#alas. rather bleak times to become a mother happening out there.

[hairtusk]

if i had a massive amount of inherited wealth that was mine alone, i'd become a stay-at-home-mother in a heartbeat tbh

#like if i was hugely wealthy on my own terms and wasn't relying on my husband's generosity #i'd have kids and spend six-ish years raising them hands-on (with maybe a nanny to help every now and then) #then i'd get back into writing when my body had fully recovered and hire them several tutors to homeschool them #in the grounds of my enormous country manor #alas. rather bleak times to become a mother happening out there. #i was looking at carrie johnson's instagram after reading an article about 'mumfluencing' #and yeah her life seems nice. except she was no source of income and is living on the kindness of a well-documented adulterer #but if i could live like her while being entirely self-reliant i would 🤷‍♀️

[theyearoftheking]

Book Six: The Dead Zone

“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough... and if it isn’t good enough, it has to be. Nothing is ever lost. Nothing that can’t be found.”

When I announced my next book was The Dead Zone, my brother-in-law admitted to never reading it, or seeing the movie, because it felt dated. He’s not wrong. The 1983 movie felt dated when I’d watch it in the 1990′s. But that didn’t stop me from imagining Christopher Walken during the entire book. So, here’s some cowbell for your Tuesday! Sorry, I’m home with a sick kid, doing training for my job, I need to find joy where I can. 

But The Dead Zone is still eerily important. I need to stop reading Steve’s books... it’s too much... first I picked up The Stand during the Coronavirus outbreak, and now I’m reading about shitty politicians during a particularly shitty election season. 

Who hasn’t asked themselves the question... “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler- would you do it?”

Being a disciple of Ray Bradbury, I’d have to answer probably not. I read The Sound of Thunder during my formative years, and it hit hard. I’m also a disciple of Steve, and 11/22/63 taught me what a world where Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated looks like. And that fictional world is bleak, my friends. 

Let’s get into it, shall we?

When Johnny Smith was a little boy, he was ice skating, and had a nasty fall. This fall gave him mild psychic abilities. A teeny bit of The Shine, if you will. Fast forward to grown-up John, he’s a teacher and living in the quaint town of Cleaves Mills. To keep the quaint theme going, he’s about to take Sarah, a fellow teacher, to the county fair on a date. Presh, I know.

Now... this is when the book just becomes one big homage to Ray Bradbury. The county fair is straight out of Something Wicked This Way Comes; which Steve actually references at one point. The manic laughter, the spinning rides,, the smell of carnival food, and the feeling of something evil lurking just under the surface is all there. It’s a masterful tribute. 

On their way out of the fair, John stops and decides to try his luck at a Wheel of Fortune carny game. You know... the type of game you never actually win at. But his Shine comes into play, and he ends up walking away from the game $500 richer (three weeks salary according to Sarah!). But Sarah suddenly feels sick. She blames it on a bad carny hot dog, but I’m pretty sure The Shine is wafting off John like a noxious fume, and she inhaled too much of it. John gets Sarah safely home, and takes a taxi back to his apartment. Well, tries to take a taxi back... the taxi ends up crushed by some hoods out drag racing, and John ends up in a coma for four and a half years. 

Yes. 

Four and a half years. 

I’m not smart enough to do the math and adjust for inflation; but can you imagine what hospital bills for four and a half years worth of treatment must look like? I mean, I’d almost rather they pull the plug on me. It would be less painful than waking up and finding I’m going to be broke for the rest of my life. 

John’s parents Herb and Vera are thrilled he’s awake. Vera is cut from the same kind of crazy culty-religious cloth as Margaret White (Carrie’s mom); and believes there’s a holy reason why John is still alive. John needs to have some painful surgeries to have his leg muscles stretched (because, atrophy is a bitch after four and a half years in a hospital bed); and then some spooky shit starts happening. John has discovered he can touch someone’s hand, and learn all kinds of interesting things about them. For example, he touches the hand of Dr. Weizak, and informs him that his mother didn’t actually die in a concentration camp, she’s alive and well in California. Then, he freaks a physical therapist out by telling her she needs to call the fire department, her apartment is on fire. The news media gets wind of John’s new powers, and they start relentlessly hounding him. 

