What We Write About When We Write About Our Failures

There has been so much wasted time trying to perfect the newest Shop Keeper's Unit for this intellectual property of mine. Usually, I'll spend something like 2 hours wrangling a bunch of jottings written down as I played a video game. I'll write things down on whatever is handy, be on paper, be on textedit, sometimes in the notes section of my phone. I'll get tired of that around 3 or 4 in the morning and just publish whatever I got. So what I hoped would be a think piece about the evolving nature of virtual cameras and the redefinition of cinematography through third-person shooters becomes a bad review with lots of stupid jokes in it. For a couple of weeks I remember "oh yeah I'm not the dumbest or worst writer in the world." Those feelings crater after I re-read my output. Then I panic, because something published under my own Christian name is out there for the world to see, without any copy editing. So down that thing goes, because maybe I would like to get back into a more professional capacity vis a vis this whole writing thing.

So instead of giving up, I'm going to try to show more of my work. I bet I will not succeed. Any blog-post missive that signals a new commitment to the format or a promise to redouble the output on the aforementioned blog is ultimately the sign of a dead blog. 

But oh well. Plus, I barely have I life so I've played quite a few games!

For instance, in the last twelve I have played to completion: Splinter Cell: Conviction; Mass Effect 1 and 2; Dust: An Elysian Tale; Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days; Fable II; Bayonetta; and Assassian's Creed II. I guess you can't really beat Trails Evolution, but I've certainly logged multiple hundreds of hours playing it. 

I have thoughts on these games! They aren't all timely, or coherent, but they're mine, and I think people should be free to explore my thoughts if they so chose! 

 So maybe I'll try throwing some of this stuff up more frequently, no matter how much it reads like a freshman's English free-writing exercise. 

So here's a little taste of my thoughts on Mass Effect 1 - including my thoughts re: my talent at expressing the aforementioned - which is a game that is nearly 5 years old when I type this:

There's going to be a lot of unorganized thoughts and insufficiently proofread paragraphs. There will be sections where I missed a crucial punctuation mark or even entire half sentences in my zeal to move certain paragraphs into more fitting contexts. There's going to be jokes that go nowhere. There's going to be outright falsehoods. To wit: at one point, I promised not to spend much time detailing the mechanics of the gameplay, because you could read all about that stuff in an IGN review or whatever. Then I spent something like 800 words detailing a gaggle of mechanical details. You will read jokes that go awesome places, because I'm not bereft of any talent.

I want to write about these games because I liked them. Not as much as QWOP, of course, but I did like them.

I want to write about these games because In the AAA space, the first two Mass Effects qualify as brave. Choices have consequences; those consequences can be profound and disquieting. Mass Effect do not let you critical path your way to a flawless ending. People will die, on orders given by your Shepherd, in this virtual world. Some of them will be members of Shepherd's crew, people who have volunteered to serve under your command and confided their shames and triumphs with Shepherd. Some will die at Shepherd's own hand, pleading for undeserved mercy.

I want to express my profound appreciation for Jennifer Hale's excellent performance as "FemShep," and I want to continue some of the dialogues my roommate and I have been having about this game since I picked it up on the relative merits of "BroShep."