A late little note about Mass Effect

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PurpleRain

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Copter400 said:
Necromancist said:
Now I have contracted a severe case of Awesomitis. Symptoms include restlessness, eye dehydration following incapability to blink, hyperventilation, balance and coordination problems as well as a tendency to jump up and down in one spot while explaining to your (mostly) indifferent relatives how awesome this game is.
I went through the exact same thing with Bioshock. Not even after playing it, I was like that before it even came out.

Rehabilitation was long and painful.

My first time playing Mass Effect, I loved it too. The whole thing with the Rachni has to be one of the hardest choices I've made in gaming.
Don't remind me. I tried to be evil there. I had to force myself to try and kill it. Amount of times saved: 3 Amount killed: 1 sad time.

Yeah, I had that with Bioshock as well. Damn it, make sequels already!
 

Fire Daemon

Quoth the Daemon
Dec 18, 2007
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PurpleRain said:
Don't remind me. I tried to be evil there. I had to force myself to try and kill it. Amount of times saved: 3 Amount killed: 1 sad time.
I accidently let the Rachni live on my evil character. I was annoyed I had to fight Benezia again for my renegade points.

Was I the only one who didn't save Ashely on the first play through? I wanted see what happens to the story depending on who you save and I figured I could just ask my friends what happens.

Nothing happens.
 

KenzS

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I liked the game alot, but Mass Effect isnt for everyone. My roommate didnt like it at all. Not everyone is into games with alot of dialogue and story.

Is there a sequel coming out? I hope K.O.T.O.R 3 comes out, that was a good series.
 

Necromancist

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Jul 3, 2008
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Alright, seen some good responses here.

Yes, the perma-overheating bug is a *****, but if you really know what you're doing and don't panic, overheating shouldn't be a concern. (No offense)

I don't understand the criticism about the sidequests though... sure, the driving there is pretty boring (and the Mako... nevermind, the Mako is fun as hell to drive) but when I actually got to the locations themselves I noticed that the sidequests are some of the best I've ever seen in a game, siding with Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights (the original and the expansions).
 

mitsoxfan

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Necromancist said:
Alright, seen some good responses here.

Yes, the perma-overheating bug is a *****, but if you really know what you're doing and don't panic, overheating shouldn't be a concern. (No offense)

I don't understand the criticism about the sidequests though... sure, the driving there is pretty boring (and the Mako... nevermind, the Mako is fun as hell to drive) but when I actually got to the locations themselves I noticed that the sidequests are some of the best I've ever seen in a game, siding with Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights (the original and the expansions).
On overheating, not sure what difficulty you played on, but some NPCs can tech overheat you, and it's unavoidable. And if you're playing a class with limited weapon specializations, you really only have a couple decent weapons at your disposal. It's the craps when your in the middle of a battle and can't save and reload. I don't think it's entirely the players fault in some cases.

Some mako parts are fun, though the steering is terrible. The 'WASD' controls of the PC make it a little more tolerable. The first time out in the mako was a disaster until I learned how to zoom. Then the thing was unstoppable.

I also don't understand the criticism of the side quests. I thought they were all engaging and interesting, if not too few.

Overall, Mass Effect is an awesome game. And felt much more like an RPG to me than, say, Bioshock. It's sort of up there with Oblivion for one of the better action RPGs to date. Not that I'm a huge fan of that genre. Give me a JRPG any day.
 

Necromancist

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mitsoxfan said:
On overheating, not sure what difficulty you played on, but some NPCs can tech overheat you, and it's unavoidable. And if you're playing a class with limited weapon specializations, you really only have a couple decent weapons at your disposal. It's the craps when your in the middle of a battle and can't save and reload. I don't think it's entirely the players fault in some cases.
I (and probably the others too) refer to a bug which causes the heat bar to stick at the top and not fall when a weapon gets overheated. This has happened several times when I was testing weapon accuracy out of combat. It's not so common as to ruin the game though, IMHO.
 

Fire Daemon

Quoth the Daemon
Dec 18, 2007
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You can fix that by changing weapons.

That glitch happens everytime I fight with Saren, I spent half an hour running around waiting for it to go down thinking that it was some sort of ability the guy has.
 

CatmanStu

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I haven't played Mass Effect since about a month after release, but during that month I completed it twice; that's how much I enjoyed the story.

The main villain (Saren, not the big reveal creature) was believable and at times made you think you were possibly on the wrong side. For the most part your companions were well rounded and contributed to the overall story (although I could have done without the blue Deanna Troi wannabe) and your character had an authentic reason for character progression.

On the flip side though, you could argue that the Geth were repetitive and displayed none of the hive intelligence they were supposed to have, not enough of the supporting characters had supporting quests, there were moments where choices made had no effect on the story development, and on the technical side there were some bad frame-rate and texture loading issues considering the modest size of most of the locations and the lack of any environment specific physics.

To finish on a plus though; I can't wait for the next two. What I would like to see is one sequel and one prequel, as I would love to see the story of the emergence of the Geth, with the back story being about the political subjugation of the human race.
 

Necromancist

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Fire Daemon said:
You can fix that by changing weapons.
Tried that, along with switching to another weapon of the same type in my inventory. Neither of them worked. As far as I know, the only cure for this is either to reload a save or (not tested, but possible) going back to the Normandy.

Catman, I can agree with you about the Geth being a little repetetive, but I think that it's a side effect of them being your main adversary. And I've seen some hive mind intelligence from them too. A single Geth isn't even a threat, I can stand in one spot and laugh at it before my teammates gun it down. A group of about 5 sometimes take cover. Any group of more than 10 Geth I've seen all take cover, use their abilities in unison and other tactics. For instance, once a Hopper sabotaged our weapons, while another sniped one of my teammates while an Armature had the two of us left pinned behind cover, allowing a couple of Destroyers to flank us and shotgun our collective asses into planetary orbit.
 

