Mass Effect’s (almost) Ending
Much has been said about the ending to Mass Effect 3. Some people hated it with the white hot fury of 10,000 suns, other people… uh… didn’t like it very much. Rarely have I seen anyone post that they liked it. That however, is not what I’m here to talk about. Instead, I want to discuss one of the most poignant (in my opinion) few minutes of a video game that I’ve ever experienced.
Borderlands 2 Loot Hunt!
Starting tomorrow, there’s some sort of contest going on for Borderlands 2, probably timed to match up with the release of the Game of the Year edition. From what I can tell, the idea is that each day the guys at Gearbox will announce a target boss in the game. You log in, kill the boss and get entered into a drawing for FABULOUS PRIZES. The bosses will also drop special loot for that day. There’s also a pretty sweet sale on the base game right now over at Gamer’s Gate.
Co-Awesome: Dungeon Defenders
I have a 4 year old son and an 8 year old daughter at the time of this writing. While my daughter will occasionally play a video game, my son is like a mini-me – he’d play video games 100% of the time if we’d let him. He likes to play on the iPad and he’ll play the occasional Castle Crashers on the Xbox by himself, but what he *really* loves is playing coop games with me.
It’s a neverending struggle to find games that he can play himself that can keep me interested at the same time. Nothing too violent, nothing too complex, nothing that requires reading (yet). I had purchased Dungeon Defenders long ago on Steam and never really got into it, but one Saturday morning I fired it up for him to try. He’d never played a 3rd person game before, and I was worried that he wouldn’t even be able to control it (I gave him the 360 controller, I used the keyboard and mouse). That worry was completely unfounded…
I beat a game! Saints Row 2
Late last week I finished up Saints Row 2 in my march towards Saints Row IV on August 20. After seeing the credits roll, I can safely say that I’m glad that Saints Row 2 wasn’t my first Saints Row experience or I may not have ever played Saints Row: The Third at all. It’s not that Saints Row 2 is a bad game by any means – it’s actually pretty damn fun. Gameplay-wise, it’s much closer to Saints Row: The Third than the first one, and it’s also quite a bit easier than Saints Row 1. While I never considered quitting before finishing it out, the game certainly left a bad taste in my mouth by the end.
I beat a game! Saints Row 1
Thanks to the Giant Bombcast, I ended up playing Saints Row: The Third about a year ago during my usual “end of the year week off to play games and eat pizza and generally do nothing productive” winter break. The guys on the bombcast had really talked it up – so much so that I was sure it could never live up to the hype. As it turns out, it was everything they had said it was and it quickly rocketed to my favorite games of all time list.
Saints Row IV is coming out on August 20, and from the looks of it they’re bringing back a number of characters that were either not in Saints Row: The Third or were only there for a few minutes (I’m looking at you, Johnny Gat). While Saints Row isn’t *huge* on the story, I thought it’d be interesting to go back and play Saints Row 1 & 2 prior to IV coming out (yes, the official name of IV uses roman numerals, where 1 and 2 did not). Read on for my impressions…