Category: Video Games

Mass Effect: Holding Out for a (Good Female) Hero

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I recently decided to take the plunge and play through the Mass Effect series. I was going to start a while back but my roommate’s 360 decided to retire with a dishonorable red ring discharge. But with the recent black Friday sales a new Xbox has found its way to the apartment again. So I decided it was as good a time as any to see what everyone was talking about. But as anyone who has played the game will tell you when you plunge into Mass Effect you have to make two major choices.

The first is the gender of your character. A simple but important decision. While the game does not play entirely differently depending on your character’s gender there is enough of a change to be distinctly noticeable. The other major choice you have is to choose between a paragon or renegade style. You can play the game as a noble hero or as a loose cannon who gets the job done at any cost. While you can also play more towards the middle of the road the game encourages you mix up those play styles as you see fit but favor one over the other. Also playing someone who is true neutral is just boring.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #146

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When Rango first came out, I was skeptical, but great reviews poured in. Finally, I got the chance to decide for myself. Rango is the story of a great big fake who becomes a great big hero. Amazingly, when we meet our scaly friend we don’t know his name, and actually still don’t know it, because “Rango” he makes up along with a series of amazing exploits that he sells to the folks in a little desert town called Dirt. This is a town in trouble as their water supply is drying up and the mayor is plotting something. Rango is the stranger who appears and changes everything. All things after the accident that puts Rango into the desert is a riff on the classic Western almost as if he has been thrown back in time (though of course he hasn’t). There is a clear knowledge of the reference material and it gives a little bite to some of the twists that you expect as well as great humor. The animation is all out incredible, there is a particularly flying scene that blew my mind with detail. Great film and certainly one of the best animated features of the year. Oh, and the owl mariachies are the best. I need a shirt with them.

I just read Princess Knight volume 1. When Narutaki and I read volume 2 we will probably do a full length editorial about the manga as a whole but I thought I would throw out a few thoughts before then. The oddest thing about Princess Knight was that Osamu Tezuka almost seems of have ADD with his storyline. I always knew that Osamu Tezuka liked to do episodic series like Black Jack and Astroboy. When I read the somewhat scatter brained plot of Swallowing the Earth I assumed that the fact that the plot was all over the place had to do more with Tezuka being new to Gekiga. But in Princess Knight jumps from plot line to plot line without really ever stopping for a breath. It is very clear to me that he is making up Princess Knight as he goes along while borrowing from Disney every step of the way. The main character goes from trying to hide her gender, to being a prisoner, to fighting a witch, to being on a pirate ship with hardly any transition. I think he clearly Tezuka had a beginning and an end mapped out but everything in between seemed to be decided as he was writing it. You can’t ever say you are bored by the book but it does feel a bit disjointed. Still the story is worth reading for the fact that it is a major milestone in manga history. While it was not the first shojo manga it was highly influential in the foundation of the genre. The book is just best enjoyed if you know going into  it that the book reads very young and has a scatter shot plot. I think I enjoyed the book a bit more than Narutaki because I went in with a more informed view of the book and knew what to expect.

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Is There More to the Boy Who Would be King?

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Leonardo B. Harwey is the climactic boss of Fate/Extra. You fight one more Master during the falling action of Fate/Extra but so much of the game is building up to facing Leo in the final round that he is clearly the climactic boss. Through out the game he is built up as naive tyrant. He has grown up his whole life being told that he will rule over a perfect world where there will be a place for everyone and everyone will be in their place. And he will be at the top of that hierarchy like he was the Kwisatz Haderach.

His actions are never malicious. He merely assumes the position of  tyrant because it is the only path he has ever known and does everything in the game without a hint of conscience. At first he seems like a simple character. A character that is so pure being raised in an almost Skinner Box like environment that his evil and sociopathic actions are just as pure. He does evil and heartless things because he has never learned that such actions could ever been construed as anything but the correct choices. But as I played the game I wondered if there was deeper social commentary in his character.

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