Drowsy Emperor

Since this is about the ME trilogy (although you wouldn't know it by reading most of the posts) I think its fitting to stand back and look at what the ME series did right and what it did wrong. It was certainly a major success, financially and with the critics. I think its finest points are audio-visual design, world building and some of its characters. The second and (presumably, since I'm not going to play it) the third game had pretty good combat gameplay too, better than the first. The cinematic quality of 90ties SF shows was successfully recreated faithfully to the point that the game could be considered their equal (in both their good and bad points). The lows would be the convoluted and unoriginal storyline, level design (during missions), questionable minigames and lack of ability to customize the main character in terms of personality. Shepard exhibited too little growth as a result of the binary choices the game forces you to pick between. Overall the series could be called one of the high points of modern gaming although this praise is a two edged sword. While great strides have been made in the technical aspects of game design, a lot of the charm has been lost by excessive streamlining, railroading and fear of innovation in the weakest aspect of games in general - storytelling. As such, much effort is squandered in treading over familiar ground - and most of the games (ME series included) fail to sustain the initial great impression when its revealed that underneath all the shine there isn't a truly new experience.

Thats what I felt while playing it, but it sort of evaporated when I actually finished the game. The story failed to live up to the in game world.

PST has purpose, the strange premise it has is in service of the philosophical question that drives the whole storyline. AC is about killing **** and everything else is icing meant to give a little context and nothing more.

You tribals are hopeless.

My computer is well into its 6th year and apart from the graphics cards (the second one is functional but overheats in many games) still going strong. Its a good machine, but its unreasonable to think it could keep up with equivalent or even lesser hardware that someone is going through extra trouble to optimize their games for. But like I said, who cares about hardware. Its all about games, and in that respect its best to have both. Not that traditional PC genres are doing well at all. The RTS is as good as dead, RPG's too. Most of the games released for PC are crappy low budget titles or ports of some sort.

This is incorrect. I bought a nearly 1000 euro PC when PS3 launched, and while it kept pace with them easily for a long while, its graphic card had to be changed at some point (and the current one is almost dead as well) and its been overtaken by the latest in console games in terms of how much they can squeeze out of their hardware as opposed to how much I can squeeze out of mine. Eh. Your graphics card dying and have to be replaced with a crappy one does not mean nobody can play with console quality with as old PC. I went through two good cards in 6 years, the second one works but overheats in games. Even if you chalk it up to rotten luck, the rest of the components have simply aged and the optimization that console games go through put them in the lead. Its not a great technological lead by any stretch but when money is concerned it certainly is.

Its tough being on top.

This is incorrect. I bought a nearly 1000 euro PC when PS3 launched, and while it kept pace with them easily for a long while, its graphic card had to be changed at some point (and the current one is almost dead as well) and its been overtaken by the latest in console games in terms of how much they can squeeze out of their hardware as opposed to how much I can squeeze out of mine. The PS3 used to be 600 euros. In terms of value for money the PC clearly inferior (if you aren't using it as a tool to make money at the same time). Even now, a PS3 is approx. 300 euros, and a 300 euro pc (without a monitor) is a beefed up office computer. @pmp: like I said, it takes years and even then its a gamble.

This hobby is about games , not hardware. Most games on all platforms do a poor job with whatever hardware is available anyway. Consoles have games that aren't available on the PC and vice versa. The only thing that's important is knowing what you want to play. The PC can emulate games in time, but that usually means waiting for years before you can play a certain game the way it was intended. Really the best choice is to have both if at all possible.

I don't know what's wrong with people to insist so much on playing the AC games. The first one was garbage, and when the first game in the series is crap you don't even give the second one the time of day (generally). Yet they did, even though no one (honest) said no 2 was more than good/very good... And now this. Who is surprised that AC3 is mediocre? Power of propaganda or something.

