By now every gamer worth their salt has heard of the game Mass Effect 2. I loved the first game to pieces despite the flaws it had. There’s just something about epic space odysseys that I can’t pass up. So I’ve been eagerly awaiting it’s sequel which is now finally here. Well it was here. After almost 40 hours of playing, I finished pretty much every mission, side quest, and upgrade there was in the game. I’m sure there is some stuff I missed but I’d like to believe I at least got 95% of everything.

In interest of keeping things short and simple, overall I really, really, really liked it. Story was awesome, graphics were superb, and hell, killing aliens and synthetics was awesome. So why didn’t I love it? In an attempt to make the game more of an action RPG than the first, a lot of the awesome RPG elements were stripped out. The sequel only has four-six stats that you can level up while the original had around fifteen. Also you no longer get XP whenever you kill something. All the XP is is given to you at the end of the mission. This gets rid of the satisfaction of seeing “+15xp” pop up whenever you killed something in the first game.

Despite this, Mass Effect 2 is still an awe-inspiring game. Bioware hit it out of the park again after Dragon Age (which I may write about later). It just makes me sad that it’ll be another 2-3 years till we see the conclusion of this space trilogy. I suppose I’ll have to keep replaying the first two entries in the mean time. I still haven’t done the “Renegade” side in either game.

Oh and another thing that disappointed me about Mass Effect 2. In the original you could only romance your co-marine Ashley Williams (Kaidan if you were female) or the asari Liara T’soni. I was disappointed the other female alien party member Tali’Zorah wasn’t a choice as well. She’s the one on the right in the picture above. Not sure why I gravitated toward Tali but she was probably my favorite character out of the whole game. She was in my party pretty much 100% of the time after she joined my crew. Knowing me it has to be something cute. Probably was her cute voice since you never see what she really looks like. Anyway back on track, I was ecstatic when I read that she was going to be joining your party once again in ME2. And I was even more ecstatic when I hear that she had a romantic subplot! Naturally I went that route immediately and what transpired was probably one of the most innocent romantic subplots in a video game ever. Well maybe not Persona 4′s Chie (omg just realized, short hair) but you get the point. Once Tali discovers that you also share romantic feelings for her, she curses her life-protecting environmental suit and sets out to find a way to bolster her immune system so she can spend the night with you sans the suit. So I was all like, awesome! We’ll finally get to see her face. So before the final battle when the romantic subplot comes to fruition, Tali joins Shepard in this quarters and says she loaded up on antibotics. So things unfold and Tali begins to get flustered (cutest thing ever… jeez I need help) and Shepard slowly removes her mask. Tali then jumps on Shepard kissing him. Then.. fade to black. Ahhh bastards. What a tease. Guess we’ll have to wait till Mass Effect 3 if we want to see Tali’s face if at all. They’ll probably end up not showing her face just so they don’t let anyone down. Aaand now I’ve spend the majority of this entry writing something creepy again. Horray. But still Tali rocks.

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Like always got bored during calc today. Instead of falling asleep or taking out my Zune, I decided to look around the room and people watch (creepy, right?) Anyway as I was scanning the room, I saw a cute girl with a ponytail and I thought to myself, “Hey she’s cute.” Then that got me thinking, wait is she really cute? Or did I just label her cute cause she had a ponytail? I hadn’t seen her face yet so why’d I jump to that conclusion. Anyway after some more introspection into my soul, I started thinking about hairstyles. Which ones I like and dislike. Well obviously I like ponytails. But what else. Thinking back on past girlfriends/infatuations/etc. a fairly common recurrence is short hair. Shoulder length hair is okay, but I definitely like chin length (if that’s what it’s called) a helluva lot more. Dislikes? Obviously long hair. I think the longer it gets the more of a turn off it is. Little longer than shoulder is acceptable but down to the small of your back, as Princess Vespa from Spaceballs so eloquently puts it, “it doesn’t do it for me.”

So what’s this all mean? Considering my likes and dislikes, it appears that it all points towards one logical thing. Apparently I like seeing the back of girls necks! It’s what ponytails and short hair have in common and what long hair lacks. So ladies, if you’re trying to woo me, all you have to do is simply expose yourself to me and I’ll be all yours. Expose your neck that is. Not your chest. Well you can do that if you want, I won’t complain.

So yeah. This was originally suppose to be a joke post but as I was writing it, it turned more into an “Omg you’re creepy stay away from me” post. Maybe I should just stay focused during class from now on.

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No, that’s not a placeholder title. It’s the name of a recent indie platforming game. Just finished playing the demo and had to say I had a fun time with it. Adored the 2600-esque visuals but especially loved the music. Really wish they’d offer it up as a download or something. Anyway definitely check it out. The demo can be played over at Kongregate. And if you like it enough you can buy the full version at their website.

Update: So yeah after like 30 seconds of searching looks like they do have the music for sale! (more…)

Per usual I found myself randomly browsing the internets late at night. Through some series of links I ended up on the wiki page of “Fievel Goes West” which got me in an extremely nostalgic mood. Went on over to YouTube and watched some of the clips that were on there and was amazed at how much I could recall. Then under related vids I saw a clip of Feivel and Tanya singing “Somewhere Out There” from “An American Tail.” Watched it and the first thing I noticed was it wasn’t as pretty as I remembered (mainly cause of the one high note). But it still brought a big smile to my face. Start watching a few covers of this song then came across this gem.

Honestly I was so moved by it that I got a bit teary. Maybe it’s cause this is how it sounded to me over a decade and a half ago. Maybe it’s all the memories from childhood flooding back to me. Or maybe there’s a part of me missing how simple life was back then. Regardless much love for eVonne for that wonderful experience.

Anyway will try and update more. Most likely will just be short bites like this. Don’t have much time to write long dissertations and such anymore. (more…)