series, and it also explores Jodie's life with her boyfriend Tommy after she turns him into a vampire.  He has the exact opposite reaction to the change that she did - where she felt powerful and unafraid he feels confused and frightened.  He doesn't like being a vampire, its too far out of his comfort zone.  But Jodie's "comfort zone" was so spectacularly uncomfortable that anything else is a relief.  I say "uncomfortable" because her life before being a vampire wasn't bad.  She had a job, a man, parents that irritated her, but she was always afraid of something.  But then, all of a sudden she wasn't.  And so when she's offered a cure she turns it down.

I find the contrast between Jodie and Tommy and their reactions to being vampires incredibly interesting.  Tommy, who already knew (at 19!) his place in the world, is thrown on tilt.  Looking at it from a feminist perspective, that makes a bit of sense.  Tommy, being a quintessential male, is comfortable with his place in the world.  Even though he becomes a more powerful entity, he isn't happy.  

All that aside, the book is hilarious, a highlight being the parts narrated by Abby Normal, the teenage PerkyGoth.  Hilarious, I tell you!

ESO Beta Impressions

Like the phoenix I rise from the ashes of unproductivity and laziness, ready for the coming flood of vociferous creativity!  And also gratuitous lexical chest-puffery.  Yes, after a long silence I like to break out the $5 words.

Moving on past the odd ways my ego likes to manifest, there are folks in this world who find writing therapeutic when they’re depressed or having a hard time.  I’m not one of those people; when I’m in a tough spot trying to articulate my thoughts is just too exhausting.  But shit is better now, these things happen etc etc etc.  I’m slowly learning to celebrate my successes instead of beating myself up for failures.  For example, instead of dwelling on how I didn’t go to my capoeira class for a few weeks, I’m trying to celebrate the fact I went on Monday.  Its not important that I haven’t been writing before, what matters is that I’m writing now.  Right then.  Here's a picture of my Skyrim character as a bard.



Two beta weekends before the most recent one I received a key to play Elder Scrolls Online.  My theory is they have some kind of social media search algorithm that looks for people who are super desperate because I made with the puppy eyes on Twitter and ended up with a beta key.  Whatever the reason, it turned out I didn’t play that much on my first beta outing, nor in the second.  I did play enough to decide that I liked the combat - it’s far less clunky and inconvenient than Skyrim combat (I say that with love, Skyrim).  The addition of MMO-type action hotkeys makes battles much more dynamic and fun rather than something you have to do so you can take the person’s stuff.  Personally my Skyrim playstyle is to avoid outright conflict altogether, either by stealth-murder or casting Frenzy spells at large groups so they thin each other out and thus I have fewer enemies to deal with.  This is partly because I am an honor-less p’tahk and partly because I find combat so cumbersome.  But I quickly found myself wanting to get into combat in ESO so I could see what my abilities do.  I also like the fact that your default attack is bound to mouseclicks instead of constantly cycling through a cooldown.  Although I quickly found that spamming clicks doesn’t make your character move faster.

On the flip side of that, the presence of other people in the game quickly made me realize that my normal sneaky habits were not going to be as useful.  Sure, you can try to sneak up on that flame atronach but chances are someone else is going to clomp in front of you and beat them to death while you’re still quietly approaching.  In fact, lets talk about other people for a second.  I’m not going to lie, when I first started playing I was mightily annoyed that there were all these idiots in my Tamriel disturbing the heartbreakingly gorgeous landscape.  After playing for a while I was still annoyed but resigned, and I have to admit playing ESO with a friend is quite fun.  If I have to deal with feckless strangers so I can play with a group of people I actually like, I am ok with that.  All the Elder Scrolls games have been partially social experiences for me - when I was playing Morrowind in college my friends and I would drink beer and talk about our conquests (and the hilarious bugs we encountered) for hours.  Same thing with Oblivion and Skyrim - talking about playing those games is almost as fun as playing them.  So actually playing an Elder Scrolls game with friends to me is worth the trouble of dealing with the faceless hordes.

The question is, then whether or not ESO is truly an Elder Scrolls game in the way the single player games are.  What is the Platonic Form of an Elder Scrolls game?  Open exploration, random awesome occurrences (I once found a ghostly headless horseman in Skyrim.  No quest, he was just riding around.), memorable locations, great lore, fun sidequests, and I suppose I can stop there though I could probably go on.  Possibly to the NPCs who are pretty much identical to The Silence - once you’re not looking at them anymore you completely forget they even exist.  They exist only as “That Guy Who Wanted Me To Do That Thing” and possibly not even that.  Seriously, the only Elder Scrolls NPC that ever stuck in my mind was the vampire who was the count of Skingrad.  Anyways.  The exploration is definitely still there - I spend half my time doing quests and the other half just picking a direction and running just to see what was over there.  I was rarely disappointed when I did so, although I did wander into some zones that were far above my character’s level.  The towns don’t have quite the same amount of sticking power to me that the single player games do, but they’re still pretty.  The lore is definitely still there - there are lorebooks hidden around the world that makes exploring more rewarding, and a lot of the sidequests are made richer the more you know about the world.  For example, I did a quest that involved some Argonians who believed the Dark Elves were trying to poison their Hist tree.  Seems pretty simple, but having knowledge about what the heck a Hist tree is and the history between the Dunmer and the Argonians made it much more interesting.  Although that quest bugged out for me at the end so I couldn’t complete it.

Which brings me to hilarious Elder Scrolls bugs.  While they are a frustrating but endearing part of the single player Elder Scrolls game, I really hope that won’t be true for ESO when its released.  A game that’s played online, where your character and progress are saved on a server instead of your hard drive, with no save files to edit for that matter, simply can’t survive being buggy.  I encountered a few glitches this beta weekend, most of which were resolved by reloading the UI.

Let me tell you a story.  Playing Skyrim the other day with the Dawnguard expansion I came across an interesting bug wherein Durnaviir got stuck in the ground and was flying around like a land shark.  Hilarious, no?  Except then he flew under Shadowmere, broke free of the ground and carried my horse off into the horizon where the poor thing probably fell to his death.  Really funny in a single player game where you can reload a save or open the console and fix it, but this situation would be incredibly rage-inducing if you’d just spent a bunch of non-reloadable gold on a horse only to have it carried away by a stray dragon.

The only real complaint I have about ESO has to do with the story, and its not a big enough complaint to keep me from enjoying the game overall.  At the very beginning, starting in a prison as usual for an ES game, you are presented with your Destiny.  You, and you alone must release a powerful prophet from this hellish prison and save the world.  It is very hero’s journey, and very in line with the single player installments.  But its not a single player game, and its pretty clear that while this Prophet dude is telling me all about my Great and Momentous Task he is telling a gajillion other people the same exact thing.  It really breaks the immersion and feels like all of the players are in their own bubble Tamriel universes that intersect each other only at certain points.  To illustrate - I grouped with a friend and we went to do a story quest that I had already done, but he hadn’t.  When we entered the building where it was to take place he disappeared and I was left behind.  I felt like I was in that Stargate SG-1 episode where Sam, Daniel and Mitchell all get stuck in a parallel reality.  He was walking around in there but I couldn’t see him.  The Prophet was talking to him, but to me he was just sitting in a chair muttering.  It was jarring to the point where I’m hoping at some point in the story we find out that the Prophet can be in multiple places at once and individually interacting with all these people is part of his master plan to raise an army of maniacs.  And when you find out he just shrugs and says “What, you think I was putting all my eggs in one hero basket?”  And then the body of players would become a single protagonist in an effort towards a goal.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

However, my gripes are not going to keep me from playing because honestly I don’t expect immersive stories from MMORPGs, so even though the Elder Scrolls factor was in play my expectations weren’t very high.  But it did get me thinking about how one could make a truly immersive and rich multiplayer story, one where the player isn’t a special snowflake (who clearly isn’t special at all) but a part of a whole.  I don’t know if its possible, or if people would even play it, but its definitely something to think about.

