Mass Effect

Levity is in this game. Mordin's dialogue, plus his musical bit. You get to feed fish, or clean them out. Hell, they even have Baldur's Gate II refs.

picked this up again last night, still can't find the guy i'm supposed to talk to. And fed up of loooooooooong loading times in lifts now.

gave up with the first one, got the sequel instead. Combat far far better. Only played briefly today, because yet again got stuck on very simple moment - having to use some other guys skills but no idea how to. Then it crashed.

(other than that, pretty impressed with it so far)

Mass Effect 2 is way better aside from the horrible end mission. Seriously pissed off when I finished it and realised that was the whole game.

it's very pretty. Does it 'open up' more after I've built up more of a squad (got medic alien last night), feels a bit on rails right now disguised as 'you can travel to any system - but really only the ones for your next mission'. and what's the scanning and pod surveying of planets all about? (sorry i'm so new)

Scanning and surveying mostly just stacks up minerals, which you need to buy weapon/ship/armour upgrades. But occasionally you'll find a planet with a distress signal or some other kind of beacon, which means you can do an extra mini mission there (these sometimes lead on to other mini missions elsewhere too). Prob worth making the most of those if you're wanting the game to feel open, because yeah, beyond that you're very much on rails - you can decide what order you want to do the main missions in, but they pretty much all need to be done in the end anyway (unless you're happy ploughing into then failing the final mission, which is totally possible...although that wouldn't leave you with a useable save file when you get around to starting ME3).

thanks, although that is a little disappointing to hear.

Still, I played it a lot yesterday and enjoyed myself. I am starting to become a bit tired of the same-old mission format tho.

But feels like I'll stick it out to the end, which is rare.

Scanning planets is boring as hell, but still beats that bastard buggy from the first one.

i finally shelled out for a graphics card that wasn't old enough to vote mostly just to play these games. pretty far into the first one and no regrets at all, really good. there hasn't been a time that i have put it on without noticing something new that is a bit broken or crappy about it, but i literally haven't cared once cos i really like what they have done with the concept and the good stuff is great. excited for ME2. tempted to wait for the PS3 release in the new year (fuckin sad business playing on PC at my desk when big TV and comfy beanbag just sitting there) but i am enough of a nerd to want to have the character continuity.

Really hate that you can't use an xbox 360 controller on ME2 on the pc. Apparently the pc was 'optimised' fr mouse+keyboard but it's a real fucker when i have a nice tv i can plug the pc into but really need to use a controller with due to logistics.

Character continuity makes about zero diff. to the game as far as options / decision making etc. go but it does add a lot of nice little flourishes in the world that almost certainly would make it wortwhile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZGFjBmD41Q

If there are playable earth-based mission in this I'm going to LOVE it.

Played the last few ME2 DLC packs over the last couple of weeks. Overlord is pretty good, Shadow Broker is great, Arrival is SHIT.

Seconded. I just finished Arrival, and it isn't just halfassed as I'd expected, it's actively insulting and railroads your character into committing a war crime no matter what choices you make.

Clint Mansell's scoring ME3. Any other game, I'd think that was a great thing. But I already love the ME music (which is mostly by this guy) so I kinda don't want it to change.

so mass effect 2 kinda sucks huh? bad combat, boring quests, paragon/renegade qtes, think the bioware binary morality thing has run its course.

Can't really argue with any of that but still loved it, I guess just cos I dig the style and presentation and design and universe.

that's what i liked in the first one, the vangelis synths and fake camera zooming and film grain etc, and i'm all for broadening console gaming's aesthetic base (from star wars to blade runner, i guess) but with all that stripped away it's a janky third person shooter with extremely limited customization and sadly-good-for-gaming writing.

it may be the writing that gets to me most, these dudes want so badly to be taken seriously as storytellers. video game stories are destined to be bad as they should serve the game. making the game part less interesting in order to tell a Big Huge SF Story that ultimately is sub-david weber middle school lunch table fantasizing is completely ridiculous but apparently desirable right now as console gaming is in its prog rock phase.

so another one of these things, eh?

until they stop selling, yes

It's cool that this one has Kinect-enabled menus, and multiplayer.

