Mass Effect

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2012/04/ugshep3.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox?ie=UTF8&ref_=pe_26410_20202130#

29.99 today only

thanks for the heads up. purchased.

am i crazy or is that a sign that it's about to be a much cheaper game to get?

not necessarily

Decide app says Buy now

It's the third highest selling game this week, so it would maybe be a little early to make it a platinum hit.

Prices will rise or hold steady with 83% Confidence

Amazon often does these one-day, half-off deals. I don't think it's indicative of a price-drop.

if you miss it check out walmart, they also knocked it down to 30 for a spell, it is definitely going back up to 60 after though, according to people who work there? some thing i saw on reddit, anyway.

http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/2012/04/23/laser-time-special-the-end-of-mass-effect/

neat little podcast covering the series

Anyone downloaded the new ending?

i haven't even gotten past the 5 or 6th mission in the full game. i met up w/ jack, met that arachni queen that i saved in game one, said hello to krogan friends and then stopped logging in.

I'm still playing the multiplayer despite having quit the single player halfway through.

New ending was more story, which was needed. Still the same endings though, which I'm ok with.

I'm still slowly slugging through this, just up to the bit with the quarians and the geth. Bloody bored of it though, the combat was never hugely fun anyway but I think I've hobbled it for myself even more by switching to the engineer class this time round - fights come down to "chuck in gun turret, chuck in combat drone, wait 2 mins for everyone to die, continue". So I'm only playing for the story at this point. Got the new endings downloaded, which means I'll never even get to see the original ones.

The multiplayer is really fun. I was not expecting it to be good at all. However once you play it the combat in single player is zzzzzzz - at least until the very end when it's somewhat challenging.

The free expansions are what really has helped keep it fresh. For a guy like me who doesn't really like shooting that much, all the different biotic power options are great. Co-op against computer enemies is my favorite kind of multiplayer. Wish they'd come up with something more mission based and less pure horde.

Bought this cheap on Sunday, blew my American Labor Day playing it. I enjoy it, but some of the combat is kinda bleah. Am playing as FemShep with the default character model as I like Jennifer Hale's voice better and I enjoy the idea of a galaxy-saving Commander as this cute green-eyed freckled redhead.

Kinda want to throttle who wrote the dialog as the expository stuff is so clunky and horrid while the more character-revealing interactions are far, far better. Was surprised that even a secondary character like Primarch Victus had a great performance.

Other things: nice that they still got the ass shot of Miranda in her brief appearances, and the Allers/Jessica Chobot character model has something deeply wrong with the construction of her face. This weird bulging cheeks/dead eye combo that makes her look like a Chucky doll.

Laughed at the fact that your initial dude sidekick is a full-on tatted-up fauxhawked MMA-type bro.

The Krogans are fun and I like their voice-work.

Glad that they brought Mordin back, as I think he's the best auxiliary character who has the highest contrast with the rest of the crew.

As buying the deluxe digital pack, you get a little robot dog mech that wanders around the hanger. It's name is "Kei-9", naturally.

The emotional vibe is so jarring to start the game and quickly slam into this intergalactic war. The characters sound so shell-shocked and war-weary that fast that my reaction was, "Dude, what are you talking about? Ive only been playing this game for two hours."

Download the mod that adds film grain; it's a nice touch that they took out for who knows why.

What branch of the military are these guys supposed to be, anyway? Can we assume in the post-solar Terran combined military that all branches combined into one thing, with mixed up titles? You're obviously in a navy with Admirals and are the "master & commander" of your ship, but "marine" and "soldier" are tossed around a lot.

These are the kinda things I somehow think about whilst gaming and drinking a good amount of beer.

i bought ME3 as it was on sale.
I now have all three volumes for 360
i have yet to play this at all. Maybe this holiday

You'll have a bit of a clunky start, as ME1 famously has some bits it took until the 2nd release to lock down.

also, at some point, the characters in the game are so great that it's like you only play missions just to increment the story so you can come back and talk to the characters again.

Anyone for multiplayer?

