Mass Effect for PC is...

Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
As for the resurrection: There was a time limit in Gears of War for resurrecting someone?

I'm not sure about that one. I remember the screen getting more and more red. Also, I thought you were supposed to press X rapidly to prolong time (360 version).
 
Oh yeah, it was like that in the multiplayer portion of the game. Forgot about that.

Tapping the key was supposed to get your heart pumping faster or something.
 
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
Tapping the key was supposed to get your heart pumping faster or something.

Wouldn't that make you die faster?

One assumes that if you're dying of a gaping gunshot wound, you would want your blood to stay in you, not gushing out like diarrhea.
 
generalissimofurioso said:
Wouldn't that make you die faster?

One assumes that if you're dying of a gaping gunshot wound, you would want your blood to stay in you, not gushing out like diarrhea.

You'd think so, but if you get the timing right you can actually revive yourself... from just getting gutshot point blank with a shotgun.
 
Once in a while I get a craving for science-fiction, be it books, films or in this case; games.

I will buy this game today and also plan to get Sins of a Solar Empire.

Hopefully it will turn out to be a fulfilling experience in terms of giving me a boost of sci-fi gaming at least :)
 
I got the console version of this game as my sibling and I have an xbox 360 and that was several months ago. I really enjoyed it. It had one of the best stories and best dialog of any modern rpg I have played of late. I liked it a lot, even though the rpg elements were not as present as they could have been.
 
Daimyo said:
Once in a while I get a craving for science-fiction, be it books, films or in this case; games.

I will buy this game today and also plan to get Sins of a Solar Empire.

Hopefully it will turn out to be a fulfilling experience in terms of giving me a boost of sci-fi gaming at least :)

You sir will not move from that computer chair for days on end... I kid you not.

Edit: And admit it, you too think the Quarrian has a nice bod! :lol:
 
Maphusio said:
You sir will not move from that computer chair for days on end... I kid you not.

Edit: And admit it, you too think the Quarrian has a nice bod! :lol:

First impression after 4ish hours of gameplay:

I feel like it is an interactive story/movie more than a game - much time is spent talking to people (and I love that you get small amounts of XP for this - it is an added incentive in addition to just wanting to submerge myself in the setting and story)

I love the fact that people move around, move their head, and actually express feelings with their face during conversations - very realistic and well made.

-Pretty.
-Very likable by the sci-fi lover in me.
-I don't like that inventory, character screen etc are not accessible from the same screen - i.e. I cannot change directly from inv to char by the click of a button.
-Combat (I chose low aiming aid) - abit tricky yet, but I will probably get used to it.
- Dialogue seems abit shallow and pretending to be good, while actually being quite Black and white (the gaming manual even tells me how to answer good/bad, and elaborate/short), but the story seems good so I have not thought too much about this yet - it will probably get to me in the end.

And yes, some of the female characters are portrayed with physical attributes that are not totally void of esthetic and dare I say it, erotic qualities. :)

EDIT:
Impressions after some days of playing - am at level 25 now:

+ Still pretty and sci-fi lovely
+ Still like the story
+ I like that skills make a difference. (I have been denied the possibility to loot debris due to my Electronics skill being too low)
- I cannot for the love of all that is logical and userfriendly understand why I have to exit the inventory of a vendor and then initiate dialogue again if I want to look at items of a different category. So annoying.
- Elevators are also very annoying ...

In other words; still enjoying it although the choice/consequence thingy is shallow and thus in effect black and white.
 
I've finished it. And I can say one thing: it's a typical B-Movie.
Full of cliches, combat and linear quests. It's like chewing a bubble-gum. You chew it, at first it is tasty, then not, sometimes there are some juicy bits, but at the end you throw it away and nothing is left.

It's an action game with some RPGish elements. Quests are really linear. If you get couple of quests on a plot planet, all them are solved, when you kill all your opponents there.

Side quests are all the same, as the planets are. The are only three types of side quest locations and that really pisses off. When you understand it, you just lose any interest to side quests.

Loot is based on your level and the shops are empty. Best things are found while looting.

Fuck elevators. Fuck elevators. Fuck elevators.

The main plot quests are too long, which makes the game feel too short actually. You solve three or four quests and you can finish the game actually.

Couple of things I liked though. One: you can sometimes talk yourself through and not end with a fight. The other: there was a really nice moment at Vermeir, when (SPOILER!) at first your party member turns on you, then you have to choose who will be killed from your party. Then again. It was the strongest moment in the game.

The ending is dull, the end boss is weak. I can't understand, why did the action-oriented game have such a weak end fight.

So if you want some B-Movie experience, go ahead and try it. If not - just ignore this game.
 
I finally got myself to play this critically-acclaimed RPG of the year and have some opinion on it.

