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While I’m telling you about my favourite games, I have to reserve a mention for my first ever videogame. Drum roll please… its the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive/ Genesis.
I first played this game when I was about 5 years old, which was in 1998 (already 7 years after the game came out, but I guess being five is a good excuse for not being on the cutting-edge of technology). A friend of my aunts had brought the Mega Drive to her house- being curious about what the strange black box with all the buttons on was, I instantly kept asking if I could play with it.
I’m now 4 months into my dissertation, which is a scary half-way through. A lot of interesting uni-related things have happened in the last week.
I had originally planned to have collected most of my data by now, which didn’t happen as one of my approval forms went missing. (My uni is good at teaching, but not at organisation- a recurring theme throughout the last three years).
Luckily, as my study is low-risk, I was approved quite easily. The delay meant I couldn’t do anything towards collecting data over the Christmas break, so I instead started writing the other parts of the dissertation such as the history of what I’m studying, the method I’m using, and the introduction. This has been going surprisingly well, and its now about 25% done.
As much as I’ve praised Mass Effect 3, one important thing I should mention about my experience with it is my experience with glitches. I have a tendency to cause bugs and glitches in most games Iām playing, even when other people playing donāt experience these bugs. When playing ME3, this ability is increased to weird levels. (Itās because of this game that my Xbox tagline is now āthe accidental glitcherā). So I couldnāt really write about ME3 without explaining some of the strange things that have happened to me while playing it.
1)One minor glitch is an unfortunate consequence of a useful part of gameplay. Some multiplayer classes have stimpacks or temporary skill boosts that are accompanied by visual effects. For example, human Soldiers have Adrenaline Rush, which increases rate of weapon fire and damage – when this is active everything is brighter and colours are more saturated. Krogan characters have Rage mode, which tints the screen red to show their increased attack damage.
While these effects add a visual extra to the game, they are often inconsistent- sometimes the skill can be active without the visual effect, and other times the visual effect will remain even when the power isnāt active. Normally, these donāt cause too much bother: the only one of these that Iāve found annoying is the visual glitch caused by some of my favourite characters, the Volus species. Voluses (Volii?) excel in a pure support role, relying on their Shield Boost ability to refill their own shields and those of nearby fireteam members. The “Volus glitch” comes from using this ability just as youāre about to die. At very low health the screen goes dark red as a warning, but using Shield Boost to recover your health often locks the screen onto this colour, which can only be fixed by losing health and shields again. This means itās a lot more difficult to see whatās going on, which has caused me to die unnecessarily before.
Game reviews aren’t a genre I’ve written much about before, but Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode seemed like a good place to start.
However, I should probably clarify one thing first though – I havenāt played the single-player campaign of ME3. Thatās mostly because the games are so good that I know finishing the story will kind of be the end of an era- the gaming equivalent of finishing the last Harry Potter book. My love for this series is based on just how awesome Iāve found the multiplayer to be- and also on completing the first game, which I bought after playing the third. Below is my explanation of just why I find this game so appealing.
Characters
In multiplayer, there are 64 available characters (originally 25, with new ones added throughout the year after release) – split across 12 alien races and various humans, in 6 attack classes. Each race has different health and shield levels, and different weapon preferences. Each character has three abilities, which can be for attack, self-defence, or team support. Some are common to many characters, such as Incinerate (a fireball attack), Overload (an electrical attack that removes enemy shields), or the ability to place a Sentry Turret. Other, more esoteric powers are unique to one character, such as Poison Strike (a teleporting semi-charge that creates a poison cloud corrupting nearby enemies).
There being so many potential powers and combinations means there are options to suit every type of playstyle. You could use a Tactical Cloak (invisibility) to hide and snipe from the farthest reaches of the level, and take enemies out before they get anywhere near the team. Or, levelling the Cloak differently, you can use it as a temporary distraction to sneak up to enemies and attack at point-blank range. Taking a Vanguard character into battle allows for a tank setup, taking damage away from teammates while dishing out far more, while taking an Adept provides Biotic powers that can put enemies in suspended animation, or throw them across the room.
Invisiblity plus a jetpack = a great character.
My first character- a fluorescent blue Human Engineer equipped with Overload and Incinerate- remained my favourite for the first few months of play. However, the release of new characters and power combinations means that role was taken firstly by the Quarian Infiltrator (the invisible sniper style mentioned above), and now the Turian Ghost Infiltrator. The TGI, pictured here in his neon glory, is one of the most powerful classes in the game when played correctly.
His abilities are the Tactical Cloak, Overload, and a Stimulant Pack that increases shield levels, weapon damage, and melee damage. Although I first started playing as him because he has both invisibility and a jetpack- a very fun combination to use.
