Buffy: Revelations

At the end of Season 1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer died. It didn't stick, but it did result in Kendra being called, and when she died, Faith was called. At the end of Season 2, Angel died. That, also, didn't stick, and this is the episode where everyone not named Buffy finds out about it.

Season 3 is an epic when it comes to love stories. You have Buffy/Angel, Xander/Cordy, Xander/Willow, Oz/Willow, Willow/Vamp!Willow, Giles/Joyce, Wesley/Cordy, and above all else, Buffy/Faith.  Okay, I kid, but only a little.

Case in point, "Revelations," 3.07. The episode begins with the Scoobies speculating on whether Buffy's seeing someone. The Slayer herself walks up, her arm around Faith...

"Really, we're just good friends."

No, that's Buffy's actual line.

Why, no, there's no subtext here.  It's not like Joyce's reaction to finding out her daughter was a Slayer was to ask "have you tried not being a Slayer?" or anything... No, Buffy and Faith are just really good friends who share a secret that makes them special but could also lead to them being persecuted (cf. 3.11 "Gingerbread"), and they hang out at night together. A lot. With phallic objects (cf. 4.10, "Hush").

Buffy: Revelations background

As I mentioned in the last post, I'd intended to touch on a few key Faith scenes in episodes like "Homecoming" or "The Zeppo." I've decided to expand on that a little bit by recapping at least the relevant bits of the episodes that fall between the ones I'm doing full reviews of. So here goes...

In "Beauty and the Beasts," Faith and Buffy are discussing Buffy's sex life (or lack thereof). "All men are beasts," Faith promises. Faith appears to be taking an interest in Buffy/Scott (I'll drop my insistence on finding lesbian subtext for these "interlude" posts - I mention Faith's interest in Buffy/Scott as a setup for her epic revenge on him on Buffy's behalf in the next episode).

Also, and this is supremely important for "Revelations"... "Beauty and the Beasts" concerns a series of murders that the Scoobies originally thing are being committed by Werewolf!Oz. Willow's immediate reaction: "Wolf-you, not you-you." Xander: "But it's not. It's not wolf-you, it's not you-you..." indicating that he also subscribes to the notion that Human!Oz is not responsible for the actions of Werewolf!Oz. (Possibly - he has another comment a few minutes later that's a little more ambiguous, but the gist of that one as well is, "Is it Oz's fault that [he's a werewolf]?")

Speaking of setups for "Revelations," Buffy runs into an extremely feral Angel, knocks him out and chains him up. Okay, I've gone from searching for lesbian subtext to finding flagrant bondage subtext. And yes, just in case you had to ask, yes, this episode was indeed written by Marti Noxon. I know a section of the fandom rags on her as "the woman who ruined Season Six." I prefer to think of her as "an obvious bondage enthusiast," seeing as the "Written by Marti Noxon" credit basically ensures that somebody's going to get tied up at some point during the episode. (Sidebar: the first Mad Men episode where I noticed her name in the credits did indeed have somebody tied to a bed. There's a point where coincidence just plain old stops.)

Buffy goes to the library to relieve Faith from Oz-watching duty (Faith's eager for the chance to get some slaying in) so she can research Acathla, the demon she had to more or less sacrifice Angel to. Giles gets the drop on her, so she pretends she only just had a dream. Giles says that even if Angel were completely feral from spending a century in the demon dimension, he might not be beyond redemption.

Faith immediately associates "horsing around" with "screwing."  And that's basically all we need to know from this episode.

"Homecoming" drops a couple of bombshells.  Scott dumps Buffy, and Xander and Willow are revealed to have feelings for each other.  Angel is getting better, in the sense that he can talk now. Buffy tells Angel that she's not going to tell the others that he's back, because they wouldn't understand that he's better.

It's common knowledge in the demon underworld, thanks to Mr. Trick, that there are two Slayers in town (although apparently they don't have any pictures of her, because all the demons mistake Cordy for her). When he knows that they're training, Xander says that Buffy and Faith are in the library "getting all sweaty," so it's not just me. Faith thinks that "some quality rage" gives you an edge. And then she suggests going to the dance with the now-dumped Buffy. Yeah. It's canon. (Okay, okay: she then suggests that they find a couple of studs and use them and discard them.) 

