After complaining in the Lynx that I got a physical box with a digital code instead of install media for my preorder, there were those who suggested I review the game and give an opinion.
First Caveat: I have, as of this set of impressions, thirteen in-game hours. On the plus side, it does not feel like the game is about to end. Though it also means I have not fully explored the character of all of the NPCs, which is an area that traditionally was BioWare’s wheelhouse.
Second Caveat: I may end up with unmarked spoilers because of my style of writing reviews. I will try to avoid this, but mistakes happen.
I took my code and typed it into Origin while the Lynx were going. After getting to 42% of the download completed, Origin installed the base game and said I could start playing. It then went on to keep downloading content in the background. So if anyone is already put off by the Origin requirement, there’s your answer. This isn’t an Origin review, so all I’ll say is that it’s a weak Steam rip-off, and I’d rather not have to have yet another sales platform installed on my machine to play games.
The first impression I had of the game proper was that it loaded to the main menu massively faster than earlier Mass Effect games. After poking around in the settings menu as per my habit, I dropped into character creation. There has been much said about character creation on other pages, including claims that it was difficult to make a white Ryder which prompted me to immediately try for that.
The results were passable but there were a few things wrong when wandering about in-game. One, the hairline does not actually attach to the forehead. That gets distracting in close-up shots. Two, the face looks fractionally small for the head but proportionate to itself. That could just be me having screwed up in making my changes. But one thing that kept jumping out at me – all the restraints on the character customization are artificial. It is clear that the engine as it exists could easily handle giving a wider range of variation. Two, it is easy to see where the impression that there was a deliberate effort made to try to prevent people from making a white character. Whether there was intent or not is the question.
Anyway, I had my soulless ginger, and I kept wondering – why doesn’t the hair color apply to the eyebrows? It makes it look like everyone has a terrible dye job. Actually given how the hair doesn’t connect to the forehead, it makes it look like he’s wearing a wig. This leads into the next distracting problem. I’d dismissed the fuss about facial animations, but there is indeed something seriously off about them. At times, the lip-sync is broken to the point where the Salarians have more natural speech movements than the humans. This wouldn’t be as bad, but being Mass Effect, there are closeups during dialog, and it’s right there, front and center where you can’t miss it. Speaking of dialog, the voice acting… is spotty. Some characters work just fine. No problems. Others, the voice just doesn’t sound right for the model. And then there’s the handful where the actor is just awful. The Salarian director is one such character, where I was wondering “did they leave in placeholder audio?” during his dialog. Decent voice acting is invisible, it blends into the background. Bad voice acting ruins the immersion.
Will this cavalcade of complains end? Yes, but there are a few more to get to first. Coming from the voice acting, you get the writing. Whoever wrote some of this dialog at best half-assed it. Other writing is par for the series and not so much of an irritant. The problem is the juxtaposition of varying degrees of quality. There is a side quest where you investigate a murder which is actually pretty okay, but I was doing it in parallel to some of the main quests where the glaring mistakes popped up. Little flubs – awkward sentence structure and word choice unrelated to character proclivities, things like that, but being in cutscenes for the primary plot just meant there was nothing else to pay attention to at the time. I get the feel of several parallel writers, where the less experienced members got handed the main plot.
Right, lets get on to the gameplay. Anyone who’s played BioWare’s work in the past decade will be familiar with most of the conventions. In fact, they will have played this exact game before. For some, what I am about to say is the most damning commentary I could make. For others, it’s a non-issue. But here it is. This game is really Mass Effect: Inquisition. Character picks up unique ability that requires them to personally attend to some vital task. They are dropped into a position of authority within an organization without any qualification – an organization which they have to rebuild from a shattered state and woo allies against a better-resourced foe. And they repeatedly return to the same locales to do side quests and harvest resources to perform upgrades. They even have strike team missions which fill the role of the strategic map in DA:I. These strike team missions are where the Multiplayer is slotted in, as any of them sent out using an “APEX” requirement is a multiplayer mission. I’ve not done any of these because screw multiplayer; I play video games to get away from real people.
