Halo + KOTOR = Mass Effect (still enjoyed it though)

[Lurkar]

I've found Mass Effect to be rather fun, so long as you know what to expect. It's Bioware, it's just like all their other games, only now in space. I treat it as a B sci fi action movie, and find it pretty enjoyable, grabbing collars and all.

There are three things that ruin it for me though. First are elevators, which, if you've played the game should make perfect and complete sense. We can travel across solar systems and yet we can't make an elevator that moves faster then an old man with no legs dragging himself by his crusty long yellow fingernails? Second is the MAKO vehicle thing, which has some hellishly bad control schemes. And lastly, the paragon/renegade thing just doesn't make sense most of the time. It's not good/evil, as I've done good things and gotten renegade points. It's now law/chaos either, as sometimes upholding the law gets me, yes, renegade points. It's not even pro council/pro human, as BOTH have gotten me BOTH kinds of points. Unless you're using charm (which is ALWAYS paragon) or intimidate (which is ALWAYS renegade), your points from either seem to come completely at random. Oh, and being a dick always gets you renegade points too, yet being nice and polite, surprise surprise, DOESN'T always (because sometimes it does) get you paragon points.

 

[BethesdaLove]

Halo + KOTOR = Mass Effect

shit + shit = shit *2

fixed

 

[jiujitsu]

Halo + KotOR - fun = Mass Effect

It was soulle, really. Combat wasn't hard enough either. Boring too. I can only remember one fight where I had to go all out to win. Stupid rocket launching security drones...

 

[DefJam101]

Worth playing for the collar grabbing and sexy aliens alone.

 

[DemonKing]

I've found Mass Effect to be rather fun, so long as you know what to expect. It's Bioware, it's just like all their other games, only now in space.

Precisely - it's basically built on the tried and tested Bio-console game model established in KOTOR and continued in Jade Empire. If you've played either of those games you pretty much know what to expect with ME: nice graphics and a fairly engaging story wrapped up with awful combat and inventory systems and some form of annoying mini-game.

ME has a couple of other quibbles as well - mainly the terrible Mako handling and some of the dullest sidequests imaginable, which is apparently because they couldn't fit anything more detailed in and still get it all to fit on a single DVD for the 360...plus for some reason they bought back the voice actor who played Carth from KOTOR *and* some genius decided to make him a romance option for PCs again...

To be honest I really enjoyed ME's main quest path so I would probably rate it around the same as KOTOR with JE trailling slightly behind.

 

[BLOBERT]

Buncha guys who'd shit on anything here.

Except of course, in 5 years the same guys will still say everything new is shit, and whine for the good old days of Halo, KOTOR, and Mass Effect.

 

[Lesifoere]

Oh look, a newbie. Doesn't sound like an alt.

Except of course, in 5 years the same guys will still say everything new is shit, and whine for the good old days of Halo, KOTOR, and Mass Effect.

I think you need to lurk more, little man.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

There are three things that ruin it for me though. First are elevators, which, if you've played the game should make perfect and complete sense. We can travel across solar systems and yet we can't make an elevator that moves faster then an old man with no legs dragging himself by his crusty long yellow fingernails?

The elevators are annoyingly slow. I wound up using the Citadel Fast Transit thingy quite often just to avoid the elevators. There's also some glitches with elevators getting stuck which sucks.

The uninterruptible dialogue makes things slow too.

Second is the MAKO vehicle thing, which has some hellishly bad control schemes.

I dread the MAKO. I'm wondering why it has jump jets on it. I've never found a use for them, and I'm hoping I never do. If there's a jump course in the game, I'll be pissed.

And lastly, the paragon/renegade thing just doesn't make sense most of the time. It's not good/evil, as I've done good things and gotten renegade points. It's now law/chaos either, as sometimes upholding the law gets me, yes, renegade points. It's not even pro council/pro human, as BOTH have gotten me BOTH kinds of points. Unless you're using charm (which is ALWAYS paragon) or intimidate (which is ALWAYS renegade), your points from either seem to come completely at random. Oh, and being a dick always gets you renegade points too, yet being nice and polite, surprise surprise, DOESN'T always (because sometimes it does) get you paragon points.

I agree. There should have been more than just Renegade/Paragon trackers. I just did the mission where you run across Saren the first time. It blew my mind that shutting down things that make the combat easier earns me Paragon points. I'm a soldier on a mission, not doing anything that's really out of my way to save any innocents or screw over anyone, but I'm getting Paragon points for just doing my job. It doesn't make a lot of sense there.

 

[Lesifoere]

The elevators are annoyingly slow. I wound up using the Citadel Fast Transit thingy quite often just to avoid the elevators. There's also some glitches with elevators getting stuck which sucks.

The uninterruptible dialogue makes things slow too.

Yes to the glitches. Thought it was just me--I take it that even now there's still no patch out to fix it?

