[360, PS3] Mass Effect 2 *(Spoiler Warning)

As Al once mentioned SSAO would probably hinder the look of a game like Mass Effect which aims for a clean style.
 
Dont know about 360 pad but with mouse and keyboard I find the stick to wall function a bit slow to react in some situations. It can happen that you dont stick to wall or that when in cover you press zoom/fire and nothing happens. Not sure if control related or crappy visibility checking.

Speaking of zoom... I've been trying to use the sniper rifle, but for some crazy reason the hotkeys on PC also toggle the aim function with the SR equipped (obviously, when using Shepard's powers). Really annoying.
 
More DLC? Saw this on Cerberus Network today (quoted from wikia):

01/02/2011 - From BioWare's Cerberus Daily News Team

“OUT-OF-GAME NOTICE: The Cerberus Daily News will begin a hiatus on January 24th, finishing its run of one full year. Daily postings will cease except for three weeks in 2011: a week of posts will precede a downloadable content release, and two more weeks will lead up to the release of Mass Effect 3. The CDN team thanks fans for their attention, comments, and feedback (both in and out of character!). We are sorry to go, but we had fun -- we hope you did, too!”

 
Played the demo last night. Its a very long demo,like the Darksiders one.

Things I liked:

Character faces during conversations look really good. A good change after playing the ugly Fallout3.
Thankfully, even though it is an RPG, shooting is decently implemented.
Production values seem high for an RPG game.
It does not carry the "Standard UE3" look.
Characters look n feel extremely good.

Things I didn't like:

Monochrome environments. Every room I enter is either sepia coloured or red. Its as if you are viewing the environments through cheap color filters. Takes away all the beauty of the place.
Extreme black crush on characters. I had to bump brightness from the ingame option to max and increase brightness on myTV too to see anything first of all. Even then the game's gamma seems strange. Either a part of face is bright or black. Strange!
The much touted conversation system seems just like a wheel version of the standard "list of options" system.
The game feels like a long trudge between conversations. Action lacks the adrenalin rush in the demo.
Every room lokks the same. Boring to explore monotonous environments.The demo did overwhelm me with the multiple doorseverywhere to explore, but once you have seen one room, you've seen them all. There;s only one way forward, rest of the rooms just have stuff to pick up(and diaries to listen too)

Looks like the hook of the game is moving through the story, the fights in-between are just fillers one has to move through. At least from the demo that is what it looks like. If the environments were more interesting,i would give in, but the white space station vibe is too overdone. The only variety being one room is completely brown while the other is completely red :rolleyes: !

Maybe I am too harsh on the game and all RPGs suffer from these problems, but I had thought ME was better than them. Or maybe the demo doesn't showcase the game well.
 
Monochrome environments. Every room I enter is either sepia coloured or red. Its as if you are viewing the environments through cheap color filters. Takes away all the beauty of the place.

Practically every place you visit has a distinct look/theme/colour. The demo can't cover the entire game.

Extreme black crush on characters. I had to bump brightness from the ingame option to max and increase brightness on myTV too to see anything first of all. Even then the game's gamma seems strange. Either a part of face is bright or black. Strange!

This seems to be an artistic choice in how they setup the lighting. It's pretty clear given the number of tweaks that can be done on PC.
 
Practically every place you visit has a distinct look/theme/colour. The demo can't cover the entire game.

Yes, but the choices they made for the demo areas are pretty weak. Colour variety is not through assets but through extreme colour correction. They have tinted areas so much that they turn monochrome. If this is the way they create variety........well, we are supposed to judge it by the demo.
This seems to be an artistic choice in how they setup the lighting. It's pretty clear given the number of tweaks that can be done on PC.

Hmm.....I know PC version is the best one to get, add to that the cheapest, but it doesn't support controllers. its strange actually, since they have all the controls mapped to controllers on consoles, its not as if the controls won't fit. Why did they elude controller support from the PC version?
 
Yes, but the choices they made for the demo areas are pretty weak. Colour variety is not through assets but through extreme colour correction. They have tinted areas so much that they turn monochrome. If this is the way they create variety........well, we are supposed to judge it by the demo.

