The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

How about that Mass Effect 3, eh? That’s a relevant topic, right? Mass Effect 3? Right?

Yeah, spoilers or whatever, so keep that in mind.

Mass Effect 3 was okay. I was Commander Shepard, and I shot a lot of dudes and then there was an ending.

First off, let me just say that I really enjoy the combat. For some reason people keep being all down on the combat, calling it “not great.” I have never experienced this. Maybe this is because I’ve always played Engineer, a hands-off spellcasting class, but I love the combat in this game. I was happy to jump into the multiplayer and play more of it, and I was happy to shoot a bunch of dudes throughout the campaign. I personally think the encumbrance thing is a brilliant addition and really helps you play your way, even though my way involved NO GUNS AT ALL. Or, uh, bare minimum of guns, and only the shitty ones. It was heaven: a heaven of casting Incinerate over and over and over again.
Sure, the last encounter of the game was frustrating as hell, and I died like constantly, but for the most part? A joy to set dudes on fire. No complaints at all.

Storywise, the game was… weak? You do a lot of super-cool universe-changing things, like curing the genophage, but in general the whole story just seems… dumb. They want you to feel like you’re on this pressing mission to save Earth, but Earth is apparently okay enough for Anderson to be able to call you every two minutes and go “Man, it’s going bad down here.” You’re doing the most bullshitty fetch quests like… all the damn time for people. At least in Mass Effect 2, you’d be on a mission and just stumble onto something and go give it to someone. In ME3, you’re actively searching for stupid knick-knacks that people say they want. I just never felt like I was doing anything super-important in the grand scheme of things, like I did in ME2. I always felt like there was some stupid angle on whatever I might be doing that made no real sense.

Still, when you get out of that macro level, there were plenty of great little character moments in this game, and that’s what I was there for. I made a “funny joke” in the title, but I did think the Garrus Romance Payoff was kind of nice for not being more fucking. I mean, you get to do that later, too, but it’s nice to pretend they have a normal relationship thing going on. Hearing Garrus comment on everything that was going on was really entertaining, too. He acted like the one guy who had always been in my active party always, like he was. I doubt that was something that was modified just for my game and the choices I made? But it felt like it. It felt like he was talking more because I had way more history with him than any other character.
Similarly, I really rather enjoyed James. He seemed like a dude that would, say, actually be involved in shit like this, unlike some of the characters you usually get, who just don’t really seem that much like someone who shoots dudes for a living. He was a career soldier. He was also flirty, funny, and awesome. I really enjoyed his characterization. That’s why I brought him everywhere as well.
I was really sad that they got rid of Kelly at first, but Traynor was pretty cute and awesome as well. The way she tries to get you to fuck her is… pretty fantastic! I approved, and almost did it, but, you know. Grasshopper Man. Also, you know, I watched the scene and man, this game is pretty silly sometimes! Let’s wear a bra in the shower, but no panties! This is how an actual person showers! Clearly!

Anyway, I guess I better mention the ending before I finish this. I understand why people were upset about the ending. It’s just as lame as, say, the ending of Deus Ex: Hero Reconciliation, with how you just kind of pick based on nothing you’ve done earlier, really. It’s pretty dumb in that regard. That said, people who went all apeshit ridiculous stupid over it are just as insane as I figured. It is pretty clearly a sub-par to bad ending. But it doesn’t ruin the game or the games before it at all, really. It’s ridiculous to get all worked up about it. I mean, clearly, all the stuff with the little kid was fucking STUPID. Clearly. Let’s just move on with our lives.

I will say, though, that the one thing I enjoyed about the ending was the moment where the lady calls you and is like “Commander Shepard!” and Shepard is all like dying but struggling to her feet and going “What, what do I need to do…” That’s the exact right reaction for a lady who has done literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE GALAXY’S ERRANDS at one point or another. I liked that.

Anyway, Mass Effect 3. That sure was a thing. Glad I played it. It didn’t rock my world, but it was fun. It’s a fun thing to play.

Cards Against Humanity is the best game.

Okay, let me back up here.

Apples to Apples is a card game many people like for these reasons: 1) It’s really simple to learn. 2) It feels creative, even though, most of the time there is no creativity involved. (There can be if you play the game the right way, which is to argue for your card with fucked-up logic, but many players do not do this.) 3) It’s competitive, but not directly competitive. In other words, you aren’t actively working to make another player lose, but you still get the satisfaction of winning if you win.

