SATURDAY POST! Fire Emblem Awakening

I know this blog might make you think I sit around and do nothing but swear play Mass Effect, but in reality, I lead a rich and fulfilling life in which I --

... okay, fuck it, I'm not summering in the Bahamas or anything, but I do play other games. I'm kind of ate up with handhelds. They're so easy to pick up and play! I love my 3DS.

I particularly love Fire Emblem Awakening. You have to understand what high praise this is: when it comes to tactics games? I am a dumbass. I usually can't get past level 2 in Final Fantasy Tactics. Really truly! I one time got lucky enough to get to the first level with black mages, and promptly got my shit ate. The other 12 Fire Emblem games would chew me up and spit me out, I'm sure, especially with their permadeath mechanics.

But I can actually play FE:A! ... probably because I can turn off permadeath. I recently beat this game, it was way too fun. Okay, so I had this one character? Her name was Sumia. She was a badass.

She spears people and rides around on a unicorn. A unicorn.

Also she is a murder machine.

Later in the game, you meet her kid, Cynthia, also known as my favorite character. I'd dress up as her for DragonCon if I thought anyone would recognize me.

Cynthia also gets a unicorn and a spear.

I thought Sumia was a murder machine, but Cynthia's straight nuts. I know all the stats are randomized and shit, but in my game, she hit for way more than Sumia.

And she was gleeful about it. It's nuts. I love Cynthia.

Cynthia was my first character to come preinstalled with this ability called Gale Force, which should have been called Fuck You, Bad Guys, because it lets a character take a second turn if they kill a guy.

Murder machine. The child is a murder machine. I think that's the most death and destruction you can employ without actually playing vanguard.

From Ashes: Everybody Wants The Blue

ALL RIGHT SPECIAL EDITION BLACK FRIDAY MSPIXEL

I said it last year, but I hate Black Friday. I refuse to buy anything today. I can't even believe we have a holiday dedicated to shooting each other over sales.

I'm going to can pickles, it's going to be great.

Garrus likes to hang out in the main battery, futzing around with the Normandy's gun.

penis joke goes here

The game gives you a choice here -- keep doing your cricket dude? Or break it off?

Each datable character has a moment where their romance 'locks in', meaning the other characters will stop coming on to you. For whatever reason, this isn't Garrus' lock in moment. It sounds like it, doesn't it?

... there's this implication over Mass Effect 2 and 3 that Shepard has a ~thing~ for scars. Yuck.

Bioware figured out how to animate a human-turian kiss! They didn't have that working in 2 if you'll recall, but they had the top Canadian computer scientists working on it to bring it to Mass Effect 3.

... all this cool stuff that they can do now just means I have to figure out how to draw it.

Garrus goes on to talk about a lot of the stuff we already heard on Menae: he's a reaper advisor now, his dad helped him out, he's a good yeller, so on.

Well?

... okay, you caught me, the original was wine. The wine's weird, they both can't drink wine! Leave me to my peanut butter.

We can go right on and go to the summit, but the game has given us the gift of several side missions. We're going to do a DLC called From Ashes first for reasons that will become apparent.

From Ashes was released right at Mass Effect 3's launch for $10, or free with the collector's edition. I'm sorry, I'm still pretty sure that From Ashes was a part of the original game and later extracted so that Bioware could charge us for it. I know they say they didn't, but the original draft of the script had -- you know what, spoiler spoiler spoiler. We'll talk later.

Anyway, From Ashes starts out when Shepard gets word of some funny Cerberus activity on Eden Prime. ... Eden Prime, doesn't that sound familiar?

The art department sent a memo to the script writers: "Fuck y'all, we spent money modeling the fuck out the inside of the new shuttle, you are now required to write all your exposition scenes inside this thing."

... which means I now have to figure out how to draw the inside of that, too.

Aww, I give them hell, I think it's pretty smart, really.

