Mass Effect changed all of that. For a month straight, I played nothing but Mass Effect. After that month, I was a gamer.

So, in the days leading up to the release of Mass Effect 2, I was beyond excited. This game was my game, man. That special game that every gamer has.

Once I started playing Mass Effect 2, I couldn’t stop. Well, I could, but only when I absolutely had to eat or sleep, and even then only grudgingly. It’s a great sequel to the first Mass Effect and a great game in and of itself. Yet as good as it is, it isn’t perfect. No game is, and practically all of the great parts of Mass Effect 2 are matched by an equally spork-to-the-eye gameplay decisions.

The plot suffers from the same problem The Empire Strikes Back had when it first came out in theaters way back when—it’s the middle part of a trilogy. Some of it is going to have parts that feel like filler. And it did. The story isn’t bad, mind you. Yet, compared to the depth of story we had in the first game, the story in the second game feels somewhat lacking. But that’s the nature of the second part of a trilogy—it’s a bridge between the first and last story. However, Bioware fills this story bridge with deep characterization of the NPCs. For anyone who has played Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic, the structure of Mass Effect 2 will feel very familiar. There’s an overall story, but the meat of the game is recruiting your party members, gaining their trust, and preparing for a big ol’ battle in the endgame.

The size of your party in Mass Effect 2 literally doubles from the party size of the first Mass Effect. While the NPCs from the first game were good, the depth of their background stories are almost nothing compared to the depth of the backgrounds of these other twelve party members. As you talk with each party member between missions and eventually accompany them on what’s called a “loyalty mission” to gain their ultimate loyalty, you really learn who they are, what they’re good at, what they fear, etc.

Wait. Let’s take a moment to examine the loyalty missions and the “gaining loyalty” bit. Personally, I think Bioware made a mistake in calling them loyalty missions and saying that you’re gaining a party member’s loyalty. The overall story of this game is you’re going to go on what amounts to a suicide mission. All of the loyalty missions are loose ends that each character needs to take care of before they can fully commit themselves to what looks like a suicide mission. It isn’t a matter of gaining their personal loyalty, but their loyalty to the mission and the ability to dedicate themselves fully to the task at hand.

Anyway. The NPCs interact with each other more in this game than in the first, oftentimes with hilarious results.

Which brings me to the dialogue. Bioware is amazingly good at dialogue, both for your character and the rest of the cast. In this game, Bioware doesn’t disappoint.

I’ll admit, the combat in the first Mass Effect felt somewhat lacking. In this game, the combat has been greatly enhanced and given more strategy and depth.

However. This enhanced combat (which is really enhanced gunplay) comes at the cost of having unlimited ammo to having to use actual ammo and pick up actual ammo clips. If you played the first game, or even if you didn’t, having to find and pick up ammo is annoying and gets in the way of the game itself. Added to the ammo problem, you have the nerfed Biotic abilities. In the first game, if you wanted to, you could play through the game without having to use a gun if you were an Adept. For people who aren’t particularly good at shooters (or play enough shooters that they want to try something different), it was awesome. I mean, once you got to the higher levels, you were practically a Biotic god and could toss people and items around at your whim. It was great.

You can’t do this in Mass Effect 2. Everything has armor and/or barriers, and the “fun” biotics don’t work unless armor and barriers are removed from the enemies. The thing is, once you get rid of the armor or the barriers or the shields (sometimes an enemy has all three!), the enemy becomes a one or two-hit kill for a gun. It’s more efficient to just finish them off with some bullets than throw them or pull them.

As someone who played through the first game on Insanity using an Adept with minimal use of guns, this nerfing makes me very sad.

Now, about some other game mechanic choices. In the first game, you had to explore planets in a vehicle called a Mako, discover ore, survey it, and that gave you money. In this game, you survey planets from the ship by using a scanner and when you find a deposit of ore, you send a probe to mine it. Now, this scanning doesn’t even net you any money. Instead, you use it for various upgrades. Here’s the thing about the scanning—it’s boring. It’s mind-numbingly boring. There’s one planet that isn’t boring to scan—Uranus. I’m serious. Go to the Local Cluster, scan Uranus, and send a probe. And then for good measure, send out another probe. You’ll thank me later.

Despite its faults, Mass Effect 2 is a wonderful game. I loved it, I played it for hours, and will play it for even more hours when more DLC comes out. It’s got an A- from me.

I played the demo available on the Xbox Live Marketplace and was underwhelmed and perhaps somewhat whelmed. I liked all the aspects of it (even the controls didn’t suck) except one—the camera. It won’t zoom out far enough so you can see the entire map.

If you’ve played Starcraft, there’s no excuse why they can’t show the whole thing (I mean, you zoom out far enough, you saw all your revealed land and armies and stuff, and the fog of war applied to the rest). It’s a real-time strategy game and it’s hard as shit to really get some good overall strategy when you can’t see everything. (I’m not talking about the fog of war either, that’s a great, long-standing RTS element). They have every reason to emulate one key aspect of one of the most popular RTS games of all-time.

