Mass Effect rocks SO HARD. I can't wait to get into ME3.
I have systematically avoided information about it as much as possible. I like the whole experience to be new, no spoilers :D


ethics-gradient: I tried Mass Effect 2 and couldn't get very far into it beyond a locked door while having a shootout with robots, I was supposed to use a black guy i had with me who had the force or something. There was no clue whatsoever what I should do..
Repetition is boring and that game gave me no reason at all to continue playing.

You got 10 minutes into a game with an average of like 40 hours of gameplay, and conclude that it is repetitive?
And you couldn't figure out what to do in the intro section, which is designed to be straightforward?

Lol. Opinion invalidated.

It is pretty good. Too bad EA has casualized it and then turned the new one into Mass Effect: Jersey Shore

enforcerpsu: PJ-: enforcerpsu: PJ-: Had my pre-order, then I heard about the addition of multiplayer. I canceled my pre-order, and will skip this title.

I'm just tired of EVERY farking game out there needing to have multiplayer in it.

What is today? Horrible logic day? You heard it had multiplayer and you canclled your preorder. That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard today. The day is still young though...lots of room for you be beaten. I thought that other post was bad...

Please tell me how it's horrible logic? Because they added a feature to a game that has had 0 multiplayer up until this point. I don't agree with it, therefore I will not support it by buying their product.

The only terrible logic that I see is the fact that you think that even though you don't like something about a product, you buy it anyways.

Let me map it out for you. Ready to get on the clue train?

Product X has components A and B.

Component A is completely independent of component B. Component B does not affect component A in any appreciable way. In fact, component A is the vast majority of the entire product and was the original $60 product.

Customer Joe Smith cancels his pre order because component B exists, even though component B does not affect component A. That does not make sense.

Your logic still fails because you are trying to tell me how to spend my money.

PJ-: enforcerpsu: PJ-: Had my pre-order, then I heard about the addition of multiplayer. I canceled my pre-order, and will skip this title.

I'm just tired of EVERY farking game out there needing to have multiplayer in it.

What is today? Horrible logic day? You heard it had multiplayer and you canclled your preorder. That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard today. The day is still young though...lots of room for you be beaten. I thought that other post was bad...

Please tell me how it's horrible logic? Because they added a feature to a game that has had 0 multiplayer up until this point. I don't agree with it, therefore I will not support it by buying their product.

The only terrible logic that I see is the fact that you think that even though you don't like something about a product, you buy it anyways.

Let me map it out for you. Ready to get on the clue train?

Product X has components A and B.

Component A is completely independent of component B. Component B does not affect component A in any appreciable way. In fact, component A is the vast majority of the entire product and was the original $60 product.

Customer Joe Smith cancels his pre order because component B exists, even though component B does not affect component A. That does not make sense.

Anyone else NOT looking forward to development additions designed to pimp the Kinect?

If I wanted a Wii, I'd buy a Wii.

FTA: Whether it is realistic science explaining humanoid life throughout the galaxy, or dealing with FTL travel, or the ethical ambiguity of progress, or even the very purpose of the human race in our universe, Mass Effect has got it.

See, I never got any of that from either game. Maybe it was there, but if it was it was overshadowed by the ongoing "omg end of the universe and humanity!" scenario that too many sci-fi games/universes have, IMO. It doesn't have to be a galaxy cleansing genocide to be important.

Above average games set in what I think is an average universe. Bioware rocks, but far from "teh most important". Author of TFA needs to get outside more. Or read some Asimov.

/needs coffee

sprawl15: NeedlesslyCanadian: I wonder how many of the Mass Effect 'haters' in this thread are secretly EA toadies here to whip the franchise's fans into a fever pitch in the weeks leading up to ME3.

I just found the gameplay/pacing of ME1 to be so bad that I couldn't bring myself to play it again to unlock new beginning stories in ME2. ME2 was a better game, but its story had massive, massive plot holes or blatant stupidity that makes the main storyline just awful. The 80% of the game that was sidequests was a blast, though.

