Episode 11 or Why 2011 is going to be a great gaming year!

Well folks, with 2010 behind us and so many great games already in our collection, we should be content with what we have.  OH NAY NAY!  2011 is looking to serve up some delicious helpings of pure awesomeness!  Some of these games will be delayed, postponed and maybe, hopefully not, cancelled.  But let's assume that the Gamer God is a loving God and everything will arrive right on time!  This episode has so much Awesome, you may have to take a break.  Let's begin shall we?

JANUARY:

Dead Space 2 - This survival horror looks to build upon the success of the first game.  Can Issac Clarke survive again?

FEBRUARY:

Test Drive Unlimited 2 - Own an island paradise and cruise around with friends from around the world!

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars - I don't need to talk about this one.  It already rocks!

Bulletstorm - Epic Games & Polish game studio People Can Fly make you kill with skill.  This WTFPS will blow you away!

MARCH

Crysis 2 - This groundbreaking shooter makes its console debut.

Dragon Age II - This epic piece of epicness is gonna be EPIC!!  Oh, and be ready for ManHawke vs. FemHawke!  There will be lots more on this game next episode.

QUARTER ONE

Duke Nukem Forever - HAIL TO THE KING BABY!

Child of Eden - Best looking shooter on Kinect!

APRIL

Portal 2 - Next in the long line of sequels is this puzzle shooter which looks to add some awesome co-op!

QUARTER TWO

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean - I know what you are thinking, but LEGO Capt. Jack Sparrow looks amazing!

QUARTER THREE

Nothing announced yet, usually the summer is saved as a buffer when winter and spring games get delayed.

NOVEMBER

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - The direct follow-up to Oblivion hopefully improves on the cool controls of Elder Scrolls IV.

QUARTER FOUR

Gears of War 3 - Brothers to the end.  And Beast Mode.  So awesome!

Batman Arkham City - A massive city is in trouble, and we don't know who the main villain is!

Mass Effect 3 - The finalie of the Shepard Trilogy will hopefully not be the last game in this epic universe.


Holy crap thats a lot of games!  And these are just the announced titles!  What is really gonna happen in 2011?  Let's find out together!  HERE WE GO!!

And now here's the wisdom Relevant Wife: "Go big or go home!"\

Next Time: In depth with Dragon Age 2!

Episode 10 or The Irrelevant Gaming Awards

Dear readers, I figured it out... You don't like me, you like Miranda's boobs! I understand. I like her boobs too! If you googled Mass Effect 2 Miranda, you would have seen the glorious picture of Miranda scantily clad.  Google has since changed the source of the photo, so if I'm right, the page views should probably go down...a lot.  Which is why...duh duh da duuuuuuhhhh!!

Yeah Buddy.

On with the show!!

Here are the results of the 1st annual Irrelevant Gaming Awards!(crowd cheers)  No awful musical guests or acceptance speeches...just awards!  Here we go!

Best Add-On/DLC
Runner up: Dragon Age Origins - Witch Hunt
Winner: Mass Effect 2 - Lair of the Shadow Broker

Best Collectors Edition
Winner: Fable 3

Best Multi-Player
Runner up: Call of Duty - Black Ops
Winner: Assassins Creed - Brotherhood

Most Memorable Moment
Runner up: Mass Effect 2 Suicide Mission
Winner: Red Dead Redemption Finale

Best Story
Runner up: Red Dead Redemption
Winner: Alan Wake

Best Rock Band DLC Song
Winner: Eric Cartman - Pokerface

Most Anticipated Game of 2011
Runner up: Gears of War 3
Winner: Mass Effect 3

Best Xbox Live Arcade Title
Runner up: Shank
Winner: Monday Night Combat

Best Voice Performance
Runner up: Jennifer Hale (Mass Effect 2)
Winner: Seth Green (Mass Effect 2)

Best Character
Runner up: Alan Wake
Winner: John Marston

GAME OF THE YEAR
Runner up: Red Dead Redemption

And the winner is....

MASS EFFECT 2

There you have it!  The 2010 Irrelevant Gaming Awards!

We end tonight with a word from the Relevant Wife:  "Nobody likes a sticky seat."


Coming up next time: 2011 Gaming Preview!

LA Noir Behind the scenes!

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim VGA 2010 Trailer

Batman Arkham City Trailer VGA 2010 HD

Episode 9 or Why Mass Effect 3 will be Awesome

First and foremost...THANK YOU READERS!  This blog has simply blown up this past week.  I'm not sure what is going on, but keep it up!  I was figuring on being happy with 500 hits by the end of the year, but damn!  Over one thousand!  Better than I could have hoped.  Now if only I got paid for this...