Buffy discovers that all of her friends are working on Cordelia's Homecoming campaign. Not the last time her good friends will abandon her. (Speaking of friends, this episode is probably the closest that Faith will come to being part of the Scoobies when she sabotages Scott's Homecoming by telling his date she got an STD from him.)

Buffy threatens to kill one human being, and becomes complicit in the deaths of two human beings by tricking them into shooting each other. We meet Allan, the deputy mayor, for the first time.  This will be important later.  And speaking of "important later," I think Jonathan (Inca Mummy Girl's almost-victim, "I just wanted a book on Stalin," Dip Guy) gets named for the first time. And Trick starts working for the Mayor (who says he's been the Mayor for "quite some time." He's not kidding).

"Band Candy" is an amusing episode featuring Ethan Rayne. Under the effects of some magic candy, the adults revert to teenage mentality. Giles's accent drops about three classes, and he has sex with Buffy's mum. In terms of ongoing stuff, Faith is absent, and Buffy has been lying to both Giles and Joyce about where she is (cuz she's spending time with Angel).

The "Revelations" review will be up later today. Cheers.

Upcoming schedule

Hokay so. I am very busy with law school stuff, I've never really held onto any sort of promise to keep the Daily Dose actually on a daily schedule.

Right now, as far as the blog is concerned, I have two pet projects: the Faith episodes of Season 3 of Buffy, and a re-read of A Game of Thrones. (I promised I'd finish it and I will.)  I am also working on a massive post about the Mass Effect trilogy that's less a critique of anything and more my personal favorite Xs, be they squadmates or missions or weapons or soundtrack snippets.

Do not expect any Doctor Who or Babylon Five material over the next month, as I do not believe I have any material with me that I haven't already reviewed. I may do a Farscape review or two. I have Season 1.5 of Caprica here, but my interest in finishing that is extremely low.

I have to do AGOT re-read blogs on Wednesdays and Thursdays. My schedule is just too packed to get through other stuff...

...to explain what I mean by that, I've got a working draft of my "Revelations" review already saved on Blogger, which I wrote basically from memory the day after watching the episode. I have to go back and watch the episode again with the blog open in the other window to make sure I didn't miss anything. That's 45 minutes; in contrast, I can burn through three AGOT chapters in about 15.

With that in mind, here is the schedule for the next two weeks.

Tuesday: Buffy: "Revelations"
Wednesday: A Game of Thrones  Bran III, Catelyn IV, Jon III
Thursday: A Game of Thrones Eddard IV, Tyrion III, Arya II
Friday: Buffy: Various insights to draw from "Homecoming," "The Wish," and "The Zeppo" (a full review of "The Wish" with mentions of a scene or two from the other two)
Saturday: Mass Effect Trilogy
Sunday: Buffy: "Bad Girls" and "Consequences"
Monday: A Game of Thrones Daenerys III, Bran IV, Eddard V, John IV
Tuesday: Buffy: "Enemies"
Wednesday: A Game of Thrones Eddard VI, Catelyn V, Sansa II
Thursday: A Game of Thrones Eddard VII, Arya III, Eddard VIII (skipping Tyrion IV for the moment)
Friday: Buffy: "Choices"
Saturday: A Game of Thrones Tyrion IV, Catelyn VI, Tyrion V, Catelyn VII (the entire Vale trip)
Sunday: Buffy: "Graduation Day"
Monday: A Game of Thrones Eddard IX, Daenerys IV, Bran V, Eddard X

Now, I think we all know there's not a snowball's chance in hell of me actually sticking to this schedule, but dadgumit I'm gonna try.

I've already decided to go out of the book's order for the Vale trip; I may decide on something similar for the King's Landing plot. If so, the number of chapters per day should probably remain the same.

If you're trick-or-treating early, you had better be going as The Doctor

I had to take some books back to my local library before heading back to law school.  I figured I could do this on the way. Ha ha, silly me.  Turns out the parking lot was jam-packed with cars and sugar-high suicidal children because apparently there was a trick-or-treat thing going on in town, four days before Halloween.

See, I'm crazy and old-fashioned enough to slave myself to a linear view of time, and I tend to think that holidays should be celebrated on the day on which they fall. I know. Silly me.

