DefJam101
Arcane
After the big shit piracy battle between Lord Gaider and Cap'n Whatshisface (& his scurvy crew of salty sea dogs and other stereotypical pirate references) I finally went to my local Gamestop (we got it very early, apparently) and picked up Mass Effect (PC). I played it for a few hours last night and can't say I hate it. I've certainly (certainly) played much better, but I think I might end up liking the game for what it is. I'm gonna play it more later, but here's some shitty first impressions of mine in hopes that one salty sea dog may be converted, or walk the plank, or something....
Gameplay:
I figure that I will separate this into two categories: combat and non-combat.
-==-Combat-==-
Combat is, well. Not that good. Really not much to talk about here..
Gameplay feels like (amazingly) Gears of War with a bit less polish. You can take cover, fire, issue some basic orders to your squadmates.. That's it, basically. The guns feel a bit on the weak side, except for the sniper. Combat does not feel very visceral at all, it's tough to get a good look at the enemy with all the post-process effects being thrown everywhere. When shots do hit they don't have much feel to them, you basically just hold down the LMouse button until they die. The dreaded console "O" aim instead of a crosshair has returned, and it still makes you feel rather detached from combat. I haven't played the harder difficulties, and probably never will, but your AI teammates are more than happy to get themselves killed. I'd assume that on the hardest difficulty you will have to order them into cover and to use their abilities constantly, considering they get killed often even on this medium difficulty.
Character management is pretty shallow, not that I like party-based games anyways. I've just been using the auto-level utility to avoid the process of assigning skill points, and that says a lot when it only takes about 20 seconds to assign them. I hope the secondary skills become more useful later on in the game; at this point I can't tell.
-==-Non Combat-==-
Most of the non-combat gameplay is talking to people, running from place to place, or stopping by your local bar to pick up some hot alien pussy. The last two are easy to describe; the running speed feels somewhat slow but there are plenty of ways to get around. Hot alien pussy is, sadly, restricted to our imagination. As for talking to people, there is a bit to be said about how you go about this and the actual content of the chatter. The game uses the little "dialog roll", in which you choose a general response, and your character says the rest. This comes off as a bit shallow, gameplay-wise. Almost every time you have 3-4 options; a 'good option' in which you come off as a naive carebear, a 'neutral option' in which you come off as someone who is playing the game with their eyes closed, and a 'bad option' in which you come off as someone who has 13 inches of flaming Turian dick shoved up their ass and just wants to get the hell out of here and shoot some motherfucking bad guys. The 4th option is either a 'What the fuck?' option or one that is the same as option 1 or 2 or 4 except with less syllables.
Problems do arise from this, rather basic, system. The first problem being that you no longer have to think about what you are saying, and the second one being that the game doesn't always make sense. An example of this happened to me very early in the game, when I was looking for some badass detective named Garrus. I was asking where I could find him, and was told that I should ask some drunk guy in a bar and he might know where Garrus is. A dialog option came up that said 'Any other leads?' and I clicked on it, thinking I would receive more info on Garrus. Instead I reverted back 4 dialog options and was asking for more leads about the main quest. A minor inconvenience, of course, but I'm sure something like that will eventually pop up in an 'important' conversation at this rate.
Story & Style:
I'm going to keep this category very short, because story and style in this game comes down to preference, to be honest. Personally, I love it. Why? It's like playing Far Cry all over again, spoonful after spoonful of shitty B movie goodness.
The conversations are all fairly basic, and most characters are one-dimensional. The only character I really like is Garrus, although this is probably due to my rampant sexual attraction to pointy & skinny alien species. Which brings up another point; you can't have hot gay alien sex in this game, bullshit. Anyways, I like the style of the game whether it was deliberately crafted or not. Some (alright, a lot) of lines have some very good cheesy goodness to be found in them. The collar-grabbing action and drama is there and feels oh-so out of place, like in any good B movie. There is not much to be said about the story & style, if you want a well-crafted storyline filled with rich characters, you will not find it here.
Graphics:
As for the graphical style, I need more time with the game to really tell. I do have a few basic observations down, though.