While still in the hospital, he gets a call from Herb, letting him know Vera has had a stroke, and is in Cumberland General Hospital (you know, just above Jerusalem’s Lot). So, Dr. Weizak rushes him to the hospital, and Vera tells him a voice will tell him what to do, and she believes in his higher purpose. Then she dies. 

Oh, Vera. She’s had a fun life. At one point, she was a member of The American Society for Last Times. “They were led by Mr. and Mrs. Harry L Stonkers from Racine, Wisconsin. Mr. and Mrs. Stonkers claimed to have been picked up by a flying saucer while they were on a camping trip. They had been taken away to heaven, which was not out in the constellation Orion, but on an earth-type planet that circled Arcturus. There they had communed with the society of angels and had seen Paradise. The Stonkers had been informed that the Last Times were at hand...”

I laughed so hard, because of course the crazy cult leaders were from Racine. I worked for a company based in Racine for several years, and one of my co-workers was of this same kind of crazy religious bend. He told me “my lifestyle” flew in the face of what God intended. For the record, my lifestyle was being one of those crazy, new-aged career gals, with a stay-at-home husband raising our two year old. It’s easy to understand what’s so offensive about that.

But the worst part was when this co-worker decided to “treat” his teenage daughters to a home-schooled prom. He rented a limo, ordered flowers, made dinner reservations... and was their date. But no dancing of course, because... religion. When I relayed this story back to my husband later on, he asked me which daughter was going to end up getting lucky on prom night with dad. Ick. 

So yes, cult leaders in Racine- 100% believable. 

After Vera’s death, John continues his life, living with his dad, healing from his horrible leg muscle surgery, and he even keeps in touch with Sarah, even an ill-advised hook-up for final closure. People keep sending him letters and trinkets, hoping he can help them find lost objects, or solve mysteries. He’s not having it. He just wants to go back to teaching, and lead a “normal” life. But alas, there is this nagging voice (it belongs to Vera) telling him he was awakened from his coma for a reason. He needs to serve a higher purpose. So, he ends up going to Castle Rock, Maine; and helps the sheriff solve a series of murders. Castle Rock is a fun place, FYI. They have a Flagg street there. 

After his face is splashed across the tabloids for helping solve the murders, his school district doesn’t want him teaching anymore, and his life has little purpose. After a few years of moping around on his dad’s land, he ends up tutoring young, charismatic, Chuck Chatsworth; and uses his Shine to help Chuck get around the dead zone he has with reading and comprehending text. 

A note about “the dead zone”... it’s a term John uses quite a bit to describe the gray area he can’t quite see through/around when he’s holding someone’s hand and telling them something important. 

John gets on super well with Chuck’s dad, Roger. One night they’re watching tv, and Roger can’t stop talking about this political wildcard, Gregory Stillson, who is running for a House seat. “The man is a clown. He goes charging around the speaking platform like that at every rally. Throws his helmet into the crowd- I’d guess he’s gone through a hundred of them by now- and gives out hot dogs. He’s a clown, so what? Maybe people need a little comic relief from time to time. We’re running out of oil, the inflation is slowly but surely getting out of control, the average guy’s tax load has never been heavier... So people want a giggle or two. Even more, they want to thumb their noses at the political establishment that doesn’t seem able to solve anything...” 

John keeps working for the Chatsworth family, and helps get Chuck into Stovington Prep... yes, the same Stovington Prep as in The Shining. At one point, Chuck is talking about his English teacher, “I like him a lot. Our teacher told us he still lives over in N.H. but has given up writing. That blows my mind. Why would someone just give up when they are going great guns?” I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but I’m 87% sure his teacher was one Jack Torrance. 

In the meantime, Stillson wins his election. And John endears himself further to the Chatsworth family the night of Chuck’s graduation, when he has a vision of a fire at Cathy’s restaurant; where a lot of families planned on going to celebrate. John pleads with people not to go to Cathy’s. Some listen, others don’t, but he does end up saving some lives. And then he becomes a recluse, fixated on Gregory Stillson. 

Stillson is a bad dude. He’s done a lot of shady shit, and he’s had a lot of people killed. He also worked in real estate development for a while. Smirk. 

