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Ultramar

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The Recent Happenings.

     Alright so I've been doing some stuff! Lets run through the---wait... wait... I think that's trademark phrase... Let me just tell you!
 

  • Mass Effect!

    
     So I've been playing abunch of Mass Effect. I just finished the third book, and I gotta say. I've never really read a book and felt excited. This book really did it for me, it's pace was quick, it was filled with numerous action situations that I felt were detailed really well. They introduce a new character to the Mass Effect universe named Kai Leng; he's a human of asian descent and has similar if not exactly the same training as Shepard and he's sided with CERBERUS. Oooh. I think he could possibly be a  antagonist for Mass Effect 3. In the previous books they seem to connect a character to the actual games it seems rather effectively and hints at a plot to the next game entry. For example, I think the first Mass Effect novel "Revelations"(I'm fairly sure that was the title) introduced Saren Arterius(sp?). The plot was loosely talked about in Mass Effect 1, it's about the situation when Anderson was going to be considered as a canidate for the Spectre and why Anderson and Saren have some kind of vendetta against each other. The second book "Ascension" introduces the Collectors although not DIRECTLY involved, they were mentioned about collecting strange transactions. Like for example I believe they wanted like 4 left handed human biotics that were a certain age. Along in second novel the "Illusive Man" was introduced and he ended up being in the second game. Keep in mind the writer for the novels is also the writer for the games(I'm 98% sure on this). In the third book "Mass Effect 'Retribution'" It brings back Anderson, Kahlee Sanders(a scientist that was introduced in the first book, that seems to be the main character of all the novels)  and Paul Grayson (a character introduced in the second book who worked for Cerberus but broke away from them). Basically the novel starts off with Grayson hiding from the Illusive Man in Omega Station working for Aria as a high level merc. What interesting is they brought Aria into the story and you learn something about Aria that I dont wanna spoil that I thought was f*ckin' crazy. Illusive Man has finally tracked Grayson down and sent his best agent to find him, Kai Leng. Kai Leng scouts him out while Grayson is out doing a job with some of Arias merc band and eventually follows him around and figures where he's staying. Also worth noting Grayson isn't using his real name with Aria for obvious reasons, thought I should put that out there. Eventually Kai Leng sets up an attack  and kidnaps Grayson starting havoc in Omega. During the chaos Grayson sends some hurtful data about Cerberus to Kahlee Sanders. Also attached is a automated message signifying if she got the message, he's probably dead. Anyhow Kai Leng captures Grayson, and Aria investigates her station and finds out somehow Cerberus was invovled. Illusive Man didn't really capture Grayson for revenge, but as a experiment. Illusive Man wanted to use Reaper technology he found in the Collector Station pass the Omega 4 Relay on Grayson to figure out how to deal with the Reaper threat. So Kahlee being the woman that she is doesn't believe that Grayson could POSSIBLY be dead, granted he's not but still! So she involves Ambassador Anderson, YES! Ambassador Anderson. Let me say that one more time: AMBASSADOR ANDERSON! I think they really took a liberty here in the book to say he's just an Ambassador, although they dont really touch on saying if he "was" on the council or not; Or if Udina was a Council member. So she passes on the information to Anderson and they find out the cerberus data implicates alot of people and facilities, so they send alot of strike forces and fuck up the Illusive Man's  experiment. Grayson busts out with Reaper technology still in him but thing is, Grayson isn't so Grayson anymore. He's being indoctrinated, he's kinda taken Saren's place as the avatar of the Reapers. I wont go too far into the plot, (most of this takes place in the first hundred or so pages) but afterwards you see Illusive Man and Aria exchange a few words with each other which I found very very interesting and I wonder if they will touch more on this in the third Mass Effect installment of the game series.  Needless to say everyone needs to chase him down, Cerberus sent Kai Leng to destroy him, Aria has been propositioned/manipulated into killing Grayson by the Illusive Man,  and Kahlee is trying to save/get/speak with Grayson. I especially loved the innner dialogue that Grayson sorta has with himself while observing what the Reapers are doing with his body and what they're thinking. The character Kai Leng also seems very interesting, although he IS lackey but he seems to be a very clever one. I'am curious to see if he develops some more in books or in Mass Effect 3.  If you're a reader, big Mass Effect buff, or just plain like Science fiction novels, I say pick this book/bookseries up, it's very good and it's one of the few books that actually put me in a giggle and made me felt shock and awe.
 
