My name is Brandon McLeish aka The Random Gamer and I want to welcome you to my blog, aptly named, The World Needs a Reset Button. This is where I give you a look at life through the eyes of a man who has had a controller in his hands for twenty-seven of thirty years on the planet. You name it, I've played it and that's not a boast. I've played everything for the Matel Intellivision to the Atari Jaguar. I play Dungeons & Dragons, Mass Effect, Marvel vs. Capcom, Call of Duty, and Need For Speed. I've played Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Bleach and Vampire: The Masquerade. Get the point yet? I'm not lying when I make these statements. I've played it all.
With that said, Let's get to today's tale.
The third and possibly final installment in the Mass Effect series will be released on March sixth of this year. Mass Effect takes place in the VERY distant future. You play as Commander Shepard. An Alliance Soldier who becomes the first human SPECTRE. An elite unit that serves as the right hand of the galactic council. Think of it like the Jedi from Star Wars. Except the Spectres don't really have the burden of morality.
While playing through the first in the series as a way to gear myself up, I came to a realization, Games are better at invoking emotions than movies and books........ What? Admit it. You think I'm biased. Let me explain.
Video games are the most interactive form of entertainment out there now. We can become engrossed in the story for hours on end. Most games average around eight to ten straight hours of single player campaign. While some, can top one hundred plus. That is not including the online aspect. The hours one can spend playing with friends or total strangers around the world is infinite.
And the stories themselves are what keep us play. A prime example of this is Epic Game's Gears of War. The last human resistance facing certain extinction from the Locust horde. You follow the tale of Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. Soldiers desperately fighting to save their planet. The second and third games are the focus of my argument. Dominic spent the first game trying in vain to his wife Maria while Marcus is having to deal with the cost of abandoning his post to rescue his father who supposedly dies before the start of the first game. In the sequel, Marcus and Dominic are tasked with discovering new ways to fight the Locust. They have to go in to the very heart of Locust territory. Dominic finds that his wife is being held captive inside the city. Once you find her, You realize too late that she is a mere shell of her former self. She is now a brainless zombie. Dominic has no choice but to spare his long lost soulmate any further pain. He ends her life. If that is not bad enough. In the third and, yes it was comfirmed, final Gears., Dominic, in order to save his friend and the rest of their squad, drives a tanker truck into a gas station, sacrificing himself.
It's these movie quality stories that enthrall us and keep us wanting more. Hollywood hasn't come up with anything this good in the past ten years. And stop. Don't any of start screaming Lord of the Rings or Avatar. I never saw Avatar. Let me repeat that. I NEVER SAW AVATAR. But you say: Dude, Avatar is the most awesome movie ever. It got nominated for best picture. James Cameron was nominated for best director. It doesn't matter. All Avatar was was a CG jerk fest and another reason to push 3D. I hate that. I hate movies that are made just for the sake of it being in 3D. Top ones that come to mind. Immortals, that last Resident Evil movie, Underworld: Awakening and Drive Angry. Seriously, None of those movies should have been made. I either didn't or won't see any of them. There was no point. None. The only reason was that these actors needed a frickin' paycheck. Lord knows Nick Cage needed one if he's doing another Ghost Rider movie. Why is there another Ghost Rider, which sucked the first go around, but there's not another Daredevil? Which by the way was based on the Frank Miller story arc that introduced Daredevil to Elektra and Bullseye and had her die towards the end. Which actually happened in the book. That movie was more true to the damn Marvel cannon than either Fantastic Four, any of those god awful Spidermans or that god forsaken Punisher Warzone.
Do me and the rest of the world a favor Hollywood: Come up with some original ideas. I'm tired of dumb movie adaptations. The bad comic and video game movies. Their sequels. Their spin-offs. The bad 3D for the sake of 3D. STOP. Please. No more. I'm begging.
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