Mass Effect?

[Skiz0]

11 hours? I doubt you did get most of the sidequests then. Took me 40 hours first time, and I missed quite a lot of sidequests.

some sidequests you can only get if you're renegade or paragon. First playthrough I did was in 32 hours, and i know i missed a hell lot of them.

 

[wrshamilton]

Every Mako fight I've come across so far can be solved by pointing your cannon perpendicular to the Mako and moving left and right. The only weapons that really hurt you move so slowly that you don't really even need to circle strafe.

This is probably the weakest part of the game, both because it doesn't really relate to anything else, and because it never changes - I understand they run out of time, but if they couldn't make the Mako as interesting as the rest of the game, they probably should have minimized the parts where you use it.

 

[ArchboundJ]

I got the game about 2 weeks ago, and i must say it is incredible. I'm on my second playthrough on hardcore, i finished my first playthrough with lvl 49 vanguard, im lvl 51 now and i just beat fist and got wrex etc.

the sidequests are essential, not only to lvl up but to just put your money to good use. Without them it's true the main story is very short but it took my 40 hours and i completed every sidequest. 40 hours with one playthrough is damn good, theres still many other options in gameplay such as classes and good or evil, with even more background story choices.

and about the graphical glitches it isn't the game it's the 360 console. the game is so massive that it lags out the consoles memory. the 360 has a sort of RAM and when you shut off the console it wipes it clean. so after about 3 hours of constant playing with this massive graphical game the RAM gets full and lags. It isn't the game. To fix this (although it really doesn't bother me much) just save and restart your console.

 

[soladrin]

i still think the main thing was to short.. i dont care if theres a bunch of side quests with this game really.. the games atmosphere never cought me and by the time i was finally getting into the story a bit, i finished the game. Oh and the dialogue choices are lies, wich sucks balls. I never got to say what i actually wanted.

 

[WafflesToo]

I only watched my brother play this game, but in that short time and limited experience I must stay that the sheer amount of effort and love that the developer put into it is overwhelmingly impressive (though I seriously regret flipping through the artbook that came with it... stupid spoilers!)

Again, the only flaws I could see were simply the dev's wringing the 360 for all it's worth. More memory or a HD would've cleaned things right up (as they could've started paging sooner and not halt the game to load new areas), but not much that can be done with that at present (I wonder how it'd perform on a Zephyr system instead of the Xenon system?)

As far as it being an XBox exclusive, I wouldn't worry about it too much PC fans. Given Microsoft's track record (Halo, Halo2, Gears of War) it will likely be ported over eventually (and you can bet your gamepads I'll be grabbing it as soon as it comes out!)

 

[soladrin]

i believe i read somewhere (cant remember where) that it would remain xbox only and wont be ported, dont call me on this, but i vaguely recall reading this somewhere.

 

[Beerhaver]

I really like this game, because I liked KOTOR and Jade Empire, and it's pretty much exactly the same. The environments could have been pulled right out of KOTOR, including the huge, sparsely populated rooms. But the game struck me as unfinished, with texture pop being the least annoying evidence of that.

The economy is broken. Having enough money is never an issue. Selling or converting items to omni-gel is just a task to mitigate the massive excess of useless inventory. Negotiating for 750 credits instead of 500 doesn't mean much when your funds are pegged at 9,999,999. It also necessitates quotes around the millionaire "achievement."

And the elevators? Okay, the game is loading, but I'd rather just look at some pretty loading-screen artwork than the inside of a box for a minute.

While I'm on the subject of elevators, would it have killed them to put a mass-transit terminal in the Citadel docking bay? To get anywhere you have to load the docking bay, then ride the elevator down to C-Sec, and THEN take the terminal to your destination.

After playing, Brothers In Arms,GRAW, etc, I have some expectations for squad-baded tactical combat. The combat in ME is still fun, but the friendly and enemy AI really sucks. I instruct my squad to take cover in a door... Instead of each taking one side of the door, as one would expect, one takes cover on the side of the door, and the other stands in the open doorway and paints a bullseye on himself. I would have liked the option to position each squad member individually.

The main quest missions are long and well done. On the other hand, the quest missions are the opposite. All of the environments for sub-quests were identical. You were either in a generic ship, a generic mine, or a generic bunker. A couple of them give you the chance to make some kind of decision at the end, but it pretty much boils down to wiping out idiot AI foes who charge at you shouting, "I will destroy you!"