In conclusion, I will be playing this game.  I've already pre-bought the Imperial Edition and I'm happy about the early access because I have some seriously cool names I want to lock down.  I think it has the soul of an Elder Scrolls game and it never felt boring or grind-y.  I hope they get the bugs ironed out before release though, or I'll just make sure to stay away from the land shark dragons.

Thanksgiving Weekend Movie Trifecta

This year marked the first paid Thanksgiving holiday of my life, and it was glorious.  Seriously, restaurant industry?  Screw you right in the face with a chainsaw.  You made me hate the holidays but no longer!  I still twitch when I hear Christmas music, but who doesn't these days?  Anyways, I had an amazing weekend - spent time with family, played some games, bought myself some clothes, and saw three movies in the theater.  A 4-day weekend seemed like the logical choice for catching all the movies I wanted to see but didn't have time in my normal daily life.  I started on Black Friday by promising myself I could see the new Hunger Games if I braved the hordes at Macy's for new work pants, and then on Sunday caught Frozen and Thor: The Dark World back to back.  Since these movies all fell into genres I love - Disney Musicals, Marvel Movies, and Movies With Jennifer Lawrence In Any Capacity - it was a given that I would like them all.  But here are my expanded thoughts on the three.

Thor: The Dark World

Did I say expanded thoughts?  What is there really to say about this movie?  If you like the first Thor you will like this movie.  If you hated the first one, you'll still like it.  Its a Marvel movie, in my opinion they have yet to make a bad one.  Loki finally gets to be more of an antihero, which is true to the comics, and Christopher Eccleston is great as the Dark Elf Malekith.  They really pulled out the stops naming this guy to be an obvious Bad Dude.  As far as I can tell his name means "bad friend".  This guy is Not To Be Messed With.

Instead, permit me get all nerd-righteous for a moment about how I loved the character of Loki before all the Tom Hiddleston gifs started popping up.  No really.  My very first experience with the trickster god was reading a miniseries written from Loki's POV.  Not only did the story give me all the emotions, the art is just magnificent.  But it was reading Seige and the lead-up to it that really made me fall in love with him.  I loved that Loki came back from Ragnarok as a lady and I was sad when he went back to being a dude.

***Spoilers for Seige!***
After Ragnarok (I'm fuzzy on how that happened - I'm a Marvel fangirl but there's so much to read) Thor brought Asgard back to life in the mortal world.  In a field in Oklahoma I believe.  Anyway, Loki conspires with Norman Osborn to take it down because he honestly doesn't think Asgard should be in the mortal world at all.  He's fighting for what he believes in!  Poor guy doesn't realize that he's making deals with a lunatic whose got an even bigger lunatic on a tenuous leash.  That would be the Sentry, who I think its Marvel's answer to Superman.  Except with the phenomenal cosmic powers comes THE CRAZY.  The Sentry believes he is in constant battle with his archnemesis, the Void - except the Void is just his own split personality.  Once Loki realizes how batshit his allies are he repents and uses the Norn Stones to boost the Avengers' powers because the Sentry has become the Void and things are occurring.  The Void "kills" him (hahaha Marvel, you're not as bad as DC but we all know he ain't staying dead) and the Avengers are inspired by his sacrifice to win the day.  Norman Osborn is removed as head of S.H.E.I.L.D (yep, that was a thing that happened), Steve Rogers takes over and the Superhuman Registration Act is abolished.
***End Spoilers***

In closing, to the people in the theater who left as soon as the credits started - FOOLS!  Who leaves Marvel movies at the beginning of the credits anymore??

I love comics.

Frozen

This one started out on the wrong foot for me, and not because of the content of the movie itself.  Disney is apparently trying to do what Pixar did with animated shorts and they're doing about the same job as a kid who's used to being the center of attention trying a flip off the monkey bars after another kid did it with grace and pizzazz and stole his limelight.  It is exactly as painful and awkward as that, I know this because I invented a new unit of measurement with which to scientifically express this equation of horror - the cringemitator.  I have determined that both these things have about 3.21 cringemitators of sympathetic embarrassment each.  The short is half drawn in ye olde Disney animation style and half in whiz-bang computer animation and features the systematic and repetitive beatdown and humiliation of Pegleg Pete via a gimicky switch between the two animation styles after he once again tries to kidnap Minnie for clearly nefarious purposes.  (hahaha, try reading that whole sentence in one breath!)  Clearly nefarious, you ask?  Well, and I am not making this up, Pete sees Minnie dancing on the cart and gets an eyeball boner.  An eyeball boner that wilts upon the sight of Clara playing her udder as a bagpipe.  I'm right there with you dude, my boner would scamper the hell away from that too.  If I was a parent I might be writing a stern letter.  Altogether it was dumb and an unnecessary delay to what was a solid movie.

I suppose I understand all the anthropomorphic snowman advertising attached to this movie - many boys won't go see a movie about a Queen or a Princess.  Jerkfaces.  I have it on good authority though that several little boys exist who love this movie.  And if a talking snowman is what it takes to get the little monsters into a movie where the protagonists are girls then so be it, I say.  That being said, when I saw the snowman I wasn't inclined to see Frozen at all, and only went after I heard he actually plays a pretty small role in the movie.  This is true, and even more surprisingly he's actually well written - basically he was brought to life by some stray magic and now he's obsessed with experiencing summer.  His little song, and the human characters' reactions to it is just priceless.  I haven't read the story of the Snow Queen in a really long time so I can only guess just how loose this adaptation is.  Probably pretty loose.  And you know, I don't really care.  I enjoyed it, the songs were good, and I loved Elsa's introverted Snow Queen character.  At first I was disappointed in the music, but I think I was hoping for something closer to Beauty & The Beast caliber and its definitely not that good.  But there are some charming numbers, including a ventriloquism duet between a man and his reindeer.  And after listening to the soundtrack a few times its really grown on me, and "Let It Go" is my personal anthem at the moment.  I feel bad now for hating Idina Menzel's Glee character - just watch the video and you'll see.  I got a tingly feeling in my scalp.  Sorry you had to follow that, Demi Lovato.  It was a valiant effort.  Not all of us can be divinely anointed mezzos.



One last musical note - the opening number "Frozen Heart" reminded me very much of "Fathoms Below" from The Little Mermaid.  Frozen also had a touching twist on the idea of an "act of true love" being the only thing that can break a curse, which I won't go into because I don't want to spoil it.  And for those of us who like to complain about the antiseptic nature of computer animation and long for the hand-drawn days of yore, I can assure you that the characters in Frozen are very real and distinctively their own selves.  The contrast between Elsa and Anna does a lot to help the viewer empathize with both their situations.  Its not the best Disney movie since Mulan as a reviewer I sometimes trust claimed, but it was a good movie with obvious heart and appeal for adults as well as children.  I appreciate that Disney didn't give the story a cynical undertone to try to grab the adults - I didn't stop liking straight up fairy tales when I got older.  Clearly.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I think one's enjoyment of Catching Fire is more dependent on what you expect going into it than many other movies.  For instance, my brother didn't really like it because he was expecting more action and kids murdering each other.  My words, not his.  And I wouldn't recommend going in hoping for an insightful commentary on sociopolitical inevitibilities.  Having read Catching Fire I already knew there wasn't much action in the second chapter, and the first movie didn't scream "deep insight on our societal direction" but something else.  To me, The Hunger Games is the story of what happens to a person who needs to save everyone when they are placed in a situation where that is categorically impossible.

