I’m not sure if it’s because of how dire the news has been lately or what, but lately I’ve been feeling less interested in seeking new sources of entertainment.

Instead, I’ve been revisiting old favourites. It’s sort of like comfort food, something warm and familiar you’re sure you’re going to enjoy.

Firstly, I’ve cancelled my Netflix/CraveTV subscriptions for the time being and dug out my DVDs to rewatch Continuum. I very rarely buy DVDs, as they are quite expensive, so the fact I have the entire series on DVD is a testament to how much I love it.

In a lot of ways Continuum is actually better the second time through. You can really take note of all the subtle bits of foreshadowing, and it’s interesting to see how things changed over the years. I totally forgot how cocky and lighthearted Alec was at the beginning. He’s almost unrecognizable as the character he became in later seasons. I’m also paying more attention to Garza, knowing what I know now.

Meanwhile, despite still having a couple of new and unread books lying around my apartment, I’ve decided to revisit some of my favourite StarCraft novels. Specifically The Dark Templar Trilogy by Christie Golden.

In a strange way I almost wish this wasn’t a StarCraft series, because few if any people who aren’t StarCraft fans are going to end up reading it. And that’s a damn tragedy, because it’s brilliant.

The Dark Templar books aren’t just good StarCraft books. They’re just straight-up excellent sci-fi literature by any standard.

The trilogy tells the story of Jake Ramsey, a human archaeologist who has a chance encounter with a dying Protoss woman. But she is not just any Protoss; she’s a Preserver, with the memories of every Protoss who has ever lived stored within her mind. When she encounters Jake, her mind, with all of its memories, is downloaded into his brain.

The story is then split evenly between Jake’s struggles in the present and the memories of the ancient Protoss that he relives every night when he sleeps.

Now, I’m a huge Protoss nerd, so of course I find this fascinating, but I think even if you’re not as keen on the Firstborn as I am it’s still an excellent story. One of the most powerful scenes in the series — really one of the most powerful scenes I’ve read in anything — has Jake reliving the exact moment when the Protoss invented written language.

It’s an amazing scene because while the characters don’t know they’re laying the earliest groundwork for an empire that will one day span the stars, they do understand that they’ve discovered something profound, something that will change everything. There’s such a beauty and purity to the moment.

And of course the characters of the Dark Templar books are excellent, because this is Christie Golden and she always nails the characters. In retrospect I can really see how R.M. has inspired a lot of characters in my own writing in various little ways.

Honor duels:

In other news, For Honor launches today, and over the weekend I was able to dive into its open beta and see how it shapes up. It’s the subject of my latest article on MMO Bro.

I’ll say this much: It’s a very fascinating game, but I don’t think I’m going to be in a rush to buy it anytime soon.

Also, I keep wanting to spell the name with a U. A pox on American spelling!

One of the things that gives StarCraft II’s co-op missions such enduring appeal is the wildly different playstyles offered by the many commanders. I’ve often compared to the different civilizations and god choices in the “Age of ____” games, but you could also compare them to RPG classes. In some cases, the similarity is very obvious, while others you have to squint a bit more, but most can find an equivalent in the RPG world.

Vorazun: Rogue

Vorazun is part of the inspiration for this post. I’ve been saying for months that she’s like the traditional rogue archetype ported to the RTS genre, focusing on cloaked units, burst damage, and crowd control. Generally playing Vorazun tends to entail a lot of stunlocking the enemy and then bursting them down before they have a chance to fight back. That’s a rogue if I ever saw one.

Artanis: Paladin

Artanis’ army is slow, with little mobility or fancy tricks, but they’re also incredibly tough and durable, making them the ideal frontline bruisers. He also boasts a number of helpful buffs that help add survivability to his ally’s forces.

Sounds like a prot pally to me.

Abathur: Death knight

Like Artanis, Abathur has a strong focus on very slow but very tanky units. In late game, his troops are virtually indestructible. But he also has a strong emphasis on feeding off the destruction of his enemies; his power comes from killing. That sounds like a death knight.

Stukov: Necromancer

Not just because he has zombies, but because his playstyle is about overwhelming the enemy with endless floods of cheap and free units. He’s a summoner through and through.

Karax: Priest

More so than any other commander, Karax tends to focus on supporting his ally. He uses buffs, global abilities, and powerful defenses to turn the tide in his team’s favour, often taking little to no direct role in the battle himself. While that’s not exactly the same as being an RPG healer, the general principle of hanging back and supporting your allies remains intact.

Alarak: Warlock

Alarak’s playstyle can differ a little bit depending on whether you’re going for a Wrathwalker or Ascendant build, but either way you’re going to be using a lot of active abilities (Alarak’s and/or the Ascendants’) and pumping out huge damage numbers.

That seems like a spellcaster to me, and given Alarak has a habit of sacrificing his own units for power, warlock seems like the best fit.

Raynor: Ranger

Raynor’s army tends to focus on mobility and high ranged DPS, which makes him a decent allegory for a ranger archetype. Furthermore, a common trait of ranger classes is that they are considered to be very newbie friendly but have a surprisingly high skill cap at higher levels of play, and that’s also true of Raynor.

Kerrigan: Battle mage

A lot of playing Kerrigan boils down to controlling Kerrigan herself, a hero unit with a variety of powerful abilities. This puts me in mind of a mage, but she’s also pretty hard to kill and tends to like getting into the thick of things, so I suppose that would make her more of a battle mage.

Swann: Warrior

Subtlety was never Swann’s strong suit. He likes to build an army of slow, tanky, powerful units and slog his way to victory with sheer brute force. This makes him a decent allegory for a warrior archetype.

Nova: Druid

This one’s a bit of a stretch, I grant, but she is probably the most versatile commander at the moment, able to adapt to any situation, and she can swap between two different stances with very different abilities, so that’s sort of like shape-shifting.

Zagara: ???

Okay, I’ll admit I can’t draw any clear RPG parallels with Zagara. What class does “hurl a bajillion suicide units at your enemy” translate to?

If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears, but maybe this thought experiment simply has its limits.

Life has a funny way of surprising us sometimes.

My plan for this month was to spend a few weeks getting caught up in World of Warcraft until the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. However, somewhere along the line, I somehow fell into playing Mirror’s Edge Catalyst as well. I’ll have full thoughts on my brief return to WoW and Mirror’s Edge sometime soon.

However, I noticed something distressing while playing Catalyst. My once mighty gaming computer was struggling with it a bit, with the in-game textures often not displaying quite right and occasional moments of lag. It hasn’t massively impacted my ability to enjoy the game, but it is a bit disappointing.

Then I saw how gorgeous the trailers for Andromeda are, and I started getting depressed that I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it in all its glory. Inquisition has the dubious distinction of being the first game my current computer couldn’t handle at max settings, and while I was still able to get it looking pretty good, Bioware’s now had a few years to push their graphics even further.

And it also occurred to me my computer has been showing its age in other ways. Nothing serious, but small hiccups and annoyances here and there that are becoming more common as game technology becomes more advanced.

So… I ordered myself a new gaming computer, which should arrive right around the time Andromeda launches.

This is sooner than I expected to get a new computer, and it’s maybe not the most financially responsible decision I’ve made in my life, but it’s not going to bankrupt me, and now I should be able to enjoy Andromeda in all its full glory.

I went into Logan with very high expectations. I’ve enjoyed every X-Men movie to date, Wolverine is one of my favourite characters from the franchise, and the buzz around this film has been very good.

So perhaps my sky-high expectations are causing me to judge Logan with an unfairly critical eye, but for the first time, I’m leaving an X-Men movie feeling more disappointment than anything.

Logan depicts a grim future where mutants are dying off. An aging, sickly Logan is working as a limo driver while caring for the decrepit Professor Xavier. Well, “caring for” is probably the wrong term. Xavier is more of a prisoner. His mind is failing, and he needs to be kept under lock and key for the safety of all, lest his telepathic powers run out of control with deadly consequences.

Into this wretched purgatory of a life comes Laura, a mutant child with powers eerily reminiscent of Logan’s own. Laura is the product of horrific corporate experiments to create mutant super-soldiers, and the nurse who raised her is desperate to see her to safety. She believes Logan is the only one who can save young Laura.

Unsurprisingly, Logan isn’t eager to take responsibility for the girl, but in the end he doesn’t have much choice, and he, Laura, and Xavier find themselves in a desperate flight from the ruthless forces pursuing her.

I knew going in this was going to be a very dark movie. That much was clear from the trailers. If you’ve ever read any of my fiction, you know I’m down with grim stories.

But in the case of Logan, it just doesn’t quite work.