Link (new window) - Here's a save editor.

1)Start a new game.
2)Save it.
3)Check Played ME1, and do your preferred setup for ME2. (And Conrad Verner requires all 3 checkboxes. That's a known bug in the ME1 save.)
4)Set the GameState to Finished (preferably the "Dead" one so ME3 doesn't pick it up)
5)Import it as a NG+ for your actual campaign.

Whole process takes 10-20 minutes, which is long, but not too long compared to playing a complete ME1 game.

/Extra bonus: After starting the ME2 save game, save, give yourself infinite paragon/renegade and minerals, reload, and then skip the 2 worst parts of the game.

NeedlesslyCanadian: I wonder how many of the Mass Effect 'haters' in this thread are secretly EA toadies here to whip the franchise's fans into a fever pitch in the weeks leading up to ME3.

Because unless one or several of the following is the case,
- don't like sci fi
- don't like RPGs and/or third-person-shooters
- are 9 years old and/or have the attention span of a gnat

it's hard to fathom how any self-respecting gamer could, with any degree of honesty, turn their nose up at ME.

Origin.

kemosabe: Still need to replay ME2. I accidentally got 1 person killed at the end. Oooops! No one gets left behind, dammit!

Apparently the only way for me not to get Mordin killed was to take him along. Go figure. I would have thought he'd be able to handle himself in a firefight.

RembrandtQEinstein: I'm going to pee in the punchbowl. Mass effect isn't that good.

Never played 1 but 2 is the "Avatar" of games. Big budget, shiny, polished, well crafted, and ultimately bland and forgettable. You could tell the makers wanted to do do Kotor 3 but didn't want to pay for a star wars license.

The full voice acting actually takes away from the experience whenever Shepard says something mundane like "Tell me about your culture" or "Which way is the loading zone?". With the exception of the speech Shepard gave at the beginning of the collector base and possibly the renegade option at Tali's trial nothing is particularly memorable.

The combat is just gears of bore with magic and extremely repetitive. You don't even have the tension of your companions possibly dying and causing a mission loss. Half way through I looked for a mod that let me skip combat because I felt like I was slogging though it to get to the next story part. The only unique combat mechanic was in the collector base when you had to stay in the psi shield and that was only used for one fight.

The interface has the consolization problem of one button being used for everything. I had many moments of "I want to sprint away, but oh no I just cook cover in my enemy's crotch!" The character customization seemed like it was an afterthought rather than an integral part of the game. None of it really mattered except for the "did you grind enough of the stupid mining minigame to avoid story deaths at the end?" part.

The story is a blend of elements from other good sci fi stories like Known Space and Star Control (sadly they stole the extremely shallow story of 3 rather than the deep one of 2) but there is nothing really original or "wow" about it. The setting is a mishmash of mostly B5 a sprinkling of DS9 and Star Wars thrown in. And the "reveal" was like something a 14 year old would write for an English creative writing assignment. In fact it was so bad it reminded me of this Repercussions of Evil (new window)

If you want to play through an actual well written, original, deep, and entertaining story look no further than Star Control 2 (new window) Get over the graphics and play it.

So yes I'll buy ME3 and play through because I'm a gamer and a nerd but I'm not holding my breath for it to be any better than 2 was. 2 had the dubious distinction of being the first Bioware game that I uninstalled immediately after beating rather than playing through again to try different things.

This has to be one of the worst conclusions I've seen about this game.

You didn't even like 2, you claim it was shallow and you didn't like the controls. Yet you are going to buy 3 because you are a Gamers and a nerd? That doesn't make any sense at all.

What does make sense is that you did enjoy it but are trying really hard to sound cool and different.

The mass effect series has been a breath of fresh air to the video game industry. Great story, great characters and great gameplay. If that isn't a winning combination I don't know what is.

ME2 had one major flaw. NOT ENOUGH WREX.

/Shepard...
//...Wrex

Pfah. The very best feature of the universe is that it DOESN'T have a purpose. How boring and awful would it be to learn, on one's 18th birthday, what one is to do with one's life...?