I got that feeling quite a bit from the first movie, but its even more present to me in Catching Fire.  I'll admit I didn't read the first book, so it could very well be that Jennifer Lawrence read the character and just decided that was what the story was going to be about.  If that's the case, who are we to argue with the whims of The Immortal Golden Tide of Awesome?  We should be forever grateful to Lady Lawrence because if this movie was supposed to be some kind of relevatory glimpse on the future of our decadent and materialistic society it would be more ham-handed than the Goon and far less intelligent.  I mean, look at these mitts.

Written and illustrated by Eric Powell.

Katniss isn't a badass heroine in the way some people think of her in my opinion.  Yes she's good with a bow and she's smart but I think her real power is in her empathy.  She exits the Games and finds herself, as any normal person would, with a wicked case of PTSD.  But her fears aren't for herself, but for the people she cares about.  Its the fact that she genuinely gives a shit that makes her so attractive to the masses, and so easy to craft into a symbol.

***Line break spoiler warning for Catching Fire!***

At the end of the movie its pretty clear to me that this revolution is going to break Katniss down, mostly because of her empathy.  Her scene with Gale where he's getting all excited about fighting back is a reinforcement for that - the way she looks at him its pretty clear she's thinking that he just doesn't get it.  And he doesn't - you can't relate to an experience like the Games without having been there.  Gale's all fired up about taking back their country, but all Katniss sees is every single life that will be lost.  And she agonizes over it.  She's a great symbol, but she would make a terrible revolutionary leader because the only loss of life she can really accept is her own.  The people around her realize that and they keep the plan to get her out of the arena from her.

***Line break spoiler warning for Mockingjay!*** 

The third book pretty much nails down my above opinions, especially the resolution of the "love triangle".  Although I prefer to think of it as the "Will you both please stop having your feelings at me for one SECOND?!" subplot.  The ending wasn't happy, but it was the right ending.  She marries Peta, has a decent life with some children, but never really gets over what happened.  She and Peta help each other through the aftermath of two Hunger Games and a war.  People don't go through what she went through and get a truly happy ending.  Combine that with Katniss losing the one person she wanted to save above everyone else, and there's no "happy" for her.

***END SPOILERS***

All in all I thought the movie was better than the book, which a weird thing for me to say and have be true.  But the movie got to explore perspectives other than Katniss', and honestly I found her inner monologue to be a little bland.  In the movies her emotional guardedness is a slowly cracking dyke between her and the torrent of horror and hopelessness her situation forces on her.  In the book that doesn't come across as much, which is odd because we are inside her head.  I guess what I'm saying is that without Jennifer Lawrence these movies would be just a Battle Royale ripoff.  I cared about book Katniss because of movie Katniss - I honestly don't know if I would have finished the series if I didn't see movie Katniss first.  Sorry, author lady.

Hearthstone Beta Impressions

The other day I got a nice surprise in the form of a Hearthstone Beta key.  I'd kind of forgotten I'd signed up for it, to be honest.  The only deck building game I've ever played is Magic: The Gathering but the small amount of time I've spent on it taught me that I really enjoy assembling decks.  Spending a crap-ton of money on cards to get a good deck, not so much though.  I am pleased to report that I have spent zero dollars on Hearthstone but in the two days I've been playing I've gotten 4 card packs which have enabled me to build a fairly solid deck.  Ten points to Blizzardclaw.  But I'm watching you.

I was going to write about the game yesterday but everything was turning into a long whine about how my emotions were behaving like a tweaker ferret.  It wasn't a great day.  Have you every had one of those days that starts out really great, but bottoms out hard about halfway through?  The ride to work was good - my fingers didn't freeze solid and Spotify pulled out some real gems for me.  I had some good games in the morning and won my first PvP in ages.  Things were great, and I honestly couldn't tell you where it started to go sideways.  But by lunch this was a real conversation that happened in my head -
"Well, I see you're having canned soup for lunch.  You know who has canned soup?  SAD PEOPLE and FAILURES.  It is a horrible food and you're horrible."
"Shut up.  That person is having canned soup and they're not a failure."
"Their soup is probably ORGANIC.  It was made in small batches.  There's sea salt in there, whereas your salt is LAZY SALT.  Now stop walking so loudly."
"I swear to god, brain, I will stab you with a Q-Tip."
By the end of the day I was fantasizing about crawling under my desk and glaring at people like a bridge troll.  I didn't do that though, and when I went home I plunked down in front of Hearthstone. After a couple games I felt a lot better.  So another ten points, Blizzard.  Gryffindor is going to have a hard time catching up at this rate.  Ok, whining over.

So far I don't have anything really negative to say about Hearthstone.  Like I said, my main source of trepidation was wondering whether I was going to have to spend money to not have a crap deck and I don't.  I approve of the decision to take land out of the picture and just build up your mana over the course of a few turns - seems more in line with a PC game than a game with physical cards.  The beginning of the game could use some balancing in my opinion, however.  It might be the way my deck is built, but I find absolutely no value in going first.  But if your turn is second you get an extra card and the mana crystal?  Who would ever want to go first?  That's a pretty small nit to pick, though.  I hope they add the ability to trade cards with other players soon because I've unlocked a ton of class cards I don't think I'll ever use because DRUIDS.

I've unlocked all the heroes now but the only one I've really dug into is the Druid.  I know I'm repeating myself but I love druids.  My favorite Pathfinder character of all time was a druid who rode a bear.  She was also half silver dragon, and from thence came my silver dragon quarter sleeve.  When the druid came out in the D&D Next playtest I thought I was going to have a joy aneurysm.  Druids forever.  Eventually I'll get into the other heroes I suppose but for now its all Druid all the time.

When I started playing I elected not to look up tips on how to build a good deck or what people were playing on the ladder and just wing it for a while.  I lost a lot at first because I didn't have a specific theme in mind for the cards I was choosing and just wanted to get a feel for what my options were.  Then I sat down and built a deck with a much better idea of what I wanted to do and how I could do it.  After a couple tweaks I'd say my winrate is about 60%.  So hurray for that.

If I was to name my deck it would be something like the Meat Shield.  Or the Surprise Knife To The Eye.  Or the Possum.  I knew I wanted to do two things - get as many cards into my hand as possible for the late game while forcing my opponent to burn their cards.  So all my cheaper minions either have Taunt or Draw as a Battlecry.  My cheaper spells for the most part buff my minions and give Taunt to the ones who don't have it.  That way I'm drawing more cards while keeping enemy minions off me while I build mana for the big guns.  And the opponent has to burn their minions to keep mine from building up to critical mass.  I also like to think I'm giving the impression that I'm buffing weaker minions because I don't have anything better, but I might be inflating my craftiness a bit.  The only other minion power I use is +1 spell damage.  Because once I get a couple of those out I can either clear the board with Swipe or pop a Starfire (I think that's what its called) for decent damage and an extra card draw.  After that its all huge monsters with lots of damage and Taunt or minions with good heath that buff the minions around them.  If I can get three or four of those big suckers out its usually GG unless the opponent has something really tricky they were holding back.  The other day I was killed by a combo Rogue that the dude or lady just played brilliantly.

