cough cough

People! I don't know where I've been. All I know is that I was surrounded by darkness, I had no feeling in my toes, and everything smelled slightly of Hubba Bubba Tangy Tropical. It's possible that I'd gone through some kind of temporal wormhole and I was trapped under my very own bed in 1981, I can't say. All I know for sure is that suddenly I heard this...




...and now here I am.

And just in time, too, for lo- today is FemShep Friday, wherein all of The Internet (or, at least, those internet denizens who CARE) celebrate all the gloriousosity of the Shepard who is female. YAY!


The biggest and best thing about FemShep Friday is the newly-released Mass Effect 3 trailer that features said FemShep. If you ain't done beholden it yet, behold it now.


Oh my, YES. It is indubitably your standard pump-you-up, explosion-laden, take-no-shit, kick-all-the-asses action video game trailer...and that's what I love most about it. Okay, wait- what I love most is seeing my old squadmates kicking all of the ass beside me, as well as Jennifer Hale's totally perfect delivery of all of the take-no-shit lines. But! it's a wonderful thing that the trailer featuring the female incarnation of the Commander isn't all about being sexy and having relationships and saving the children- she's saving the world, shooting guns, dodging explosions, and being every bit as badass as BroShep. Well done, BioWare. Well done.

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time deviating from my Canon Shepard. She's a vanguard, largely paragon. Still, she won't hesitate to make a renegade choice- even the more unnecessarily heartless ones, like kicking a merc out a skyscraper window when he sasses her one too many times. She's a-romancin' Liara. She saved all of her crew.

But there are so many variations and so many options, and I want to see them all! I try to roll a new Shep, though- different attitude, different decisions, different gender- and I poop out after a while. My Shep just feels like my Shep, and Mass Effect feels like her story. Who knows, maybe when all is said and done I'll make 44730 more Shepards to see all the possibilities. I mean, what if she fell into the abyss on the Collector Base at the end of Mass Effect 2? I'd like to know how she gets out of that.

How does your Shepard get it done?

oh lawd, COME TO ME NOW

This was a triumph.

It's only a wee TV spot for Portal 2, but once GLaDOS chimes in, it just drives home the point: I CAN'T WAIT. April 19!

Unf.

It is really, really killing me- KILLING ME UNSOFTLY- to pay as little attention as possible to news about Star Wars: The Old Republic. It is a Star Wars game. It is a Star Wars game from my favorite developer. It is a Star Wars game from my favorite developer, who already made a Star Wars game that is one of my favorite games.

As it's clear that The Old Republic is like a perfect storm of my heart, why am I disregarding it so? Because it's an MMO and...meh. It's not so much that I'm a solitary gamer (though I am)- it's that there's the repeat cost thing, subscription fees. It's also that I'm afraid I'll get completely sucked in and become some tragic story on Kotaku or something: SAD WOMAN SPENDS FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS LEVELING UP, FORGETS TO EAT, DIES, IS FOUND BY NEIGHBOR HALF-EATEN BY CATS. Seriously. At least non-MMOs have an end point! The story will come to a close, and no matter how much I obsessively play, I know I'll be saved from sad death if only by the virtue of a finale.

Okay, I probably wouldn't DIE, but a neverending story is bad for me, unless of course Limahl is somehow involved.

Oh yeah, and the other big reason? I don't have a PC and my Mac is decidedly ungameworthy...so all my fretting about my sad death is fretting about something inconsequential.

The point is, I find it best to be a big baby and ignore things I want but can't have. They make it so difficult, however, when they do things like making trailers for the effing bounty hunter class. Stupid awesome-looking game! Stupid out of reach temptations! Stupid everything!

HURRY UP 2011

I think 2011 may finally be the year where I become a complete shut-in. I stress the "complete" because really, I still venture out from time to time...although to be honest, that has as much to do with my fear of rickets than anything else. Also, I still mostly wear pants that employ the use of fasteners. What can I do, though, in the face of all the ba-rilliant releases lined up for next year? It may be time to give my life over to elastic-waist bliss. Just a few of the titles that have me salivating already:

• Dragon Age 2
• Dead Space 2
• L.A. Noire
• Bioshock Infinite (they say 2012, but I think that through the sheer force of will, I can get them to release it in 2011)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Mass Effect 3
• updated to add: Portal 2 (how could I have overlooked it?)
  

As you can see, I have no choice in the matter.

BY THE WAY. The trailer for Mass Effect 3 was just released at the Spike TV Video Game Awards and let's just say that I'm already lined up outside of Best Buy. HURRY UP 2011.