I was okay with Inquisition, and I’m fine with its reskinning. In fact, the reskinning is one of the best things because the Environment artists did a gorgeous job. Lets take a trip from the Citad- sorry, the ‘Nexus’ to the Desert world.
Then we go and have a chat with an NPC and we get another good look at the character animations. And we see that there was a shortage of quality control
Lets take our mind off that, here’s a view of the system on the verge of falling into a black hole.
But that brings me to another problem. While exploration is explicitly a part of the game’s premise, the movement transitions take too long. You select a new celestial object to visit, the camera zooms in where you are, pans to aim at the other body, then flies over there, pauses for a full second, and finally reorients at the new location before giving you back control. You can’t skip it, and it does this for every transition. This wouldn’t be so bad, but when you’re doing stellar cartography, a lot of these planets have zero or at most one surface feature to investigate from orbit. You will be flying from world to world a lot. This gets tedious after a while.
While we’re on the subject of transportation, the Nomad is a decent vehicle in some ways, it definitely handles better than the Mako, but cannot tackle anything approaching the inclines that the Mako could. It doesn’t jump very high, but it also doesn’t leap off of cliff faces and pirouette through the air like the Mako did. It has one seriously annoying drawback – no gun. You have to get out of the Nomad to shoot anything. I’m not going to compare to the Hammerhead because that was a skimmer, and the wheeled vehicles are more appropriate parallels. The Nomad apparently has an infinite supply of mining probes packed away in the back. These probes are as big as people and I’ve launched a number on a single run without resupply. I think I’d rather have a gun.
While I joked about the aesthetic in the screenshot travel montage, I do understand wanting to keep the Initiative tech looking like what we saw in previous installments. Where the problem comes from is the lack of originality in the Andromeda aliens. I’ve seen two sapient species thus far. One looks like it got lost trying to figure out if it was supposed to head to the Star Wars set or the Star Trek set. It is an uninspired rubber-forehead design. The main villain race looks like someone tried to mix and match traits and animations from the Geth and the Collectors. They are the biggest disappointment thus far. We flew all of these light years for something that isn’t even all that alien. The ‘Archon’ has a comedically child-like face too. It’s just a bit embarrassing.
The characters look like BioWare standard fare, and I could point to the archetypes from previous games, but as I said, at thirteen hours in, I’ve not had time to evaluate them all. Except I know I cannot stand ‘Peebee’. Immediately after the scene where she introduces herself, I emptied an entire thermal clip of pistol rounds into her because she was that obnoxious. Sadly, these seemed to have no effect. There were points in the subsequent mission where I was all but yelling “Don’t follow the moron” at the pathfinder, but the power of cutscenes compelled him. I cursed when I opened the wrong door on the ship and ended up in an inescapable conversation with her. Some of the other NPCs started out grating, but became less of an irritant over time. Liam was much easier to deal with after I replaced him with a Turian and he wasn’t constantly yapping on during missions.
I am seriously distrustful of the AI, and I really wish there was a way for the PC to try to get it out of his head. That thing is just plain wrong and the first step down a lot of bad endings for humanity.
So far, I give it three dead Reapers out of five. It won’t wow you, but it can be enjoyable if you liked Inquisition. You may want to wait for a sale if you’re on the fence.
Comments
175 responses to “UnCivil Reviews – Mass Effect: Andromeda”
-Servant It’s “UnCivilServant” The joke doesn’t work if I’m merely UnCivil
It’s about time. I need to decide when/if to buy this.
Thanks.
You’re welcome.
If it means anything I’m still playing it today.
Thanks, Civil. Pay no attention to my smart assedness, I really do appreciate you doing this.
If I were offended by smartasses, I would not be here.
Well, I guess I should take that for granted, lol.
“First Caveat: I have, as of this set of impressions, thirteen in-game hours. On the plus side, it does not feel like the game is about to end.”
What? You mean a $60 RPG isn’t over after 13 hours of game play? What sort of modern wonder is this thing?
