The Art of Thrilling Conclusions: Bioware's Mass Effect 3

In 2007, the first Mass Effect game was released.  It was published by the relatively unknown Microsoft Game Studios, and was exclusive to the Xbox 360 console.  Fast forward to 2012: amidst a massive amount of hype across social networks and YouTube, Mass Effect 3 was released (on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3) and concluded the trilogy that can very fairly be called “epic.”  As promised, Bioware has included an official female Shepard protoganist, and ultimately decided on a redhead (see my post from last summer, Mass Effect: Hair Salon).  As the only member of the ScreenFix staff who shared Bioware’s trailers on his Facebook with comments like “AHHHHHH!”, the responsibility falls to me to review the conclusion of the trilogy.  If you’re only here to find out if you should play Mass Effect 3, or if it’s worth the money, let me save you reading the rest of this admittedly lengthy review.  The answer is yes.  Go buy it and play it.  You will not regret the purchase.  For everyone else, here’s a breakdown of the game’s qualities.

The Summer Movie Season Is Upon Us

Well, we have officially sprung forward and as the days get longer and warmer, we here at ScreenFix are turning our attention to what really is important this time of year – the summer movie season.  Without further preamble, here are the films I am most looking forward to this summer.

2012 Summer Movie Fantasy League

If Ryan is writing his summer movie preview that means it is also time for the NSFW Podcast's Summer Movie Draft. In case you don't remember the draft from last year here are the basics. NSFW is a podcast on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech netcast network (TWiT.TV). Every summer (and sometimes the winter) NSFW runs a fantasy football style game with movies. The podcast's host bid on movies for their team. Followers of the show can play along. You get 100 points to spend on movies at the rates set by the host's bidding.

Here is how I picked the ScreenFix movie team. I looked over the list of films and took note of the points it cost to buy each film. This ranged from 9 points to buy G.I. Joe 3 to 60 points for The Dark Knight Rises. I then loaded up the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX.com) since people on the site basically do this year round. I compared the estimated earnings for all the films to their point value and picked out the movies with the highest points per dollar earned ratio. Admittedly I did tend to skew toward movies I personally was excited but I ended up with a team that HSX.com estimates will make over a thousand million dollars. I don't know if that will be enough to win, but I'll check back in here through the season and let you know how its going. If you're interested in following along I'll include some links below.

The NSFW Episode 2012 Draft Episode

The Draft Spreadsheet - Bookmark this to follow the progress of the draft

NSFW Draft Image created by Kid Lion

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going to see John Carter. To be quite honest I did not really know what to expect from the film. I was only tangentially aware of the John Carter franchise but it is difficult to be a fan of science fiction literature and not have at least heard the name in passing. I sat down with my oversized soda in a theater filled with more ten year-olds than I had expected, and after double checking that I hadn’t stumbled into a Lorax theater by accident, I prepared myself for whatever was going to happen on screen in front of me.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Group Review

If you deserve your nerd card, or have been awake at all for the past few months, you’ve probably heard of the latest cooperation between RPG giant Bioware and the Star Wars license holder, LucasArts. Star Wars: The Old Republic is far from the first Star Wars game, and isn’t the first (or even the second) Star Wars massively-multiplayer game, but it does break new ground as the first MMO title to divorce itself from the lore of the films, set firmly in the “Old Republic” era of Star Wars history (home of the Knights of the Old Republic games). Players choose to side either with the Galactic Republic or the Sith Empire, roughly (though not neatly) analogous to the Rebellion and Empire from the films, and then select one of four classes. In theory, adventure ensues.

A Review in Two: Awake

Awake is a new midseason offering from NBC that tells the story of Detective Michael Britten, a man who, after a terrible accident, finds himself drifting back and forth between two different realities.  In one world, a car crash has killed his wife and in another the same crash kills his son.  In both worlds, he loses a loved one and in both he must try to help a loved one to grieve.  The change between realities occurs when he tries to go to sleep so Michael dons a green bracelet to let him know he is in one world and a red for the other.  I thought the pilot showed a lot of promise, but in the interest of fair journalism I decided to correspond with a version of myself from another reality that did not like the show.  He will take on the moniker of Red Ryan and I will go by Green Ryan.