In this universe, I choose the purpose of my life. I choose what matters, what is worth fighting for, who i ought to be, and who is worth knowing. I choose, because the universe doesn't.

The author of TFA kinda sorta praises Mass Effect for raising this idea, but then gets sidetracked in context errors that make it impossible to resolve. For example, the question "What value do humans bring to the galaxy?" is unanswerable because it fails to first establish the context "Of value to whom?"

I'm going to pee in the punchbowl. Mass effect isn't that good.

Never played 1 but 2 is the "Avatar" of games. Big budget, shiny, polished, well crafted, and ultimately bland and forgettable. You could tell the makers wanted to do do Kotor 3 but didn't want to pay for a star wars license.

The full voice acting actually takes away from the experience whenever Shepard says something mundane like "Tell me about your culture" or "Which way is the loading zone?". With the exception of the speech Shepard gave at the beginning of the collector base and possibly the renegade option at Tali's trial nothing is particularly memorable.

The combat is just gears of bore with magic and extremely repetitive. You don't even have the tension of your companions possibly dying and causing a mission loss. Half way through I looked for a mod that let me skip combat because I felt like I was slogging though it to get to the next story part. The only unique combat mechanic was in the collector base when you had to stay in the psi shield and that was only used for one fight.

The interface has the consolization problem of one button being used for everything. I had many moments of "I want to sprint away, but oh no I just cook cover in my enemy's crotch!" The character customization seemed like it was an afterthought rather than an integral part of the game. None of it really mattered except for the "did you grind enough of the stupid mining minigame to avoid story deaths at the end?" part.

The story is a blend of elements from other good sci fi stories like Known Space and Star Control (sadly they stole the extremely shallow story of 3 rather than the deep one of 2) but there is nothing really original or "wow" about it. The setting is a mishmash of mostly B5 a sprinkling of DS9 and Star Wars thrown in. And the "reveal" was like something a 14 year old would write for an English creative writing assignment. In fact it was so bad it reminded me of this Repercussions of Evil (new window)

If you want to play through an actual well written, original, deep, and entertaining story look no further than Star Control 2 (new window) Get over the graphics and play it.

So yes I'll buy ME3 and play through because I'm a gamer and a nerd but I'm not holding my breath for it to be any better than 2 was. 2 had the dubious distinction of being the first Bioware game that I uninstalled immediately after beating rather than playing through again to try different things.

Gawdzila: The main points were not just diversity, but the fact that humans really aren't that important in the universe, which encourages us us to take a certain humble perspective on the other aliens around us.

Er, how is the second part of what you said not just diversity? Also, I'm not commenting on the game universe itself, but the characterization of it in the article. It seemed like no matter what the heading of the paragraph was, it was actually just about another facet of diversity. What never seemed to be explained was...why is this the reason that the ME universe is the best sci-fi universe ever? For example: "I don't need to explain why the option to have a non-white, non-male, non-straight person as the main character of a blockbuster action science fiction story is important." Oh, ok then.

ethics-gradient: I tried Mass Effect 2 and couldn't get very far into it beyond a locked door while having a shootout with robots, I was supposed to use a black guy i had with me who had the force or something. There was no clue whatsoever what I should do..
Repetition is boring and that game gave me no reason at all to continue playing.

You actually failed at the tutorial? Yet people wonder why games have been made so piss easy for modern gamers.

untaken_name: So...it's the best universe evar because diversity? O....k....
This isn't a commentary on the game, since I've never played any ME game, but the article reads like it was written by a Liberal Arts major who's still a year or two away from graduation. Hey, maybe there will be a left-handed lesbian midget albino in ME3 so it will have an EVEN BESTESTER universe.

You joke, but man, that shiat is totally coming. Also a combat system based on back-patting and advocacy.

I tried Mass Effect 2 and couldn't get very far into it beyond a locked door while having a shootout with robots, I was supposed to use a black guy i had with me who had the force or something. There was no clue whatsoever what I should do..
Repetition is boring and that game gave me no reason at all to continue playing.