miffy495

Juv3nal, you could hotbar biotic powers in the first game, just like now. That never changed. I don't want to give the impression that I didn't like the Mako stuff either, I actually really did. On 360. The PC completely gunked up the controls. Still, it's too bad they gave up on it rather than improving it. Dragon Age in space is the last thing I want out of this game. All the same, I do wish the action were toned down a little bit more. It's making me think I should have played the game on Casual instead of Normal, as I don't care about the action nearly as much as the story and the story wouldn't change either way. Murdoc, the side missions are actually quite plentiful from what I've seen so far. A few little things from running into people on Omega, but actually most of them come from scanning, detecting anomalies, and following up on them. I've had encounters with paranoid VIs, checked out ruined spaceships, salvaged ditched cargo, and generally just found cool shit. Nobody told me to go to the places though. It's much more like Fallout, where you need to go looking for cool shit, cool shit doesn't just come to you. In some ways, I think I find it that much more rewarding when I find something awesome. For example, it was in exploring a crashed ship that I discovered a datapad that let me know the existence of an orbital station in another system. Landing on that station gave me a separate side mission exclusive to that place. The world is smaller and more focused, but at the same time gives a greater reward for exploring what there is to explore. Nothing wrong with that. The way to enjoy the side missions is to stop expecting people to give them to you and start actually being a space explorer.

Ahahaha! Well played, sir.

Crazy talk! I'm about to go recruit Subject Zero, so soon I'll be able to comment on that stuff. So far I've been exhaustively going through every system I encounter scrubbing the galaxy for content. Goddamn this game is good. I now have Zaeed, Archangel, and Mordin, and have finished Zaeed's loyalty quest. I was a bit worried, as I played it strict Paragon and his methods are... not, but it seemed to work out ok. I would be going for the Krogan party member next, but I'm actually a bit worried about having a Krogan and a Salarian on the same ship, given the history between their races. It's a bit sad that I've bought into the mythology of Mass Effect this hard, but god do they do it well. I do have a couple of gripes to temper the raving fanboyism. First off, why the hell did they need to change the interface on PC? I keep finding myself holding shift to run and spacebar to open my tactics menu, when for no reason they do the opposite in this game. Then I'll hit E to use something and accidentally order one of my allies into an odd position because the game changed it so that spacebar is your all-purpose interact. Bullshit. Also, adding ammo to the game seems like an entirely dumb idea. The first game handled it so well, with you always having to worry about heat dissipation but never being stuck for ammo. My go-to weapon in this game is a super powerful pistol, but it can only hold 24 rounds at a time. During any firefight of consequence, I'm out of ammo and switching to my secondary weapons before the fight is a third over. Very frustrating. Third, and perhaps most oddly, I miss the Mako. I know I was just complaining about it over in the other thread, but the concept was still a good one. Just because it controlled like crap last time and the height maps were a bit boring doesn't mean the idea wasn't worth saving. I really liked, for example, the long approach to the Salarian camp on Virmire in ME1, which this game just doesn't seem like it wants to even try to recreate. The DLC mission where you go to only rubbed it in, as it looks like the Mako is in pretty good shape, just ignored. Boo.

I think the eye glow may just be a trick of the lighting, like the freak-eyes in Uncharted 2. I'm getting red glows every now and then and playing as a pure paragon, but it's always when there's some kind of terminal nearby or something. I noticed those little face scars are kind of glowy though. I don't know what's up with that, but considering how paragon my character is, the red glow seems odd. Are you sure that's dependent on your actions and not just cybernetic parts from the reconstruction or something? After how well they handled morality the first time around, I'd be really disappointed if they went all Fable on this one... Haven't recruited anyone yet, but have done the missions on the Citadel to get reinstated. It's pretty amazing how much of that was entirely dependent on my ME1 playthrough. Almost everything I encountered could have been drastically different. Fantastic stuff.

Hey, I finished my replay of ME1 about 40 minutes before GTA was scheduled to start. What I'm getting at here is: Man up.

My copy is 20% downloaded, but I'm at school so if I continued downloading it while using my computer in class I'd kill the battery (in a 3 hour lecture tonight). It hurts a bit that I won't get to play it when I get home, but will only get to resume my download.

I was just impressed that your logos were so classy. When compared to my "EAT IT!!!" bumper stickers, you certainly came off as the more mature. And yeah, that final race was incredible. Me following infuriatingly closely behind you for 8 laps, finally overtaking you on the ninth, and then you spinning me out when I was on the homestretch to beat me by half a second is probably the most intense gaming experience I've had in a long time. Well done, sir.

I just finished my replay of Mass Effect in anticipation of ME2. Took me about 14 hours, according to the timer thing in-game. Goddamn that's a fantastic game. I'd forgotten how much I loved it. Now to start downloading my pre-order of ME2 off Steam.

Thank you, good sir! I'll be checking that out shortly!

Anybody have tips for 360 controller mappings? For some reason, even now that I can get my 360 pad to work with all my other PC games, Psychonauts still doesn't want to recognize that I have a second analog stick. If I want to play it on PC, I end up using my Logitech Dual Action pad from around 2002, which it likes just fine for dual analog goodness.