1 and 3 are valid reasons for liking the game. (And Cards Against Humanity has both of them.) However, once you really dig into playing Apples to Apples, 2 just kind of falls apart very quickly. The “funny” cards aren’t really that funny. Matching them with adjectives does not set up situations for laughter, really. Usually something is just wrong, flat out, or right. There are times where you can push the boundaries of what a word means, and it is those times when Apples to Apples is actually fun, but they are honestly few and far between. There is a guise of humor, but in the end, after a game or two, no humor really exists in the game. It’s kind of a soulless endeavor.

Cards Against Humanity, on the other hand, while playing basically the same as Apples to Apples, has a soul, and that soul is as crude as it is hilarious. The questions and memes the black cards put forth are, in many ways, entertaining in their own right. They’re often absurd on their face, and even when they are more standard, they’re designed to be pretty funny, no matter what card you play with them. Similarly, the white cards are written for comedic effect. There are “straight man” cards that are funny in certain situations, but also help to highlight how insane the more insane cards are. Little touches, like having the card say “Bees?” instead of “Bees” just show that this is a game made by people who get it. It’s a game where drawing random cards off the deck creates, most of the time, a logical and hilarious response. You will laugh while playing this game, unless you’re easily offended. It’s fantastic.

We played multiple rounds, and they were such a blast. We played using a suggested house rule, where there was a pretend extra player named “Rando Cardissian” who would just draw random cards off the top of the deck and play them. It was pretty amazing that, a lot of the time, it was hard to guess which card belonged to Rando! Similarly, it was great to really be able to play to the strategy of playing the cards that you think the current Card Czar would vote for. That’s sort of a thing in Apples to Apples, but there’s just not enough variety to do so. In Cards Against Humanity, it was pretty easy to pick “Harry Potter Erotica” for what kept Shauna up at night, or “Tasteful sideboob” for anything Spaeth was reading, and be rewarded for it. We laughed so damn hard, and I can’t wait to play it again. Sure, the game probably has a shelf life. Eventually you will have seen all the cards one too many times. But until then, fuck, this is an amazing party game.

It’s sold out right now, but BUY IT WHEN IT COMES BACK. Seriously. Do it. You will not regret it.

I’m playing this game of Arkham Horror over a forum, and it’s a lot of fun. But recently it’s just kind of occurring to me how messed up the gameplay of this game is as compared to the flavor.

My character in this game is Minh Thi Phan. She’s a secretary who stumbles across a copy of The King in Yellow, according to her bio. She’s also a spell-slinging, monster-murdering badass warrior lady. Well, so far. Maybe she’ll be organizing some files later on in the game. I dunno. But the point is, who she is on the card is nothing like her in-game stats and gear. I’ve armed her for war, and I’ve gone out and done war with her. Kamikaze attacks. Murderous rampages. That sort of thing.

Arkham Horror is based on these stories of people fighting against insane odds and taking on the unknown while probably losing. The little story snippets on the investigators and things like that really highlight that sort of thing: these are supposed to be, with a few exceptions, normal people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. That’s certainly, say, the theme of Call of Cthulhu, if you do it right. You’re fucked, but you’re struggling: you don’t fight head-on unless you’re in a really shitty, desperate situation. Sure, you can take it in a more pulpy way. In some ways, the cover of Arkham Horror does this. But all the flavor suggests the sort of desperation of normal people against the supernatural.

Basically, Arkham Horror is a game that doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be, flavor-wise. Even with the “weak” characters, if you make it a priority to be a murder machine, you can make that happen, usually. The “unknown” is pretty known, most of the time. Enemies appear and you steamroll them or dodge them with ease. Really, you’re more in danger of forgetting to play exterminator, which will you over because of the Terror Track, than dying from enemies the majority of the time. All that’s fine, mechanically, but when you’re also supposed to be roleplaying a, say, lounge singer that wants to find out what killed her boyfriend or something, it kind of strikes a weird tone when she’s going around slaying demons with a broadsword.

I’m probably thinking too much about it. But that’s sort of the problem with all these games, conceptually. I have such a great time, say, roleplaying Trail of Cthulhu games where everyone is actually as weak and in as much danger as the situation suggests. That’s really satisfying. But the mechanics of Arkham Horror, with the mass slaughter of enemies and collecting of their heads for fabulous prizes… well, that’s nice too. Still, it seems like there would have to be a way to flavor the game to make those mechanics make more sense. I dunno.

No spoilers.