He knows he needs to take Stillson out before he becomes President, and gets the country pulled into another war. “I have to do something about Stillson. I have to. I was right about Cathy’s, and I’m going to be right about this. There is absolutely no question in my mind. He is going to become president and he is going to start a war- or cause one through simple mismanagement of the office, which amounts to the same thing.” 

 Oh, how quaint... when the biggest fear is the President starting another war... not the President getting us all killed by nuclear weapons. But, this book was set post-Vietnam, so the feeling is honest. 

John goes to a rally, and hides on the upper balcony, hoping to shoot Stillson. He gets a couple shots off, before Stillson grabs a baby to use as a shield (yeah... really...), to prevent John from shooting him again. John ends up shot by Stillson’s goons and he dies, but so does Stillson’s political career, because of a photo showing him using the baby as a body shield. So, his mission was mostly carried out. We also find out John had a brain tumor, which may or may not have caused his abilities. 

So, yeah. That’s The Dead Zone. This was a long review for a really short (by Steve standards) book. But it was fun because there were so many references to his previous five books. And yes, the book was published in 1979, but I feel it still holds up. And it has me wondering how/if Trump supporters would explain away Trump using a baby as a shield. I mean... the man has done far worse than that and has still been elected, so.... 

God damn, I really did not intend for this blog to become political, but here we are! Welcome to the new climate around election season! 

There was one lone Dark Tower reference, “He opened the paperback with the picture of the gunslinger shouldering his way through a set of saloon batwings...” 

Total Wisconsin Mentions: 9

Dark Tower References: 5

Book Grade B+

Rebecca’s Definitive Ranking of Stephen King Books

The Shining

The Stand

The Dead Zone

‘Salem’s Lot

Carrie 

Night Shift 

Next up is Firestarter. Yes, cute little Drew Barrymore. I can’t wait. 

Until next time readers, Long Days and Pleasant Nights!

Rebecca

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Finland to Eurovision with a meme icon and his side-kick

“heeeeeey what is that song on that video???” Definitely not Darude - Sandstorm. Grow the fuck up.

I mean that they basically threw off the open call for songs from Finnish artists, instead opting for having one artist national final, usually one very known but very gettable-bored-of name so that they could get some more viewership rather when they pick a random nobody from a bunch of other random nobodies. Last year YLE got themselves an artist whose Eurovision ticket was long overdue, but this year they went the extra step and brought us HIM.

No, not that HIM. They can't go anyway as they've already disbanded. I'm talking about HIM.

Yes, THAT HIM. Meet Toni-Ville Henrik Virtanen, which thankfully has a pseudonym to publish his music with - Darude. Almost 20 years ago he published this beautiful techno single "Sandstorm" with lyrics like "du du du du du du du du du du du du". And now it's become the big-ass target of memery for the past few years on the Internet, with Darude being very well aware of it all - I don't think he has escaped questions about "Sandstorm" now that the Eurovision interviewers media is on horizon and interviews literally every single representative, no matter if they're shy or unpopular with the bookies at all.

And even if "Sandstorm" was the only thing to shake his tiny little Finnish world, it did not break Darude to be just a one-hit wonder (well he still looks like one but yeah) and he's got more music out ever since. And it probably sounds a little too tragic when YLE resorts to just nagging and begging Darude to represent their nation, even kinda secretly hoping that thanks to him Finland can have a qualification just solely for the meme factor. Darude even said so that he at first rejected their calls, but this year became THE year for him to go, and he's not alone obviously - his credited vocalist friend for this ride to Tel Aviv became Sebastian Rejman, a bit washed-up media star who already did some collaborating with Darude.

So the format was basically the same for this year's UMK - artist announced separately, then each of their 3 songs gets published every week on a specific weekday, with single cover art and a music video already, and the Finnish people together with international juries vote for the best track. Simple as that. Unlike with Saara Aalto though, all Darude & Sebastian songs were barely even distinct from one another in sound - just techno songs that have a piece of "Sandstorm" with themselves. Well only 2 do anyway. But still, techno/house songs to listen to on the radio when you're driving and minding your own business. And I had hard time picking favourites but all of them were alright I guess. Yet somehow my least favourite happened to win... and that was "Look Away", very much so inspired by natural disasters and how do we all ignore everything around us. No matter if it's a storm or hurricane or tornado or wind throwing sand at our eyes.