You see, there is a difference between trying to be something and actually being something. You’ve probably heard it said that the harder you try to be cool, the less cool you actually are, and the same is true of most of anything.

Logan is trying very, very hard to be a powerful movie, but that’s exactly why it isn’t. It’s such an unrelentingly bleak and brutal story that it just ends up feeling bland and tasteless. You need some light to contrast the darkness, or else you’re just fumbling blind.

It works so hard to be tragic that it misses opportunities to be genuinely impactful. Xavier has degenerated so much that I no longer see anything of Professor X in him. If there had been more flashes of his old self, if I could have seen something of the character I know in him, his issues would have been heart-wrenching, but instead he’s just this incoherent, foul-mouthed old man who isn’t a shell of his old self so much as he’s a different character entirely.

I very much like the idea of superhero movies being a little more serious, a little more about character and less about spectacle. Part of the reason I’m such a fan of the X-Men movies is that they’re already doing a pretty good job of that.

But Logan has gone to the opposite extreme. It wants so desperately to prove its emotional weight and artistic prowess that loses sight of the forest for the trees and fails to actually tell an interesting story.

That’s not to say that there aren’t positives to the movie. Indeed, there are a lot of individual parts of Logan that I enjoyed quite a lot, even if they don’t fit together very well as a whole.

By far and away the best part of the film is Dafne Keen’s performance as Laura.

This kid is going places.

Despite the fact that she doesn’t speak any coherent words for roughly the first three quarters of the movie, she manages to communicate an incredible amount of personality and emotion. You can see a clear resemblance between her and Wolverine, yet she’s also clearly her own person.

And the sheer intensity of her performance is staggering. When danger comes, she morphs into this shrieking avatar of bestial fury, and yet her quieter moments are no less powerful. She’s as convincing as a vulnerable, innocent child as she is as a cold-blooded killer.

The villains of the story also put on excellent performances. They’re skin-crawling, blood-boilingly, disgustingly and utterly vile, and I mean that in the best way possible. Villains should make you hate them with every fiber of your being, and these guys accomplished that with flying colours.

But still, Logan is a movie that ends up feeling like less than the sum of its parts.

There’s one other thing that bothers me, but it’s a spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to go in fresh, I’d advise leaving now. For the record, I’m giving this 6.9. You can leave now and not miss anything non-spoilery.

Everyone ready for the spoiler? Good.

I don’t like that Logan died. Now, I want to be clear that I’m not being sentimental here (see my Dark Knight Rises review for proof I’m willing to kill my darlings). This was always going to be Hugh Jackman’s last movie as Wolverine anyway, and Logan has got to be pushing his second century at this point. We all have to go sometime. I’m not upset by the death of the character.

What bothers me is it sabotages the whole theme of the movie. The core thread running through the movie is Logan’s struggle to cope with the pain and horror of his long and violent life. He’s outlived everyone he ever cared about, and he just doesn’t have the strength to go on anymore.

What a powerful moment it would have been if Logan could overcome that in the end. How meaningful it would have been for him to find the strength to continue on, to escape with Laura and finally have the peace he long ago gave up hope of ever finding.

But instead he’s just killed off. It’s not even his choice; it’s just something bad that happened. Again, they were so desperate to make this movie a tearjerker that they ignored their best chance to tell a truly powerful story and just went for the most blunt, contrived, obvious solution possible.

It’s a death with no thematic meaning. It doesn’t make any point about the character. It doesn’t have any real emotional payoff. It’s lazy.

Again, if Logan hadn’t been so hyped by both myself and the media as a whole, I might view it less harshly. It’s not that it’s a bad movie, but it could have been so much more than it is. Honestly I liked the previous Wolverine movie much, much better.

To make it official:

Overall rating: 6.9/10

As I post this, most gamers are probably either playing Mass Effect: Andromeda or counting the minutes until they can (myself included). I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say on it soon enough, but in the meanwhile, there’s another game I’d like to discuss.

I had planned to spend the month leading up to Andromeda focused on World of Warcraft, but some happenstance had me splitting my attention with another game, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.

While looking for info on Andromeda, I discovered that Origin was offering a free trial of its subscription service, which allows you to play a number of games for no additional cost. I’d long had my eye on Catalyst but wasn’t willing to drop the dough without trying it first, so this was a great opportunity. After a couple hours of play, I knew I wanted to see more, and it also happened to be on sale for a generous discount, so I bought the full version of the game so I could playing even after the free trial ran out.

It’s an interesting game, though I do have some conflicted feelings on it.

High, just like the Runners:

Catalyst is a reboot of the Mirror’s Edge franchise. It has roughly the same general concept as the first game, but there’s no continuity between them that I’m aware of. They’re starting fresh.

Catalyst takes place in the futuristic city of Glass, a glittering metropolis whose pristine beauty conceals dark secrets. In Glass, nearly all information is digitized, and therefore vulnerable to hacking. The only way to prevent this with total certainty is to go old school and deliver letters by hand.

To this end, a strange subculture of “Runners” has developed, elite agents operating in a legal gray area, darting across the roofs of Glass to ferry packages and information.

As in the original Mirror’s Edge, the star of the game is a young Runner named Faith Connors. At the beginning of the game, Faith is released after several years spent in prison and resumes her life as a Runner. But Faith’s reckless curiosity soon finds her drawn into a dangerous conspiracy that threatens to end what little freedom exists in the shining prison that is Glass.

The gameplay is focused on high octane first person platforming as the player uses Faith’s speed and parkour skills to navigate the city, solve puzzles, and defeat her adversaries.

Long-time blog readers may know I have some history with Mirror’s Edge. I remember seeing a preview of the first game on Electric Playground many, many years ago and instantly falling in love with the concept, but when I finally got around to playing it, I simply couldn’t. I never was very good at jumping puzzles, and I became hopelessly roadblocked shortly after finishing the tutorial.

So the question with Catalyst was not so much, “Will I like it?” as it was, “Can I play it?”

The good news is that the answer is yes. I won’t profess to be particularly good at it, and there were still more than a few occasions where I screwed up and left a small crater, but that wasn’t the sum total of my experience this time, and I managed to finish the story, at least.

The funny thing is I’m hard-pressed to determine what the difference is. Catalyst offers more or less the same gameplay using more or less the same controls, and yet the difference is night and day. The first game was unplayable for me, but Catalyst just… works. I don’t know how else to describe it.

It’s a hard game to rate because it can be thrilling and frustrating in equal measure. Leaping, climbing, soaring, zip-lining, and wall-running across Glass is incredibly enjoyable — poetry in motion — when everything is going well. When things aren’t going well, it can get ugly.

The combat is the same way. Faith has access to a few basic martial arts moves, but on their own they’re woefully inadequate to deal with the heavily armed goons she finds herself up against.

To level the playing field, you need to take advantage of the same acrobatic movement that gets you around the city. Faith can literally run circles around her enemies, and the more momentum she can maintain, the stronger her offensive and defensive capabilities are.

When you get it right, this makes combat spectacularly satisfying. There is no way for me to adequately communicate in text how much fun it can be to flow like water around your enemies, to wall-run into a flying kick or leap off a zip-line and crash into a guard like a freight train.

But it’s a very finicky system. When it works, it’s brilliant, but it doesn’t always work, and then combat just turns into a flailing awkward mess.

Combat is a relatively small part of the game, though, and interestingly it is often possible or even advisable to avoid fighting altogether. You can simply outrun your enemies. Unlike a lot of video games, Mirror’s Edge is fundamentally about wits, not brute force. Enemy soldiers are more of an extension of the game’s puzzle nature than anything. The goal is not to kill them, but simply to stop them from killing you.

On a similar note, I do find it interesting that Faith as a character has no particular super-powers or exceptional abilities. She’s very fast, agile, and smart, but not inhumanly so. She’s not enhanced in any way, nor does she have elite military training or any of the other inherent advantages most video game heroes have.

I like playing super-powered characters, but Faith’s relatively ordinary nature is a refreshing change of pace.

One difference between Catalyst and its predecessor is that it is now an open world game, which is another thing that has its pros and cons.

On the one hand, I love the actual open world part. Movement is such a joy in this game that I love the option to just run around and explore the city at leisure, and there are lots of little collectibles that are just rewarding enough to make exploration feel useful, but not mandatory.

Conversely, though, Catalyst has also inherited many of the sins of the open world genre, like a preference for quantity of content over quality. The game is overflowing with side-missions, time trials, and other random activities that are for the most part just dull.

The good news is you can skip pretty much all the optional content and not miss out on anything important, so that’s what I ended up doing.

