Grooting for France!

Well, it's Monday, and my 2nd day off in a row with another day off coming on Friday.  Retail, you know?  At least since I stepped down from my mgmt position I no longer have to get up at 0300.
Last evening I finished my 1st play through of Mass Effect, Andromeda - that's not saying there's going to be a 2nd play through.  Since a lot of people never complete a game, those that do get certain very nice perks.  This game, however, had a lot of problems right out of the gate so I will probably sit back and see what kind of fixes Bioware makes.
A big Congratulations to the people of France who voted in a Centrist by a landslide.  That's the kind of victory the Idiot would have like to have had and failed to get.  This means that the Idiot's only ally in Europe is Theresa May... and everybody knows that the EU is going to send her a plate of shit to smoke when it comes to trade deals.
And Sally Yates is going to testify this week... and the Idiot has already started his negative Tweeting.  Evidently the Obama Administration warned the Idiot... but, well, this is why this guy's the Idiot in the White House.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised it that warning didn't send Steve Bannon into a giggle fit.  He would have thought that a very, very strong endorsement... in fact, I'm sure the Idiot, himself, didn't tell Steve that "this is a huge, a really, really huge sign Flynn needs to be on our team."
Now, I and the dogs are going to take a little nap.  Later this afternoon I'm going to grout.  That's right, I said grout... not Groot.  I'll be Grooting later this evening.

And tomorrow it's back to work... and the gym,,, the stuff I live for.

Mass Effect - Andromeda revealed

E3 2015 is going on right now out in Los Angeles.  For those who don't know, E3 stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo and is The Show where studios talk about new games.  Also, for those of you who don't know, worldwide gaming makes $101.62 billion dollars.  Yepper, you read that right.  That makes E3 very, very important.  The big guns come out.  Now I know a lot of your are saying that's a lot of money for kids to be spending... well, it isn't kids.  Surprisingly, 26% of all gamers are over the age of 50.  I'm in that group.  I started playing because of hand / eye coordination, not that I had any problems, I just want to keep them in tune as long as possible.  All games use different button controls on the controller so you're constantly learning new moves.
The trilogy of Mass Effect games are my favorites by far.  I've played them through several times on different difficulty levels as well as with different characters.  You can even play as a female, should you want.  Mass Effect 3 was the first game to offer same sex relationships.  That's a biggie, believe me because anyone playing the game, whether as a male or a female, can have a same sex relationship.
The last Mass Effect game came out in 2012 so it's about time for another and everyone was hoping for some thing.  No one was not let down.  This is all CGI.  It's all done 'in engine' which means this is what it will probably look like on your television or computer screen.  Video games have come a long way.

Here is the teaser trailer for Bioware's Mass Effect - Andromeda.

Now all I have to do is wait until Christmas of 2016.

Dragon Age Inquisition, another major disappointment?

I sent an email to Bioware regarding my pre-order of Dragon Age Inquisition.  The original game in the series, Dragon Age Origins was very good.  Dragon Age 2 was abysmal, and that's putting it mildly.  So bad was the game, many thought the franchise was dead and buried.  Everybody was quite surprised when Bioware announced that there was going to be a third installment.  Ever since that announcement they have been on a really, really hard sell.  This is understandable for two reasons:  part two was little more then a hot mess from hell; and this is also the same corporation which foisted the disastrous Mass Effect 3 on the unknowing public.  Putting it in easy terms to understand, they have problems with story telling.  They don't understand their audience, at least they didn't until the ME3 fiasco, at which point they began learning fast.  To give you some perspective, 6 weeks after the game was released it had already sold 3.4 million units starting at $60 and going up to $125, depending upon whether you wanted the collectors edition or not.  At that point, because the ending was so hated, sales began to hemorrhage badly.  Bioware had wanted to create a legendary game and what they sold to the public was a legendary failure.  So bad were the fans bleeding away, a few months after the game's initial release, Bioware released an extended cut in the hope of putting a bandage on the wound.  It failed.  Paul Tassi, from Forbes, called it "too little, too late."

