Mass Effect - Bioware - PC

[Fabricated]

Nothing like getting to the party late on a good game, but after spending several hours with the PC version I imagine it was for the best I didn't get a 360 since I probably would have destroyed and consumed my non-existent 360 controller due to anti-thumbstick rage. A simplified third person shooter with a semi-useless cover system combined with ye olde dialoge treese, great voice acting, generally interesting characters, and some pretty amazing texture pop in. I imagine Mass Effect was a sweaty-palmed nightmare for the Bioware fans who didn't play the incredibly clumsy Jade Empire, but any FPS veteran will quickly discover that popping a weapon skill, zooming in, and strafing back and forth with the fire button held down solves pretty much every single fight. Cover is of questionable use and doesn't work half the time, and letting your squadmates fight nearly anything for more than 5 seconds without your backup ends with you just gunning everything down by yourself again. It's still a great time due to the plot, dialog, and characters (WREX. SHEPARD.), but the shooting portion for me at least just felt like riskless self-gratification after navigating all of the dialogue. That's fine though.

Also when the textures decide to show up 2-3 minutes into any dialogue the faces of some characters (and yours if you didn't make a mutant clown for laughs) approach the uncanny valley. Even the non-human looking aliens.

Buy it.

Also: Seth Green as a bandy-legged cripple.

[Fabricated]

Oh right, the side quests. They suck.

*Go ride around a randomly textured planet in the Mako. Loot random probe. Go in the same 2 buildings and shoot some people. Return to Normandy and get asked by gravel-voiced Earth captain to do it again*

[rk47]

Yep, but it's a decent time killer if it's cheap. The lack of locational dmg hurts gameplay a bit, pop from cover burst on leg gets repetitive after a while. The choices felt too generic at some part, but I enjoyed the game overall. The romance is still vomit inducing  and that asarian culture designer needs to get a life.

[Fabricated]

Yep, but it's a decent time killer if it's cheap. The lack of locational dmg hurts gameplay a bit, pop from cover burst on leg gets repetitive after a while. The choices felt too generic at some part, but I enjoyed the game overall. The romance is still vomit inducing  and that asarian culture designer needs to get a life.

I definitely got the image of some writer wearing a 3XL shirt, sweating profusely over his laptop writing the Asari stuff thinking, "This. This is good."

"YOU SEE US RACE OF BLUE HUMAN-FACED TENTACLE HEADS CAN REPRODUCE WITH ANYTHING AND ALSO THE ONLY THING PAST CASUAL CONVERSATION WE DO IS SEX TAKE ME YOU HOT SPACE MARINE"

Also I like the consort. She gives me advice and you can be like "*ziiiiiiiiiip* AHEM."

Also there is locational damage on sniper rifles...at least it feels like it. I tend to one-shot things on headshots way more than I do body shots.

[Sky]

Never had the texture issue you had.

The side quests didn't bug me, other than collection. What was the point to that? I never finished the resource collection stuff, and got piddly experience from a couple others. I didn't mind the side quests to go kill a bunker of bad guys, those were pretty easy...but it was a cheap way to pad the playtime of the game. Seems to be a step backward from KotOR. Hopefully it's not a sign of a Bethesda thing. 

Minigame for hacking: suck. Mako driving: suck. Actually those two things are what led me to rush the last quarter of the game, ending up 1000xp shy of getting the lvl 50 achievement. And I'm not sure I'll play through again. I played through KotOR, on the xbox no less, twice at 60 hours light side and 40 hours dark side.

While the hacking minigame was just repetitive and obnoxious, you could skip it with that magic gel crap (an odd thing in itself). The mako was much worse, next time how about a flying machine or some other way to no have to deal with a gazillion mountains? When it worked it was cool, jamming around with a big cannon. Mostly it didn't work and was just slogging through a shitty terrain. Maybe that's realistic, but it sucked in a game.

My evil character was going to be this cool black mofo named Lamont Shepard, but when he had the whitebread voice it just kinda didn't work.

The rest of the game (read: most of it) was pretty cool.

[rk47]

Yeah if they hired Samuel L Jackson to do Shepard and defaulted the appearance based on him, it'd come out so much better.
I think the most glaring repetitiveness is probably the Lunar VI mission where I went to 3 identical bunkers, blowing up identical enemy types and 8 same terminals in each bunker.  I felt really cheated in there. Where's the variety ?
Some missions just lack polish, all we get is a damn pop up telling us where to go and after we kill everything in there, we get another pop up. Yay, even WoW delivers better reward than some of ME's side mission.