So, my version of the thread's title would be : Mass Effect for PC is an uninteresting, dull pseudo-RPG with too many console feel to it and bad main hero animations. Listening to the conversations make me fall asleep, combat looks ridiculous, there's no punch you should feel when being shot upon and shooting in return.

There are some strong points, though. You have a very good journal (inspired by the one from Witcher, my guess), for which updating you get experience points. The conversation's animations are nice and there are some strong plot points.

Except for these few things, the game is very boring IMHO.
 
I've been playing the game sporadically for the past several days and I think I've already completed at least 50%. I'll try to post a more detailed review when I'm finished, but in the meantime, here are some early impressions:

1. The roleplaying aspect is as underwhelming as I expected. This is your typical idiot's RPG. Character system is simplified to the extreme, only allowing you to customize your character through selection of class and skill increases. The latter are largely irrelevant due to poor balancing - namely, you gain so much experience in the game that you can max out most useful skills at your disposal, effectively removing the need to plan your character like in normal RPGs. Furthermore, the storyline is mostly linear, requiring you to perform a series of missions without really giving you opportunity to do anything radical and unexpected, such as change your allegiances. Your choices largely amount to the following: 1. Do the bidding of your superiors, and 2. Do the bidding of your superiors AT ANY COST. The Good/Evil meter is still there, only this time it's called "Paragon/Renegade " and it appears to be even more irrelevant than its equivalents in Jade Empire and KotOR.

2. Sidequest design is the laziest I've ever seen. Majority of sidequests amount to landing on a planet, driving to a remote location in your Mako rover and killing everyone there. Writing is almost universally subpar and forgettable. The only art assets unique to each sidequest are voice-overs, while everything else is reused over and over again, creating a deja vu effect so prominent you could crush an elephant with it.

3. Area design is as lazy as sidequest design. So far I have encountered only one urban area in the entire game - the Citadel. In addition to the Citadel, there appear to be only a handful of unique locations in the entire game and most main quest-related missions take place there. All sidequests take place on random-generated surfaces of planets and in one of two predefined indoor areas. Even "unique" areas have a generic, bland feel to them, as if they have been poorly ripped from mediocre sci-fi without any attempt to make them distinctive or interesting.

4. BioWare have yet again utterly failed to craft a living, believable world - Mass Effect supposedly takes place in a sprawling and cosmopolitan galaxy, yet for some reason said galaxy appears to consist of nothing but tiny, constrained hallways and barren landscapes exported from TerraGen. Inexcusable.

5. Writing is inferior to most of BioWare's prior work, let alone the work of developers who are actually good at writing RPGs. I can understand if BioWare was aiming for the '70s trash sci-fi feel, but that still doesn't excuse the unengaging main quest, completely unremarkable characters and largely uninteresting setting. Here is a friendly tip for BioWare: if most first-person shooters have comparable or better writing than your flagship RPG, then you are doing something wrong.

6. Mass Effect's supposed "maturity" is a joke. For all the mature themes that supposedly abound in Mass Effect, the game could still cleanly fit into PG-13 rating. If three-second implied sex scenes and occasional mentions of "ass" are what makes a piece of media mature, then even most sitcoms are pornographic orgies of profanity and violence. About the most brutal acts you can do in Mass Effect are summary executions of unarmed prisoners, and even these don't have any real ramifications to underscore their severity, so they feel about as nefarious as robbing a pop-corn stand.

7. BioWare miraculously managed to implement a combat system that is halfway decent. While combat in Mass Effect is hardly comparable to a proper shooter, it's still an enormous improvement over the catastrophe that is BioWare's RTwP. I never thought I'd say this, but it's even somewhat fun at times.

8. Planetary exploration fucking sucks. Not only are planetary surfaces random-generated and devoid of anything that would make them even remotely interesting to explore, but Mako handling and physics are among the worst I've ever seen and about on a par with mediocre late '90s driving sims.

9. Following in the footsteps of other RPG developers who don't really have a clue about game balance and RPG design, BioWare introduced an annoying hacking minigame that never fails to put a smile on my face as I fantasize about playing football with Casey Hudson's disembodied head.

10. In technical terms the game is generally unimpressive. Character animation is solid, especially during conversations and animated sequences, but everything else is last-gen. Environments are sterile and lack detail, textures on most objects have a blurry, washed-out look to them and lighting is fairly basic and unremarkable if you don't count the occasional lens flare during planetside missions. There is nothing in the game to indicate that it is powered by one of the most advanced game engines currently available. To top it all off, I have also encountered several highly annoying bugs with texturing and interface that will hopefully be fixed by the newly-released patch.