Seriously, if there was a chat function I would have told them that.  You can kind of chat to people by making your hero say things like "Hello" or "Well Played" but it seemed kind of inadequate for the situation.

Not being a WoW player, my knowledge of the game is strictly garnered from people I know who play.  And I find my inner D&D supernerd getting its panties in a bunch about certain cards.  For instance, the spell Polymorph turns you into something more awesome than you are already, like a Black Dragon.  Baleful Polymorph turns an enemy into some non-threatening animal.  Also, Flame Strike is a divine spell, not an arcane spell so mages (wizards) don't get it.  Guess who does?  Futhermucking DRUIDS, that's who.  And also clerics, but who cares about them?

So overall Hearthstone is a Most Likely Will Buy At Launch for me, which is a title reserved only for my very favorite franchises because I am cheap as hell.  I haven't gotten into the crafting aspect of it at all, but I'm sure it will be fun times.  I've thought about trying out streaming on Twitch off and on, and I may do that a little bit because my computer can handle it and it would be interesting to see if I can climb the ladder without reading guides or studying the metagame or (and this is the big one) spending any real money of any kind on cards.  Ever.  The beta's been out for a while, so its probably a good guess that someone has already locked down the "Stream Hearthstone In Cleavagey Shirt" gimmick so I'll have to figure out something else.  Maybe weird hats.

The Old Republic: An Addendum

I remembered a few things this morning that I had intended to put into my post yesterday, so I’m making this a two-fer.  That’s probably for the best - that last post would have been a serious wall of text if I’d added more to it.  One thing I will revise about my customization review - I haven’t found a way to dye my clothes or transmute them (if I find a look I want but need the stats from something else).  How am I supposed to cavort about the galaxy as the eyeball-shattering unholy spangled diva that I clearly am with these horrifyingly drab outfits?  HOW?

...Composure regained.  Here we go.

PvP: B+
Keep in mind, this opinion is from someone who has never played any MMO PvP before this game.  I didn’t get into PvP in Guild Wars 2, but seeing as this is the closest thing I’m going to get to a real life lightsaber battle, I jumped into a warzone to check it out.  As a 10th level character with the most basic gear and hardly any grasp of the controls I died a lot, but I walked away with a decent idea of how it worked and a sense that it has the potential to be incredibly fun.  One thing that bothers me about PvP in these games is that skill in the moment seems to be less of a factor than awesomeness of gear.  Which means people who grind for hours to get the best gear will always beat people who aren’t insane.  But I’ve realized there’s a little more strategy involved than hoping your cooldowns reset before the other guy’s do, and that is in the strategic application of gear.  For instance, I found a forum thread addressing all the people complaining that you can’t be effective in PvP until you’re max level because that’s when the good gear can be equipped.  However, this person pointed out that you can buy gear that you can’t equip, take the mods off it, and install them on gear that you can equip.  I’m not expecting to be able to take my level 12 character into a Warzone and own bitches all over the place, but its good to know that with some prep and class knowledge you can do well.

Also, I think the ladder has completely turned me into a competitive person.  I never used to care about winning before, but now you should see some of the victory dances I’ve done the last few weeks.  Let’s just say they aren’t humble.  And I kind of want to become good at this game because all I ever wanted to be when I was a child was a Jedi.  Starcraft, you have turned me into a monster.

Combat: C+
Flat out, I was hoping that the combat would be a little more dynamic and hacky-slashy.  I want to feel like I’m in a real lightsaber fight, not waiting for cooldowns and spamming one attack until they do.  I might be playing it wrong, I don’t have the controls down yet.  I might be looking through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I had hoped for something more like what I remember about Jedi Knight II.  I loved that game, and not just because I’d been shipping Kyle Katarn and Jan Orrs all the way through Dark Forces II.  But its still fun, and the leaping attack Jedi Knights get reminds me a lot of being a Vanguard in Mass Effect.  I don’t care how much hate Vanguards get, Charge+Nova+Shotgun = pure undiluted joy.

Late to the Party Again: The Old Republic

I’ve said this before - I’m not really an MMO player.  There are very few instances in which I’ve found grinding to be enjoyable, I’ve found that the massive nature of the games doesn’t lend itself to gripping storylines, and I’m still hanging on to my poor-college-student aversion to monthly subscription fees.  When I found out Bioware was making a Star Wars MMORPG I thought about changing my ways, but for some reason when the game came out it just kind of slipped my mind.  However, I have some friends who play and its free now so I downloaded it.  In the middle of NaNo.  But since I’m a certified NaNoRebel writing about my first impressions totally counts towards my total words.  After some thought I decided to drop $30 on a 60-day subscription, but so far I have not played as a subscriber so this will all be from the perspective of a free player.  Also, I’ve had a monogomish relationship with Starcraft since I stopped playing Guild Wars and perhaps its time for some variety.  Don’t worry, baby, you’ll always be my main love-muffin.  I can’t quit you.

So here’s my review of the first few hours of The Old Republic: Cheapskate Edition, broken down into delicious bite sized niblets!  With grades.  Stay in school, kids.

Character Creation:  A-

As a free player I only had access to 3 races - humans, cyborgs, and those Darth Maul-looking folks.  I stopped following the EU quite a while ago, so while I do know that Admiral Thrawn is a member of the Chiss race I have no idea what they ended up calling Darth Maul’s race.  Not a terrible array of choices - I ended up going with cyborg.  Overall I was impressed with the customization options, although I docked points for cyborgs basically just being humans with cool facewear.  There are a lot of ways to make your avatar special - hairstyles, makeup, scars, skin texture and color.  There’s a limited but acceptable number of body types, and I went with your standard tall hotness.  I like my characters pretty, what can I say?  For the class options, I’ll admit I went into it with a bias.  I figured out which class lets you dual-wield lightsabers and went straight for that one with no consideration of the others.  Force powers, schmorsh powers - let me introduce you to my friends Cauterize Jackson and Dismemberment McGillicutty.  But with the base classes and advanced classes there are a lot of options for those who aren’t as laser-focused as I am.  So I came out of the process quite satisfied - my character is a white-mohawked chocolate beauty with dangerous-but-sexy facial scars and a Borg implant named Kirasca.

Yes, there’s a K.  There will always be a K, for K is my favorite letter.  If K were a person, she would be an exotic beauty with come-hither eyes and a smashing rack.  She would have expensive tastes but know how to live on the run.  Men would want to bang her and women would want to be her best friend.  Her voice would flow like flow like silk and burn like acid.  K is magnificent, got it?

Alignment System: C-

I almost gave the Dark/Light side points system an F, but I realized that was because I am biased against binary moral systems in general so I reevaluated.  This system could also be called the Way of the Jedi/Way of the Feels - some of the things that give you dark side points aren’t things that are necessarily evil or even selfish, but choices that involve letting your emotions have free reign.  For instance, I got dark side points because I decided to become sisters-from-another-mother with a Twi’lek girl because the Jedi way is serenity and staying detached.  So that’s pretty true to the whole Star Wars philosophy about the way to serenity being detachment from passions and whatnot.  I think this was a little more emphasized in the prequel movies than in the originals, or maybe it was just more ham-handed.