I don't know why the song didn't click with me all that much at first, I suppose it was because it's just a mindless gloomy techno song that raises global awareness (we already have Denmark talking about that, but they're insisting that "love is forever", while Finland is just... getting up more seriously in all this), and besides that, it's just incredibly repetitive. It consists more of the pre-chorus-ish chorus (I mean the line "is it in my head? Am I the only one?" and that other line preceding) and the actual chorus that mostly goes like "look away, look away, look away...". Even to the point when the song ends with some additional “look away”ing but under a different drum beat. What's it with Finns having a passion for the word "away"? We already had seen them sending a "Sing It Away", which was basically a cheer-up tune telling you to sing your problems off... while this year? We're trying to NOT look into the problems dead in the eye. We're looking... erm, uh, away.

But now I do have to say that I somewhat like it. Tell it to ya - the B minor chord is possibly one of my least favourite music keys, so I might as well be a little bit more negative on it if takes the song with itself to sound incredibly dull and painfully meh. So thankfully we'll be hearing it live half a step lower (idk if that's what it is with most EDM singers in Eurovision that shit like this can be possible, as well as idk why are they allowed into Eurovision in the first place. But seriously, why can't you just choose the same key you sang in in studio for Eurovision...), which made the song sound better to me - as a Nightcore junkie, I am passionate about hearing songs in different keys all the darn time, to see in what key would a certain song sound the best. It's usually the song's key that makes me like a song better or worse live rather than a live performance itself (though in some NFs I can see which of my favourite acts are DoA by not even emoting towards them - my emotion has to be evoked, and if I evoke it on purpose, well then, I'd just rather stay motionless completely on anything and only yelp if a song causes me to do this unexplainedly). We'll see how Sebastian will execute his singing live. As for now, he's the captain of this sinking ship that hit a small iceberg (another one of the disasters we usually "look away" from until it's found in our history books). Not Darude. Darude's just merely a musical hold-up of the disaster. It all has to depend on the vocalist and if the staging clicks with the audience. Sure, Darude can put on a red wig and green sunglasses so that he could click with the meme audience, but that won't get the Finns far.

So I like this song, it actually has some cool musical moments thrown in (I like the piano for one), I can enjoy this off my free time. But Estonia does it better at the "Finno-Ugric EDM-ish entry about Mother Nature's tantrums" category and I ain't even sorry for saying this. But I gotta be sorry for Darude. This year's UMK had the lesser care about it because... well, these songs weren't exactly inspiring or anything, and with people wanting something groundbreaking, their hopes kept on vaning away with each and every song release of the UMK entries': "oh so the next 2 two songs will be good right?" "oh so then the last one will be the best one, yeah right?" "...oh, okay then .-." And him, as the Finnish meme king, should have deserved a better year for a better Eurovision stint, so he could have become something à la Epic Sax Guy. Right now I mostly see a middle-aged DJ with 2 kids, not a redhead dude with green sunglasses looking shadily on us. And that's okay sometimes because memes don't necessarily need to be remembered for memes (just like I mostly remember Kanye West for music, and then memes come second), but Finland's gonna take a miracle to get through, and I hardly see any. That's an aina mun pity.

Approval factor: Eh, it's alright, but I would certainly not hold it up to high regards post-contest? lol.

Follow-up factor: it's kiiiiinda bleak knowing that after giving us probably one of the most favourable dark horse efforts for Eurovision they're now going down the dancier route, with one entry after being a banger, the other being a dad banger. Ah well. It doesn't flow so neatly in my eyes, it seems.

Qualification factor: almost dead in the tracks. Finland flows anywhere they can, having a lot of bad luck for 3 years this decade, and I doubt that the juries will be supporting this heavily, considering they are better at rating good vocalists over bad ones, so I don't think this will sail through. But I secretly have hopes in this. It's not that bad, but Estonia is in this semi too, and it's a friendlier EDM track, so I don't quite think that repetitive will out-compell the good formulaic. Plus, Sebastian has a lot to fix vocally, and I doubt that he will carry Finland any further if he doesn't fix anything, so so far the chances of Finland aren't looking up imo. Bottom 5 at the semi is more likely if not already the actual outcome. Maaaaybe 10th in the semi at best, but I doubt it.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