The one side activity that is a little interesting is billboard hacks. These allow you to hack into electronic billboards so that they display your Runner’s mark, a customizable sigil. Oddly, you can’t customize it in-game; you have to go to the game’s website, which is less than convenient. Still, it’s a neat idea, and it can be gratifying to see your personal sigil shining over the city for the rest of the game.

Supposedly any friends who play the game will also see your mark on billboards you’ve hacked, but since I don’t have any friends who play, that’s a non-issue for me. (Insert Forever Alone meme.)

One other thing that needs to be said about the gameplay is that Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is not at all a relaxing game. In fact its constant “go-go-go” mentality can make it quite physically and psychologically exhausting at times.

It’s a very interesting game. It will challenge your intellect and your reflexes, and it can be both fascinating and satisfying, but it’s not something I’d recommend if you’ve had a long day and need to unwind.

The story, meanwhile, is mostly enjoyable, though a bit on the basic side. I played so little of the original that it’s hard to compare the two accurately, but based on what little I saw, the original seemed to have a bit more personality.

I made my Mark purple, of course.

For the most part there’s very little to set Catalyst apart from any number of other sci-fi dystopias where corrupt corporations rule the world (a genre which seems increasingly prophetic by the day). It works, and it does get pretty exciting near the end, but it’s not especially surprising. What twists there are can easily be seen coming.

The ending is also fairly inconclusive and clearly intended to set-up a sequel, which may or may not actually happen.

I did really like the cast of characters, though. Faith is a great protagonist; she’s tough, but not to an unrealistic degree, and she still feels very human and relatable. Her recklessness and curiosity remind me of Leha a bit.

The rest of the cast isn’t quite as impressive, but they’re still pretty solid characters. For a game that isn’t particularly long or story-driven, they have a lot of depth and development, even the ones that seem one-dimensional at first. The one exception is Plastic, who is as artificial as her name would indicate.

It’s one of the more diverse casts I’ve seen in a game, too, which is always nice to see.

Graphically, I imagine this is a very good-looking game on a powerful machine, but as previously discussed, my rig was showing its age when I played it. Catalyst ran well enough, but the textures just never seemed to display quite right, and it did get a bit sluggish or laggy at times. The funny thing is that no amount of tinkering with the graphics settings seemed to affect any of these issues. At least the cinematics looked good.

One other thing that I did really like is that you actually have a body in this game. If you look down, you’ll see Faith’s feet and legs. If you grab onto a ledge, you’ll see her hands. It seems like such a small thing, but I found it made the game vastly more immersive than the standard first person game where you’re just a disembodied head.

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a very hard game to rate. I’m coming away with more positive feelings than negative ones, but there’s no shortage of either.

Overall rating: 7/10

One other amusing thing to note: Early in the game, you’ll encounter a jukebox you can activate to play music in-game. This is hardly a radical idea at this point, but imagine my joy when the very first song to be played was by none other than Chvrches, one of my most beloved bands of all time (though ironically not the one referenced in the sub-header).

Now, I knew they’d done a song for the game, so it didn’t come as a total shock, but it was a great way to be welcomed into the game. Needless to say my progress ground to a halt as I listened to the song.

I’ll level with you: I’ve had an unusually busy month, and it’s not done yet. I would frankly rather spend what free time I have on continuing to explore Mass Effect: Andromeda than blogging, but I suppose blogging about Andromeda is the next best thing.

I’m still pretty early in the game, and I’m a long way from ready to do a full review (though you can be sure that will come at some point). Any of my current impressions of the game can and will probably change with time.

However, right now, I would say it has met or exceeded pretty much all of my expectations. Of course it also needs to be said my expectations were very carefully managed, so don’t think I’m without complaints, but they’re complaints I expected to have. Too many boring side activities, slow pacing, iffy combat. In other words, it’s a Bioware game.

Right now the thing I’m enjoying the most is the sense of discovery and wonder of the unknown that runs through the whole game. I’ve said before that Mass Effect feels like it’s become something of a spiritual successor to Star Trek, and never has that been more true than it is now.

Some other quick and dirty (and spoiler-free) thoughts based on my first few days with the game:

-I don’t like Cora or Vetra as much as I expected to. I definitely don’t dislike either of them, but I was expecting to be more impressed than I am. Cora’s a beast in combat, though. I think she’s getting almost as many kills as I am.

-On the other hand, so far I like PeeBee more than I expected to.

-In general this may be the first Bioware game where I don’t hate any of my companions, assuming Jaal turns out okay. I’m not yet blown away by any of them, but so far none of them rub me wrong way, either. Even Drack is growing on me.

-Overall, though, my favourite characters so far are all outside the squad. Suvi is awesome, and Kallo and Gil are both a lot of fun.

-I like the Tempest a lot better than the Normandy. Easier to navigate. Pretty windows.

-I actually kind of like scanning planets and systems this time. If only because the space graphics are so pretty.

-On that note, I love my new computer. I’m running the game at 100% maxed settings, and it’s smooth as butter. It looks real.

-I’m far too pleased with how my Ryder looks. Also, the game’s ability to automatically make her father look like her is amazing.

-With keybindings being as limited as they are, Throw and Pull really should have been combined into one power. It sucks to give up 66% of your slots just to be able to combo them.

-I’m glad they brought back so many guns from the original trilogy. I’ve already been reunited with my beloved Viper.

-Jump jets! Jump jets.

-Did I mention Suvi is awesome?

-I am a little worried the wealth of side missions will start to beat me down after a while. That’s what happened with Inquisition. But at least this time the places you’re exploring seem to be a bit more interesting, and so far nothing is as annoying as collecting shards.

-The Remnant are the Xel’naga. I’m not saying they remind me of the Xel’naga; I’m saying they are literally the Xel’naga.

-For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over lack of polish, I’ve encountered very few issues, and all of them minor. Some very mild animation hiccups once in a blue moon, and I keep finding references on the Tempest to squadmates I don’t have yet. I’ve already heard Jaal mentioned, and I haven’t even encountered his species yet. But that’s hardly game-breaking.

-Above all, this is a Mass Effect game, for better and for worse. For all the talk of how much has changed, this is still fundamentally pretty much the same sort of experience as the original trilogy, with all the good and all the bad that entails.

After months of speculation, Blizzard has now officially announced StarCraft: Remastered, an HD update of the original game and its expansion, Brood War. They’re going to make SC1 and BW totally free, while the Remaster will be a paid upgrade.

A remaster of a classic Blizzard game seems like the sort of thing I’d be over the moon about, but to be honest… well, as Randy Jackson would say, I’m not feelin’ it, dawg.

The trouble with updating old games is that there’s such a fine line between changing too much, and not changing enough, and where that line sits can be quite subjective. For me, this remaster isn’t changing enough.

It’s basically the original game with slightly tweaked graphics. That will undoubtedly please the purists, but to be honest I don’t really want to be dealing with clunky UI, infuriatingly brain-dead pathfinding, and graphics that may be better than the original but still look about fifteen years out of date.

Ultimately, what kills my enthusiasm more than anything is Mass Recall.

The main thing I’d be interested in when it comes to a remake is the campaign, and Mass Recall already provides all of the story content of the original with fully modernized graphics and gameplay. And it’s free. It’s giving me more while costing me nothing, whereas the official remaster is offering less for a price.

The main thing the official offering has over Mass Recall is that it includes competitive play, but I’m not much for PvP, so that doesn’t really matter to me.

I am a little intrigued by the animated interludes they’re talking about — I don’t know if that means the briefings, the cinematics, or both —  as those sound pretty cool, but I don’t think it’s worth dropping cash for.

I’m sure there are people who will enjoy this remaster, but it seems like it’s going to be a pretty small niche.

I’m not really that disappointed because the remaster I want already exists in the form of Mass Recall. I am, however, concerned about the precedent this sets for other hypothetical remasters of old Blizzard games, which don’t already exist in the form of mods (not good ones, anyway).

I’d love to see modernized versions of a lot of older Blizzard titles, but if they’re all just going to be minor graphical face-lifts and nothing else, I’m not sure I’d want to bother. Warcraft III could maybe work with nothing but mild visual tweaks, but the others would need more changes to really be worth playing in this day and age. I’m not saying I want them totally redone from scratch, but at least fix some of the more broken old school mechanics.

Similar to Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda has a certain feeling of a single-player MMO to it. Given that, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between Andromeda and its multiplayer cousins.

For my latest article at MMO Bro, I take an in-depth look at how what lessons MMORPGs could take from Andromeda.

This also feels like a decent time to update on my progress in Andromeda (again, no spoilers).

