The idea and practical applications of marriage barely come up in video games. Sure, there’s not much of a place for it in Angry Birds, and it theoretically might be the ultimate goal of dating sims. But what about games where you’re playing as a character or interact with NPCs who just ARE married? Sean and Vinnk (gamers who are, apparently miraculously, each respectively married with children) explore the reasons why games might actually shy away from the trapping of matrimony, and how the few games that do use it (Fable, The Sims, Alan Wake) want to milk it for emotional impact. But how "emotionally impacted" might an 8 year-old gamer feel about such subject matter — and is that right there the reason it’s a subject few developers dare to tread? And when is Mario just going to marry Princess Peach already! How many more times does she need to get kidnapped by Bowser for him to get the hint??

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Hype is great… until your game comes out. Quite different from development hell, these are games that come out, but when they do they don’t quite live up to the promises made by the marketing department — and sometimes the developers themselves. Sean and Vinnk discuss the raft of hate against the Mass Effect 3 ending, the lack of ending for the Shenmue series, Peter Molyneux’s retirement from Lionhead Studios, and more. Suffice to say, it’s been an interesting year for the hype machine and its consequences.

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The launch of Mass Effect 3 is without a doubt one of the most disastrous I have ever witnessed. First, we learned of the import save problem if you decided to move your game to the new Cloud storage feature. The only solution is to track down the hard drive on which you originally finished the game; an impossibility for some. BioWare is offering no other solutions.

Second: just yesterday, we learned of the Shepard face import problem that also has no official solution… yet. This one BioWare is going to fix. In the mean time, there are a bevy of homebrew solutions, but all are overly-complicated.

Then there’s MY problem… This is what NewEgg sent me today:

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In our ninth (!) and final part of the KEEP PLAYING: Mass Effect 2 romance series, we take a look at “Kinky Kelly”, and her somewhat Easter Egg romance — which is probably the best in the entire game.

We have a lot more to say about this particular romance option (that isn’t officially a romance option), so keep reading, or watch the entire nine-part series from the beginning after the jump!

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Mass Effect 3 owners were shocked to find out today that most of their customized Commander Shepards could not have their faces imported into the new game.

One of the first things you’re able to do before you get going in a new Mass Effect game is to customize your Male or (preferably) Female Shepard’s face. If you’ve played Mass Effect 2 (or the just-released Mass Effect 3), you have the option to import this custom character and his/her saved data to continue your adventure as the Shepard from your previous game.

However, if you bought the game for your Xbox 360 or PC and started your character all the way back in the original Mass Effect, you might find that your face refuses to import, leaving you with a blank slate, or the option to use the default Shepard head for your ME3 playthrough.

How did this happen? And is there a solution? Find out after the jump.

(UPDATE: More temporary solutions found, plus BioWare is working to address the issue.)

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Kids get a bad rap in video games. Sometimes they’re beat up to pull emotional heartstrings, but mostly they’re just annoying. Is there a way for kids to be used or portrayed in games that isn’t exploitative or make you want to cause yourself bodily harm? Vinnk and Sean run down the appearances of children in games, from the NES all the way to the upcoming Mass Effect 3, across consoles and the PC. We also run down the history of unlicensed NES publisher Color Dream, and what their originally shocking games turned into.

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There are a lot of couples in video games, but is there romance? Mario and Peach, Luigi and Daisy, Link and Zelda, The Brooding Loner and the Star-crossed Japanese Flower Girl Who Loves Him, and — of course — Samus and the baby Metroid. Do any of these games do romance well, or is it just assumed? And how far is too far with player-to-NPC romance? Sean and Vinnk wonder if video games can truly ever be your Valentine as they discuss these problems, the likelihood of your characters ever finding true digital love, and the potentially unfortunate state of Princess Zelda’s armpit hair.

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