The Mass Effect...

[Defunct]

Anyone playing this gem of a game?

if so, waddaya think of it?

Personally i think its yet another triumph from Bioware, essentially they've taken KotOR and slapped a shiny new shell on it, stuck a different story line on it (havent got that far with it.... well after 11 hours of play I have yet to start the first Main missions) and stuck it in a galaxy thats 3 maybe 4 times the size of the star wars one.

Flows like any decent RPG should... well that is to say theres enough side quests to keep you busy for long enough to forget what your actually doing in the main mission.

coupla issues though;

The "Radical new chat system" that is supposed to have been implemented... erm well as of yet I haven't seen it at all, just the classic Bioware stuff, you get a few options, if your a nasty bastard you can pound some skulls or if your a pansy you can "talk things through", if your indecisive well screw you, your boring :p (not really a complaint more of an observation)

Also, would have much preferred to play it on the PC, would say I had a pretty high end PC think it could probably beat or at least equal my 360 on graphical stuffs. This game is either one of two things; Far to pretty/big for the 360 to handle (i.e. textures don't load fast enough, sometimes the struggles to load areas before you get to them) or that the 360 just isn't a powerful enough machine (of course without seeing the game on other platforms I'm just hypothesizing).

Well theres my 2 cents, would like to hear what ya'll think of it.

....back to the game I go! :D

[Midnighter]

I dicked around on character creation for 20minutes and then played it for 3 minutes.
I'll go back and play it proper some time when I actually have time :)

[G0rF]

The Mrs has it pre-ordered.

It did not arrive on Friday.

<sarc>
I had the best weekend ever.
</sarc>

PS: Was designed and built on the XNA.

Not due for cross-platform release either, we believe.

[Midnighter]

The voice acting seems great and the character visuals are fantastic.
There is clearly a lot of effort in getting things to look as perfect as possible.
Makes Oblivion look like a crudely manufactured turd.
I'd compare it to Halo 3, but that will always be a crudely manufactured turd ;)

Only reason I actualy bought it was because HMV had it £37.95 and you got 1000 MS points free with it.
And I desperately needed MS Points to get me more Guitar Hero songs :)

[Defunct]

Only reason I actualy bought it was because HMV had it £37.95 and you got 1000 MS points free with it.
And I desperately needed MS Points to get me more Guitar Hero songs :)

yeah was weird seeing it quite so cheap, I got my 10% student discount on that as well so it ended up about 34 quid, which is pretty damned good for a new 360 release. :D

[Dragonstorm]

Not due for cross-platform release either, we believe.

Nopes, not coming out on other consoles, but it is coming out not too far away on the PC - just like gears of war and assassin's creed (both out now on pc).

The voice acting seems great and the character visuals are fantastic.

I half agree with this.

They have put alot of effort in, and have done some VERY nice blending wit the normal maps on the characters faces. As the chars raise their eyebrows etc, they add extra bumps/wrinkles to the chars heads, and that looks VERY nice. (also does this on the clothes around the joints).

The one big bad thing about the talking though is the lips. On most characters (those with lips!) they look very plastic-y and don't form the shapes properly. It looks okay, but doesn't look like the character is actually saying the words, just badly trying to mouth something else.

On the same branch, there was supposed to be some sort of innovation in the chat system, but so far I haven't seen anything of it. There was some big fuss about being able to interrupt people and that woudl change their reactions towards you. Say if you ket cutting someone off, they would get angry. This isn't present in the game at all, and it's actually impossible to interrupt someone. You can skip speech (with X), but the character doesn't react to it and rather than smoothly change to the next scene like it was supposed to, the character will quite visually 'snap' to their next position.

Other than that minor gripe, the other thing I don't like is the loading. There are loading screens, and they're not too long. But you also then get big pauses whilst walking around whilst the console loads up newer areas. You get used to it after a while, but it's pretty damned annoying at first. The one that hasn't stopped annoying me yet though is the one that Defunct mentioned.