Originally, Dragon Age Inquisition was to be released in September, however, that date has been delayed until late in November.  Supposedly this was done so they could "fine tune" the game in order to give the fans the best gaming experience possible.  I read this as them saying "hey, the game looks great, the combat is damn good, it's just that we still don't know how to tell a story."  Now, I may be wrong, but I also remember those few months between the initial release of ME3 and the extended cut.  All they could come up with was a leaky bandage, when what they truly needed was a tourniquet.  This is why I sent the email and why I'm trying to decide if I really want to plunk down $70 for a game that's going to end up being another major disappointment.

Mass Effect failure of Bioware

I like playing video games, they are one of the ways I work off the stress of a hectic day at the store.  One of my all time favorite franchises is the Mass Effect group.  I liked the fact that I could customize Shepherd - I made mine real hunky.  Mass Effect 3 was the first game I played in which the main character could have a gay relationship, which was really neat.  I liked it so much I played through all 3 games a second time while waiting for Shadow of Mordor to arrive.   It's a shame Bioware chose to give the franchise such a rotten ending - Shepherd dies.  There are actually three endings and they are all terrible.  The main idea behind a franchise is to keep growing it, not kill it off.  One of the golden rules of any form of entertainment, be it games, literature, movies, what ever, is don't piss off your customer base.  Don't let them play for 30 hours and hand them a plate of shit, they need to be given some sort of reward.  About a week after Mass Effect 3's initial release, Bioware gave the world additional content - for free, to try and explain the ending.  No one was satisfied.

Where's the % of players they pissed off?

And now, because they killed off Shepherd instead of retiring him, Bioware has quite a task ahead of them.  You see they're working on Mass Effect 4, and have been some time.  I'm sure they remember, however, that they did piss off a lot of people with the ending of Mass Effect 3.  This means they will need to kiss a lot of ass to get back all of those unhappy customers.  What reason is there for me to buy it?  The character I invested so much time in ended up getting incinerated.  I can't even conceive of what exactly was going through their minds when they approved that type of ending.  Bioware, and Electronic Arts, the company which released the game, are not going to get my buckos when the new game comes out.  Don't expect me to eat a plate of shit just because you hand it to me.
 

What a combination, Romney and ME3

This has been a bad month on the job line for me, not because I'm losing mine, no, my schedule is all topsy-turvy thanks to meetings and classes and more meetings.  I can't wait for October to get here so things can quiet down... a little, and I can get back to a regular schedule.

On a whole I'd have to say this past week was on the funny side.  I got to watch some of the secret Mitt Romney tapes and, were I a critic, would have to call them boring and uninspired.  If you've seen any of them then you know, he rambles on and on and on totally avoiding anything substantial.  I saw where the dude who threw the fundraiser is blaming the "help."  How Republican.  My suspicion is that he, himself, taped the dinner for posterity only to discover Romney is the personification of droll.

Ann Romney's plane had to land because of smoke.  Later she whined about being a candidate's wife.  What did she think this was going to be?  A Sunday Social?

Paul Ryan got booed by Seniors and then, from one of the news clips I read, went on to lie about his percentage of body fat.

Boo, baby, Boo

Quite a number of Republicans are unhappy with the campaign, including Laura Ingram, and the want it shaken up.  I'm sure they must realize by now shaking is not going to help.  They did pay attention to their own primaries, didn't they?  Mitt basically won by default because the other candidates were just to crazily far to the right.

One of the really funny things was Ralph Reed telling Evangelicals they should vote for Romney.  Isn't that going against your faith?  Could this indicate Ralph wants a heretic in the White House?  Or, is it possible he's an White Supremacist in disguise?  Perhaps he doesn't understand that if Mitt gets elected Mormon Missionaries will swarm out of Salt Lake City like a plague of locusts.

