Two things:

1) I like the original one better. And partly that’s because of 2):

2) Mark is FAR more likely to have made this comment than Sam. At least as far as the original characters were concerned.

Powers &8^]

First, a quick note about the punchline: Obviously, I think both are funny, which is why I included the original in the news post.  I make no secret of the fact that I like to talk about the process behind creating the strip because I think that some readers might enjoy reading about the fairly organic, seat-of-the-pants way that Dave and I craft the strip.

Now, for the second point.  I’ve made no secret here that many of the characters in the strip were not created by me.  The Towne Pub comic is based on a long running story that a bunch of my friends and I wrote together online while students at RIT.  Here’s a quick list off the top of my head:

• Dave Grabert – Marc Trebarg
• Matt Dolins – Savage, Dude
• Matt “Powers” Wilson – Nate, Sam
• Sue Meredith – Cap’n Hooter
• Kim St. Jacques – Taruga

When I first started the strip I tried to make very clear that I would always attribute creation of these characters to their original authors, but I would make them my own within the universe of the strip.  I understand that sometimes the characters will do or say things that they would not have if written by the original authors.  I can’t help that.  For me, the main characters of this strip are Phinn, Trebarg, and Savage.  The duality of their natures (being heroic adventurers in alternate dimensions while being clownish buffoons within the Pub itself) is what interests me, and what I want to write about.  The rest of the characters in the Pub are supporting cast members meant to be homages, but never exact copies, of the original creations.

And this most recent strip is an extreme case: Sam exists solely as a foil off of which to bounce the punchline (it is, after all, a gag strip).  It can’t really be said that her line is out of character, because in the strip she really hasn’t been developed as a character.  I get that the original Sam was brash and crass.  She also wasn’t (as far as I recall) a dimension hopping, sword wielding, genetically engineered samurai warrior (and licensed Fidotron pilot).  What can I say?  Liberties were taken.

I do recognize that there is a dearth of female characters in Pub, though, and those that are there are meant to be strong women, but I don’t want them to be strong by acting like men; (e.g. brutish, arrogant, and rude).  Well, except maybe Taruga, who I expect would be lighting her farts right next to Trebarg.

Damn!  Missed opportunity!  I could have had Phinn mention “the light show!”

But I digress.   I think that there is more to being a strong female character than drinking, burping, and farting along with the guys.  The last thing in the world that I want to do is upset anyone by using their creations in a way that makes them unhappy, uncomfortable, or disappointed.  But, at the same time, I can’t promise to climb inside the minds of other people and write these characters as they would have.  It’s an impossible goal.  I also recognize that it can be upsetting to see your characters misused so if anyone feels that way, please talk to me about it and we can discuss how to handle it within the confines of the strip.

All that being said, I think this strip can be fixed!  Maybe?!  We’ll see…

Much Longer Version: It will be difficult to discuss my thoughts of BioShock 2 without some spoilers.  It will be impossible to discuss it without spoiling the first BioShock game.  If you haven’t played the original yet, well, what are you waiting for?  It’s great, and you can get it for, like, 5 dollars.

Anyway, in the first game you played a plane crash victim that finds himself swimming in the middle of the ocean near a lighthouse on a small island.  Upon entering the lighthouse, you quickly discover an elevator that leads deep under the surface of the ocean to the underwater city of Rapture.  There you are guided through the city by the mysterious Atlas, who communicates with you via radio.  The opening sequence of the original BioShock is one of the most memorable of any game I’ve ever played.  In fact, after downloading the demo and playing through the first few minutes I immediately stopped playing, and pre-ordered the game, without even bothering to finish the demo.  It was that good.

This meant that BioShock 2 had some pretty big shoes to fill, right from the start.  It would be difficult, if not impossible, to top the first few minutes of the first BioShock and unsurprisingly, the game fails to do so.  In fact, there is a naked attempt to shock the player in the first few moments of the game that mostly fails.  People playing this game, for the most part, know what to expect.  They know what Rapture looks like.  They know what splicers are.  It’s going to be hard to whip up the same kind of excitement and fear.  So, what do you do?

Well, first, you pander.  You give the players everything they want, and more.  You throw the kitchen sink at them, starting with the ability to play one of the first game’s most difficult adversaries: The Big Daddy.

Some of the impact of this twist on the core game play is hurt by a few things.

First, those that finished the first BioShock will remember, the final act of the last game featured a lengthy sequence where the player disguised himself as a Big Daddy.  Given that fans of the series already spent some time stomping around in a Big Daddy suit, it’s hard to get excited about doing it again in the second game.

Second, the Big Daddy that you play in BioShock 2 (called “Delta” throughout most of the game) plays almost exactly like the main character from the first game.  You unleash plasmids from your left hand, and fire weapons with the right.  Sure, you get a nifty drill (which has limited utility), but most of the other weapons are standard FPS fare with a twist.  The spear gun, for example, plays just like a sniper rifle.  The rivet gun is like a powerful pistol.  Other weapons, like the grenade launcher, shotgun, and machine gun, all play like they do in every other FPS.  To make matters worse, the game eases you in through a series of tutorials that are shockingly similar to those in the first game.  These include using your lightning-bolt to flip switches and open doors, using telekinesis to fetch far away objects, and using fire to melt ice that is blocking your way.  I don’t mind reusing the powers from the first game, which makes sense, but presenting players with the same exact series of obstacles and puzzles early in the game feels tired and overdone (especially given that these mini-puzzles rarely show up later in the game).

