Commander Shepard and Captain Planet

Mass Effect 2

System: Xbox 360

Developer: BioWare

NA Release: January 2010

Back when neon was king and Paula Abdul was coherent, environmental matters were an issue of great media attention—by which I mean exploitation.

The global warning debate barely garners a yawn on the airwaves anymore, but the '90s bombarded us with tons of bright, whimsical shows and games that fell along the same general lines: Nature good! Big greedy dirty corporations and their machines bad! Evildoers—you could tell because they were ugly and often voiced by Tim Curry—sought to take over worlds by pillaging them of their resources and overrunning their dry, smoggy husks with metallic contraptions. These plans, of course, would be foiled in extreme '90s fashion by wildly colored characters like Captain Planet, Sonic the Hedgehog and Widget the World Watcher.

You know! Widget! The World Watcher? Ah, forget it.

Setting things in space does change things significantly. In the Mass Effect series, the metal of ships and stations becomes a primary means of life, with the natural settings of planets mere specks compared to the grand void of it all. Still, I had to muse how the influence of environmental messages has seemed to wane as I shotgunned probe after probe onto every planet I could find to satiate the game's never-ending demand for natural materials.

Mining in Mass Effect 2 is a simple matter of scanning planets from orbit and firing probes onto locations that spike the readings. Whatever needed materials are found there are automatically added to your store. Ores include Irridium, Platinum, Palladium and “Element Zero,” which is probably what powered Ma-Ti's heart ring.

Even he knows his useless ring's going to get him hurt.

On the surface, probing is a fun little mini-game, but go deeper and the propensity for environmentally based backlash rises right along with the likelihood of making dubious metaphors. For a series that enjoys delving into moral quandaries so often, I'm surprised I haven't come across any sort of tough choices in this department. Firing probes at a planet from space can not be the safest means of exploring. Many of these planets are noted as being inhabited, so it would only be a matter of time before you hit something important. It's much the same reason they banned lawn darts, only now you're playing it in someone else's backyard with stakes the size of the Eiffel Tower.

"I'll build on that Palladium deposit!" I said. "Who's ever going to need Palladium?" I said!

And how do the materials instantly transport to your ship? It doesn't look like the universe has teleporters yet or else you'd be Star Trekking all up in this place. I can only imagine a long, Dr. Seussian hose snaking out of the Normandy and onto the planet, sucking all the elements up while fluffy Neptunian dodos or what-have-you shriek and flee in terror.

Of course Mass Effect shows that the universe has a lot of gray areas, but when my '90s kid mind sees me hopping from planet to planet, depleting planets of their metals in order to fabricate weapons and war machines, I'm suddenly Dr. Shepbotnik. I just can't get around it.

Perhaps I've missed a scene where mining is brought into question or one is coming my way, but I think it would be an interesting subplot. Trust me, though; even if it's not, this definitely isn't the end of the world for me. I can only shudder to think of what Mass Effect could have been if media's extreme '90s environmental push was still alive today. We could be playing some cross between Star Fox and Awesome Possum.

Remembered so it may never happen again.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the Unbreakable Armbreaker

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Capcom
N.A. Release: November 2011

I should have known better than to go online with Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

You can probably find no greater disparity between casual and advanced players than within the realm of fighting games. Coming across a serious fighting gamer as a novice is like showing up to a chess meet and sending your first pawn out, ready to have fun and learn. Then you're unable to do anything but sit back in shock as your opponent somehow manages to capture all your pieces, kill your king, and ban you from ever coming back in one move.

You will feel violated.

Whereas many other games have some sort of reactionary element to them, providing more of a chance for beginners to get the upper hand now and then, fighting games operate on a strict, formulaic system that players can analyze and take advantage of, finding inescapable combos that will destroy your character while you might as well drop the controller and go to the bathroom.

And hey, that's all fine if you're only playing others like yourself; those who spend nights studying matches on YouTube, building character tiers and practicing the timing of your button presses. But a big problem--and one that alienates fighting games more than many other genres--is that many of the pros will use their techniques indiscriminately. Or, worse, they get pleasure from wiping up noobs who just want to try things out.

Our high school had the "games expert," which at that stage of life means being the kid with access to enough parental funds to have an impressive library of games. He became a fighting guru, and on one field trip we had a layover stop at a mall, which meant an arcade. He invited people to challenge him to Mortal Kombat 4. Some of us did, and he beat us all. But was it impressive? Not in the least. He beat a bunch of kids who openly admitted they haven't played the game much by literally repeating the same unblockable arm-breaker move on everyone until they died. Eventually we learned trying to play with him was the opposite of fun.

You can have a longer, flashier-looking combo, but if it's all you use to defeat an opponent, you're not really much better than my high school example. There are people who play to master the game and again, that's cool. But there are also people who like to play because they love the design and characters. It's not hard to identify the players like us. We're the ones who are unashamed to use fighters like Rocket Raccoon or Felicia.

This is the only image of Felicia I found on the internet that I felt morally confident in posting.

So pros, how about it? The next time you see you're facing someone online with a 0-10 record (I know they exist because I am one), how about taking that opportunity to try some new things with the game instead of using your same old memorized combos to pulverize them? Doesn't it get boring doing the same thing over and over? Doesn't it kind of deaden all the creative elements the developers built around the system you love to manipulate? Wouldn't it be nice to let someone else actually feel like they might be able to win for a few moments; let them have some actual fun? It might encourage them to get into the game more and become a real challenge to you, instead of having them rage quit and go back to Super Smash Bros.

I may get labeled a button-mashing whiner for stating all this, but I can handle it. I've taken enough lumps as it is.