Superbun Reviews: The Deacon's Tale (Sword of the Stars)

To start this, I’d like to say that I’m a huge fan of the Sword Of The Stars series, i’ve racked up over a hundred hours of playtime in Sword Of The Stars 2, and credit to Arinn Dembo, the author of this book and chief lore-writer for the games. I love all the SOTS lore, I think the universe is really unique and interesting, with intriguing technologies and alien cultures. So, you’d think that with such a detailed and original universe, the logical next step would be to write a novel set in the universe. However it seems the skills of writing background fiction do not necessarily transfer to writing science fiction novels.

The story follows the tale of Cai Rui (Or Rui Cai, his names seem to switch order randomly) commander of the black section of Sol Force intelligence, responsible for investigating unexplained phenomena in the galaxy, through the events surrounding the discovery of another sentient race in the galaxy - the Zuul horde of the video games.

Reflections of a Lifetime Gamer: "So, you've decided to quit - now what?"

I was browsing The Escapist while I was meant to be doing some chemistry homework - as I often do - when I came across a forum thread that posed an interesting question. The question - as the title of this article suggests - is “So, You’ve Decided to Quit Gaming - Now What?”, or to quote ‘Face_Head_Mouth’ in the opening post of the forum thread:

“Pretend that you have reevaluated every aspect of your life. In the process of doing so, you have come to the conclusion that video games are no longer worth playing. You either sell or give away your systems and games, or you only keep them in case of a visiting nephew or cousin.

You now have access to time, money and mental resources that were previously occupied. Now what? What do you do with this newly created potential?”

Being the socially awkward Nerd, afraid of even the most basic of human interactions, rather than responding to the forum thread, I instead decided to write an article about it.

Minecon 2012 Liveblog!

If you didn't know already, I'm flying to Paris this weekend for Minecon 2012. I'll be tweeting and Liveblogging from the event over the weekend, and there should be a video on my channel next week.

FRIDAY 23rd 1:48 pm (UK time), NEWPORT - The journey begins, Just got picked up from school at lunch, we're on the road to Cardiff airport now. I just had a bacon and egg sandwich for lunch in the back of the car. Paris, Here we come!

FRIDAY 23rd 2:54 pm (UK time), CARDIFF AIRPORT - Through security, sat in the departure lounge waiting for my flight @ 3:45

FRIDAY 23rd 8:27 pm (French Time), HOTEL CHEYENNE, PARIS - Arrived and checked in at the hotel, off to dinner at the western-themed restaurant. Then record the first part of the video diary, then get an early night ready for the first day of Minecon!

SATURDAY 24th 2:03pm (French Time), NEW YORK CONVENTION CENTER, DISNEYLAND - Phew! Been running around between panels all day, this has been the first chance I've got to update the blog. The opening ceremony was absolutely epic, featuring a few highlights from the Minecraft community, including HatFilms, FyreUk and Captain Sparklez. which I followed up with the Custom Maps panel and the Modding panels. If any of you are at all interested in either of these, I would recommend finding the recordings of These panels for a goldmine of helpful Information and advice on how to get started from the pros.

SATURDAY 24th 6:50pm, HOTEL CHEYENNE, PARIS - Back at the hotel, The final two panels I attended were Introversion Games at the Indie Theatre and the Minecraft PC team. Prison Architect (Introversion's new game) looks great, I didn't get to play it today, but I'm planning on getting to do that ASAP tomorrow. The Minecraft PC panel shed some light on what to expect in MC1.5 - subtitled "The Redstone Update" - and the longer-term future of Minecraft. Later tonight Mojang have booked Walt Disney studios exclusively for Minecon attendees for an awesome party!

The Homestuck Kickstarter

So Homestuck's being made into a video game, which finally gives me an excuse to talk about it on this blog

 For those of you who don't know, Homestuck is a web-comic, any visitor to certain parts of the internet will know that it has a fair amount of fans, some of which who can get pretty obsessed. While I could (and have previously) gone to great lengths to explain what Homestuck is, it's far easier to let the man himself, Andrew Hussie explain:

"It's a story about some kids who are friends over the internet. They decide to play a game together. There are major consequences... Saying anything more about the plot here would probably be getting in too deep."

You can read the full "What is Homestuck?" document written by Andrew Hussie: here

 Let's start with the facts: Yesterday (September 4th) Hussie released the kickstarter for the game, with a target goal of $700,000 at the time of writing, less than 24 hours after it was announced, it has raised $540,081, 71% of it's goal, so I think it's safe to say that the kickstarter is easily going to surpass it's goal. The game will be in the format of an adventure game, no more details as to the style of game have been released yet, although the likelihood is that, fittingly coming full-circle the game will be heavily influenced by the 'mock adventure game' style of MSPA. The game isn't an adaptation of Homestuck, it is it's own self-contained story set in the Homestuck universe (multiverse?), and will expand upon some aspects of the universe, but will have "minimal" impact on the comic's storyline, but as a fan of the comic, I wouldn't put it past Hussie to throw in a few characters or references from the comic.