I still play the multiplayer some, but fyi I don't use headsets. polyphonique

lol remember when people got really mad over this game's ending

and then insane nerds crashed a poll of worst companies ever and got EA to beat out bank of america

in the middle of Mass Effect I now, as I continue playing all the games I bought on holiday sales a long time ago. This game seems great! I think we're gonna make it with an alien, (s)he's got a hot voice. about 15 hours in now, the combat is getting easy & rote, but there are surprises still: the thresher maw on some planet we explored, the geth colossus.

probably my fave game of the generation. (will confirm in like 2020 when we finally get to the x360/ps3/etc poll)

even tho it doesn't always deliver the film grain synthed out vibe is enough to make me love this game

The combat crackles and the worlds are lush, but mediocre writing and tepid quests add up to what is probably BioWare's worst RPG yet.

per eurogamer. not surprised at all. the bioware rpg model has imo aged v poorly esp since they abandoned isometric dnd RPGs which for me, even more than KOTORs, are the high mark of the company. speaking of which, has anyone tried the new Torment? it looks like it got decent reviews. i never finished pillars of eternity but now there's a sequel coming out for that too...

i played the trial, it's ok. the writing is indeed bad but no worse than the other games in the series. it's just running errands for aliens. if you are looking for a reasonably pleasant way to pass the time until death gathers you in her warm embrace then this will do

surely there are better ways to wait for death than yet another on-the-rails generic sci-fi rpg from bioware?

i admit i do prefer the bioware generic sci-fi series to their generic fantasy series. not like that's saying much for either.

i didn't say it was the best way, just an acceptable one

surely there are better ways to wait for death than yet another on-the-rails generic sci-fi rpg from bioware?

name one

witcher dlc?

okay name two

wait there's a new Torment game????

yeah kickstarted - https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/

i'd much rather be on rails in space than left to my own devices surrounded by bombed-out americana. love, the guy who pans every bethesda game ever

(well, just the fallout and elder ones)

I really hope the critical success of Witcher 3 leads the other AAA RPG producers to consider writing for adults.

...and consider having a good voice director and completed dialogue before hiring voice talent. It's audible from playthroughs that each character's dialog in single conversations was recorded over multiple sessions, suggesting a lot of rewrites.

...and if Frostbite is that difficult to script facial animations for, perhaps Bioware should return to something they can work with.

witcher 3 is so anomalous in terms of its writing (and uniqueness of setting) that i imagine some of it is having rich source material to work from. i find that mass effect (or, ugh even worse, dragon age) are far more generic than even bethesda's fallout or elder scrolls games - esp if you expand the parameters to include Morrowind (which the studio deserves credit for) or Fallout 1 & 2 (which they do not). mass effect does relationships better, and the actual prose is probably better (tho this might just be cleaner prose i'm not sure that any of it is actually memorable or effective). none of them are comparable to witcher 3 and honestly it really exposed to me how bad AAA contemporary western RPGs are (esp these very open-world models, i think deus ex: mankind divided was - despite coasting on the mythos of the franchise - remarkably tight in terms of plotting and writing maybe bc of how short and somewhat on the rails it was, but we will discuss it more in coint + plick i'm sure).

Nothing prevents a game developer from licencing. There are comparable, "less generic" fantasy and science fiction worlds that would make great IPs. For example, Morecock's Brecht-inspired Elric saga (and Chaosium's tabletop RPG Stormbringer). Iain Bank's Culture series, etc.

The bigger issue is that there's only a handful of VG companies that can afford the entry fee into the AAA RPG domain. So Bioware has its generic fantasy and space opera series, as does Bethesda (Starfield will be the original sci-fi IP). Perhaps the hope resides in nations with lower development costs. Hey CD Project Red, you've heard of Stanislaw Lem, haven't you?

the important thing is that they've heard of cyberpunk 2020

the problem with shadowrun (which I've played and gm'd irl and find the same problems there) is that it's basically a generic fantasy game grafted onto a low quality Gibson urban setting. Consequently I've found all the recent vg releases to be pretty lackluster. Also the underlying mechanical system is totally broken and unbalanced.

Didn't (think to) find this thread till now, anyway, I'd been thinking that I made a mistake starting off as an Infiltrator since the sniper rifle is so hard to use... and then I maxed out sniping, and now it doesn't drift anymore! Nice! But I'm still not sure how useful it's going to be in typical combat situations (taking out Geth Destroyers when I'm surface-rambling).

The series has its faults, but balance between combat classes isn't one of them. Thinning the ranks from a distance works fine, you just won't need Garrus anymore. It's a good class for a more strategic player, who is willing to trade time for better odds. For fun, though, choices other than Vanguard are suboptimal.

It's a good class for a more strategic player

lol this is not me! I don't think I've actually used Garrus after I recruited him (it's been Tali/Liara partytime as much as possible for me).

Also the PS3 port's graphics are total butt compared to what I've seen of the XBox version.