So far I continue to enjoy it, though the nigh-endless side quests are beginning to grate somewhat. This is definitely Inquisition in space.

There doesn’t seem to be as much depth to the companion content this time (or I just haven’t gotten to it yet), but I am reasonably fond of them all so far. I’m waffling on PeeBee, but she has her moments, at least. Who could be considered my favourite changes from day to day, but at this very moment, I’d nominate Cora and surprisingly Drack as the frontrunners. I’m normally not keen on Krogan, but the big lug is growing on me.

Suvi and Kallo are still my favourite characters overall, though.

I also quite like how much variety there is in the gun selection. If you haven’t already, I recommend trying the P.A.W. assault rifle from Remnant research. Just be aware that every time you use it you have to shout “IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR” at your screen.

I’m still seeing StarCraft allusions everywhere, too, but that would get into spoiler territory, so I’ll say no more.

Right now I’m in the thick of Mass Effect: Andromeda, but massive as it is, it isn’t going to last forever. It was such a landmark release that all my gaming plans for the last several months have dealt with Andromeda and the lead-up to it. As a result, I’ve given very little thought to what I’ll play after I’ve finished.

Here are some of the leading candidates.

World of Warcraft:

This is probably the safest bet for where I end up after Andromeda, though I wouldn’t quite declare it a sure thing yet. As always, I maintain very mixed feelings on the game, but there’s still a lot more I’d like to do in Legion, and now that flying has finally been turned back on, now seems the time to start.

My main goal is still to go alt-crazy and see as much class content as possible. My monk has already started on the Broken Isles, so she’s probably next, but I’m not sure who to level after her. My paladin, shaman, demon hunter, priest, and warrior are all in the running.

Elder Scrolls Online:

I’m in a strange place with ESO. I almost always enjoy it, but I’m never particularly blown away by it. It’s good enough, and it’s consistently good enough, but it’s never more than good enough.

So I remain very open to playing more without feeling a very strong push to do so. There is an expansion coming soon, but there’s still so much in the base game I haven’t done yet that I’d be in no rush to move on to it.

I did rather like the templar alt I was tooling around with, and it’d be a shame for all the effort I put into crafting my gear to go to waste, so there are pretty good odds I’ll be back in Tamriel at some point, but I’m not sure when.

Star Wars: The Old Republic:

I was pretty heavily invested in SW:TOR for a while there, but as you may have noticed, I haven’t touched it in a few months. I was getting burnt out, but don’t think I’m done with the game. I just needed a break.

I will be back, but as with ESO, I’m not sure when. There’s a major story update coming soon, but I don’t necessarily want to jump straight from Andromeda into another Bioware game, so I may hold off on that for a while.

There are also still two class stories I fully intend to finish. Again, it’s all just a question of when.

The Secret World:

Sigh.

I’m still pretty heartbroken over what’s happened to TSW. I don’t like to ever rule anything out (I certainly never could have predicted getting into SW:TOR as much as I have), but I currently don’t have much interest in making the transition to the new game. It sounds like a much shallower experience, and I just don’t think I can start over from scratch.

There isn’t much point in investing much more time in vanilla TSW, as it will undoubtedly be shut down before too long, but I do think there are a few more things I might want to do before it’s over. Dorothy is very close to getting her Panoptic Core, and even though there couldn’t be less of a reason to do so, I’d kind of like to finish that.

I may also run some of my favourite missions one last time, and I’m thinking about where I want to park my characters before they log out for the last time.

For a game that I once considered my virtual home, this is really hard to cope with.

Old favourites:

When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time replaying games. It was often a matter of necessity, as there simply weren’t enough good games to keep me fully occupied in those days, whereas now there’s more good games than there is time to play them, but I still kind of miss it. Lately I feel a slightly stronger pull to revisit some old favourites.

I’d really like to play through Dragon Age II again, but the lackluster gameplay has always driven me off. Recently I’ve been considering downloading some mods to try to make it more palatable, because I loved the story in that game. For that matter I’ll probably replay Andromeda at some point, but probably not right after I finish it the first time.

The thought of more StarCraft replays is also in my mind. At the very least I should do another playthrough of Covert Ops at some point, as I’ve only done it once so far. Plus there are still a few Legacy of the Void achievements I’d like to get, and I have a vague desire to do another replay of the original (via Mass Recall), if only to once again bask in the awesomeness that is old school Zeratul.

Then there’s Diablo III. I remain very bitter that the story is apparently being abandoned unfinished, but I still have a lot of fondness for the game, and the new necromancer class is seeming increasingly tempting. Have you seen the blood golem model? It’s the most disgustingly horrible thing I’ve ever seen, and I need it in my life.

I even briefly considered reloading Neverwinter the other day. I was organizing my screenshots and realized how badass my Half-Elf paladin looked. I never did try tanking in that game…

Other possibilities:

I maintain a list of games I’d like to get around to playing if I ever find the time. The Division is prominent on that list, especially now that I have a computer that can run it a bit better. I enjoyed what I played in the beta, and while I don’t think it’s a game I’d stick with for a long time, I think it could be an enjoyable diversion for a few weeks.

Star Trek Online also pops into my mind every now and again. It’s not a great game, but I did really enjoy the whole “I’m a Romulan commanding my very own warbird” part, and every time I get a jolt of Trek nostalgia I want to play it again.

Destiny 2 is apparently getting a PC release, which is tempting, but since I never had the chance to play the first one, I’m not sure it’d be worth it, since the story is the main thing that would interest me. Plus I’m not sure I’m okay with them replacing an MMO with its sequel so quickly. I know they don’t like calling it an MMO, but let’s be real here.

Plus I’ve got a Steam wishlist a mile long at this point.

For those who are playing Andromeda, what are your plans for when you finish it?

Are you watching iZombie yet? If not, start.

Season three of the show has begun, and while I’m still going to avoid doing formal reviews on it because it is my favourite show for relaxation and I don’t want it to feel like work, I did want to take the opportunity to once again sing its praises.

We may only be two episodes in, but so far iZombie season three continues to delight. If anything this might even be a little better than past seasons.

Of course, it’s still hilariously off the walls. I missed a lot of lines of dialogue in episode two because I was laughing too hard at the preceding line. Ravi’s eyes while Liv and Major were bickering… my sides…

Liv and Ravi have always been a joy, but Clive and Major are really starting to come into their own, too. I always liked them, but season three is giving them much more freedom to shine than ever before. The guy who plays Major is a better actor than I’ve given him credit for, and one gets the impression he’s immensely enjoying the role he’s been given.

It’s not just funny, though. So far season three seems to be taking the show in a bit of a new direction, and the implications are intriguing.

Without spoiling too much, the scale of the show seems to be broadening. No longer is it just about the trials and tribulations of Liv and those close to her. iZombie is beginning to think on a more cultural scale as the battle lines are slowly drawn between humans and the undead.

It’s different, but so far, I really like it. The show is going down a darker path — while somehow still maintaining its off the walls comedy — and I’m starting to see a certain sophistication in the writing. Maybe it won’t ever be quite as cerebral as Continuum, but iZombie is getting smarter.

*Insert brain joke here.*

Anyway, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, and I can only reiterate that if you haven’t tried iZombie yet, you totally should, because it’s excellent.

Not the kind of porn you may have been looking for if you found this on Google. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This post is not about porn in space, but porn of space. Mass Effect: Andromeda’s interstellar graphics are nothing short of breath-taking, and the game helpfully lets you hide the UI and explore all sorts of different camera angles from which to view the planets, stars, and stellar phenomena.

For a screenshot nut like me, this is basically crack, and I’ve developed an extensive collection of photos from my exploration of the Heleus Cluster. I now share the best of them with you.

There’s no plot spoilers here, but if you’re really passionate about exploring, you may prefer to stumble on these vistas yourself.

It’s funny to think I was so skeptical about a continuation of the Mass Effect series. For a while there are I was considering not trying Andromeda at all. But having now finished the game, I’m very glad to have kept an open mind.

I will be avoiding major plot spoilers as much as possible.

Exploring the unknown:

First of all, let me say that this is very much a Mass Effect game. A few things are different, but nothing’s radically changed. If you liked the previous ME games, you’ll like this one. It does have its flaws, but most of them are things you would naturally expect of any Bioware game.

That doesn’t entirely excuse the problems, of course. One of the biggest is that this is once again a game that has favoured side content to an unhealthy degree. In the end, it’s maybe not quite as obnoxious on this front as Inquisition was, but it’s still kind of obnoxious.

It’s not just the amount of side quests and exploration, but how repetitive a lot of it is. I think something that dragged Andromeda down is how little environmental variety there is. More than half the worlds you visit are empty deserts, and the monotony of the scenery really wears you down after a while.

