One-paragraph reviews...

[ilanin]

Because I used to write reviews for books I'd read and games I'd played, but haven't been doing so for ages so this is a catchup.

Computer Games:
35. X-Com: Enemy Within (Firaxis/2K, 2012-3)
36. Mass Effect 3 (Bioware/EA, 2012)
37. Long Live the Queen (Hanako Games, 2012)
38. Science Girls (Hanako Games, 2009)
39. Fire Emblem: Awakening (

Comments

[requiem_17_23]

Specialist *Bentley*?

(oblig link: artrald.wordpress.com)

[requiem_17_23]

Rereading this recently, I'm struck especially by the way *everything is still stupid*. Half a dozen story elements would need to be outright excised to the point that it didn't even follow the game plot any more before it would stop being stupid.

The story needs half as many characters, and either a *solid* theme beyond 'the brainless adventures of Shepard, space badass' or a much stronger insistence on the action-filminess of the whole thing - it needs to be either Babylon 5 or Star Wars, it cannot handle attempts to be both. And a high-concept-SF ending requires a high-concept-SF beginning and middle: opening like an action film requires that you play like an action film and close like an action film, or you will disappoint the audience.

[ilanin]

I think a large part of the stupid comes from the fact that Bioware clearly had no idea how they might present the Reapers as a regular antagonist. Accordingly, therefore, they tried to avoid having the Reapers be the actual enemy as much as they thought they could get away with...which really is the proximate cause of everybody being a moron.

[ilanin]

The number of different surnames I have given Samantha Traynor is now beginning to get silly.