And as for the moral "choices," this fails excactly where Bioshock did. Aside from getting an achievement, there's no advantage to making "renegade" decisions.

For the above reasons, I can only give Mass Effect an 8/10. Still damn good and could have been a 10 with a couple months of more work.

 

[jadias]

Oh, you guys are going to love this. First post because I finally got around to signing up to present an alternate take on this huge circle-jerk. I know I am in the minority and I will probably get death threats, but screw you all.

Moving on, I wrote this for a different site but, obviously, it's relevant here.

Mass Effect, or:
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Trade It In

A comprehensive and hate-filled review of this year's most anticipated video game RPG



Mass Effect. Talk about hyped, this game should be awesome. And it SHOULD BE AWESOME, because it's a massive space-faring free-form adventure set in a brand new and lovingly-crafted universe, with first-person real-time combat, made by BioWare who have pretty much never made a bad RPG ever in history. How's THAT for a design brief?

In the interests of appearing to be fair, and I really am, let's start with the good points.

- It looks great when all the textures have loaded and it's not juddering like fuck
- The voice-acting is generally superb
- The script is probably well-written
- It has a good go at making you feel free to do as you please
- The universe BioWare created seems pretty deep and 'believable'

Now let's go with a brief summing-up of the bad points.

- It takes five minutes for all the textures to load and it's always juddering like fuck
- The AI is not up to the standard of the voice-acting
- I only got about 5 hours into the script before I gave up with the game (see below)
- You're not actually free at all, and if you believe you are, you're a fucking moron
- The universe BioWare so nicely crafted is contained within an inconsistent train-wreck of a game
- The save system is fucking broken

You can read any number of the reviews on the internet and find out about the graphical and AI problems, so I'll skip over them and let you find out about them elsewhere. Suffice to say, they are as bad as the reviews make them out to be, in particular the AI.

Now, let's explore a few of those bad points in greater depth.

Firstly, that feeling of freedom. Yes, it's a feeling, and nothing more. The galaxy map (when you finally get control of your ship) has some wondrous music playing on it and it makes you feel awesome, until you realise that most of the planets only have a generic description, some you can press A to scan for a generic pop-up message about precious metals, and a few you can land on to drive about on a generic, flat, uninspiring auto-generated terrain with some half-hearted and cack-handedly implemented 'mission' tacked onto it to give you a sense of purpose there, and to prolong the game.

The game plays like that previous sentence, in fact. It's way too long, easy to get lost in, and full of shitty filler. You could get to the point and have a good time by just following the big main words and missing out the rest, but for the sake of getting your money's worth, you won't.

At this point you're probably shouting "What?! Have you never played a BioWare RPG before? Side-quests are awesome!". Yes, they are awesome, when they're well-crafted and inspiring. The majority of these ones, however, are utterly uninspiring, all feel the same, and only exist to boost the number of medals you've collected (or something). This is represented as a number on the menu. Feel the wow factor and the sense of achievement, right there.

Look at Neverwinter Nights (and/or NWN2), Baldur's Gate, or anything else they've ever made. Even KOTOR. There's loads of tangible loot to collect, there's something to aim for, the side-quests all link into the main storyline somehow, even if it's just recurring characters. None of that really applies here, even down to the loot, which feels really limited and lacks any sense of actually being worth collecting.

In short, the side-quests all suck and the sense of freedom is put-on and false. If you believe it, you are easily fooled. Kill yourself.

Moving on, the save system. It couldn't be more broken if it tried. The game autosaves at seemingly random and entirely inappropriate times. It saves, for example, upon entering some new areas, but not others. It rarely saves before any kind of quest-related incident, and this involves INSTANT-DEATH SCENARIOS.

If there are two things I hate in games more than anything else, it's instant-death scenarios, and time limits. More on time limits in a minute, but there is one particular quest that highlights the former problem very easily. There may be more later in the game, but I gave up before then, so I can't say for certain. But it wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, (SPOILER ALERT) you trace a fraudulent transaction through a series of nodes in a perfectly safe city and arrive in the back room of a store. The last time the game deemed it fit to save was an hour ago, for no apparent reason. You approach an odd mainframe on the wall and interact with it. It's a super-computer with an AI installed, and it wants to kill you. The only way out of the conversation results in a time-limited button-pressing trial-and-error mini-game, of which failure to complete results in instant-death and a reload from the last save point. That last save point was an hour ago. The game threw an inescapable instant-death trial-and-error game at me, with no prior warning, and didn't see fit to save the game before it started.