Third, and worst, your Big Daddy is a wimp.  At the beginning of the game you have few weapons, only a little health, and a minuscule store of EVE (the resource needed to power your “plasmid” abilities).  In fact, other than the drill jutting out in the lower right corner of the screen, it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a Big Daddy at all.  In the early parts of the game small numbers of splicers present a real threat to your survival, forcing you to run, duck, and hide just like any other normal human.  Contrast this with the other Big Daddies from both games, which you often see fighting 5 or 6 splicers at a time without breaking a sweat.  Still even worse is that you are not a match in one-on-one combat with any of the other Big Daddies in the game; you will find that you need to plan your strategy, set traps, use cover, run away a lot, and pop health packs like candy in order to beat a Big Daddy, especially in the first third of the game when your health and EVE reserves are low.  From a game design perspective, I think that the Big Daddy mechanic in BioShock 2 comes off as a total gimmick; it’s not implemented very well at all.  The excitement that comes from the idea of playing a Big Daddy stems from the fact that they are so big and powerful in the first game.  Simply slapping a Big Daddy texture over the same kind of weak player really stings.

And the problems of BioShock 2 don’t end there.  The controls are great, except for the all-important research camera.  The camera, which you get fairly early in the game, is used to record your enemies while you fight them.  Record a specific enemy enough, and you will unlock research that benefits you in some way.  Examples include new gene tonics, plasmids, learning which weapons are most effective against that enemy, or simply increasing the damage that you do.  It’s a really neat mechanic, but it’s implemented poorly.  First, in order for you to start recording, you must switch to the camera like you would any other weapon.  On the 360 this involves holding the Right Button (RB) down, which pauses the game and brings up your weapon wheel.  Now you can use the analog stick to select the camera.  While the camera is out you can use plasmids, but you can’t fire weapons.  The good news is that, once you start recording, you will automatically switch to whatever weapon you were using before you equipped the camera.  The bad news is two-fold: 1.) if you have already completely researched an enemy, you can’t start recording, and therefore you can’t auto-switch weapons, and 2.) sometimes the weapon you had equipped before was lame and ineffective against the enemy you’re facing now (e.g. the “hack tool” used to hack into computers).  It would have been far better to assign the camera to its own button (like, say, a click of the right analog stick) to allow players to start recording without futzing with weapons.

I’ve said an awful lot about what makes BioShock 2 less than stellar, but I want to take a moment to say now that I really enjoyed the game.   The first act was essentially a carbon copy of the same segment from the first game, but the story really starts to pick up steam in the second and final acts.  Despite the rumors surrounding the pre-release of the game, you discover that you were not the first Big Daddy per se.  Instead, throughout the game you discover that you were the first Big Daddy to be successfully bound to a specific Little Sister; previous attempts had failed, resulting in insanity or death in the Big Daddies.   I don’t want to spoil anything for those who are planning on playing through the game, but I will say that the story builds up to an incredibly satisfying conclusion, with a lot of really “gee whiz, that’s neat!” moments in the final act.  Like the first game, the ending of the story depends heavily on how you treat many of the other characters in the game.  Unlike the first game, and this is one of the places where the sequel really improves, the outcome of your decisions is not mostly isolated to the final cut scene.  Throughout the game you will encounter several characters that you will be given an opportunity to kill.  They are all more-or-less at your mercy, and some deserve a nasty fate more than others.  How you treat them will greatly affect  how the story plays out, not only in cut scenes and dialog, but in other aspects as well, including in some cases the appearance of the levels.  It’s definitely worth considering how you want the game world and the characters that inhabit it to reflect your choices.

Another really great improvement over the first game is the way that you interact with “Little Sisters.”  As anyone that played the first game will remember, Little Sisters are brainwashed little girls that have been genetically modified to be able to sense corpses containing “Adam,” the material that makes granting powers and abilities with plasmids possible.  In order for a person to use a plasmid that grants the ability to shoot lightning from their fingers, for example, they must combine the plasmid with Adam, which helps to rewrite their genetic code.  Little Sisters are responsible for finding dead bodies that contain Adam, and for extracting the Adam from the bodies using giant, nasty looking syringes.  Of course the splicers and various degenerates in Rapture want to get their hands on as much Adam as possible, and so they hunt down Little Sisters.  This is why the Big Daddies are needed: to defend the Little Sisters from anyone that would do them harm.

In the first game your interaction with the Little Sisters was somewhat limited.   First you needed to kill the Big Daddy defending the Little Sister.  Then you would be given the choice to either save the Little Sister (let her go) for a small amount of Adam, or harvest the Little Sister for a little bit more Adam.  These choices are what determined whether or not your character was “good” or “evil” and affected how the game ended.  In the sequel, things play out very differently.  You start the same way: killing the Big Daddy defending a Little Sister.  Then you are given the choice to immediately harvest her, or to adopt her.  Should you choose to adopt the Little Sister, she will ride around on your shoulders as you make your way through the level.  This can be fun when she makes comments as you fight your way through waves of enemies, some of which can be darkly disturbing and funny (for example, after you set someone on fire, she’ll say “Ooooh!  Marshmallows!”).    While a Little Sister is on your shoulders you can ask her to lead you to a corpse containing Adam.  She doesn’t leave your shoulders, unfortunately, but you are provided with an ethereal white trail of mist that you can follow to the body.  Once there, the fun really starts.  You can tell the Little Sister to harvest the Adam from the corpse, but once you do splicers will begin attacking from every conceivable direction.  The game pulls no punches: it will throw the biggest, baddest splicers you have seen up to that point in the game, and they will keep coming.  The goal of the splicers is to kill you, and kidnap the Little Sister, but not necessarily in that order.  Your job is to keep the splicers away from her until she’s done.  You can choose to stand over her and just attack anything that comes at you, or you can use the various weapons, gadgets, and plasmids in the game to set traps  and only pick off the stragglers that get through your defenses.  My favorite tactic was to drop a few mini turrets, lay trap rivets in arcs around the Little Sister, place a few proximity mines and a Cyclone Trap or two, and then use the Hypnotize plasmid to charm the first splicer that shows up to fight on my side.

