Do not want: “One of the company’s newest hopefuls in the arena is Mass Effect. Amazon Studios is nearing a deal to develop a series based on the best-selling sci-fi video game franchise from Electronic Arts.” …God help us all. I’ve always smugly watched other people’s favorite video game franchises crash and burn when they’re brought to the big screen; but I never thought it would happen to me. Clearly, this is a judgement upon my sins.
#commissionearned
Moe Lane
PS: Yes, Bioware is dead to me, too. It still pains me to see this.
Not the first time. IIRC, people were talking about a possible Mass Effect movie clear back when the first game was still the only one out.
Which would have been the only time it could possibly be good.
Apologies in advance Moe:
I want boobs back in games!
I want romance in games!
Romance has its place, but…
I used to frequent the Bioware forums off and on. I finally left for the last time during the lead-up to Inquisition. The biggest and most popular threads *by far* were ones in which someone opened stating why their preferred character gender absolutely positively *must* be a romance option for a particular character, and the numerous posts agreeing with them. There would literally be dozens of pages of replies in any given post along those lines.
Any post that wasn’t along those lines quickly got dropped to the second or later pages, and forgotten. It was annoying. And it all seemed rather childish and silly, really.
That’s kind of my point: romance has been pushed aside in the name of representation only.
Who played Ghost of Tsushima. That would have been a perfect opportunity for a romance between the main character and the thief gal. Nope. Stone.
Haven’t played it. Wasn’t even aware that there was a potential romance there since no one ever talks about other people that you meet in that game. Nioh (which I also haven’t played, though I think I got it for “free” from PSN a while back) apparently has a potential one, as well, that never quite plays out. I think part of the reason why you don’t see romances in games like that is that too many people who would otherwise be fans of the game are likely to knee-jerk accuse it of being sappy, and undermining their otherwise oh so serious story.
My condolences.
Mew
p.s. I wonder what sort of a lunatic it would take to propose making anything video out of … Dwarf Fortress …..
I once wrote a five minute play about dwarf fortress. It was very memetic and my teacher was very confused. I think I got an ‘A’ on that assignment.
If it were a total dumpster fire, it would be appropriate, and might cross the line into cult classic territory.
Speaking of dwarf themed games, has anybody else been enjoying Deep Rock Galactic?
(Tagline: Danger. Darkness. Dwarves.)
I only tried it because of GamePass, but it’s really good. The graphics are a bit on the potato side, but the lighting and shadows are phenomenal, the gameplay is polished, and it’s just danged fun.
Short (heh) description, you’re a dwarf, working for a mining company, that’s mining a dwarf planet (heh) that’s infested with hostile alien bugs.
Space dwarf. That’s important. Since otherwise people tend to think more fantasy when they see that word.
Haven’t played it myself. But one of the forums I frequent has had a number of people say very good things about it. Should also add that it’s designed to have a group of up to four players working together.
I should note that the co-op is smooth and effortless in a way Destiny and Anthem never were.
The matchmaking is up to you.
You pull up the menu of available missions, start a game yourself and chose to run solo, friends only, or public.
OR you can push another button, and all the missions you can currently join pop up, complete with difficulty, how many players of what classes are in it, how long they’ve been going, etc. There are incentives to join a mission currently in progress, in that you get credit for completing a mission of that type without having to run the whole thing, so games often snowball as more people jump in, start doing multiple things simultaneously, and synergies start clicking. Many hands make light work, and all that.
(Plus it’s a good community, and the tools to boot someone are easy to use. I’ve had to kick one griefer since I started playing.
Considering that the game DOES have friendly fire damage, and you’re using flamethrowers, miniguns, grenade launchers, etc. in close quarters against swarming, burrowing enemies, that’s phenomenal.)
That said, it is perfectly viable to play Solo. Since you (can choose to: it’s on by default) have a robot companion with a considerable amount of firepower when playing solo, there isn’t a big difference between solo and with one other player. (If you have the mission open for joining, the robot self destructs when the second player joins. Which can be inconvenient if you’re in the middle of a firefight, because it’ll take the new player a few seconds to orient themselves and start to act.)
But the benefit from running solo would normally be more loot, and as far as I can tell, rather than divide the booty by the number of players, everybody gets full value. So there’s pretty much no downside to leaving your game open for public joining. And groups formed this way stay together until players choose to leave, so if you get a good group that clicks, you can just stay with it. (And buy each other beer in between missions.)