The Mass Effect 3/BioWare Thread

[sgc_meltdown]

Dragon Age 3 previews will probably slam the everlovin shit out of Mass Effect 3 and say how the new Bioware is all about the satisfying endings now so you can preorder DA3 with peace of mind

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

To give *some* credit to the mainstream critics, they are usually under very tight time pressure to review games. Often they are given a week or less to do so. I've never been on a strict deadline with reviewing stuff, but for those that are, sometimes the flaws in a game don't really manifest until repeat playthroughs, or until you start going into the optional content, or until you kind of sit down for a few days and think back on it. The scores are always going to be high (and for what it's worth Mass Effect 3 is still a good game in comparison to what's been released this year so far), but even the best critics can overlook things when they've got to play and review a 40 hour game in the span of 3 days.

In general - fair enough. But that isn't really the case with ME3. A gentleman with some taste and a brain cell or two would be WTFing pretty hard every five minutes over the plot holes, the characters' behaviour, the writing in general and even level design (med kits littering a robot ship - I kid you not). Not to mention the overall soulless, derivative, unimaginative nature of the whole deal.
Anyone being impressed by this trainwreck has no business proclaiming how "phenomenal" it is, as they know not the meaning of the word. Otherwise, I'd like to know from what horrifying depths of stupid they'd drawn their baseline for comparison... and why I am expecting anything of the sort from an XB360 subsite of IGN.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

what horrifying depths of stupid they'd drawn their baseline for comparison

just look at the distribution of scores here
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/mass-effect-3/critic-reviews

now let's take a look at say, eurogamer

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-06-mass-effect-3-review

As with any game that dares to be ambitious, deconstruct Mass Effect 3 into its constituent parts and of course there are flaws, but taken as a whole this is arguably the first truly modern blockbuster, a game that transcends the genre boundaries of old and takes what it needs from across the gaming spectrum in order to finish its story in the most compelling, thrilling, heartbreaking way possible. Few gaming sagas come to a definitive close, but this one signs off in breathtaking style.

sounds like he finished it to me. 10/10

the same fellow has also to given the Syndicate remake a 7/10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-21-syndicate-review_4

and Serious Sam 3 the same 7/10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-24-serious-sam-3-bfe-review

and Dragon Age 2 : Mark of the Assassin starring Felicia Day an 8/10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-17-dragon-age-2-mark-of-the-assassin-review

draw your own conclusions

 

[skuphundaku]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/122/1221492p1.html

IGN's second opinion on Mass Effect 3. I don't know what to say

"The Galaxy At War system feels incredibly arbitrary."

"And what was that great reward? A cutscene featuring a bunch of characters I've never seen before, and a final moment where I see some familiar faces stranded in a jungle."

"I wanted to love everything about Mass Effect 3. Actually if you take away the ending and a few buggy moments the game is still phenomenal. But instead of ending on something noteworthy, all this final moment did is make me think of how expertly crafted a similar ending was in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. "

Still, 10/10 GotY !

To give *some* credit to the mainstream critics, they are usually under very tight time pressure to review games. Often they are given a week or less to do so. I've never been on a strict deadline with reviewing stuff, but for those that are, sometimes the flaws in a game don't really manifest until repeat playthroughs, or until you start going into the optional content, or until you kind of sit down for a few days and think back on it. The scores are always going to be high (and for what it's worth Mass Effect 3 is still a good game in comparison to what's been released this year so far), but even the best critics can overlook things when they've got to play and review a 40 hour game in the span of 3 days.

I actually respect IGN a little more for putting out these occasional second opinion articles. Their reviews and articles may suck, but at least they show they do have some honest opinions underneath all the hyperbole, even if they're afraid to express them within the initial sales window. Not that I ever read them, but yeah.

If the mainstream reviewers have problems properly reviewing games in the current mainstream press environment, the the environment has to change because it's fucked up. If they compromise for the sake of money, then they're part of the problem and they have no excuse in the eye of the reader. The reader doesn't come to a website to read a review and make sure the reviewers are paid adequately. The reader come to a website to read a good review, period. If the website keeps providing shit reviews and excuses, then the discerning readers will stop coming. Luckyly for most mainstream websites, the influx of non-gamers recently turned gamers, who couldn't identify a good game or a good review even if it hit them in the face, means that, overall, they won't be losing too many readers to make a difference, hence the pathetic state of affairs when it comes to game reviews.

Because of the way the sales are concentrated in preorders and the first couple of weeks after release, a second opinion that comes after these critical two weeks have passed won't help the vast majority of people wanting an unbiased opinion of the game as a means of deciding to purchase the game or not. Publishing a second optinion this way (this late) is a very underhanded thing to do because the readers have already been decieved to buy a lacking product by the initial opinion but then the website comes back and updates the content of that review (without updating the score, which is the more important thing for Metacritic and Metacritic-related issues - see the Obsidian/Bethesda debacle) so that they, later, could claim they have journalistic integrity (that they don't really have).