[Jashan]

The decryption minigame struck me as a wrap-around frogger. It was light enough to not get annoying, so I would call it a success. It was a huge improvement over the logic puzzles they snuck into KoTOR, which bugged the heck out of me.

ME gets a huge thumbs up for me. I even bought the book. This game is one of the reasons its been a good year for PC RPGs.

[Sky]

I found wrap-around frogger annoying. I thought KotOR's logic puzzles were the best part of the game. Sorry you aren't in MENSA, dumbass. 

[Ingmar]

Note: I say this as a member of the PC gaming master race.

ME is really quite playable with the thumbsticks. They didn't bug me at all. Well, except for driving the Mako, and I hear that's shitty in the PC version too.

[Brogarn]

My rants about that game are almost all about driving the mako on yet another planet with yet more mountains. I wanted to beat the shit out of the guy who designed the mako using the body of the guy who designed the planets. I don't know what the console was like, but trying to maneuver that damn vehicle with the keyboard was some of the most frustrating gameplay I've ever experienced.

Beyond that, pretty darn good RPG. KoTOR still kicks it's ass, but it's well worth the purchase.

[Brolan]

It had it's weaknesses, but overall it was a lot of fun.  I played once as a goodie-two-shoes and then thought I would play again as a evil a-hole for more fun.

Except for some great dialogue lines it was actually more fun to be good than be evil.  Being an ass too long cuts off some quests but some of Shepard's comments had me rolling on the floor laughing. 

[Ingmar]

It had it's weaknesses, but overall it was a lot of fun.  I played once as a goodie-two-shoes and then thought I would play again as a evil a-hole for more fun.

Except for some great dialogue lines it was actually more fun to be good than be evil.  Being an ass too long cuts off some quests but some of Shepard's comments had me rolling on the floor laughing. 

It leads to some of the more brutal cut scenes I've seen in an RPG too. Not in terms of graphic violence as it tends to cut away from that sort of thing, but just kind of on the 'whoa' scale.

[rk47]

i used to think that KOTOR 2's [Force Persuade] Give me your weapons, credits and go jump down that ledge over there was the ultimate jerkface I've seen in game but ME somewhat gave a new level of jerk with all the inappropriate punching to solve conversation problems. 'What's wrong with him?' 'He's a little over the edge, don't worry I gave him some stimulants..' 'I know what'll calm him down...*POW*' 'WHAT THE- You can't just hit people around like THAT!' 

But the ultimate was probably near finale where I performed mercy kills on POWs. Shepard literally popped 4-5 POWs heads with a pistol without an expression.

[Azazel]

I'm waiting till it hits the bargain bin, but only because of the DRM. I would otherwise like to play this game.

[Fabricated]

I'm waiting till it hits the bargain bin, but only because of the DRM. I would otherwise like to play this game.

IIRC they got rid of it and just went with regular old securom.

[Sky]

At first I read that as "IIRC they got rid of it and just went with regular old scrotum."

[Strazos]

Played through it on the 360 and loved it. Had very few issues with the combat, and the cover was actually useful for me as a sniper. Also, there was locational damage.

The mako bits were full of suck though, trying to crawl the damn thing up a cliff, UGH.


The in-game encyclopedia bits were great though. It was refreshing to see so much Actual Effort put into a seemingly minor portion of the game (re: lore).

[Sky]

I agree about the lore stuff. I also read the planet descriptions, it was pretty cool.

And I liked cover once I started sniping later in the game (I was mostly using the assault rifle early on). I noticed by dipshit squadmates finally tried to find cover when I would hide and snipe. I actually stopped using the squad control buttons after a while because it didn't seem to make a difference except for the 'charge like a moron and die' button.

I've been bagging on Bioware a lot over the last few days, since I finished ME, which was overall a decent game. It's just that their games lately have smacked of unrealized potential and a lot of design compromises.

[rk47]

hm finished one planet on insane difficulty. The difficulty jump from Hardcore to Insane is a little wide, but it's nice to see that enemy snipers are actually deadly and space zombies are bad to touch. I started to worry about cover and strafing like crazy. The funniest part is telling Wrex and Ashley to hold position in a far position while I lure the mobs at a distance to whittle them down. Feros is insane.

[Stormwaltz]

The in-game encyclopedia bits were great though. It was refreshing to see so much Actual Effort put into a seemingly minor portion of the game (re: lore).

Thanks (I did all those). ^_^

[Sir T]

I actually saw this game in the shop today and was going to buy it till I say the "periodic online activation" crap and put it back. If thats been pulled I'll pick it up. Looked fun.

[caladein]

The in-game encyclopedia bits were great though. It was refreshing to see so much Actual Effort put into a seemingly minor portion of the game (re: lore).

