I’m almost jealous since I do not own an XBox. If any title seems worthy of play on the XBox at all, it’s probably Mass Effect. It’s really the only title that has perked my interest immensely since playing Gears of War. Sweet sci-fi/space drama.
Since EA now owns Bioware, etc. maybe they’ll consider future iterations or maybe even a port later on to various other platforms.
A gang of people is gathered around the TV behind me playing it right now, and a rotating cast of coworkers has been playing all day.
It looks like the story is pretty great, and the combat is pretty weak. I really want it, and am dying from my current lack of xbox. I’ll need a week off work when it gets back for this, Assassin’s Creed, and Rock Band.
I’ve been able to dump 8 hours into the game. The combat seems that of an RPG action game, where its good enough (There’s a lot for the RPG nerds but enough action to suffice us regular gamers). The story so far is deep and involved. I always fear is I might miss something cool, its a curse of a game having a freeform story but also the same point that makes it so engaging. I finally made it past the introductory part of the game and left the first city. The amount of detail, namely to characters shows an obvious evolution in game design. The absolutely A+ superb voice acting, realistic facial animations, multiple angles during conversations make it feel more like a cinematic experience than point and click adventure. It reminds me of the quality that the colorful albeit few characters of Half Life, its one of the few studios that’s on Value’s level. Due to the nature of the games, Alyx in HL2 stands as still the pinnacle of good AI sidekicks with some of the best character animation I’ve seen but considering the scope of Mass Effect, its equally impressive.
Mass Effect doesn’t feel as neatly packaged as Jade Empire (best RPG I think I’ve played) but Mass Effect feels so large and freeform it seems silly to compare the two and I never played KOTOR as I bought the game used last year but the combat bored me stiff and wasn’t able to sink more than an hour into the game.
There’s some trip ups, the menus are clunky like Oblivion, although during combat not nearly as a pain. The combat at times feels slightly clumsy (I haven’t driven the vehicle that all reviewers unanimously hate) but serviceable. There’s graphical glitches, texture popping as the 360 just doesn’t have the muscle that developers seem to wish it had.
Still, it takes me back to the classic SCUMM adventure games with some action tossed in. Just for reference: When I play these, its always for the story not the action so your milage will vary. I’d have hard time believing anyone honestly completely disliking the game unless you’re anti-story. It goes on my very short list of games that warrant purchasing with Halo 3 and Bioshock.
So I finished Mass Effect yesterday (kind of accidentally, more on that later) after putting 26 hours into the game. My final consensus being that it was a truly great and tremendously fun experience. So much so that after the credits rolled (I have to admit to kinda liking the song that plays through the credits) I immediately restarted the game using my level 42 Infiltrator.
That being said there were some minor and fairly major annoyances that kept me from gamergasming all over my 360 (most of which have already been mentioned here or in mainstream reviews):
1. REALLY bad texture P O P… IN. If you thought Halo 3 was bad you ain’t seen nothin yet!
2. Needed a better in game tutorial on how to use powers and upgrade weapons.
3. Insane and ridiculously tedious inventory system. (or what I like to call the omni-gel transference unit)
4. Pretty much no need for money, at all.
5. Very short main story line that ends before you know it.
I was about 24 hours into the games and was under the impression that I hadn’t done much of the main story arch so I decided to accelerate things by tackling those quests rather than exploring any of the worlds I hadn’t yet explored. Before I new it the credits were rolling. That being said I found the last hour and a half of this game to be one of the highest pinnacles of my fairly long gaming career. I was literally left breathless. One of the best end games EVAH!
Great story (although a little unoriginal), great characters, great acting, great graphics (for the most part) and great combat (at least in my opinion).
I’ve dumped 20 hours into the game progressing slowly. Soon of the quests are rather dull like the lunar mission on Earth’s moon but there are quests that start appearing that actually have significance, one that only can be found if you can decrypt a terminal in the world with the plant (blanking on the name). Upon decrypting it, you’re then able to find out what the geth have been up to. In the end you actually complete the mission and the game registers it as a plot event, meaning you talk to the crew and it causes new dialogue. I wonder if it has a bearing on the entire plot or not.
