Uncharted and Mass Effect 3
Feb. 20th, 2023 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietI've been playing some more video games. Spoilers for Mass Effect 3 below.
My roommate bought some Uncharted games for her PS5 so when I'm home alone I've started playing some of that. I've never played any of the Uncharted games before and am starting with A Thief's End, which I think is the last in the franchise so I think I'm going backwards, but I'm not particularly concerned about any of that. It makes for a good dinner time game, because there are a bunch of cut scenes and I can just eat whenever I don't need to have my hand on the controller.
I'm enjoying the game for what it is. It definitely opts to put everything on very strict rails to ensure a smooth story, which is fine. Very much not an exploratory game even though there are a few little tidbit rewards for poking around the odd corner and dead end. The gameplay feels smooth and the combat is fun. I've been going as stealth as possible but usually end up having to clean up the last bit in a fire fight. I've also been taking full advantage of the aim assist, because I haven't played an FPS on console since Perfect Dark.
The puzzles, such that they are, are almost insultingly easy and do not appear to be intended to be really that puzzly, which is a bit of a disappointment because I really enjoy puzzles. But there's still that little "gadget go whir" satisfaction every time you turn a switch or press a button. The story is fun but also kind of silly. You're chasing down some pirate treasure, and the characters occasionally do things that are not so bright. For example they are texting each other puzzles and their solutions. The whole time this was happening I was thinking, ok, you're racing to a treasure and your biggest asset is knowing things your rival doesn't and your texting each other shit? OPSEC anyone? Sure enough the next scene is the baddie being like mwa ha ha I hacked your phone, see you, suckers. Which, at least the game kind of knew that was a silly thing to do? The characters also keep showing up at each new location, all of which are in a situations where I'm like, how was this not discovered again? (Including a tower in the middle of a busy town where the puzzles is just straight there on the floor, like no one ever just thought to ... go in the tower?) And every time they're like, we've made it to the treasure! Where is the treasure! You'd think after the 7th or 8th location they'd be like, let's temper our expectations a little bit.
I found the climbing stuff to be both fun and hilarious. Dino 5 times in a row? No problemo. Need to climb up a low wall but there's a shrubbery in the way? No can do. That said the game does a wonderful job of identifying what is and isn't doable and I rarely got lost or confused.
Overall the game is fun to play and the silliness is kind of a contributing factor rather than a detriment. It's also a really well voice acted game, and so the emotional performance comes through quite well. I play modern AAA games so rarely it's always a little bit of a surprise when the production values are so high. It like, whoa, everything works!
Which brings me to the other game I started playing. I got a bunch of Steam dough for the holidays and have just been sitting on it so far, but I got an itch to finally try ME3 and since you can get it with all the DLC for about 15 bucks now I was like, alright, I'll pull the trigger. Unfortunately to get that price you need to get some deluxe edition that contains all three games and takes up like a third of my hard drive, but small sacrifices. My single motivation for playing this game is that I want to smooch Kaiden. I wanted to smooch him in ME1 back when I played it many years ago, but he refused to be smooched by a dude, and then with ME2 he just wasn't around. I thought I might smooch Jacob as a consolation prize but he also does not smooch men. It was a desert out there for a long time. But I was pretty sure in ME3 I will finally get to have my gay space romance.
To tell the truth, who I really wanted to smooch was Joker, but woe, that has never been an option.
I was never a huge fan of the Mass Effect games. They are not bad and were probably cutting edge back when they were made, but I played them many years later, and the writing in particular I always found a bit rough. Dragon Age has always been my preferred series. The voice acting for the male Shepard is such a struggle lol, man the things I do for a smooch. And the line by line stuff feels like pure cheese a lot of the time. But when the game gives me some whump right at the start and then puts Kaidan half naked in a hospital bed I just have to give it an A+.
Playing this game now, after all that Andromeda mess, I feel like a lot of the stupid wank over the latest game relied on a bunch of easily offended morons making hay over franchise typical silliness. I haven't played Andromeda so I won't draw too firm a conclusion, but dumb shit goes on in these games starting from ME1, and while choices were somewhat consequential, clearly a certain amount of laziness was already set with the ending of the third game which I've only been spoiled for to the extent that I know everyone hated it. I'm not concerned because my expectations are calibrated properly, I think.
When I started playing I hadn't played 2 in years and didn't have an old save, so I went through the "intro comic" that would set my save state. Well I fucked that up entirely by thinking there might be a little nuance in my choices and got a disaster state where literally everyone was dead. I figured, whatever, I am here to smooch Kaiden so if he's alive I'll just go with it, but after playing a bit started to get worried that I had fucked myself over and ended up resing everyone with a save editor. Only, I didn't remember what any of the other save state flags meant and did kind of a sloppy job, and as I've been playing along everyone has fucking been dying on me all over again. Tali threw herself off a cliff. Miranda got shot. Thane got himself out assassined, but to be fair Thane was dying anyway. Everyone's fucking dying on me! I considered fucking with the save again, but it's not like I can redo those scenes so oh well.
And I have still not smooched Kaiden. We had a conversation at a cafe about dating so we're... together? But I had triggered the citadel DLC (I didn't know that's what it was at the time) /before/ that so I just missed all of his romance stuff there. I'm so saaaaaad. Why did the game even let me start that mission when it meant I couldn't actually see where all the meaty romance stuff was going to be?
