Cosplay rage - The frustration and you

I'm well aware that this is generally supposed to be a gaming blog, but I feel strongly that cosplay fits in the realm that *is* nerdy.

I don't know how many of our (what so far, 4?) readers are into cosplay, or even understand what goes into making the beautiful costumes we see at conventions. There is a lot to it, and most of the time, there is more anger than one would probably like to deal with.

To make a good, recognizable costume takes planning, money (some, anyway... depending on how resourceful you may be), time, and patience.

Here's the issue that I'm currently faced with: I have (really) none of the things mentioned above. I planned as well as I could to work around work (full time office job, looking at your roof), and school. I know school wasn't much. It was a math class that I attended two days a week. And here I sit, with less than two weeks until I'm supposed to show off my mediocre seamstress skills as Batgirl (the Stephanie Brown kind) at Emerald City Comic Con.

Now, I'm raging because I clearly didn't figure into the mix that things would probably go wrong. Crafting dates have been missed, materials weren't gathered in a timely manner, and general chaos has gone on.

Crunch time is upon myself and the group of friends I will be attending ECCC with, and it seems to be showing. This isn't really much of an "I have a TON of interesting stuff to tell you about the wonderful world of cosplay" article, as it is a "hey kids, the moral of the story is plan until your head explodes" thing.

I will definitely update as time winds down for my lovely ladies of the DC Universe, so stay tuned for my inevitable rage.

-KT

Mass Effect 3 & The Kinect

Since Katey has been kind enough to join the not-so-respectable ranks of 'author' for our faux-journalistic escapades, I've decided to strap on my serious(ish) pants and start writing entries as though I actually intend people to read them.

Should you play Mass Effect 3 with the kinect?

Voice Command Guide for ME3

The answer is an ambiguous that depends.

I suppose the easier question to get out of the way is, does it work?  As long as you can manage to ensure that nothing else in the city makes a noise louder than a mild mannered gentleman's ahem while you're trying to issue your commands, you'll find that the Kinect works most of the time. In all honestly it worked better than I expected it to. Granted, I ended up rolling with EDI and Liara because my Kinect apparently didn't like hearing someone else call out Garrus' name, and it absolutely abhored the way I pronounce shotgun, but aside from that it seemed to get the gist of what I was trying to say.

Looking past the actual functionality of the voice commands, a lot of this decision rides on whether you give a rat's ass what your companions are doing while you're in combat.  If you're more into letting them do whatever they want (which is anything from decimating all life to picking their nose in a corner) then the only commands you'll get any use out of are switching your own weapons and using the 4th skill you probably don't have. I found these mildly helpful at best (possibly due the whole shotgun thing) and rarely used them.

Oh, and I guess there's the commands whose only purpose are for shits and giggles.
You can tell Bioware was hoping that using voice command would overwhelm you with that new technology feeling by all the absolutely useless opportunities they give you to use it.  At a doorway, you can say 'open' to do guess what, and during conversations you can recite a line to choose it.  Both of these things are more time consuming and less likely to work than their button counterparts, so the only real purpose of them being there is to make you fawn over how your 360 finally understands you, bringing you one step closer to eloping together.

I do feel obligated to take a moment and say that despite the fact that most of the time it's like trying to walk upriver through mud, reciting lines for conversation does have its advantages when you've decided to busy your hands with something else during those long conversations. Like stuffing your face with food or jerking off.

Now, if you're the kind of player that micro-manages your players, you stand the most to gain. However, how you play the game and what you want out of it still play a big part in whether you'll actually like it. If you're not a fan of real time combat and find yourself wishing whimsically for the days when turn based combat was in vogue, you might not enjoy the perks of a device that allows you shed all need for the menu systems that pause combat, seeing as that's what it was made to do. If the game stopping dead mid-combat doesn't break your immersion, and you honestly like the excuse to take deep breath and collect yourself enough to work out some tactics, you probably aren't going to take advantage of the system. Also, if you're really into the menu system because it provides you with the ability to use 3 skills simultaneously, you'll probably be disappointed with voice commands, seeing as you can only issue one command at once.  2 if you use it in concert with a button.

Alternatively, if a game's ability to 'draw you in' is important, you should seriously consider giving it a go. It's true that I had to repeat myself from time to time, but that didn't seem break the immersion nearly as much as I thought it would. I'd gotten so used to issuing commands vocally that I foolishly started thinking aw shit, they didn't hear me instead of I wish my Kinect would quit being an asshole. Having to sort out tactics hiding behind a box while things were shooting and/or screaming at me, and then having to execute those orders in real time and in a realistic manner well made up for in immersion what it lacked in success rate. I suppose this only works if you're not a cynical ass who refuses to meet anything halfway, so if you aren't going to try to like it, don't even bother.

The technology is new and its obvious, but I still think its a great step forward for more interactive gaming. I'm a big fan of using the voice commands, and aside from a very depressing half an hour when it was too loud to use it, my game never had to stop dead.  It had its issues, but that half an hour without taught me how much I really really enjoyed the system.

Also,
Dear Kinect:
Headset.
Love, Me.

End

Why Mass Effect 3's Ending Didn't Suck

Before I get started, I just want to say that I already know this post will be unpopular with a lot of you. I want you to know that I don't care, because I think you're all a bunch of babies. I should also say that these opinions are my own, and not necessarily KT or Amanda's (and certainly none of yours). Now that that's out of the way, I want to talk about why Mass Effect 3's ending didn't suck. Also, before you continue reading, please note that THERE ARE PROBABLY SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN THE GAME. Of course, if you couldn't figure that out, I can't even...