And for all of you gamers out there, the real shocker was Bioware putting forth a statement which, and I paraphrase, states that the Mass Effect Universe is large and there are more stories to tell.  I said something similar back in... May?

Back then everybody was running around like their hair was on fire because they didn't like the ending of ME3.  Why is this funny?  Because you don't kill off your golden goose and everybody was sure Bioware had loped off its head.  I said that and nobody listened.  Now I read on Gamestop, or maybe it was Rock, Paper, Shotgun that the original team is either reassembling, or has reassembled.  Surprise.

Mass Effect 3 DLC / What? No fantasy TDF?

I finally watched the Mass Effect 3 DLC on Youtube.  Boring.  They said there was going to be some added filler to enlighten gamers as to what actually happens in the end.  The answer is a boring 'nothing much.'  You still end up with, of all things, a 2 second clip of someone laying in the rubble on Earth, someone who may or may not be Shepherd.  Like I said before, in 2 or 3 years Bioware is going to put another Mass Effect game, though who knows what they might call it, maybe Mass Effect Resurrection because Shepherd will rise from the rubble.

To be continued?

Next on the agenda - Cycling, the kind you do on a bicycle.  The Tour de France starts Sunday and I can't wait.  I've watched it on Versus for years.  At some point in time NBC purchased Versus and for the most part they've kept pretty true to previous years' telecast.

There is, however, one exception.  I've been going to the NBC Sports website daily to see if they were going to be running a Fantasy Cycling Challenge or at least a link to one.  So far?  Nothing.  Thousands of people used to participate and I used to be one of them.  I never expected to win and never did, but there was still a lot of fun in creating my own team, usually a team that did not include all of the "superstars" of cycling.  Remember, it's how you play the game; if you play it well and you win, well that's stupendous, if you play it well and lose, well, that's life, deal with it - it didn't cost anything.  But not this year, so far no link has been published.  I did go online to see if there were any listed and there are, but they cost money.  There's one in the UK which is free for the first 7 stages but after that you need to pay 10.5 Pounds Sterling, or about $25 per stage.  Give me a break!  Not out of my bank account.  So, this year, I will most likely just watch.  Oh, and I will not be signing up to watch the live broadcast from my tablet.  My employer would not be thrilled to find me sitting at my desk watch the race live.

Mass Effect 3, the true ending

Back when this game came out there was a lot of hubbub as to whether Shepherd dies; a lot of people were not happy.  Of course he didn't die, there was no body.  What you did get were a number of short scenes which didn't tell you anything.  A two second clip of a human moving in the rubble of Earth says nothing yet a lot of voices shouted "see, Shepherd lives."  The truth is it could have been any survivor.  Where is the Normandy?  That's my main question.  First you see the Earth relay station detonate and pulse / destructo beam aim and hit a 2nd relay station, and then you see the same pulse / destructo beam chasing and (perhaps) overtaking the Normandy.  This means Joker had left Earth and made it through at least one relay station (maybe two).  The fact that you see survivors exiting the ship (no where near Earth) raises a lot of questions.  Like, was the pulse / destructo beam specifically targeting every relay station?  If that was the case a three second clip could have shown them all destroyed.  Or was it specifically targeting the Normandy?  Hhmmmm.

Too many people were thinking inside the box.  They need to understand Bioware is thinking mostly in terms of revenue.  With Mass Effect they have a golden goose.  So, they're going to kill it off leaving only a few measly DLC golden eggs? Holy shit, give me a break.  Believe me, Shepherd didn't die.  How do I know?  Normally, when I finish a game I don't watch the credits - boring.  With ME3 I didn't turn off my console, nor did I pop the game out in frustration.  I actually went into the kitchen and began loading dishes into the dishwasher.  I had just put a glass in the rack when I heard voices talking, one old and one young.  Going into the living room I saw that a tag was added at the end of the credits. What I saw was an older man talking to a child.  The last spoken line in the game is a statement made by the child.  "Tell me more stories about Shepherd."