Once you have used a Little Sister to harvest Adam twice, you will be given the choice to let her go, or a second opportunity to harvest her.  Like the first game, choosing to harvest will grant you an immediate bonus of Adam.  But also like the first game, should you choose to let Little Sisters go, you will be rewarded later (with care packages left for you filled with Adam, plasmids, money, and other goodies).  In the end, I don’t know which path gives your more Adam, though I suspect that harvesting comes out ahead.  However, saving the Little Sisters grants plasmids and gene tonics you would not be able to get otherwise, not to mention a warm and fuzzy feeling from being a swell guy.

Beyond all that, the game plays in much the same way as the first BioShock.  You are being lead around by mysterious strangers who communicate to you in various ways including radio transmissions, televisions, telepathy, and PA systems.  Most of the back story is revealed through tape-recorders that you find scattered throughout Rapture.  While I love listening to these, I find this habit of the citizens of Rapture to be hilarious.  Each of these diary entries is left on a full-sized tape recorder.  Most are not more than 30-60 seconds.  The idea that everyone in Rapture is carrying around a few dozen tape recorders so that they can capture random thoughts before leaving them on the side of a random hallway is pretty funny.  All that being said, you get tons of background and history for Rapture, the major characters from both games (including those long dead), and even some references to the events of the first game.  This is also where you get most of the back story surrounding the Big Daddy program, and your involvement therein.  Unfortunately, because many of these are hidden and/or easy to miss, if you don’t find certain, important tape recorders, you will be missing big parts of the back story.  I didn’t even find 100 out of the 138 scattered throughout Rapture, so I’m fairly certain that I missed some pieces of the puzzle.  It’s unfortunate because, unlike the first game, you can’t really backtrack to previous levels, so if you miss something, you’ve missed it forever.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed BioShock 2, though it took me several hours of play before I really got hooked.  A lot of this had to do with the expectations set by the game and the pre-release buzz.  Much of what the game promised was implemented poorly (i.e. playing a wimpy Big Daddy), and there were a lot of misleading rumors and speculation about the story that didn’t play out (e.g. there is only one Big Sister, you are the first Big Daddy, etc.).  Once you slog through the opening act, though, you’ll start to remember what it is about the first BioShock that you loved so much.  The core gameplay is almost completely intact, and there are some really nice additions that make BioShock 2 its own game.  Is it as good as the first?  No.  But how could it be?  Discovery and surprise were much of what made the first game great, and it would be impossible for BioShock 2 to have the same impact.  But, what you do get is a fun, if familiar, game.  And that’s what really matters.

Not that I have any right to tell you how to do your comic… but I wonder if you could have excised the second panel and pushed the monologue into the other two. As you note, space is at a premium in comics, and so sometimes you have to show your action in as few panels as possible.

I have mentioned repeatedly that I struggle with “panel density” in these new strips, especially given the dearth of updates (one per week) which means that there is a long wait between comics.  This presents difficult problems for keeping readers engaged, and so I want to try to get more panels, more dialog, more action into the comics.  So here, Powers has definitely tapped into something with which I struggle often.  The biggest problem for me is that I do not like working small.  I dislike drawing small, and I don’t like putting small font into the comic.  It’s bizarre because, when I am reading comics, I don’t even notice when there are 8, 9, 10 panels on a page.  The art looks fine, and everything is clear and readable.  I don’t know why I have trouble with it myself.

I will say that I am writing the script as clearly defined pages, which is something I’ve never done before.  In the past I would write scripts panel-by-panel, and decide which panels (and how many) to include on a page when the time came to sit down and plot the page out.  Now, I try to capture a logical sequence of action to “fit’ a single page.  A great example, I think, is the “I have had enough of you” page, and the following “jetpack ignition” page as well.  I would not have wanted to break that action sequence across multiple pages, especially if that meant starting it half way through one page, and ending it half way through another.  I’m trying to make careful, thoughtful decisions about what is going on in a single page.

So, as I said, this page was supposed to be 6 panels originally and I struggled with that for a day or so when trying to do the rough layout.  I could NOT figure out how I was going to fit Trebarg, the cats, and the dialog into 6 panels.  Not without making some dramatic concessions.  So, the next logical question was, how do I break up the page to make the new, individual pages, still work as individual units?  As it happens, the logical point of separation was the half way mark; 3 panels on this page, and 3 on the next page.  I absolutely hate talking about upcoming strips in any detail before we actually post them, so I’ll refrain from getting too specific as to why I felt that way, but I hope you’ll trust me

That being said, Powers’ comment is absolutely valid: these three panels absolutely could have been condensed into two with some success.  The action between panels 2 and 3 (which basically shows several of the cats pulling out knives) is fairly subtle.  I would still have some misgivings about fitting the dialog into two panels, but I probably could have made it work.    The problem then would be what to fill the remaining space with.  I could pull a panel from the next page, but that would leave me with only 2 panels for page 11, unless I started sucking panels in from page 12.  This would begin to affect the flow of the script, and how I’ve decided to break up the action from page to page.  Would anyone even notice besides me?  Probably not.

Suffice it to say, these are things that we really do put a lot of thought into.  On some days it feels like we have no time, and that we are churning these pages out at a breakneck pace.  As readers I can understand why it would feel slow and tedious between pages, but for us we are literally working on these every day.  We make decisions by the seats of our pants and hope that you’ll just bear with us.  But, feedback is always good, and I want folks to know that we don’t make even simple decisions, like how many panels to include, lightly.  Knowing what readers would like to see definitely factors in, though, so in the future I’ll try to work a little more outside my comfort zone to pack more into each page!