Despite issues involving random card packs of upgrades, I have been really enjoying the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3. I like shooting dudes and casting spells and so on and so forth. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s exciting fun. Plus, you’re earning this Readiness rating, which could potentially be a nice bonus for the single player.

So I played a bunch, and then I dug into the single player. Then Aesa showed up and I kind of took a break.

Then I came back, and my Readiness had fallen about 8 percent.

Why the fuck does it fall so fast? I’m okay with the idea of playing multiplayer to up that rating, but why does it fall at all? Mass Effect 3 is a game people are going to replay. To ask them to put like 4 hours into the multiplayer every time they want to play through the game again to get that rating is FUCKING INSANE. What’s more, it doesn’t decrease if you don’t connect to the online server: Chris at work maxed it out, and then disconnected because he doesn’t have internet at his house, and he’s still at 100%. As long as he doesn’t play ME3 online, he’ll always be at 100% readiness. The game is encouraging him not to play the multiplayer or use any online feature of the game, basically, so he can do his multiple playthroughs, which seems like a bad move on EA’s part, and that means it’s impossible for him to waste money on their stupid microtransactions. What the fuck.

Anyway, I decided this is a thing that I have to deal with either way, so I get this ME3 Datapad app to play this minigame as an alternate route to upping that number. I try to log into what is apparently now my Origin account in order to hook the minigame up to my main game. I have no idea what the password is, though: EA always just logs me in to that stuff automatically. So I try to do a simple password reset.
It keeps throwing “server errors” at me, and telling me to try again later.
After about 15 minutes of this and being frustrated, I decided to try typing in a different password.
It changed.
My password wasn’t meeting their password requirements. But it was never going to tell me that.

Fuck EA and Fuck Origin, is basically what I am saying here.

What is there to say about Earthbound? Earthbound is a basically perfect creation. When I was younger, I might have disagreed. I’d have thought Earthbound was way, way too hard. That’s because as a young person, I was an idiot and never actually used spells and items. The game is pretty damn balanced, a lot of fun, and super creative.

The setting itself is just unique. So few jRPGs would even pretend to set themselves in modern day. While the world of Earthbound clearly isn’t modern day as we know it, being really quite crazy in a lot of respects, it’s this weird idealized modern day through the lens of like the 50s that just works perfectly. It’s a world that seems perfectly normal, yet it also seems perfectly normal for kids to be fighting sentient taxi cabs with psychic powers and frying pans. It’s pretty wonderful that it can pull off that odd sort of tone in setting. The wackiness is just how the world is. Nobody takes it as anything but normal. If anything, the general “innocent seriousness” of all the main characters just kind of supports that. It’s awesome.

The writing, too, is just… so rarely do you have a game with such creative and solid writing. You can tell that someone who actually knows how to write a thing was involved in the creation of this game. It’s hilarious in a very subtle and surreal way most of the time, and even the littlest things, like using a Protractor in combat, have funny messages for no reason other than to be funny. Being able to subtly capture strong scenes, like the first time Jeff meets Dr. Adonuts, which are funny, but also kind of have actual emotion involved is just… yeah. Great. Part of that has to be credit given to the translation team, who clearly put a lot of love into the game to make sure the jokes and style made it across to the English version, but it’s just top notch all around.

Even the combat system’s subtle changes on the Dragon Quest formula really make it interesting to play. Little things, like the fact that one of your characters probably has the Franklin Badge and is immune to lightning, but which one should it be, and bringing Teddy Bears along to distract the enemy really add depth that isn’t immediately apparent. The breaking of standard genre conventions in the game is weird. Paula has no defensive spells, and Jeff, the character without spells, is only stronger in physical attack power than Paula, and really relies on what are basically spells in the form of gadgets to be effective in combat. (Slime Generator always and forever!) The rolling HP meter adds so much drama to the game, it’s not even funny. Killing easy enemies without actually going into combat is something so wonderful, you wonder why games today don’t do it. Even the condiment system, which honestly is not something you should really deal with in a playthrough, is creative and fresh, at the very least.

It’s just fantastic. Just fantastic. I will offer the general advice that if you want to roll through the game with little to no combat issues, it is a good idea to grind up to level 10 before facing Frank at the beginning of the game. Someone taught me this trick, and in my replays (yes, a game I have actually replayed! That’s how you know it’s good) this, and actually making use of Jeff’s gadgets and spells, makes the game way, way easier than I remember it being in my youth. But seriously, I would not touch anything about this game. There are little flaws, sure, as the aforementioned condiment system that is too cumbersome to actually use. But all the flaws add character to the game, and don’t detract, at least in my opinion. Earthbound is a game I would ask anyone serious about video games to play, if I had to force one really long gaming experience on them. It’s great. Great. Great.