-==-Art Design-==-
I've always been a "fan" of space-opera (if that's possible..) and there is a very fine line you need to pay attention to when creating alien species. Since they are all inevitably going to be humanoid (fuck you, realism), you need to find a good balance between making them look alien enough to avoid uncanny valley, but humanoid enough to not make them absurd looking. An example of this being executed badly is 80% of all aliens seen in Star Wars and 99.9% of all aliens seen in Star Trek. IMHO Mass Effect is a mixed bag; the Turians are well done, having a fairly unique facial structure and body type. But most of the other species look like your standard Star Wars knockoffs, such as the weird "frog had sex with a down syndrome kid" aliens, or the inexplicably blue women walking around with no clothing on.
The weapons, ships, machinery, and locations are all very standard and generic. A mix of Star Trek & Babylon 5 with a very small drop of BSG. It's very clear from the start that some things are blatantly ripped from (or are obvious nods to) other space opera games. The first time I saw the 'Geth' my first thought was "Covenant Elite!" until I figured out they were weird robots..or something. The Artificial Intelligence that guides you around the Citadel is almost an exact copy of Cortana with a bit of porn-star flare thrown in. The Citadel itself felt like a combination of Babylon 5 and Halo, with it's ring structure & colorful plant setup.
The characters are fairly well facially animated (borrowing from Half Life 2's craze, no doubt), and don't just stand around in dialog. The additional movement in dialog scenes gives the game even more of an action movie feel. My only real complaints with the animation is the running speed that feels painstakingly slow, and the way your selected three characters look like total idiots standing with their arms at their sides in a triangle formation at the end of every cutscene.
-==-Technical-==-
To start off, the game runs decently on my computer at max settings; I can't be a good judge of performance because my CPU is in dire need of upgrading. If you have a good C2D and a 7800+ or something you should be fine running this game.
As with any UE3 game so far; the post-process effects are out the fucking wazoo. The bloom is very high in some parts of the game, but perfectly tolerable in others. The motion blurring is a bit distracting to some people's eyes (including mine) but you can turn it off, and this is the same in any game. The two effects that Bioware seemed to take a risk with were the 'film grain' effect, and a strange black blur around the edges of your screen. I wasn't bothered by the film grain at first, but I don't exactly understand it's place. It's a fairly subtle effect, unlike bloom, but I couldn't help but feel that I was playing Grindhouse in space. I eventually switched it off, I like it better this way. The other effect, which I hate, is this weird blackish blue blur around the outside of your screen. Combined with the film grain effect it *sorta* simulates a movie experience, but does little more than get annoying by itself. It's a decent attempt at building a unique visual style, but I think it could've used more subtlety (and the ability to turn it off like the film grain effect). I, however, have to point out a good use of depth-of-field effects when looking through a sniper rifle's scope. Distracting? Yes, but the combat is easy anyways.
At times it does feel like the excessive post-process work is trying to make up for some otherwise shoddy texture work. The normal maps and shaders all look good enough, but some of the textures of people's clothes or faces look like the belong in Oblivion.
Sound:
The sound of the game (an oft ignored aspect of videogaming) is a mixed bag.
-==-Moosic-==-
The music is *not* what I expected at all. It's not your typical aggro-industriatech breakbeat nigracore like every other action game in existence. The music is very light and... how do I say this, 'boopy'. Some weird synthesizer noises that I can't say work very well add a bit to the 'bad movie' flare. I don't mind the music, in any case.
-==-Voice acting sans Patrick Stewart-==-
The voice acting is solid, actually. They managed to get a fairly diverse cast of actors to work on the game, and the main female character (thankfully) doesn't sound like a dumbshit bimbo like every other game in history. The voice modulation on certain alien species is fairly well done, and makes them sound different but not absurd. Of course, the actors are limited by the writing; no matter how well you say 'I think she's the right person to save the galaxy.' it's going to sound stupid. My only complaints are the frat-boy ship pilot and one incredibly aggravating female character.
-==-Things that go boom-==-
Weapons and explosions in general sound weak, coupled with the graphics and loose feel... they just feel weak. The sticky grenades sound (and look) pathetic, so do many of the guns in the game. The sniper rifle has a decent kick to it, as well as a few pistols. That's about it.