When we were working on page 9 of the Reboot to the Head saga, we really wanted to make the background feel like a real bar.  That meant filling the walls with the kind of stuff you’d see in a bar.   The first thing that sprang to mind for me was the Captain Morgan Poster that we’ve all seen like a million times.  Of course on a planet of feline aliens, we can’t have a normal looking Captain Morgan.  And so, Captain Felix was born.  You can spot him on the right wall, in the back of page 9.

I knew I was going to be needing the poster in several panels over the next few pages, so I drew it in a separate file, at fairly high resolution and quality.  Then Dave colored it, and added the textured “old parchment” background and border.  Dave was then able to insert the poster into the background and adjust for the perspective.  We had always planned on posting the full sized poster image today to give people something amusing to look at, but then Dave went above and beyond and made some really spiffy wallpaper, which you can find on the Goodies page.

Sorry that this isn’t more substantial.  I’m a bit distracted at the moment.  Either way, please enjoy!

So while we are on a bit of a break between chapters I thought that it would be a good time to talk about the first chapter a bit.

Bob and I have learned a ton over the last 8 strips. So much has changed since we first launched the strip back in 2000. Hardware, our methods of drawing and creating the strip, our methods of collaboration… It’s all very different from where we started.

We have talked about a lot of this again and again, but I thought that I would take the time to talk about each of the first eight Reboot to the Head strips.

Reboot 01

Well, of course I can’t find it, but this strip originally looked a lot different. Instead of a sleek, modern skyscraper that Phinn was busting out of, the first panel showed a window into a stone-walled building (looked like an old English cottage, or a classic Irish Pub). Second panel had the cracks on the window and the third panel was, well… blank at the time.

Bob redesigned and we get to see that these Cat-creatures-things live in a futuristic world with flying cars instead.

The first strip is the only one where we see a neon sign on the side of the buildings. Bob originally was thinking something like Blade Runner, I think, with neon signs all over the place.

Let’s be frank. It was too much work to try to put that amount of detail in, so we stopped with one. I’m pretty sure that the Neon Sign in the first strip says “Your Ad here” in Kitty-ese.

You will also notice that none of the buildings are lit, and there are nice reflections of the buildings across the street in this one. Maybe we are just very lazy.

Reboot 02

Not much else to say about the second strip that we haven’t already written here. Take a look at the Behind the Scenes page when you get a chance.

Reboot 03

This is the strip that nearly killed us. It looks pretty simple. but the problem is that while a lot is happening, the scene does not change all that much. It was a lot of tedium getting everything drawn and colored correctly so that it looked consistent. It also suffers from what a random internet person referred to as “Color-form” syndrome. There isn’t a lot of apparent depth of field because we are lined up perpendicular to the buildings in the background.

At one point I was blurring the backgrounds to create some depth of field. Below is a test of what that looked like.

We didn’t like it one bit.

You will also note that this is the first strip where we “lit” the buildings. It’s a great effect. It started to really pay off in the next few strips where we were able to put less detail into the buildings in the panels where it wasn’t as important and focus our time on the foreground.

The second panel here drove Bob nuts. He redrew it at least twice. It came out great in the end.

Reboot 04

I love the first panel here. I think that we just nailed it.

The second panel shows the less detailed, but even more effective, in my opinion, buildings in the background.

You will also notice in the second panel the brand of Phinn’s shoes. It’s a call-back to previous strips. D’OH brand shoes. Multiverse favorites!!!

Reboot 05

Not a lot to say here except that we forgot to add in the grapple-line falling in the last panel. Phinn in the last panel is a great drawing!

Reboot 06

Jetpack gets lit! I did about eleventy-billion versions of the color on the rocket nozzles. The final version is much cleaner and looks great.

The last panel was sketched by Bob on paper, captured on his handy-dandy iPhone camera, and added it to be digitally inked. Nifty!

Here is the shot of the drawing that we added in.

Reboot 07

The first strip that we missed getting posted on Friday. Darn Superbowl…

We were a bit slap-happy to get this one and 8 done as on-time as we could after we missed the strip 7 date.

We generally have versions of more than one strip being worked on simultaneously. While Bob was finishing up strip 7, I was doing some color on the parts of strip 8 that I could.

One of the cars there just looked to me like a Ferengi Marauder. In all fairness, it doesn’t but that “car” was sort of colored like one and was referred to as the “Ferengi” car from then on.

So, that sets us up for Strip 7 stupidness.

So Bob was worried about the last panel. In that panel, Phinn is bathed in light from oncoming headlights from the truck that ends up blowing him up in strip 8. (GOOD RIDDANCE SAYS I! TOO MANY COLORS ON THAT ONE!)

The concern was that it wasn’t obvious. Bob decided to put in the “sound” of a horn honking.

I decided to do it myself first. Take a look at the last panel. I also snuck in a new car design up in the first panel…

Bob then did me one better. Take a look at the first panel in the final version of the strip. A stylized Klingon Bird of Prey. Yeah baby!

Reboot 08

The last chapter, or as I call it, the one where Phinn goes Boom.

If you look under the truck in the first panel, you will see those pesky Ferengi.

Also, if you didn’t notice, take a close look at the last building on the right in the panel. Happy egg-hunting!

What… back so soon? Yeah. It’s obvious.

We have done it before and will probably do it again.

We hope that you enjoyed these strips.

Sorry about blowing up Phinn. It had to be done.

Come back soon to find out who we blow up next!