I’ve had $60 games that were less than 12 hours. According to the galaxy map I’ve explored 24% of the Heleus Cluster.
I’d be pretty pissed if a $60 RPG was only 12 hours. I think I may have had 30-40 hours in ME 1. I never finished the 2nd and 3rd. But just for reference, I had 200+ hours in Fallout NV, and about 120 hours in Skyrim, 130 hours in DOS, more than 100 hours each in the first 3 Gothics, and about 70 hours in Risen.
Only 120 in Skyrim? I have 488 (#1 most playtime in Steam… Holy crap, I have a lot of games over 100 hours: DoW II: Retribution at 298, Dragon Age: Origins at 243, Fallout 4 at 214, Fallout: New Vegas at 128, Empire: Total War at 126, DoW II at 120, Total War: Warhammer at 116, Kerbal Space program at 113, GTAV at 112, and Mass Effect 2 at 100)
… I need a life.
Checking Origin playtimes… Dragon Age: Inquisition has 95 hours. ME:3 only 65. Nothing past the 100 hour mark.
I have said many times if I could only have 1 game it would be skyrim. Easily the overall best game ever made.
I actually think Morrowind was better (for it’s mechanics) it was cancelled deeper RPG. If you could have some of the advances of Skyrim plugged into Morrowind it would be great.
Not cancelled… I don’t know what my phone was thinking.
Yeah, Morrowind is easily the most fleshed out and interesting of the Elder Scrolls games. It’s just hard to appreciate with the terrible combat system.
I get that. It’s been years since I played it, but it was my first RPG, so it has some sentimental value as well. Definitely if you could add combat and sneaking advances to Morrowind, it would be great. I loved Skyrim as well. Oblivion was ok…
Nope, the best game ever made is Fallout NV. Followed by Gothic 1, Gothic 3, Risen, and DOS. But it’s good. (:
When Hyperion is right, he’s right.
I bought fallout NV for Christmas, but have yet to get in it.
New Vegas was okay. 4 accidentally severed Raider Heads out of five.
Most under rated games of all time:
Two Worlds 2
Dragon Age 2
The biggest thing that bothered me in DA2 was the sheer number of times they reused maps. It became a running gag for me. I liked Varric, and was surprised that Anders became un-killed (and a warden) after I’d handed him over to the Templars to be executed in Awakening.
No love for Borderlands 2?
I’ve got 162 hours in NV, and 583 hours in BL.
I did not break 100 hours in any of the borderlands game. I don’t see as much to do after I’ve finished the plot. I suppose they don’t fit my style of wasting time ingame.
BL2 is probably the best co-op game out there. It’s a really good single player, but great as a cooperative.
They really got the balance and scalability right for adding players.
Do you people work??
Seriously, that is a lot of gametime. My max is 30 hours, and that’s for a game I played through almost three times. Next highest is 22 hours for about halfway through.
I play Go. I’ve got a lot of time in that game. 🙂
Do you even game, bruh?
That game? I had to duckduckgo it to Wikipedia page. Never heard of it, but I have never heard of almost all of what these geeks are talking about.
Go is a simple game that gets insanely complicated.
Yes, that game, also known as baduk or weiqi. (The other languange names for it make internet searches much easier.)
I don’t do “gaming” of the sort Rhywun implies, because I can only get high-speed internet via satellite, so lag and bandwidth are issues. (And for the longest time when I was taking care of Mom, I only had an XP computer.) When it comes to Go, I just don’t play blitz.
NERD!
Unfortunately, I’m a pretty lousy player. 🙁
I have 622 hours in Europa Universalis 4.
That makes me a mid-tier player.
You aren’t married, correct?
Well, I don’t know how much I’ve played of it so far but I know I’m way past your 13 hour mark. I can definitely say there’s a real lack of polish on some things (mostly animations), but I really like it so far. With the in-depth exploration of the system, in some ways this feels like how Mass Effect 1 should’ve been, IMO. Also, how dare you not like Peebee. It’s the two human companions that I find a total bore. (Haven’t used either of them after getting my first two alien companions other than for Cora’s loyalty mission, and I assume Liam will have his own loyalty mission later on). But, I think this game will be a good fresh start for the Mass Effect series after the mess that is Mass Effect 3’s ending.
