This article was originally published on April 3, 2012. We're bumping it up for Mass Effect week. For a different view on Mass Effect 3's malleable ending, check out Stephen's take.We should have known the conclusion would be trouble. Ending a game like Mass Effect 3 poses a special set of problems, because a central attraction of Western RPGs is that their systems respond to player choice. Mass Effect and its like are the classic case of games that generate stories through collaboration betwe…

This article was originally published on June 6, 2012. We're bumping it up for Mass Effect week.Like almost every other game, Mass Effect 3 has official subtitles. But that's not what we're looking at today. No, what you're about to see is what happens when people record themselves playing Mass Effect 3, upload videos to YouTube then let Google's service try and guess what's being said on screen.It, um, doesn't always get things right.Sure, of the tens of thousands of lines of dialogue to be…

This review was originally published on Kotaku on January 26, 2010. To celebrate Mass Effect week, we're bumping it up!What kind of man (or woman) has intergalactic hero Commander Shepard become after saving the universe from the Reapers in Mass Effect? That's all up to you in BioWare's Mass Effect 2.Shortly after the events in the original game, Commander Shepard comes down with a serious case of death, but death is only the beginning in Mass Effect 2. Reconstructed by the mysterious Cerberu…

This post was originally published on Kotaku on August 28, 2009. To celebrate Mass Effect week, we're bumping it up! What if Mass Effect was multiplayer? What if there was a way to get a taste of that, even if it was just in a solo mode? Now, strangely, there is.Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station is the barely-hyped second downloadable expansion for BioWare's 2007 sci-fi game, a brief, belated and broken extra for a game already bursting with content.It's an expansion about which I have more negat…

There are two reasons the console port of Diablo III, announced by Blizzard last month and shown off at PAX East this weekend, could be the definitive version of the game.The first reason is obvious: you can play offline. You don't have to worry about server errors or Time Warner Cable while playing this incarnation of Blizzard's action-RPG.Reason #2 is harder to understand without getting your hands on the PlayStation 3 version of the third Diablo, but it becomes obvious almost as soon as yo…

It's no secret that Nintendo has had a major problem marketing the Wii U. Most non-gamers (and even some gamers) I speak with have no idea that it even exists. Even Jimmy Fallon couldn't quite figure it out—and he was supposed to be showing it off that night.Now Nintendo has apparently ramped up its efforts to explain just what the hell that big, glaring "U" means with the posters that GTTV host Geoff Keighley spotted and Tweeted about at PAX East today. "Why Wii U?" the ad reads, followed b…

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Back in the era when playing an MMO was an all-or-nothing proposition, choosing a final logout location could be an emotionally overwrought event. Today, however, players drop in and out of games with regularity. We may skip patches or even expansions that don't particularly appeal to us. We may temporarily step out of Azeroth to focus on real-world goals. We may fall out of love with a character and pick up an alt, only to return months or even years down the line.Even so, I confess to remai…

It is absolutely official, now -- I have no idea how the Aspects actually came to be Aspects. For that matter, Tyr's purpose seems to be just as mysteriously vague. However, there was far more light shed on both questions in part four of Dawn of the Aspects, now available for a variety of e-readers. Despite the muddied waters of draconic origins, it is apparent that more of these mysteries will be answered in full by the time the fifth and final installment rolls around.What did we know, to…

What's the best way to get Lesser Charms of Fortune every week? Although Blizzard recently reduced the amount of Lesser Charms of Fortune players need each week (by lowering the requirement for the weekly quest Mogu Coins of Fate from 90 charms to 50 charms) we've still got to get them somewhere. So what's the best way?Prior to patch 5.3, it seemed like everyone was swearing by pet battles. Players were claiming they'd earned hundreds to thousands of Lesser Charms just killing critters in Sto…

I can't remember the last time we ran this video, which is a shame since it's one of the breakthrough machinima hits that brought the hobby to the masses. And by the "masses," I mean me. One of Oxhorn's biggest hits, ROFLMAO remains as hilarious to this day.Enjoy a few moments of silly WoW song. Sorry if it gets stuck in your head all weekend. Then again, it's better to have in your head that Tik Tok. ROFLMAO!Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here o…

View PollSo, the new patch has been out for a few days now, and one of it's more touted features -- heroic scenarios -- has left us here at WoW Insider all scratching our heads a bit. See, surprisingly, there's no Dungeon Finder option to queue for them, meaning that currently the only way to do them is to get a premade group of three and zone into the scenario from its Azerothian starting point. Talk about a blast from the past! Suddenly visions of Shattrath trade chat in 2009 whirl before…