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-wDXQbxt/0/L/i-wDXQbxt-XL.jpg

i love deer status bar, can't help it

until they stop selling, yes

they planned it as a trilogy from the first game iirc, which is why they've been able to do such cool things with decisions in the beginning reverberating through the series

oh cmon man, i know the IP was intended as a trilogy, but you know there's gonna be a prequel or some other such dumb shit as long as they can milk it
did game dev story teach you NOTHING?

It's cool that this one has Kinect-enabled menus, and multiplayer.

― polyphonic, Wednesday, February 1, 2012 1:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

srs? guarantees it will be total shit imo.

some of these screenshots are pretty nice tho.
http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1052033-Mass-Effect-2-High-Resolution-Texture-Mod

I will play the hell out of this.

guess who got an early peek at the demmmmoooooooo

If someone asked whether I was excited about this game I guess I'd say yes, but I tried downloading the demo and there wasn't room for it on my hard drive and I couldn't even be arsed to spend 30 seconds clearing some space for it. In fairness though that's maybe because a) I don't want to play the single player demo anyway because spoliers and b) I'm far from convinced I'll ever bother with multiplayer anyway.

sadly-good-for-gaming writing

this is at the base of why i can't bring myself to care about 90% of the games i feel like i'd like

I think the objective quality writing isn't the point with *most* games - just as poetry isn't the point with *most* pop music (I mean, no-one says or cares whether "Umbrella features sadly-good-for-pop lyrics but unfortunately falls well short of TS Eliot" )

what is it with people lately with t.s. eliot

all this dude's youtube videos bring serious lols for me

http://youtu.be/biZr1z5DQIg

http://i.imgur.com/w76uU.png

console gaming is in its prog rock phase

lol @ this

a tarkus game would be way better than this crap

adam's post up there is booming though

i watched my pal play the end of mass effect 2 the other day, and man was it hard to sit through. So many cut scenes, and so painful!

so i'm wrapping up ME1 and it's enjoyable enough to pick up ME2, then we'll see about ME3.

i almost gave up on the entire game when i had to fight matriarch benezia and i was severely underpowered: 10 seconds of fighting, getting killed, waiting for the save to reload, X through the stupid dialogue, repeat. it probably took me about 30 tries over the course of two days

I had the same issue at that point. I just knocked down the difficulty for the fight and beat it the very next time.

Xpost, cutscenes are awesome.

It probably helps to play through the game and get invested in the characters.

That said, I am a notorious cut scene skipper.

The Benezia fight is such bullshit- I had the same problem.

ME2 is weird in that the story is noticeably worse- there are plot holes you could drive a decent-sized bus through, and seemingly half the supporting cast are raging assholes- but it's way more fun to actually play. It's like they handed off the combat to a completely separate dev team that had actually played an action game at some point in their lives.

I am staying up until ME3 unlocks at midnight, in order to get in a few rounds of multiplayer, and oh god that is the most pathetic thing :(

http://i42.tinypic.com/2e1hpmv.jpg

not only did they already beat it BUT they already found plagiarism AND took the time to photoshop a snide meme
the internet, damn

i love the idea that someone searched for "winter space"

This is good so far, better than the demo led me to believe. I like all the mechanics to roll around and move from cover to cover.

so if I was to play this damn thing and i already own ME1, should I buy ME2 and just play top to bottom? Anybody want to argue that you should just jump into this in the middle?

Apparently if you play through 2 you start 3 with all of your stuff and at the same level?

I'd play each game in order. At least at some point even if you start with 3.

1 suffers from RPG inventory glut, copy/paste dungeons and endless vehicle roving.
2 suffers from awful planet scanning for minerals/upgrades.

I played through both (years ago) but have no save files due to severe virus eradication efforts a year ago. My plan is to playthrough ME2 again using a savefile from a completed ME2 save from Mass Effect Saves. Replaying a completed ME2 game gives "200,000 credits, 50,000 of each resource; Renegade and Paragon points reset to neutral; and your weapons and armor (but no upgrades) from first playthrough".

There are pointers for importing PC saves on XBox360 at the site, but none for PS3.