Speaking of holiday dates, did you know that Thanksgiving was moved from the final Thursday in November to the fourth one by FDR? See, he thought a longer Christmas shopping season would revitalize the economy.  I want to repeat this for emphasis. FDR, who never met a piece of overreaching legislation he didn't like, thought it would be easier to move the date of Thanksgiving rather than declare that the Christmas shopping season begins before Thanksgiving Day.

Think on that the next time you hear Christmas songs in a shopping mall the day after Halloween.

Buffy: "Faith, Hope & Trick"

"Girl's not playing with a full deck, Giles. She has almost no deck. She has a three."

Season 3 Episode 03

(This isn't so much a standalone review as it is the first in a long series of posts on the character Faith. I'll try to keep long-term spoilers to a minimum.)

At the end of Season 1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer died. It didn't stick, but it did result in Kendra being called. At the end of Season 2, Kendra the Vampire Slayer died. That one did stick, and now Faith is the "true" Slayer. Also at the end of Season 2, Angel died. That, predictably, didn't stick, and this is the episode where it is proven not to have sticked. Stuck. Whatever.

"Faith, Hope & Trick" introduces three characters to the show. Mr. Trick is a vampire who will be talkin' jive and doing the Mayor's dirty work until... well, let's just say there's a job opening.  Scott Hope is Buffy's rebound, who gets his own little mini-arc and can almost be completely ignored for the sake of this episode. But Faith...

As she puts it to Wesley in Angel's "Five by Five," would things have been different? If Giles had been her Watcher, or if X happened instead of Y... or was she always fated to end up the way she was by the time she disappears from the show(s) for a while at the end of "Sanctuary?" And is the character who returns in "Salvage" really the same character?

Right off the bat, we know that she's a "darker" character than Buffy is.  She's carrying around no more emotional baggage than Buffy is, but hers boils so much more closely to the surface.  And she is far more sexualized than any other human character on either show; she's introduced dancing provocatively, and immediately after introducing herself as a Slayer, she regales the Scoobies with a story that involves nudity, much to Xander's delight (post-"Consequences" Xander was unavailable for comment, alas).  Oh, and according to her, slaying makes you both hungry and horny; Buffy will only admit to the first one (blah blah Season Six blah blah).

Okay, the plot: There's a nasty vamp in town named Kakistos, who's apparently even older than the game-face-locked Master, because this guy has hooves in addition to a permanent game-face. He's after "the Slayer," and because he's introduced before Faith is, we're led to initially believe he's after Buffy. But no; he killed Faith's old Watcher (tore her in half, according to the Expanded Universe), and left Faith with some serious emotional scars.

Speaking of emotional scars, a running subplot of this episode concerns Giles's ultimately successful attempt to get Buffy to confess that Angel had been re-ensouled when she killed him.  Both Slayers are carrying around emotional baggage, both are told they need to put it behind them, both appear to do so at the end of the episode... and neither actually does.

Who Review: The Reign of Terror

...is phenomenally stupid, overcomplicated, padded, and schizophrenic.  Oh, and the animation on the two missing episodes for the DVD release is nothing to write home about.

So it's the Bloody French Revolution.  At this point in the series's history, we have to split everyone up, so the Doctor is knocked unconscious and Ian is locked in a separate cell from Susan and Barbara.  But he is locked in a cell with a guy who tells him to get in touch with a British spy named James Stirling, because Ian looks English and must therefore be a counter-revolutionary.

Stirling is undercover as Lemaitre, an official of some sort whose role is never clearly defined (he gets face-time with Robespierre but spends all the rest of his time hanging out in a prison, which already has a jailer), which is supposed to be a surprise, but a) Lemaitre is the only candidate, and b) Lemaitre's actions don't quite square with his "official" story, so something is clearly up. I will give the serial very reluctant credit for taking the usual "coincidence-driven escape" - that is, where Lemaitre, long before the reveal that he's Stirling, calls to the jailer to distract him at a crucial moment - and eventually using it as prove that Lemaitre is a good guy.

Anyway, Lemaitre/Stirling lets Ian go, ostensibly to track him and find out where Jailbreak Inc is headquartered.  In reality, he needs to know if Ian is against the Revolution before he helps him. Meanwhile, the folks at Jailbreak Inc have their own problem. Their names are Jules, Jean and Leon, and unfortunately Leon is the one who turns out to be a mole, so don't expect me to waste time telling Jules and Jean apart.

