Mass Effect

[DPDarkPrimus]

So the long-anticipated Bioware game Mass Effect comes out November 20th.

But some K-Marts in the United States sold copies for a couple days before they were told to stop, and so a lot of people got it a bit early. My local K-Mart was out, but I hopped on ebay and picked up a copy for... well, more than you'd probably pay.

But I've beaten the game (only once) and I can assure you that it is a must have title. I can't even properly put into words how awesome the game is.

The combat is great. It's all real time, except it pauses when you press the LB to switch weapons or the RB to select skills to use and the targets for said skills. The amount of side quests is insane, and some of them are dependent on what class you are or what characters you talk to. Speaking of characters, they are all written and acted excellently. A didn't talk to my crew much in KOTOR, and I didn't talk to a lot of them at all (Mission), but I found each and every one of my crew in this game to be fascinating, and I looked forward to finding out more about them.

The morality system is a bit different in that you are unequivocally a good guy, but it's whether you'll play the by the books straight edge or the do it my way damn the consequences Dirty Harry type. The dialogue for these choices is, again, very good, not the over-the-top triteness of previous titles, and charming or intimidating often have the same result (just... different approaches to it).

And yes, you can have sex with a blue alien chick.

[Stark]

Some of the stuff I've seen suggests the alignment thing is still much more rigid than I'd hoped: that you are essentially either paragon or renegade, and not shades of both. Is this the case?

[DPDarkPrimus]

Some of the stuff I've seen suggests the alignment thing is still much more rigid than I'd hoped: that you are essentially either paragon or renegade, and not shades of both. Is this the case?

Not at all. I went about selecting the different options as I saw fit. Sometimes when I got done talking to someone I would receive both paragon and renegade points. Sometimes I would choose the paragon option if I liked the person, but if they were pissing me off I did the renegade option.

Normal dialogue options will give you points (renegade option on the bottom, paragon on the top, neutral in the middle). Using Intimidate or Charm dialogue options give you even more points, but that's only if you've leveled up the skill enough to select that option. There are caps on how high your Charm or Intimidate skills can go, but as you gain more points, that cap increases. In other words, if you use one of the options more, you will gain access to it more often.

[Stark]

Ah, I'd seen various events or quests described as 'paragon events' or whatever, and it seemed that you may have been railroaded down one side in order to get the 'lewt'.

I'm glad it's more flexible. Are reactions mainly based on your scores, or is there enough direct scripting where people remember specific events or decisions to make it awesome?

[Mr Bean]

I got a 360 just to play this game. Tuesday can not come quickly enough for me.

Question:DPDarkPrimus, as far as game issues go, what have you found? IE things you did not like about the game. I know what's good in the game from all the various leaked reviews, what's bad?

Second question:Multiple game endings? IE More than two?

[Stark]

Well, I finally managed to get an AU early-release copy. I guess I'll be posting frothingly fannish stuff soon.

[MJ12 Commando]

I don't have a 360, but my roommate's bringing it come Christmas, so I guess I get to play it after you people dole out all the spoilers I need to be happy for the next half-year.

And if that fails, there's always the inevitable PC release. :p

[DPDarkPrimus]

Stark: I'm sure there are some quests you can't get if you don't do certain things. That's kind of how games like this are designed.

Question:DPDarkPrimus, as far as game issues go, what have you found? IE things you did not like about the game. I know what's good in the game from all the various leaked reviews, what's bad?

There is some texture pop-up at times, which can get annoying. It's not nearly as bad as Halo 2's, nor as often, but it's very noticeable because the game looks so great most of the time.

There are also a lot of elevators. Elevators "hide" the load times, but it's just as boring standing in an elevator for 30 seconds as it is looking at a loading screen. Hopefully by the time Mass Effect 2 comes out, BioWare will be able to design a game with the HDD in mind, so that you can avoid such frequent load times.

I have no major complaints, only niggles like that.

Second question:Multiple game endings? IE More than two?

I think there's at least three.

[Stark]

I'm pretty impressed so far. DP's right about the elevators: they've tried to spice it up with news reports and conversations, but they're just too long to dodge. I don't mind the texture popup: I got used to it in Gears and with the 360's small memory it's going to be a problem regardless.

If I hadn't already played Witcher I'd be much more impressed, but it's still a fucking good game. The combat isn't clunky or lame as I thought it might be, and the game/conversations/story is good. I'm just heavily against 'go here, now go here' style missions and I strongly dislike incredibly boring second acts.

It doesn't quite have the effortless flow of Witcher (it's very much a standard RPG in it's quests, despite it's excellent UI and conversation system) but it's absolutely worth a go.

Need I say that it's yet another game with a better face generator than Oblvion? Oh man, that joke never gets old.

Oh DP, there better be a 'kill that horrible influence-pedalling self-important bitch' mission later. If it was Witcher she'd already be dead, but I guess I have to save up my renegade points for later on.

[Master of Ossus]

Need I say that it's yet another game with a better face generator than Oblvion? Oh man, that joke never gets old.