I lost an hour's worth of progress. I was PISSED.

Onto time limits, I hate them. They're a lazy half-hearted way to increase the difficulty of a game. They're supposed to introduce tension, but they actually introduce frustration and panic. In the real world, if you have to find 5 bombs in an unfamiliar location, you can look around and take everything in using your excellent vision and then make snap decisions as to where to go to find them. In a game, you have a limited field of view which takes relatively ages to pan around, displayed on a low-resolution (compared to your eyes) TV set, and they expect you to do the same task. It is not the same, you are completely alienated, and you don't know where to start. So instead of making a calculated decision, you panic, which makes it worse. And I don't mean good panic, I mean bad panic.

Mass Effect introduced the first time-limited bomb-finding section within about an hour and a half. I was not impressed, thinking that this hinted at a lazy design ethic. I guess I should have heeded that warning.

How so, though? I mean, BioWare are so experienced, they piss crude oil and shit gold nuggets. Nothing they do can suck. Right?

Wrong.

Mass Effect is the worst-designed and, more importantly, least consistent game I have played in AGES. I mean, fuck, STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl was inconsistent and a bit broken, but the overall design was better than Mass Effect could ever be, and it was made by a first-time development team based in Ukraine, not a top-of-their-game uber-studio like BioWare with a full Western budget behind them.

Two particular design problems came to light in my recent playing, aside from the time limits and other previous rants.

Firstly, the difficulty levels, in particular relating to boss battles. For example, I've been fighting piss-easy bad guys for the last hour, I land on a planet and answer a distress signal. I drive across the barren, featureless and uninspiring terrain taken from the 1998 E3 demo of Halo (which you all remember, right?). I'm not even kidding here. Anyway, I'm driving and driving and driving and a giant worm appears. I use the cannon on it. It doesn't lose much health, but it loses some, so ok, fair enough. It disappears underground and reappears somewhere else, I use the cannon again. Wash and repeat.

Then out of nowhere, the fucking thing bursts out of the ground directly underneath me, even if I am moving. This flips my vehicle right over, attacking my weak spot for massive damage (in before giant enemy crab) and leaving me completely unable to attack it back because:
1 - my vehicle is tits-up
2 - the camera has gone batshit-crazy and I can't see anyway

By the time I know what's going on, I'm basically dead.

Now come on. Unfair boss battles? I thought we got out of that back in 1995? This is 2007. I don't expect a boss battle to frustrate and annoy due to some ****** designer giving the enemy I'm fighting the ability to strike a critical, crippling, game-ending blow to me (which results in a game-over and a reload, for the record) with no prior warning or way to avoid it.

I'm sure said designer thought it would add tension and danger, much like the time-limited bomb-finding sections, but instead they annoy and cause me to break controllers. Added to the fact that this is on a SIDE-MISSION...what the fuck? No, I don't have to play it, but I'd like the 'reward' at the end (hah) and just because it's a non-essential mission shouldn't mean it's crippled with terrible and unfair design to the point at which it's virtually unplayable.

This doesn't bring me neatly onto the second issue in any way, but I'm moving on anyway.

Environmental design. No, I don't want linear levels. I played Oblivion and Morrowind, I loved them, and they set a standard of open worlds that every other RPG (or any game, almost) should aspire to. BioWare games have always been pretty linear, but this claims to be free-form, so let's see it. And you know what? They have. The levels are free-form (I'm not talking about the overall game design here, but the individual levels).

But there's a problem here. Playing Oblivion and Morrowind, you never felt lost. You felt like you were in a big open world with lots of options, but you also knew exactly where you were straight away, and you knew exactly where you needed to go, and where that was in relation to where you were at that moment in time. Playing Mass Effect raises either two reactions"

- "I'm on this huge planet and there's nothing here at all so I'll drive directly towards that compass point until I hit the objective."
- "I'm in a huge city. Where the fuck am I? Where the fuck am I supposed to go? What the fuck does the map represent? Someone please help me."

There's no consistency. The same schizophrenia that applies to the difficulty level also applies here. One moments you're on a bland level with no points of interest at all, and the next you're lost in a concrete jungle of generic buildings filled with genetic characters, scattered across a confusing layout and displayed on an utterly useless map.

Just give me a few points. The levels don't need to be linear - look at the aforementioned Bethesda games. But for Christ's sake, let me know where I'm going, and how to get there. Even the general direction to head in would be fine, thanks. Just something, ANYTHING, to stop me running around in circles.