It’s very disappointing in a game that is supposedly about exploring the unknown and discovering wonders, and doubly so when you contrast the endless wastes with the sections of the game that are more creative. One of the most memorable parts of the game for me was the planet Havarl, a bioluminescent jungle world that is absolutely breathtaking.

We needed a lot more locations like that, and a lot fewer endless brown desert zones.

Something else that inhibited the game’s sense of exploring the unknown is how much time you spend fighting criminals elements of your own people, the Andromeda Initiative. I’m okay with the idea that some people went Lord of the Flies when confronted with the challenges of Andromeda, but it’s, like, half the game. How did so many immoral, unstable people even get admitted to the Initiative?

I know this much: I didn’t buy a game about exploring another galaxy so I could fight generic human crooks.

In general some more variety in threats would have been nice. Andromeda has a better variety of enemies than past installments, but it’s still mostly lacking boss fights. When they want to ramp up the difficulty, they just throw more of the same old trash mobs at you. Some more creativity would have been nice.

The one exception is the Remnant Architects, open-world bosses analogous to Inquisition’s dragons, but even these quickly become repetitive.

You see, every Architect fight is exactly the same. The mechanics never change at all. And their mechanics also happen to be virtually the same as those of Dark Matter Monoliths in Defiance, which made them feel even more repetitive for me.

I have killed a lot of Monoliths.

But when those issues don’t apply, exploring the Andromeda Galaxy can be a real treat. You may spend too much time trekking through the desert, but you’ll also marvel over wondrous new worlds and delve into profound alien mysteries.

A few weeks ago I said that Andromeda is the best Star Trek movie in years, and while I was half-joking, there is a lot of truth to that. There is an incredible sense of mystery and discovery running through many parts of this game. Not as many parts as there should have been, but when it delivers, it really delivers.

It’s not just about the sights and the story, either. A wealth of puzzles and environmental hazards constantly remind the player that exploration is a difficult business. It makes the game world feel much more like a real place — it’s not always an easy road, but that’s what makes it rewarding.

The feeling of exploration even helps make the wealth of side quests a little more tolerable. It’s easier to justify wandering all over and investigating every little thing as a Pathfinder exploring a new galaxy than as an inquisitor in a race against time to stop the world from literally exploding.

Similarly, the combat has its repetitive elements, but fundamentally it’s still very fun, and it can offer some real thrills. Andromeda doesn’t change a lot about Mass Effect combat, but it changes enough to matter.

Combat in Andromeda is a lot more mobile, a lot more dynamic, than in past installments. You can’t just camp out in cover and snipe enemies with impunity anymore — not all the time, anyway. It’s a little more challenging and a lot more exciting.

The build system helps with this. In Andromeda, classes are gone, and you can instead pick any skills you want from combat, tech, or biotics. You can even save multiple skill sets and swap between them in combat.

Now, this isn’t quite as much flexibility as advertised. It took me until relatively late in the game to unlock a second set of skills (a vanguard-style melee set-up) without compromising my main build, and I never had enough skill points for more than those two builds. But it’s still much more flexibility than we had in past games, so I call that a win.

One final thing about the gameplay that bugged me is that Andromeda has taken a step backward by returning the Mass Effect franchise to a vertical progression grind wherein you have to regularly update your gear, and where loot (most of it entirely worthless) drowns you at every turn. Not a change I welcome.

The best gear by far comes from crafting, which means you don’t have to be at the mercy of RNG, but it also means all the dropped gear is just a waste of space.

Finding a home:

But the story and the characters are the true heart of any Bioware game, so let’s talk that, shall we?

The main story in Andromeda is pretty sparse, but unlike Inquisition or ME2, it doesn’t feel underdeveloped. It tells all the story that it needs to.

The villains this time are a race of imperialistic aliens called the Kett. The Reapers were some of the greatest antagonists in sci-fi history as far as I’m concerned, and the Kett can’t live up to that legacy, but they’re scary and alien enough to serve their purpose.

Really my only complaint is how dorky they look. Everything about the Kett themselves and their technology looks like it came from the bottom of Star Trek: Voyager’s reject pile.

But ultimately the Kett are just one part of the grand galactic mystery that makes up Andromeda’s story. I can’t say much without spoilers, but it’s a story that exemplifies the sense of wonder that lies at the heart of speculative fiction. I loved it, and the ending is magnificent.

The characters, too, are strong, as one would expect from Bioware. This is perhaps the first game I’ve played from them where I didn’t strongly dislike any core characters. Liam started getting on my nerves after a while, and Vetra’s a little boring, but there’s no one I truly hate the way I did Vivienne or Zaeed.

The biggest surprise was Drack. I’ve never been a Krogan fan, but he actually became one of my favourites. Turns out “adorable Krogan grandpa” is a pretty good character concept.

Jaal also stood out. It took me a while to warm up to him, but in the end he really won me over. He reminds me of Garrus — he’s the one you can trust to always have your back when it hits the fan — but he’s warmer and all around more likable than Garrus was.

However, I was disappointed by the amount of character content. It’s definitely less than you’d expect from a Bioware game, and it’s quite imbalanced, too. Some characters get a lot more attention than others.

PeeBee seems to get quite a lot of content — of course the sexy Asari is going to get plenty of time in the spotlight (eye-roll) — and Jaal and Drack also get a decent amount, but Suvi has hardly any content at all. Which is a crying shame because she’s easily the game’s best character.

Anyone who complains about the facial animations in this game has never seen Suvi nerdgasm.

I also found Ryder, the main character, a little flat-feeling. This despite the fact I like Fryda Wolff a lot better than Jennifer Hale (sacrilege, I know). I think the dialogue changes might be to blame.

I don’t mourn the rigidity of paragon/renegade, but the new tone options are so similar to each other it’s hard to define a specific personality for your Ryder.

There’s also a surprising dearth of “mean” options. It’s like instead of blurring the lines between paragon and renegade, they just made everyone paragon. This shouldn’t bother me since I was always pure paragon anyway, but somehow it does. Being the good guy doesn’t feel as meaningful if you don’t have the option to be the bad guy.

Still, there is enough character here to give the game real heart.

We made it:

I’ve been reviewing things on this blog and elsewhere for a long time, and I’m coming to the conclusion reviews can be surprisingly hard, because there’s a lot about how things fit together and how things feel in the moment that can’t be explained in rational terms. Andromeda is a good example. I can rattle off no end of things I didn’t like about it, but the end result is still a game I deeply and truly enjoyed. It’s somehow more than the sum of its parts.

Reading it back, this sounds like a fairly lukewarm review, but the fact is I loved Andromeda. Partly it’s that a lot of my favourite things about it are things I can’t talk about without spoilers, but partly there’s something special about this game that can’t be readily quantified.

I can’t wait for DLC. I’m most hoping for stories relating to the “benefactor” and Keelah Si’yah.

Overall rating: 8.7/10 Familiar enough to be nostalgic, but fresh enough to be exciting.

One another thing: I was surprised and delighted to discover the song that plays during Andromeda’s credits is by none other than Norwegian prodigy Aurora Aksnes. I’ve been a big fan of Aurora’s for a while now, and I can’t believe I didn’t know she was involved with the game.

I hope the extra exposure gets her more fans; she totally deserves it. If you’re looking for it, the credits song is called Under Stars, and while you’re at it, I recommend checking out her other stuff, too. Warrior, Winter Bird, and Runaway are my favourites.

Pet classes in RPGs tend to provoke strong reactions. Most people either love pet classes and play them at every opportunity, or hate pet classes and avoid them like the plague.

I’m a strange case in that both of those are true of me. Depending on the game, I either love or hate pet classes.

For example, you’ve probably heard me complain bitterly about pet classes in World of Warcraft. Yes, one of my most played characters is a warlock, but I started her as a leveling challenge to see if I could play a lock without pets, and once Grimoire of Sacrifice became a thing, I’ve used it as much as possible. The pets have always been my least favourite part of being a warlock.

Similarly, pets are one of the bigger reasons I haven’t spent much time playing a hunter, and it’s not entirely a coincidence I started losing interest in my mage around the time they made frost a pet spec.

On the other hand, when it comes to single-player games, I tend to embrace pet classes with open arms. When the Van Helsing games revamped their classes, I went straight for the Constructor and terrorized Borgovia with my army of dismemberbots.