Meanwhile, the Doctor wastes one episode walking to Paris and getting waylaid by a work party, and another episode playing dress-up.  "Hello, my good sir, would you please give me that sash of office on the wall there, as well as a paper and pen with which I can forge my credentials? Thank you." Amazingly, the shopkeeper actually has a brain between his ears, but the person he tells is Lemaitre, who takes the Doctor to see Robespierre for, um, no discernible reason. 

You'll excuse me for skipping over the "exciting" part of the plot - that would be in the missing episodes, and I was distracted by the gratuitous crotch-shots the animators decided to give us. No, I am not making this up. Rather than attempt to recreate the shots as they existed in the original episodes, the animators decide to do basically everything in close-ups. And when characters sit down, for whatever reason we're treated to a close-up of a pelvis dropping into a chair.

The plot gets even dumber in Episode Six. Since Episode Five ends with the Doctor and Lemaitre dropping in on Jailbreak, Inc, and Episode Six begins with Lemaitre revealing that, yes, he is Stirling, you would think the story was over. No. Instead we have a pointless excursion to an inn so that somebody's cousin can put "Napoleon" on his C.V.  At least, that's the only reason I can think for it.

You cannot do Jeu des Trônes on a BBC budget. And, by the way, if you're going to try, you could at least make the filler as interesting as this.

Four out of ten. Three out of ten for the reconstructed version and its stupid animation.

IG2EUS: Iron Maiden

The Irreverent Guide To Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Iron Maiden:

Iron Maiden are, perhaps, the greatest band ever made. They are certainly the greatest band ever that is not the Beatles.

Their genre is Heavy Metal. Not Thrash Metal or Speed Metal or Power Metal. Just Heavy Metal. They are bloody famous for their epic songs and awesome harmonies. They also have, in the form of singer Bruce Dickinson, the single greatest singer in the history of music, ever.

They have made 15 studio albums. Only bassist Steve Harris and guitarist Dave Murray have appeared on all 15. Oh, and Eddie. Eddie the Head is their mascot. He may or may not be an alien, zombie, cyborg, or all of the above.

History
There are two ways of dividing Iron Maiden history into four blocks.

Method 1:

• Pre-Bruce
• Iron Maiden (1980), Killers (1981)
• Classic Bruce
• The Number of the Beast (1982), Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984), Somewhere in Time (1986), Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988), No Prayer for the Dying (1990), Fear of the Dark (1992)
• Minus-Bruce
• The X-Factor (1995), Virtual XI (1998)
• Re-Bruce 
• Brave New World (2000), Dance of Death (2003), A Matter of Life and Death (2006), The Final Frontier (2010)

The main advantage to this method is that it tells you who's behind the microphone. The major disadvantage to this method is that it doesn't give you the slightest  indication what's going on behind the scenes.

Method 2:

• Early Days (1980-1982)
• Iron Maiden, Killers, The Number of the Beast
• The lineup during this era was constantly shifting, adding guitarist Adrian Smith in 1981, singer Bruce Dickinson in 1982, and finally drummer Nicko McBrain in 1983.  None of these albums are exactly masterpieces, but by Beast it's clear that the band has found its footing.
• Classic Era (1983-1988)
• Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere in Time, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• With Bruce now freed from a provision of his previous band's contract and able to write songs, and Adrian firmly entrenched as a powerhouse songwriter, the band pumps out four absolutely essential albums.  Or rather, three: Somewhere in Time suffers from synthesizeritis (and was doomed to failure seeing as it was a lighter offering the year Metallica did Master of Puppets).
• Janick Era (1989-1998)
• No Prayer for the Dying, Fear of the Dark, The X-Factor, Virtual XI
• Adrian Smith quits.  Not to knock his abilities as a guitarist, but his songwriting abilities are missed more. Two albums later, Bruce Dickinson quits. Not to knock his songwriting abilities, but his singing abilities are missed more.
• Six-Piece (1999-Present)
• Brave New World, Dance of Death, A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier
• Steve Harris decides to put the band's best interests ahead of any personal beef he has with Bruce Dickinson. Bruce agrees to return only if Adrian does as well. Adrian, who is old friends with his replacement, Janick Gers, refuses to return if it means Janick has to go, so the band becomes a six-piece with Janick continuing to play a number of Adrian's solos live.