P.S. Cry me a river over a professional reviewer having to play a 40 hour game over 3 days. I put roughly 40 hours in a completionist ME3 playthrough over the course of a little over 2 days, during a week-end, and after that I could identify all the problems the game had. Nobody paid me to do that, so somebody being paid to play games and rewiew them should be able to do that as well. If they can't, then they're simply bad at their job.

 

[Sceptic]

Denoument is the point in the story after the climax where plot threads are resolved, the tension winds down, character arcs are brought to a conclusion, and everything comes to a tidy end.

Being extremely pedantic I'd like to point out that the meaning is in the etymology itself (French)

nouer = to tie up (plot threads together)
denouer = opposite, to untie
denouement = the untying (of the plot threads)

If your denouement INTRODUCES new plot threads or characters (hello Crucible, hello Catalyst, hello Vega, hello TIM-the-Indoctrinated, hello........) it is by definition not a denouement.

 

[Ulminati]

Yhatzee finally got around engaging emotionally with the ass erect. Not sure if it's already been posted - couldn't find any mention of it skimming the last few pages.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5497-Mass-Effect-3

He sums it up pretty neatly.

"Mass Effect ends not so much with a bang or a whimper. More like the sound you get from releasing a baloon and then watching it fart it's way around the lounge."

 

[Menckenstein]

 

[racofer]

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I can see it now. Like the battle cutscenes playing in the background when your Garden gets attacked in FF8, except in this case it's Shepard and team popping regular moles while a giant Blobert skips gracefully around in the background headshotting every Reaper that lands with his deagle, climbing over their smoking bodies and bobbing back and forth serenely with each step and booming LOLLOLOLOLOLOL every so often in the distance, unreachable and ever-present

doing the equivalent of making you feel like you're just a little fighter from Descent Freespace games just doing his part while supercapital ship Blobert does most of the work and you're just happy you survived

The lack of a genuine sense of scale like this is another reason why Bioware's third installment fails to live up to expectations.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

edit: just noticed the tags at the Jason Effect video

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-06-mass-effect-3-review

As with any game that dares to be ambitious, deconstruct Mass Effect 3 into its constituent parts and of course there are flaws, but taken as a whole this is arguably the first truly modern blockbuster, a game that transcends the genre boundaries of old and takes what it needs from across the gaming spectrum in order to finish its story in the most compelling, thrilling, heartbreaking way possible. Few gaming sagas come to a definitive close, but this one signs off in breathtaking style.

"In other words, I like this game very much. Comment plz"

Colour me amazed.... I was utterly convinced that this would not get a 10 from EG..... Well played

My jaws literally dropped upon seeing the 10/10
Never expected Eurogamer (one of the more harder critics) to give Mass Effect a perfect score. Now I'm even more dying to play this

well dammit. looks like ea gets more of my money after all

Woah, this was a little under my radar, despite loving the other two.

Ten?

I'm in.

WOW 10/10! NICE !

10/10 o.o wow. Really looking forward to the game

Holy munch!

Wasnt expecting a 10!?

Thursday cant get here soon enough

/ I love Shopto

Some people have a different opinion.

Fortunately, Eurogamer's readers knows what's up and take care of these nasty trolls by themselves.

haha oh wow.

Eurogamer confirmed for as corrupt as every single other gaming site.

How much did bioware have to pay you for a 10/10?

• -30

how much did EA pay all these reviewers anyway?

• -48

10/10? Really guys? Really?

• -54

That's the review? Was it written whilst on a toilet break? Or is it a pre-review and a more in depth one will be here shortly?

• -69

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Fortunately, Eurogamer's readers knows what's up.

that's right mah brazilian daimyo

check this shit out, the same reviewer coincidentally also gave his professional analysis of Dragon Age 2 to the tune of 8/10

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-08-dragon-age-ii-review

Dragon Age II is a big game. Not in the usual sense of lengthy playing times and sprawling maps (though it's no slouch in those departments), but in terms of its ambition and storytelling.

This is a game with a lot on its mind, a game that wants you to feel the weight of history, both ancient and personal, pressing down on you with every decision you make. It wants you to live through a story that spans a decade, taking you from penniless refugee to beloved champion.

It wants you to think, to immerse yourself in cultural conflicts that don't try very hard to conceal their real life parallels, to juggle questions of faith and free will, justice and security, revenge and passion.

It wants you to stitch yourself into its unfurling narrative tapestry, to feel every betrayal and failure even as you carve your way through another dozen Darkspawn. This, it says, is more important than fannying about in your backpack sorting out potions.

Only a churlish heart would fail to appreciate the effort.

This lends proceedings a more bleak and confrontational tone than Origins, which traded in Tolkienesque myth. Dragon Age II is, at its heart, a political game. It places greater stock in the way you approach questions of society and culture than the binary quest choices of the previous game.

Choosing to save or destroy some sacred ashes feels like small beans next to some of the decisions you have to make here. Things still have a natural tendency to eventually boil down to either-or choices, but the path to get there at least takes you through a lot of grey areas. Often, the best you can hope for is to pick the lesser of two evils.

Only the truly hardcore role-player will allow such design choices to dampen the experience. The genre is evolving, like it or not, and once you stop obsessing over what's different and start paying attention to what's important, Dragon Age II has plenty to offer.