I don’t have a lot of fond memories of the gameplay of Diablo II, but one of them is definitely having a posse of skeletons following my necromancer around. In D3, I never quite managed to click with the witch doctor, but I have done my level best to rekajigger my crusader into a pet class (a “zoosader”). At a maximum, he can be accompanied by three swordsmen, four archers, Kormac, and a demon minion summoned by his sword.

And let us not forget my zombie goons in Lichdom: Battlemage.

“…Zombie goons?”

Then there’s party-based RPGs to consider. We generally seem to separate companion characters from pets, but practically speaking, they’re pretty similar. AI minions who assist you in combat. And I definitely enjoy party-based RPGs — I prefer them to games where you only control a single character. In fact, my most common complaint about them is that the parties aren’t nearly big enough. Dungeon Siege spoiled me with its nine party slots.

So what accounts for this split?

Honestly I’m not entirely sure. I don’t think it’s necessarily one factor as much as a combination of them.

Broadly, it seems to be a difference between single-player games and MMOs.

For one thing, MMOs never really seem to take pets into account when balancing the difficulty in the open world, so while pet classes are at no particular advantage at endgame, they’re brokenly OP when soloing, and since most MMOs tend to make their solo content rather insultingly easy to begin with, it just makes the whole experience a snorefest.

On a related note, most tab target MMOs have incredibly stilted combat with little meaningful interaction between the player and their opponent. You kind of just ignore whatever the enemy is doing and mindlessly drill through your rotation. Having a pet tank hits for you exasperates the issue.

MMOs also usually use an over-the-shoulder camera, which causes pets to take up an obnoxious amount of screen real estate. They mess up screenshots and cause all sorts of problems.

Meanwhile, a lot of the single-player RPGs I favour use an isometric camera, which makes pets far less of an encumbrance.

Perhaps due to less concerns about lag, single-player games also tend to allow you to control much larger numbers of pets, and I definitely prefer a swarm of minions to just one.

It could also have to do with the rigid threat mechanics that tend to exist in a lot of MMOs, but not in single-player games. Most MMO pets have taunt abilities that ensure enemies will focus on them almost 100% of the time. This, again, robs you of any meaningful interaction with your opponent.

In single-player games, pets usually don’t have taunts or threat modifiers. At best they’re a physical barrier between you and the enemy. Even in Dragon Age, where the warrior in your party will likely have taunts, it’s rare for them to hold aggro on every enemy. This means that you still have to look to your own defenses and survival at least a little.

Another divide is that MMO pets tend to require a lot of micro-management, at least in group content, whereas single-player pets and companions are almost always fire and forget. I definitely do not want to have to spend a lot of time baby-sitting my pets — that defeats the purpose as far as I’m concerned.

All that said, I can still find exceptions that muddy the issue even further. I quite like the companion characters in SW:TOR, for instance, and they’re essentially pets. In that case I suspect it’s a combination of the fact they’re meaningful characters within the story and the fact I already dislike the combat in that game, so how much worse can the companions make it?

In ESO, also, I’ve leaned heavily on my Clannfear pet, perhaps because unlike most MMO pets it doesn’t require much management. Then again it’s also worth noting that I have been moving away from using it recently — it doesn’t fit my character’s RP very well, and it bugs out a lot.

It’s definitely a very muddled alchemy that determines whether or not I will appreciate pets. The one thing you can be certain of is that I will always have strong opinions on pet classes one way or another.

“I fear no enemy, for the Khala is my strength. I fear not death, for our strength is eternal.”

After a minor content drought, StarCraft II has come roaring back with a big update to co-op. The star attraction is a new commander, Fenix.

Well, sort of. It’s not really Fenix; it’s Talandar. But the name “Fenix” is more recognized, so I guess it makes sense that’s what they went with, even if it gives us lore fans eye twitches. Either way, he still captures the essence of the OG Protoss badass.

I had hoped for Selendis next, but I can’t say I’m heartbroken by Fenix. A proper Purifier commander without Karax’s baggage is very welcome.

He’s got some interesting mechanics, too. His theme is around downloading AI consciousnesses between various bodies, which confirms with certainty that Purifiers are Protoss Cylons.

Fenix himself can swap between three bodies at will. Each has their own unique stats and abilities, but they only regenerate health and energy when they aren’t deployed, so you have to swap them out regularly.

Probably a good thing, too, because otherwise I’d never use anything but the Dragoon body. That thing’s damage is nuts.

Fenix can also call upon AI champions based on the personas of legendary heroes from throughout Protoss history. The champion will inhabit the body of one your units, greatly increasing their stats and granting new abilities. If a champion is killed, it will transfer to another unit of the same time at no cost. So you basically can’t ever lose them.

Each of these is an actual character from within the lore, though some are sufficiently obscure even I barely know who they are. The biggest name is probably Kaldalis, the Ahkundelar champion featured in Reclamation and the Legacy of the Void cinematic.

Unfortunately, they didn’t bring back any of the original voice actors, so Kaldalis, for example, still sounds like a regular Zealot. I realize it’d be a lot of investment for just one commander, but it would have been cool.

They did put a lot of work into his visuals, though. Not only does he have all-new Purifier skins for all his buildings and units, but even a unique UI, which is a first.

I’m still pretty low level, but my initial impressions of Fenix are positive. He’s not as overpowered as he seemed from the initial previews, but he is pretty strong. Like Nova, he’s very versatile, with many viable builds and no obvious weaknesses.

Similarly, he’s probably not going to be my favourite commander, but he is pretty fun. He has a lot of my favourite Protoss units that were either missing or consigned to Karax: Adepts, Scouts, Colossi, Carriers.

I’m sure it’s not the most efficient strategy, but I’ve been having a lot of fun just going for mass infantry. I love the aesthetics of the Protoss warriors (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) heroically charging into battle with Fenix at their head.

My only real concern is that Fenix may be the last Protoss commander to be added. I can’t really imagine what’s left to do with the race at this point, which is a shame because I still want to see Selendis get some love.

Scythe of Amon:

Patch 3.13 also included a surprise new co-op map, Scythe of Amon.

The map’s been getting a lot of criticism for being so similar to Rifts to Korhal, which it definitely is. Go around, kill Void Shards Slivers, and beat the time limit. The bonus objective is an escort mission, with all the annoyance that entails, which doesn’t help, either.

That said, there are a few things that make it a bit more interesting than Rifts to Korhal. The time limit is tighter, making it more challenging. You have more choice in what order to tackle the objectives in. You have enemy forces of all three races. The Slivers have more diverse and deadly attacks to avoid.

So really it’s an improved version of Rifts to Korhal. If Rifts didn’t already exist, it probably would have been received much better.

It’s very pretty, too. The lighting and rain effects are gorgeous.

The colours, children!

Finally, Blizzard has at long last enabled custom team colours in co-op. It’s the same system as in ladder, meaning it requires some tinkering in the depths of the options menu and then hitting a button next to the mini-map in-game to work, and your ally won’t see what you’ve picked, but it’s still a lot better than just being blue or orange every single game.

I’ve been trying to find the best colour for every commander. I highly recommend white for Fenix. It looks fantastic with the Purifier skins.

Into the Badlands is something my father discovered while perusing Netflix and then recommended to me. Without much else to watch between episodes of iZombie, I decided to give it a try.

It’s a strange show. It’s some sort of post-apocalyptic Western kung fu… thing, set in a far-flung future where the civilization we know is a distant memory. The land is ruled by ruthless barons, aided by their armies of “clippers,” which are sort of like samurai without the honour.

The story focuses on Sunny, a weary veteran clipper in service to a cruel baron, and M.K., an orphan boy with a mysterious power. Fate causes their paths to repeatedly cross as Sunny’s master prepares for war with his rival, a revolutionary known as the Widow.

It’s a pretty unique mash-up of genres, and certainly the concept holds a lot of potential, but the problem with Into the Badlands is that it isn’t very good.

That’s pretty much it. It’s mediocre in almost every way imaginable. None of the characters are all that interesting or likable. The plot’s pretty unsurprising. It’s often silly and illogical — I like how they were able to preserve the technology for cars and X-rays, but not guns.

All the absurdity of the show would be fine if it weren’t determined to take itself so deadly seriously. Into the Badlands has all the ingredients for a fun, light-hearted action-adventure, but it’s trying to be a serious drama. It has no whimsy, no self-awareness, and no sense of humour.

The shortness of its season doesn’t help matters. Season one is just six episodes, and it’s a pretty complicated story, so I’m not sure there’s really time to develop anyone or anything enough. On the other hand if the season had been any longer I might not have made it to the end. At just six episodes there wasn’t much to lose by sticking it out.

I suppose the acting is not bad — I actually rather like the guy who plays Sunny; he’s got some gravitas — but the writing is so weak that the cast’s talent is largely wasted.

