During these uncertain times, one of the best things we can do to protect ourselves and others is to wear a mask. There’s no shortage of evidence out there that show how effective they are. I’ve been wearing a mask for months now and I agree with my government’s laws around masks in public spaces.
But don’t just follow my lead. You can be just like these star video game characters who also wear masks!
When it comes to playing video games, the majority of gamers don’t just play whatever is new and hot. Most of us will play some new releases, but we’ll also go back to older games we may have missed for whatever reason. In hindsight, most of the games I played this year were were not originally released in 2010. If I were to make some sort of defining list of the best games of 2010, it would fall well short of representing the year’s best, as I spent much of the year playing older stuff.
Instead, I present to you this list of awesome, older games that I only got to this year. You may have already played this stuff, but if you haven’t, they’re all worth a look.
Having just finished playing through Mass Effect, I think this is one of the greatest video games I’ve ever played. When I played through that game, it is startling how big this game is, yet how awesome the experience is. When it comes to storytelling, scale, characterization and role-playing, I don’t think I’ve played anything better than Mass Effect.
I don’t play too many games that are squad-based. Off the top of my head, the only two I can think of are the Gears of War series and the Fire Emblem series. While both of these games are great for their own reasons, the stake you as a player emotionally have for your teammates is negligible. In Gears of War, they’re essentially there to make you not feel alone, even though they won’t die and they don’t really help you, either. The back-story of your squad is practically non-existent, with only Dom having one major plot point to his name, and the others are there to shout expletive-filled one-liners. In Fire Emblem, that series does try to make you care through some back-story, endings for each character and the permanence of death, though ultimately each person feels more like a piece in your intricate game of chess more than anything.
Mass Effect has made me feel really weird about my squad in a way that other games haven’t for me. The game has so much story and so many moments where you can interact with them that you can’t help but build a weirdly fascinating connection to them.
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What I wanted to focus on first is the scope of Mass Effect. Without question, this is the biggest game I’ve ever played. In a number of ways, the Mass Effect experience is absolutely colossal to the point that it’s intimidating the heck out of me.
Up until the release of Mass Effect 2, the original Mass Effect was a game I thought I would never touch with a 10-foot pole. The premise of the game did not appeal to me at all. I was well aware of the pedigree that BioWare has in the role-playing game space, but I hate RPGs. The last real role-playing game I ever got into was Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo. It featured third-person shooting combat, which I like. But I also don’t like managing an AI squad and I also don’t like the idea that all of the combat is dictated by dice rolls rather than shooting ability. Ultimately, I passed on this game because it didn’t sound like it was something I would like.