The other reason I wanted to give the alignment system such a low rating at first is because I can’t find any tangible rewards in the game for staying neutral.  I’m a huge fan of staying in the grey area - in Fallout 3 I took that perk that gives you stupid bonuses to Speech if your karma’s neutral and I wish there were more bonuses like that.  But of course there aren’t, and of course there’s all sorts of fancy gear associated with being either a total kitten-nuking dickbag or a saintly, tooth-rotting paragon of goodness and purity.  So if I play my character the way I plan to, by role-playing my choices according to how I believe she would react (which, given my history, generally tends to keep me in the grey), I’m going to be locking myself out of a bunch of gear.  But I’m still going to play it that way - YOU CAN’T CHANGE ME, GAME.

Crew Skills: A fucking plus so far

Wait… a crafting system where I can send my minions (er, friends) out to gather the stuff for me?  I don’t have to grind through dozens of low-level idiots and hope they’ll drop some frikkin jute rags so I can level my Tailoring??  Sign me the HELL up.  So far I’ve only been able to learn 1 crew skill (free version) and I picked Archeology because suck it, Doctor.  Its also a bonus because that T-7 droid annoys me, so sending it away to fetch stuff for me is a double bonus.  I’m sure the crafting system will get become mundane and frustrating over time as these things are wont to do, but for now I’m pretty pleased.

Story:  C (Thpoilerth)

Granted, I’ve only played through the first few hours of my class story, but its pretty humdrum stuff so far.  What I’ve come to rely upon in Bioware games is their well-developed characters and none of the ones I’ve met so far have really struck me except for Bengal Moor.  He had some depth, so to reward him for not being a boring milquetoast I let him live instead of killing him or knocking him out and delivering him to the Jedi Council.  It seemed like what Kirasca would do, anyway.  So now I have a “Dark Jedi Lightsaber” - I have a feeling my character is going to end up a rogue Jedi.  Not a Dark Jedi, but just one who chafed a little too much under the oppressive taupe mantle of the Jedi proper.  I really hope things get more interesting later, but its an MMO so I don’t have much hope.

Companions:  Submit a 500-word essay by Monday

I have only encountered one companion so far, the aforementioned droid that annoys me.  He gets pissed off when I talk about how awesome I am, and seeing as that is going to be a fixed pattern we will probably not get along well unless I bribe him.  I gained great satisfaction in wiping his memory of me letting Bengal Moor go.  We will see how the other companions measure up once I get there, but I will be curious to see if this game can produce any characters that live up to the likes of Varric, Oghren, Fenris, and Shale.  But on to the more important question - this is a Bioware game.  Where are my love interests and how long will it be before I can shag them?  I have priorities.

Free to Play Version:  B+

In the first few hours of the game, I did not notice anything prohibitive about being a free player.  I picked up a customization item I couldn’t use and the vendor prices are higher, but neither of those things really affect me much.  I don’t often buy equipment in games - I’m a serious miser because I know that once I spend a bunch of money on equipment something is going to drop that is better than what I have.  However, I can see that once you get further into the game sticking with the Cheapskate Edition will get annoying.  But, if you’re going to play the game for more than a few hours you should probably drop a few dollars on it anyway.  Which was my reasoning for buying a subscription.  I’m enjoying it, $30 will pay for itself fairly quickly, and I want to be able to display my Legacy name.

As a closing note - I really wonder if Legacy names are unique to the whole game, or only to the server you’re playing on, or at all.  Because if they are unique there are two years worth of players who missed out on locking down the awesomest surname in the Star Wars universe - Sunrider.  If you are unfortunate enough to not know who I’m referring to, let me lay some knowledge down.  Nomi Sunrider was a Jedi Knight in the Tales of the Jedi comics and has a tie with Mara Jade for Most Kickass Star Wars Lady.  She fought against Exar Kun and her lover, the fallen Ulic Qel-Droma, in the Great Sith War.  When the Sith were defeated Ulic had repented his ways, but not before murdering his own brother and Nomi was so pissed at him that she cut him off from the Force completely.  For good.  You do not want to piss this Legacy off, is basically what I’m saying.

Interlude: I Hope You Like Spoilers

I'm not sure what it says about a creative endeavor when one can't decide whether its brilliant or the worst possible thing ever.  That's how I feel about both Star Trek: Into Darkness and the Dr. Who season finale.  It is very confusing.

I suppose I'm cheating on my original idea for this blergblog thing in that I'm not talking about games right now.  I suppose I could point out that neither of the intellectual properties I'm talking about have (to my knowledge) a video game tie-in that isn't rubbish.  Seriously, has there ever been a Star Trek game that didn't suck?  And how exactly would the mechanics of a Dr. Who game work?  I want to say it would have to be a point-and-click adventure game but really most Dr. Who stories involve a lot of deus ex machina and not a whole lot of logic.  Case in point is one of my very favorite episodes - "New Earth" - where the Doctor uses pouches of Kool-Aid to cure a bunch of vat-grown humans of every known disease.  Now that I think about it, that sounds very point-and-click adventure-y and I would play the hell out of that game.  Someone get on that.

By the way... SPOILERS.  Spoilers for all things.  There are going to be spoilers EVERYWHERE.  I'll separate Star Trek spoilers from Dr. Who spoilers with the caps lock but after this sentence is done I take no responsibility whatsoever.  Leave now to remain unspoiled.

**BEGIN STAR TREK SPOILERS**

Remember when it was announced that Benedict Cummerbach was going to be a villain in the new Star Trek movie who "totally wasn't Khan"?  And then the whole Internet rolled its eyes because Mr. Cummerbach already plays a super-intelligent sociopath on the BBC and who the hell else would he be cast as?  And let me get one thing out in the open right away - I really did enjoy the movie.  It was a lot of fun and there were a couple moments where I was stifling squeals of fangirl-ish joy.  The gripes I have are pretty negligible in the grand scheme of how much fun I had.

To recap, at the end of the last movie it was established that the characters we knew and loved had been set on an alternate path because of interference from Nero and Future Spock.  As far as reboot concepts go, I am actually behind this one.  The fact that a huge event (Vulcan's destruction) happened changed all the characters in subtle ways, enabling the actors to put their own stamp on their roles without completely ticking off a huge loyal fanbase.

Its pretty obvious to me that the character who's changed the most is Spock.  Which makes sense - it was his home planet that was destroyed after all.  He still struggles with his emotions, but I feel like he lets his human side show more as a way to honor the mother he lost.  I am on board with that.  I even accepted him kissing Uhura on the transporter pad.  His home was dead, you can't judge a man for needing a little comforting.  What I am not ok with is making Zachary Quinto yell "KHAAAAAAAAAN!!"  No.  I wish I could erase my memory of that moment.  It worked when the Shat did it because he is William Shatner and melodrama is what he spreads on his toast in the morning.  He eats scenery for lunch.  This is all right and proper.  That moment was an icon and trying to replicate it made me laugh uncontrollably.  I don't think that was the emotional response it was intended to inspire.