Announcing: Lost Connection: Mining All Day Long!

As some of my eagle-eyed twitter followers may have noticed, yesterday we were testing out some livestreaming software, now we can finally reveal the reason for this!

 At 12:00 (noon) on 03/08 Lost Connection will be hosting a 24 hour Minecraft marathon in aid of charity! Yes, from Midday on Friday through to Midday on Saturday you can tune in to us at http://www.twitch.tv/lostconnectiongames and watch Me and TheMorpher play a single vanilla Minecraft world non-stop for 24 hours!

Of course this being a charity livestream, we need some charities to support. Donations will be split 50-50 between the two following charities:

• Child's Play - A video game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children in hospitals with toys and games
• Sparkle - A charity that operates in the Gwent area of South Wales, where Lost Connection is based that provides facilities for children with special needs

For details on how to donate, please click the "read more" button below

REVIEW: Mass Effect 3

This review will remain spoiler-free until the last section.

3 games, 5 years, Multiple “game-of-the-year” awards, called “the definitive sci-fi saga of this generation”. The epic Mass Effect saga finally comes to a close in the battle for earth.

The gameplay is best described as somewhere between the original Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. The power trees from Mass Effect 2 return, and while there are not as many weapons as the original, credits can be spent to upgrade your weapons through 5 levels, also weapon mods make a return, in the form of various upgrades your weapons such as increased thermal clip (ammunition) capacity or Assault Rifle scopes. In conclusion, there is a greater diversity of weapons than ever before in the series including the ‘Graal spike-thrower’ (A shotgun class Krogan nail gun) or the ‘Falcon’ (An Assult-Rifle class grenade launcher), and weapon upgrades and mods give you greater freedom of control over your arsenal. Enemy AI is generally competent, although there are a few moments where it falters such as enemies freezing or standing out in the open.

Mass Effect has never pushed the envelope in the graphics department, Although the games still maintain a distinct, recognizable graphical style. Mass Effect 3 suffers from occasional graphical hitches, such as the camera clipping through the environment, props and characters occasionally disappear in cut-scenes, and the infamous Mass Effect texture pop-in still crops up infrequently. Mass Effect 3 disappoints in the soundtrack department, several climatic fights are left without musical accompaniment, and the pieces that are used are forgettable and re-uses several pieces from earlier in the series (or at least very similar pieces). I did encounter a bug in one of the early missions where a turret section glitched if I left the turret, but aside from that the game performs without a hitch.

Story is always the highlight of a game from Bioware, and aside from the controversy about the ending (More on that later). Mass Effect 3 is no different- a definitive tour-de-force in video-game storytelling, with some of the best realised characters in gaming today, and genuine, thought-provoking moral dilemmas. My only complaint would be that the squad doesn’t receive as much focus or character development as Mass Effect 2, but that reflects the winder focus of this game. While not a problem for me, the increasingly self-referential nature and ever more tangled plot threads of the series could be an issue for new adopters, but if you’re a gamer and haven’t played the Mass Effect series yet – where have you been for the last 5 years?

In Short: Bioware delivers a definitive tour-de-force in videogame storytelling, Not a perfect game, but damn close, A must-buy for any lover of sci-fi.

Rating: 9.5/10

SPOILER ALERT: the following section contains spoilers for the ending of Mass Effect 3, if you don’t want to see it, stop reading now – you have been warned!

Text has been censored with CIA-issue black marker, highlight it to reveal

I assume anyone reading this section has already finished the game, but for those of you who haven’t I’ll summarize: At the end of the game you are presented with a choice: To either detonate the crucible and wipe out all synthetic life in the galaxy and end the reaper’s cycle of extinction forever. Or to take control of the reapers, the reapers are shown retreating from earth in the final cut-scene, but they may return. Or a final choice, unlocked if you have an Effective Military Strength (from War Assets/Galaxy at war) of 2,800+ to combine synthetic and biological life, and create peace across the galaxy. Whichever choice is chosen the mass relays are destroyed and the Normandy is stranded on a planet after being caught in the destruction of the relay network. Sheppard is destroyed/presumed dead regardless of which choice is chosen, although it is speculated that Sheppard could survive if the destruction or synthesis option is chosen.