Peebee is like a sandpaper q-tip being driven into the ear canal.
I think you’re mixing up Peebee and Liam. I really don’t understand why BioWare has such a problem making an interesting human male companion. Kadian, Jacob, Carth. They’re all so boring. I think Dragon Age’s Alistair might be the only one that was interesting.
Unless Liam is acutally a blue-skinned tentacle-haired alien with an annoying, high-pitched voice that doesn’t know when to shut up or what rational approaches to situations are, I don’t think so.
Also, I couldn’t stand Alistair either (though I agree that Kaiden, Jacon and Carth were uninteresting). Actually, a lot of the DA:O companions were annoying. I liked more of the DA2 companions.
People give him shit, but I liked ME3’s Vega. He was the only human around who liked Shepard but was not in awe of her. He jokes and acts casual, but a single sentence from Shepard and he snaps back into full professional mode. Also, the fact that you couldn’t bang him, because it would be inappropriate.
I never talked to him. I was still trying to figure out why I couldn’t recruit Mordin to do field work. (Funny thing, Mordin has a lot of the traits I complain about in other characters, but he is still one of my Favorite NPCs)
Probably because he’s the very model of a scientist Salarian.
+1 Gilbert and Sullivan
wait, what
i played those games year ago, and it always irked me that they kept offering up these prompts for “FLIRT GAY WITH BRO” even after it was made pretty ()@#*@()$* abundantly clear i was making my moves elsewhere.
the game was like WHAT ARE YOU HOMOPHOBIC OR SOMETHING and i’m like “it just seems unprofessional” but then i started thinking, “Well maybe i should do a playthrough where i fuck everyone”, and now you’re telling me that’s not even possible? Then why do they keep offering those dialogue options? I hate that shit.
The game that was the fucking worst in that respect was Fallout New Vegas. Every scabby NPC was willing to have gay sex with you, but the 2 cute chicks? (veronica and cass) were constantly gabbing about their exes and leaving you blueballed-friendzoned.
Damn, I’ve been playing the wrong games.
Until 3 in Mass Effect you couldn’t have real proper gay sex, and to have it, you have to bang a guy whose only character trait is literally “My husband died in the invasion, I’m sad”.
Vega is the best because he won’t bang you even if you are a female flirting hard with him. Because he knows about chain of command and why that is a shitty idea.
Gilmore, you can’t hook up with any of your companions in New Vegas. And the reason you got the gay dialogue options was because you picked the gay trait for your character when leveling.
If you pick the straight trait there are a few random ladies you can romance.
but confirmed bachelor sounded *classy*!
given that “sex” is typically represented by A BLACKED OUT SCREEN in the game, its not really much of an accomplishment or anything; and the few you can bang don’t even really provide much in the way of dialogue-seduction, or lure you in with the pretense of a relationship.
By contrast, i think the only fleshed-out romantic options in the game were provided via “Arcade”, and only possible if you’re a dude. and technically i think you can do the gay-relationship w/o ever getting the bachelor-perk, tho i can’t remember.
Somebody wrote an article a few years back basically pointing out that there were far more varieties of options ranging from cheap-one-off sex to actual relationships if you took the gay path in FNV, whereas if you’re hetero? the best you can get is a quickie with either the Pit-fighting woman, or the ditz who runs the Vault hotel.
AND YES I TRIED IT ALL. INCLUDING FISTO
Who didn’t try Fisto? What happens in the creepy rat-infested robot factory stays in the creepy rat-infested robot factory.
Please assume the position.
All playing as a gay dude with Arcade gets you is that you can recruit him earlier, without having to do some side quests. There’s no real romance quest there. You can pull the same thing off by playing as an int 3 or less character.