Let's talk about the scene for a moment.  I have a freakish memory for movie and television plotlines, which may be one of the reasons I'm so on the fence about this movie.  The last time I watched The Wrath of Khan was about two years ago, but I remember Spock's death scene with absolute clarity, to the point where I could probably rattle off the whole dialogue if I thought about it hard enough.  And Spock's death scene is lifted very nearly intact and re-created in "Into Darkness" with Kirk being the one who dies.  There were whole bits of dialogue from that scene in "The Wrath of Khan" that are used unaltered.  The camera shot where (originally) Kirk realizes that the ship is saved and then looks over to Spock's empty chair?  That's there-ish.  Scotty yelling about how opening the door will "Flood the whole compartment".  Yep.  The list goes on.  And I honestly don't know how to feel about it.  Is it a brilliant tribute or lazy directing?  I really can't decide. Without committing to either opinion I will say it was an interesting reversal and it made sense for Kirk's character to finally realize that being a ship captain wasn't just whizzing around space and sleeping with cat-alien twins.

But Kirk's "death" felt a little cheap to me.  In The Wrath of Khan, Spock's death felt final.  And it took a whole entire movie for him to come back.  But that can't happen here because Kirk is human - he can't mind-meld with anyone to pass along his katra and as my sister pointed out its not like the creators would actually let Captain Kirk die for real.  They wouldn't be able to make any more movies.  So I there was kind of a lack of suspense.  You knew that Kirk would live, but you didn't know exactly how.  By the way....

Dr. McCoy saves him with a tribble.  And Khan's magic blood.  In case you thought there weren't enough spoilers already.  So, did I enjoy the movie?  Yes, yes I did.  But I feel confused and a little bit guilty for enjoying it.  There were more than a few genuinely awesome moments, but I really feel like it could have been better.  And the "KHAAAAN!" thing.  As the 10th Doctor would say - stop.  No, just... don't do that.

**END STAR TREK SPOILERS, BEGIN DR. WHO SPOILERS**

You may call me the Mistress of Segue.

The current season of Dr. Who has been an exercise in disappointment for me.  It took me forever to accept Matt Smith as the Doctor, but eventually I did because A Doctor is eternally better than No Doctor.  And there are some genuinely amazing bits about the 11th Doctor's run.  The reason I fell in love with Dr. Who was because it embraces whimsy and optimism so whole-heartedly that there could be an episode where the Doctor saves the universe with a kettle and a bit of string (see what I did there?) and you would be so starry-eyed and in love that you wouldn't care that it didn't make a lick of sense.  The starry-eyed optimism is not present for me in this season, but the not-making-sense has definitely stuck around.  In short, this season has been promises crushed by disappointment every step of the way.

"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"!!!  How could that ever possibly suck?  By being boring.  Which is what it was.

"Journey to the Center of the TARDIS"!!!  No, there is no way this could be bad.  Finding out what was in the TARDIS this whole time?  And yet, it was not good.

Neil Gaiman is writing another episode?!?  About Cybermen??!  Be still my thumping heart, surely this will save the Doctor from this horrendous pit of mediocrity.

Cue the sobbing.  Other than a few good moments, Neil Gaiman has written something that I did not like.    My heart is broken into a trillion tiny pieces.

So I didn't have very high hopes for the season finale.  And while I would like to say that it blew my mind and my faith is restored, that would not be the truth.  Let's bullet-point this nonsense.

1)  The villain.  I had to look up The Great Intelligence because I was certain that someone who had so much enmity for the Doctor that he was willing to destroy himself to kill the Doctor couldn't be just a side character.  Who was this Great Intelligence and why was he so upset?  Turns out the Great Intelligence has met the Doctor exactly twice.  Once in the Christmas special of this year and once back in 1968-era Who.  And he was willing to burn up his own existence for the satisfaction of foiling the Doctor over and over again?

2) The Impossible Girl.  The explanation behind Clara was so neat I could practically see the bow wrapped around it.  And while I kind of liked the sequences where they inserted her into old footage from the 60's and 70's in the end I felt let down.  It felt like everything was explained but nothing was explained.  The inside of the Doctor's timestream is a ruined planet?  The Doctor doesn't have a corpse (he's had loads of bodies), his remains are a hole in time?  Does Clara get out of his timestream?  Did he just jump into his own corpse?  The non-sense-making has reached a critical mass at this point.

3)  John Hurt.  Don't get me wrong, John Hurt is an amazing actor.  But his aesthetic in the finale illustrated something I didn't want to have to admit.  The whimsy and optimism and sense of wonder is going away.  John Hurt as the Doctor looks sad and tired and run down and his tragedy appears to be catching up with him.  That's not the Doctor I want.  I'm not even asking for Tilda Swinton, though that would be amazing.  Please let me have the illogical optimism.

4) River Song.  What was going on with her in this episode?  Was she a ghost, was she still living in the Library?  Nobody can see her but the door can hear her saying the Doctor's name?  I'm going to go on record here and say I really don't like her as a character.  "Forest of the Dead" was such a good episode and the part where the Doctor says that time can be rewritten and she says "Not those times.  Not one line.  Don't you dare." is simply heart-wrenching.  But when she comes back in the 11th Doctor's run nearly every time she opens her mouth I want to throw her off a cliff.  The smug smiling and the "Spoilers" and the "Hello Sweetie" and the guns... AGH I can't even.

All that being said, there were some moments I did appreciate.  Jenny saying in a panic "Ma'am I think I've been murdered" choked me up, and Strax is just the best thing in the world.  The Whispermen were incredibly scary as well.  Stephen Moffat comes up with some of the most amazing monsters I have ever seen, I'll give him that.  But that's just not enough.  This is really more vitriolic than I originally intended but that is because I love Dr. Who so much and it is seriously hurting my soul to see it so bland and mediocre.  I only have one thing to say about the 50th Anniversary special... Please, David Tennant, bring your glorious sticky-uppey hair back and save this thing that I love.  And don't be the meta-crisis Doctor.

Guild Wars 2: No Metagaming

I'm a little late to the Guild Wars 2 party, being of limited funds.  I almost wish I had bought it instead of Assassin's Creed 3 because for the life of me I haven't been able to get into it past a few multiplayer sessions.  The multiplayer isn't as fun as I remember, but maybe I haven't played it enough to get my mojo back and getting stabbed in the face every two seconds isn't so fun.  And I haven't started the single player because honestly it just seems exhausting.  Sure the combat and climby-jumpy stuff is fun and all, but the story is getting so damn convoluted and I KNOW its going to end with some wacko cliffhanger to lead into the inevitable sequel where there will be more climby-jumpy stuff and fabulous combat and MORE weird story elements to lead into another sequel and on and on for as long as they can keep it up.  Its like a long corridor with no end in sight, because Ubisoft has as much as confirmed (as far as I know) that they'll be trying to crank out an AC sequel every year.  Maybe I'll play it, but for now Starcraft and now Guild Wars 2 seem far more appealing to me.

So I've started two characters already, a Sylvari Mesmer named Kikkari and a Norn Ranger named Meia Lua.  Haven't played the ranger yet, and I'm wondering if I should level up one character and then the other, or just have four or five characters going concurrently.  But to the point, I took my Mesmer out and just started doing things - quests, gathering, crafting, exploring.  And I was doing it all without any outside information beyond a couple simple beginner tips and a guide for how the menus worked.  It was fun, surprising, and exploratory but eventually the cancer of metagaming started to creep in.  Where to get the best armor, what build should I use for optimal leveling, and (as Yahtzee says) how can I get my numbers to beat the enemy numbers so that my numbers are the best in the land.  I started alt-tabbing for a quick wiki-browse every couple minutes to figure out which skills to pick and other things until the fun just leached out of the game.  This happened my second gaming session, and after I was done I honestly didn't know if I would ever pick it up again.  There goes my fifty bucks, I thought.