So, yes, Mass Effect blowed up my console, and it’s been about 2 years since I played through it, which has allowed me to remember it fondly, through rose tinted glasses.  I’d honestly forgotten about many of the aspects of the game that were annoying.  I will list some of them here:

• Planet exploration.  Blah!  Upon scanning some planets you would find that you could drop your ATV to the surface and explore.  And by “explore” I mean you could drive around aimlessly trying to fill in your map and find points of significance.  The points were sometimes a batch of enemies, or a building you could infiltrate and explore.  More often they were crashed ships or rocks containing valuable minerals.   If you’re a completionist, like me, this meant you spent about 95% of your time on any given planet filling in the map, and maybe 5% actually doing something useful or fun.
• Texture pop in.  I never understood how some games could have such lengthy load times and still not manage to load high quality textures.  Mass Effect was plagued with pop-in.  It seemed like every time you loaded a save game, entered a building, or walked around a corner your screen would be full of blurry, low rez textures that would slowely, one at a time, be replaced with the high rez versions.  Yuck.
• Inventory Management.  Like many other western RPGs, Mass Effect threw lots, and lots, and lots of items at the player.  Every corpse was lootable, and containers filled with treasures were everywhere.  Unfortunately, your team had a limited inventory capacity, so eventually you’d run out of space.  Then you’d be forced to compare the stats of similar items to try to decide which ones were worth keeping, and which you could reduce to goo to make room (the goo was used to upgrade your other equipment).
• Elevator rides.  This didn’t bother me as much as it did some others, but Mass Effect tried to hide its load times by forcing the player to ride elevators from one floor to another.  The next level would load while you watched your team standing idly in the elevators, sometimes for a solid minute or longer.
• Space Exploration.  Yes, I realize that, at its core, Mass Effect is a space opera RPG and a certain amount of exploration is expected.  But the starship “mini game” was bland, and boring, and seemed like a silly way to get from point A to point B.  In other RPGs wandering through the wilderness results in random encounters, which can yield experience and treasure.  Mass Effect seemed to be trying to apply that to space travel, but forced the player to visit star systems and individual planets to find encounters outside of the main storyline.  It’s just not the same.
• Moronic companions.  I had a really, really hard time playing through the first 90% of Mass Effect.  Late in the game I realized this was because my companions were idiots.  They would blow all of their powers on anything and everything, and refused to take cover.
• The Citadel.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  There’s very little to do there other than walk around and talk, which is great.  The Citadel is a fantastic lore dump that brings players up to speed on the Mass Effect universe.  It can also be long, drawn out, and boring.  Necessary in a first play-through, perhaps, but a huge barrier to fun in subsequent games.  It’s a giant black hole of boredom between missions.

All that being said, there was a lot that I loved about Mass Effect, not the least of which being the storyline.  Very epic.  Very well written.  Full voice for every line of dialog, and all of the voice acting top notch. I also enjoyed the game play, for the most part.  Once I figured out that I could turn off the “auto use powers” setting for my team, I really got much better at the epic battles.  Instead of having to reload and replay every fight 5 times to get past it, I was actually doing well and enjoying it.  I’ve always liked deep customization, too, so specializing in certain weapons and abilities to increase effectiveness and damage was fun, and biotic & tech powers were very satisfying.  Lots of levels, and lots of customization options also made a great role playing game even better.

Still, in the years since I’d last played, I’d forgotten a lot about the storyline, so it was kind of a blessing in disguise when I popped Mass Effect 2 in for the first time and if failed to recognize my saves from the first game.  Apparently I’d never saved after beating the game, or I had but then overwrote the save.  Thankfully I had a game saved right before the final battle with Saren, and I was able to replay through the last 25 minutes of the game.  This was a great reintroduction to the characters, and a refresher on how the story ended.

Immediately after playing through the opening sequence of Mass Effect 2, it becomes obvious that BioWare decided to take a sledgehammer to the game.  They fixed nearly everything that was “wrong” with the first Mass Effect, but in their quest to create a game that is more “shooter” than it is “RPG” they introduced as many problems as they fixed.  Additionally, the way that they chose to “fix” some things resulted in new problems that were just as bad as the original.

Wait.  Let me stop myself for a minute.  Mass Effect 2 is an incredible game. The storyline is even more epic and involving than the first game.  The twists, turns, and overall plot are incredible.  The new characters on your team even more interesting and involving.  The gameplay, while dumbed down significantly, is still pretty great.  The personalization, which actually builds on decisions you made in the first game if you import your character, is unparalleled.  The writing, dialog options, and voice acting continues to be off the charts.  I would not hesitate to recommend this game to anyone.  I would strongly encourage you to play through the first game first; some of the bomb shells in the second just won’t resonate if you don’t.  But regardless, Mass Effect 2 is one of the best games I have played in a long, long time.

So, yes, I loved Mass Effect 2.  The entire story, from start to finish, was absolutely superb, but the final act was absolutely great.  As I recruited each new character to join my crew I could not believe how attached I became to them.  Unlike other RPGs I actually agonized over who to bring with me on each mission, and routinely rotated through most of them.  Furthermore, walking around the ship and talking to the characters to probe them for more information about their feelings or their pasts was a pleasure and not a chore like it is in some other games.

But, I have to admit, I was disappointed with much of what is different about Mass Effect 2.  The creators of BioShock have repeatedly bent over backwards to insist that their game is a shooter.  System Shock 2, the spiritual predecessor of BioShock, was a first person RPG and is beloved as one of the best PC games ever made.  It was also a commercial failure.  Shooters, on the other hand, are popular!  The frat-guy crowd loves them.  So I don’t blame the BioShock guys for cutting away a lot of the RPG elements that made System Shock so unique and incredible in order to focus on the mechanics of making BioShock more like an FPS.  Similarly, the first Mass Effect game built on a long BioWare tradition of real time RPGs with deep, strategic combat that allowed the player to pause at any time, assign specific tasks to specific party members, and then watch the results play out in real time.  A system first pioneered in Baldur’s Gate, another game that is remembered as one of the best RPGs ever made, and was thrust into the third person with the original Knights of the Old Republic.  Since then, BioWare has applied the same formula successfully to Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect, but with Mass Effect 2 they pushed even farther from their roots in Baldur’s Gate and closer to typical 3rd person shooters like Gears of War.