The game can go through a full loading screen, but when you get in there, all the textures and models are VERY low detail for around 10-20 seconds, whilst it still loads. It just seems silly to have done this really. I'd much rather they'd have stuck the extra time on the load screen rather than put me straight in, and then completely ruin the immersion of the game, and leaving me wondering if I've fallen back in time 10 years, or if somethings wrong with the game!!

Last thing; I've only had a few game breaking bugs. Mostly getting stuck in the scenery, but one was caused by the above loading scene. I walked out after a load and got talking to someone in a cut-scene, but at the end of the cutscene it went into a dialog with them. The models were still laoding after the cut-scene, and it seems everything else was too. In the dialog I had no options, and all the other char could say was "NO_TLK". Nice! Had to reset and unfortunately hadn't saved in about 20 mins!! So keep in mind stuff like that can happen, so save often!

Anyways! I'm about 12 hours in now, and have ony done 1 of the main missions since I got my ship. Other than that I've been doing all the side-missions and it's kept me very busy.

Ultimately it's a Bioware game, and you get exactly what you'd expect, which imo is great :) The combat is a little different than usual (Over-the-shoulder shooter. You still have squad management, powers and can give orders like 'use a certian power', or 'go over there' to each squad member as usual), but it's fun and as long as you don't try to treat it like a shooter, and remember it's an rpg you won't find it too difficult. Fun engaging story, ability to be good or evil, group of interesting chracters you can get to know over the main story, it's got it all :)

Highly recommending this on to Bioware fans.


Ps. If you're trying to rush through the game just to finish it like some people I know then you're a fool. That is not how you play a Bioware game! :mad:

[Jekht]

*holds out for a month for possible announcement of PC version*

Like KotOR, I don't want to 'ruin' the game for myself by playing what I'd consider an incomplete or unstable copy. From what I hear the 360 game suffers from serious load problems, just like DS says.

If it doesn't get released on the pc, then I'l still snap up a copy, so either way... i'l be happy

[Dragonstorm]

*holds out for a month for possible announcement of PC version*

Like I said, 100% confirmed PC version on the way, but it will definately be a while because MS likes 360 to have "exclusives", which they then like to say "nah, not so much anymore" a few months down the line.

I don't think there's an estimated release date yet, but it will no doubt be after the holidays whilst MS tries to secure more console sales =S

[Jekht]

Do you have a link to a PC announcement I can pass around? :)

[NovaBlack]

Not due for cross-platform release either, we believe.


I also heard it was already confirmed for pc!

ill try and track down my sources



we will probably get improved visuals and some nice extra areas! woohooo!

[Defunct]

When this game does come out for the PC I would seriously consider selling my version to one of my mates (the stupid ones :p) and get it for the PC, that is provided I fix my broken heap'o'shite. ;)

[G0rF]

Erm...

6 hours play, 3 in-play loading screens, none of the rendering problems detailed above post load.

One character rendered slowly during one conversation, not exactly a show stopper.

Other than that, watching my Mrs play "Ghost Recon in Space" is f'kin' weird.

[NovaBlack]

lol count yourself lucky!

the forums are full of talk of it atm :-/ Thing is they could alaways try some sort of patch with the 360s online capabilities

[Dragonstorm]

Woop, just finished the game. (Credits are still on in the background)

Overall, i'd say it's a very good game. It plays pretty well, with nice smooth combat and easy to use interface, etc. It has the usual Bioware bugs of loopable chat (sometimes with rewards, etc.) and broken chat arcs and stories, but you're probably used to it by now! The story is good, although a li'l too obvious for my tastes, I prefer something with a bit more mystery and some twists to it, and right up until the end I was hoping something bigger was going to come along.

The game itself was disappointingly short for what I've come to expect from Bioware. I finished in 24hrs, and that involves completing every single side-quest available in the game to my character. I only reached lvl 47, out of 50 too. If you take out the side missions, this game is definately less than 10 hours, which tbh is much less than I'd usually expect from Bioware.