Outside of the plot stuff the game mechanics also drive me nuts. The combat is weird, the cover play annoys me, I couldn't kill shit for a long ass time and then when I picked up the gun in the Citadel DLC finally I could just oneshot everything with a pistol which trivializes the combat but I don't care so much because I think the combat is a little awful. I haven't liked a Bioware combat system since DA:O tbh. The weapon updates are a pain in my ass. Inventory system and number crunching are my least favorite things in games and so I just ignore it, honestly, which is probably why I was so underpowered before I got the god gun.
I'm pushing through just cause I want that last Kaidan scene but wish I had just spoiled myself completely so I hadn't fucked myself over with this playthrough. I guess I'll just watch the cut scenes on youtube or something or find an early save and just redo the Citadel part at the right time... ;_;
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Date: 2023-02-21 04:10 am (UTC)I only played the ME games for the first time in like 2020, long after I'd played all of DA, so yeah, I'm not as nostalgic for them as other folks (though I am friends with a lot of ME fans), but I have a soft spot for them. I also realized I don't really like science fiction games generally (my preferences are for fantasy). I also couldn't put myself through male!Shep lol Not for meh m/m romances in the third game, and nothing in games 1 & 2 (if Imma be in a potato space game, I'm not doing meh straight romances and breaking hearts to be meh m/m in the last game). So I did fem!Shep for the better VA, more me-feeling self-insert, and romanced Liara all three games cause that felt like a more fun story lol I can always go back to DA3 and romance Dorian if I want XD Or DA2 and Fenris. I also really wanted Jacob to be an m/m romance. So underused. I still think about writing m/m fic for him. I literally missed out on whatever his intro was because I kept staring dumbstruck at him being like "thank you ME2 devs for putting your money and time IN THE RIGHT PLACE" (sort bc no m/m :/)
I played Andromeda recently as well (after the trilogy in 2021), and while I can't say I despised it, I don't love it like some of my friends do. I found it to be clunky, game-wise, repetitive, incredibly buggy (even in like 2021 or so when I was playing it), unpolished (in the sense that the lore is really under-utilized), and just generally frustrating. The graphics were nicer, and there were funny moments, so there's that. I don't know that it's necessarily worse than the trilogy (in my opinion it's far more similar to ME1 than anything else), but I do think that three games gives the ME trilogy time to breathe, which will make a single game lose out, and each individual game, terrible ending or not, felt all around more interesting lore-wise and slightly less tedious (even, sigh, ME1) than Andromeda. And frankly Shepard is more fun than Ryder (but also I spent three games with her so, bias). That being said, imo none of the games are masterpieces, so the fact that Andromeda isn't perfect doesn't destroy my post-2021 roflmao. It felt like it was just all of the problems with none of the good parts and a pretty gloss that was buggy a lot of the time anyway. I don't like any of the endings for 3 (watched them all so I could pick). I played the game through until right before the last mission, then played all of Citadel, and that's how "my" ME story ends lol
I'm so sorry for the complicated save state thing >.< That's unfortunate. And I'm sorry Kaiden was complicated. Funnily enough, the first time I played ME1 (as fem!Shep), I accidentally began Kaiden's romance because it's so easy to get into by just being nice to him roflmao
I do kind of wonder if part of it is different camps of folks for gameplay styles. Like, of the three DA games, DA:O is the only combat "I" can't stand, whereas I enjoy II and Inquisition (and I prefer Inquisition). But another friend also only liked DA:O, and didn't like the progression through II and Inquisition. To me, ME's combat in 2 and 3 was quite enjoyable. Then again, my game ended after Citadel, so I didn't take any weapons from there out into the rest of the game, to see how that affected the experience. ME made me love sniping again, so there's that. I also play on easier difficulties, so that likely affects my experience. I was there for the story, not the fighting.
The Citadel DLC was the best part of the game imo lol I knew vaguely what happened but found a lot of surprises. I hope you like your future playthrough, if you give it a shot! I don't remember my romance being a highlight of it (then again I'm like... eh with Liara even though she was my bae all three games lol). Everyone dying sounds so terrible lakdjlaj I worked so hard in all three games to make sure everyone loved me and survives alkdjal I hope the rest of your time with it goes better <3
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Date: 2023-02-21 04:40 am (UTC)Yeah I feel you. The male voice actor has to be realllllly bad for me to pick the female option as I get my seasonal does of gender euphoria from picking "male" in character select screens. But the straight romances were a concession too far. Very meh all around. Though Tali spontaneously decided she loved me in 2 and I was like... oh, ok I guess.
Jacob was such a balm on the eyes lol. I think he's dead in my save because I haven't seen hide or hair of him this time.
There's definitely a sharp divide between a lot of DA fans based on combat preference. I'd enjoy DA:I much more of the enemies didn't feel like bullet sponges a lot of the time and the tactical mode worked, but it was fun to watch my tank just stand there immortal at times. I hear they're doing away with companion control in DA4 so I'm curious to see how that goes.
Running into the Citadel was kind of hilarious to me because I had heard for years that it was excellent, didn't know what it was, went all the way through thinking "well this is a weird ass aside, kind of fun though" and then in the end was like... was that the Citadel? It was one hell of a side track but it was fun for sure.
As scuffed as my run is I'm enjoying it. As long as I get that damn smooch at the end...