Thanks (I did all those). ^_^

[Jashan]

My understanding is that the nerdrage tsunami convinced EA to compromise. It used to be that ME would phone home every ten days to make sure that you had a valid copy. Now it is only at every install. Which still sucks. You only get three installs before you have to appeal. Or crack. We all know what is more efficient.

But mang, this game is great. Whats a rootkit on your machine compared to a good story?

[Falwell]

I'm finally getting around to playing this. Quite frankly, I'm having a helluvah good time. I've got about....27 hours in and by far the bulk of that has been on side missions. Yes, even the collection ones.

I've only barely scraped the story so far but up to this point, excellent play.

[Amarr HM]

I just knocked out some babbling idiot to the shock of my teammates fucking dick was annoying as fuck, anyway yeh great game like the amount of freedom of movement it gives you renegade +9

[rk47]

i blew up some monkeys with a tank cannon. +4 renegade 

[Azazel]

My understanding is that the nerdrage tsunami convinced EA to compromise. It used to be that ME would phone home every ten days to make sure that you had a valid copy. Now it is only at every install. Which still sucks. You only get three installs before you have to appeal. Or crack. We all know what is more efficient.

But mang, this game is great. Whats a rootkit on your machine compared to a good story?

I have the same understanding, and I object to this level of DRM as well (the limited installs, specifically).

Meh, I got plenty o'other games to play. I won't go on to derail this BiiF into DRM-thread part 2.

[Amarr HM]

i blew up some monkeys with a tank cannon. +4 renegade 

aww man haven't got that far yet 

[Fabricated]

Since someone mentioned it, I must say that the "dark side" responses in Mass Effect are way more actually...you know, evil than even anything in KOTOR 1/2. KOTOR's dark side choices were mostly vaguely cheesy, Snidely Whiplash sort of stuff ("Mwahahah! I shall make you two FIGHT eachother though you are friends! *evil cackle, lightning*"). Half of the "intimidation" or "dark" responses for situations in ME make you kinda lean back in your chair and say, "Jesus Christ!" Kudos to whoever put some of those scenes together, because they're pretty sudden and brutal.

[DraconianOne]

I haven't got very far in this - I've just become a jedi spook and am heading off to do missions. For some reason* I haven't felt the urge to load it up again even though it wasn't a bad game at all so far.  But I've got to say that I don't think of the choices as being Good/Evil.  For a start, they don't seem to be mutually exclusive - you can build up charm and renegade at the same time (and building up one doesn't reduce the level of the other).  I feel renegade is more of a Jack Bauer approach to things rather than a Darth Nasty approach.

*Two reasons - one planet mission started crashing the game which was kind of annoying and also I started playing through the Half-lifes (half-lives?) again.

[Amarr HM]

I don't think the intention was to be good/evil only to be Han Solo or Luke Skywalker so it works on that level.

[Ingmar]

I see the choices in that game as far more liberal/conservative (or sometimes extremes on other political axes) than good/evil, personally. It is in many ways a very political game.

[Hawkbit]

I finally got around to beating this tonight.  Overall its a good game and I feel it was money well-spent. 

What I'd like to see in Mass Effect 2:

2-4x length of the main story
Less than half of the side quests/collections, in fact do away with them
Continue with the excellent journal/codex entries
Less Mako
Less alien sex (dirtay  she was only 106!)

Strip out the outdated pause combat and skill system, put in more specifically defined characters.  That should allow for design to make a more challenging and tactical experience.  This game was about the story and the side quests simply got in the way.  If squad combat will continue in ME2, make one toon the soldier, one a biotic and the other a tech.  Cross-classing makes it feel like you have more control over the characters, but it's at the expense of the depth of the gameplay and challenge. 

I bitch a lot above, but this game was done right.  The grainy effect over everything was wonderful.  The game ran like a champ.  Simply put, it was a fun game... but needs more story next go-round.  Good work, Bioware. 

[FatuousTwat]

I didn't ever really get bored with the sidequests... If you do it all, there is some pretty cool stuff. I loved the planet descriptions, and the random little things you would find, like abandoned settlements and dead soldiers. RPGs are all about the side quests IMO.

SPOILER!

On one of the planets, you find this floating silver orb. If you got the trinket from the Asari consort and put it in the orb, you experience a vision of a caveman being studied by the Protheans. Too bad it was just a textbox.

[rk47]

wow , i somewhat...dont' give a flying fuck about that talisman shit after 5 replays. I mean it's not even THAT significant. It had nothing to lead us on, it gave no clues, just 'go to that potentially uninteresting planet over there and go to each waypoint in a big truck'

yeah I never found a use for that, nice find though.