Generally the missions assigned from colonies that take place the colonies are the more interesting ones as the generally entail some form of character interaction where as a bulk of the missions involve go to star system, land on planet, fight stuff in vehicle, go in base, kill stuff in base, find terminal or dead body, leave. You really start wishing they had worlds with flora. There are a few fauna on some worlds including 6 legged deer, monkish beings and a few worlds with greenery. The lack of diversity in the universe really makes you wonder if it was time constraints, file size or hardware limitations that kept the game from having a little more diversity. It’d really made the duration of the game much more enjoyable just to see a few new sights, like a beautiful lake with some trees along with the barren rock worlds.
I’ve already accumulated up to 450,000 credits once, and ended up buying a mega assault rifle that’s a tier 7 that has 297 damage and about 60 accuracy which set me back about 250,000 and already am back to 300,000 credits. Mostly the creds as Zoso said are worthless.
This game really is the best and worst argument for the 360. It shows the absolute limits of the 360, you won’t see a game with this much in it on any console. I imagine the space constraints of the DVD format really were some of the prohibiting factors. Graphically this is it. This is as next gen as you’ll ever see on your console. This is the 360 at its best and there’s a price for it. Its also the slowest loading game constantly aside from the very painful Oblivion. The voice acting is superb and some of the 360’s best audio but you can hear the artifacts from heavy compression.
But with its flaws, you have to admire the ambition of the game.
This game really is the best and worst argument for the 360. It shows the absolute limits of the 360, you won’t see a game with this much in it on any console. I imagine the space constraints of the DVD format really were some of the prohibiting factors. Graphically this is it. This is as next gen as you’ll ever see on your console. This is the 360 at its best and there’s a price for it. Its also the slowest loading game constantly aside from the very painful Oblivion. The voice acting is superb and some of the 360’s best audio but you can hear the artifacts from heavy compression.
I’ve only played a couple of hours into the game yet, but if these are the rough limits of the 360 - I guess I can live with it for a long time to come.
The decision to include blu-ray is what delayed the PS3 and made it pretty expensive. This decision might in the end save PS3… but honestly - how many two disc (or more) dual layer PC DVD titles are there? Sure, developers probably wish for more than the 8,54 Gb that dual layer DVD can hold, but it will take a while before this restriction really sets the limit. Mass Effect is one out of very few titles that seemingly really suffers from this limitation. Sure GoW could’ve been longer - but IMO the length was pretty much perfect.
I dig Mass Effect. It has a couple of Oblivionesque moments (looong travel over nearly desert areas, etc), but these haven’t started to annoy me yet. And the game universe and biotic/tech abilites actually has made me stopped wishing for a BioWare KotOR3! This is a deep and interesting universe to explore for many titles to come.
What I wish for is patches, patches, patches. Texture streaming doesn’t bother me as much as when the game freezes completely for a couple of seconds, which happens every now and then.
Edit: oh, and I really can’t decide whether the ever present film grain effect looks nice or downright corny.
Edit: oh, and I really can’t decide whether the ever present film grain effect looks nice or downright corny.
Just turn it off in the graphical preferences and compare to what it looks without it I personally prefer the clean mode… even if some textures gets more a plastic feeling then.
So late last night, after 30ish hours of gameplay, I beat the game as a lvl 44 Vanguard. And as previously stated, the last part of the game is completely amazing
(hence the late last night part). While I’ve sometimes regret playing as a hybrid class, it’s given me a possibility to feel out two of the pure classes to a lesser extent. I can’t decide wether to play as a Soldier or Adept next time.
I also feel the the main storyline is a tad on the short side… but with all the optional quests I’m pretty fine with it Found that there was a gamer achievement to “Complete the majority of the game”, that I have yet not unlocked after a full playthrough where I took a short at quite a lot of extra assignments. All in all this game has set a really high bar as to what I will expect of Mass Effect 2 and 3…. whenever they may show up :/
Overall this is the best BioWare game in ages… definitely the best one using a 3D engine. Compared to KotOR and Jade Empire you’re a lot more free to do and go where you want. While the main story is still pretty linear like in KotOR and Jade Empire, the number of places you can go to, and the number of sidequests is completely mindboggling, and got me to remember the good ol’ days of BGII where you sometimes lost the main storyline somewhere between a myriad of sidequests.