If you’re getting all the gay options, it is because you went out of your way to pick the button that says, “My character is gay.” So complaining about it comes off as a bit ‘Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?’
If you want to avoid the gay options, just play as a straight woman. You get the same bonus damage to men, and can cut out an story questline.
That said, the Obsidian devs have repeatedly stated that they strongly dislike romances in video games. Since they’re not really like real life romances, it’s just press speech option 3, 7, 2 and then you’ll get laid. So they’re romance storylines were probably half assed at best.
And thirdteen hours was back on wednesday when I wrote the review.
Forgot to add, really like the multiplayer. I found myself surprisingly impressed with ME3’s multiplayer mode and am quite happy to see that it’s mostly more of the same here. Very glad that BioWare plans to have the same future support for this one as they did the previous game’s.
Just wanted to promote my absolute favorite video game writer’s epic 50 Part Mass Effect retrospective, because it’s the best critique of the series I’ve seen. Hopefully he’ll revise it and put into a book someday.
IDK anything about Mass Effect, but you got me reading this – and it’s fantastic.
His “let’s plays” (which are really him and three to four other people bitching about narrative or mechanics) are the only ones I’ll regularly watch. Their Fallout let’s plays are hilarious.
Yeah, I wonder where people got that idea from.
I didn’t want to waste too much time on that guy, as my focus was on whether the game was any good. So I covered it to the extent I felt it deserved.
Yeah, we all know the blatant double standard going on here. But one racist jackass isn’t worth coverage for a game that probably had plenty of decent humans working on it. Not worth more than the passing reference you gave.
Dude kind of sounds like a douche. I see his success as a game developer has been foiled by all the evil white people.
Really does he get to claim to not be white? Cause I get he looks white to me. (Perhaps the worst insult he could receive?)
Charming.
Fuck this privileged shitlord. Wanna fair bet? This asshole’s ancestors’ stations in life have probably benefited in some significant historical sense, from the ancient concept of caste in the subcontinent. Not to generalise too much, but a great many of South Asian immigrants to North America (Caribbean islanders exempted) come from backgrounds variously of the extremely wealthy landowner, bureaucratic/chieftain, and high level professional stripe.
Hello. I’m finished pretending to work. Now I’m pretending that I care about what this big tittied woman at the bar is saying.
Well, what is she saying?
Want paying attention. Just watching the cadence shift the mighty bosum of bounty
The tits are fake.
Now I’m pretending that I care about what this big tittied woman at the bar is saying.
There are worse things in life.
This game is really Mass Effect: Inquisition.
Thanks for saving me $60, UnCivil.
You know, I’ll probably buy this game, if for no other reason than boredom. There hasn’t been a lot, like none, good games come out yet this year. The game that everyone is talking about now, is NieR: Automata, which is not for me since it’s not a RPG. One game I am looking forward to is ELEX, from Piranha Bytes, who I somehow keep expecting to make another good game despite the fact that they haven’t done so since Risen 1 in 2009.
Ok, what is an RPG? I don’t speak nerd.
“Role-Playing Game” More plot- and character-oriented.
Aah, TY.
Role Playing Game.
What system do you guys prefer? I hear much about that. Or are you a PC player?
I’m a PC Gamer because I’m going to have PCs anyway for a lot of other things – so I invest in one good system and don’t clutter everything up with piles of consoles.
Makes sense. I have an x box but use it more for streaming netflix and blu ray than gaming.
PC, of course. Unless cost is an issue, not sure why anyone would want a console.
I have a PS4 strictly for playing with my friends. I’m a programmer, I’m going to have a kick ass computer anyway, and steam is cheaper, so I prefer PC gaming. Most of my favorite games are single player as well, but since we’ve scattered to the four winds the PS4 is a decent way to keep in touch.
I have a Wii for Nintendo-exclusive games. I don’t play $60 PC games which is good because I’m on a Mac.
PC gamer here. Steam has made it impossible to justify spending $60 for a AAA game, plus however much for DLC, when I know I can wait two years, and buy the GOTY version with patches and all DLC for $20.
role-playing game, I believe.