The Wooster

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Jul 15, 2008
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Necromancist said:
Fire Daemon said:
You can fix that by changing weapons.
Tried that, along with switching to another weapon of the same type in my inventory. Neither of them worked. As far as I know, the only cure for this is either to reload a save or (not tested, but possible) going back to the Normandy.

Catman, I can agree with you about the Geth being a little repetetive, but I think that it's a side effect of them being your main adversary. And I've seen some hive mind intelligence from them too. A single Geth isn't even a threat, I can stand in one spot and laugh at it before my teammates gun it down. A group of about 5 sometimes take cover. Any group of more than 10 Geth I've seen all take cover, use their abilities in unison and other tactics. For instance, once a Hopper sabotaged our weapons, while another sniped one of my teammates while an Armature had the two of us left pinned behind cover, allowing a couple of Destroyers to flank us and shotgun our collective asses into planetary orbit.
We must be playing a different game. I never saw the geth use any tactic other than 'zerg rush'
 

Alex_P

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Mar 27, 2008
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Decoy Doctorpus said:
We must be playing a different game. I never saw the geth use any tactic other than 'zerg rush'
Sometimes they also use the "stand still right next to (but not actually in) cover" tactic.

-- Alex
 

Alex_P

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Mar 27, 2008
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Necromancist said:
I don't understand the criticism about the sidequests though... sure, the driving there is pretty boring (and the Mako... nevermind, the Mako is fun as hell to drive) but when I actually got to the locations themselves I noticed that the sidequests are some of the best I've ever seen in a game, siding with Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights (the original and the expansions).
You do a lot of driving to get from place to place. Most locations on the map are usually nothing more than one of those little hacking minigames. When they are a base you can enter, that's basically one big one-room fight.

Fighting stuff in the Mako is absolutely trivial. Everything that can seriously damage you moves at a snail's pace so all you have to do is wiggle back and forth to avoid it. The hardest part is occasionally having to figure out how to angle the gun to hit something that's below its line of fire. The only time you're in danger is against Thresher Maws.

There's a total of, like, four interior sets for all the side quests (underground complex, underground mine, little prefab colony house, space freighter). All of these are basically just one big room to fight in, and then little side sections that contain mostly loot or some kind of goal.

Most of the quest storylines are about the same two or three themes. How many "conspiratorial science gone wrong" side-stories does one game really need?

There are a few really good exceptions here. Like that one part where you have to help the marines fight off Rachni. The first Thresher Maw you encounter is definitely a breath of fresh air, too. But, for the most part... highly repetitive.

-- Alex
 

HSIAMetalKing

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I agree that the sidequests are quite repetitive. Whenever it comes down to "sidequest time" I crank up some music and grind my way through them as quickly as possible.
 

Ragefulmonk

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Jul 26, 2008
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Is it just me, or did the AI surprise anybody at times with nicely executed 'kick your ass' maneuvers?
One example I had was when I went to the base on the moon to destroy the turrets/computers.
When I went down there I saw all of the little red triangles on the mini map and thought that if I went barely into the room the turrets would all gang up together and be easy pickings. That somewhat worked...
I had everyone stand ground near the entrance and use the boxes for cover and the turrets did gang up and start shooting at me to pin me down (lots of rockets). What I didn't notice was a small group swinging around some cover to get to the other side of me. Didn't see them until they were pretty much sitting on top of my corpse as they quickly dispatched my allies.
Sadly though, that didn't happen to much the next time because I stayed in the other room making them come over to me so I could close the door whenever they shot a rocket.
Bad ass game though :)
 

Spleeni

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Jul 5, 2008
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/sigh

I didn't really like Mass Effect. It had an intresting premise, but I never saw very much replay value in it; and even on hard I breezed through the game.

MEH.
 

mitsoxfan

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Feb 12, 2008
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Fire Daemon said:
You can fix that by changing weapons.

That glitch happens everytime I fight with Saren, I spent half an hour running around waiting for it to go down thinking that it was some sort of ability the guy has.
The bug is that the weapon you are using stays overheated. Switching weapons allows you to continue to play, but the weapon that is bugged stays bugged.

This happened to me twice. Once during some random combat, I simply waited for a point where I could save and reload, and that fixed the problem.

The real issue (for me, anyway) was during the Saren battle. Since you had to defeat him to continue, and my squadmates, for some reason, were being incredibly useless, all of my weapons kept bugging out, and of course I couldn't simply reload in combat. So I ended up having to use weapons I wasn't specialized for, which was a pain.
 

shadowyoasis

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Feb 8, 2008
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mitsoxfan said:
So I ended up having to use weapons I wasn't specialized for, which was a pain.
Speaking of which, trying to play sniper spec was damn near impossible. Don't know if they fixed it somewhat in the PC version but xbox version you were being quite and sneaky, trying to get the drop on them and bam! your npcs go and charge full speed in front of you, blocking your shots, and putting the enemy in high alert.

Only time it was remotely useful was during that one time where you had to get your tankthing(forgot its name was along time ago) back and you were ontop of a cliff shooting down at the people below you.
 

Numpkus

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Jul 27, 2008
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I liked the way the game let you be a complete bastard - not to mention the moral grey areas in the game. But I didn't find the main storyline to be at all compelling. I never got the sense that the main enemy was in any way a credible threat.