The above problem is made worse by the inclusion of inoperable sliding doors which look exactly the same as the ones that actually open, leading to a huge sense of confusion and a loss of your bearings as you run around bashing into every door around and hammering A to see if it opens or not.

Clearly this review/slating is enormous and probably not entirely fair. However, it's what I personally think of the game, it's what I've found, and I have no desire to slate the game any more than it deserves.

At points, the game is awesome. I mean absolutely awesome. When the textures have loaded and it all looks beautiful, and you're using the admittedly well-made (mostly) over-the-shoulder shooting system, the game feels great. But then it throws something so shitty at you, something so badly thought out, that you can't help but either sigh, break something, or turn it off. Or all of the above.

The game just annoys me so, so fucking much. I want to love it, I really do, but it's so riddled with amateurish design decisions that I wouldn't expect from any game, and especially not a BioWare RPG epic. It's genuinely frustrating to a point I've not reached for some time now.

The solution? I'm going into the store tomorrow, with the express intention of trading it in for credit I can cash against something else. This 'something else' will most likely be Call Of Duty 4.

When I was weighing up COD4 vs Mass Effect, I made a deliberate move towards Mass Effect because it would last me a long time and I'd still be playing it months down the line. However, if it's a choice between an 8 hour chunk of solid, polished entertainment or 35 hours of badly-designed cack, I'll take the 8 hour movie any time.

Call Of Duty 4 won't last me into next year, but it'll be fun, and that's what gaming is all about in my mind.

Oh, then I'm going to buy Psychonauts off XBL Marketplace and play a beautiful and well-constructed adventure game that no-one bought on its original release because it wasn't branded with the Star Wars/Disney/King Kong logo.

Following on from that, I don't have COD4 yet because I bought Psychonauts and Longest Journey instead. This, folks, is how you make an adventure game.

 

[praxis22]

The textures do pop-in, especially if you load frequently, and the decrypt mini game, (how you collect most of the loot) is a twitch fest/test. I also find myself shouting at the Mako a lot, though I doubt it's anything like the abuse hurled at Lair's dragons.

That said, the rest is fantastic, I played through once and I'm now playing through again on veteran, it's pure escapism, with the added joy of stats obsessing and loot shopping. Is it as good as KOTOR, no. Nor was Halo3 as good as Halo: combat evolved. Most sequels are never as good as the first time. It's an incremental improvement in places, and not as majestic as hoped in others. However, given how high the bar was set, and the level of hype pre-release, it's still a damn fine game.

Cinematic as all hell, gobsmacking to watch & play, both with film grain and without, if you like RPG's you'll love it.

 

[Senor Pantz]

Well the worm has turned for me.

My spotless disc, which has come out of the pack and into my xbox and stayed there is apparently scratched or dirty and is now not allowing me to continue with the game, or create a new character.

The only solution online is to flush the xbox cache, and that achieved sweet F all, the thing that pisses me off the most is that I was enjoying the game despite its limitations .

 

[jadias]

The textures do pop-in, especially if you load frequently, and the decrypt mini game, (how you collect most of the loot) is a twitch fest/test. I also find myself shouting at the Mako a lot, though I doubt it's anything like the abuse hurled at Lair's dragons.

That said, the rest is fantastic, I played through once and I'm now playing through again on veteran, it's pure escapism, with the added joy of stats obsessing and loot shopping. Is it as good as KOTOR, no. Nor was Halo3 as good as Halo: combat evolved. Most sequels are never as good as the first time. It's an incremental improvement in places, and not as majestic as hoped in others. However, given how high the bar was set, and the level of hype pre-release, it's still a damn fine game.

Cinematic as all hell, gobsmacking to watch & play, both with film grain and without, if you like RPG's you'll love it.

There are two problems I see here.

Firstly, it sounds much better the second time round. That's lovely, except I don't want to have to waste 20+ hours to play it through badly so I can have the 'full experience' the second time. I can play a different RPG like Morrowind for the 40 hours, have one play through, and get the full experience right from the off.

Second, I wouldn't say it was a sequel as such. If they'd said "Hey, this is like KOTOR with some small improvements and a new universe." then I'd be cool with that (even if it wasn't as good). However, they promised too much and missed the mark, even on the most basic of things. The brand new shooting system is wonderful...but the basic design is appallingly bad. The universe is wonderfully detailed, but after promising full freedom and a huge explorable area, it's actually sorely lacking in anything to match up to those promises.

