Mass Effect Reviews

[Hurlshort]

You are refering to games that are at least 4 to 7 years old. Get with the times. Take NWN2. It has Neverwinter, West Harbor, Port Llast, Highcliff, and Crossroads Keep was starting to be a town in of itself by the end of it. Oblivion has several cities and towns to explore.

 

Mass Effect is suppose to be a game which we are exploring a GALAXY andnot stuck in a single psuedo-medieval world. There should be quite a number of large cities to explore. Hell, do we even get a chance to go back to and visit Earth?

 

Wait a sec, every place except Neverwinter you mentioned is more of a town or village than a city. Plus, have you even played Mass Effect? Why are you talking about it like an expert?

[Sand]

Damn Biowarians not catering to our irrational and unreasonable demands!

 

BURN THEM WITH VELVEETA!

 

[Sand]

Wait a sec, every place except Neverwinter you mentioned is more of a town or village than a city. Plus, have you even played Mass Effect? Why are you talking about it like an expert?

 

I'm not talking like an expert. If I was I would be.

[Volourn]

"Plus, have you even played Mass Effect? Why are you talking about it like an expert?"

 

He can read reviews like the rest of us, you know.

[Sand]

Reading some of the posts over there it seems that the game has a few bugs and people are clamouring for a patch. HA!

 

If a console game needs a patch then something is seriously wrong with the programming of the game and the QA department for not catching it. One of the main strengths of consoles is suppose to be their hardware conformity so that developers don't have to worry about patching. If a console game needs patching that is a result of shoddy workmanship.

[thepixiesrock]

My game has some sort of bug that doesn't let me shoot non-enemies. I demand a patch to rectify this.

[Bokishi]

Yeah I noticed this too, It would be great to go GTA on everyone's ass

[Nick_i_am]

If a console game needs patching that is a result of shoddy workmanship.

 

how...unlike...Bioware.

[Volourn]

No obvious bugs yet.. load times are as slow as most games' loading times are. *shrug* I do got other issues though... Fun game; but not perfect.

[Sand]

If a console game needs patching that is a result of shoddy workmanship.

 

how...unlike...Bioware.

 

Its not a problem isolated at Bioware.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

At least Jade Empire was better than NWN1. Then again, almost anything was better than NWN1.

 

*sigh* I can hear volo beginning his rant already...

[Volourn]

Rant is short: Sand played the NWN OC 3+ times. He liked the game. He just has to admit it now.

[Sand]

I played the NWN1 OC once. The Expansion OCs more than once. I hated the NWN1 OC. I liked the expansion OCs.

[theslug]

Haven't read entire thread and don't plan to. But I got the game and just finished played it after like a 4 hour run. Game is sick as hell. Loving the graphics and somehow loving the combat too. Doesn't bother me what so ever that its a shooter pretty much. I mean I do have some qualms with it. Like unsticking yourself from cover can get annoying when it's not immediate and I've yet to use any skills what so ever. I also haven't used my partners skills or really use them for anything yet since i haven't mastered the commands yet (haven't even figured out how to go into planning interface) but thats becuase I get in the battle and just forget about them completely. Battles are also usually so short that I can handle them alone anyways and they just stand back shooting/taking damage from me.

 

Story so far is very reminiscent of kotor-goodness but much improved. A little repetitive going back and forth between people in citital station but some of the stories have been a little interesting. Citital station is hard to navigate through but you figure it out sooner or later. Right now I'm on my ship planning where I want to go into the wide ol' universe.

 

Edit: Also on the subject of loading and stuff I really haven't had any problems what so ever. Elevator times are extremely exaggerated, doesn't mean they aren't long but it hasn't killed me or annoyed me at all. Also there has only been 2 or 3 times where I've come in counter with a small amount of lag. Loading happens sometimes during gameplay but thats only happened in two parts and wasn't bad at all. And the loading textures things I've noticed maybe 5 times and it was cleared up so quick it didn't really matter. So really all these things combined yeah they flaw the game just a tad but it's really so unnecessarily minimal to the overall experience of the game that it's almost irrelevant.

 

Loving the game so far. Seriously a 9.5/10 game.

