June 19, 2013

Hindsight is kinda dumb

True Lies, brought to you by the good folks who made Mass Effect. Though they probably wish otherwise.

Corrupt corporations and their CEOs are everywhere, especially in the future. Imagine if you took Dick Cheney, literally anyone else with a degree of business sense, and gave them a lemonade stand,

Chaos. If Resident Evil taught us anything, it's that profitability is determined by how stupidly evil you are.

The same is true for the planet Feros, which doesn't really exist, don't worry, in Mass Effect. You'd think making shitloads of money would be enough; similarly, you'd think that being attacked by evil robots with murder on the mind would be bad enough. But it never is. Either thing.

Shepard and crew landed on Feros with high hopes, because I forgot to actually play the main game of saving the galaxy and spent like thirty levels dicking around the boonies. But here we are! Ready to rip and roar well past the point in which it will make a difference.

Fighting the Geth isn't much of a problem, though everyone keeps telling me how creepy the colonists are (personally, I think surviving weeks of constant battle while your space savior jaunts around the stars calls for a little slack there). For some reason their ship latches onto a building, but doesn't bother with safety features; prying the landing gear off the side (yes, not the roof or the goddam ground) is easier than taking a fat toddler's fingers off a fudge bar.

Shepard never has a nice day, however, so those asshole colonists attack my ship. Meanwhile I find out some random surviving scientists (nice one, murder machines) are up to no-good, so I shoot them. I could have let them live, but the leader was a real asshole, and the parts where I shoot people in the head in cutscenes are awesome.

Scientist lady gives me knockout gas to help with the colonists, which somehow makes my grenades not kill. Which is great! I save about four out of fifty. I only had three grenades, woman. To be clear, I chose the "Akuze" background for my Shepard, which means that she survived a horrendous experience while the rest of her squad was killed. I know this was tough on her, psychologically. I'm going to have to play her as a lot more crazy from now on. And guilty. I know we couldn't save them, but those dead colonists deserved better.

Finally I find a giant plant-vagina that spits a clone of an Asari (lady alien) at me. It's a real asshole, so I have to kill it. After, Asari-1 is freed. She tells me a bunch of stuff that makes me realize the writers might not have thought through their plot. And I shoot her in the head, because... wow, no one, not even my Asari teammate, normally compassionate, tries to stop me.

The colony is fucked. Scientist lady thanks me for trying, I pick up my shit, and we leave. I wonder, as I reenter my scratched-up ship (fucking colonists, I have premiums to worry about) if I could have done more. Load screen tip:

Try knocking the colonists out with Anit-Thorian gas, or by getting close and hitting them with the butt of your gun. 

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