You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing! Playing Mass Effect 3! Well, not a lot of it yet, but, you know. I’m working on it. In any case, I just felt like making a little list of what I am liking and what I am not liking and such right now. I will try to be spoiler-free, but, you know. Maybe something super small in there will bother you? And let’s make this clear: I’m enjoying the game, and think it is worth my time. I just, you know, have complaints. Who wouldn’t?

What I Like About Mass Effect 3 Thus Far

The Multiplayer: I really think the multiplayer is a lot of fun! It’s not the sort of thing that is going to keep people coming back for like, a year, to be sure, but it’s a really solid horde mode, and I can’t wait for this proposed LAN with people from work to really blow this shit out and play it.
There are problems of course. The microtransaction bullshit is pretty bullshit! I normally like cards, but I don’t like card packs, and that just seems like a really terrible way of putting this multiplayer together. I may never get the better pistols while I play this thing. That’s sad to me.

The Weight System: When I heard about this, I’m like “Eh, pistols for lyfe.” But now that I’m playing, I really appreciate it. I love that my secondary weapon can be the lightest assault rifle (burst fire one, no less!) instead of the stupid SMGs. I love that when I really want to incinerate people constantly, just carrying the pistol gives me like 200% increased cooldown speed, and I can just spam the motherfucker. The weight system really lets you play the way you want to play. It’s neat.

Vega: I guess people were worried about him, in the same way they were worried about Jack last game? I think he’s pretty cool, at least so far. He’s very likable.

That This One Male Crew Member Mentioned His Husband: It’s done pretty matter-of-fact and throwaway, as opposed to THIS IS A BIG DEAL. You don’t even have to hear about it if you don’t question every member of your crew. It’s nice.

What I Don’t Like About Mass Effect 3 Thus Far

Shepard Is Earth-Centric: In previous games, Renegade Shepard only really cared about humanity, and Paragon Shepard looked at the big picture. Now my paragon Shepard is whining about Earth and talking to aliens like Earth is the most important thing ever constantly, and it really frustrates me. Where did my other Shepard go?

Shepard Is No Longer A Battle-Hardened Badass: Seriously? The tutorial events traumatize you? Give me a fucking break: Shepard has seen crew members liquified before her fucking eyes. I can’t believe she’d be so shaken as to affect her and her mission. They always did a great job before of making her a person while also making her a soldier first and foremost, and I rather liked that. Now that feels thrown down the drain.

Mood Lighting On The Normandy: Can’t the Alliance Military afford to actually light their goddamn ship? This “everything is dark and soft-glow like a romantic restaurant” look is obscenely stupid.

Security Station To Hide A Load On The Way To The Galaxy Map/Elevator On The Second Floor: Why the hell is Shepard getting scanned for weapons every time she goes to talk to Joker on her own fucking ship? Is this really where we need a security station? Seriously? And not, like, I dunno, near life support, or something where a saboteur could do a lot more damage? Or in, say, the docking bay, where people are boarding the ship? It’s clearly hiding loading, and I get that, but gods, it’s just dumb being there. There wasn’t a stupid security point there in 2.

Calibrations Joke: Yeah, I get it, Bioware, you read fan comics about ME2 as well. But by recognizing it, you’re kind of ruining it.

Anyway, I’ll get back to playing more tonight. It’s fun! But yeah, could be better, thus far.

Remember how this is a thing I’m doing? I think this is a thing I’m doing here.

Tetris Attack is basically a perfect game.

There have been a million versions of what they now call Puzzle League, and they are for the most part fine. I loved Pokemon Puzzle League, for example, and the 3D mode was interesting, if not really very long-term engaging. The DS version of Puzzle League was fine, though the stylus controls really kind of changed the game a bit and made it a lot easier. I’m pretty sure there were some versions of this game in Japan before Nintendo brought it out here all Yoshi’s Island’d up. I’m sure those are also fine. But Tetris Attack is the one that I feel is perfect.

