Zero Punctuation: Mass Effect 3

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

You know, I was watching the video and after the first sentence on how you had one word-bollocks-and that was it, the ad kicked in. I though for a moment that really was it for the video and it was some kind of joke

 

[Joccaren]

Wait, someone doing an Escapist article that doesn't paint the Mass Effect 3 protests as childish and stupid?
HOLY CRAP!
Well, I guess Jim didn't. I don't think. Maybe. I really couldn't tell through half of that, I'm pretty sure he was still insulting us, but saying we were doing the right thing?

And I mean, no offence to the Escapist staff, but please don't try to make any protest about Video games sound childish. This is possibly the first person writing an article or video that I KNOW has played the game, and he goes without calling us 'rediculous', 'crazy' or other such things. Oh, I remember! The Escapist Podcast crew is on our side!
But seriously, most articles I read on this either imply or state 'I haven't played the game personally, but I think this whole thing is rediculous'. I think you should not insult us, especially if you haven't played the game. Say you don't understand why we're upset, but don't go so far as to insult the cause. As said, no offence meant - I am sure you don't mean to be rude to anyone, but it is the way I feel you are often coming off, and I thought you might like to know.

Other than that, I agree with Yahtzee for most of this. There is... nothing... about the gameplay. Just a feeling of emptiness. The Mako was cool and fun, and should have been refined rather than turned into tissue paper [Anyone who listened to that Vega/Cortez chat will know what I'm talking about], and the romances, to me, felt extremely meh. Extremely. Apparently the Liara one is better, but I felt absolutely nothing for most of the romances in this. They just seemed like excuses to say 'Yeah, Shepard shags his love then runs off' and utter fanfic then something meaningful. I'm surprised he didn't mention the Dream sequences though. They were utter crap. I hated every second of them. You couldn't even run to make it feel like it went faster. Wasted time to me. I get what you were trying to do, but you didn't have to make it so slow. I got a galaxy to save, and interesting stuff to do, and I don't want to waste the little time I have left tonight walking after some kid in a dream.

 

[Labcoat Samurai]

Reapers aren't just dreadnoughts, the Destroyers (those crabs on land) have weaker firepower. They're also smaller than the likes of Harbinger or Sovereign.

Sure, so would you say they have at least 10% the firepower? Because if so, it's still like a Hiroshima bomb every shot. The codex sets up a pretty scientifically interesting world for space combat. The game shows something entirely different. That's somewhat to be expected, I think, given that the space combat of the codex would look nothing like what most people are used to from sci-fi films.

But it's one thing to say "Oh, shields held up against shockwave, it wasn't a direct hit", because if you are even scratched on Rannoch, you die. Here you get a blast to the face from a ship that can destroy space ships.

The whole time you're running up to the gate, you're getting beams that are striking right next to you and, at most, slow your stride slightly. I think you're missing the forest for the trees. No amount of debating over reaper beam continuity is going to trump plot necessity. It just isn't a compelling argument.

 

[Andrew_C]

Actually I'm pretty sure "It could have been worse" - Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw WILL end up on EA marketing material. Enough people think Yahtzee hates everything that they will think it's a ringing endorsement.

Wait, someone doing an Escapist article that doesn't paint the Mass Effect 3 protests as childish and stupid?
HOLY CRAP!

Er, didn't you hear him say "Are you sure not not upset about the ending because it IS an ending" (or word to that effect).

I agree the idea behind the Mako had a lot of potential.

But they totally biffed the execution by using repetitive, bland but frustrating to navigate environments. Then they made the damn vehicle itself handle like a drunk ballerina with bricks strapped to her feet. They topped it off with equally bad exploration music and hidden objectives that seldom gave an indication of their existence. Once inside of planet's primary objective they provided 3 carbon copy interior designs that had minor layout changes.

They had a lot to fix no doubt. But if they actually made the environments and Mako fun, then provided more compelling quests and exploration . . . The Mako sequences would provide an awesome way to emphasize the size and scope of the Mass Effect universe.

I LOVED tha Mako. If they'd just made the environments interesting and fun then I'm sure that most people wounldn't have minded the handling, and maybe spent more time trying to exploit it to get over terrain.

And you can't say they just spent 5 minutes in a procedural terrain generator, because they carefully created easy paths to even the most apparently inaccessible objectives.

 

[pandorum]

And I still don't know how does this game ends...

Well, I wasn't discouraged with the bashing it got, but for once, it's good someone talked about it without the fanboy rage. Not that I expected you to be the same.

