Tell me about Mass Effect for the PC.

[Shogoki]

The inventory is definitely not the best thing the game has going for itself, but it doesn't trip all over itself either like it does on consoles. On PC it's pretty much just unremarkable. The combat is not that bad either for an RPG. It's well worth the 20 bucks.

[Starglider]

As far as I can tell the PC version still has no foliage in the outdoor segments, which sucks. The barren look is fine for airless moons but fails for supposedly-habitable planets. Come on Bioware, Oblivion manages decent forests (to be fair, the Mako gameplay feels rough and they probably just ran out of time, hopefully it will be fixed in the sequel).

[Peptuck]

Are sniper rifles still as utterly broken on the PC as they are on the 360?

My most recent playthrough was as an Adept->Nemesis with the sniper rifle bonus talent, and by level 35 I was basically God, even on Insane difficulty. I was Lifting the geth Colossi like they were infantry and raining single-shot death from a half a kilometer off when the enemy couldn't even see me. It was ridiculous.

[Mr. Coffee]

Well, I went ahead and snagged it. It's only $20, so what the hell.

[General Zod]

At risk of stating the obvious, have you tried the "Run as Administrator" trick? Or running it in Windows XP Compatability mode? I've had to do one or both of those things on several games on Vista 64.

That's how I do it. The game installed properly, and has XP compatibility and Admin mode. It says 'The program has stopped responding' when trying to load the Mass Effect Config utility.

So I just got ME for the PC and wound up having the same problem that you did. Turns out it doesn't like having the UAC on, so the only way I was able to play at all was to disable the UAC (whatever fucktard at Bioware thought this was a good idea deserves a punch in the mouth). I'm not sure if it was a one time instance or I have to do it each time; I'm going to do some further poking tonight to see what I can do about it.

Are sniper rifles still as utterly broken on the PC as they are on the 360?

If by broken you mean they kill in one hit? Seems that way.

[Starglider]

Turns out it doesn't like having the UAC on, so the only way I was able to play at all was to disable the UAC (whatever fucktard at Bioware thought this was a good idea deserves a punch in the mouth).

Wait, you actually like UAC? What the hell? I always disable it ASAP. Anyway, have you tried right-clicking on the launcher and choosing 'run as administrator'?

[General Zod]

Turns out it doesn't like having the UAC on, so the only way I was able to play at all was to disable the UAC (whatever fucktard at Bioware thought this was a good idea deserves a punch in the mouth).

Wait, you actually like UAC? What the hell? I always disable it ASAP. Anyway, have you tried right-clicking on the launcher and choosing 'run as administrator'?

The UAC doesn't bother me since I'm not ADD about installing software, and I've just gotten used to it so I don't even really notice it anymore. As far as running as admin that's one of the many, many things I tried doing. The only way I got it to run at all was by disabling the UAC, and after searching through Bioware's support forums it seems to confirm that it's the culprit.