Mass Effect

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.

spoilery image - http://i.imgur.com/fCcd3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/viq2Z.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zP9p9.png
http://i.imgur.com/l1lHa.gif

^ ass effect

should i activate the cerberus network in ME2? i'm wary of signing up for EA stuff with all the haxx0ring going on with xbox live

Oh come on, man, this came out TWO DAYS ago! Giant fucking spoiler in that post :(

sorry, I honestly didn't think anyone would care. or that anyone didn't know. mods?/?

I can only delete a post, I can't edit text.

pc version of this keeps locking up on me at the first loading screen. bioware's forums are completely silent and a few dozen ppl having the same prob. this suxxx

That sucks. Start chopping down the graphics settings.

I'm waiting for a bit on this one.

I am about 2 hours in. Pretty fun.