Do I even need to talk about how fucking amazing Tetris Attack’s gameplay is? Because it is goddamn amazing. It is, hands down, the best puzzle game, save maybe Tetris. Bust-A-Move, Puyo-Puyo, Puzzle Fighter, they can all get the fuck out of the way. Tetris Attack is where it is at. The way you can only flip tiles to the side is, honestly, genius. It makes the game work with basically one button, and it makes it so that if you make a mistake, you’re pretty stuck with it. The methods to set up combos become pretty easy to see pretty quickly, and you have a huge amount of control over making them happen: rarely does it feel like a random element was involved. The game is also just as fast-paced as you want it. You can fly around that board setting things up, like I do when I’m in practice, or you can take it slower and have a good time anyway.

But you get that in any version of Tetris Attack, and indeed, those are fun. What really sets this one apart is the style. The Yoshi’s Island backgrounds and stuff look great, sure! But goddamn, that music. Let’s listen to some. Here’s the classic Raphael theme. I could listen to that all day, seriously. Some of the best the SNES has to offer in terms of music. And it’s not just that stage. There is so much more.

Tetris Attack: A life-changing game for me. Granted, I mostly played it on the Game Boy, where it was also fantastic. But the SNES version is just where it is at. It’s such a damn good game, and I would not change a damn thing about it. There is a reason why it is a euphemism for sexual intercourse on Talking Time. Heh.

I played a game by the name of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Boy, was that a video game.

Reckoning had so much potential. Dialog Trees! Combat that seemed potentially fun! Um… Dialog Trees! It was trying so hard to be Dragon Age, only better. Surely it wouldn’t be terrible? Certainly some of that would rub off and it would be fun!

Not really!

I mean, alright, it was fine, you know? It was fine. There were plenty of quests? Lots of talking. You had plenty of character customization and could choose what you wanted to do in combat. I went pure mage, and it was really pretty fun! You eventually get this skill where your dodge instead leaves a deadly ice cloud behind, so you can kind of zip through enemies and slow them down while you’re running away. That’s neat. I threw millions of ice shards at enemies until they died. That’s pretty neat!

That’s about it.

I think now I’m just going to make a list of everything that disappointed me in no particular order.

I had a persuasion skill that was maxed, and I failed the last persuasion check in the game. REALLY? REALLY, GAME? Plus, persuasion, and conversation in general, never did anything besides get me gear that wasn’t as good as what I had on. Persuasion was “give me a free thing.” That’s really unsatisfying.

I played on Casual, but at the end, the game got really hard. On Casual. Granted, I might have been underleveled because I only did two side missions because they were all insanely boring. But that fact just kind of strikes me as really weird. I mean, I was playing on Casual.

All the characters in this game are super boring stereotypes. “Hello, I am a warrior who used to be great but now I drink a lot ha ha!” “I am mysterious lady from your past you can’t remember who isn’t telling you anything and has large breasts!” On top of that, none of them have anything vaguely interesting to say. At least, say, Oghren from Dragon Age, while being a stereotype and being voiced by Steven Blum, was pretty interesting once you actually talked to him. These characters are not anything other than your first impression of them, and they can talk and talk at you and not say a goddamn thing. All the dialog in this game is skippable, and in an RPG, that’s insane.

There are at least two mainline “run around in this area and get into a lot of stupid random encounters just to walk to a place and press a button before walking to another place” quests. I get it, there’s an open world for some reason. Can we please move on? Why not make some more interesting quests instead of filling your game with padding?

I enjoyed Amalur well enough, I guess, but only because I basically just charged through the main storyline without stopping, and even then, I was kind of nearly sick of it by the time I was running towards final boss land. It is just devoid of creativity or anything interesting, which just seems crazy to me, as they kept talking up what an interesting world they had. But a bunch of lore doesn’t mean shit without characters, and this game has none. Sure, it has some decent combat, but that’s really it. Rent it if you want, it’s an okay time if you just want to smash your way through like I did. But goodness, just wait for Mass Effect in a week or so, and play a good dialog-full game with fun combat.

Let’s see, what do I still need to write about…
Oh, right. Dead Island.

I did not like Dead Island.

I picked the gun lady because I’m like “how could this possibly work without making you get a lot of guns early on?” And basically, it doesn’t. As the gun lady, you don’t really have any gun skills until like half the way down your skill tree. You’re doing the same melee and throwing shit as the other characters, only you’re probably a bit worse at it. You walk around and zombies run up and you smack them with objects until they break, and then you pick up new objects. You can hold a lot of weapons, but only equip two at a time, so at least in the early game, you have to go into the menu to equip something new constantly. This is genius. (Not really.) I’d be okay with the equipment limit in a game where two weapons would be things you’d use for more than 3 enemies and you’re just having less options, and I guess eventually the game gets to that point? But certainly not at the beginning. It’s frustrating and stupid.