If you still want to know, the game basically ends with choice A, B, C no matter what choices you make through out the last two games that's the three you get not to bad i suppose...... but each ending is exactly the same and no matter what the mass relays get destroyed stranding every race who came to help earth as it would take hundreds of years to get back, not to bad for the Asari but the others not so much and the majority do not eat human food as it could kill them. Bioware is calling it artistic but if every ending is exactly the same that's lazy, it boils down to which color of explosion you like most RED, BLUE or GREEN I love the game till the end so i play till the last second then save turn it off and imagine how the ending should of gone, not the garbage they gave, it seems to me they ran out of time on development and rushed the last bit not thinking they were identical.

 

[wintercoat]

Well I'm surprised about the fact that he didn't mention that not playing MP directly affects you in SP.

If he said that he'd be lying. Playing multiplayer makes it easier to get your effective military strength up, but you don't need to play the multiplayer.

However you should, because it's pretty fun.

I dare you to get the FULL ending without multiplayer. Let's see if you gett an EMS above 3900.

It's perfectly possible to get an EMS of 4k(which would be a TMS of 8k. I think some people are confusing Total Military Strength, which is the combined might of Sword and Hammer, with Effective Military Strength, which is the individual strength of both forces) without playing multiplayer. However, it requires you to play a specific way throughout all three games. Choosing the options that gain you the most points from the first 2 games, combined with doing the best in 3, will net you around 5k EMS, give or take a few hundred. In other words, if you don't play multiplayer, but you want the super special ending, you either need the perfect game, which lets them say that you can get all possible endings without playing multiplayer(even though, in all actuality that's pure bullshit), or you're SOL.

 

[pandorum]

I'm shocked that there was no mention of how many times you had to switch the disks in ME3. If you're someone who likes side missions (and I am.), then it was hard to tell when you had to switch. They only made you switch the disks in ME2 3 times that I counted. In ME3, I've already counted 6 times, and I don't think I'm halfway through the game yet. This breaks game flow, and takes away from the game as a whole.

Overall, from what I've played, I like ME3. I like how that the gameplay seems to move faster, BUT I haven't seen this "ending" everyone is talking about, so I might want to hold back on my full opinion of the game until then... To me, the ending of a game is supposed to be the climax, and in most cases, it's what makes the most impact on someone, and what most people will remember from their gaming experience, so if the ending is truly bad enough, it can ruin the entire thing as a whole.

Switching disc's? That on Xbox? if it is LOL.

 

[sharada]

I've never played Mass Effect 1 and 2 but 3rd game did not impress me at all :S ... I thought that writing was plain god awful and cliched at times.
Dreadful ending to the side, the biggest "beef" I have with this game is that none of the aliens actually FEEL...you know...alien! They think and talk like any generic american with a latex mask on... it's like a really bad scifi fan convention.

I can't help but remember Dragon Age:Origins and the character of Sten. Whilst not being strictly "alien" his outlook on life was a stark difference compared to "conventional" outlook of all the other characters. He was masterfully written, and that is something I have truly missed in Mass Effect - I just did not feel as if aliens had any particularly unique culture to them. All the difference in "aliens" was nothing more then skin deep...which is sickening in it's ignorant political correctness -.-'

 

[DarkPheonix13]

Yep, that's on Xbox, but I'm not getting into PC vs. console, so I'll just say this. I like console systems... that's it.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

So his opinion pretty much came down to "meh".

That's the most unentertaining kind of review of him to watch, but the internet is full of reactions to this title, so I don't mind that much.
I thought the game was throwing him a lot of bones he didn't pick up tho. ME3 must've really really bored him.

 

[JonahNYC]

I posted my own article about what went wrong with Mass Effect 3:

http://www.gamestooge.com/2012/03/21/mass-effect-3-what-really-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/

Let me know what you think, Mr. Croshaw and others.

 

[eljawa]

Return of the King was better than the second LOTR movie. But beyond that I cant really think of too many ends of trilogies that live up to the expectation.

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

If you still want to know, the game basically ends with choice A, B, C no matter what choices you make through out the last two games that's the three you get not to bad i suppose...... but each ending is exactly the same and no matter what the mass relays get destroyed stranding every race who came to help earth as it would take hundreds of years to get back, not to bad for the Asari but the others not so much and the majority do not eat human food as it could kill them. Bioware is calling it artistic but if every ending is exactly the same that's lazy, it boils down to which color of explosion you like most RED, BLUE or GREEN I love the game till the end so i play till the last second then save turn it off and imagine how the ending should of gone, not the garbage they gave, it seems to me they ran out of time on development and rushed the last bit not thinking they were identical.