I did eventually because of a lovely person I know on Twitter, and the fun came back just running around doing events and jumping puzzles (which I am rubbish at) and generally just having a good time without all the numbers.  So the next time I picked up the game I closed the guides about where to find the best armor and weapons and just used whatever I picked up from monsters or could buy with my karma.  I started crafting jewelry because I thought it would be fun, not because it would level me faster.  I became a tailor because I wanted to make pretty clothes.  I went back to my starting area and noodled around there and found a metric ton of things I hadn't seen before.  The first time I jumped into water and almost got killed by a zombie before I figured out how to swim was amazing.  I've died plenty and had to repair my armor because I wandered into something way too high level for me, including the Christmas airship which you are supposed to have five people to play.  I may not be an expert at the game, but I am having fun and if anyone mocks me for having n00b equipment I will make my character dance at them until they go away.

Oh, and also the snowball fighting they added for the Christmas season is the awesomepants.

That is not to say I don't indulge in the metagame, mostly in JRPGs.  I would never have gotten the good ending of Valkyrie Profile, Dante as a party member in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, or nearly every Ultimate Weapon in Final Fantasy X (pretty sure I was only missing Tidus' and Wakka's) without online guides.  And if you're wondering, yes I am indulging in a bit of nerd chest-puffery.  I still use guides for most Bioware games, but certainly not as frequently as I did previously.  Mostly it was just to make sure a moral choice was going to fuck me over in the long run or make me unable to sleep with Fenris.  But after Mass Effect 2 I stopped caring about maximizing my Paragon points because I found if I role-played Shepard the way I wanted I got a full meter anyway.  But most of the Western RPGs I've played other than that are all about exploration for me, to hell with the guides.  And since in Guild Wars 2 it seems to me the only reason to pore over internet strategies is to find out how to get to level 80 faster.  So, no thanks on that.

On the other hand, though, without the metagame in Starcraft 2 I would have rage-quit the first day.  I guess it just has to be judicially applied in the proper circumstances.

Mass Effect 3 - Romance and Gnashing of Teeth

I was going to call this post "How Commander Shepard's pot-boiler of a love life validates the ending" but that seemed a tad long for a title. So, spoilers. There will be a lot of them. If your virgin eyes haven't beheld ME3's endgame, or if you are replaying it trying to get a different outcome, navigate the hell away. Alright.

By now most people have heard a bit about the outpouring of fan rage over the endings. I'm not going to dwell on how stupid I think all the hullabaloo is, but its worth mentioning. By the time I got to the end, I had heard about the controversy but had studiously avoided any details. And when I got to the end I just sat there, torn and perplexed and miserable, pondering the final choice. It was a good five minutes before I made a decision. Why did it take so long? Because Commander Shepard was no longer just a series of moral choices to me. She'd become a real person with real emotions and desires and motivations and a SERIOUS wish to not die. And that's what stumped me.

You see, somewhere towards the beginning of Mass Effect 2 I stopped playing with the rigid "all Paragon all the time" mentality that had ruled the first game for me. My concept of Shepard was that she was generally a good person, but with all the Paragon points I'd gotten from importing my character I found I could be a dick sometimes and still max out the Paragon meter. So my thought was no longer "Is this going to get me Paragon/Renegade points?" but rather "What is she feeling right about now, and how would she react?" Like the Velveteen Rabbit, Shepard had become real. She was always snarky with the Illusive Man because she could tell he was holding out on her and that drove her nuts. Even some of the gameplay elements formed her personality for me. In ME2 and 3, I always did the interrupts no matter if they were Paragon or Renegade, so I started to think Shepard was more than a little impulsive. In the second game I reactivated Legion without a second thought, and brought Grunt out of the tank even though my crew didn't think I should. That told me that she will give anyone a chance, but just one. But the formation of her personality was the most present in the romance subplots.

Anyone who isn't interested in squishy feelings talk should also leave. This is going to be long winded. That and the spoilers.

So in the first game I hooked up with Kaiden. I got some grief from friends about passing up the hot alien nookie, but I'm old fashioned. Also, once I heard Carth Onassi's voice from KOTOR coming out of his mouth I was done. In the second game, I had my eye on Thane from the beginning. But I had to stop myself and think, because in my concept of the character she had real feelings for Kaiden. That night before Ilos wasn't just a fling for her. So why would she leave him for someone else? One word, Horizon.

It wasn't just that Kaiden was so harsh with her on their reunion, though that was part of it. Being accused of being a puppet will cool fuzzy feelings in a person. But I realized that even though it had been two years since the first Normandy went down, in Shepard's personal timeline she'd just seen Kaiden a few weeks previous. That's gotta cause confusion. So even though he sent her an apology letter, I think she figured the book was closed on the two of them. And there was Thane, with his tragic past and lovely voice. (Seriously, me and voices. Its like the deciding factor.) When I realized that Garrus was a potential hookup I thought about it, but realized we'd hit the friend zone long before and it would be weird. And so the game's characters ceased to be code constructs for me - they were all real people.

Cut finally to the third game, and Shepard is reunited with Kaiden. But he just can't stop with the suspicion, and during the mission at the Mars archive basically accuses me of being a Cerberus clone. Nothing I say can appease him, and that hurt. Of course, I see where he's coming from as I have concluded that Cerberus = Evil. But he doesn't trust that I'm myself, so there's resentment there. But then he gets his face smashed in by a Cerberus robot, and you have to get him to the Citadel for medical attention. And guess who's in residence there? Thane Krios, having reached the final stages of Keprel's Syndrome.

This was another instance where my thought processes were less "How can I get the Paramour achievement?" and more "What would she do right now?" When I visited Thane in the hospital, there's the option to drag him into a corner for some private time, but I wasn't sure I should do that. After all, before I even started playing the game I was pretty sure I was going to try to patch things up with Kaiden. But all that stuff on Mars really threw me. I felt guilty for letting him get hurt, but I was still angry about the whole clone thing, which made me feel even more guilty. And there was this dying assassin, not judging me and wanting to spend some of his last moments with me. So yeah, there was private time. But afterwards, he as much as told me to move on and live my life. It was poignant. Especially later, when he died protecting me from Kai Leng.

When I visited Kaiden in the hospital, of course he knew about me and Thane. Where would the drama come from otherwise? In the moment, there's the option of being matter-of-fact about it or contrite. I went with contrite - I was still feeling guilty for letting Dr. Eva smack him around and now even though I thought our book was closed apparently he didn't. Fast-forward to the Udina's coup on the Citadel, and our dinner at Apollo's Cafe. In game terms, Kaiden was my locked-in love interest at that point.

And that brings me to the ending. My Shepard had thought she'd lost the love of her life, found another one, lost him too, but found the first one again. And she wanted to keep him. She wanted to retire on some beach with Kaiden, sipping mojitos, where the most important decision she'd have to make was what to order for dinner. But the Catalyst gives you three options, and there was only one with even a slight possibility she might survive, and that's to destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy. The Geth and EDI included - and these were two forms of life that she'd had a hand in making who they were. Could she do that, just for the dream of a beach and mojitos? Turns out she couldn't, and as I limped up to the synthesis option all I could think about was how sorry I was I'd never see Kaiden again, but that I was bringing peace to the galaxy.

That's what validated the ending for me, all the choices that led up to it. And the heartbreaking decision to give my own life for the rest of the galaxy. It was a fitting end for Commander Shepard, a character who deserved nothing less than a polarizing, inspiring, and final conclusion.