It’s a game designed for people who never get laid.
Winner
Yeah, this year definitely seems a bit slower with games than usual. (At least games I’m interested in). Every game but one that I’ve been looking forward to this year is now out. Halo Wars 2, Horizion: Zero Dawn, and now Mass Effect: Andromeda. So, unless there’s something I’m forgetting, or some big reveal at E3 that comes out this year, all that’s left is the remastered Crash Bandicoot trilogy. Ah well, it’ll help me save up my money. Maybe I’ll instead put the money I’d use for that towards a GTX 1080ti.
“Horizion: Zero Dawn”
Yeah, that looks good, but not sure when it’s coming to PC.
I’m trading my GTX 970s in for a 1080ti, soon.
> The game that everyone is talking about now, is NieR: Automata, which is not for me since it’s not a RPG
Well it’s an action-adventure pseudo RPG type of game. The gameplay is the 3rd person action type using dual analog control button firing skills, combined with strategic resource management for your character. The RPG elements come in the form of side-quests and multiple paths to multiple endings that are required to discover the entire story.
Oh, and it has that quintessential Asian game characteristic of the hawt attractive female character(s): 2B.
This alone is enough to get me to check it out:
Nier Automata’s Creator Explains Why 2B Wears High Heels
This is currently the first generation where I don’t have any of the major game systems since.. well, ever. Ever since I got an Atari 2600 when I was 5 anyways.
I keep waiting for that one killer game to get me back in and it’s not happening. Maybe if Kingdom Hearts 3 ever comes out.
I bought Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and Kingdom Hearts 2.5 this past fall. I kept waiting for things to make sense as I progressed through KH. I finished it then started watching whatever the mini sequel was on the 1.5 disc, and got even more confused. So I tried reading online what was going on. Finally I was said WTF is all this gibberish. Luckily, 2.5 was still shrink wrapped and I returned it to Wal-Mart.
Good grief. I thought there would be some actual conversation going on here after y’all got the game-nerd stuff out of the way.
What I hear you is saying is that I turn the nerd speak up to 11 and start discussing board gaming.
It is all gibberish to me. The last time I was into a video game I was dropping quarters in a Stargate machine. I wish I had those quarters back.
I wonder if anyone here even knows what that means.
Now, get the fuck off of my lawn.
Stargate (also known Defender II) is an arcade game released in 1981 by Williams Electronics.
Holy shit you’re old.
I’m Gen X so I get both sides of this. I know the old stuff, I know the new stuff – and I’m not sure which I prefer.
I preferred Asteroids or Missile Command. But my first quarters went into Pong.
I preferred Q-bert. Lovable potty mouth.
I hear you suthen. Everytime gaming comes up on these boards I realize what a bunch of nerds I interact with here.
The hippie dippie chick I’m dating is ten yrs younger than me. Last summer, one of her co-workers’ boyfriend invited us to play D&D. She is too young to have encountered it in the old days. We spent 4 hrs creating our characters, something that modern video games based on D&D can accomplish in minutes.
Sigh. Man, that game was labor intensive.
Just because it’s late, and there’s no late night links to run around in. There’s now a board game that’s a character creation process. I played it earlier this week, and it’s actually a solid game on it’s own.
We spent 4 hrs creating our characters, something that modern video games based on D&D can accomplish in minutes.
If she’s anything like my ex, she’ll spend an hour and a half on the Dark Souls character creation screen fine-tuning things like cheek width that DON’T BLOODY MATTER, STAB THE FREAKING DEMON ALREADY.
This is REALLY why there are no female libertarians.
I’d introduce you to my libertarian wife…but she’s too busy playing WoW,
Jesus Frank. You are making that up, right?
Still have ice up there? Everything is green and flowering here.
Unfortunately, no. She’s an addict.
Snow in the surrounding mountains. 50’s here. Only two more months till spring.
