It’s time for another dive into that Gameological WAYPTW mainstay Mass Effect 2. I’m playing Shepard as friendly, helpful, and stupid, so I’ll let you know what that means for my romantic prospects and the suicide mission.

If the industry learns nothing else from Mass Effect: Andromeda, it should appreciate that all it takes is one sub-par game to kill an entire franchise.

And are there drunken, semi-improvisational voice-overs by a comedian doing a Paul Lynde impression?

I was just listening to the Editors’ third album today; I think it sounds better now than it did at the time. I wrote the band off in 2009; maybe I should have a look at what they’ve been up to.

That makes a lot of sense. Bush was always held up as a “centrist” conservative (regardless of any fact of the matter) who the far-right/neo-nazi people saw as a weak-willed goof. [Boy, do I ever miss the days when the nuttiest of far-right nutbars threw their votes away on third-party candidates instead of voting…

The Secret of Mana remake has its flaws (the 3D graphics are less charming, the menus are less elegant, and it crashes every few hours) and some questionable decisions (the 360 degree targeting takes some getting used to, the inn conversations are mostly tedious) but it has some clear improvements as well: your party…

Three weeks left to add Wii points!

Most people love Chrono Trigger because it’s charming and straightforward. Aside from a few plot twists and turns, the story is a pretty lightweight adventure. Its time-travel mechanic is used sparingly, so as not to make the story grow convoluted. The battle system offers some level of customization with its…

“Surely I can get enough cat food so that my cat(s) won’t run away during the ending!”

The retail purge of Dreamcast games happened to fast that there was barely time to snap up any deals. I hate when that happens. It’s like when “Sam the Record Man” went into bankruptcy protection and decided to close 90% of their stores: instead of liquidating stock with clearance sales, the closing stores shipped all…

Yeah. If you’re going to look at Audience as a morality play, then the reason that Aoyama is spared is that he’s redeemed by the fact that he’s a loving father.

I watched it for the first time last night. (I knew in advance that it was a horror movie.)

The Super Famicom original is just as buggy as the SNES version.

It seems to coincide a lot with the “poptimism” movement, i.e. that we shouldn’t scold people who like trashy corporate product. And a lot of the so-called “ethical alternative” chain restaurants have turned out to be bad like McDonald’s, just on a smaller scale. Even smaller, independently-owned restaurants often…

Yeah. Nintendo isn’t doing much to challenge the notion that Kirby is a B-level series. (It’s the same with Yoshi.) Considering none of Nintendo’s traditionally A-level series are scheduled for a game release in 2018, you’d think Nintendo would be doing more to promote Kirby.

The previews make it sound as though the settlement-building aspect is almost as important as the dungeon-crawling and monster-wrangling. That takes me right back to Level-5's glory days.  

The monster collection mechanic has been replaced in the sequel, so that should be good news for you.

I’m lukewarm on e-sports, but I do love to watch speedruns (assuming they’ve got good commentary.)

It’s a shame that Corgan’s star has fallen so low that he can’t sell out 20,000-seat arenas (at least, not at the price he’s asking for.)

Gameological shall exist as long as those who carry its spirit still write and talk about games.