GreasyDogMeat

I know Bio had planned ME as a trilogy from the start but I wonder if they had always planned for Shepard to die and be brought back in ME 2. Maybe it was just a convenient reset for the high level you end at in ME 1 and to make all the gameplay changes in ME2 seem less drastic in the game.

Never heard of it before.

I hope this game rocks as much as it rocks on paper.

I completed a stealth no-kill playthrough on hard and didn't notice a change in how stealth worked from normal. The only real difference I noticed was that enemies did more damage.

I might be a bit odd in that I really don't mind inaccurate aiming that requires skill points/xp/etc to improve in a RPG, but I hate it in my shooters. This killed the original Brothers in Arms for me. You line up the iron sites of your weapon on an enemy, fire and the bullet would hit five feet off to the side of an enemy, at relatively close ranges. The devs just made the shooting bad to force the player to rely on their squad. Between giving orders I actually wanted to you know, shoot someone in a shooter. The recent complaints about AP's aiming pissed me off because you actually can get critical hits and kills with weapons even at their lowest skill levels, you just have to leave your gun on them for an extended amount of time to get the aiming reticle to appear and close in. If you watch the first minute of this video review you will see how many modern gamers tried to play AP. Like a shooter. NO time is given to actually aim the pistol so that an aimed shot can be taken. In fact, the reviewer fires so quickly that not once during that minute of gameplay does the reticle even START to appear because he shoots so fast.

I got my medieval instruments of death confused. Was thinking of a flail. I made an

The land mine or the bludgeoning weapon? Maybe both...

You consider direct-to-dvd cash-ins to be modern anime movies with the best of the best effects? One of those movies isn't even made in Japan. The one with the worst animation, I'd argue. That's some selection process. Which one was that? From my understanding all of them were outsourced to Japanese studios. What exactly would you say are decent big release anime movies? I remember Princess Mononoke and my complaints fit that one too. Hey... if you like anime good for you!

To me they're kind of like the MST3K of video games. Mocking the bad ones. The whole 'angry' thing as games are expensive and time consuming and bad ones can warrant that anger. So its fun if they do the whole angry routine + some decent jokes added.

The thing is though, lack of animation seems to be a hall-mark of anime, as if it is a point of pride. Again, look at a modern anime movie with the best of the best effects and the action is just off. A punch might be comprised of just a few frames of animation. I just watched the trailers for some of the recent compilation animation, like The Matrix anime movie, the Dead Space 2 anime movie, Batman anime & Halo Legends and it all looks off. When you add this to the odd art styles, the strange sensibilities (Halo Legends: I'm an ODST who hates Spartans, but this Spartan is a girl so I now look up to and respect them. Emo this emo that.), the lack of movement etc I just hate anime. As far as the ME anime goes, I'm betting they'll not even have Shepard in the story. This has been another trend in these anime compilation movies that I listed. They are often side stories, sort of companion pieces to the main body of work.

What... don't games also send you into a flurry of rage? Maybe its just me...

Anything else. Disney, Warner Bros. Anime started out as: How can we do Disney but cheap? Cut out the animations and place it against a static background. Take a look at this, from 1937. Look how smoothly the characters move. Look at the most recent anime out of Japan and it looks like stop motion in comparison. Every moment a character is on screen, they are moving. It looks... life like. Even though many of the backgrounds are static, watch when Snow White runs through the forest and pushes the branches out of the way and interacts with the environment.

"Cowboy Bebop is good in spite of its animation. 100% of anime animation sucks. 99% of the stories and characters suck. Let the flaming begin!" I simply forgot an added word. I'd define anime as the whole package... all the anime tropes etc. Yeah, not all of them contain every element. Part of what made Bebop good was that a character didn't get upset and have a squigly line appear over their head followed by their already large eyes going titanic saucer plate sized when angry with flailing limbs etc. The animation for me is just... horrendous. Bebop would come on and I'd see the animation and I'd say **** this and change the channel. I finally caved to all the positive things said about and actually watched an episode and enjoyed it in spite of it's animation... and the spiky hair on... Spike. The whole sci-fi space cowboys/bounty hunters really appealed to me. I became more open minded about anime, giving other shows a chance but they were all horrible. I hate this recent trend of popular game series getting a cheap anime movie. The sensibilities of the game rarely match up with Japanese writers. Just look at the atrocity that was Halo Legends.

Angry Joe Review. Should have given it a lower score but, sigh, raises it because it is 'dragon age'. Makes a lot of good points, but likes certain things I hated. He liked having to mash the A button!? I also actually liked the design and look of Kirkwall. It could have used more variety though considering you spend 80-90% of the game in it. He also barely touches on the repeating areas. I would have spent half the review railing on that problem.

I'm replaying the game and it pisses me off how the game got so much criticism for the shooting. Here is an example: Angry Joe Show Review. Watch the first minute of the review. He keeps shooting like he is playing, well, a shooter. That is not how you would play Deus Ex, VtM: Bloodlines and even to a lesser extent Mass Effect 1. He does not even give himself time before the aiming reticle starts to close in to represent an aimed shot. Hell he starts shooting so fast he doesn't even give any time for the reticle to even APPEAR. So he sits there like a fool with an angry look on his face popping shot after shot. Am I the only one who understood the aiming system? Mina explains it during training. You start out a terrible shot. You can still hit your target, but you need to take a long time to aim. Once you build up your levels you will be a lethal killing machine with any weapon and it will start to feel like a shooter. Replaying the game now with a shotgun tech and I'm devastating. Even using SMGs, which I have NO skill points invested in, I can blind fire around a corner and wound/kill enemies. The one thing that reviewers did get right was the horrible AI. In that same 1 minute section you see the enemies acting like utter fools. One stops fighting back altogether and another rushes forward and then just goes off for a bit. I've seen the AI break on me a few times in my current game. It is some of the worst AI I've seen in a modern game.

Cowboy Bebop is good in spite of its animation. 100% of anime sucks. 99% of the stories and characters suck. Let the flaming begin! The only thing that could cheapen the ME universe more now with an Anime movie coming out would be a ME MMO.

Have a cousin who lived in Australia. She was chased out of the house 3 or 4 times by one of those spiders.

This must be cheap labor. Why pay good money for good animation when it can be outsourced for a fraction of the price. People don't actually like this art style... do they?

This must be cheap labor. Why pay good money for good animation when it can be outsourced for a fraction of the price. People don't actually like this art style... do they?

Not as good as the song though...

Screwattack's intro to OMG, this game is

You do realize how many more gamers there are now compared to back then? Flaming turd-balls today sell more than some of the better games 10+ years ago. Over 50% of Americans play games now. Also, BG was better accepted for it's time than DA 2 has been, that is for damn sure. I remember how well it was received, part of the reason I gave it a try as my first RPG along with Fallout. 'It has saved the RPG genre!' etc. Being Bio's first RPG and all I'd say its fair to forgive some of the early design problems like the NPCs being there for no other reason than to fill your party. A problem that was rectified fairly well in BG 2. That brings up a good point too. Look how well BG 2 improved on BG 1. Almost everything about it was better. Look at how DA 2 has improved on DA 1. For every positive there is a negative, and sometimes a big fat stinking negative.

Yay! Auto-attack alone will be a big improvement. Hopefully the Merril bug will be one of the quest bugs fixed. Now if only they could add new dungeon maps. Imagine backlash if they released new dungeons as DLC. I'm so desperate I'd still pay for them.

Check it out. Lucky for me, I don't have any of the BttF episodes. The only thing you apparently need is a Telltale account.

Catchy too.