MASS EFFECT 3

[vcool]

MASS EFFECT 3








I got the face loading bug.......................................

[Armageddon]

MARSSSIUHFS EEFFECSTUGHSGHS TREEHEEHEAAEA




Too bad it's not on Steam.

[Phott]

Good thing the bay has it.

[Dives]

I thought the demo was pretty pitiful. Same bad controls, terrible dialog, little to no changes in the (imo) boring combat, bad animations, and terribly low-res textures. And the from what I've read about the ending, I'm not even interested in the plot.

[Phott]

I'm mainly playing it to finish the story, I don't really care if it's good or not. But I have to admit the other two games really captured me.

[Hellraz0r]

The demo was great I reckon.

Controls are good, easier than mass effect 1. You can always change them later on Dives.. dialog was good as always, conversations take a turn however you want as always, love it. Don't know what you're about dives, the combat seems pretty good, no change like you said apart from a super-melee attack but hey I still enjoy it as it's not all about combat in this game.

As for the animations.. I don't see any problems really, apart from the typical slight change in animation in conversations that would be hard to maintain anyway I'd say, I noticed it in mass effect 2 aswell but it's not a deal-breaker.

The textures on the other hand I agree could have been slightly higher resolution, but they do look slightly better than ME2 and ME2 looked greater than ME1. I'm not too fussed it's still better looking that the new sources cs:go update will be probably.

As for the plot, how about instead of "reading up on the ending" already dives, you actually play the game and get into it yourself. I couldn't care less about what someone else says about the plot/ending, I will decide myself if I like it or not. You sound like you're being too critical dives, apparently nothing can please you with this game, you should move along now.

[Dives]

My problem with the controls is that its space bar to do everything. Too often I want to to change cover but end up vaulting over something. The cover system isn't particularly robust either. There are areas you should be able to take cover behind but the game won't let you. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a better example of a cover system. On the PC version it suffers from consolitis. No graphics settings and the camera is way too close to the character.

I've never liked the combat in the Mass Effect series. Its usually a fairly linear path and you just move from cover to cover popping up and shooting. It gets repetitive. I was hoping they'd change it up a bit. I want to like it.

This is all that needs to be said about the animations:

The dialog in the opening scene is fairly cring-worthy. "Each of us must be prepared to die, or they've already won". Its delivered with a pretentious sense of importance. Something more subtle would have had a lot more impact.

The little boy getting his ship blown up was very forced. They gave no reason to care for this kid any more than I'd care for the millions of other people are are supposed to be being killed in the same scene.
Of course I'm critical. Its a AAA $60 PC game (where the standard is $50) so it better offer improvements over the first two game. I saw none in the demo.

[Major Banter]

And the from what I've read about the ending, I'm not even interested in the plot.

Whut.

As to your points Dives, each is pretty true. However, I will repeat this god damn statement until it is wedged into gamer's head on the planet.

Graphics are not a valid criticism, justification, negative or positive feature unless they affect gameplay.

[Phott]

Graphics are not a valid criticism, justification, negative or positive feature unless they affect gameplay

When does this NOT affect gameplay? It's the first impression, it's the lasting impression, it's the last impression. This is all you SEE through your entire god damn run. How it does not fall into all the different aspects of a game is beyond me. I get that turning down a game simply because graphics is shit is stupid and extreme, but removing it/ignoring it as an important aspect is just as stupid and extreme.

[Hellraz0r]

Graphics can affect gameplay I agree, I too am one to enjoy a game with better graphics than the other. HOWEVER, I am not hating on games with bad graphics. Phott you must remember those games back in the days like spyhunter, defender, or spyro, crash bandicoot, speedfreaks. These games weren't good graphics but were still BLOODY good games and had great gameplay. I spent hours and hours on them.

Back on topic though, I will most certainly be getting ME3. Perhaps when its a tad cheaper though. I just love exploring and doing missions when I see fit, it's like the game doesn't force me to do shit which gets to me sometimes, I like to go at my own pace and mass effect allows me to do that. Really enjoy these games, originally I would have told you these aren't my type at all - but they've definitely grown on me I can tell you that.

[Armageddon]

The game looks like a tacked on piece of crap that Bioware need to push out for money. I'd really like to see huge sales decline because it won't be releasing on Steam.

This is hilarious.

I have never been a fan of Mass Effect, the first game nearly had me asleep. But the second was kind of cool, it had a really interesting visual style, and the story was pretty good. Now we have Mass Effect 3, a grey game, with no visual style that I have seen, it just looks bad, I watched the ending and it just doesn't make me want to play the game, there is no point if they give you a terrible ending to this trilogy of games. Sigh, I guess people just love their sci-fi.

[Major Banter]

Graphics are not a valid criticism, justification, negative or positive feature unless they affect gameplay

This is all you SEE through your entire god damn run [...] I get that turning down a game simply because graphics is shit is stupid and extreme, but removing it/ignoring it as an important aspect is just as stupid and extreme.