How exactly did Mass Effect 2 do this?  A number of ways, really.  First, the way that powers & abilities work has fundamentally changed.  Using any one of a teammate’s powers resets the cooldown on all of the available powers.  This significantly dumbs down controlling your team as you can pause combat, assign them one action, and then more or less forget about them for the next 10 seconds.  I should note that your teammates are just as stupid, if not more dumb, than they were in the first game.  They often run into the thick of combat only to get gunned down in seconds, and there is no rhyme or reason to which powers they use when.  I admit that the first few times I heard Jacob say “Now nothing can touch me!” after throwing up a barrier, and then seeing him run into close combat only to get gunned down instantly, I laughed.  After that first few times, it stopped being funny.

Look, squad based shooters can be great, they really can.  If your team is highly scripted to do specific things, like in Call of Duty, or if they respond to simple commands intelligently, like in Republic Commando or Rainbow 6, then it can be an absolute pleasure to play with a couple of AI controlled team members.  But when the default action of your crew is to try to commit suicide as often as possible, and the game forces you to take fine tuned control over their abilities to get any utility out of them at all, it can be down right frustrating.  In many ways Dragon Age suffers from the same problems.  Even with the DA tactics system, something that is completely missing from ME2, I find myself having to take fine tuned control of the abilities and positioning of each party member, in every instance of combat.  Either that or I watch them blow all of their mana on stupid spells, and then die by running into a storm of fireballs.  In Mass Effect 2, I found myself forgetting that I even had team members in most firefights, choosing instead to take out all of the enemies myself.  If one of the AI crew members got lucky, that was a nice bonus.  Using the “unity” ability to bring partners back to life was a waste of medi-gel because, just as often as not, they would die within seconds again.

There are fewer levels to obtain in Mass Effect 2, with a level cap of 30, and the leveling system is dramatically streamlined.  Your crew still levels with you, regardless of whether they participated in recent missions or not.  Abilities are no longer separated into trees, where you must get ability X to a certain point before you can train ability Y.  Instead, you start with a specific set of abilities based on your template, each of which has 4 levels.  Each time you level you get skill points, which you can spend to improve one of your abilities.  By the time you reach the max level, all of your abilities will be maxed, or nearly so.  If you use the “auto level up” option, the game distributes the points evenly across your abilities, effectively increasing them all at the same rate.   You do get access to new abilities late in the game as you gain the loyalty of your crew, and they also get some new abilities as well.  But generally, leveling is a no-op; if you have enough points to improve the next skill in line, you do.  Otherwise, you wait until the next level.

Additionally, combat missions no longer award experience for accomplishments in the field.  You don’t get experience for killing enemies, hacking computers, cracking safes, or blowing stuff up.  Instead, at the end of each mission, you see a “mission complete” screen and are awarded a fixed amount of experience points.  Occasionally you will get bonus experience points for mini-missions, or based on choices you make in dialog trees.  But those are the exception rather than the rule.

The end result is that the majority of the gameplay plays out a lot more like a 3rd person shooter than the first Mass Effect.  You no longer worry about experience, inventory management, or exploration.  Maps are very linear, and other than assigning your squad to use specific powers or to take cover, in most cases you point and shoot.  It’s fun, to be sure, but isn’t implemented as well as other games where 3rd person combat is the focus.

As for the problems of the first Mass Effect, as I mentioned before, BioWare’s solutions are hit-and-miss.  Time for bullets!

• Miss! Planet exploration is gone.  Instead of driving your vehicle around the map using your radar to find points of interest, you have the “scanning” mini-game.  When you fly to a planet you are given the option to very…slowly…scan…the surface…for resources.  To do this you use a combination of analog sticks and the left and right triggers to find resources, and fire probes to collect them.  This is not the only way to get resources in the game, but it is the only way to get them in significant quantities, and therefore if you want to get all of the upgrades in the game, you must spend literally hours of play time scanning planets.  It’s fun at first, but after the 5th (or 10th, or 50th) planet, it gets really, really old.
• Hit! Texture pop-in is, thankfully, non existent.  Graphics in general are nicer to look at, a lot more solid, and a lot more stable.  Huge improvement here.
• Hitty Miss! Inventory management is gone.  There is also no longer a loot system.  In the rare cases where you find lootable corpses, weapons, safes, or containers in the field you are immediately rewarded with a new weapon, money, upgrades, or resources that you can use to build upgrades.   Weapons are permanently added to your armory, and will be available to any character that can use it.  You can equip them at the start of a mission, or whenever you find a weapons locker in the middle of a mission.  Salvage and resources are automagically “‘beamed” to your ship.  No muss, no fuss, no inventory.  At the same time, the deep, stats-based decisions of which weapons and armor to use are removed from the player.  Instead you get a generic message “this is an upgrade!”  Mostly, this is an improvement.
• Draw! Elevator rides are gone.  Instead, you get loading screens, sometimes for minutes at a time.  Is this better?  I don’t know how it would be.
• Miss! Space Exploration.  They managed to make this even worse.  Flying from system to system is still dull.  Random encounters are still non-existent.  Small planets and asteroids are just as hard to find as they were in the first game.  And now we have the added bonus of fuel, which limits the distance that you can travel without back-tracking to find a fuel depot to fill up again.  How do you make a boring, silly space exploration mini game even worse?  By forcing players to backtrack to the same spot 3 or 4 times before they can finish exploring a large system.  I like the idea of the galaxy map, but it is poorly executed here.
• Draw! Moronic companions.  Just as moronic as ever.  They still run into enemy fire and die instantly.  They still use their powers randomly, only now it’s more significant because using one power blows the cooldown on all of them.  To get maximum effectiveness you must still disable “auto use powers” and manage them yourself.
• Hit! The Citadel.  Thankfully this plays a much, much smaller role in the game.  Instead, there are several major locations throughout the galaxy, to which your party will journey multiple times to pursue the major storyline, or character related side quests.  There is still a lot of exploring, talking, and large swaths of areas where little or no combat is possible.  At the same time, however, these are dispersed much more evenly throughout the game, with missions and assignments in between, instead of being lumped all together in the first 25%.  Much improved!