~~~
Overall, I'll have to get back when I have finished the game (I'm about, 6 hours in..?); these are just my initial impressions of it. Post your thoughts on the PC version of the game if you have played it. I am enjoying myself playing it, so far.
Praying for hot alien gay sex
,Def
Gameplay:
I figure that I will separate this into two categories: combat and non-combat.
-==-Combat-==-
Combat is, well. Not that good. Really not much to talk about here..
Gameplay feels like (amazingly) Gears of War with a bit less polish. You can take cover, fire, issue some basic orders to your squadmates.. That's it, basically. The guns feel a bit on the weak side, except for the sniper. Combat does not feel very visceral at all, it's tough to get a good look at the enemy with all the post-process effects being thrown everywhere. When shots do hit they don't have much feel to them, you basically just hold down the LMouse button until they die. The dreaded console "O" aim instead of a crosshair has returned, and it still makes you feel rather detached from combat. I haven't played the harder difficulties, and probably never will, but your AI teammates are more than happy to get themselves killed. I'd assume that on the hardest difficulty you will have to order them into cover and to use their abilities constantly, considering they get killed often even on this medium difficulty.
Character management is pretty shallow, not that I like party-based games anyways. I've just been using the auto-level utility to avoid the process of assigning skill points, and that says a lot when it only takes about 20 seconds to assign them. I hope the secondary skills become more useful later on in the game; at this point I can't tell.
-==-Non Combat-==-
Most of the non-combat gameplay is talking to people, running from place to place, or stopping by your local bar to pick up some hot alien pussy. The last two are easy to describe; the running speed feels somewhat slow but there are plenty of ways to get around. Hot alien pussy is, sadly, restricted to our imagination. As for talking to people, there is a bit to be said about how you go about this and the actual content of the chatter. The game uses the little "dialog roll", in which you choose a general response, and your character says the rest. This comes off as a bit shallow, gameplay-wise. Almost every time you have 3-4 options; a 'good option' in which you come off as a naive carebear, a 'neutral option' in which you come off as someone who is playing the game with their eyes closed, and a 'bad option' in which you come off as someone who has 13 inches of flaming Turian dick shoved up their ass and just wants to get the hell out of here and shoot some motherfucking bad guys. The 4th option is either a 'What the fuck?' option or one that is the same as option 1 or 2 or 4 except with less syllables.
Problems do arise from this, rather basic, system. The first problem being that you no longer have to think about what you are saying, and the second one being that the game doesn't always make sense. An example of this happened to me very early in the game, when I was looking for some badass detective named Garrus. I was asking where I could find him, and was told that I should ask some drunk guy in a bar and he might know where Garrus is. A dialog option came up that said 'Any other leads?' and I clicked on it, thinking I would receive more info on Garrus. Instead I reverted back 4 dialog options and was asking for more leads about the main quest. A minor inconvenience, of course, but I'm sure something like that will eventually pop up in an 'important' conversation at this rate.
Story & Style:
I'm going to keep this category very short, because story and style in this game comes down to preference, to be honest. Personally, I love it. Why? It's like playing Far Cry all over again, spoonful after spoonful of shitty B movie goodness.
The conversations are all fairly basic, and most characters are one-dimensional. The only character I really like is Garrus, although this is probably due to my rampant sexual attraction to pointy & skinny alien species. Which brings up another point; you can't have hot gay alien sex in this game, bullshit. Anyways, I like the style of the game whether it was deliberately crafted or not. Some (alright, a lot) of lines have some very good cheesy goodness to be found in them. The collar-grabbing action and drama is there and feels oh-so out of place, like in any good B movie. There is not much to be said about the story & style, if you want a well-crafted storyline filled with rich characters, you will not find it here.
Graphics:
As for the graphical style, I need more time with the game to really tell. I do have a few basic observations down, though.