The other main downside I found was that the game was ridiculously easy. I managed everything first try, except for the odd game bug making me die repeatedly (stuck in terrain making worms eat me!), or when i made a stupid mistake and got swammped by a flood of rockets (they can 1-hit kill more often than not).

Oh, I feel I need to mention that annoying texture loading bug too. At the end of the game there are ALOT fo cut-scenes, and they jump around between lots of characters in lots of locations. I spent most of the time just trying to figure out who the characters were, because it only managed to losd the textures in about half the cases, and even then it was just as it was cutting away form the character. Nearly every character it displayed in the last 10 odd minute cut-scece was one solid colour. This is a very noticible, very annoying design flaw/bad programming/bug/whatever.

One last annoying, but very minor thing is for you achievement hunters out there! You get an achievement for keeping the same squad with you for "most of the game". What this actually means though, is having the squad member with you at the right points. Namely for the key missions. I had Garrus with me for the entire game except for the one mission where the achievement gets awarded (same place as "complete most of the game" badge), but even though I had him in the party all that time before and then after i didn't get it, I only got Ashley's one. So there's the tip, if you want two of those for two squad members, keep them with you for every mission until you get to that point. Skip even one and it fails because of a stupid design. I actually took him out for that mission, because the story highly recommended that I did so to swap him for Liana. Turns out absolutely nothing happens if you take her along anyway! I was not impressed!

I'm looking forward however to re-playing the game with my character. After one playthrough, you unlock harder difficulties (much needed imo), aswell as getting to use the same character. I was pretty bitchy and mean in this play through, so I'll try the goody-goody approach this time too. I haven't checked yet but apparently, aswell as raising the level cap to 60 for your existing character, the game also gives you the choice of an additional skill tree based on the achievements you got in the first play through for new characters. e.g. If you were a soldier first time and got the assault rifle badges, you could play biotic on a new char, and give them assault rifles as a new tree. That sounds pretty fun, so that's another reason to play through.

Anyways, overall I'd highly recommend it to all Bioware fans or anyone looking for a good RPG on the 360.

[NovaBlack]

i....want...too...ppllllaaayyy... *WAAAAAAH!*

[Ackercoke]

AWESOME

Play the nice renegade ;)

Just completed, much fun if not a little on the hard side especially with the very few Auto saves, that gets a little teidious remembering to save every 30mins so you don'thave to repeat an hours game play, which is why I have taken to long to complete, that and the fact that I've been playing Stuntman ignition too

REALLY, really good story though although some of the tasks were monotonous IMO

[0bitus]

Just started playing it and yeah the no auto save has caught me out a few times not sure about the combat yet tis nice being a mean renegade though!

[Jekht]

just making my character now!

[Jekht]

This game is so good... it's just... amazing.

The acting, the setting, the history, the story, the gameplay... it's even longer than I expected, I'm surprised they can fit that much data onto one disk. It truely is, so far, an epic RPG. Just what I had been waiting for!

[TrillianX]

I just beat it, like DS said.... credits are still rolling in the back round. I loved this game. This is probably one of the best stories I have seen in a game, although I think the original KoToR may still be better. The controls are good, the graphics are nice. I had maybe one load issue, other than that.... no problems at all.

5 stars... Best RPG I have played in a long time. Way to go Bioware, your my hero. :p

[savity]

Just bought it - and ya know how slow I play games....... - I saw it for £19.99 on sale so it was a no-brainer really...... just playing through slowly - but I have to admit looks fantastic so far.


See ya in 6 months when I finish it....... ;)

[Jekht]

£20? Blimey - was it second hand as well? Even second hand, i think someone made a mistake when pricing it!

[savity]

Nope Brand New - Gamestation. The one near us do these odd sales where they seriously mark down recent games for a few days.

[Defunct]

Thats an amazing deal you got there Sav, and yeah our Gamestation occasionally does a similar thing.

I actually still have yet to finish this game, and I doubt I will for a while, seem to have taken a step back from gaming for some reason.