Speaking of jetpacks leads on to one of my very few criticisms of this game. To ensure that brand new players would not be disadvantaged by playing the game months after its release, the later characters brought out were more powerful and had stronger abilities than the starting characters. While this is a good idea in theory, it was perhaps applied too strongly- when looking at the ME3 forums, very few original characters are still used due to the new ones being either more fun or simply more survivable.
The two characters that are probably too overpowered to be fair are the final ones released, the Alliance Infiltration Unit, and the Geth Juggernaut. The AIU is mostly a typical infiltrator build, but her final power is essentially temporary invincibility- while it is active, she cannot be killed. Furthermore, this ability is treated in the same way as a grenade ability, meaning she can top up her invincibility powerups at every ammunition box on a level, and keep it almost permanently active on small levels.
The Juggernaut doesnāt even need to worry about invincibility powers, because at twice the height and eight times the shield strength of any other character, almost nothing can take it down. On the lowest two difficulties, using a Juggernaut means actively having to try to be knocked down. They also cannot be hurt by the instant-kill attacks of stronger enemies. Iāve never played as one myself, because I havenāt unlocked it yet (new characters are unlocked via random cards bought in packs), but playing in matches with them Iāve seen one downed less than a handful of times.
Weapons
The same pros and cons can probably be applied to the weapons, though to a lesser extent. Weapons are easily customised, meaning the same weapon can be tweaked to fit very different characters by adding extra components. The all-rounder Phaeston assault rifle, for example, can be equipped with Ultra-light materials and a power magnifier, making it perfectly suited to backing up a Biotic class who need a very light loadout in order to use their powers quickly. On the other hand, adding an extended barrel and stability modifier makes it a useful weapon for Soldier classes to use suppressive fire.
The amount of customisation available means, similarly to characters, that there is always something new to try out. However, because there are so many weapons, even well-performing weapons can be forgotten about. Also, there are some weapons that can only be used well by specific characters or classes, making them a fairly niche option. For example, the Anti-Synthetic Rifle is incredibly powerful against one species of enemy, but useless against any other type.
Gameplay and Teams
Gameplay is pretty simple at its core- a team of 1-4 players take on waves of progressively more enemies, the aim being to survive through 11 waves. Mixed in with fighting are objective missions such as holding a specific point on the map, retrieving lost objects, or escorting a valuable drone to a safe location. That sounds like it should get repetitive quickly but in practice, it very rarely does. This might be luck on my part, as my average ability level means I have a set of characters that I can comfortably play Silver difficulty on, and a (smaller) set of characters I can use for Gold difficulty, meaning the game is rarely boringly easy or frustratingly hard.
The maps available are mostly based on different territories seen in the single-player campaign- there isn’t anything too strange on most of them, but they are all fun to play on, and all can suit different styles. The most interesting part is the addition of Hazard versions of the original maps, which add a danger that affects gameplay in some way. Some maps only have a very subtle effect (such as Giant, which adds thunder and lightning to make aiming more difficult). Others change how the map is played completely: Firebase White, which has a sniper-friendly outside area with close-quarters inside areas, gains a visibility-destroying snowstorm which forces everyone inside.
Challenge System
The multiplayer challenge system is very comprehensive, covering general challenges such as playing on each map a set amount, weapon challenges obtained by scoring points with each weapon, and alien challenges obtained by surviving matches with specific characters. This system means trying out everything in the game is encouraged, which stops people from just sticking with their favourite setup forever. It worked especially well on me, as Iāve become quite the completionist, rotating characters, weapon setups and maps to fill as many challenges as I can. Itās a good combination of being involving and accessible, meaning itās my favourite challenge/award system of any game Iāve played (with the possible exception of the one in Black Ops II, which runs on much the same idea).
The only thing that ever bugged me about the system is that it was introduced after the game had been out for 6 months, so everything I had done before that would have counted towards a challenge didnāt count- considering the amount of work that making it retroactive would have required, that isnāt too big a deal.
The system also included weekly challenges that rewarded successful players with free weapon and equipment packs- this lasted until a year after the gameās release, and is probably the part I missed most about the game ageing.
Replayability
According to my online activity feed (from the gameās companion website), I’ve played 556 matches totalling over 176 hours of gameplay. This makes it probably my most-played game ever (the only exception to this might again be Black Ops II). Almost two years after release, the online community is still strong, and its easy to find matches online. It can also be easier to survive a match now, as the people left playing this late in the release cycle are either very new or very dedicated and skilled. Even playing against people with no headset on, and therefore without being able to communicate, 99% of people still revive their injured team-mates and protect each other.