-==-Art Design-==-
I've always been a "fan" of space-opera (if that's possible..) and there is a very fine line you need to pay attention to when creating alien species. Since they are all inevitably going to be humanoid (fuck you, realism), you need to find a good balance between making them look alien enough to avoid uncanny valley, but humanoid enough to not make them absurd looking. An example of this being executed badly is 80% of all aliens seen in Star Wars and 99.9% of all aliens seen in Star Trek. IMHO Mass Effect is a mixed bag; the Turians are well done, having a fairly unique facial structure and body type. But most of the other species look like your standard Star Wars knockoffs, such as the weird "frog had sex with a down syndrome kid" aliens, or the inexplicably blue women walking around with no clothing on.
The weapons, ships, machinery, and locations are all very standard and generic. A mix of Star Trek & Babylon 5 with a very small drop of BSG. It's very clear from the start that some things are blatantly ripped from (or are obvious nods to) other space opera games. The first time I saw the 'Geth' my first thought was "Covenant Elite!" until I figured out they were weird robots..or something. The Artificial Intelligence that guides you around the Citadel is almost an exact copy of Cortana with a bit of porn-star flare thrown in. The Citadel itself felt like a combination of Babylon 5 and Halo, with it's ring structure & colorful plant setup.
The characters are fairly well facially animated (borrowing from Half Life 2's craze, no doubt), and don't just stand around in dialog. The additional movement in dialog scenes gives the game even more of an action movie feel. My only real complaints with the animation is the running speed that feels painstakingly slow, and the way your selected three characters look like total idiots standing with their arms at their sides in a triangle formation at the end of every cutscene.
-==-Technical-==-
To start off, the game runs decently on my computer at max settings; I can't be a good judge of performance because my CPU is in dire need of upgrading. If you have a good C2D and a 7800+ or something you should be fine running this game.
As with any UE3 game so far; the post-process effects are out the fucking wazoo. The bloom is very high in some parts of the game, but perfectly tolerable in others. The motion blurring is a bit distracting to some people's eyes (including mine) but you can turn it off, and this is the same in any game. The two effects that Bioware seemed to take a risk with were the 'film grain' effect, and a strange black blur around the edges of your screen. I wasn't bothered by the film grain at first, but I don't exactly understand it's place. It's a fairly subtle effect, unlike bloom, but I couldn't help but feel that I was playing Grindhouse in space. I eventually switched it off, I like it better this way. The other effect, which I hate, is this weird blackish blue blur around the outside of your screen. Combined with the film grain effect it *sorta* simulates a movie experience, but does little more than get annoying by itself. It's a decent attempt at building a unique visual style, but I think it could've used more subtlety (and the ability to turn it off like the film grain effect). I, however, have to point out a good use of depth-of-field effects when looking through a sniper rifle's scope. Distracting? Yes, but the combat is easy anyways.
At times it does feel like the excessive post-process work is trying to make up for some otherwise shoddy texture work. The normal maps and shaders all look good enough, but some of the textures of people's clothes or faces look like the belong in Oblivion.
Sound:
The sound of the game (an oft ignored aspect of videogaming) is a mixed bag.
-==-Moosic-==-
The music is *not* what I expected at all. It's not your typical aggro-industriatech breakbeat nigracore like every other action game in existence. The music is very light and... how do I say this, 'boopy'. Some weird synthesizer noises that I can't say work very well add a bit to the 'bad movie' flare. I don't mind the music, in any case.
-==-Voice acting sans Patrick Stewart-==-
The voice acting is solid, actually. They managed to get a fairly diverse cast of actors to work on the game, and the main female character (thankfully) doesn't sound like a dumbshit bimbo like every other game in history. The voice modulation on certain alien species is fairly well done, and makes them sound different but not absurd. Of course, the actors are limited by the writing; no matter how well you say 'I think she's the right person to save the galaxy.' it's going to sound stupid. My only complaints are the frat-boy ship pilot and one incredibly aggravating female character.
-==-Things that go boom-==-
Weapons and explosions in general sound weak, coupled with the graphics and loose feel... they just feel weak. The sticky grenades sound (and look) pathetic, so do many of the guns in the game. The sniper rifle has a decent kick to it, as well as a few pistols. That's about it.
~~~
Overall, I'll have to get back when I have finished the game (I'm about, 6 hours in..?); these are just my initial impressions of it. Post your thoughts on the PC version of the game if you have played it. I am enjoying myself playing it, so far.
Praying for hot alien gay sex
,Def
