Burning Keyboard

Mass Effect 2: Overlord, Part 2

2011-10-30T11:57:00.001+01:00

After having examined the... er... inhabitants of the base I'm sure that serious intervention from my side is necessary. Upon further divin into the facility I encounter the last working monitor, showing the image of what seems to be the last survivor (... fitting, isn't it?) who kindly explains the situation.

Haha... he thinks I can die because he doesn't know the game loads the latest save when I get killed. Stupid mortals...

So basically an artificial intelligence is switching the lights on and off and locking all doors at random. Apparently scientists aren't able to survive that long without constant supply of coffee, so the whole base seemed to commit suicide. I am tasked to avenge them by deleting the damned program. But first, I must stop its attempts at transmitting a copy of itself to distant planets - who knows what havoc a rouge AI can create in a populated world.

Trying to leave the room I encounter my next problem: the closed doors. Unfortunately all glass windows in the whole game are bullet proof. Luckily the only glass window with cracks in the whole game is next to the door I want to pass.

The hud indicates the glass is breakable - you don't even have to think for yerself on that one...

A well aimed shot from my submachine gun relocates the glass and grants me passage to the next room.

Heroes don't "steal money", they "recover funds"

Something interesting catches my eye in the next room. I "recover" some funds of the company that hired me. But... no need to mention that in the official report.

Thought you could hide that, dr. digital Mengele?

In the next room I deactivate the transmitter and stick my nose deep into the shit people been doin here. Turns out these scientists where fucking with living "we-will-destroy-all-living-things"-Geth. That's the Mass Effect equivalent of growing living Nazis in your basement.
After that turn of events it seems reasonable to just dump a bomb on the whole thing. Unfortunately my Ship happens to be out of weapons of mass destruction, because I used our last to destroy another science facility - see the pattern?

Creepy eyes are watching you mastrubate!

As I turn off the transmitter, some weird eyes pop up on the nearest terminals while a horrible series of sounds that remotely resemble a voice crawls out of the sound system, directly heading towards my spine. But it's impossible to understand anything. Suddenly I lost interest in herrassing my female teammate - I wonder why...

A few doors later we lay foot on our first battleground.

Whata nice playground!

Having tons of indestructible glass-rails as cover, I quickly decide to put Grunt in front, while Miri and I stay behind and cover the flanks. Unfortunately Miri decides to stay behind the door that is automatically locked when the player enters the room. So my Krogan Pureblood and I will be the only ones having phun, today.

The shining isn't gay - its Grunts awesomeness illuminating the air around him

With his shotgun and incendiary rounds, Grunt burns the legs of everyone who dares to get near our position, while I do what infiltrators do best: cloak myself (for damage bonus) and hit their ranged-attackers with my Widow anti-material rifle. The disrupt0r ammunition almost cuts though their shields and if Miri were clever enough to use a door on her own, she could spare me a bullet per enemy by using "heavy overload" to bring their shields down.

Noooo, Grunt! After all we've been through!!!11 Now I need to use a Medkit on ya -.-

Everything is fine even after loosing Miri, but the situation gets foobar when Grunt heroically decides to catch a rawket destined to hit my cover - with his face.

The whole trick is to look through the fire to take aim - who needs eyebrows anyways

With Grunt gone their close-range combatants get a shot at me - alongside the rocket launchers allready firing. Most annoying: the Flamethrowing "Geth Destroyers", but I manage to shield me from the fire with the help of the sheer coolness I accumulated over the course of two galaxy-saving-adventures.

Revenge!!!1111

After the Destroyer is destroyed (self-fulfilling prophecy?) I make a push to outflank them, while the weakened Rocket Trooper falls to my submachinegun fire.

Allright - aim for the ... erm... throat?

... as suddenly reinforcements arrive. I have to throw myself behind the nearest cover and take the time to pop'em off from a distance.

Knock, knock. Who's there?

When I finally reach my flanking position my team decides to join in and draws the enemy away from me. I get a nice volley of shots out and the Geth aren't able to get cover as they're caught in a crossfire.

Before Krogan defense

Grunt decides to employ a typical Krogan defensive tactic: he jumps from behind his cover and runs directly through the Geth troopers, into the flames of the flamethrowing Geth-Destroyer to finally punch him in the face till he's dead.

I like Krogan.

After Krogan defense (notice the Geth corpses/debris)

Meanwhile the genetically engineered human "Miranda" gets hit a few times and decides to take cover and stop shooting.

I don't like Miri.

As the battle is over, I continue to "recover funds" and collect all ammo dropped by my prey. I also get to catch a nice view of my next target: The satellite dish I need to destroy, because the AI is realigning it manually to transmit. It also gives you the idea of the nice ingame graphics:

Look: another huge thing we're supposed to "deactivate". I wonder how we will pull this off next time...

I hope you had as much fun reading as I had writing. Next time we'll fight our way to the satellite dish and deactivate it to contain creepy eyes on this planet.

Mass Effect 2: Overlord, Part 1

2011-08-19T22:48:00.001+02:00

After having beaten the main storyline its time for "Jack Shepard" to face the Downloadable Content Missions, starting today with "Overlord".