Really the only thing it’s got going for it is that it’s a very visually appealing show. If all you want is to see good-looking people in really cool costumes doing extravagant wire fu moves in front of pretty backdrops, this is the show for you.

If you want anything more than that, move on.

Overall rating: 5.9/10

As an aside, has it occurred to anyone how inaccurate the show’s title is? The story is about trying to get out of the Badlands, and the “Badlands” appear to actually be quite fertile and clement.

/equip_tinfoil_hat

So I’m possibly reading too much into something small, but I stumbled across a rather intriguing story last night. It seems Christie Golden has suddenly moved to California so that she can work at Blizzard’s main offices for a secret project that will last until October.

I’ve been a pretty big fan of Christie Golden’s for a while now, as both an author and a person. She’s written a number of excellent tie-in novels for Blizzard’s various games, and I have had enough sporadic contact with her over the years to determine she is a pretty excellent person. Therefore, the news of her doing more work with Blizzard excites me.

But what’s really intriguing is the question of just what she’s doing there. While I’m not an expert, I have done some research on the process for how authors produce tie-in novels for Blizzard, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t normally require actually working at the Blizzard offices for months. Why would it?

Again, I might be jumping the gun, but my mind has turned to the possibility that she may be writing an entire game. It would explain why she needs to be in close proximity to the development team(s).

But what game?

Christie Golden has the most history with the Warcraft universe, but I’m not sure things quite add up for her to be working on WoW. It seems a bit early for them to be designing the plot of the next expansion in detail, and the continuous nature of WoW’s story doesn’t mesh with the temporary nature of her job at Blizzard.

Given she is in theory only there for a few months, I would think she’d be working on something with a clear beginning, middle, and end. A game that can be finished.

The only other Blizzard franchise she’s worked on in the past is StarCraft, so perhaps she could be writing a new mission pack. Blizzard’s said they were moving on from story content for StarCraft II, but they could always change their minds.

However, I see no reason she must be limited to franchises she’s already worked on.

We do know something is in the works regarding Diablo, though whether it’s an expansion, Diablo IV, or some kind of spin-off is anyone’s guess. I have a little bit of trouble picturing someone as sweet as Christie Golden working on a series that’s basically all torture and brimstone, but then I remember how dark some of her past writing has gotten, and it doesn’t seem quite as far-fetched.

The possibility that really intrigues me, though, is that she could be working on Overwatch, either a story mode within the current game or entirely new title in the same universe that focuses on story instead of PvP. There’s clearly a strong desire for such, and the Overwatch universe seems the perfect fit for her emotive, character-driven style of writing.

Regardless, I hope it is a new game she’s working on, because any game written by Christie Golden is a game I want to play.

Lot of interesting stories coming out of the Blizzard camp this week.

Yesterday we learned that Destiny 2’s PC version will be published by Blizzard and playable only through Battle.Net.

This is simultaneously very surprising and not at all surprising. On the one hand, I don’t think anyone saw this coming, but on the other Blizzard and Activision are part of the same conglomerate, so it makes sense.

For me personally, this feels bizarre because two companies that helped shape my childhood, Blizzard and Bungie, are suddenly collaborating. Though it’s far less exciting than the Warcraft/Myth mash-up my eight year old self would picture if I was to go back in time and tell him about it.

I was already curious about Destiny 2, and Blizzard’s involvement — however minimal — puts it a little more on my radar. The fact you’ll be able to potentially buy it with WoW gold certainly doesn’t hurt matters.

To be honest, though, most of my interest stems from Bungie’s past history, and it’s an ancient history by now. I stopped playing their games when they gave up on PCs, and that was quite a while ago now. I’m sure a lot has changed since then.

The one trailer for Destiny 2 I watched was less than inspiring. It tried to be funny. It did not succeed. The Bungie of my youth this clearly is not.

There’s also the fact I never played the original Destiny, and I’m really not a fan of jumping into the middle of franchises. I’ve done it from time to time, but it always leads to a certain degree of confusion and dissatisfaction.

Still, it’s worth mulling. I shall mull.

When I tried The Division’s beta last year, I knew I would end up buying it sooner or later. It was just a question of when. A recent Steam sale coupled with a lull in other major gaming projects to pursue provided the perfect storm of conditions to finally pony up and get the full version.

The Division is a strange game. I went into the beta expecting very little and came out enjoying it far more than expected, but now that I’ve bought the full game, I question whether I made the right choice.

Magnificent desolation:

Everything that I initially liked about The Division holds true. It is a game that does some things very well, and overall is rather charming.

Its best feature by far is its attention to detail. The Division’s vision of a ruined New York is spectacularly detailed, incredibly well thought-out, and beautifully realized. The graphics are stunning, and the game design is solid, providing an excellent formula of exploration.

The game is empty enough to sell the loneliness of a dead city, but not so empty as to become boring. There’s always something neat to find, be it loot, missions, lore, or just a cool set piece.

Cell phone recordings reveal haunting slices of life from those who died in the outbreak. Storms roll in, dusting your character with snow and cutting visibility down to virtually nothing. Distant gunfire rattles the otherwise tomb-like stillness of the city.

An early mission has you rescuing the sister, a musician, of one of your fellow Division agents. Much later on, I stumbled across the sister in the base of operations, strumming on her guitar for an audience of refugee children. It was an incredibly charming scene, and somehow far more satisfying of a quest reward than XP or loot could ever be.

“Immersion” has become almost as much a buzzword as “epic” these days, but it’s still a valid concept, and The Division has it in spades.

And yet I already myself struggling to find motivation to log in, to the point where writing this post seemed a significantly more appealing prospect than actually playing. Why?

Stumbles:

Certainly The Division does have problems. The actual main plot of the game is underwhelming at best, from both a story and a gameplay perspective.

While it may become more interesting later on, so far the main story has been quite simplistic — terrorist attack, yada yada — and it’s just not written very well.

The dialogue is so cartoony and ridiculous it almost achieves a sort of kitschy, “so bad it’s good” charm. It’s hard to believe it comes from the same game as the achingly real recordings you find while exploring, or even the goofy but fun NPCs who deliver your side missions.

The main story missions also aren’t that fun to play. As I noticed in the beta, the difficulty is oddly tuned. I don’t think you’re meant to solo the main story, which is an incredibly strange decision in a game that otherwise seems to hew closer to a single-player game than an MMO (while obviously having elements of both).

I don’t like being pressured into things, though, so I’ve stubbornly continued to solo the main missions, frustrating as it can be at times. It’d be fine if player characters in this game weren’t so squishy, but your incredibly low health pool severely punishes the slightest error.

You can mitigate the issue a bit by outleveling the missions via side content, but as much as I enjoy the side missions in The Division (much more so than I usually do), it doesn’t feel good to do them because you have to, and it detracts from what could otherwise have been a pretty solid sandbox-ish experience.

There are also smaller hiccups. The Division may well have the worst character customization of any game I’ve ever played, and I’ve been gaming for twenty years. The options are shockingly limited, and made even more so by the incomprehensible decision to tie certain options together. For example, only about half the female faces can have ponytails.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Even with my relatively small amount of time in the game, and even playing entirely solo, I’ve still managed to find someone who was pretty much my character’s exact doppleganger, minus only the lip piercing I gave her in a vain attempt to inject some personality into my avatar.

I think the idea is you’re meant to rely on clothing to make your character stand out. TSW had a similar philosophy, and I don’t hate the idea, but in this case, it doesn’t work as well as it could.

There are a lot of clothing pieces in The Division, but there isn’t that much difference between them. The game clearly tried very hard to make them all realistic choices for the setting. I’m torn because I really admire the commitment to verisimilitude, but it also means that your choices are pretty much down to what colour of winter jacket and pants you want to wear.

Less than the sum of its parts:

Still, none of these seem like crippling flaws. I’ve been able to overlook bigger issues with games. So why am I losing interest in The Division so quickly?

I don’t know. It’s not even that I’m not enjoying myself. It’s fundamentally a good game to play. But I just find that my motivation to keep going is rapidly dwindling.

Even if this is the end, I don’t necessarily regret buying the game. I maybe should have waited for a better discount, but I did get at least a few good hours out of it. I explored a lot more than I was able to in beta, and I generally had a good time.

* * *

One final note before I go: I was deeply amused to discover that the very first safehouse you’re sent to is actually Illuminati headquarters. Both The Division and The Secret World replicated the same neighbourhood of New York, and the first safehouse is in the exact same building as the entrance to the Labyrinth.