These are what I have been hearing the most when people complain about ME3's ending:

• The ending was too short!
• There was really only one ending since no matter what you chose, the variations were so minute!
• I didn't like the little boy!
• I didn't feel like the ending was what MY Shepard would have done! Wah!
• There wasn't an epilogue for any surviving races! I wanted an epilogue for the quarians and the humans and the turians and the krogan and the asari and the nyancats!
• I wanted Shepard to live damn it!
• I jumped on the bandwagon and read that the ending sucked before I finished the game so of course I thought it sucked because I follow what others tell me!

I might have gotten a little mean there, but I'm just being honest. Why don't we look at those one by one?

It was too short.

Really? Really? I loved the series too, from start to finish, but I didn't need to see a whole MOVIE at the end of the game. The whole ending fight was the ending. If you pretend that you didn't fight and that it was a cutscene, then the ending was very long. I remember in Metal Gear Solid 4, you all complained about how the whole thing was basically a movie and that the ending was so long. Now, it's not long enough, even though it was pretty lengthy. There's no pleasing you!

Only one ending.

Okay. Let's make this clear before I continue: yes, I am aware that there is basically one ending, and no, I am not disputing that. What I will dispute is that it's a valid complaint. Why should Bioware have to have a ton of different endings if it's the end of the series (not to mention the other Mass Effect games endings weren't that different from each other anyway)? It's not like it's the middle of a series where anything could happen. It's the conclusion, the final one, and they had a plan in their head for how they wanted it to end. Fans, you do not OWN the series just because you played all three games and have your own ideas of how you wanted it to end. This is Battlestar Galactica all over again, and it's sad. Just because the game didn't end how you thought it would or thought it should have doesn't mean that the ending is wrong. Also, everyone seems to forget that they're supposed to get ONE ending, not five. It's based on what you chose, and there didn't need to be 10 options for those. You have every right to be sad that it ended differently, but you really shouldn't be up in arms threatening to burn down Bioware's building or something. Seriously.

The little boy sucked.

I'm going to make this one short. You all are complaining that it was a little boy. I bet if it took on a different form or was just a voice, you wouldn't complain. All I have to say is that if you didn't realize the little boy was only "the little boy" because Shepard chose to see him that way due to prior events, then you're dumb. Moving on.

My Shepard wouldn't have chosen any of the end options.

Oh really? Your Shepard? Shepard isn't yours. Shepard is a character, created by Bioware, and they gave you the amazing ability to control him/her while still limiting your options to the story line, and they did no differently here. Then again, I feel like the only people complaining about this specifically are the people who created a Shepard so evil that they would have punched the little boy and let the reapers kill everyone. That, of course, makes no sense as a legitimate option since Shepard would have given up long ago if he/she wanted to let everyone die.

I wanted epilogues!

This is the only one I am remotely sympathetic towards, because everyone wants to see what happened afterwards. However, I still don't think this is an argument worth fighting for. Mass Effect is a very cinematic series, obviously. The ending itself was cinematic. It ended like a movie, people! It ended with the final, sad scene and then rolled credits with a surprise at the end (and you DID stay to see the end, didn't you?). Plus, the ending was already relatively long. You wanted epilogues with all the races? Really? Because that would take an hour. If your argument is that they could have shown the important races, well, who's to say what race is important? What if my favorite race is the krogan, but the endings were for the turians, asaris, and humans? I'd be more upset than if there were no epilogues, and you would be too. You'd be up in arms, just like you are now. So calm the fuck down.

Shepard died.

Yes, Shepard died. Deal with it. It's the end of a series, and it felt right for his/her story line to come to an end this way. If at the end everything was completely happy, we'd have complainers about how it wasn't realistic and how the series can't end with everyone happy and going about their lives. What was important about the ending is that Shepard had to choose between some VERY difficult decisions, and Bioware had every right to make this the ending if they felt it was the most appropriate option.

I hate it because everyone else does.

I swear at least half of you fall into this category. Let's face it, this is the internet, and the internet tends to cause bandwagoning. I bet if that same half didn't read anyone's comments before and instead just played the game and came to their own conclusions, most of them wouldn't hate it.

Now, why I liked the ending.

Look guys, I liked the end of Mass Effect 3. I really did. I felt like everything was appropriate and everything was explained to a satisfactory level. I was sad and emotional during the entire ending. It was with great heartbreak that I made the decision that I did as Shepard, and I liked that the game ended there. It felt right, as I was controlling her throughout the entire series. Her life ended, and so my experience should also end. I also liked the ending because although this is the last game in the actual series, the way it ended leaves it open for more games to occur in the same universe. Maybe we can have a new set of problems with a new hero! Maybe you'll get to be whatever race you want! Maybe it'll be set 3000 years in the future with a new race! The beauty of it ending the way that it did is that it leaves the door open for so many more things. 

I'm (sort of) sorry for being rude, but I am so sick and tired of people getting up in arms about things not ending the way they felt it should end. Maybe you should write a game series and set events how you want them to. But, you didn't write this one. So, as Chris Crocker said about Britney, leave Bioware alone!

-Katey