Notable Songs
You should know the following Iron Maiden songs by heart:

• Iron Maiden
• "Phantom of the Opera." If you added this song to the production quality of AC/DC's Back in Black, out the same year, you'd have the formula for the next half-decade of music.
• "Remember Tomorrow"
• "Iron Maiden." It's one verse and a chorus. First major use of the twin-guitar harmonies.
• Killers 
• "Wrathchild"
• The Number of the Beast
• "The Number of the Beast." Actually probably about a nightmare Steve Harris had. Has the exact same plot as a Nathanial Hawthorne short story. So, not exactly satanic. 
• "Hallowed be Thy Name." The. Greatest. Song. Ever.
• Piece of Mind 
• "Revelations"
• "The Trooper." Easily the most famous use of the twin-guitar harmonies. Based on Alfred Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
• Powerslave
• "Aces High"
• "2 Minutes to Midnight." The intro riff was borrowed by Adrian Smith from this song... written by his future replacement, Janick Gers. Small world.
• "Powerslave"
• "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Thirteen and a half minutes of your life you won't regret wasting. Also, you'll never mis-quote "nor any drop to drink" again.
• Somewhere in Time
• "Wasted Years." Adrian Smith's masterpiece.
• "Alexander the Great"
  
• Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• "Can I Play With Madness"
• "The Evil That Men Do"
• Fear of the Dark
• "Fear of the Dark." Do not go to an Iron Maiden concert if you haven't memorized the guitar fills. Everyone will be singing along to them. Yes, the guitar parts.
• Brave New World
• "The Wicker Man"
• "Brave New World"
• Dance of Death
• "No More Lies"

 

Where could Doctor Who go from here?

With Matt Smith's departure, hopefully the era of Doctor-Who-as-fairy-tale is over. True to the show's timey-wimey nature, I'm going to look backwards for ideas on where the show can go.

U.N.I.T. 
I'll be the first to admit I don't know what the show's budget is, but it seems like they're either on Earth or in a studio an awful lot. While I do miss the "disguise this quarry as an alien planet" approach that Classic Who often took, maybe it's time to acknowledge their budgetary limitations by having the Doctor settle down for a little while.


Now, obviously, it wouldn't be a direct throwback to the 3rd Doctor's era. Nothing would compel the Doctor to stay on Earth in the 2010s.  What if the Doctor were to discover some massive conspiracy spread throughout all of human history? (Like, say, Scaroth from City of Death.) Maybe you wouldn't keep him in one time, but you'd give him a reason for never leaving Earth.  Each episode would only have to be tangentially tied into this arc, a la the Key to Time (Season 16).

And what if the companion didn't travel in the TARDIS? What if the time frame is roughly 1968 through 2038, and the Doctor interacts with the companion at various points in his* life?

*Yes, the companion here has to be a guy, which means there would indeed be a usual female "what's that, Doctor?" character. The reason for this is simple: in addition to doing the "what's that, Doctor?" routine, the companion also has to be eye candy.

And yes, I'm basically saying "Do River Song again, but right this time." Making River a time-traveler was a mistake. It made her and the Doctor's timeline about forty-two gajillion more times complicated than it needed to be.  

Robert Holmes
When Bob Holmes was the script editor (1974-1977), the show was frakking awesome. You had Genesis of the Daleks. You had Pyramids of Mars. You had, above all else, The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Now I'm not suggesting you put white guys in yellowface, but you could do the "Hammer Horror meets sci-fi" shtick that Holmes kept doing. Make Doctor Who scary again (inasmuch as a hideously fake giant rat and The Phantom of the Opera on videotape could be scary).

Cartmel Masterplan/Early Hartnell
Moffat's not going to do this because he's on record as hating the Cartmel Masterplan. I think. That isn't going to stop me from pitching it because this is my blog and I'll say what I want.

After 11 regenerates into Sir Swears-A-Lot, he disappears for a while. Yeah that sucks for Jenna-Louise Coleman, but... what's going on with her again? Has all the mystery been sucked out of the Doctor such that he must be surrounded by infinitely more interesting companions? Between Amy The Girl Who Waited and Clara The Girl Who... Died A Lot, it seems like The Moff has forgotten that the whole damn point of the companion is to be Arthur Dent.