And now, a letter:
Dear BioWare,

  I love you!  So very much!  If you were a person, I'd make sweet love to you all night long!  You have given us a gift.  One that we as gamers were not truly expecting!  Mass Effect 3 was a great surprise!  I personally wasn't expecting it until at least fall of 2012!  But you have deemed us worthy of the final chapter of this uber-trilogy.  Again, I love you.  So very much.

  Love(seriously...ask the wife)
   The Irrelevant Gamer


Now that we have that out of the way, we can get down to business!  The year of gaming is pretty much at an end.  And everyone and their mom is giving out awards, so will we!

ANNOUNCEMENT!  Next posting will be the 1st Annual Irrelevant Gaming Awards!  Finally, an award show that doesn't matter...wait...

Allrighty then!  Let's get on to the review!

CALL OF DUTY BLACK OPS
  Black Ops is the latest in the long line of war games.  Instead of modern times, or World War 2, like all previous titles, takes place in the 1960's(with one mission taking place in 1945.).  It starts off in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion.  The campaign is actually a pretty good story, taking about 8 hours.  Moving from Cuba to Russia, Vietnam, and beyond.  Intense combat and lots of dying await those who try this baby on Veteran mode, which is more intense than Modern Warfare 2.  But here's the thing: Nobody buys Call of Duty games for the story!  No...it's all about the multi-player.  Yeah, it's good.  But what do you expect from a multiplayer staple?  A few new additions is the wagering system, which is worth checking out.  And because it's a Treyarch game, there be zombies!  Yes, Nazi zombies are back!  There are even a few secret game types which I will not speak of here...they are secret for a reason!

PROS: Realistic combat, fast and furious action.  Really good controls.
CONS: Predictable, but all Call of Duty games are.  Watch out for Douche-bags online.
GRADE: 8.0


So Mass Effect 3 is coming holiday 2011.  That's one year from now.  That may seem like a lot of time to you and me, but in game design terms, that's a really short time.  Alan Wake took 5 years!  So, it's pretty obvious that BioWare has been hard at work on this title for sometime.  In the past 5 years, BioWare has put out 4 major titles: Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, and Mass Effect 2. (Not to mention the oft-overlooked Sonic: Dark Brotherhood on the DS.)  They also dropped the massive Dragon Age expansion: Awakenings this year.  Next year looks to be about the biggest year ever!  Starting with Dragon Age 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic mmorpg, and ending with the crown jewel: Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect has been called the modern space opera.  It's certainly been better than Star Wars Episodes I-III.  The culmination of this massive story arc can only lead to Commander Shepard leading not just a crack team of space commandos, but an whole army based entirely of consequences of your decisions in the three games.  Did you kill the Rachni queen?  Is Werx even alive?  What about the Collector base?  All of these will be weighed in.  Over 1,000 variables will be imported from Mass Effect 1 & 2.  No other game has taken your decisions and ran like the Mass Effect games.  The best thing about these games:  It's your game.  Everyone else's is different!  Your choices, your team, your Shepard...it's all on you.  So what's next Commander?  The choice is yours.

Questions?  Comments?  Can't keep your flippin' opinion to yourself?  E-MAIL ME!
TheIrrelevantGamer@gmail.com


Next time: The 1st Annual Irrelevant Gaming Awards!  Wooo!

Mass Effect 3 trailer

Well folks...I can admit when I'm wrong.  It wasn't a Mass Effect spin-off...IT IS F@#$ING MASS EFFECT! Hold on kids...this looks EPIC!

New BioWare teaser!

http://www.spike.com/video/who-what-where-is/3501777

New Bioware Clue!

If I didn't love Bioware so much, I'd hate them right about now.  They just released a new clue!  You'd think I'd be excited!  But Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!  Bioware had the audacity to give us, as the new clue...A RED HERRING!  


For those of you who don't know the significance of a "red herring", Wikipedia.org defines it as thus:

Red herring is an idiomatic expression referring to a rhetorical tactic of diverting attention away from an item of significance.^[1] For example, in mystery fiction, an innocent party may be purposefully cast as highly suspicious through emphasis or descriptive techniques; attention is drawn away from the true guilty party.


Not funny Bioware...not funny.  On the bright side: We will know what this secret project is and more on Saturday!  Stay tuned!!

Episode 8 or Shepard Vs. Shepard - This is War

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite photo on the Citadel.

There have been some great games that let you customize you hero, from choosing their sex, class even their origin story!  There has never been a game that has cause such a split over character creation like Mass Effect.  What seems like an every-game decision of male-or-female has turned into a long standing battle of "My Shepard could shoot your Shepard from 500 yards!" and "My Shepard can crush you with biotics while shooting you with a hand cannon...plus she has boobs!"

She may have curves, but that doesn't mean she won't kick your ass (or shoot you in the face with a shotgun)!