          I've also got around to playing the new add-on for Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker. Oh man, I swear that DLC was probably more exciting than the original game. You still get it through an email through Cerberus network which was kinda like a drag, I would've liked to talk to Illusive Man or someone about the information then going to Liara with the information. Anyhow, I loved how it starts off with a crime scene kinda feeling like, a detective murder mystery vibe, and the few characters it introduces such as the asari Spectre, Tela Vasir. Liara as a party member was awesome, the new biotic power you can learn is Stasis, I'd imagine it'd be useful if you're a biotic character. The set pieces were really nice and continueing your relationship with Liara was definetly satisfying. My only complaint with this DLC being an actual "bridging to ME3" DLC is that it's a tad short. I mean I was satisfied with the 2 and a half hours, but I honestly was hoping and thinking it was going to be about 5 hours.  I do believe Bioware did state that they do have another bridging DLC on the way with the surviving human. I'm definetly looking forward to that, but honestly I got some cool ideas for more side DLC. I think they should go back to Tuchanka. They should have the Urdnot clan leader send you a message, and there should be some crazy situation with the clans trying to remove the guy out of power and that specific leader should bust a Liara and join your squad and you kick some ass. Oh man ,Wrex and Garrus tearing it up again. That sounds so good! So after I did all this DLC and novel madness I made a new character on Mass Effect 1, a renegade male Shepard. I might do another paragon and make it a lady Shepard, but man... Mass Effect 1 is not as approachable as Mass Effect 2. Still a charming game, I enjoy it, but some of the sidequests, like the Geth invasion one, aren't so nice to do. So much work involved, it takes like I think two hours to do it. But the main story is still pretty good. 
 
  •  Moar Games!

 
            I've also been playing some Halo stuff, friend gave me his extra copy of Halo 3, so I officially own that. Borrowed Halo 3 ODST, and actually finished playing Halo3 and ran through ODST. Gotta say, I'm not the biggest Halo fan, but I really enjoyed ODST.  it's got a really different vibe then Halo 1-3 has. Granted those are good maybe even great single player campaigns to go through, but I find myself kinda getting lost in the whole mess of the narrative. Also the characters weren't as compelling as some of the ODST group is. I found they kinda effectively flushed that out better than Halo 1-3.  In a span of three games to make you interested in some of the characters in Halo 1-3 you dont really feel anything for half of them, Johnson and Master Chief are just badasses, not much to muster up from that, you like 'em but you cant really make them more interesting, they did make Chief a tad more interesting in the third game though. I find the Arbiter very interesting he's probably my favorite character in the main series so far, plus he's voiced by Keith David. 
 
           But yeah, played and beat ODST but I also played a mess of Halo Reach at a friends pad. Hands down, my favorite Halo game. Graphics are superb, love how the remodeled the Elites. They made Spartans more humanized in Reach. For example, during dialogues they remove their helmets, seems dumb but Master Chief doesn't remove his helmet and he's a Spartan.  I kinda like how they did that in Reach, also kinda carried the ODST approach with narrative which I appreciated, good character development, simple'ish plot, lot less convoluted than the Halo 2 and 3, very hard to keep up for me  I always kept asking my friend when we played co-op like "Hey why is this happening? Why are we here?" Loved the kind of impossible situation you're in throughout the game,  I find it kinda unique to put a main character into a losing situation, somewhat like Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, we ALL KNEW ZACK WAS GOING TO DIE! Gameplay is alittle different, like the abilities you
 One of the more intriguing characters of Halo Reach I'd say.
 One of the more intriguing characters of Halo Reach I'd say.
can equip such as sprint, armor lock up, and drop shield. Cool stuff.  I just tried alittle online stuff with it at my friends house as well, I definately like the "Invasion" mode, it's like Elites vs. Spartans. You got different objectives, so it's not just "Go kill each other". I honestly never really clicked with the online Hal o competitive play because I thought it was stale. bunch of white Master Chief's killing each other and the occasional Arbiter. So Invasion seems to start off with defend multiple points, fall back and protect something, alright this thing was opened or breached, then protect a core. You can capture this core then take it to a ship or a drop off point where the attacking team could win the round. Defintely like it, it switches things up. I definetly want to pick that game up for my 360 soon, but I gotta get my moneys together. Also like to say Kat the spartan, my favorite character in the game lol.
 
 
So yeah. Good stuff ahead, replaying some other stuff, will probably elaborate on that later, and probably talk some smack about Final Fantasy XIV beta experience and throw up some pictures. Hopefully can get some newer games as well, had a job interview at Food 4 Less, feeling some good things about it I'm hoping to hear form them, so I can talk about more relevant games and my thoughts on them. And maybe set up some games with fellow readers. 'till next time.
 
 
Edit: for some reason the image is cut halfway in the blog page but you can probably just select it and view it. Going to be like that until I find a way to fix it.
Edit#2: Fixed. But some spacing issues that I dont feel like fixing.
 

 

:OI

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