I played through the tutorial and barely started the campaign, hoping (because I’d liked the rest, surprisingly) that you could have a zoom-out-more option once you got out of the tutorial.

I was wrong. You couldn’t. And all I could think about as I tried to play was “I want this motherfucking camera to zoom out more.” Since that was all I could think of, I certainly couldn’t strategize, and stopped playing.

Though I did feel like playing Starcraft.

Already, Supernatural has gone far beyond that. I’ve watched four full episodes and am currently watching the fifth episode of the first season, and so far, every episode has scared the crap out of me. Some people might not be so susceptible to the kind of fear that the show plays to (Nathan, for instance, while he’s gotten jumpy, hasn’t gotten nearly as freaked as I have). Others, like the ones who were afraid of every monster and legend found in childhood, will find this show to be the grown-up version of All Their Fears Proven True.

So far, the first five episodes have dealt with—

• A stranger in the house that you don’t know is a stranger at first, followed by death by fire caused by possible demons
• Something (a Wendigo) killing people in the deep woods that you can’t see
• A “seriously pissed-off ghost” that you can’t see drowning people in a lake
• A demon that likes to crash airplanes (anyone have a fear of flying?)
• The myth of Bloody Mary

I will never be able to sleep alone again.

And this is all Olivia’s fault. I must give you a non-sarcastic thank you for your great recommendation.

There’s also a bunch of references to The X-Files, which I love. It’s also a highly amusing show, in addition to being a scare-the-crap out of you show. The soundtrack tends to be classic rock and 80′s metal. One episode included a reference to Metallica with Dean called himself “Dr. James Hetfield.” Bwahahaha.

Now, what person with at least an average amount of curiosity (and perhaps at least a dash of impulsivity) can resist picking up the slim 200 page novel for a buck? Well, since I possess a dump-truck full more than the average amount of curiosity and have impulsivity that reads off-the-scale (if such a scale existed), of course I picked up the book. And, without bothering the read the back. In fact, it went much like this—

“Nathan! Look at this title! The Man Who Folded Himself! How cool is that?!” I hand the book to Nathan.

Nathan accepts the book, glances at cover, hands book back, tosses off a, “That’s interesting,” in a flat tone indicating otherwise, and resumes his own digging.

Meanwhile, I’ve carefully placed the curious treasure in one of the grocery bags.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the book, here’s the Wikipedia entry about it. It is a screwed-up book. Actually, that’s not a strong enough description. This book is a serious mind-fuck for both you as the reader, and the protagonist… And I mean it. But it’s a quick read, so if you’re in the mood for such a thing and don’t feel like watching Fight Club and prefer more sex than fifteen orgies, The Man Who Folded Himself is the right read for you. (No, the title doesn’t refer to any portion of the protagonist’s sexual prowess. I don’t think, anyway.)

And as a side note, this also reminded me of Olivia’s LJ entry about the title of a story a friend of hers wrote—The Man Who Ran Faster than Death. Another one I’d completely buy and read based on title alone.

Last night I had the opportunity to go see Transformers with Nathan and our mutual friend Eric. Before last night, I had never shouted at a character in a movie while in the movie theatre, because I’m generally acutely aware of being in a crowd of people.

But last night, I completely forgot. I became so involved in the movie that when the main human character (Sam Witwicky) is running around on the top of a building, flapping his arms wildly to get the attention of a helicopter, I found myself shouting the following:

“The flare, you idiot, the flare!”

And then I found myself surrounded by giggles.

Fantastic.

At least the kid lit the damn flare. And no, that’s not a spoiler, they light a lot of flares and there’s a lot of helicopter-attention-grabbing from buildings.

As for the rest of the movie, it’s awesome. It’s funny, it’s exciting, and it’s touching. The CGI is wonderfully done. Nathan and Eric never noticed that the characters were CGI, while I only had one moment where I remembered that it was CGI. Otherwise, I completely believed it.
When one of the Autobots is captured by humans, the audience can see him suffer. But we, as an audience, didn’t just see him suffering, we believed he was suffering. We wanted it to stop as much as Sam and all the Autobots.

With a fairly tight and very well-paced plot, the movie cruises along without even a thought of glancing at your watch. Nathan complained that the movie was too short until I told him that it was actually two hours and fifteen minutes long. He called me a liar. I called him something not-nice.

Now, I’m an 80′s kid. I grew up with the Transformers and, like every other 80′s Transformers fan, I coveted an Optimus Prime. I never got an Optimus Prime, though I did have a Starscream. I loved the Transformers and Optimus Prime was The Man. So when I found out they were making another Transformers movie, I was a bit unsure. I didn’t want another of my childhood experiences beat up in the parking lot outside thousands of theatres nationwide (à la Batman & Robin).

Not only did my beloved Transformers come out unscathed, they came out buffed and waxed and shining.

Go see this movie.