There’s even some blue pyramid graffiti in the area. I kind of wonder if one of the environment artists was a TSW player…

Of Bioware’s two main franchises, you would think Dragon Age would be my favourite. While I enjoy both genres, I prefer fantasy to sci-fi by a significant margin. The very fact that Dragon Age has Elves should be the trump card.

And yet this is not the case. Quite the opposite. I strongly prefer Mass Effect to Dragon Age. It’s a franchise I’m genuinely passionate about, whereas I didn’t start to gain any unvarnished enthusiasm for Dragon Age until Inquisition’s DLC.

So why is this? Why do I enjoy Mass Effect so much more than Dragon Age despite my strong preference for fantasy? I can think of a few reasons.

Continuity

I think one of the biggest factors is simply the continuity of the series. The first three Mass Effect games were far from perfect, but the fact that they formed a continuous narrative allowed them to become far more than the sum of their parts.

Take Garrus. He is, when you get down to it, really not that interesting of a character. But after three games of fighting alongside him, you can’t help but form a special bond with him. By the end he feels like family, and it becomes easy to forget how cliched he is.

There’s also something very special and unique about being able to develop Shepard over such a long period of time. It makes them feel so much deeper and more real than most video game protagonists, despite ultimately being a faceless cypher for the player.

Dragon Age, on the other hand, has jumped around between different plots, settings, and protagonists quite schizophrenically. Some elements may carry over between games, but there’s not the same sense of continuity. By the time you get really invested in a set of characters, it’s time to move on again.

As an aside, I would like to reiterate how hard I’m going to nerd rage if we’re not able to play as the inquisitor again in Dragon Age IV.

Combat

I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about Bioware’s combat over the years, but even so, Mass Effect is the clear winner in that arena.

The combat of early Mass Effect games is a little shallow and extremely repetitive, but fundamentally, it works. The mechanics are sound, and the moment to moment gameplay feels good enough.

By comparison, early Dragon Age combat makes me want to claw my own eyes out. Cooldowns are so long and characters so resource-starved that you spend half your time just watching your party auto-attack. It’s excruciating.

Both franchises saw the quality of their combat improve immensely with their most recent releases, but while I enjoyed both, I’d still give the crown to Mass Effect. Andromeda’s combat was more visceral, more satisfying.

Inquisition had better boss fights, though, so I’ll give it that.

The ship

This is a smaller thing, but while playing Andromeda, I was reminded how much I enjoy having the ship as a home base to come back to. It’s just comforting to have a bit of the game world to call your own, to kick back and relax in.

The continuity of the original trilogy obviously helped the Normandy feel like home, but even after one game, I have grown very attached to the Tempest, as well.

Dragon Age games have home bases that are analogous to the ship, but none of them quite click. Origins’ camp is too dull and generic. The Hawke estate wasn’t used enough. Skyhold was too big, cold, and empty.

Thedas is an ugly place

And I don’t mean in terms of how it looks, although it’s kind of ugly that way too.

What I mean is that Thedas is not a place where I would ever want to live. It’s a monstrously corrupt society where injustice and cruelty are everyday events. I suppose the defense would be that this is realistic, and maybe it is, but while I can enjoy a dark story, I’m not particularly enamored of wallowing in awfulness the way the Dragon Age writers seem to delight in doing.

In a strange sort of way it fosters my engagement with the franchise, because I hate Thedas so much I always want to change it for the better, but it still ends up leaving a bad taste in my mouth, and I leave every game wishing I could have done more.

I prefer Mass Effect’s setting, which has enough bad people and societal flaws to create drama but doesn’t make me hate every culture and institution until I want to cleanse all I see with holy fire.

New game plus

One thing I love about the modern era of gaming is the concept of new game plus. Not having to start over from scratch makes replaying a title a much more appealing prospect.

Mass Effect has always made very good use of the idea, and it’s one of the driving factors behind why I’ve replayed the original trilogy so many times.

Dragon Age, for reasons that I can’t begin to understand, has never offered new game plus. That coupled with the poor combat has made replaying Origins or DA2 to the extent I have Mass Effect games fairly undesirable.

Inquisition has the Golden Nug, at least, but it’s still a pretty poor substitute for a real new game plus mode. I can only hope such will finally be included in the next game.

The opposite of what you’d expect

Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m not underwhelmed by Dragon Age despite the fact it’s fantasy so much as because it’s fantasy.

Let me explain.

Bioware is great at character building, but fairly crumby at world building. Both their main franchises feature very generic and frankly dull settings comprised mainly of the most stock standards archetypes imaginable. There’s very little that’s creative about either one.

But I have much more experience with the fantasy genre than with sci-fi, so Dragon Age’s bundle of cliches feels more tired to me than Mass Effect’s.

Everything about Thedas from its art design to its cultures seems culled from a handbook of overused fantasy archetypes. This is most true of the Darkspawn, who are such pathetically generic fantasy villains I just go cross-eyed whenever they show up.

It even applies to class design. Whereas Mass Effect offers a pretty healthy selection of different class archetypes, some of them generic and some more unusual, Dragon Age is limited to just warrior, rogue, and mage, which are pretty much the three classes someone who’s never played a fantasy RPG in their life could name if you put a gun to their head.

Even the name! “Dragon Age” is such a predictably generic fantasy title that there is at least one other fantasy franchise that I know of named Dragon Age, which is going to make my blog tags terribly confused if James Maxey continues that series like he’s been hinting he will.

Even on the rare occasions Dragon Age does buck trends — like by making the Elves an oppressed under class — it does so in such a simplistic, direct reversal sort of way that it somehow feels even more lazy than when they are directly aping the standard archetypes.

A large part of the reason I’m so keen on Descent and Trespasser is that they’re the first time it’s felt like Dragon Age has had any real colour, any real imagination. I won’t pretend the additions made by those DLCs are wildly original, but at least they don’t feel like they’ve come off an assembly line of fantasy cliches, either. They begin to add some personality to the history of Thedas, and now for the first time I want to learn more.

* * *

That’s not to just completely dump all over Dragon Age. Obviously I do enjoy those games as well, or I wouldn’t play them. I don’t have much good to say about Origins, but DA2 had a great story, if not great gameplay, and despite flaws Inquisition mostly won me over (again, helped by the strength of its DLCs).

I can also think of some things I prefer about Dragon Age. As mentioned above, those games have proper boss fights, something Mass Effect never seems to have gotten the hang of, and Inquisition’s were actually pretty good.

I would also say that on average Dragon Age tends to have more colourful and perhaps deeper characters, though clearly both franchises have lots of great NPCs, and they seem to be a bit better at romance, as well.

Along that line, I think companion approval/disapproval is a vastly superior way to track the consequences of your actions than the rigidity of paragon/renegade or Andromeda’s system of just not really having consequences at all.

But taken all in all, Mass Effect still feels like the clearly superior choice to me.

Over the past few months, I’ve found my interest in Heroes of the Storm waning. I’m starting to worry it will be like Guild Wars 2: a game I was once very passionate about that I then totally lose interest in.

I’m not sure how much of this is just my own burnout and how much is due to the game itself. It does seem to be a bit of a different game than it once was. After that big rebalance they did to prevent snowballing (which it had no effect on), everything seems so much more bursty and unforgiving. Add to that Blizzard’s apparent aversion to add any more heroes that aren’t super squishy, and the game’s becoming almost as much a nerve-wracking one-shot fest as Overwatch.

Still, I have enough history with the game to make me reticent to write it off too easily, so with the big 2.0 update, I once again delved in to see how things had changed. My full thoughts form my latest article on MMO Bro, but in the end, it’s not that different.

Also on MMO Bro, I take a look back at the WoW clones of yesteryear and how they’ve evolved over time.

Speaking of Overwatch, I’ve been playing the free weekend again. They have a new(?) mode called Total Mayhem where everyone’s health is doubled, and it is so much better.

I mean, it isn’t balanced very well, since the game wasn’t designed for this. The mode also includes reduced ability cooldowns, and between that and the increased health pools, a good Lucio can keep his team alive almost indefinitely, leading to some frustrating stalemates sometimes.

I also seem to perform better in Total Mayhem. A little.

Even so, I consider this a vast improvement over standard Overwatch. You actually have time to react to threats. You don’t just get constantly one-shot out of the blue. There’s room for tactical play, and when you do land a kill, it’s so much more satisfying.

I’m not sure if it’s a permanent mode or not. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a clear answer on that. If it is, I’m tempted to finally pull the trigger and buy the game, especially with the sale on right now. Heck, I’m tempted either way.

But then again I already wasted so much on the new computer, and I’d probably get bored of it fast.

Sigh… self-control was never my strong suite.