All these reasons show why Mass Effect 3 is one of the most enjoyable and long-lasting multiplayer games I’ve ever played. Bring on ME4!
An odd-sounding title for today’s post, but it turns out that soft drinks have a far more interesting history than I expected. While soft drinks can be seen as a kid’s alternative to alcohol, or as a vilified sugar deliverer, many have a deeper history than that. Surprisingly, many started their lives as medicines.
Firstly, I’ll start with the most popular one- Coca-Cola, a drink so popular and prevalent that in some parts of the world it is the generic term for all soft drinks. Its history is also brought up a lot for fans of interesting facts; anyone with a liking for trivia has probably heard “Did you know Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it?” quite a few times. So I figured I’d try and find out why it used to contain cocaine.
I’ve spent a large proportion of this summer gaming when I meant to be doing psychology work, so I figured I could at least combine the two so it looks like I’ve done some work!
I first got the idea of this combination when I was playing Halo 3 online- while the game is good, an annoying part of the online experience is that people on the opposing team will in many cases jump away and lose a point for committing suicide rather than lose a gunfight and have the other team gain a point. Even though these two options have the same outcome mathematically, many people will choose to take the deliberate loss rather than let someone else gain any status. While this seems like an irrational decision, the principle is common in real-life as well.
The weird thing for me about crowds is that while much of psychology focuses on how complicated individual humans are, they are even more confusing and complicated when they are put together into groups- there is an entire branch of psychology (known as, not surprisingly, crowd psychology) dedicated to understanding the difference between people as individuals and in a crowd.
The media, psychology, and sociology, have many stereotypes of crowds- most of these lead to the conclusion that crowds are irrational, suggestible and even dangerous, a sort of hive mind run by its collective not-quite-conscious. Most of these views, and the theories behind them, are taken from examples of destructive crowds, such as riots and demonstrations. (Annoyingly, the example of a riot and crowd behaviour used in my A-level textbook was actually about Bristol- not the best side of the city…).
However, looking at studies and observations of crowd behaviour, it is only a minority of crowds that become so destructive; non-violent crowds are researched much more rarely, which doesn’t seem fair.
One of the biggest stereotypes is that crowds are fuelled by their anonymity, as people lose their identities and rationales in the process of deindividuation– this is a popular notion, described in detail by social psychologists like Zimbardo. However, while this does sound like a good explanation, and is useful in some circumstances, it fails to take into account that most people in crowds aren’t anonymous- they normally go to events with friends or family, meaning their actions will be seen so they would be accountable for anything they did while part of the crowd.
A new theory of how people behave in crowds, and to me a more useful one, is Convergence Theory. This theory says that crowd behaviour is not caused by the crowd: instead individuals take their behaviours into the crowd, meaning crowd actions reflect beliefs that are already there. Using this theory, crowd behaviours stop being irrational violence, becoming a more sensible reaction to popular views.
So if convergence theory is true, then the media shouldn’t be so quick to declare crowds as violent and irrational and should instead look towards the reasons behind the crowd, for that will probably provide a much better picture of what behaviour to expect and why.
When I tell people I’m studying psychology, one of the reactions I sometimes get (mainly, I’ve observed, from older people) is confusion: many seem like they can’t see the point of psychology as a subject. In this case, they will often say psychology doesn’t need to be studied as it is just “common sense” (something I apparently have nowhere near enough of).
Although I haven’t yet tried it, an easy way around their confusion could be to just asking them what common sense actually is, because it’s surprisingly difficult to get an agreed-upon definition.
Today’s topic of choice is another group of people with amazing memories- Mnemonists. Unlike the people with developmental disorders that I talked about a few weeks ago, mnemonists don’t often have physical brain differences to explain their memory abilities (apart from a small difference in the area linked to memorising long lists of numbers, which seems more of an effect than a cause).
Instead, their memories are so strong due to practice, and the use of Mnemonic techniques. Almost everyone has used some kind of mnemonic before; for example, SOHCAHTOA (for remembering when to use sin, cos, and tan in a triangle), or Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (for remembering the colours of the rainbow).However, the method used by mnemonists are much more detailed and involved than this.
Part 2 is about how memory is affected by developmental disorders such as autism, Down’s syndrome, and especially savant syndrome, and how the abilities of people with these disorders could be linked to savantism.
People with autism spectrum conditions can often have memory and expertise that is described as “very deep but very narrow”. In other words, they concentrate obsessively on one small area and learn everything they can about it, even if that area is not needed or used. (For example, I once read about an autistic boy who loved to memorise camera statistics and model numbers, but had no interest in using a camera).