Dear Ron,

2008?

Why can’t you write and/or produce a crappy show? I mean, if you did, sure, we’d all be denied compelling, fantastic storytelling, but then April through December of 2007 wouldn’t feel so long and shitty.

And I thought the summer between the Best of Both Worlds I and II was long.

2008.

Ron, I’m sorry to say, I fucking hate you sometimes.

Best Regards,
Jamie

P.S. At some point in 2008, I won’t hate you anymore.

Enclosed: One of a Kind Cylon Flipoff

I fell instantly in love. Zombies! Apocalypse! Evil cell phones! (Even now, I’m very apprehensive about answer my cell phone. Not that I wasn’t apprehensive before, but now it’s gotten even worse. My friends now hate Stephen King).

I read. And I read and read and read, the book was really a page-turner (the sort of book that can wrangle my ADHD attention span for long lengths of time). It developed well, it was eerie, suspenseful. For me, it also had an added element of familiarity with the setting. That made it even more creepy (the creepiest moment for me in a King novel was when he once wrote something about going to the theatre in Conway, NH. Holy shit, I’ve been there!)

And so I loved it… all the way up until yesterday around 11:53 a.m.

You see, that’s when I got to the end. Only, it didn’t seem like the end. It seemed like a chapter end, yes. The kind of end where you say to yourself, “Self, let us continue on to the next chapter.”

And then you (and Self) notice that there’s his traditional tagline-ish endnote. You know the one (if you ever read any of his novels, which I do recommend) where he gives the date and place of where and when he finished the novel.

I felt lied to. “You are not done! I will turn the page and there will be another chapter!”

And there was another chapter… for another book. One of those previews of books to come.

But I will never know what happened with Clay and his son Johnny and their compatriots left in the northern unnamed counties of Maine. This makes me sad because I figured Cell to be a multi-time read. I’ve got several of novels that I’ve read multiple times—Ender’s Game, The Stand, An Unquiet Mind… the list honestly goes on and on. But Cell won’t be on that list because it’s promise is broken at the end. The story doesn’t finish. It ends in practically mid-sentence, as if your lover was shot in the middle of saying “I lo—”

Wii does not.

It’s pronounced “we.” As in second person plural personal pronoun.

Wii is the name of the nintendo revolution.

I’d write more, but I’m too busy laughing my ass off.

Image Size
OdR—(RAW) 3072 x 2048
XT—(RAW) 3456 x 2304

Write to CF card speed comparison (from Rob Galbriath’s CF card database):
Using my fastest card, the Sandisk Ultra 1GB
OdR—1.232 MB/sec
XT—4.464 MB/sec

…that’s 3.6 times faster! The Sandisk Ultra 1GB is on the lower end of the CF card database for the XT. If I picked up a Sandisk Extreme III I could write up to 6.263 MB/sec, which is five times faster than the OdR.

Hot damn. Even a Sandisk Ultra II would write at 6.083 MB/sec.

Did I mention that I can finally use 1600 ISO and that’s part of why I can 1. bump the shutter speed up to 1/500 and freeze more blade movement AND the higher ISO also moves faster to grab the action.

Let’s compare, shall we? Same venue, same time of night, different cameras.

Technical Crap

Original Image Size
• OdR— 3072×2048 (shot aligned vertically)
• XT— 3456×2304 (shot aligned horizontally)

File Size
• OdR— 36.1 MB
• XT— 45.6 MB

Shutter Speed:
• OdR— 1/400 sec
• XT— 1/500 sec

Aperture
• OdR— f/4.0
• XT— f/2.8

ISO
• OdR— 1600
• XT— 1600

Lens
• OdR— Sigma Zoom 1:2.8-4 28-70mm
• XT— Sigma Zoom 1:2.8-4 28-70mm

Focal Length
• OdR— 47mm
• XT— 28mm

Now for some visual comparison:

Full Frame Maximum Quality JPEG image with size reduced to 25% of original (so it might have a chance to fit on your screen)
• OdR
• XT

200 by 200 pixel section at 100% zoom (lookin’ at some feet here):

OdR—       —XT

Mmmmmmm.

Honest.

Anyway. Here’s a few shots from the practice run at a club night.

I had no idea that the fencer on the left had dropped his weapon. No clue until I was browsing the images in my Photoshop CS image browser and I said, “When the hell did [fencer on the left] drop his foil?!”

This really doesn’t look right. Is he hugging him or something…else?

I don’t think you ever really got a good look at a fencer’s face with the original dRebel (OdR from now on). This one, you can see the amusement on his face!

Even in the air, Cole (fencer on the left), has a pretty good en guarde.

I love how it seems like they’re flying sometimes.

White men CAN fly.

I played with ISO (800 vs. 1600). 1600 ISO on the XT is better than 800 ISO on the OdR. Insanity. I also tried spot metering vs. evaluative metering in terms of getting the best DOF. Spot metering seems much better, but still, um, spotty.