When that one woman said "This made me feel old. What happened to Atari and Pac-man?" I felt like slapping her. Seriously, when people have been living in a cave and are absolutely clueless about video games, they have no right to even discuss video games like they have any idea what they are about.

If I never see Cooper Lawrence's smug face on TV, I will be glad. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this woman is a liar whose arguments are full of fallacies. And the smug anchors, with their "I'm old! What happened to Pac-Man? Nonetheless, I'm going to opine about this and say that Mass Effect is the worst thing ever!"

Goddam, that was a frustrating clip.

My favorite part was Lawrence saying "Just as videogames can desensitize people to violence, it can desensitize them to sex" as Shephard is blowing away Geth on screen. Yeah, ignore the 50 hours of violence and focuse on the 2 minutes of sex because you know that if you focused on the violence, you'd have to focus on the violence in every videogame, and that would demonstrate just how laughable your position is.

And again, I know I'm not telling anyone here anything they don't know, but the guy from IGN (or wherever) was exactly right -- you don't get to the sex unless you build a relationship with the character over the course of the game. Which means this game is doing the exact opposite of what Lawrence claims. It's not teaching the player to view a woman as a sex object. It's teaching them that sex is the consumation of a long relationship where you get to know someone in depth before things get physical.

The funny thing is that these things usually don't bother me. Media attacks on video games is nothing new, and honestly, while the uproar over say Grand Theft Auto was ridiculous too, at least the media was generally accurate about what the game was about.

But Mass Effect? Talk about a huge mis-representation of the game and an obvious lack of research. At least the anchor admitted that she went and watched multiple videos about the game. The other guys just made blanket statements. Ugh.

I wonder how many times you would have to play this to really see everything. On my first playthrough for some reason I didn't get Liara until very late in the game and she was acting all crazy, asking me if I was real or a hallucination. This time I went straight to her and she was normal.

And to get the ally completionist you have to use the same people on EVERY mission?? That stinks, I thought it was just the majority of the missions....

It's funny how only the big name games get media attention. A little known game called The Witcher was just released on PC. It has A LOT of full nudity (the European version does; the US version is censored), but I have seen no media comment on that. Sure, it is censored in the US, but seeing as it is a PC game, I bet someone will eventually hack it and remove the censors. There is a screenshot of a fully nude dryad on mobygames.com if anyone is curious.

I hope this boosts sales for the game.

And yes you need the same people on every mission and a good majority of side missions.

So I finally got around to beating this. Still don't see what the fuss is about. The story was significantly less interesting than in Knights of the Old Republic, and the whole universe feels so faceless. I'm trading my copy in tomorrow towards the purchase of No More Heroes.

Beat this last night on Casual. Took about 26 hours of play time and I made it up to level 47. I tried to do all the side quests but didn't know I'd entered into the final stage of the game until I was deep into it, and didn't have the chance to go back and finish my other quests. I'll do them on the second go through.

This was the first game I've played to completion since my NES days when I beat Dragon Warrior and Mega Man 2.

In response to some other hidden inquiries earlier in this thread:

Looks like EA is calling out Fox for their report on Mass Effect. This is pretty cool:

http://kotaku.com/348187/ea-calls-fo...t-inaccuracies

I never thought I'd say it but Kudos to EA!

Seriously... I'm sick of the news media always dumping on video games. You see way more inappropriate content watching an hour or two of network television than you do in Mass Effect.

I kind of have to agree. I really enjoyed it when I first started, especially on the Citadel. But the combat system, and specifically going to any planet other than the main quests ones, is boring and repetitive. I mean they couldn't even design more than 3 facilities to go into (The caves, the one story building, and the two story building)? I really enjoy talking to people, but I get the feeling 3/5 of the responses are the same thing. I choose one and he says one of the other ones.

Yeah they really didn't budget for the side quests in ME. I would say that the side quests are better developed in almost any of their other games. The absolute saving grace is that you can ignore the side quests entirely and miss out on very little. Also, the items and loot you get in the main quest is more than enough to thoroughly equip your party. The rest of the game is quite excellent, although short.

Anyway, I'm playing through a 2nd time, and doing all the extra quests that I skipped first time round, but man is it painful at times.

Btw, I realise now that the Renegade thing isn't quite as stupid as some reviewers made out. It actually is quite different from the Dark Side / Evil Alignment of their previous games. Basically your end goal is nearly always the same regardless, whether you are following the Renegade path or Paragon path. Just the dialog and scenes play out differently, sometimes in quite an interesting or entertaining way. Anyway, for me this gives more genuine role playing opportunities than the "Save the baby"/"Bite off it's head" choices in other games that try to do good/evil.

Fox News knew what it was doing - Sex sells in news media too... any story about sex gets more viewers. Say the words "sex" or "nude" or "naked" and ratings jump. They report that it's bad because core Foxnews viewers are scared of children being exposed to sex, so it's a red alert double whammy. It doesn't matter if it's true (not much on Fox News is true) as long as it's entertaining or interesting.

I agree, as well. I enjoyed the main quests, but the side quests were mostly boring as well as the planets. They were all barren and boring. I was going to try to play through it again, to get some achievements, but thinking about doing the side quests again made me stop. The conversations were the best part of the game. I prefer KOTOR's semi turn-based combat, and characters to ME's though. I'm also having more fun playing The Witcher on PC. The world in that game seems more alive than ME's, and the quests are more interesting to me. I also like that it's choices aren't always good vs evil, but more gray, and evil vs lesser evil, with consequences to your choices later in the game. I liked Mass Effect, but it could have been better.

Looks like Quack psychologist Cooper Lawrence is having her books reamed on Amazon.com

Read about it on Kotaku... http://kotaku.com/348355/quack-gets-...rating-spammed

That's awesome.

Here are a couple of my favorite "reviews":


Simply stated, the author attempts to make insightful points, but each of these points gradually spirals into a sordid, explicit sexual metaphor. The sheer attention to detail leaves the reader confused and dumbfounded. What's worse is that the author is clearly marketing this book to children.

and

5.0 out of 5 stars
A thrilling autobiography of a woman's sexual awakening., January 24, 2008
By Sherman Lawrence

Cooper Lawrence is to be commended for this candid and graphic exploration of her extensive sexual experience. From her early teenage years working at "Uncle Sherman's Bestiality Ranch" in Las Cruces, to her latest exploits as a media prostitute for Fox News, with many hilarious and vividly described chapters in between, Ms. Lawrence is never afraid to "bare it all."

The "goat slapping" chapter was particularly good.

I think the included pornographic DVD and "spank rag" were nice touches. The rag is a bit small, but not enough to keep this book from getting five stars and a place on my bookshelf next to my well-worn copies of Hustler.

If you love graphic sex, you'll love this book.

Most of these "spams" are actually pretty clever.

If only you could decide what happens during sex. I'd pick anal.

So ridiculous. You see more skin in a Girls Gone Wild commercial on late night TV.

Saw more nudity in FOX's highly marketed new Terminator show then in Mass Effect.