Re-playability

First, a note to the 1-3 people who actually read this thing, my computer had a demon in it so I have had to turn it off. Turns out it was my media hard drive going the way of the dodo. Jubilations. Hence, the gap in posts.

Anyways, I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a game worth playing more than once. Now, I'm not taking about multiplayer games obviously, because while you do play the same maps over and over, its always a different experience because of the different people involved. No, re-playability is some special quality of a single player game that makes someone go back to the same story, system, and characters over and over again. There are all sorts of games in all genres that are highly re-playable, so its not a quality of one genre of games. So I thought I'd go over some of the games I've gone back to over the years and see what kind of things they have in common.

Now, I'm not only going to be talking about games that I've gotten 100% completion on - that would be a short list. But I'm also not going to talk aout games that I never finished. Before you call stupid on me, I know what "to replay" means. But I've played Lumines about a thousand times, but I've never actually made it to the final skin of the single player mode. So I feel like my picking it up again and again is more about conquering something that going back to it. Anyway.

Devil May Cry 4: I think I've played through the single player campaign at least 4 times, mostly on the same difficulty setting. As with the others in the series, the lure of replay for me was more about the style meter than it was about beating the higher difficulty settings. The satisfaction of seeing that "Smokin' Sick Style!" pop up on your screen while you're juggling a demon in the air never gets old, no matter if its the same demon as the last one. So its less about the enemies you're facing, but how you can face them with more baddassery. Sure there were those extra challenge rooms that you could try and get to if you missed them the first time around, but for me it was always about style. But even I had to admit that tower at the end with the spiky dice where you have to fight every single other boss in the game was a little annoying. If I remember correctly, you'd already fought all of them twice, once with Nero and once with Dante. Except for that seed-pod-throwing snake lady. Killing her never got old.

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth: I love this game. The graphics are dated, but still attractive. The characters (most of them) are relatable, and it has that underlying Norse theme that I never could resist. I'm on vacation now in the middle of my third playthrough - and believe you me this is quite a long game. The battle system is great, trying to tie your combos together with various characters never gets stale because there are so many characters to chose from. But there are lots of RPGs I've played with great systems that I haven't devoted as much time to, and I think the difference here is the system is an exquisite balance between deep and interesting. There are a lot of nuts and bolts to this game, to the point where you can't get the "good" ending unless you know most of them. But for some reason that's not frustrating or prohibitive. For one thing, the progress of the war for Valhalla changes depending on the characters you send, making for a different story experience every time. The skills system is fun - trying to balance which skills to level and which not to. In fact, most of the extraneous bits of the system are interesting and fun to uncover. Admittedly there are some secrets that are really obscure and I had to use the Interent to find them. But the combination of a fun battle system, an immersive and complicated level progression, and a story partially contingent on your actions makes me pick it back up again every couple years.

Mass Effect (1&2): I've played both these games at least twice, and plan to play them again. I prefer the second one, mostly because of the annoying vehicle sections and confusing inventory screen in the first installment. But I still played the first one twice because I wanted a "perfect" Shepard to import into the second game. But it didn't seem like a chore, it was still fun once I stopped raging at the stupid MAKO. The second one expanded my understanding of my Shepard as a character. I built her as a pale, tough looking brunette with a scar across her eyebrow, and decided she was going to be a Paragon. After that, her personality started building itself in my mind. In the first game, she was an idealistic proponent of galactic unity, willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good. She talked Wrex down when it counted, and all of her allies trusted her. But in the second game I think she gained more depth for me, mostly because of all my imported Paragon points. I knew I would be able to max out my Paragon meter halfway through the game, so I had the option of choosing some of the Renegade options when I felt like it. I decided that the experience of dying and being brought back by a company she previously thought to be evil made her a little more impatient and cynical. That coupled with a boss that wouldn't tell her anything - she definitely grated under his smugness. But her core ideals stayed the same. I wonder how Lenneth Shepard will develop in the next game. The character development coupled with the fun combat - I will probably play the second one at least one more time before the next one comes out. I've played as a Sentinel and a Vanguard, and I loved both. But there's nothing that can beat the Vanguard's Charge+Elbow to the Face+Shotgun to the Nads combo.

Dragon Age (1&2): Another Bioware series. My experience with both of these games was the same - once I finished them for the first time I immediately started over again. There are so many variables, you can get a different experience every time. There's different classes, party characters, romances, random party banter, and tons of sidequests. My first playthrough was always the quick-and-dirty one without too much sidequesting so I could see the story, but I'd always go back for the meticulous, do-everything playthrough because I loved the story and system so much.

Super Mario World: There is something incredibly charming and timeless about 2D platformers. They remind me of a simple time in my life when all I needed to worry about was pretending to be busy while I was supposed to be doing schoolwork. I've played some of those levels a dozen times and its still fun. At first its fun to figure out what patterns of jumping needs to happen to get through the level. Then after that its kind of a zen experience to watch yourself expertly maneuver Mario through the various pitfalls. I love the low-tech music, mostly because it reminds me of being a kid.

Final Fantasy X: This one was mostly about getting revenge on the Omega Weapon. There's a secret dungeon populated by ridiculously hard monsters with an ungodly ridiculously hard monster at the end. With no save points. On my first playthrough I spent six hours getting through that dungeon, leveling my characters multiple times, only to be killed in one shot by the Omega Weapon. This was my greatest rage-quit moment, and I had to put the game down for a couple weeks. But I came back to finish the story, swearing that one day I would have my revenge. The first time through I didn't pay much attention to the minigames and only got a couple of the Ultimate Weapons because at a certain point I just wanted to see how the story would end. Not the second time. While I could have started from a save from my previous game, I decided it would be better to start fresh. And so, armed with a strategy guide and some tips from friends I carefully plotted the downfall of the Omega Weapon. In doing so I discovered several elements of the game that I'd previously overlooked. For example, at first I thought blitzball was stupid, but in my trials to get Wakka's Ultimate Weapon I realized its actually kind of fun - especially because you can just play a couple games to kill twenty minutes or so. I did finally slaughter the Omega Weapon and I really hope nobody got that victory dance on tape. Thank you, No Encounter weapon!

The Elder Scrolls series: Ok, this is a bit of an exception since its more about continuous playability than re-playability. I consider them to be similar, so here we go. I've played the last three entries in the series, but I'll mostly talk about Skyrim since its the most recent. I've dropped so many hours on this game, because there are thousands of things to do. You can ride around on your (undead, in my case) horse and collect alchemy ingredients, and spend hours experimenting with potion recipes. You can explore caves and slaughter bandits. You can kill dragons and absorb their souls. There's Dragon Priests to hunt, giants to sneak up on. And I haven't even mentioned any of the questlines yet. I'm almost 100 hours deep into the game and I haven't really touched the main quest. In fact, the last few hours I've played were spent raiding people's houses and stealing their cheese and apple pies. That's right, I steal cheese.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the system is the thing most of these games have in common. Even in different genres, a well-built system is core to re-playability. But its more than that. I loved the system in quite a few games that I've only played once. In the end it comes down to a symbiotic relationship between the nuts-and-bolts of a game and its creative elements. A good system is nothing without an engaging story and characters, and the best story in the world can't be carried by a broken game. But creative elements don't only refer to story and characters - in the case of puzzle games it might be well-designed graphics or an interesting new gameplay gimmick.

I guess the moral of the story here is that moderation and balance makes things awesome. And also, I just wanted to nerd out about some of my favorite games.