Bioware tried out a lot of new shit in ME3. Aside from kissing space crickets and shuttle guts, Shepard might occasionally say dialogue related to her background. ... very occasionally. I can only remember one other instance, but it's totally in there. I don't think she's said anything about her raisin' since ME1.

DUN DUN DUN

You can imagine, Liara? Liara has a reaction.

"Wow, I'm so glad I waited an extra two days for all of this well-drawn, intelligent analysis and commentary that MSPixel delivers on," and other things you totally said today.

So, while we're going through the colonies, we're going to have to fight through some Cerberus baddies. Cerberus has a new trick this time: meet the combat engineer!

Yeahokayso. Combat engineers set up turrets, and vanguards and turrets don't like each other. Vanguards work by getting close to enemies, but you can't get close to turrets without getting sprayed by bullets.

Put simply, you see a turret? You're about to get your lunch ate.

There's a couple of ways to deal with a turret. There's the method I usually use, which is:

I charge at them. Then I use Nova. Also, I die a lot.

The more effective idea is to find the combat engineer before he can set the turret up.

Garrus has got overload, he can overload turrets for you to make them easier to deal with.

Pfft. Men.

NEXT TIME: more asari tits, that's for sure.

Have A Link

I feel bad, I know the content for the next entry but I can't figure out how to divide it up in such a way that it's not huge.

And here's why I feel bad: I've been MSPixeling for a while now, shouldn't I be the nation's leading expert on how to divide content up and make an MSPixel entry?

So here's the deal I'm going to make with you: on Friday, you're getting a super entry, one big enough to fill all your MSPixel needs and then some.

Today, I'll give you a minigift: Check out this link to see all the stuff Bioware posted for N7 day. They posted pictures of themselves working on Mass Effect 4! You can't really tell anything about the game from the pictures.

... except that you can tell that they have nicer tablets than I do.

Oh Boy! A New Character!

I am not going to make friends today. I can feel it in my boneseses.

I think I've been on this rant: is there seriously not another person on the ship that they could send in? If Shepard dies in a fire, that's, like, a thing. Do they legit not have a security officer?

... um okay so.

Hey everyone, EDI is a big titty robot now, because this, Mass Effect 3, Bioware's magnum opus, is the horniest game the world has ever known.

And here's the thing: big titties happen in nature. I get that. I do, truly. But EDI's titties are, like, inappropriately huge. This starts to give you an idea of what I mean. There's a line, damnit. I'm not sure where it is, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say that EDI shat on that line and jet packed over it.

This is not a spoiler: there's a scene in the ending where Shepard and EDI are standing facing each other, and the camera pans out as they speak. Shepard's standing there looking like, you know, a human, while EDI looks like she's about to tip over. I wish I had a screen shot, truly I do.

I don't know, it's just a giant wad of, "Could we not?"

It's okay though, if nothing else, I bet we can trust Bioware to be respectful about having a bit titty robot in its game. Hey, EDI, why the hell do you have a big titty body now?

I wish I could tell you this is as bad as it's going to get.

(Hey, that means EDI is a squadmate now. Really truly! We can take her on missions and shit. EDI is the second squadmate that you can't ditch. I'm pretty sure that everyone else besides her and Liara can either die or be told off.)

Okay, fine, let's go see Jok --

HEY BIOWARE. COULD WE NOT?! COULD WE MAYBE NOT TAKE A HALF DECENT CHARACTER, GIVE HER HUGE TITS, AND THEN MAKE HER SPANK MATERIAL FOR ANOTHER CHARACTER? COULD WE NOT.

LIKE, SHE COULD HAVE HAD INTERESTS, OR FLAWS, OR ANYTHING OTHER THEN TITS SO HUGE THEY DEFINE HER CHARACTER AND HOW OTHERS INTERACT WITH HER.

BUT NO, KIDS, NO. CASEY HUDSON HAS HIS DICK IN HIS HAND, SO WE HAVE TO WATCH THIS BULLSHIT.

Maybe they'll cool it with --

Spoiler alert: I will be yelling for the rest of the game.

NEXT TIME: Probably, I'm still mad.