The more this section pops up in my works, the less I wanna recap national finals anymore. I hope there’s more breather moments with me having to review a lot of internal selection songs in between the ones from NFs, because this whole season was an utter disaster, and it’d help if the next one isn’t. So let’s check in on Finland's selection’s best:

• But seriously, did anyone ever see Darude as a Finnish representative coming??? No??? Me neither. I was just sitting there, waiting to see if there's a hope for Mikael Saari (you know, that balladeer guy from previous UMKs - I do believe some audiences love him just as much as Saara Aalto, who only was on one UMK and one Euroviisut) to be announced on this special separate programme. Nope - the trilingual hosting trio of the programme that included Krista Siegfrids in it as the token Swedish speaker just happened to happily proclaim Darude as THE Finnish hopeful... and the world was s h o o k e t h. Just look at him go. His smug grin is still iconic on here.

• During the wait for all the UMK songs to pile up, the excitement for Darude faded away and everyone moved on to support other countries. I can't blame them, because I have found like one decent song this UMK that's still worth listening to twice a year or so - "Superman". Where Darude becomes the everyday hero for ordinary people that have difficulties in live to do mundane stuff. Maybe this song would have made him look like a better meme than his current entry would have? Just watch him go on his DJ booth dressing like a knock-off superhero because EBU doesn't allow blatant advertising. A way better gimmick than Gromee's snakey hands. Alas, no one will have to hear "Superman" anymore. Granted it's just an EDM song just like any other, but somehow I liked it best, end of.

• There's at least one memorable screenshot from UMK as well, so I'm happy with that. I saw this pop up on my Twitter time line and I could not stop laughing inside. Seriously. Krista and this other guy should host ESC provided Eurovision is ever coming back to Finland. They had a lot of iconic outfit changes during the NF itself (and the NF itself had "Look Away" with some dancer on a cube but they scrapped the tall cube for Tel Aviv entirely), but those floral onesies are my favourite.

Now I kinda hope that there’s something that will alarm YLE in the meantime that Finland needs a better approach for Eurovision and we’ll see another fully-fledged UMK in the works next year, and then Finland can be great again. For now, I’ll just wish “onnea” to Darude and Sebastian, with hopes that people don’t look away from their song at all! (but most likely they will so what’s the point.)

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #finland 2019 #darude ft. sebastian rejman #look away #finland

[zydrateacademy]

Retrospective Review: The Entire Mass Effect Franchise

Andromeda is coming out in a week (as of this writing) and I feel like I want to revisit the franchise. I’ve done a post like this a few years ago when my blog was new but didn’t really settle in on a style and it was kind of garbage with a lot of pointless paragraph breaks. First, some quick insight. I was born in ‘89. That means I was too late to life to be considered an “80’s” kid, and the 90’s were half over before I was able to form real likes, dislikes, or memories. It’s a strange bit of flux because most of my “Nostalgia” is usually in the form of Legos as opposed to comics, games, movies, etc.

