So, uh... Mass Effect- Am I missing something?

[Jeronus]

I dunno, it just doesn't seem fun, to me.
Today, I was on some random planet, and I open a door only to be attacked by over a dozen husks. I'm sorry, but it breaks game flow to have sparkly, blue zombies gnawing at my ankles and your character can't use a shotgun at point-blank range.
And the sniper rifle: I'm sorry, but at ten feet away from the target, you should be able to have a half-decent grip on your gun.
And most recently, I boarded this ship only to be attacked by terrorists. They killed the hostage, then proceeded to kill me eight times within the first four seconds. Seven seconds, if I was lucky. There was no decent cover available, or anything.



Now, before I seem like I hate the game, I must admit that its very fun, and more importantly to me, eyepoppingly gorgeous. It was like biting into fresh berries and creme fraische on creme broulee in the same spoonful. And then the battle's like the raspberry seeds. Seemingly unnessary, to me.

Try playing the soldier class. You basically become a human tank capable of running into hail of bullets and coming out on top.

Edit: Sorry for the errors.

 

[lumenadducere]

Well, considering the 3-month gap between the thread's creation and the current necro, I don't know how relevant any of this is, but here goes:

As others have said, use cover. Peek out for shots and ability use, but otherwise stay tucked away.

Also, make absolutely sure you're using both your abilities and those of your allies. All weapons have special attacks, and the biotic and technology skills are very handy as well. If you aren't using both your and your companions' abilities then you're most definitely wasting a huge amount of potential.

Also, this may seem like a silly question, but you've leveled up and put points into your skills, right? When the game launched there were quite a few people that didn't realize they could put points into their skills as they leveled (there was even a reviewer who made that mistake!) so they found the game to be much more difficult than it should have been.

 

[Flying-Emu]

Necro'd thread is necro'd?

 

[Heraklitus]

I found that the most effective tactic was generally to grab a pistol, flip on Marksmanship. . .

Wait, you have to flip it ON?

ROFL... well that would have made life easier. I beat it anyways!

 

[Muphin_Mann]

not sure how old this thread is popped up in a google search

You could just read the date of the post above yours. Its about three months, which is fairly long but i consider it to be fair game if the website hasnt locked or deleted it as it ages.

Yeah. Sniping in Mass Effect is really crappy. The gun sways too much at range to aim effectively, one shot is never enough to kill (that I've noticed), the first shot always alerts the enemies, you can't zoom in far enough to make the distance an effective defense against opponents, etc.

The subquests are... hellish. The first few are kinda fun, but after the 10th time you make planet fall you really just wish there was an option to skip straight to the mission. Driving is at best mildly fun, at worst frustrating, and completely unnecessary in the first place. All of the mission zones are nearly identical copy-pasted clones with a few boxes shifted around and a Villain of the Week around every corner.

Oh. And very low replayability. Really, clearing the game with a pistol isn't a whole lot different than clearing it with a rifle, even if you can throw an glowy blue ball that might do something (if you're lucky) once every minute. The glowy green ball helps mix it up a bit, but you don't get either until you're far enough into the game that you're so bored you don't care anyway, so it doesn't matter either way.

Also, what's this 'Be at the right place at the right time or die' thing? There are only a few timed events and none are terribly hard. If you're talking about things like dodging massive balls of energy, well... yeah. That's part of playing a game with fighting in it: don't be in front of the bullets.

I dont agree on the replay thing. A pistol and an assault rifle might have some similarities but the sniper rifle and shotgun are not at all like either of those. So thats four weapon playthroughts. Then you have biotics which, if you know what your doing, will be coming out the wazoo (later on you will have like five abilities with a 20 second reset timer and another ability that instantly resets them. In all but the biggest fights you will have more pwoer than needed) and then you also have the electronic grenades (which i dont use) plus the fact that different backstories give you different sidequests (some of the most interesting ones in fact) and you cant be all lawful and all chaotic on one playthrough.

As for distance and whatnot. Not a big problem although you have to pick your poison. Fight up close and worry about rockets and Krogans or fight way back and worry about difficulty aiming and enemy snipers.

As for sniping...i probably wouldnt do it on higher difficulties, buts its pretty powerful on normal or easy. My longest kill was at a bit over 300 meters outdoors from one mountaintop to the base of a different one that had baddies around it.

 

[scotth266]

Doo doo doo!

I liked Mass Effect. I played through as a Vanguard, and had very little trouble doing so due to the overwhelming combat power that class has. That being said: I would have played a different class to try it out if I had the time.

Note: Apparently, sniping is bad according to my peers that have played this game. Any verification from vet ME snipers? I never tried it.

And all the classes have some point to them, that's why they're in the game

Edit: Actually, the most challenging thing was using those gas grenades. I kept killing just ONE civie by accident, but I was stubborn and kept reloading the game till I got it down.