Actually liked the elevators at first for the news bits and such. But after a while they just repeat themselves.

I dread the MAKO. I'm wondering why it has jump jets on it. I've never found a use for them, and I'm hoping I never do. If there's a jump course in the game, I'll be pissed.

Nah, no jump course, but jumping helps when trying to dodge lasers.

 

[Spectacle]

The Sci-fi in Mass Effect is so light that if it wasn't tied down it would float away to the stratosphere.

The game is utterly mediocre in almost every way except for the human face animations, which are really spiffy. Though this is balanced by the fact that they have managed to make computer generated aliens look like humans wearing rubber masks.

 

[Lesifoere]

Were there facial animations, really? The only expressions I recall seeing on the human faces were either scowling indifference or bland indifference, and the expression would never change perceptibly (it was a little like watching Hayden Christiansen in the prequel trilogy). Bloodlines did facial animations much better, I thought.

 

[BethesdaLove]

Will it run on max settings on a ati 3850 (i stole one) and an amd 3200 (no moneys)?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Halo + KOTOR = Mass Effect

shit + shit = shit *2

fixed

What is the hidden value x? Next-gen?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yes to the glitches. Thought it was just me--I take it that even now there's still no patch out to fix it?

Nope, there's just quick saving prior to getting on elevators. That's what I do.

Nah, no jump course, but jumping helps when trying to dodge lasers.

I mainly roll forward or backwards to dodge them. What's strange about the MAKO is when you get out of it and something is shooting at you. If the MAKO is between a critter and one of your partymembers, it's amazing how fast the MAKO gets trashed.

Were there facial animations, really? The only expressions I recall seeing on the human faces were either scowling indifference or bland indifference, and the expression would never change perceptibly (it was a little like watching Hayden Christiansen in the prequel trilogy). Bloodlines did facial animations much better, I thought.

There's the occational interesting reaction to something like when the captain of the Normandy smirks and shrugs. I thought the expression thing was pretty decent, as opposed to KotOR where it looked like all the NPCs were having strokes through a conversation. The expressions changing constantly in KotOR got annoying.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I didn't have any trouble with the elevators really... didn't find them too annoying either. Load times were generally OK, except for starting the game which takes several minutes.

Other strange bugs I remember is the game completely freezing randomly (that did not happen often), which could be helped by switching tasks and then switching back again (eventually).

Full crashes with some "render error" or whatever happened very seldom, after several hours of playing. Might be a memory leak or something.

 

[NiM82]

Full crashes with some "render error" or whatever happened very seldom, after several hours of playing. Might be a memory leak or something.

Were you skipping through dialogue before the actors had finished talking? I found doing that caused the render crashes for me.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Full crashes with some "render error" or whatever happened very seldom, after several hours of playing. Might be a memory leak or something.

Were you skipping through dialogue before the actors had finished talking? I found doing that caused the render crashes for me.

I can't remember if I was skipping, but it was usually during dialogs I think.

 

[DefJam101]

ME and TW are almost identical games, if you think about it. Both of them are fun, but for wholly different reasons.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The lifts are the games loading screens.

 

[Texas Red]

So whatever happened to being able to interrupt everyone with proper responses. I remember this feature was hyped to death.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Full crashes with some "render error" or whatever happened very seldom, after several hours of playing. Might be a memory leak or something.

Were you skipping through dialogue before the actors had finished talking? I found doing that caused the render crashes for me.

I've never been able to skip dialogue. Then again, on my laptop, I can't skip the blink videos either, but I can on my desktop. So, I don't think I've tried to skip dialogues on the desktop.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

ME and TW are almost identical games, if you think about it. Both of them are fun, but for wholly different reasons.

Whats TW?

And I can't remember ever clicking a dialog option before the other guy stopped speaking and the response somehow indicating that you were brash or whatever.

 

[NiM82]

You don't need to click a dialogue option, if you hit spacebar whilst someone's speaking it cuts to their next line, or whoevers turn it is to speak next (handy if you enable subs) -- but it in doing so causes their animation to skip forward too, which rarely can cause the render error.

 

[Claw]

Buncha guys who'd shit on anything here.

Except of course, in 5 years the same guys will still say everything new is shit, and whine for the good old days of Halo, KOTOR, and Mass Effect.

Except of course, we've been whining for the good old days of Goldbox, Realms of Arkania and Fallout for over ten years, so why should we change now?

 

[Cthulhugoat]

ME and TW are almost identical games, if you think about it. Both of them are fun, but for wholly different reasons.

At least you can pick a side in The Witcher. Mass Effect doesn't even let you do that, you can only play the same quests with slightly different dialogue (and collar grabbing).

 

[NiM82]

The world design in TW is also much better, the world feels alive and lived in. Mass Effect's like so many of Bioware's feels very sterile, empty and static.