Actually, you're proving me right rather than stupid and extreme. In your case, the animation breaks the immersion. Immersion is key to gameplay. Therefore, to you, the animation is affecting gameplay. In the case of (for example) Battlefield 3, I personally found the graphics to be of no interest whatsoever. The sound was, hugely so, but graphics?

Anyway, for me, I don't care about the animation at all. Therefore, it has no impact on my gameplay.

It's subjective. Say it's your opinion and why you think that. People shouldn't just throw out words like 'shit' or 'flawed' or 'broken' based on things that are trivial to some people, that's all. Hope I don't sound like a dick, not intentional.

[Phott]

BF3 graphics does affect gameplay because why? Lighting, textures, colours... All of these things are taken in and analyzed, it affects your reactions, what you see and how you respond to this information. It's not really subjective, it's a fact that graphics affect gameplay, but maybe not in the brute technical sense you're referring to. Rather, graphics have more of a psychological impact.

[nub]

Although I'm probably close, I haven't managed to beat the game yet so I'll refrain from reading the thread in case of spoilers.

Mass Effect 3 definitely suffers from a slight lack of polish in the visual department. I remember ME1, with all the animation snapping and random misplaced characters in cutscenes. Mass Effect 2 had nearly none of that in any cutscenes. It really does have an impact on the narrative side of things. You feel less immersed when peoples' faces are jerking around all the time or if a wall is talking to you. Hell, sometimes a character will be turned too far away and will look at another character at a neck-breaking angle and it's just plain awkward. I imagine Bioware will patch something like this but I can't be sure. There's just so much of. The opening cut scenes to the game are pretty much flawless. I loved the implementation of seamless cutscene-to-gameplay transitions, but they stop doing it in a lot of missions.

Some animations tend to be pretty awkward as well, like when Shepard holsters a weapon he's carrying. It just looks funky. That's really just a minor nitpick though. It doesn't have much of an impact.

The thing this game suffers from mostly (in the visual department) is low resolution textures. I was hoping they would have improved it like in ME2, but it seems like a step backwards. I was wondering why the game ran so much smoother than the last two, and it's because of the lack of any high resolution textures in the worlds. Still, It has a few moments where it looks nice (the Noveria mission looks cool). I think the Citadel suffers the most from low resolution textures. The Presidium could look SO much nicer.


Anyway, the gameplay itself is very polished. The UI is definitely ME2 style, but refined. The gunplay is much more satisfying compared to ME2. I cried tears of joy when I saw that weapon mods were back, and now you can upgrade every weapon you find to tier 5. You essentially have most of the benefits the inventory system in ME1 provided, but in a different form and without the negatives. Classes weren't totally overhauled but they have a little better distinction. A few classes were given brand new powers. They changed shockwave in to some really...boring ass, slow-moving projectile thing rather than being this branching wave of destruction. Was not happy about that one bit.

Every mission is unique. No more arduous planet scanning for resources (it was essential in ME2 for ship upgrades). No more cookie-cutter areas (ME2 didn't do this either). Every mission feels distinct now. There are a few where you just do a scan in a solar system and pick something up, but that's only for really simple missions.


A few things that I think could have used a little more attention:

Finding someone on the Citadel is like being in an Easter egg hunt. You have a map with "points of interest" you can open up, and names of important NPCs will be listed under points of interest they're located at, but when it comes down to physically locating the NPC, you have to sort through the dozens of unimportant NPCs until you finally come across the one you need. A little, unobtrusive minimap with radar indicators for important NPCs would have gone a very long way. It's not a big deal but it would just make things a lot quicker.

Only being able to level up your squad mates at the start of a new mission. I really don't understand why they limit you like this. I liked ME1's style where you could spend skill points at any given time. I get it with weapon selection. You need to be at a work bench to swap out mods. That makes total sense. But it's annoying when I start a new mission then the level up screen pops up and when I finish allotting a point to a certain power, I hit back twice on accident and it skips the level up screen and starts the mission. Then I have to wait until the next mission before I can finish allotting points.

My problem with the controls is that its space bar to do everything.

THIS. The introduction of dodge-rolling is what fucked the spacebar up. They needed to make a new key for the Dodge or Use function (preferably dodge). It makes sense to integrate multiple functions as one key, but only if the functions don't conflict with each other. Dodge CONSTANTLY conflicts with Use. It's fucking annoying. There MIGHT be a way to fix this by modifying the coalesed.bin file, but I'm not sure.


Overall, ME3 is awesome. It's amazing how much they put in to this game and I'm hoping they didn't botch the story like with DA2. So far it's great.

[cashed]

All in all awesome end to the trilogy. I beat it in 18hours and was really good (doing another 100% play-through slower now, i did a critical mission on accident and decided to plow through after) they have improved a lot on pacing and combat since me1. encounters felt good and not overly drawn out.