If the gloriously messy stat-heavy guts of the RPGs of old are being carved out and replaced by simple mechanisms, it's not because the Bioware designers want to appeal to drooling simpletons. It's because they want us to engage with story rather than statistics.

If Mass Effect 2 took its cue from the propulsive thrust of pulp sci-fi, Dragon Age II gladly follows its own genre roots and echoes the meandering myth-building of a doorstop fantasy novel.

This is a game packed with stories. With no monstrous uber-foe to defeat even the smallest side quest takes on its own importance, feeding back into the whole and weaving a saga that draws you further and further in as the hours tick by.

unfortunately with nobody to hold the line the codex and 4chan trolls have taken over the comments section it seems

Why is everyone using the word "evolve" to describe what's happening to RPGs? To say that they're evolving suggests that they're getting better in someway. I also find the argument impossible to fathom when we see something as core to RPGs as inventory management all but removed from modern RPGs to make them "more accessible"

What we have here isn't evolution, it's a mutation, something halfway between RPG and action adventure, and if it was a new game there'd be nothing wrong with that, but it's part of an established RPG franchise made by an established RPG developer, aren't the long term fans of said developer entitled to skeptical, entitled to be disappointed by the developers decision to forsake them and what they want in favour of pandering to people who aren't all that interested in RPGs?

I'm reminded of a rather elitist comment I saw once on a driving game forum "you can assistance options to a racing sim but you can't add sim mechanics to an arcade game" or something along those lines. Same applies here, why not make a proper RPG with the option to dilute the experience if you want, that way everyone is happy. +23

 

[Hamster]

I just did the mission on Thessia, and, oh my, the derp levels are rising!

Cheesy over the top dialogue (the bad kind, not the good extreme kind) with no player input, enemy defeating you in a cutcene, forced drama delivered via cutscenes with terrible animations. etc.

Wtf with all the "OH, NO! The protheans influenced Asari history! Liara is so mad!" bullshit?

Hello? Wasn't this obvious to everybody already? And whats so terrible about this?

Ifhistory channel guy knows protheans influenced our history and is cool with it, how comes it causes an existential crisis for Asari?


"Don't worry, Shepard, fall of Thessia is not your fault! OMG, do not blame yourself!"

Yeah, i know. We never went there to stop the Reapers, that was never an option. WTF? And, please, let me decide what my character thinks about this rather than making him spout nonsense in cutscenes without my input.

 

[hiver]

"Mass Effect ends not so much with a bang or a whimper. More like the sound you get from releasing a baloon and then watching it fart it's way around the lounge."

Man, ass effect 3 even made yahtzee crack good jokes.

 

[Schleichwerbung]

Smudboy's plot analysis:
[youtube]

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Spot on. Pure pleasure watching him deconstruct this mess bit by bit.

 

[DraQ]

I can see it now. Like the battle cutscenes playing in the background when your Garden gets attacked in FF8, except in this case it's Shepard and team popping regular moles while a giant Blobert skips gracefully around in the background headshotting every Reaper that lands with his deagle, climbing over their smoking bodies and bobbing back and forth serenely with each step and booming LOLLOLOLOLOLOL every so often in the distance, unreachable and ever-present

That was beautiful.

Also, LOLLOLOLOLOLOL bit reminded me of whale songs.

 

[Angthoron]

Smudboy's plot analysis:
[youtube]

Okay, so I watched this. Now, while this is, I believe, an accurate depiction of the intro, I can't really join my bros here in celebration of this video, simply because it is unnecessarily fucking long. Don't get me wrong, I like long videos, Plinkett's reviews, for one, are awesome because they're long, but FUCK. I honestly can't even fucking remember anything the guy's said anymore. What was the fucking point of taking 27 fucking minutes of nitpicking the intro to shreds, repeating things several times, only to say, on the 28th minute, that after that, the plot is solid? And am I to presume that the other two parts will be 28 minutes long as well? I rather fucking watch all of Spoony's archive, thank you very much.

So yeah, what is this for? Catharsis? Prove BioWare lovers that they're wrong? Turn in at the university for extra credits? Really, what's the fucking point, and why does it take 27 minutes to pick that bunch of lazy sequences apart when bros in this thread have ripped that fucking game a new one in 1/20th the fucking effort? Why did the "New/Old Player" checklist drop off? Continuity, much? What was the point of the checklist if it didn't consistently make an appearance? Can we "close the door" with the list being half-assedly discarded? What was the list's subplot ending? Why start with larger points, then abandon them in favour of nitpicking and never come back to larger points again? How about some literary/movie theory to add to the mix? Why is that abandoned so soon?

I was intentionally wasting half an hour of my life and now I'm angry for wasting a half an hour of my life. FUCK!

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I'm angry

 

[Angthoron]

I'm angry

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Thanks meltdown, I think I'm able to love again now.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

 

[racofer]

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Reminds me of that one black guy raging after episode 9 of GoT. His name was Larry, I think?

 

[RPGMaster]

He died in the tutorial. ROFL.

 

[Ulminati]

Doesn't look staged at all. This is how kwans actually behave.

 

[Albers]