I like to duck into the local CostCo World Market on occasion, buy silly foreign candies and the like and indulge my curiosities. Not seeing anything in particular that was grabbing my attention, I began my exodus when I happened upon...This stuff.
Yes...Cucumber soda. Needless to say, I was intrigued. So I ponied up the buck something for the little bottle (my whole hand can encompass the body of the bottle), and decided to have a sit and partake outside on a bench.
Usually with World Market niche soda's I find, most of them aren't really all that good. Obscure cola's tend to have a heavy Ginger flavor, and taste nothing like what the word 'Cola' might have you expect. So, I was unsure just how much genuine Cucumber flavor I should be expecting...
...Dear lord, it tasted like a bottle of Sprite soda and a fresh Cucumber were caught in bed with each other...It was one of those moments where the taste left me blindsided.
A few days later I went back and bought a bunch of them, as they did not have them in cases. Sadly you can only get them in bulk by ordering them through sites like www.Thirstmonger.com.
This has been my unique offering for the day, until next time.
Mass Effect is one of those franchises that I'm always going to look back on in a fond manner. It was one of the few role playing games to come about that gave actual weight to your moral decisions over the course of three games, having to even weight until the third to feel the real weight of your actions.
And then, we...get to the ending.
For spoilers sake, just turn back now because there's nothing spoiler free about this post. I'm not talk to you, Joe Somebody who hasn't finished Mass Effect 3, I'm speaking to the people who made it and them people who've already completed the journey.
This is what our decisions lead up to...
Yup. All three endings, the universal reset button gets hit and we're left with a Garden of Eden ending with one teaser bi
Now watch this video.
I am apt to agree with poster TheGOODKyle. It all makes sense. And as much as I want to tell Bioware to kiss my ass over potentially having to buy the proper ending as DLC...I'm probably going to buy it purely because I've been invested in the series for three games now, I may as well see it through to the end.
A lot of us are not happy with the finale of the trilogy as it stands. I agree, it is shit. However, if I put on my clever specs, I can see just how clever it is. No doubt the Bioware forums are exploding like the Mass Relays did, and people like Casey Hudson who remains unapologetic about the ending, even going so far as to say "we see the final moments and imagery as offering victory and hope in the context of sacrifice and reflection."
So, basically they want us to look at the ending and derive our own meanings and victories from it. Yeah sure. Until the DLC comes out, the Fanfiction writers are going to get right on that. It's clever. It really is. An ending so vague and unsatisfying, we can only engage in discourse and argument to find solace and closure. A conversation device. Well played, Bioware. You've inflated your forum traffice for another year.
Are the endings thought provoking? Yes...Yes it is. Is it satisfying? No. It's really not. Especially when all the endings are exactly the same, the only difference being the color of the laser being fired, and one scene in one where a child asks his grandfather to tell him "another story about the Sheperd."
Maybe we can look at the whole third game as one giant ending, a series of conclusions before we actually reach the big finale. A 20+ hour series of doors opening and closing and goodbyes being said and loose ends getting tied down. It's not really a suggestion that gets the rather bitter taste out of the mouth, mine especially, but it's at least an approach that makes sense. As long as we're settling for the least.
Mass Effect was a wild ride, but...If it had just been a book I was reading, after finishing, I would have contemplated the ending for a few minutes, maybe even re-read the last page once or twice, before flicking it across the room, letting it's shape carry it in perfect rotations, and letting it sit where it landed for a few days before it eventually got in my way and got shoved in a book case. A reminder when my eyes wander aross it's spine and I smile at the good times, before laughing to myself and uttering "Oh, that ending was horrible..." and moving on to something else.
So, I raise my glass to hopes that maybe the Indoctrination conspiracy theory is correct, and we can look forward to an extended ending. I can only imagine what else they'll nickle and dime us with before then, if at all.
And no, if it's just stuff for the multiplayer, I won't waste my money, not if THAT's the end result.
So...I'm balls deep into Mass Effect 3, going about my business of being Commander Space Jesus, as is my want...When I stumble upon...this.
She's a staff member at IGN, I am going to assume. Her character is a sleepy looking Hooters girl with bad posture and a delivery just about as dry as Shepards romantic dialogue in the first Mass Effect.
After the above linked scene after meeting her, I had to ask myself "Cool, but...why?"
No offense to Miss Chobot but...I was more excited when I unlocked Cheapy D of Cheap Ass Gamer podcast fame as a homie in Saints Row 3. Or even Felicia Day as Veronica from Fallout: New Vegas. At least they as characters contributed something to the overall game other than being a percentage unlike Miss Chobots performance.
If she had been a Squad Member, I think I'd have been more accepting. But not in that tank top. That is not battle appropriate.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
You know how most times, you forget what you dream about as soon as you wake up? How you'll have some seriously epic dreams, and as soon as you come out of it, everything just turns to haze? Happens to me all the time. I KNOW I have dreams. I can recall flitting instances. But then it's all gone. Just because my first thought when I woke up was "I have to take a leak."
Well, not long ago, maybe two days ago, they all came rushing back to me. All the dream sequences I ever woke up with any clear remembrance of came back to me as though somewhere in my psyche where they keep this stuff stowed away, the dam burst and it all came flooding back to me. It was almost too much for me too handle. Had to sit down. I recalled the rolling and spiraling green and foggy mountains of the bizarre mountainside resorts. I remembered the strange geometric shapes of the office building that was slowly fill with water. I replayed the legendary "Walrus Nubs" Dream. I even got a few scenes of the "Saving the tiny Victorians from Evil Doc Brown from the house of David Bowie" dream, just to name a few.
If I took all of the dreams that I could remember, and compiled them into a sort of story, it would make Doctor Seuss look like Doctor Zhivago. A strange series of locations morphing into and out of each other, like when Tokyo, Japan morphed into an Art Deco version of my native Coolidge, Arizona, or when London slipped into a dusty part of Mexico. With stories that make no sense but seemed drastically important at the time, like racing the streets of the aforementioned London-turned-Mexico, trying to find a place to take a leak, but everywhere I turned, there was someone watching me.
All this and it would STILL be a better love story than Twilight.
Actually I take that back. I have nothing against alarm clocks. They serve their function faithfully, and without questions, that purpose being to emit a loud noise at a precise moment in time.
What I hate, is my bodies unnatural ability to wait up five minutes before the alarm is set to go off. And it happens a lot.
If you wake up in the middle of the night of your own volition, like say two hours before you need to be awake, you can say "cool, I can sleep a bit longer". But when your bastard brain wakes you up just minutes before the party is set to start, what's the point of laying your head back down? May as well get up five minutes early. Doesn't stop me from stealing a few minutes of snuggle time with my quilt and pillow, but it's the principal of the matter.
What the hell?
So I looked it up.
From: http://www.biotele.com/facts.html
- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.
Well, son of a bitch, I figured I was the type to overstress.