One last thing I love with Mass Effect is the approach to “good” and “evil”... where the game effectively shows that few things in life is all good or all evil but a huge spectra of greys. Morality choices aren’t always as clear as they usually are in similar games and sometimes you can’t predict at all what your choices are gonna do.
I got 1,000,000 credits and it opens up the Spectre Rare Stocks gear. The game really has bizarre dynamics. You never get really progressively get your ass kicked in a fight, either you die or you tear the enemies so many new assholes they’re better off being used for an afghan. Its annoying, you’ll beat ass then occasionally die instantly.
The spectre rare stocks is completely weapons, no armor sadly. I had guns that were capable of shooting bullets that were so powerful they’d not only kill the enemy, it’d go back in time and kill his dad too, then his dad’s dad until this analogy wears thin but I had shitty armor. I finally got some tier 7 armor, and just dumped on two 110+ shield buffs so I have that plus the armor’s 260 and whatever the buffs I have from leveling up. I can now take a rocket and still have two notches on my shield. Its amusing. Really when you hit about level 35, you’re completely capable of killing even bosses without even flinching given you have the guns to back it up.
I wouldn’t call this my game of the year. The gameplay is too broken. The story element is the best I’ve seen but there’s too many minor complaints to overlook to call it game of the year. Sadly some of them could have been fixed with the use of the hard drive.
I think we’ll likely see Mario Galaxy or Bioschock voted as game of the year in most places.
Has everyone forgotten and put down Halo 3 already?
Man, I need to get a modern console already.
I’m staying with my Halo 3 as game of the year… Halo 3 is like Halo 2 but less gaylo. The balancing is the best I’ve seen, but I only play games where I can shoot shit or arcade sports so I can’t really make a bold comment that its the best ever, much improved comes to mind. Single player generally drives game of the year.
Mass Effect vs Halo 3 I don’t even think warrants an argument as they’re too different. If I had to pick one, it’d be Halo 3 because it has the best multiplayer experience I can think of. Game of the year probably will be Bioshock for a good deal of critics but I’d take Mass Effect over Bioshock.
I haven’t played Mario Galaxy but it doesn’t involve shooting shit or arcade sports so I have a feeling I won’t enjoy it as much as the Nintenerds. My roomate and his friends all seem to think its just ‘eh’ where as my two Wii owning friends think its best game ever. Both have collectable Mario stuffs.
Honestly the best single player experience I’ve had this year is Half Life 2: Orange Box. I never played Half Life 2 but even if, seriously, Half Life 2 + Episode 1 + Episode 2 + Portals? Better than Halo 3. Better than Mass Effect. Better than Bioshock. Half Life already has more game of the year awards than any other game ever made, what’s funny is 3 years later its still game of the year.
So how about that PS3? Man I wish I had one so I could play…. ratchet and clank.
I don’t think anyone can argue that The Orange Box is one heck of contender to Value of The Year, especially if you don’t own HL2 and Episode One already. But the only new full game in the bundle is Team Fortress 2, so I’m guessing that orange box will be pretty much overlooked for that.
Game of the year will probably be Mario all over. A game that actually hits number one on Gamerankings for a while, and then settles for second best game ever is going to rip the competition to shreds in most places.
Halo 3? If non-skippable lousy Cortana glimpses in a polished up third reincarnation of the same stuff wins game of the year, there’s something wrong.
I really loved the last level on Halo 3, but besides that and the now very familiar multiplayer (Halo: Marathon Evolved), there isn’t much new there. Well done. Competent. Amusing. A+ and all that. But game of the year? No way.
I personally prefer the clean mode… even if some textures gets more a plastic feeling then.
Found that there was a gamer achievement to “Complete the majority of the game”, that I have yet not unlocked after a full playthrough where I took a short at quite a lot of extra assignments. All in all this game has set a really high bar as to what I will expect of Mass Effect 2 and 3…. whenever they may show up :/