Libertarian Parenting Part 3 – Professor David Friedman on Unschooling
tl;dr: David Friedman encourages his daughter to play WoW. Daughter voluntarily audits his college class during high school age (she was home/un-schooled) becomes as smart as smartest college law student.
So she became a blithering idiot?
I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.
Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labor and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.
Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.
Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that’s how the west developed.
The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.
People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their refrigerator, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.
I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.
Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.
If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.
No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.—-Ross McKitrick
From this article.
Hmm, thought I blockquoted it.
I’m gonna run my A/C with the door open during earth hour. Fuck them.
“For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. ”
I was gonna make a joke that we solved the first two. Then I fought of all the gulags, wars, genocides of the past 100 years and realized we only solved diseases
We haven’t even solved all of disease. We have scratched the surface, thats all.
A return to nature would mean that a whole bunch of us would starve to death. I’m not sure how many people the earth can support without modern farming equipment, but it is an order of magnitude less that how many are currently here.
I’m not sure about that. I think that even with 19th century technology, the US Midwest could probably feed the whole world. Distribution would be impossible, though.
Wiki has the earth est. population in 1800 at about 1 billion. I would guess that there were a lot more people starving then than there are now with the technology they had.
Yes, but that’s a symptom of the lack of a distribution system. I’m pretty sure that farming tech from, say, 1850, mixed with modern logistics, could feed the world. But I’m not paying for the shipping.
I get your point, I guess I was thinking along the lines of a “return to nature” being the return to a pre industrialized state. That would mean no modern electrical distribution, no modern logistics infastructure, etc. Basically setting us back several hundred years to appease the Earth worshippers would come with an unprecedented body count.
The population of NYC is 8.4 million people.
They reside in 300 square miles.
If a solar flare or EMP happened, people would starve by the millions.
Those who managed to escape would flood the surrounding area, whose residents might otherwise be self sustaining. Yeah, bad day.
I make it a point of turning on every light in the house.
Thanks for reminding me.
Here you go!
Zod bless cheap power!
Beautiful!
LOL had no idea I just missed it. I could not agree more with the sentiments of the quote.
It puts me in mind of a commercial I saw the other day, exhorting me to turn off the water faucet while I brush my teeth (I already do this because… who doesn’t?!) because water shortages in Africa or something. Like the water company is going to package up the water I saved them and mail it to Ethiopia.
What, you’ve never heard of Wettern Union?
That’s so corny you should be ashamed of yourself.
Wettern Union
“Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature.”
Throw in exploding nuclear power stations and I’d feel right at home.
Stolen. YOU GET ZERO CREDIT
Earth Hour is a shining example of media bias. Look how quickly they glommed onto it and normalized it.
Thanks. I can log in now.
I mean “I can’t login to post, would somebody tell the admins, please?”
When are my needs going to be met??!11???
I request, nay, I DEMAND (!), equal time. Where are the cartoon reviews?
Write one, submit it.
Damn! That means I have to watch them.
Count me a slow nerd but the game I enjoy is Rome:Total War. I play the first version because in many ways it is better than the re-release.
Have you played the other Total War games?
they were also my main gaming pleasure until…. i suppose shogun II. But my favorite was was the Medieval version. not sure why, maybe the interesting differences in strategic options depending on which faction you chose. If i recall Rome added some complexity to the settlement development which turned me off. I played it, but i don’t recall liking it, or being miffed that my prior experience w/ the others counted for little.
What’s your problem with Shogun 2? I see it as the last good Creative Assembly game until the clusterfuck that was Rome 2.
I’ve played quite a bit of Rome and empire, but CK2 stole my heart with Grand strategy.
Maybe i was unclear. Shogun II was the last (‘most modern’) one i liked. Rome i found overly-complex (i can barely remember, but something about the controls or settlement development had changed and it was annoyign)… and Medieval (the first one) was my favorite overall.
I agree with you Gilmore. Rome version 2 destroyed the play-ability with only minor positive tweeks. I had the Barbarian expansion as well until my computer took a dive.