With STALKER, which promised the same thing, it eventually fell away over the years and things were stripped away. But we all knew about this, so our expectations were (or at least, should have been, if you had any sense) lower when it was released. And realistically, it was pretty close to what we were promised within the close time leading up to its release.

Mass Effect just missed it completely. Total freedom? Huge explorable universe? Where, exactly, are these things? They were promised right up until release day, but they're not there, unless the devs' definitions of these things are entirely different to mine.

By the way, I'm not attacking you or your post. You're free to enjoy the game, and I can't criticise. Good for you. I'm just using your post to point out perceived problems with the game.

 

[PurpleRain]

Wow, I just finished it...


(BIG FAT UGLY SPOILER!!!)


Why of why did Wrex have to DIEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! (Cries)

I really wanted to help him. You know get a cure just for him. He was so awesome! But no, angry chick had to shoot him in the back... then in the head! Overkill much? But anywho, me and angry chick eventually hooked up and did the boucy bouncy before saving the universe just after brain plant guy bit the dust holding off the attck while we blew him from here to kingdom come (Yes I have a name for everyone in the game)

(Spoilers have ended)

Overall this game just kick some serious arse. It was so fun to play! I didn't care to much for the obvious problems because the gameplay made up for it perfectly. Now to play the exact opposite of my first character... a biotic tech girl hell bent on world domination. Let's see if I can brake the game shall we?

 

[Ghandi 2]

You could have saved him if you had talked to him enough/had enough Charm/Intimidate points.

As a warning, Biotics get raped early on on Hardcore or above. Once you level up enough that you have enough points in your powers then you are unstoppable, though.

 

[MacCarth]

I'm not sure why there's controversy. I had fun playing Mass Effect. I guess my standards aren't as high as those people who play PC games that were so superior they completely blow games like ME out of the water.

It's a great adventure, plenty of excitement and enjoyment around every turn. Well scripted, good voice acting, and an overall solid control system.

 

[Saskwach]

WARNING: This entire post is spoiler material.

Wow, I just finished it...


(BIG FAT UGLY SPOILER!!!)


Why of why did Wrex have to DIEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! (Cries)

Because you didn't put enough points into Charm or Intimidate. Having spoiled this for myself I was ready and waiting for his death but unsure how it would happen. But as it turned out he was just a Charm/Intimidate option away from sweet, sweet life(yes I could have done either and you should have too).
This scene was probably Bioware's dig at combat min-maxers.

 

[jessehalljrw]

i havent had a really good play of it but i tryied it at my friends and its got great game play and a prity coool story line

 

[PurpleRain]

Thanks for the tips Saskwach and Ghandi 2. Now me and Wrex can finally travel space and get married. Is there a romantic story with him? No. Damnit!

 

[GloatingSwine]

Because you didn't put enough points into Charm or Intimidate. Having spoiled this for myself I was ready and waiting for his death but unsure how it would happen. But as it turned out he was just a Charm/Intimidate option away from sweet, sweet life(yes I could have done either and you should have too).
This scene was probably Bioware's dig at combat min-maxers.

No, I've saved Wrex without spending a single point on Charm or Intimidate. Just talk to him enough on the Normandy and you get a quest to find his family armour. Do that, and you can save him without social skills at all.

 

[Woppler]

I absolutly love this game, deep storyline, great characters, great graphics. The game reminds me of the first time I saw Bladerunner, also loved it.

And yes, there are some issues with the framerate, loading of textures and navigation. But because the rest of the game is so great that isn't that important. More serious problem is that some missions and encounters aren't that difficult once you levelled up a bit. That is when you choose to do a lot of side-quests before working on the main storyline. You've have to balance side-quests and the main storyline to have the best experience.

For me, the best the game of the year...

 

[Saskwach]

Because you didn't put enough points into Charm or Intimidate. Having spoiled this for myself I was ready and waiting for his death but unsure how it would happen. But as it turned out he was just a Charm/Intimidate option away from sweet, sweet life(yes I could have done either and you should have too).
This scene was probably Bioware's dig at combat min-maxers.

No, I've saved Wrex without spending a single point on Charm or Intimidate. Just talk to him enough on the Normandy and you get a quest to find his family armour. Do that, and you can save him without social skills at all.

Really? Maybe that was how I did it instead... I know I used Charm in the face-off but it might have been some of that quest helping too.