A decision

After talking to a few of you through comments or actual conversation, I’m going to stick with the hybrid approach. I really appreciate all the feedback and it’s nice to know there are some people who are interested in seeing me continue working in this space.

Some things you can expect:

• I’ll still share links, because really, I find a bunch of stuff semi-regularly that I can’t not share
• I’ll try to do reviews more often. These will include books, films and tv shows, so long as I’m not too lazy, or they’ll just be reactions to the same types of media if I’ve grown to close to it to be able to do a proper review
• I’m also considering doing reviews of series starting with James Bond. I’ll focus mainly on the films, but will try to tie in the books as often as I can (and since I own 10 of the books that should be for about… 10 of the films)
• I’m going to start talking about what’s going on in my life. That could mean cooking, the dogs, family, whatever. When it’s (eventually) time to have a baby, I’ll probably chronicle some of that here

So that it’s. Again, thanks very much for your feedback and if there’s anything you want me to write about, just let me know.

Blog burnout

Earlier this week I was rightly called on my lack of posting by Rhett. I started strong and was excited about this blog, but for various reasons, I’ve burned out and even quicker than I thought I would. Work got busy and stressful, I started playing more video games and my RSS feed reader got overwhelming.

I wish I could say I have a plan, but I don’t. A part of me likes the current format of the blog: take the links I would have put on Facebook and put them here instead. It’s easier to find them later when I want to refer back.

Also, I liked writing up book reviews. Thing is, I haven’t been reading much either. The 95 Book challenge started to get pretty damn un-fun when I realized I was reading poetry and comic books just to try and keep up with the numbers. That feels a lot like cheating and it’s hard to read a lot what with my full-time job, two crazy dogs and a marriage I like actively investing in. Maybe that’s just me, but I suspect it’s a lot easier for the people who are doing lit degrees and need to read a lot of it for classes anyway. But I digress.

So… I’d like to ask you, the 8 people who have subscribed to this blog (most of whom I know personally)–is there anything in particular you’d like to see? I’m considering a few things:

1. Continue with the current format, but try to update more often (i.e. do the reviews, post links)
2. Make this more of a personal blog, talk about some of the day-to-day
3. Do a hybrid of 1 and 2

If you have any thoughts, please do leave a comment. I don’t want to close this, but I need to figure out what to actually do with it.

Books & Film: Zombie Beatles movie could be on its way

According to Deadline, the yet-to-be released novel Paul is Undead by Alan Goldsher has already been optioned by Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher at Double Feature.

Written as oral history, the book details how Lennon, a zombie guitarist in Liverpool, kills and reanimates McCartney, then does the same with Harrison and Starr. They create hits and bloody mayhem across the world, pursued by England’s greatest zombie hunter, Mick Jagger. They also engage in a battle with Eighth Level Ninja Lord Yoko Ono, and snack on the brains of swooning fans.

I’ll go see it. And in the meantime, there’s a book I’ll be pre-ordering.

The Beatles Join The Zombie Hit Parade

Game experience: Mass Effect & Mass Effect 2

Where have I been the last couple of weeks? I’ve been way too busy playing through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to read things online, let alone post anything. I know, I know. My bad. I would say I won’t do it again, but we all know I will the next time another game captures my attention.

This isn’t really going to be a review of the Mass Effect games. I’ll share my impressions, but I mostly want to put my choices out there and let this be a place where people can also talk about the choices they made when they were playing. So if you haven’t played yet, stop reading here because the rest of this post is going to be riddled with spoilers.

Which game is better?

This is a tough call and it really depends on whether you value story more than gameplay. In terms of story, I think Mass Effect was better. It had a great overarching narrative where you’re the underdog, taking your squad to hunt the bad guy across space.

Mass Effect 2′s story was good but so much time was spent on gaining each team member’s loyalty that I found it easy to lose site of the overall narrative. Yes, many of the loyalty missions are great (Samara’s and Tali’s stand out for me), but the game was really about assembling the team to take out the big bad in one major suicide mission.

Mass Effect decisions

Character

First off, I chose to play a spacer soldier with the standard male Shepherd look. Going the spacer route turned out to be a good choice since Neil had several game files where his Shepherd was a colonist. It made it much easier to know which file to import into Mass Effect 2. It also led to a conversation between Shepherd and his mother that I would have missed otherwise.

Team

Because my Shepherd was all combat, I ended up rolling most of the game with Tali and Liara. I was a little leery at first about not taking another combat person along but it worked out better this way. When things would start to get overwhelming, Liara would pull someone up in the air. Fantastic.

Relationship

I mostly thought Ashley was annoying, so I had Shepherd go the relationship route with Liara. She was also more interesting because she had more  at stake emotionally since she doesn’t trust easily and she’ll outlive Shepherd by 800 years or so.

Major decisions

• I saved Wrex
• I let the Rachni queen go in hopes that a Rachni army will help out in Mass Effect 3
• I let Kaidan die instead of Ashley. In terms of the story, it made the most sense to me that the guy rigging the bomb wouldn’t make it out alive
• I let the Council die. Again, this made the most sense to me because otherwise most of humanity will die. However, I’m considering doing another run next year or the year after in anticipation of Mass Effect 3 because I didn’t know how much shit I’d get from NPCs about the Council not being around. It is probably literally the only decision I’ll consciously change from this run
• I left Captain Anderson in charge instead of Ambassador Udina because Udina was such a pain in the ass

Mass Effect 2 decisions

Character

When I imported my character, I opted not to change his specs. It was a good opportunity to do so, but I wanted to see the story through as a soldier. It worked out well because I greatly benefited from the adrenaline rush ability when I used the sniper rifle, which was most of the time.

Team

I mainly rolled with Tali again, but I tended to switch up the second character between Jack, Samara, Grunt and even occasionally Miranda.

Relationship

Because Shepherd had the relationship with Liara, I didn’t have him get into another relationship. The quests around Liara on Illium were okay and sort of indicated that there would be a payoff in Mass Effect 3 if Shepherd doesn’t cheat on her. I’m looking forward to the rumoured Liara DLC and am hoping that it’ll be a mission to take out the Shadow Broker.

Major decisions

• I helped Miranda’s sister get away and encouraged her to talk to her
• I let Jack blow up the Cerberus facility where she grew up but stopped her from killing the other former patient
• I let Mordin take the data
• I let Garrus shoot Sidonis
• I let Samara kill Morinth
• I helped Tali get pardoned
• I helped Thane stop his son from assassinating Jorim Talid
• I let Legion upload the virus to the geth heretics
• I chose to blow up the Reaper station
• I had Tali open the doors at the station
• I let Miranda lead the other teams
• I had Kasumi escort the doctor back to the Normandy

I didn’t manage to save most of the crew because I wanted to complete the loyalty missions first. Having no crew makes the Normandy creepy as hell, but I was happy to make it through without losing any of the squad members and with all of them loyal.

Final thoughts

Unless they start releasing GTA-style games, I will play any game that Bioware puts out. They’re masters not only of storytelling, but of creating complex moral choices that have real consequences.

I loved going through Mass Effect 2 and seeing the way my decisions in Mass Effect affected people, with the exception of all of the race relations issues that came with letting the Council die.

So although I recently said Dragon Age: Origins is my favourite game, I think the Mass Effect series soundly kicked it down to second spot. That’s still good news for Bioware though.

Buy Mass Effect on Amazon.com
Buy Mass Effect on Amazon.ca

Buy Mass Effect 2 on Amazon.com
Buy Mass Effect 2 on Amazon.ca