But yeah, the zombies run up at you, and you attack them all the same way, and then your weapon breaks and you grab another weapon and then a zombie runs up and you do it again. This is boring, and really frustrating when you get to a zombie who is “special,” because you’d think “Oh, I need to use different tactics!” but you can’t, really. That’s your options. If you want to do significant damage, you need to run up at him and hit him, but now you’re being punished for it. Genius. I turned on the “analog” combat, since I heard that was more fun, but that doesn’t really help much. It feels different, sure, but I, in a lot of ways, felt like I had LESS control over what I was doing. It felt like I was doing what I’d actually do if I tried to fight someone with an oar or pipe: flail wildly. I’m supposed to be some badass security guard, according to my little bio, but I’m flailing about and screaming while I fight people. I don’t feel badass at all. That seems, in a lot of ways, like a problem in a supposedly loot-driven game like this. I dunno. Certainly not what I expect in a game where you’re supposed to run around with 3 other people.

The missions were fetch quests, and I tired quickly of the combat, and then I realized that people say this first part of the game is the best part! And I am hating it! So I sent it back to Gamefly. Good try, Dead Island! But yeah, I just wasn’t feeling it. At all.

I played the first episode of CSI: Deadly Intent.

I’m still not 100% sure why I did? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a single episode of CSI, no matter what the variation, and really nothing about the game made it seem like it was even vaguely going to be good. Sure, Telltale made it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has appeal outside of those who like the show. But I have Gamefly, so sometimes I put stupid things on my Gamefly list, and then they show up when I’ve forgotten about them, and I go “Oh.”

Let me just say that even as a fan of adventure games, this game is not very good. The controls on the 360 version, especially, are just completely fucking awful. Your left thumbstick is just emulating a mouse. For some things, you can choose options with the d-pad, making it less of a pain, but not everything. It is un-good. Maybe it’s slightly better on PC because you can actually control it.
Second, let me just say that I don’t know how much a CSI fan is going to get out of this game. I mean, maybe I’m wrong about what a CSI fan likes, but I’d think a lot of why you’d like the show is an attachment to the characters, right? All the characters are there, but you interact with them very, very little. They don’t really have any sort of dialog or banter between them that you would assume would be a major portion of the show. They just pop in, or serve as menu options for different things. For example, some guy named Captain Brass is your menu for getting warrants, basically. Again, I haven’t seen CSI. Maybe I’m wrong, and the whole show is all business all the time and everyone works in silence. But I really doubt it, and that would suck for fans of the show, wouldn’t it? Also, the few times the characters do talk, they often crack kind of weak jokes. There was a “ha ha, look, that stripper fingerprint belongs to a transsexual” stupid joke for example. I dunno.

The story of the episode and the mystery seemed fine, however. You had multiple dudes who all could have been the murderer, and you kept finding evidence that would point more to one, then the other, and so on. That seems like what a crime show would do, and that’s kind of neat. Not, you know, hard to do, but not bad.

The actual finding evidence, though, is kind of annoying. Most of it involves playing silly minigames on computers at the lab, which is fine, but also not necessarily entertaining, especially when the game won’t let you complete the minigame yet due to the story, when you know that’s the ultimate solution. For example, the murder weapon in this episode had been broken into many pieces, and you were collecting them over the episode and putting them back together. One fragment had half of a fingerprint on it, so the idea is that you’re going to get the whole fingerprint eventually. But here’s the thing: you match partial fingerprints like 5 times during the course of the investigation. Why the hell wouldn’t you take a partial fingerprint and see if that was enough, at least for now? You’ve got this magic crime computer: use it! I got so frustrated at being unable to match that partial fingerprint, but of course if I could have done that, it would have ruined the suspense on who was the actual killer, so oh no, can’t do that. They even could have explained it better, “That looks like a fingerprint, but it’s too smudged on this piece to get a good match… maybe the rest of the print on another piece will be clearer,” or some shit like that, and I would have been happy. But they didn’t. It’s a shame.

Anyway, I beat Episode 1, and got like a million achievement points, and I could have gotten a lot more if I kept playing, but I don’t care about achievements that much? In any case, I can’t say this game is any good. I guess I hoped that Telltale’s “sellout get that cash money” game would not be quite this slap-dash, but eh, that was probably too much to ask for.