You can make some pretty fugly faces in Mass Effect, although I guess you sort of have to be trying ffor it in that game, unlike Oblivion.

[Stark]

I made my guy pretty ugly (rectangular head, wide nose, heavy brows, amusingly tiny ears), but it's nothing on the deformed elephant-man stuff you got unless you were really careful in Oblivion.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I tried to make my first character look like an older, stylized version of myself, but after a while I realized he also looked a lot like Robert Patrick.

[Xon]

I got my copy on last Friday so I've played it a bit over the weekend, and Overload(electronics ability) in combination with marksman(pistol ability) is some damn serious cheese.

End-game Overload will one shot upto 600 shield points and deal 100 damage on top of that to everything in a 2-3m radius, and then turn that pistol hitting for 80-90% of an assault rilfe into a micro-machinegun with ultra-high accuracy.

I am/was averaging ~400-600dps against organic/non-organic targets if I remembered to switch my ammo type around. And the cooldown on those two skills is seriously fast.

[Enigma]

That is not butt ugly faces. You want to make grotesque characters? Try Sims 2.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I got my copy on last Friday so I've played it a bit over the weekend, and Overload(electronics ability) in combination with marksman(pistol ability) is some damn serious cheese.

If you get access to the prototype weapons, you don't even have to worry about activating marksman or assassin.

I had my sniper rifle tweaked out enough that I could simply crouch down and aim (no scope) and be able to blast my target accurately, and it'd take down a Deth Destroyer in one shot.

[Stark]

I'm kinda glad the latest RPGs care taking the genre away from munchkin shit like that. Mass Effect on legendary/low aim assist is *already* not very hard. The idea of doing sub-sub-sub-quests to get the zomg teh bestz gunz is one that I hope stays dead.

But then I hear Witcher sucks because Geralt doesn't pick up every piece of shit sword...

Since I'm sick of RPG bullshit like 'every location has bullshit subquests', I'm massively leaning towards renegade. Not because I'm 'a renegade' who 'doesn't care about the cost', just because I'm focussed on my mission. No, I am fucking not going to do your menial shit, too busy saving the world. You can spend 15m on Citadel the first time, or you can spend three fucking hours solving nonsense personal problems while Sarren gets closer to universal armageddon.

What this game needs is a super-hard mode like System Shock where there's a time limit.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Actually, to get access to the prototype weapons, you just need to get the "Rich" achievement. Then the C-Sec requisitions officer and the dealer on the Normandy will have them available for purchase.

A lot of the achievements for Mass Effect unlock little bonuses for any character on that gamer profile.

[Stark]

Hey, that's a cool way to do it. I flicked through the ingame achievements menu and saw plenty of stuff that'd take a pretty focussed effort to get: do they all unlock profile-wide stuff like that?

[DPDarkPrimus]

Not every single achievement, no, but quite a few of them do. I know if you get a certain weapon mastery achivement, you have that weapon on any future character sheets, even if the class doesn't normally train with it.

[Stark]

Not every single achievement, no, but quite a few of them do. I know if you get a certain weapon mastery achivement, you have that weapon on any future character sheets, even if the class doesn't normally train with it.

That's interesting: I got the pistol achievement this afternoon (playing an infiltrator, and the rifle isn't very useful a lot of the time) and it gives a buff to the marksman skill too. If getting (say) the AR bonus means even non-AR guys can use ARs, that'd be really nifty.

Do the perks you get from them count for party members, or just the player?

[DPDarkPrimus]

Just the player character.

The pistol achievement gives you a buff because all classes use the pistol by default.

[The Kernel]

Just picked it up along with Assasin's Creed. Can't wait to play the crap out of these games this weekend. I'm a huge KOTOR fanboy and the whole concept of Mass Effect makes me giddy.

[Mr Bean]

An hour in, giddy as hell, playing as an Infiltrator it's annoying Assault Rifles are limited to Soldiers only. You figured they could have created something between Pistols and Assault rifles, like say Carbines, not full auto, but better damage than pistols, which Engineers could use and one of the engineer derivatives.

[DPDarkPrimus]

An hour in, giddy as hell, playing as an Infiltrator it's annoying Assault Rifles are limited to Soldiers only. You figured they could have created something between Pistols and Assault rifles, like say Carbines, not full auto, but better damage than pistols, which Engineers could use and one of the engineer derivatives.

I played through as an Infiltrator, and am now playing a Soldier. If you do the same, you'll wonder why you ever hated not being able to use them.

[Stark]

Yeah, just a look at the stats on damage and accuracy tells that story. The 'pistol' is more like some kind of heavy-calibre SMG anyway. And if it's what they call an 'accurate' weapon I'm kinda glad infiltrators don't get to use anything else.

BTW, which bright-ass level designer thought it'd be cool to turn off the Feros elevator once you do the main mission, even though there are quests you get AFTERWARD that you need to go back to ExoGeni for? Hand of The Writers can stay the fuck out of my game, thanks. Don't get me started on how the ATV got up onto the skyway INSIDE A GARAGE when the Normandy is bolted to a skyscraper.