It all starts like a normal day for a galaxy saving super hero: getting up, having a little flirt with my ships creepy counsellor, and checking my mail. But what's that? A mail from the "Illusive Man" - the guy who spent literally billions rebuilding my body and my ship after I wrecked them both in a stupid spacefight. So lets see what we can do for the man with Martin Sheens voice:

Imagine hearing how Martin Sheen types this on his notebook - Thats what I call voice acting

whoahoahoahoahoouuuu of cause I will be super-duper carefull in this matter, mister superrich. Just like yesterday, when I blew up that space station full of advanced alien technology instead of handing it over to you greedy, manipulative bastard.

Mission 1: Hermes Station

A short flight through half the galaxy later my ship arrives at the planet Aite. Now I have to select the two pityfull members of my crew who have to accompany their insane captain on this suicide mission.

The red one is not a native american: she's just "dead in action" cause my team can only hold one insane psychopath

The only enemies I'll face in this mission are Geth. They're robots mostly utilizing shields, sometimes armor as defense. So I choose Miranda and Grunt as my teammates. Why?

Miranda:

The black stuff is supposed to be clothing, but I swear: it looks like bodypainting...

Abilities:

Heavy Overload rips allmost complete shielding off a standard trooper.
Heavy Warp kills around a third of a heavy armoured enemy - even around corners.
Cerberus Officer increases weapon damage of all team members - this means: MOAAR DAMAGE!!!1111einself.
Slam pulls enemies up and slams their faces to the floor after their protections have been ripped off by Overload/Warp.
Datt Ass

Grunt:

That's what a ton of concentrated death looks like [yes, he can eat you]

Abilities:

Concussive Shot let's the bodies hit the floor. Once an enemy is thrown to the floor by an explosive shell they think twice before getting up again.
Inferno Ammo ignites every projectile of Grunts guns. Burning ammo does damage to nearby enemies and rips through armor. Unprotected enemies catch on fire and try to "cool down" for 2-3 seconds. Burning enemies also ignite nearby comrades. Combining that with Grunds shotgun makes him an armored flame-thrower-thrower.
Krogan Pureblood increases Grunts awesomeness
Fortification heals Grunts shields and gives him a bonus of like... 50% in shielding.
He's basically a badass damage soak with legs and a burning shotgun

Knowing how fucked up the situation is the game decides for me not to take an unarmed shuttle to land in the supposedly friendly scientist base - it chooses to send the M-44 Hammerhead hoovertank. My lucky day...

My badass-crew drives to work in their hover tank

Upon arriving at the ground some employee tells us via radio that their base has a Virtual Intelligence going berzerk. The Illusive Man seems to be richer than I thougt: he hires the dude that saved the galaxy twice to do the job of a mouth-breathing apple genius. But after my first meeting with the rest of the employees I'm starting to realize where this is getting:

Definately no job for an apple genius

And then? What happens next? Obviously fights, but... You'll see.. in a few days or so...
Thanks for reading.

Meet Jack Shepard

2011-08-18T17:06:00.002+02:00

Greetings!

As this blog is supposed to be about my gaming experiences it's time to show the first game I'm currently playing:

I know: it's damn epic - but the ads are nice too, right?

Mass Effect 2 is the second incarnation of an action-roleplaying game made by BioWare. As Commander Shepard you save the galaxy from certain annihilation, whilst enjoing to choose how the story evolves and how you interact with people.
... and you get to shoot things.

I made a few characters (... and playthroughs) but my current one kinda looks like this:

... what's Jason Stratham doin in my character sheet?

Name: Jack Shepard
Origin: Spacer
Reputation: War Hero
Class: Level 30 Infiltrator

As you can see he's kinda paragonish - I just couldn't let all the funny renegade-interrupts pass. Skillwise he's specialized in Assassination Cloak to max the damage his Widow can deliver. As Advanced Training I chose Heavy Warp Ammo to overcome the infiltrators weakness in dealing with Barriers.
Biggest problem are shields, I allways have someone with heavy overload with me. Mostly Miranda because she also got a nice... Heavy Warp that supports my barrier-/shieldcrushing abilities.

I also tend to use my cloaking ability to sneak around enemies and catch them in a crossfire with my teammates. Of cause I use the Kessa Locust for that matter.

I just did the suicide mission to finally gain my lates precious:

[seal of awesomeness]

Now it's official: I'm member of the club of insane Mass Effect - players.

Next thing I'll do is beat the DLCs for Zaeed, Shadow Broker, Overlord. Then I'll try to get the last 2 missing achievements:

prison break reversed

survive 5 flying skulls!!!111

I guess Covert Action should be a piece of cake for an invisible infiltrator ^^. Let's see...
Thanks for your attention!

First Post!

2011-08-18T15:49:00.000+02:00

So what's this?

I wondered if there are other people out there who love gaming as much as I do. Occationally I get stuck or find a neat easteregg. This is meant to be a way to share that experience and fun with you guys.