I can see that this might not be the ending that fans of the series wanted – I expect they wanted the crucible to be what it is originally portrayed to be – a weapon to destroy the reapers, and for the series to have a ‘happily ever after’ ending. While I’m sure Bioware could have pulled it off successfully. I think I prefer these endings – and any attempt to change them now, would just be undermining the series in my oppinon. It’s obvious really, when you think about that the reapers, the Mass Relays, the citadel and the 50,000 year cycle of extinction of all advanced organic life had to be the work of some kind of higher cosmic power, So it makes sense that the ending wouldn’t be as simple as just destroying the reapers. These endings provide a definite sense of finality and nicely underline the trilogy. The first thing I, and many others probably thought of was the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey - it's weird and is in stark contrast to most of the film, if holywood decided to re-release 2001 without all the mind-fucky stuff at the end there would, naturally be fan uproar, what's the diference? I dont see any.  My only complaint is that the ending is a little too final – an epilogue of how your squad members and the races survive after the finale and the destruction of the relays would have been nice. This, I wouldn’t mind seeing added in a patch or as DLC.

Mass Effect 3: Back From Ashes DLC - NERD RAGE!

Update (23/02/12): Casey Hudson (Executive Producer for the Mass Effect series) tweeted the following message last night:

https://twitter.com/#!/CaseyDHudson/status/172503190946856961

So, While this does negate my point of "everything made before release should be on-disk". This does raise another point I didn't mention in the original article. This DLC was made once the game was "Feature complete" So either A: The character wasn't finished before the game went gold, and was cut from the release game, kind of a sucky move, but not really a heinous crime. Or B: The character wasn't in Bioware's plan for the game, and was added in after-the-fact which means the character will likely only be referenced properly in whatever mission(s) come with the DLC, or Worse will just be a generic 'squaddie' and have no real reference to the enormity of the character's plot significance, which in my opinion is a worse crime against the Mass Effect fan-base than charging $10 for the DLC on day 1

For those of you who have nothing better to say in the comments than point out that I'm a massive hypocrite, I state it plainly in the article, just scroll down a bit, it's still there, but I'll say it again: I'm a hypocrite, I know, and I know by still buying the game, I'm telling whoever's responsible for this, they can get away with it. Please bear in mind that the original article was written pretty much as my "first response" to hearing the news of the DLC, so forgive me if my comments are a little bit extreme (especially the last paragraph). However this does not mean I retract my previous statement or don't support anyone who does boycott the game in protest.


Original Article:
This post contains minor Mass Effect 3 spoilers regarding the identity of a hitherto unannounced NPC. if you don't want it, don't read it!


I love the mass effect franchise, Mass Effect 2 rates among my favourite games of all time, And the original (although flawed) ranks inside the top 20. Bio-ware is among my favourite video game developers, And yet this... this insult to the Mass Effect community is -quite frankly- atrocious. While a lot of you would like to just blame this on the suits over at EA, that does not - and cannot - exempt Bioware from responsibility.

Let me back up a minute and tell you what's going on...

Everyone remember the "Cerberus Network" from Mass Effect 2? You bought a brand new-copy of the game, you got a code in the box that gave you acess to several pieces of DLC for free (A few bonus missions, a couple of weapons and armour sets) and an extra character, Zaeed, who was bad-ass and his missions were cool but he wasn't really that plot-essential, second-hand purchasers had to pay for a code to access Cerberus Network. All in all a pretty fair deal to reward new purchasers, without making used owners feel ripped off right?

Yeah, I know EA's Project Ten Dollar sucks, but you can see why they do it, right? But with Mass Effect 3 EA took Project Ten Dollar to a whole new level of suck-age.

Recently a piece of Mass Effect 3 DLC ("Back From Ashes") accidentally leaked to Xbox Live early, before being swiftly removed. Later EA/Bioware confirmed this will be day 1 DLC and available for free for those who purchased the N7 collector's edition. Notice what I underlined there? This isn't just the usual attempt to claw back some revenue from pre-owned sales (controversial that may be) This is content that development time was spent on, that will not be available for the majority of players on-disk. Yes, pre-order bonuses and in-game collector's edition items are commonplace these days and I mostly accept them.

However, the new Squad Member in this DLC is: a Prothean ...yes, that's right a fucking Prothean. For those of you familiar with Mass Effect lore recognise the massive plot significance of those words. The Protheans, thousands of years more technologically advanced than any race in the galaxy, supposedly all wiped out 50,000 years ago by the big bad guys of the series, and yet here we are, a living, breathing Prothean. Somehow, impossibly returned from extinction.

This revelation that the Protheans (or at least one) somehow survived extinction is a massive event in the Mass Effect universe, and the audacity of EA to release this kind of content as DLC - A PAID EXTRA! - is just shocking.

I am being  hypocritical here, I have a pre-order for the N7 collector's edition of Mass Effect 3, and I love the series to much to give that up. However I urge everyone, stand up to EA/Bioware, show them that we - the fans - will not stand for this. Cancel your pre-orders, write to EA or Bioware, show them that the fans have a voice, and that we will use it!

Gareth Bushell
Lost Connection Co-Founder & Massive Bioware fan