Final Fantasy X: Open Concept Barn

I'm replaying Final Fantasy X, and I got to one of the parts where you get a different cutscene depending on who you were palling around with.

Two of the characters get into an argument about organized religion. While driving to their next destination, the protagonist and one other character are talking it over. It's meant to give the player some insight into the thought-process and feelings of characters that are otherwise pretty guarded (FFX is populated by several hard-asses who refuse to tell the main character important information. There's a good reason for why this is, but it makes them to seem like cold, unhelpful jerks for the first half of the game).


Who the main character talks to on the way is different, depending on how you play the game.

RIDIN' ON CARS!!

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7 Better Endings For "Mass Effect 3"

~~~~~
-Powerless, the survivors have no choice but to defeat the Reapers... THROUGH THE POWER OF DANCE!

*Cut To: All of the Reapers exploding
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Penny Arcade, Mass Effect: "Pandora's Box"

Some people started a donation drive thingy to "Take Back Mass Effect 3" after the childishly stupid ending was discovered, mostly by people who had paid hundreds of dollars for the special edition of the game that promised the ending wouldn't be childishly stupid.

They figured the best way to send a message to Bioware that they ought to do something about this would be to show it with their money. But in a misguided attempt at kindness, they decided all funds would go to Child's Play.

Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, two people who -liked- the Mass Effect 3 ending, have decided to reject all funds directed to Child's Play from this movement. Their reasons?

"Child’s Play cannot be a tool to draw attention to a cause.  Child’s Play must be the Cause."

And you know what? As much as I hate the idea of needy kids being deprived of joy that such money could buy... I agree.

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Mass Effect 3: "Homosexuality"

The tragedy is that this person is stuck writing for Gamespot. That's not fair.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

High Definition Sucks

That's a dead url, btw, so don't bother.

There is something really annoying going on, and it's why I don't watch as much TV or play as many new video games anymore. At some point, games and shows started just assuming you have a widescreen television. Even just a couple of years ago, a new game would give you an option to play in widescreen or full-screen. Now they just assume you have the most expensive, gigantic HD, 3D alien View-a-motron available for domestic purchase.

So now everything is cutoff. On a standard television, TV Shows and commercials do this stupid thing where half of the onscreen text is bleeding out past the edges, or half of people's faces are cut out of frame. In video games, this means that the Heads Up Display is impossible to read, as well as text. The new Halo games do this. So do the Dragon Age and the Mass Effect series'. Both of those games are ALL ABOUT reading text and determining a response... in a visual presentation that makes both of those things impossible.

Do you see where the trouble comes in?

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Mass Effect 3: James Vega

Meet Mass Effect 3's newest squad mate. In a game universe with dozens of interesting alien species that would have made fucking awesome team-mates, they give us a white guy with a douchey faux-hawk who does a lot of crunches.

Way to break the mold, Bioware.

Don't we already have Kaiden to be the boring whitie no one puts in their squad or talks to or looks at if it can be at all avoided? Do we really need another one of those? And what if you PLAY as a Commander Shepard who's a boring white guy? Well then that's half of your team being a poor man's recreation of EVERY OTHER VIDEO GAME EVER MADE.

Favourite Things of 2010

Every year since about 2005, I've made a list of my Favourite Things from the previous year. They can be anything. Movies, Games, TV Shows, Songs, cupcakes, scented candles shaped like dongs, what have you. If it happened to be one of my favourite things of that year, it got featured with a light writeup.

I of course distinguish between "Favourite" and "Best". I don't think the two are synonyms. When I say "Favourite", I'm not necessarily saying it was the biggest achievement in the history of ever. I'm saying that even though I know not everyone will like it, that it might even be a deeply flawed example, for whatever reason I admired or appreciated it.