[360] Mass Effect

Here's a question I haven't found sufficiently answered in reviews yet: To what degree does the roleplaying aspects of the game affect game progression and/or replayability (not talking about combat strategy or whatnot here). Do your actions impact the narrative in any significant way, or mainly just the tone of it?

 

At least one (IGN) mentions the occasional loss of control while in combat (in that buttons/triggers stop registering every now and then and sometimes the only fix is to reset). That I'd think qualifies as serious. Additionally, more than one has run across the "getting stuck in random places" bug. Okay, so they claim that you can fix these with patches, but normally a game would never be allowed to ship with that first bug (assuming it's actually caught in the course of the submission process).

Also as far as the slowdowns were concerned, it often sounded more like framerate hitches and combat always went hand in hand.

Moreover, my one big problem with the forgiveness on account of "that can be fixed with a patch" is that I've never heard that uttered with regards to any other game before. A lot of games are forgiven for slowdowns because they just look good... but this one is new to me.

 

I will for sure get this game and I am sure an 8 is still a very good game, especially if you enjoy the genre or the more strong point of a game and disregard the weaker ones.

 

They actually gave Gears of War an 8. If they gave that to Gears I would think that an 8 for Mass Effect is pretty good.

 

added newest

IGN UK 9.1


92% at Metacritic

 

I beat the game on Sunday (21 hr play time) and I never once got my character stuck anywhere or had a non-responding controller. There are some occasional framerate issues when you enter a battle, if you open a door and 10 dudes open fire on you the game hitches, but after 2-3 seconds everything is fine. Also, calling the AI bad is a stretch, more like average.

 

What did you like best about the game?

 

BTW, for Canadians you can pick up Mass Effect for $44 from Dell.ca.
http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/top...=cabsd1&l=en&s=bsd&dgc=AF&cid=3881&lid=574243

Each day, 3 games are on sale. Yesterday it was Assassin's Creed and NHL 08 and some other game for $39. Today it's Call of Duty 4, Orange Box, and Mass Effect for $44.99 each with free shipping.

 

Well, aside from the insane visuals, the game has really good pacing. There was always enough going on that I wanted to play more and wanted to hear the next set of dialogue. Also the game levels up with you, so anytime you get new abilities you pretty much have to use them to keep combat even (on the harder difficulty anyway). Nothing is ever really too high/low for you, which is nice. I’d say the game is very Bioware and is very much what you would expect from them.

 

Please discuss the "generalized" review process and your opinions in this thread: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=45535

Just a reminder: this is a thread about Mass Effect and shall stay that way! This still includes ME review discussion, but it went off on a tangent to include a more general stance, hence moving a number of posts to a new thread.

 

Mass Effect doesn't use a cache on the 360 HDD...
http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=598210&forum=124

Seems pretty silly, but I don't know how they organize their data or what is involved for a game such as this. Gears of War used caching to good effect - it reduced the amount of texture popping quite a bit compared to not having a hard drive (in my experience).

 

Gears doesn't use a HDD cache either.

http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=24678834&postcount=9

 

My copy is waiting for me at home No one else is playing yet?

 

Yeah I just spent a few hours with it. Very interesting stuff. Slick presentation. The way they use their super high detail actors is pretty darned immersive.

It's actually fairly reminiscent of KOTOR, but with obvious refinement. Combat is of course nothing like KOTOR, though. The combat reminds me of GoW, actually.

 

Spent 5hours on it tonight. And now made Spectre after 4 hours! Spent a lot of time talking to everyone. Then headed off to do a rescuse mission which I believe is a side quest. I'm exploring the abandoned planets. The vehicle is damn fun to drive

Goes without saying, the presentation is top notch. The voice acting, gestures, dialouge scheme is just spot on. Your level of immersion depends on your interaction with the NPC's and how much of the story you want to know and be involved with. Amazing sound track and effects. The characters so far have been likeable and most importantly, believeable. After a few hours, it feels like you are watching some show like BSG. If you're into sci-fi at all, the story will hook you in no time at all. This is the sort of game you could sit and watch someone else play and if they were good at it, you literally would be watching a movie. The grain filter is a must! Really gives it a movie feel. I turned off the filter for 10mins and turned it right back on.