11. Fucking elevators move so slowly you could have a coffee while they inch along. To make matters worse, you have to use them very frequently, as the Citadel and your ship Normandy are teeming with them.

12. Also add the decontamination sequence triggered when entering Normandy to the list of annoyances. Whoever came up with that brilliant idea is undoubtedly a fucking moron who deserves to die an extremely violent death. When they do, I hope they end up in a hell where everyone is forced to stand alone in a tiny 2x2 airlock for no reason while an irritating computer voice keeps reminding them that "decontamination [is] in progress".
 
Ratty, you should know better by now than to expect a deep RPG from these guys. certainly in an acclaimed game like this. can only mean it's lowest common denominator stuff.

that said, it's enjoyable enough to play through once. regardless of the many flaws listed above. personally, the most annoying part for me was the lack of actual ways to get your character to walk the thin line between good & evil. i'm a neutral good kinda guy at heart, and as an infiltrator i thought i'd get to play it out like that. but no, it's just the choice between goody twoshoes, rebel without a cause and saddistic bastard.

the total lack of a sense of pressure was also a problem. saving the galaxy? pfft, nevermind i'll just do some sidequests first. afterall, killing some retarded doctor that sells organs is much more important than saving the galaxy, right?
this is true up til a point you complete the 'main quests' and then BAM! you cant take any sidequests anymore. kinda retarded.

repeating minigames ad nauseum is indeed utter crap, but luckily you can bypass many. seriously half these lockers contain total shit and you only need to actually buy very few items at all to be combat worthy. so halfway the game i just stopped caring. half the time & only did lockers that looked interesting. though the bland repeating shit does make it hard to tell what's interesting & what isn't most of the time...

Ratty, for the maturity rating, at the end of the game you can get a 'sex' scene, where you see some skin & that's pretty much it.

tl;dr: enjoyable as a mindless shooter with some dialog options. had some potential though, but never came close to achieving it.



PS: i hope you guys spotted Cree "Hi, my name is Tandi, what's yours?" Summer and Dwight Schultz in Mass Effect.
 
SuAside said:
PS: i hope you guys spotted Cree "Hi, my name is Tandi, what's yours?" Summer and Dwight Schultz in Mass Effect.

Sadly, hearing Cree Summer's voice these days makes me think of Foxxy Love (Drawn Together) more than Tandi. Also, Lance Henriksen is in Mass Effect, which has nothing to do with Fallout but is cool as hell anyway.

I really don't know whether I should play this game. I played KOTOR about half-way through before I got bored with it, haven't touched KOTOR 2, and even NWN 2 made me feel a little queasy. The DRM is also over the top.
 
13pm said:
Fuck elevators. Fuck elevators. Fuck elevators.

The heterosexual male part of me thinks you might be missing some very well put together pixels. :D
 
Typical elevator news:
"The researchers at the Feros excavation headquarters think Commander Shepard is a total badass for solving the planet's problem. Shepard is the sexiest human alive"

SPOILER:

There was one part of the game where I thought, "Awesome!"
You can punch the female reporter in the face for asking too many questions - You already dun told her once.
 
So I'm done with the game... (Like I told you further up on this page.

End conclusion?

Spolier alert of course, but then again, this whole thread is a spoiler :)

Arggghs in addition to what I have already mentioned:
1. Elevators turned out to remain annoying.
2. The bouncy ragdoll physics of the Mako-driving drove me mad. Extremely annoying and not any less so because of the insanely exaggerated spiky mountains in every planet terrain ... What is wrong with rolling hills, or God forbid, some fluids (oceans, rivers etc)?
3. The whole lovestory thingy is quite weak, but then again, they tend to be in games.
4. Dialogue is very transparent and skills are not influential enough in dialogue. Would be nice if knowledge of biotics, tech or weapons unloced dialogue choices too, and not just the good guy / bad guy skills ... (Charm/Intimidate)

Mmms:
1. Still looks good - I like the alien races, the urban environments and the space-looking-skies while outdoors. (And the menus/loading screens etc)
2. I like that vehicle combat is in although it could be more challenging - also the spiky terrain makes it annoying at times.
3. Some "SURPRISE" moments - like the first time I encountered a Thresher Maw. (It was in the middle of the night, I was concentrating and suddenly I jumped in my seat. A proud moment at 29 years of age ...)
4. I like that the downloadable content is free.

But best of all, (and this is kind of weird seeing as it is in play perhaps 0,003% of the time I am playing):
The ambient sounds and music while browsing the menus, or looking at loading screens, like the screen where you can choose to "resume" / "load" etc. I just loved it - I thought it had a very Sci-Fi sound to it.


So? Will I play it again? Perhaps, but not right now ...

Question: Do the acheivements alone make it worth another play through? (What do they give me?)
 
Back
Top