Entries in BioWare (2)

Friday
May252012

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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Friday
Aug052011

captain obvious

I know this might come across as kind of a shock to some of you, but I'm going to have to say it anyway. Not all games are the same. I say this in light of having just read Ian Bogost's article on conservative and aberrant reformists in game design (and the aesthetic filter). But really, that's just the trigger for this post. I've been talking about this for months, although my fervor was slightly diminished when I found that Jim Gee had already touched on the topic.

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