I am hoping that somebody kluges together the V2 graphics and taking two cities per providence with the V1 mechanics.
I’m acutely feeling the generation gap. No idea what this is about.
HAHA!
Meetup is good for tomorrow! I know we missed a few with traveling, but if anyone just happens to be in Denver tomorrow, come on down and have a drink.
Make sure to get social security numbers for me!
you already have the mother’s maiden name, or should I get those too?
I need mother’s maiden name, high school mascot, and name of first pet.
Peak derp? courtesy of that Sargon guy. (Probably been posted here already.)
Force women, at the point of a gun, to be employed! That sounds like it’s been tried before.
Hm. I’m sure the poster can’t really be arguing that…
*clicks on link*
whut
Bullshit. For that, I refuse to read any further.
Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed.
Ahem,
FUCK OFF SLAVER!
That is all.
unfotunately Peak Derp is very clearly just straight up Marxist Totalitarianism, so no. But this is definitely a lot closer to that. yikes.
There’s a comment to that post that is well worth scrolling down to. (If my link don’ work)
Christ, you might have to be logged in to the Australian Daily Worker for the link to work.
just quote it
Or take a screencap.
I didn’t have to be logged in to see it, but I’m pretty sure this is the comment SIV was referring to (minus many extra blank lines; poster’s name is “eualadindeal”):
Anyone in the DC area want to go to this and report back?
Projection overload SEGFAULT
George Soros training up a new generation of fascists….thats just great.
I have no idea what in the hell you guys are talking about.
Skinner says the teachers are going to crack any minute purple monkey dishwasher.
Now this is a language I understand.
Javier Ortiz, head of the Miami police union and noted piece of shit (even for a cop) has been reassigned to desk duty after a judge granted a restraining order against him from a woman he already doxxed last year.
Of course, it’s all BS, says the cop with him, because he was truly a gentleman.
But you repeat yourself.
And there’s none of the media wailing there was in, say, the Ray Rice case.
Bioware (and Mass Effect) died a long time ago, this is just some new team furiously humping its corpse.
I must admit, while I’ve still been enjoying the recent BioWare games, the teams that have made Inquisition and Andromeda are not the same teams that made KOTOR, Jade Empire, or the original Mass Effect. There’s still that BioWare touch in the games, but it’s not what it used to be.
Not like Mass Effect 1 was all that spectacular….
*Ducks Head*
The new ME was made by bioware Montreal, it’s first feature game. AFAIK
Damn, sounds kinda disappointing. Then again, I loathed Inquisition’s quest structure so that’s probably it. Will probably pick it up on sale. Some good stuff looks like it’s coming down the pike in April and May anyway. Plus Torment. Need to start that.
All the reviews I’ve read on the new Torment game have been pretty mixed. The story is pretty good but the combat system sucks balls. Not that the original Planescape : Torment had a great combat system. B
ut every other RPG developer has had 20 years of trial and error to figure out something better. But the Torment crew ignored all that.
I’m not too concerned, didn’t like Planescape’s combat all that much, played it mostly for the story/writing. It looks like here at least more of the fights can be talked through.
I’m the type of gamer that can jump from RTS to big RPGs to a COD campaign and enjoy all of them, as long as the story/setting grabs me.
I used to love me a good RPG. But I think the last one I had the patience to finish was Wasteland 2. Pillars of Eternity was great, but I never could scrape together enough time to play it. Fallout 4 was pretty disappointing and I lost interest. I keep thinking I should get Torment since I loved the original so much, but…enh.
I guess it’s not just RPGs. I picked up Atilla on sale, fought a couple battles one night, then forgot about it. I even tried to play my old standby, Crusader Kings 2, but not even some dynastic child murdering could hold my interest. I dunno. Getting old sucks.
At least this sort of stupid bullshit is still fun.
https://youtu.be/cN7sZRHYPj0
I work with a couple of guys who have that issue.
Great review! I’m still getting this game. Oh, almost forgot the shade, “this review was a bit tasteless”.
You have a problem with the flavor of alt-text and snark?