Professor Plays Games is a conversational video game podcast focusing on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles (and a bit of PC gaming). In this episode, The Professor (@profplaysgames) and Anthony (@summerspeak) from Owldragon Games discuss TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan, EA, Destiny, PS+ Titles, GwG Titles, Mighty # 9, Game Delays, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Darkest Dungeon, The Division Beta, Final Fantasy Explorers, and TV shows.

Professor Plays Games (now with an improved mic!!!) is a conversational video game podcast focusing on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles (and a bit of PC gaming). In this episode, The Professor (@profplaysgames) and Anthony (@summerspeak) from Owldragon Games discuss Darkest Dungeon, Mark Cerny, David Gaider, Microsoft: Education Edition, Nintendo, Fire Emblem: Fates, Xbox One Backward Compatibility, Uncharted 4, the price of games, Diablo 3, AC: Syndicate, and drunken guns.

Professor Plays Games is a conversational video game podcast focusing on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles (and a bit of PC gaming). In this episode, The Professor (@profplaysgames) and Anthony (@summerspeak) from Owldragon Games discuss the Vive, WGA Awards, Diablo 3's latest patch, Nintendo's 2016 plans, Fire Emblem, amiibo, David Bowie, Mass Effect 2, Viva Piñata, and Game of Thrones.

Professor Plays Games is a conversational video game podcast focusing on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles (and a bit of PC gaming). In this episode, The Professor (@profplaysgames) and Anthony (@summerspeak) from Owldragon Games discuss the Scalebound and ReCore delays, Assassin's Creed "Empire," IGF Finalists, Microsoft and Sony holiday spin, virtual reality, crowdfunding, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Witcher 3, and more Star Wars. 

In this short episode, The Professor (@profplaysgames) delivers the audio version of his write up of Mass Effect, the first game from his backlog to be bested in 2016. Professor Plays Games is (usually) a conversational video game podcast focusing on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles (and a bit of PC gaming). 

For 2016, I made a pledge to play through my not-insignificant backlog. It can help me to spend less money on games, and it can encourage me to enjoy the games I have instead of yearning for more. I have enough games across Steam, 3DS, Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, and PS4 to last me the rest of my life. I had to make a similar resolution with books a few years back, and it helped me to discover gems already on my crowded shelves and reacquaint myself with old friends. I knew the same thing would happen when I applied this formula to video games.

I just didn’t know it would happen so soon.

The first game I wanted to tackle from my backlog was Mass Effect. After I beat The Witcher 3, and raved about it, my friend said I had to try Mass Effect. I’m not a sci-fi guy (fantasy is my bailiwick), but I am a fan of good writing and choice-driven narrative.

So I turned on my Xbox One, loaded up Mass Effect (playable via backcompat), created my FemShep, and dug in for an hour.

Immediately, I was both engaged and repelled.

The writing was strong. The story latched on, and I wanted to see what happened next and next and next. The dialogue wheel always offered something unexpected (selecting “no thanks” prompted a retort roughly equivalent to “get fucking bent”). The designated hour of gaming became two. A “let me save real quick and then I’ll be done” became talking to my crew for 20 minutes before remembering I was going to save and exit. Games usually don’t keep me. They engage me, of course. They are fun for the time I’ve set aside to play them. But I can usually walk away on my schedule.

That didn’t happen with Mass Effect (in the exact same way it didn’t happen with The Witcher 3). The story kept me.

However great the story was, though, the moment-to-moment gameplay was… dated. Obviously. Shooting mechanics were the I’m-a-keyboard-and-mouse-shooter that I thought console games surmounted in the Xbox-PS2-GameCube era. Frame rate in firefight became a slightly up-tempo slideshow, and driving the Mako reminded me of rolling up a straw wrapper and using the straw to try (and fail) to blow the wrapper across a table in a straight line. Basically, gameplay was what I would expect from an older game. 

But my friend did not ask me, “Do you like riding Roach in The Witcher 3? How about you try driving a Mako in Mass Effect.” That was not the sales pitch. The story’s the thing, and that was the pitch.

In Mass Effect, my choices mattered. People lived or died or died and rose again because of how I played the game (80% Paragon, by the way…I told the Council to fuck itself a few times and, in the end, went after the sovereign and left the Council to fend for itself). I saved Wrex when I could have shot him, I sexed up Kaidan when I could have left him to die, and I tried to save Saren from himself. The decisions I made shaped my game and made it different than your game.

That is where the game shines for me. You and I played the same Mass Effect, but we did not play the same Mass Effect. We became our Shepard, and we experienced our own, unique playthrough. We passed through similar plot points, of course, but the prose wrapped around them varied to such a degree that, only 10 hours removed from saving the Citadel, I want to both replay Mass Effect (this time as a Renegade) and begin Mass Effect 2.

As with the books on my shelves, I can produce no higher praise for a game except this: upon ending, what I most want to do is begin again.

In this episode, The Professor (@profplaysgames) and Anthony (@summerspeak) from Owldragon Games discuss ReCore, EA Visceral's Star Wars Game, Halo, Destiny, Final Fantasy 9 and 15, Legend of Zelda Wii U, Mass Effect, Witcher 3, Gaming Resolutions, and their 12in12 lists. Professor Plays Games is a conversational video game podcast focusing on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles (and a bit of PC gaming).