mr insomniac

I was pretty excited, to say the least. Thornton has really found his game in this series, he's making the big plays when it matters most. Yup. No one can say anymore that Thornton and Marleau don't come through when it counts.

Gamespot screwed up. Those aren't AP screenshots. Looks like they've got some shots from Vanquish up instead for some reason. There are some AP screenshots on that link, but are they old ones? As we get closer to release, I'm avoiding news about the game until I get my grubby little paws on it.

Not a great game by Romero today but the offence got him off the hook and the Jays keep pace in the east. Nice to see. I remember last spring they were swept by the Sox, went on a nine game losing streak and never recovered.

Great day for hockey today woot. SJ now with a stranglehold on the series. Hopefully they can finish off the Wings.

And there was much rejoicing.

What about non-responsive controls, lack of options(half the games don't even let you remap keys these days) and bad UI/HUD? I'd only be really concerned about that if a PC port is going to be released weeks/months after console release, and the task for porting to PC was farmed out to another developer, like Bio did for Mass Effect. Since AP will be a simultaneous release for all three platforms and Obsidz is doing all the work themselves, I'm not concerned. I have faith.

Anderson and the Alliance just knew that human colonies out in the Terminus were going missing.. (there's a whole bunch of politics there as well, the human colonies that established themselves out in the Terminus were the people who wanted to get away from the Alliance and not be interfered with..). For various reasons, they suspected Cerberus as the force behind it.... Then tIM gave a few rumours about Shep and Horizon to manipulate Anderson into sending Ashley/Kaiden to look into it... Yeah, once Horizon is done, and you've encountered Ashley/Kaiden you do get a few different dialogue lines when talking to Anderson at the Citadel.. but I can't remember off-hand if you have to check with the Citadel for possible Alliance backing before Horizon is doable or not... You might have to talk with Anderson and the Council first, then go to Horizon, then go back to anderson.. hm, its been a few months and my memory is going spotty on that... You don't have to go to the Citadel first. I went back to an old save and this time skipped the presidium meeting until after Horizon. Something is still a little odd about it. TIM says, immediately after the mission that he purposely let slip some info about Shep and Cerberus into Alliance channels. Anderson says, if you wait to talk to him until after Horizon, that when he approved Ashley/Kaidan's mission to Horizon he didn't even know Shepard was alive.

Seeing Hurlshot's record in the first round, maybe I should have waited to make my predictions

From what I saw in it, I kind of gathered that to the galaxy at large, the Collectors are half mythical, kind of the Kaiser Sozhe of the Terminus Systems... Even Cerberus wasn't sure it was the Collector's behind it until Shep did his discovery run.. (okay, tIM seemed to know/guess, but he didn't have proof so wasn't saying anything until firm evidence was uncovered). There was a brief bit where the Human Alliance actually thought Cerberus was behind the disapearancs... so, Anderson is being very careful around resurrected Shep. Right, I see what you're saying. TIM's suspicions were confirmed on Freedom's Progress. He slips the Alliance a little info about something happening on Horizon, Shepard may be involved. Alliance sends Ashley/Kaiden to check it out. Collectors attack. TIM tells Shepard, etc, etc. Something still seems a little fishy to me, unless Anderson himself was on 'need-to-know' status. I'm considering reloading an old save just prior to the Citadel visit, and then putting off that visit until after Horizon, just to see if the conversation plays out differently. Or does Horizon not happen until after you do the Citadel thing?

While patiently waiting for June 1st, I've been replaying ME2, this time as a renegade wherever possible. I've just visited the Citadel for the first time, and I gotta say some of the renegade dialogue options are pretty funny. Getting the discount from the souvenir shop and selling the krogan a "presidium" fish are tops. One thing that stood out was the conversation with Anderson; where he mentions Ashley/Kaiden being on a classified mission for the alliance, and that he couldn't talk about it further as long as Shepard was working for Cerberus. Prior to this, he asks Shepard about working for Cerberus and he seems genuinely surprised that the Collectors are behind the colony attacks. It seems to me there's a contradiction here. Anderson shouldn't be surprised about the Collectors, unless he's lying to Shepard.

Crap. I will never ever ever predict a sweep against a team again. Argh it pains me to say something nice about Les Habs, but credit to Montreal and Halak. They stepped up when it mattered most. That puts me at an even 4-4 in 1st round predictions. Yeesh. EDIT: May as well get the second round predictions out of the way. San Jose vs Detroit. Before game seven against Phoenix, someone on TSN pointed out that since the Coyotes last won a playoff round (as the Jets), the Wings have won 33. That's just... wow. Still, it's time for someone else to get a turn. Sharks did me proud in the 1st round, giving me my only correct 'number of games' prediction. Sharks in 6. Vancouver vs Chicago. I did say Chicago would roll into the 3rd round, and I'm still feeling 'meh' about the Canucks, but I'll keep cheering them on til they lose. Canucks in 7. Philly vs Boston. I really really really wanna say Philly in 6, but without Gagne and Carter, and the way Rask is playing... ahem, excuse me... DAMN YOU JFJ!!!!1!1!1... sorry, had to get that out of the way... the way Rask is playing, Philly's gonna have a tough time scoring goals. Plus Boston will have Savard back. Boston in 6. Pittsburgh vs Montreal. I was hoping to see Pens/Bruins to watch Matt Cooke get destroyed. Maybe next round. Pens in 6.