Well, isn't this pretty much what happened with Deus Ex: HR? The relevance of your choices had no impact in the ending except for the last choice, it was really a downer, but we survived, so why is people still getting mad with ME3?

 

[Mahoshonen]

To be fair to Yahtzee, he did admit that he's always jaded. He never seemed to be 'in' to Mass Effect anyway (in his ME1 review, he romanced Ashley Williams of all people, and just got weirded out that she has the same name as Bruce Campbell's character from Evil Dead.) So while it would have been great to see him get his narc on about the ending, I can understand his indifference.

 

[Dr. Stupid]

Yahtzee, I'm guessing your girlfriend dumped you or something, because while there's always been a lot of fapping jokes on the reviews, it seems for a while now things have taken a more bitter (and less funny) tone towards all things sexual. It plays into the stereotype of gamers being alienated losers, and I know you don't want that to be your persona.

 

[stef1987]

to be honest, I never got what people liked about mass effect.
I only played the first, and only the first 30% or something,
but it was terrible imo, just way too boring.

 

[pandorum]

If you still want to know, the game basically ends with choice A, B, C no matter what choices you make through out the last two games that's the three you get not to bad i suppose...... but each ending is exactly the same and no matter what the mass relays get destroyed stranding every race who came to help earth as it would take hundreds of years to get back, not to bad for the Asari but the others not so much and the majority do not eat human food as it could kill them. Bioware is calling it artistic but if every ending is exactly the same that's lazy, it boils down to which color of explosion you like most RED, BLUE or GREEN I love the game till the end so i play till the last second then save turn it off and imagine how the ending should of gone, not the garbage they gave, it seems to me they ran out of time on development and rushed the last bit not thinking they were identical.

Well, isn't this pretty much what happened with Deus Ex: HR? The relevance of your choices had no impact in the ending except for the last choice, it was really a downer, but we survived, so why is people still getting mad with ME3?

Because of the major plot hole, destroying the Mass Relay in the Arrival DLC destroys that star system but in mass effect 3 it would of wiped out all life in every system. If it did not then everyone is stuck in their star system that they are in now, effectively plunging the entire galaxy in to the dark ages at least the three in HR were different to some degree no closer but still different. Look on you tube all three in mass are identical bar who comes out of the Normandy at the end, joker always comes out making him a deserter in war because he was on the front line ten min before fighting the Reapers.

 

[Shiro No Uma]

All of this seems strange to me. Everyone is talking about the ending and not the game. I haven't finished the game yet, but I'm loving it. Some of the things he mentions really felt like strengths to me. It's strange that Yahtzee sounded like he was upset there weren't new characters when the story is already saturated and really doesn't need to be cluttered with even more characters to end the story line. It even sounded like a negative that it was so well written. Also, don't you blast shit from space? Like a Reaper? And the little differences in game play, such as the aforementioned Reaper laser strike mission, was amazing. I felt like they showed off the locales in really cool ways, i.e. shooting at Husks running at the Quarian Admiral from a hovering shuttle. Even though some of these game mechanics were short, they made this game the best experience in the franchise for me. And the amazing detail on all of the locations, most of which we haven't seen in previous games. I even felt like I was being rewarded for exploring all that the area had to offer. While some people don't like the multi-player aspect, I think it's brilliant. You and your squad literally represent the team worked needed to save the galaxy with cooperation in the front lines of a war. Like most of you, I have played the first two games many times and have so much invested in the story and charters. I have imported my saved games to both sequels and I get reminded of my triumphs and mistakes. I don't feel cheated at all, and I know how it ends. I can't go to a website without it being brought up, and most of my db friends won't shut up about it. Sad to see such a bastion of great storytelling be subjugated to....what every this is. (With my friends it sounds and feels like crybaby syndrome)

 

[DolorousEdd]

You can count on Yatzeeh not taking notice of or even getting universal (unfanboy) criticism but otherwise pointing out obvious criticism that tends to be overlooked in the fuss... Among other things, this is a very typical Yatzeeh-phenomenon. Just don't expect straight-on criticism that one side can fully sympathise with. (Or some can, of course.)

 

[DolorousEdd]

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."
?John Carmack

You know. That's John Carmack. The guy who made the graphics engine (!) for Doom (!).