Anyway, drop him in on some new guy. And girl. And make the guy and girl an item. Get as far away from the mold of the last three Doctors-as-chick-magnets as possible. So these new companions have to discover the Doctor for the first time. And as they do, we the audience are slowly cued in to the fact that this is not the same guy we're used to, either.  He's one death away from the Valeyard. (I swear, that fact alone gives this so much potential.) If we're really ignoring the 13-life-limit, this is going to be around the time the Doctor works his way around it.  He's been reunited with that shell of himself that got Chestbursted during the Time War. DO SOMETHING.  Make the Doctor unfamiliar again.

Do the same damn thing you've been doing since 2005
Excitable Nerd Who Helps People.

Because it works. Ugh.

Weekend Song: Leave This Town

My next guitar project

On videogame difficulty, part 2: the difficulty setting

I should point out that I'm really not going anywhere whatsoever with this. It's a big long ramble without any real editing, and is thus probably the purest look into the warped enigma that is my brain. You're welcome.

It's nice that video games these days (and by "these days" I mean "going back at least to whenever the hell Half-Life came out) have difficulty settings.

As a general rule, when I'm feeling smugly superior about my video-game talent, I like to classify difficulty settings in the following way:

• The highest setting is "Hard."
• The next-highest setting is "Normal."
• Everything below that is "Tiny Baby Mode."

So this holds true for, say Starcraft II and Mass Effect 3.  But it's mainly a joke for myself.

Where am I going with this: let's start with the thing that inspired me to write this post, Half-Life. Having beaten Half-Life 2 (having beaten it more than once, if you count "skipped Ravenholm" as still having beaten it), I figured I could handle Half-Life on the "Normal" setting.  Now, as it happens, Half-Life has three difficulty settings: Hard, Normal, and Tiny Baby Mode Easy.   And on Normal, every enemy is a bullet sink.  I'm pretty sure the ammo pickups are the same, but...

Fairly early on in the "Office Complex" level, for example, there's a security guard who gets attacked by a zombie. If you can keep him alive, he'll open a door for you that gives you a metric ton of shotgun ammo. The problem being, as I mentioned above, every enemy is a bullet sink on Normal.

So that's pretty clever.  The level design is exactly the same, but you're still less likely to get ammo if you play on a higher difficulty.

My problem with Half-Life's difficulty settings is this: Tiny Baby Mode is too easy (well, at least until I got to Blast Pit - now I have C'thulhu's drummer to contend with, and that's not going too well), but Normal mode is too hard. (Yes, I know, I suck at life.) There's really not an in-between setting that is a) enjoyable, and b) challenging.

I love Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 for having the Veteran difficulty setting, between Normal and Hardcore. Once you're on Hardcore... I'm not going to say it's too hard, because I've beaten every game on Hardcore, but it certainly starts to suck the fun out.  In ME1, everyone gets the Immunity ability and becomes a bullet sink.  In ME2, everyone gets some form of protection. In ME3, it seems like the differences are: your weapons do less damage and their weapons do more damage, and that's it. Now, I enjoy a difficult firefight and a feeling of accomplishment (note to Valve from the Half-Life 1 era: accomplishment, not plain blind luck), but bullet sinks don't really provide that.

...my point there is that ME1 and ME2 have Veteran, which hit that sweet spot of "being more difficult than Normal without sucking the fun out."

ME3 lacks this, because Normal is supposedly now Veteran, but because of certain new mechanics (namely tech explosions and a rework of AP ammo), it doesn't seem as difficult as ME2's Veteran. (Actually, this is probably due to the other mechanics I mentioned in Part 1; I would imagine that ME3's Casual is easier than ME2's casual as well.)

All of that said, I am currently working through ME3 on Insanity and enjoying the hell out of it. I would not want to do this for every playthrough, because I don't think it'd be possible as some classes (cough Vanguard cough*) but also because sometimes I play Mass Effect more for the story than for the challenge.

*To explain that for the uninitiated: on Insanity difficulty, with your shields down you die in about two hits. Vanguard's main strategy is: 1) teleport directly into your enemy's face. 2) Use "Nova," an ability that damages all nearby enemies and knocks weaker ones off their feet... by completely draining your shields. 3) Roll around frantically waiting for the teleport ability to recharge. 4) Repeat.