The combat is nothing amazing from a shooter perspective. Basic cover, pop up shoot with squad controls. 2 things worry me so far. The rifle crosshair expand way too quickly regarless of how well you try to do 2-3round bursts and retraction is painfully slow. I'm really hoping that as you upgrade the rifle, those things evolve also. If not that make it useless. The other being the sniper rifle. Again, the level 1 weapon has waaaay too much sway and hiting things is a prayer. There is not hold breath button to stabilize that I came across. Like with the assault rifle, I'm hoping that is improved with the more advanced models. The pistol is rock solid though! Sounds good too. I was stupid and picked soilder class which doesn't give me any powers I guess I'll pick another class next playthrough.

The framerate and tearing issues within 5hours of continous playtime were minimal at best and never became a distraction. I got stuck one time because I climbed onto a crate and a pirate did some power on me, knocking me back at a weird angle and getting me stuck back there.

If you're an achievement whore, just understand that it'll take 2-3 playthroughs to get most of them.
All said and done, this game is easily something you can play through a few times and have a completely different experience each time. The NPC interaction is as close to real as you can expect. The whole conversation aspect is just amazing. You'll tell your character to give a response and expect the conversation to go one way but your character will take your response and loosely direct it into a sentence but might change up the delivery thus the NPC ends up reacting in a way you didn't expect. For those who are playing it, you'll know exactly what I mean but to those who have not, it'll be a bit confusing. Rest assure, it works well!

 

About 12 hours in, amazing game, I'm loving (almost) every minute of it.

Some initial impressions:
- Enemy AI is dumb, but aggressive, therefore very dangerous. They also aren't afraid to use their powers against you, and battles can become extremely hectic.

- Combat feels very clunky when compared to something like GRAW, but it also offers excellent depth, and strategy is the key to winning a tough battle. Using combinations of powers between party members, to absolutely dominate the opposing forces is a great feeling.

- Exploring in the Mako is great, I like that they made it a significant gameplay element. I love how then game seems to come together in a perfect mix of conversation, storytelling, exploration and combat.

- HORRIBLE auto-save points!! At one boss battle, dies about 20 times, and each time I had to watch the same 5 minute cut-scene over and over and over....also, if you're going to have a boss battle, after 20 minutes of fighting, for crying out loud, put a checkpoint!!

Also, the fact you can't save while in combat can create for very annoying situations if you get ambushed.

- Equipment is by and large excellent, many cool weapons/armor to be found strewn about, and it's all organized in easy to manage levels, i.e. generally a Mark IV gun/armor/ammo is better than a Mark 3. The interface needs some work though, quite clunky and un-intuitive.

- The graphics are gorgeous, but generally don't knock your socks off, it does have moments where it's absolutely beautiful though.

The bugs while certainly there, have a very minor impact overall. The biggest negative is framerate in very heated battles, it can sometimes slow to a crawl.

 

You can't skip them? That sucks. Reminds me of the Airship battle in FFX you had to watch that damn cut scene over and over too if you died. Why anyone would think that is a good idea is beyond me.

 

yeah, that stinks. I'm really stoked about getting this game, maybe even accelerate my 360 purchase because of it, and then Scooby has to go give a list of flaws that all just happen to be things that make games almost unbearable for me and usually lead to me quitting them midway through.

 

lol, well for what it's worth that's only happened to me once so far, for the most part you can save just before starting battle.

 

Well, I ran into the combat glitch on the first mission. This is the kind of glitch that if you run into often enough can literally kill your gaming experience as constantly saving and reloading is a pain. However, it was time for bed so I basically saved and cut off the game after I experience the glitch and dying three times didn't alleviate it.

I was really confused and disconcerted at first as this kind of a glitch has to be a first for a major release. At first my weapon refuse to zoom at times which is required to tighten the reticule and basically a must for accuracy, then my weapon refused to fire at times. The occurences were random after replays due to death but occured once during the first trigger pull which alleviated my thought that it was a mechanism from overheating my gun.