So, what happens when you take a truly great game, fix some problems, overlook others, and introduce some more?  Well, if you also have an incredible storyline, unparalleled personalization, great characters, world class voice acting, and far better than average gameplay, you get Mass Effect 2.  An incredible game, with about 40 hours of play your first time through, and well worth your gaming dollar.

One last thing: buy it new.  New copies of the game come with a single use code that lets you join the “Cerberus Network.”   This will give you access to free downloadable content including new weapons, armor, characters, and missions.  If you don’t have this code (e.g. you buy the game used), you will need to pay a $15 surcharge to get access to the extra content.  In my opinion, this is a pretty clever and downright fair way to combat the plague of used game sales, and possibly piracy as well.

The Reboot to the Head storyline was not the first idea that we had for the relaunch of the strip.  We both agreed that we did not want to simply pick up where we left off.  I wanted to redo the art style, which wouldn’t work well with picking up a story mid stream.  Also, even though we had a lot of time and effort involved in that storyline, we had both long since fallen out of love with it.  I had some pretty grand plans (check out the comments on that last strip if you’re interested), but it was going to take a long time to get to the interesting parts, and we’d already lost interest in that arc once before.  There was no guarantee that we’d be able to stay motivated if we tried to pick up from there.

We knew that we wanted to start fresh.  Exactly how fresh was unclear.  Should we pretend that the original story arc never happened?  Should we write new strips as though the story had played out to its inevitable conclusion?  Perhaps we should do a series of 10-15 strips to quickly wrap up the storyline in a text heavy, almost “previously on Towne Pub…” format.  Maybe we’ll still do some of that stuff, but longtime readers will have picked up on the clues in the first new strip where Phinn directly refers to the events of the previous story arc, but he seems just as confused as the readers regarding what has happened.  The holes will be filled in as we move forward.

Folks who have decided to become fans of the Ye Olde Towne Pub Facebook Page will be able to see another direction that we had considered going.  In fact, we got quite far into development of this relaunch idea before abandoning it.  The idea was fairly simple: a total reboot that retells the entire Towne Pub story arc beginning with the very first strip retold as though Savage had never fallen through the portal to Dude’s planet.  This would accomplish a few things.  First and most important, we could begin telling stories that featured Phinn, Savage, and Trebarg, all together again.  Something that has not happened in the main continuity of the strip since that first strip back from March 31, 2000.   That’s right, other than the odd one shot, comic cover, or flashback, Trebarg, Phinn, and Savage were not together in the same strip at all, during the entire classic run, after that first day.   Weird.  Second, it would get us back into the Pub, so we could tell stories from the nexus of realities.

In the “Sketches, Roughs, and Behind the Scenes” photo album on the fan page, you can check out some of the work we did on that reboot idea, which we later abandoned in favor of the current series, which does almost none of the things that we wanted to accomplish.  Go figure.  Dave and I will both be posting status updates and other goodies via the page on a regular basis.  We’ve also linked the page with Twitter, so followers there will be kept informed as well.

Now, onto the next thing: the iPad.

The iPad is getting a bad rap.  Sure, it sounds like an electronically enhanced feminine hygiene product.  A few weeks ago, when I heard about the new Apple tablet on NPR, they said it would be called the “iSlate,” a name that I hated.  In retrospect, it seems like a much better choice.  Naming aside, though, this announcement has just stirred up a tremendous amount of animosity for some reason.  The biggest complaint seems to be that Apple did not make a case for the existence of the iPad; that it is simply a “big iPod Touch” and therefore has no place in this world.

Interesting theory, I suppose.  I’ve been an avid iPhone user and advocate for well over a year now.  I carry my iPhone with me everywhere I go.  I use it to call my wife and kids several times a day, sure, but I also use it to watch movies at the gym (yay for fitness equipment with iPod docks), listen to music at work, play games, surf the web, check my banking status, read e-mail, update facebook, manage my Google Calendar and even post blog entries here on this site.  Unlike my American Express card, I never leave home without it.  So, yes, the iPhone (and the iPod Touch) is a great, wonderful little piece of technology that puts a lot of power and entertainment in the palm of your hand.  It’s something that I consider an essential part of my day-to-day activities.  Apple really knocked it out of the park.

I also have a Macbook.  I’m interested, in the most casual sense possible, in developing iPhone applications someday in the future.   At least, that was my excuse for buying it.  What I really use it for is checking Facebook, playing FarmVille (yeah, yeah), and surfing the web while I watch TV.  I also use it to stream video to my TV sometimes when I miss a show and don’t feel like watching it on the small screen.

So, I have an iPhone, and I have a Macbook.  Why do I need an iPad?  Obviously, I do not need one.  But does it fill a niche?