Well, if you ever get down buying that console, play Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3, and all your faith of Rockstar shall be restored. I'm certainly interested in Red Dead Redemption. I used to love Max Payne but I felt it was a nicely wrapped up story without the need for a sequel. MP2 sorta proved this, it felt so tacked on and redundant. But I could be persuaded to try MP3.

Next step, Bioware Edmonton 15 guys again? At least gamers, as frustrated and cynical as they (we) are, are never wrong about one thing - EA. The way they (mis)treat and eventually ruin the studios they run is more predictable than Newton's laws.

I have nothing against Rockstar games, the novelty of their sandbox gameplay has merely worn off after so many years of repetition. I just recently finished Bully and the game, while well crafted was nowhere as much fun as it should have been.

Not very evocative. We have the rugged american (inevitably the good guy) on the right, the projects yo in the middle with his shirt over long sleeves "black people can't dress properly" thing and probably the resident butt ugly psycho on the left. I can't get excited over GTA anymore. The fourth one took that concept as far as it was going to go and even then there were signs that the series was going downhill.

Is your monitor also "unavailable"? Yep. You can connect the PS3 to a monitor huh, I forgot all about that. Thanks for reminding me, that's certainly a good temporary option to consider.

Of course. There's always the temptation to jump in while its got all the new thing shine on it though. And I don't know what features they're going to offer that would make for a strong motivation to get them early. I doubt there's going to be anything nearly as useful as Blue Ray capability was at the time (and even now). On a totally unrelated note, my recently rediscovered PS2 is starting to show disc read errors on occasion. Considering that my big PC is unavailable, I'd really be depressed if the PS2's laser dies on me. Even if I might be able to afford a PS3 as a replacement I sure don't have cash for an LCD/LED tv, and its worthless without that.

I knew I could get him to break character Ha!

Sing for us Volo ...you'll feel better afterwards, I guarantee it

Volourn rides in on a brontosaurus each time, a mere horse can't hold that much arrogance.

There's that but this is really just a case of hurt professional pride - the game succeeded at doing his thing while he did not, at least not as much as he feels he's entitled to.

Why is it always that when you can finally have all the toys playing isn't so much fun anymore.

And I call BS on his attitude. I have read two of his books, and nothing elevates him from the cesspool of epic fantasy literature. In fact, the game was the best thing that happened to him and to his books. In some ways the games are even superior, like the characteristic atmosphere of the first Witcher (that is nowhere to be found in the books). The reason his books never got a worldwide breakthrough in the genre is because they aren't good enough (and they wouldn't be even if he was American). The reason the game succeeded is because it was (and still is) a great achievement in the world of computer games.

Its you hedonistic master race people who sit in a recliner while playing games that turned me away and now I retire to the poverty of couch based console gaming. The PS3 on the whole has fewer exclusives than the PS2 and its a trend that may well continue, especially as its inevitable that some long running exclusive series will hit a brick wall at some point - like Final Fantasy did. Investing in PS4 in the first year of its release would be a huge gamble.

True dat. I always feel their games are playing themselves and that my participation is there so the game can show off, like that annoying friend who invites you over to his house to play games only to play them by himself while you watch.

Some articles have asked the question of how long will next gen consoles cycle's be. Due to high costs its very likely that they will last as long as the current generation or even longer for a total of 7-8 years of gaming. This is about the same as a PC, maybe a little less. There are a lot of cheap games for the PC amongst new releases that don't require much hardware power so this extends to total use you can get out of it. During that time, barring bad luck with the warranty and hardware failure the only real expense is replacing controllers. On that note my original PS2 dual shock joystick (almost a decade old) is still fully funcional even if the analog seems to send input in a certain direction on its own, rarely (fixed by rotating it). (While my expensive logitech turd of a gamepad died after barely a year of use). In terms of manufacturing quality Nintendo is the unquestionable leader, followed by Sony (which has dropped in quality somewhat) and MS in last place (with lowest quality components, in regards to both hardware and controllers).