Mass Effect 3, the bad and the ugly (spoiler heavy)

There's a lot of good in Mass Effect 3. In fact, as others have argued I'd say the game is really roughly 98% good. In addition, unlike some folks out there I don't think that the ending of ME3 ruined the whole Mass Effect series. I do believe that it casts an indellible shadow across it that slightly diminishes it as a whole, but there's a big difference between that and saying that it's ruined as I honestly I don't think it even ruined the rest of the game. I mean heck, I'm still playing the multiplayer and plan on replaying the rest when I have the time so that surely counts for something. That said, I'm not going to write much about the good in Mass Effect 3 in this post, because honestly I don't have too much to say about it that hasn't been covered in the more glowing reviews. Instead I'm going to focus primarily on the parts of Mass Effect 3 that I consider to be badly designed or badly written, as well as those elements that I consider to be ugly game design in that they may be effectively designed but they still do a disservice to Mass Effect players.

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Games and narrative: The ludologist's lament

Some of you may have read Ted Castranova's post a few months ago over on Terra Nova titled Movies Stink. As I tried to convey in my comment there, I'm sympathetic to Ted's plight. Having novel and film shaped artifacts foisted upon you at the expense of game shaped ones really sounds like it sucks. Of course, I'm also more or less unable to have much empathy with him in this matter.

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Reflections of raid leadership

I had the opportunity the other day to give a talk in game in World of Warcraft for the r u game series by the Games and public libraries group which was a real blast. Although the attendance was light, my friend and colleague Mark Chen did jump on, and along with the series host Ellen Forsyth we had a rather excellent conversation about everything from my work on guild leadership, to games as texts, and more. One thing that came up, as it invariably does, was the question of leadership skill transfer between WoW and other settings.

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SimCity always-on and other crimes against humanity

I'm not going to be the only one saying this. In fact many people have been ranting about it already, and there has been much muttering of oaths and rending of...bits in the comment threads. But I'm going to say it anyway, because it needs to be said. It needs to be said multiple times, by many people with different voices, and it needs to be stated from a number of angles including education.

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Live blogging GDC Sid Meier: Interesting decisions

The famous interesting decisions line, Sid Google's himself too apparently. Not interesting decisions: Choices a player makes randomly or non-choices where there's really only one right answer. Not an argument that this applies to every game (rhythm/puzzle/etc.) The importance of the fun as generating "those moments" for the player (shot of Sid with his son many years ago) LEGO game design: If you recombine fun elements from other games it should be fun - not so much Better chances in the design phase to ask what kinds of decisions will I want the player to make over the course of the game. more after the jump...

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