It’s a flux that’s kind of leaked into my daily life. My family is not, and never has been particularly affluent. Every extra ten dollars we find, we think “YES. A few days of gas” or “YES. Lunch money.” We’re not poor, we’ve never had a lot of room for amenities. We update our computers basically once every 5-10 years based primarily around income tax returns. Whatever hand-me-down I get from person who was able to afford their new computer, it was always better than what I had. A problem that has recently been remedied when I was employed for two and a half years as a part-time cashier still gave me enough to buy my own completely up to date computer that will last me the next five years on its own. Stick with me, I’m getting to the point. As a result of all of that, I tend to not be able to get games as they come out. Especially not games that turn into these huge franchises. A few games hold special places in my heart BECAUSE of the very fact that I was able to start with them. Mass Effect is one of those series. I started with it on the Xbox, probably borrowing it from a friend initially and playing it in bite-sized chunks before getting it used (likely bought for me like everything else was). The story starts out well. Your character (do I even really need to name them at this point?) is on the track to becoming a Spectre, a sort of special service agent for the entire alien government. During the screening process, another Spectre goes rogue and the entire game is building up a sort of power base against him while discovering a secret of the universe that may lead to the death of everyone in it. Damn. Ramped way the hell up, didn’t it? I suppose that’s fine, as studios don’t exactly expect all their games to shoot off the way they do sometimes. Mass Effect was good for its time. A fairly basic shooter with some RPG elements, in the older days where putting a point in your skills increased damage by 4%, and other things like that. It was incremental, but it had a cool idea based around a boring mechanic. Every few levels in the huge variety of skills you had at your disposal, you’d get a new ability or some kind of boost. Put enough points in “Fitness” and you’d unlock an ability called Immunity, an active ability that reduced taken damage by a flat rate for a few seconds. It’s interesting how the following two games basically dropped that idea, gave you the same 4-5 abilities (that vary per class), called it a day, and just built everything around those. It made the second game a certain kind of boring because every playthrough was effectively the same. You hotkey your main one or two attacks and just shoot stuff when it’s on cooldown. The second game’s story went sideways rather than forward, a point against its favor when looking back at the series as a whole. It continues, presumably a few months after the events of the first game and your ship gets shot out of space and Shepard literally dies immediately. In the introductory sequence establishes that you were picked up by the Cerberus organization and basically rebuilt like goddamn Robocop. I was expecting a “We have the technology!” type dialog but alas, we were deprived. Cerberus was an organization briefly mentioned in some tiny fetch quest in ME1 when you discover a small outpost had been husk-ified. To their credit, this definitely tied into what they would end up doing en masse in ME3 but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. They come to ME2 full force as Shepard is more or less forced to work with them when the mere association makes the alien council backpedal their support for Shepard, whom they presumed dead. As a result, you don’t see a lot of them in ME2. The whole story culminates in fighting a sort of human-based reaper that the collectors (who you later discover were reaper-possessed Protheans. Christ this series is weird) have been building by harvesting human colonies just on the edge of the government’s jurisdiction. Because of this they refuse to respond to the abductions and Shepard joins Cerberus to figure out this mystery and solve it. With bullets. Or whatever the hell comes out of guns in this universe. Something something mass effect fields. The entire game is basically the Dragon Age 2 problem all over again. It feels like it takes place in a single setting even though it doesn’t. It’s mostly padding. Half the game is loyalty missions as you run around to make sure your minions are happy enough with their lot in life, so they’re suicidal enough to do the suicide mission at the end but not suicidal enough to shoot themselves on the Normandy because they’re just not quite sure their father is still alive or not. I never liked this aspect of the game. Every where I turned, someone on my team was whining about something that barely mattered in the grand scheme of things. You could argue that settling their business gives them enough drive and morality to survive the mission at the end. If they didn’t have the morale, maybe they would be too sad to move out of the way of certain bullets. I get that, morale is a huge thing and I suffer from the gain and drain of it on competitive multiplayer games. I feel it, but it’s exhausting to try and manage it across a 20 to 40 hour game. Especially since the mechanics were dumbed down as I alluded to earlier. In the end, ME2 barely matters on a story standpoint and mostly served to update the graphics, systems, and mechanics from the first. To that end, they did fine. ME2 looks fine, even by today’s standards. In a more combat-oriented game, ME2 functions as a successor.  This brings up to ME3. It opens up about a full year after the events of the second game, where Shepard is being punished for their actions in the Arrival DLC of ME2. Never got around to doing that DLC? Tough shit, as they reference it throughout the entire first act of the game and even later when you meet a Batarian on his deathbed. I played through it maybe once and I still don’t really understand what happened or why it was my fault, but there you go. Basically, in the second scene the reapers attack and fucking finally, the goverment lets Shephard get their best murder on and fly out to kick some actual ass. This is even lampshaded by Legion (a Geth teammate you acquire in late-game ME2) who told their own people that the reapers were coming and were believed immediately and began prepping. “Must be nice”, Shepard says. Indeed.  