To put you at ease, ME2 has some of the best use of color I've seen on any game this gen, and I play 30+ games each year. It really is a very pretty, unique and colorful looking game. There is no way a short demo can convey that, but rest assured it looks amazing.


Hmm.....I know PC version is the best one to get, add to that the cheapest, but it doesn't support controllers. its strange actually, since they have all the controls mapped to controllers on consoles, its not as if the controls won't fit. Why did they elude controller support from the PC version?

Yup...an extremely frustrating developer choice to not support gamepad on pc :( Still, at just $10 I'd go with the pc version if you have waited this long to play ME2, it looks and runs far better than on console unless you have an ancient pc.
 
Its old, but runs Crysis at 30fps at beyond Ultra High, so no sweat in that dept :) ! But I still prefer controller as I am pretty much ignorant about RPG way of life, had lot of trouble comprehending Fallout3's ways of working. Controller at least simplifies controls down, if not the game.


I'll take your word for the colours. Demoes often fall short in conveying what is best about a game.
 
I agree, color use and flare use is top notch and the Citadel is one great example. It really pops into your face with such nice colors and intensity. It also runs great on the PC and even a mid-end gaming system can run it excellent with heavy tweaks and highres.

Its old, but runs Crysis at 30fps at beyond Ultra High, so no sweat in that dept :) ...


Such system would run it smooth with tweaked config and SSAA! I run ME2 with tweaked config and it ups some things quite a lot like 2048x2048 shadowmap size, greatly improved filtering for shadows, LODs etc. It's very rare for my 4890 to dip below locked 40fps at 1680x1050 with 4xMSAA/TSAA and 16xAF. I would actually run it with 2x2SSAA if I could (no support for SSAA) and ditch the forced 4xMSAA or just keep it at 2x and lock at 30fps.
 
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I agree, color use and flare use is top notch and the Citadel is one great example. It really pops into your face with such nice colors and intensity. It also runs great on the PC and even a mid-end gaming system can run it excellent with heavy tweaks and highres.

I am downloading the PC demo from Steam. Can the tweaks and mods be applied to the demo too?
 
Yes I recon there will be no problem. I could upload my config (you need to customise your own res, gamma, control settings).

Just replace games original config. Backup included. Also if you got ATI card then make sure you aint forcing AF through CCC else game wont use AF.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KZ4UC7FJ
 
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I use MLAA...looks pretty nifty, the text and interface isn't affected either (atleast to the extent of you noticing it while playing).

I am downloading the PC demo from Steam. Can the tweaks and mods be applied to the demo too?
Get the game from EA India's Store (digital version)...its only 800 INR.
I bought it for even less during the Halloween sale couple of months ago. :p
 
Dam just spend 25 hours and still not done.
But thinking on replaying mass effect 1 i want wrex alive so i will pump some more hours in this franchise. My mass effect 2 just feels empty without Wrex he was my favorite character out of ME 1. Hope i recruit him in Mass effect 3.

And my body is ready for a mass effect Mmo rpg i want to play as a krogan.
 
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I've played through the demo now, both the non spoiler and spoiler bit, and while I can appreciate the scope of this quite a bit and the underlying story, I really, *really* don't appreciate the crappy shooting at all, and no special powers can redeem that (they're not all that hot either). And there is way, way too much of it too. Also, the dialogue system seems so pointless. The demo does not do the game much good if all it manages to do is give the impression it's a very, very bad corridor shooter!
What difficulty options are in the demo? I played ME2 first on Normal and was really underwhelmed by the combat but my second playthrough was on Insanity and it was a totally different experience.

On the hardest difficulty, every enemy has at least 2-3 "layers" of health. So they'll have regular health, armor, and then maybe biotic barrier or shields. You have to use different ammos, powers, and weapons to take down each layer efficiently which is where all the challenge comes from. It's actually fairly intuitive to control all of these things once you get used to the controls.
 
That's what they claim at least. But we know that in practice, demos and final games rarely differ significantly. Sure, there are exceptions (God of War 3 demo was a year older, and was quite a big difference), but we'll have to wait and see if t his one is one too.
 
There is at least one significant difference between the demo and retail, but the DF article should cover that more later today. It's... a mixed bag.
 
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