So here we stand with the Irrelevant Gamer and his Relevant Wife on either side ready to debate. Who will you choose?

Irrelevant Gamer: First and foremost, ManShep is the standard for all Shepards.  Posters, trailers even the gamebox has ManShep all over it.  When you think of Mass Effect you think of 'John' Shepard.  He's a man's man.  Tall, strong, irresistible to the ladies (Ashley, Miranda, Tali, Jack, Morinth, Kelly...and the list goes on...) There is only one clear choice in Shepards.  You want the true Mass effect expirience, you go to the source: ManShep!

Relevant Wife: FemShep is the ultimate warrior. She exudes strength, confidence, danger, and sexiness; an extremely deadly combination. She is all this whether she is killing Collectors, reassuring a nervous Turian or Drell, or threatening to rip someone's balls off and feed them to a Krogan. For those of you who haven't played FemShep (shame on you!!) I've selected an introductory fan trailer that's is pretty darn close to my FemShep (mine's better of course).

So welcome to the battle and may the best Shep win!



IG:  A video, huh?  I don't need no stinking video!  Playing as ManShep comes very naturally.  A good guy with a mean streak!  Able to help entire species and still punch nosy reporters!  The Mass Effect film will feature a ManShep. (Matthew Fox?)  FemShep may make a better Renegade(SupaBitch) but ManShep makes the ultimate hero!


RW: The awesomeness that is FemShep can mostly be attributed to the superb voice acting of Jennifer Hale. Without her voice FemShep would not be who she is. Ms. Hale puts a deep timbre into Commander Shepard that has a confident husky quality. You be come completely willing to believe that FemShep is the Savior of the Citadel, Destroyer of Saren, and the perfect love interest for an unassuming alien. This is not to say that ManShep (Mark Meer) isn't good. He does a fantastic job as well. However FemShep just has that certain something extra.


IG:  We could go on and on about the superior voice acting of both ManShep and FemShep, and trust me...it's freakin' fantastic voice work!  But the key to Shepard is the face!  Mark Vanderloo:

While you can endlessly customize your Shepard to look how you want, the true face of Shepard is and will always be his.  


RW: I should note that I've played ME1 twice (both Kaiden) and ME2 four times (2 Thane and 2 Garrus). I'm very much of the opinion that Kaiden is a whiny bitch and that the only acceptable mate for FemShep is a bad-ass alien assassin/sniper. Now ManShep does have a very good companion in Miranda (who I will fully admit is smoking hot) however it just goes to show how awesome FemShep is that she needs 2 bad-ass potential lovers. Oh and FemShep is so awesome she needs a special name. I am getting Siha tattooed on the back of shoulder in the near future :-)

Choices, choices!

IG:  And now we get to the best part: Hot Steamy Alien Sex!  Woooo!  Mass Effect is famous for its romance and sexual content (Remember Fox News ill-conceived SeXBox scandal?)  ManShep has the best choices when it comes to the ladies!  In the first one you can choose between Ashley and Li'ara.  Hotties!  Unfortunetly after romancing Ashley it turns out she is a worthless bitch...my only regret in playing the first one.  Mass Effect 2 however, gives you Miranda Lawson, played by the equally hot Yvonne Strahovski!  

Yeah buddy.  But that's not all!  You can also romance the always topless Jack (How does she get those straps to stay??), the always enviro-suited Tali, and the effervescent Kelly Chambers...but to be fair FemShep can have Kelly too, because Kelly loves EVERYBODY!  To some up: Miranda's boobs.  'Nuff said. 


RW: FemShep has her own very nice boobs thank you very much! And now to seal my argument, my favorite FemShep moments in no particular order (yes ManShep can do some of this stuff as well, but it's just so much better when FemShep does them)

• FemShep head butts a Krogan.
• FemShep gets drunk on the Citadel and regains consciousness in the men's bathroom while an annoyed looking Turian is relieving himself.
• FemShep is told by the Blue Sun recruiter that the strippers apply next door. She proceeds to take out her gun and tells the recruiter to show her his and she bets hers is bigger!
• FemShep beats up the Shadow Broker.
• FemShep gets a mating request on Turchanka.
• FemShep wearing her dress from Katsumi's mission for the rest of the game. It makes kissing Thane and caressing Garrus that much better!

Well their you have it folks!  Now it's up to you to decide!  Over off to the side is a poll where you can tell us who you prefer to play with!  And that's the beauty of the game.  No matter if you are Man or FemShem, expect the experience of a lifetime with these two(and in the future more) games.  Play On!


RW: FEMSHEP RULES!


IG: Always gotta have the last words, don't you?


RW: Yep.


Next Time: Review of Call of Duty Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops TV Commercial: "There's A Soldier In All Of Us"

I'd love to be in an ad like this!  Pure genius!

L.A. Noire First Trailer