Edited November 22, 2007 by theslug

[Tigranes]

Well, my expectation remains unchanged so far (i.e. not expecting anything in terms of combat / sidequest / nonlinearity / exploration but main story should be solid and music/graphics good).... but we'll see.

 

How is the dialogue system? I haven't heard much about that yet, but I haven't been reading game website reviews, since most of them are useless. I'm really thinking that it pretty much turned out as expected - i.e. about, Oblivion dialogue quality.

[theslug]

Dialog has been pretty unremarkable so far but it definitely hasn't been bad. Just nothing has really stood out to be particularly awesome or particularly cheesy/bad. The choices in what you can say are usually quite similar to each other but are still somewhat varied.

 

Usually something like:

 

Obvious good/neutral good/neutral kind of a meany/I'm slightly an a hole.

[angshuman]

Well, my expectation remains unchanged so far (i.e. not expecting anything in terms of combat / sidequest / nonlinearity / exploration but main story should be solid and music/graphics good).... but we'll see.

 

How is the dialogue system? I haven't heard much about that yet, but I haven't been reading game website reviews, since most of them are useless. I'm really thinking that it pretty much turned out as expected - i.e. about, Oblivion dialogue quality.

From what I've seen thus far (about 2 hours), the dialogue writing and voice-acting quality seems to be at par with KOTOR and Jade Empire (I haven't played Oblivion). The new dialogue choice system isn't offering a vastly different experience from previous Bioware games (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). It works, you feel at home. The only major difference is that the character facial animation and body language during dialogue delivery are superb. It's far from perfect, but a big improvement over any other game I've seen.

 

One thing that's been really annoying is the UI. It's not intuitive, and even after you get familiar with it, some things are really annoying, e.g., inventory management, and cycling through NPC's and items you can interact with. I think it's a combination of stupid design decisions and not enough playtesting to polish and finetune the systems. I'm getting used to the combat, though I hate not being able to micromanage my squadmates. Shepard's combat, though, can be micromanaged (this might not be apparent from the videos), but actually doing this turns out to be a bit tedious.

 

The game's presentation is simply outstanding; the music, graphics and artistic vision come together to give the game a very unique larger-than-life feel. Of course, this wears off slowly as you get more immersed, but the initial impact is definitely significant.

 

Ignoring the annoying quirks and the stellar presentation, I'm finding the game quite enjoyable. The story hasn't developed much since I've only played a little beyond the prologue chapter. I'm really enjoying walking around the Citadel and taking in the gameworld, and reading up all the Codex (an in-game encyclopedia) entries on what seems to be an interesting and well thought-out universe.

[Volourn]

"about, Oblivion dialogue quality."

 

Nothing that bad. BIo's dialogue is as good as it's ever been if not been steadily improving. And, to comapre even BIO's worst dialogue to Oblivion is hilarious!

[Tigranes]

Good, good. I take it fromi nventory criticism that it pulled the idiotic KOTOR thing again? I mean, it was excusable in Fallout but..

 

If dialogue is standard bio quality, then yeah, ME looks a decent enough game - another KOTOR / JE - ish game. That's fair enough. After all, who actually believed the hype?

[Volourn]

Yeha, they did the KOTOR inventory style thing again. Urgh. Too bad too as I find the equipment rather cool, and the system is a lot deeper than it appears on the surface consideirng there's only 4 basic weapon types. With the ability to add mods to the actual weapon, chnage bullet types, different ranks of weapons, and different prototypes (manufactures) adds up to some variance and choice so not evryone should end up with the same type of pistol or shutgun (at least till the best stuff is found, most likely).

[Meshugger]

KotOR style inventory? Do they even read their own forums? The inventory was one of the worst things with KotOR.

[Meshugger]

Edge gave ME a good 7. In the same issue, Mario Galaxy got a 10.

[Pidesco]

Isn't Edge full of Nintendo fanboys?

[Meshugger]

Uh? They gave Halo, Halo 3, Orange box, HL2 and Gran Turismo 10's as well. The only other ones made by Nintendo that got 10's where Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

 

And that's it. No other games have gotten 10's in the magazine's history.

[Pidesco]

I don't read it often. I just remember a best games of all time list they put together, and every other game seemed to be a Nintendo game