Out of curiosity, what are people playing it on? If somebody using a 360 is having issues with interface, I'd assume that I, being one of the chosen PC users, would not have the same problems. Just wondering how seriously to take interface complaints. I'm sure they're an issue for those who are playing on console, but if you're playing an RPG of this calibre on console, you're doing it wrong. Yeah, so I played the first ME on 360. In my defense, it didn't come out on PC until about 4 months after I'd already finished it. I'm greatly preferring the PC playthrough I'm enjoying now. (Just got to Ilos for the final non-citadel showdown! w00t!)

What do you mean Shepard isn't voiced? They had the old voice actor in all the trailers. It can't only be for cutscenes or similar crap, can it?

Thanks for that link, Kuddles, I may look into that. I was hoping to finish my playthrough before the sequel went live, but alas I'm just touching down on Virmire at the moment. I still intend to finish before I start playing though. I think I'm just going to carry my character through from where I'm at on the PC this time, as it'll have been played this past month and not two years ago, but if I suddenly decide that male Shepard's voice is too irritating (which it may well be) I'll get a save with more-or-less the same outcome and start over.

Basically, darker colours don't show up so well on the minimap, giving whatever player is assigned brown an unintended advantage in sniper matches and the like. This prompted outbursts of "Goddamnit! Who's brown in this match?" which then turned to people being accused of racism for having issues with the HUD design.

I quite liked Lego Batman, and heard Pure was a pretty decent racing game. I'm sure you'll have some fun with it. I'm most certainly up for an F in the A race, although I'm thinking with everybody suddenly copping my style I'm going to need to upgrade my stable...

In fairness, if Bogey suddenly came out of nowhere and started talking to you, how would YOU approach him?

I was actually really wondering about this, having pre-purchased ME2 on PC but played the first one on 360. I wanted to have my character carry over, but didn't know if it was going to work. In the end, I started replaying ME1 on PC to get the universe in the state that I wanted before playing the new one. I'm playing basically the same way, as I can never live with myself if I play the game evil-style, but with a different gender character to see what difference it makes to the game. The accident at the start of ME2 won't be so traumatic that my gender is in question, will it? If so, I should be able to get back to exactly where I was the first go 'round...

Yeah, it was the first thing I tried. No 360 pad support.

So in preparation for ME2 hitting soon, I'm replaying the original. Thing is, I played Mass Effect on 360 the first time around and want to play the sequel on PC. This means that I'm playing through Mass Effect on PC this time around so I'll have a save that will transfer over to the new game next week. Just beat Noveria, which was the first planet I went to after the Citadel. I played for 4 and a half hours without stopping tonight. It was pretty sweet. One complaint though: My god, I thought the Mako controls were shit on 360, but the PC version is completely fucked. So awful. Everything else is great though, and the inventory and squad management systems are great. So yeah, great and pulling me through again. Definitely warrants its place as one of my favorite games of 2007, and still holds up. Had to say something about the Mako controls though. Goddamn.

Oh man, Crane Simulator 2009 looks so much like a joke photoshop that it's ridiculous. I would buy that just to have it on my shelf. Fucking awesome!

Just wondering if anything will be done with goty.cx this year. The end of 2009 is rapidly approaching and though the cast proper may be over, that doesn't mean people stop having opinions. As the gamse of the year feature was text-based last year, I hold out hope that there will be a new feature from the Thumbs and us, the readers. Any plans, Chris/Jake/Nick? Failing that (and the reason I put this thread in the "Gaming" subforum): THUMBS! Use this as an opportunity to talk up whatever gaming experience made you most happy this year. There have been quite a few good ones, so this is where to put them.

It can be kind of intimidating, but you end up with a far better machine. I think I may be getting out of the habit though. I still upgrade my old desktop, but that thing is getting to be more and more of a relic. My laptop on the other hand was pre-built but has become my primary gaming machine. Despite the resolution topping out at 1366x768 due to the limited monitor, it's more than capable of handling all the latest fancy looking games and making them look and play great. Ain't nothing wrong with pre-built if you get a good 'un.

Yeah, I play a few games with my wired controller. Just hooks straight into the USB slot. If you only have wireless controllers, you need to buy a dongle so your PC can pick up the signal, but you should still be able to get it working.

Get L4D2, but know that it's not that good unless you're in a group. Once you have it, join in on Thumb games and love it. Otherwise, that list seems pretty great. I'd go with Arkham first, but then I've still not played Dragon Age, so people may consider my opinion invalid.

Well the biggest one was the really creepy glee he took in her ass in an interview. Going on about how perfect it had to be for a while followed by the "I'm really into that stuff" just made me feel uncomfortable with the character design. The "best ass in gaming" stuff earlier in the thread and elsewhere on the internet didn't help with my icky feelings about it either, and I guess that combination just pushed me a bit too far. The gaming public can be kinda gross sometimes, but a lot of the talk around this game has gone far enough that I can't feel good about myself being a part of it. Now I can't really see the character without feeling a bit unpleasant.