From the Gaming Desk

Back on December 7, the Game Desk announced that it had started playing the game Far Cry 6.  I finally "beat" (completed) the game on January 6.  It's a huge game and it took me some 159 hours to wrap up, putting it right between Borderlands 2 (two playthroughs) and Death Stranding (one playthrough) in terms of total hours played.  

The very next day (January 7), I started playing Mass Effect.  Mass Effect is a "classic" game, originally released in 2007 as the first installment in a beloved science-fiction trilogy.  But I wasn't gaming back in 2007 (I wasn't gaming between about 2001 and 2016) and I missed out, so it's "new" to me.  Besides, the game was just remastered and rereleased as a part of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in May 2021 with upgraded graphics and gameplay adjustments.  

I liked the game. A lot. I beat the game within a week, completing it last night after a total of 47 hours of gameplay.  I could have played longer and I'm sure I missed a lot of side missions and left some planets unexplored, but the main story line was so compelling and interesting that I wound up pretty much just following the central plot.  In true role-playing game style, a lot of decisions and choices made early in the game affect the later storyline, and the game therefore has high replay potential. But I probably won't replay Mass Effect until I first complete Mass Effect 2 and 3, the other two games in the trilogy and the Legendary Edition anthology.

Mass Effect contains probably the best scripted dialog and documentary writing of any game I can recall. Instead of the usual, comic-book-style "Let's go kick some ass!" and "That's what she said," the dialog felt like something from a high-quality sci-fi novel, and embedded texts and descriptions of the game world displayed some actual intelligent thought.  The game contains it's own backstory and mythology, and the story involves a baroque plot of byzantine political ambitions among galactic powers.  The backstory is every bit as rich and complex as the Star Wars franchise or The Elder Scrolls games.  

While playing, I also realized how much the 2007 game influenced later games.  For example, the game The Outer Worlds involves a crew on a spaceship exploring various planets as they complete the main plot.  In Outer Worlds, you play as the captain, and at each planet, you can choose any two of the crewmates to join you on the mission.  That's exactly the premise of Mass Effect.  In both Outer Worlds and Borderlands 2, in addition to a variety of weapons which can be fired for various lengths of time before they overheat and need a cooling off period before they can be fired again, you have protective shields that absorb enemy fire for variable durations before your character's health is damaged. When your shield is depleted, your best move is to take cover for several seconds until the shield recharges.  Mass Effect has the exact same weapon and shield mechanics. I guess what I'm saying is that Mass Effect apparently pioneered a lot of the gameplay mechanics of later games that I've enjoyed.

Suffice it to say that I expect to be playing Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 in the very near future, possibly even this very evening (but after the New England Patriots' playoff game, of course).

Update:  Well, the Patriots played like shit and lost their Wild Card game to the Buffalo Bills, 47-17.  Season's over for this year, but at least we get to say we made it to the playoffs.  Truth be told, the game was so one-sided I started on Mass Effect 2 during the Third Quarter, and found more similarities to other games that turn up as Easter eggs in those other games.  In the underrated and much maligned Cyberpunk 2077, there's a bar called The Afterlife where thieves, mercenaries, and cyber-villains go to blow off steam.  There's also a bar in Mass Effect 2 called The Afterlife that's much the same.  In both games, The Afterlife is run by an older matriarch who's built up a formidable reputation as someone to respect and to never fuck over. In both games, The Afterlife matriarchs discuss business in their own private booths while seated on long cushioned benches, never directly facing the person they're talking to but instead watching the other side-eyed. 

To make it even more interesting, I understand that The Afterlife and its matriarch first appeared  in the 1990 table-top game Cyberpunk, the source material for much of Cyberpunk 2077's lore.  It could be that The Afterlife of Cyberpunk 2077 was paying homage to Mass Effect 2 paying homage to the 1990 Cyberpunk table-top game.