Shadowrun Returns

I mentioned recently that Nathaniel was playing through the classic Mass Effect, which Matt had gifted me many years ago. Another game he graciously gifted me was Shadowrun: Dragonfall. I've been thinking about cyberpunk a lot lately with my city of Vesper under construction, so I decided to check out the predecessor of Dragonfall, Shadowrun Returns. It's been a while since I've played any video game that wasn't on an Evercade platform, and I'm really enjoying a return to the Shadowrun universe!

Mass From the Past

Over a decade ago, Matt gifted me a copy of Mass Effect, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nathaniel found the whole series on Steam today at a mass-ive (!) discount, so now he's going to give it a whirl. Brings back great memories!

One Day Only!

If you head over to Humble Bundle and sign up for their newsletter, you can get a free copy (via Steam) of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, a third-person shooter that reminds me of Mass Effect. However, this freebie is available for only one more day, so act fast!

Good Game, Eh?

I beat Mass Effect yesterday, bringing down that hoser Sovereign in a hail of assault rifle fire. The game's greatest mystery, however, remains unresolved: Why do so many people in the future have Canadian accents? Should we be worried?

Simplify, Simplify

Thoreau advises us to simplify our lives (as I learned from a Calvin & Hobbes strip -- I've never actually read Thoreau), and I'm taking that advice to heart. First up, I'm going to put my plans for the massive Quintessence War storyline on hold. I still intend to run this adventure someday, but I'd like to wait until there's an opportunity for more people to participate. Likewise, it's time to hit the ol' Pause button on The Druid Cycle and take a break from that campaign for a while. Those battle-tested heroes have earned a rest, and I need to invest some time in converting that world to Fifth Edition. Blog posts, which have been pretty sporadic lately, will continue to be sporadic, although I'll still pop in here and there to share game news and whatnot.

In the meantime, I'm going to start up a short-term Fifth Edition adventure with some of the regular Front Porch players. It's going to take place in the Shattered Realm setting and will serve as an introduction to 5e. I also plan to play a lot more Star Wars: X-Wing and 5e D&D with my boys, chip away at Neverwinter, finish up Mass Effect, and of course jump into Sword Coast Legends the nanosecond it gets released. Wait, wasn't this post supposed to be about simplification?

Holy Sophie's Choice, Batman!

It seems that I'm rapidly approaching the climax of the first Mass Effect game. During the frenzied assault on the villain's main base, I had to choose whether to save Kaidan Alenko or Ashley Williams -- the two NPCs who have been with my main character since the beginning of the game. When confronted with the choice, I googled various Mass Effect game guides and walkthroughs to confirm that players cannot, in fact, save both of them; the game forces you to decide which NPC lives and which one dies. Damn!

In the end, I chose to save Kaidan. Ashley seemed more like the die-in-a-blaze-of-glory type anyway, and earlier in the game she had mentioned wanting to restore the reputation of her disgraced family. In game terms, though, I sacrificed Ashley because she was...redundant. As a gun-toting, front-line warrior, her skill set exactly overlapped that of my main character. Kaidan has all those wacky biotic and tech powers that my main character will never have, so it makes more sense to keep him around. Sorry, Ash!

Big Bug

I was playing Mass Effect earlier and demonstrating to Matthew how the six-wheeled transport vehicle can drive around on the surface of the various planets that you can visit. My main character and her team were investigating a mysterious distress call from some fellow marines and, suspecting something amiss, they hid the vehicle out in the hills and then moved in on foot. As they approached, some sort of gigantic worm-like creature -- think Tremors or Dune -- burst up out of the ground and started spewing acid at us.

TPK.

Next time around, I approached in the vehicle. When the worm popped up, I opened fire with the vehicle's cannons. Then came the acid.

TPK.

Hoping that the third time was the charm, I again approached in the vehicle, but instead of parking it, I just started driving around in circles. The worm ducked underground a few times, and whenever it surfaced, I hit it with cannon fire, all the while zooming around to avoid the nasty gunk it was spitting at me. This cat-and-mouse game continued until the beast at last went down and never came back up.

The worm's appearance was a real surprise -- I haven't read any spoilers or walkthroughs for this game, so I genuinely have no idea what's coming. I don't think this critter has anything to do with the main storyline, but it was a cool encounter, and one I won't soon forget.

Games, Games, and More Games!

So now that I have a new computer, the floodgates are open. I'm playing Mass Effect (thanks, Matt!), Darkest Dungeon (ditto!), and Neverwinter -- all at the same time! I think I need to focus on one at a time or I'll never get through any of them. But with all this gaming goodness at my fingertips, I'm no longer pining away for Sword Coast Legends. Well, at least for now...