And then there's Dragon Age: Origins, which just takes the model and beats it to death with a crowbar.  On Casual mode, your spells don't damage your allies. On Normal mode, they do. And you'll run out of health potions much more easily. And... well, see the point with Half-Life and ammo, above. Having to spend more money on health potions means spending less money on the top-tier items. (By the way, BioWare took notice: "Normal" on the console is about as hard as "Casual" on the PC.)
Let's see if I can make something resembling a coherent point here: There are certain points in certain video games where I find myself saying, "I am not having fun." (Cough the Haven mission from SC2, cough.) I like challenges. Especially if those challenges come with rewards for beating them. When playing all the way through the Mass Effect trilogy, I have to decide whether to play Mass Effect 2 on a challenging difficulty (and therefore enjoy it), or play on Normal and burn through the game as fast as possible, being fairly bored for 20 hours, in order to get to ME3 as fast as possible. I really appreciate having a difficulty setting that sits right in the sweet spot between "enjoyable because I can win" and "enjoyable because it's a challenge."

On video game difficulty, part 1: Mechanics

In my opinion, Mass Effect 2 is the most difficult of the three Mass Effect games.  This is mainly down to two separate but overlapping reasons.

• Excessively long universal cooldowns
• Limited ammunition

The first game is a cakewalk if you are, say, a Sentinel. You have Electronics, which passively boosts your shields, you have Lift and Throw and Stasis, and you have a pistol with unlimited ammo.  Lift, Throw and Stasis are all on separate cooldowns so you can basically always have access to one "instant I-win button."

Now, Mass Effect 3 has a very interesting - and by interesting I mean I really hope it makes a repeat appearance in Mass Effect 4 - mechanic in that, the heavier your weapon loadout is, the longer it takes for your abilities to cool down.  You can subvert this all to hell by, say, grabbing two really really light weapons, getting -200% cooldown time, and then running around spamming Cryo Blast and Overload on everything to wipe everything out.

However, in ME2 and ME3, cooldowns are now universal (and egregiously so in ME2 - even ammo and grenade abilities triggered the cooldown), meaning you can't spam all six/seven abilities at once.

I get that - your omni-tool or bio-amp needs time to recharge (but again, wouldn't Sentinels have separate cooldowns for tech and biotic abilities? And I never understood how the Soldier's abilities fit into this scheme - in what way is Concussive Shot based either on the omni-tool or the amp?)

(I would like to just note that I prefer the Tech Armor mechanic of the second game to the third. But that - and the extremely overpowered Mattock when you have Adrenaline Rush on - are the only two ways in which ME2's gameplay is superior to ME3.)

Now back to ME2. You don't have any way to modify your cooldown times (yes, there's a DLC helmet that gives you +5% cooldown reduction, but 5% is nothing), everything's on one timer, and ammo pickups don't give you as much. This is especially noteworthy if you're playing as an Infiltrator - you're utterly dependent on spamming Tactical Cloak as often as you can for the massive damage boost it gives your sniper rifle, and yet your sniper rifle only carries ten shots and each thermal clip gives you only a shot or two.

Now, even this isn't as bad as, say Half-Life. Dear God, Half-Life. You have no idea how much this generation is just being babied by their games. Tell you what. It's $4.99 on Steam. Stop what you're doing, go buy it, play it on Normal, and come back after the first time you die.

Well, that didn't take long. Where was I?

Right. You're not expected to run out of ammo at any point across the entire Mass Effect trilogy, except perhaps during the first part of the Citadel DLC. (Oh, you were a Soldier who rushed into that DLC the moment it became available and spent all his points on Adrenaline Boost and the ammo powers, so you don't have grenades or Concussive Shot? Sucks to be you.) Even so, the second game - and only the second game - encourages you to save ammunition if you're an Infiltrator (or if you're a Soldier with the Mattock).  You are not required to play the game that way, because there are other classes with different strengths.

Turn around and you've got Half-Life, which is entirely a rail-shooter. There is no leveling up. There is no "other way to play the game." If you suck at dodging tripwires or navigating ledges in a 1st-person POV, you are going to have a bad time. And on Normal difficulty, every enemy turns into a bullet sink. So, uh, aim true.

To be continued...