Did you watch the clip you linked to? I dunno, I guess I just interpreted it differently. When Wrex says, "there's no story," you can leave things right there and -- this is the beauty part -- if you choose, you never have to talk to Wrex again. But in that clip, Shepard did initiate things by pushing for a story and then comparing what the turians did to the Krogan to the first contact war. Wrex told her it wasn't the same at all, and why. What's the problem with that? Yes, the way the game is designed you have to follow through on the converstion up to a point, but it's the same with all characters, and you can opt out without digging too deep into the whole genophage thing if you want to. I thought finding out about the quarians was interesting. The idea of a race of people with no planet to call their own, scavenging what they could to keep this massive flotilla of ships together, it intrigued me. Finding out about the pilgrimage that every quarian goes through and the way their government is set up, and how fragile their existence really is, well I thought it was really cool. Tali's accent helped with that And who else are you going to find out about the quarians from? IIRC, She's the only one you meet in the entire game. And again, Shepard is the one driving the conversation forward. As the player you don't have to go that far into what makes all these different aliens tick. To me, if you don't do that, then you're missing out. Funny thing about that is, you could take any two squadmates along on Virmire, and one of them will react negatively to killing the indoctrinated salarians. Mass Effect is full of situations like that. I dunno how it's decided which squadmate has which reaction, but there are times when it seemed wildly out of character. I'm guessing you could replay that and even take Garrus and a different someone than you did the first time, and that squadmate would be the one to react negatively.

Doesn't she ask you at one point to like murder your family for some marginal magical bonus if you're an elf? I remember reading about that somewhere. I've not gotten that particular dialogue. Given that the Dalish Elf origin is parentless, is this the City Elf (has a single parent) or more likely an elf mage? Perhaps it's the choice between the templars and the mages? I've played the game through as an elf mage, and you can basically choose your past when someone asks about it. It's not all that important and doesn't impact the game from what I experienced. When Tali or Liara or Wrex or Garrus tells Shepard something about themselves, (s)he is discovering things about them simply by listening. As the player you can choose to comment on or ask about something they say, in order to further the conversation and learn more. Or you can decide you've heard enough, say, "I have to go," and leave it at that. Sometimes one of them will ask Shepard questions, where you, as the player, can reveal things about Shepard, usually based on the background and personality you choose during character creation. So let's see, shared information, listening... hmm.

I really did not give a **** about everybody talking about their species. It was dumb and silly and shouldn't have been in the game. "Hello Tali, please, tell me about the Quarians. Despite being a badass special forces agent, I don't know **** about Quarians and can't be arsed to wiki it." Actually, like Amentep said, Wrex's concern about the genophage and what it has done to his people makes him a more interesting character than any of the other krogan you meet. They were the "grumpy space frogs". Wrex knew the krogan had to become more than that to survive as a species. What he's trying to do in ME2 shows that. And I'd like to know how else you're going to find out anything about the different alien races in Mass Effect without talking to them. It's far more interesting than reading codex entries about them, that much of the time aren't even unlocked until you do have those conversations.

3-1 here so far as well, but no matter what happens now, I'm 1-7 in number of games. d'oh.

To be fair, the C-Sec turian isn't as big a douche as he first appears to be. He's probably one of the more reasonable characters in the game. He may have turned out alright, but I stand by my original statement. The first conversation with him made me want to punch turians.

^This.

And here's the bad news.

So does Liara, or Kaidan for that matter.

Jays beat the Rays woot. It's tough to be too elated about anything this early in the season, but it's always better to stay close to the division leaders, especially in the AL East. Hell, Boston hasn't even started playing well yet, and you know that's gotta change.

Because Garrus is a badass pulpy cop who excellently embodies Renegade principles while simultaneously avoiding being a pointless douche and whose worldview is cool and which you can positively effect. On the other hand, Wrex is a boring character who you may recall from KotOR as "Canderous Ordo" and Jade Empire as "the Black Whirlwind." I didn't play Jade Empire long enough to meet the Black Whirlwind, but what's wrong with Canderous? He's no HK-47 but still. And Wrex wasn't that bad either. Yeah, but his voice was kinda whiny through all that. Don't believe me? Listen to him say, "We'll have a better chance if we all stick together," and tell me honestly that you don't want to poke his eyes out. If he had a Dirty Harry voice that would be different. Besides after talking to both that Turian council member and the head of C-Sec, I just wanted to punch Turians whenever I met them. ME should have had renegade interrupts. Er, don't get me wrong, I like Garrus. He just came across as a whiner in ME. On topic, well jeez, I'm trying real hard to remember what I didn't know the first time I played ME. It's been a long time. There were alot of little sidequests I didn't know about. Like the ones about the Rachni that occurred after Noveria, or the one involving that guy on the Citadel who was looking for his missing brother. I didn't realize you had to hover the galaxy map cursor next to the planet. I just thought it was a bug that I couldn't land on it. Little things like that.

I don't usually play RPGs above normal difficulty, but I did Tali's recruit mission in ME2 on hard, in order to get the Geth Pulse Rifle. This was after playing through the game a couple of times, so I had a good idea of what to expect. I thought it was pretty intense. I wanted more. Went to the Collector ship and got my ass kicked. Wonder how AP will compare... and no I'm trying to make ME2/AP parallels, it's just my personal experience with higher difficulty levels. L4D isn't a RPG so I guess it doesn't count, but I managed to live through 5 to 10 minutes of a singleplayer 'No Mercy' campaign on hard difficulty. Francis, Zoey and Louis aren't too bright in SP mode though; more hindrance than help.

I've heard that too much 80s pop culture can have that effect on a person.

I don't think that disallowed goal should have been disallowed.

This is totally unrelated to the videos I've quoted, the thought just kinda popped into my head, but for me one of the best parts will be not taking a squad along on missions. This game will be badass, and the Grigori and Sie vids just confirm it even more.