The entire game is spent gathering war assets for the finale of the series. The more you have, the better it goes on a story standpoint. If you scrape for every asset you are capable of, there will be less loss of life. More soldiers on the field, more field assistance, and generally a slightly less bleak atmosphere (which is still pretty goddamn bleak). The mechanics are a crisper version of ME2′s. You still only have 4-5 main abilities to use per class but the leveling system is a bit more nuanced and more in-depth than before, which edged towards ME1′s style without being too stupidly gratuitous like adding 4% to damage. They saved that for actual gun modifications. The cover system has remained through the entire franchise (As it will continue in Andromeda) and it mostly serves to give you shield recharge while reloading your gun and not much else. Mass Effect 3 is probably my favorite of the entire franchise. Some are beholden to the first game as classic nostalgia, and I don’t know many who talk about 2 very much. However mostly decry the third game for its flawed ending and I chalk that up to a PR misunderstanding, or just bad wording on Bioware’s part. See, the sting mostly comes from when they claimed that “Oh the ending won’t be a simple A, B, C matter...” That’s exactly what it became. In the end you had the choice between destroying ALL synthetic life, taking control of the reapers for yourself and effectively fusing your consciousness with them, or if you gathered enough assets, full on synthesis. This basically fuses organic life with synthetic code, making everyone a sort of hybrid and thus rendering the Reaper’s flawed logic completely moot, and they fuck off into the void of space all over again. However for those who actually watched the endings, with the help of the extended cut, there’s a lot of nuances that that simple choice does not immediately seem apparent. In the extended cut you can see the multitude of your choices play out. Did you cure the genophage? You witness the rebirth of Tuchanka and see it get rebuilt in grand buildings with Krogan mothers celebrating their children. What did you do about the Geth/Quarian conflict? You see the results of that as well. Yes, the ending decision did boil down to an ABC choice but the ramifications of a few choices that you made since the first game still absolutely had an effect. A mass effect, if you will (please kill me). Ultimately I feel like there’s a lot more to do in ME3. I’ve played it for a few hundred hours, changing something big every time I do it. I take on a different lover, I switch sides and sabotage the genophage (which I will never ever do again because holy shit). I hop between Paragon and Renegade because it’s fun to watch the world change before my eyes as I decide to murder people that I would not otherwise have done. I do run out of things to do however as the level cap is 60, and if you’ve imported a ME2 save you’re probably already level 25-30 so it takes a single playthrough to max out. After that point, doing NG+’s only change a bonus power and maybe you can fiddle around with different weapon types and adjust playstyles. Which I did often. While I wrap this up with a sort of game-by-game summary, I want to give an honorable mention to ME3′s DLC, The Citadel. It’s often considered the ‘true’ ending to the series and is my personal headcanon post-final battle regardless of lives lost. It takes place on the Citadel (obviously) while most of your crew is on shore leave while the Normany gets cleaned up as it presumably does every time you dock anywhere across the franchise. Shepard’s life is never simple as it turns out there’s a plot against their life and must scramble to figure out another mystery. It’s an incredibly funny DLC with a ton of humor and mostly acts as a tone-shifting breather for the general “We’re all fucked” aura the game mostly gives you. It even ends on a “We’re all in this together” high note with most of your crew (And some from ME2 come back!) overlook a beautiful view while in the titular Citadel. So. We’ve reached the conclusion with my overarching thoughts on the franchise as a whole. It’s good. It’s an experience, and I highly recommend playing through it because there’s a lot to talk about. I’ll give a basic rundown. Mass Effect 1: Fine game, but has not aged well on a visual standpoint. Story is perfectly solid and moderately self-contained without originally relying on a whole franchise to carry it. RPG elements are excessive and each individual upgrade doesn’t feel like it does much until the higher levels. Mass Effect 2: Basically sidesteps its predecessor. Weak story that takes the plot nowhere but with crisper, actionized mechanics and less inventory menus to worry about. Mass Effect 3: Is the culmination of everything they learned from the last two games. More nuanced RPG systems that seem like a middleground between 1 and 2. Story comes to a solid conclusion, and I don’t agree with all the constant whining about how the endings ruined the entire game for some people. Grow up. I’m sure the game has some kind of anthology pack you can buy on sale at this point and I’d recommend giving it a go. If you’re a newcomer to the franchise, be prepared to set aside anywhere from 50 to 200 hours between the three games. If not, Andromeda takes place between the events of 2 and 3 while taking place in a completely different galaxy and will very likely only slightly reference the previous games. There’s the occasional nod, like you meet a sibling of the Turian female in Omega. Other little nods like that but it won’t be necessary to go through all three to enjoy the full experience of Andromeda. Can’t wait!

#Mass Effect #mass effect: andromeda #Andromeda #Bioware #EA Games #Electronic Arts