I think it does.  Sure, I can surf the web and check my e-mail and Facebook from the iPhone.  But it’s got a 4″ screen.  Navigating web pages is an endless process of two-thumb-typing in a URL, scrolling to the approximate place of interest, zooming in, reading, zooming back out, scrolling around, clicking links (and fat fingering the wrong one sometimes), rinse, and repeat.  It’s awesome to have the internet in the palm of your hand.  You can’t beat the iPhone when you want to look something up while you’re standing in the middle of the grocery store.  But is it ideal?  hardly.  The screen is just too small to navigate the web comfortably.  Yes, you can make do, but there is a lot of scrolling and zooming.  E-mail is the same.  Typing a message that is more than a few sentences without making any ludicrous typographical errors (especially with the notorious and prudish iPhone auto-correct) should be an Olympic event.  Again: it is awesome to catch up on your e-mail quickly.  But is it ideal?  No.  Another example?  The calendar.  I love having my calendar with me wherever I go.  It is absolutely essential for me to manage my time day-to-day, especially with my wife at work and in class until 8pm 4 nights a week.  Without a calendar, I wouldn’t know where I needed to go, and when, on any given day.  I couldn’t plan dinner, let alone remember which kid had to go to which Girl Scout meeting and when.  But entering new events into the calendar, while convenient, is a total pain in the ass.  Again, lots of two-finger typing, annoying auto-correct, and scrolling all over the place.  Essential feature, but hardly ideal.  Anyone that has used the Kindle iPhone app knows that, when reading a book on the iPhone, you can choose between micro-font that’s impossible to read without squinting and holding the phone 3 inches from your face, or a more reasonable font size and 20 words per page.  Nothing makes reading more pleasurable than having to turn to the next page every 3rd sentence.  Watching video is also great…if you’re out and about, or have a TV with an iPod dock.  But watching an entire movie on a 4″ screen?  Not exactly the ideal viewer experience.

So what about the Macbook?  It’s great.  It’s also big, unwieldy, heavy, uncomfortably hot, and has maybe 2 hours of battery life between charges when streaming video.  It’s fantastic to use when there’s a desk or a table to pop it on, and a power outlet nearby.  I do use it while watching TV sometimes, but for all of the aforementioned reasons, it’s not ideal for simple, easy, around the home use.

That’s where the iPad comes in.  It’s a tablet, so there is no unbalanced, folding LCD screen and keyboard to manage.  I’m guessing it’s a cooler than the Macbook, which may be a moot point, because it’s small and light enough to hold in your hand without needing to rest it on your lap.  The screen has plenty of real estate, making web surfing, e-mail, and calendar management a lot more user friendly.  Full touch screen controls make scrolling, and navigating easier than the tiny iPhone and the Macbook’s touchpad.   It would be hard to argue that the larger screen isn’t much better than the iPhone for reading books and watching videos.  Being able to use all of the iPhone apps you purchased?  Great.  Sure, some of them don’t work very well on the larger iPad, but who can argue with backwards compatibility and portability as though it’s a bad thing?  Is the fact that the Nintendo Wii plays GameCube games a bad thing?  Obviously not.

I love my iPhone.  I love my Macbook.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t have the thought many times over the last year or two that, while they are great, they are not perfect for a lot of things.  I can very easily see the iPad filling that niche in between.  It’s small and light enough to carry around the house, and keep nearby when I’m watching TV or whatever.  It’s far more ideal for reading and watching portable video.  And the price is hard to argue with.  The 64GB model costs about the same as an iPhone 3GS without a 2 year AT&T plan.   Not to mention the fact that there are literally billions of people that don’t own an iPhone or a Macbook.  I see no fault in Apple marketing a device at them.

I’m hardly an Apple zombie, but I find the iPad to be a neat little gadget that will be fun and useful to have nearby while I’m puttering around the house.  It seems to me that what a lot of people wanted, was a full tablet version of the Macbook.  I’d like to see one of those, too.  But if/when Apple launches such a device, I doubt we can expect it to cost $500.  In the mean time, the animosity directed towards the iPad completely mystifies me.  You either see how such a device would be useful, or you don’t.  Feeling the need to attack the company because they didn’t offer a product that you want right now seems a little odd.  Maybe it’s just me.

Just letting you know about a few minor tweaks to the site. We have removed the links section over there on the right sidebar, and put in two new links to follow Towne Pub on Twitter and to become a fan of the new Towne Pub Facebook page.

We added a link to the menu bar at the top of the page to easily get to the latest strip without having to dig for a link in one of the posts.

Under each post and on each page you will find a Share This button to share content on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Email, Digg, Delicious, and so on.

Our resident writer and artist is having issues with the latest strip. At 10:31am he tells me that he finally decided that the strip kicks hiney.

At 10:36am, he comments on his post saying that it is not great and that a new version might go up.

What say you?

Update:

The pictures to the left of the post there are small parts of other strips. On the old, non-WordPress site, you could click on the images to see what strip they were from. Now you can again!

I just fixed up the DB (read, HACKED) and wrote (read, mangled) some PHP to make it happen.

If you were ever wondering why there was a giant Volton-looking dog robot that showed up here every once and awhile, click away and you can find out.

I also added two new portraits from two of the new strips.

Have a great weekend. If you see Bob, tell him to put down Mass Effect 2, and get inking!

Dave assures me that the problem is correctable, and he’ll get to it when he can.  As it turns out, he’s actually working at work today.  Or something.  So he can’t get to it right this second, which he would, if he wasn’t a selfish, cold hearted bastard.  Which he is.

In the mean time, you can view individual storylines without the clutter by clicking on the “Categories” shortcuts on the lower part of the left sidebar.  For example, clicking on the Reboot to the Head option on the sidebar will navigate to a new page that shows only the first four pages of Reboot, with the newest page on top.  You can use this, along with your browser’s handy dandy “back” button, to navigate from page to page.  Yes, it’s clunky, but it’s also only temporary.  Because, again, Dave’s fault.  The end.

We just made a couple changes which will fix a few broken things around here.

First, the associated Comic posts will show up here on the main page, so yay for that. No more double posting

Second, the archives are fixed now too. Feel free to go check out the Classic Towne Pub and the One Shots!

Come back on Friday for another new strip!