Mass Effect

[Wrestlevania]

Thanks for asking.

I've played the game a little more of late and the story is starting to gain pace. I've made my first planetfall and am just about to complete the scientist rescue mission.

I've mellowed somewhat in my initial disdain (upgrading from 'thumbs down' to 'thumbs meh'); it's a good story with a limp-wristed art style and deplorable interface. It's fair to say the combat, up to now, is completely forgettable; it's also very easy to get punked by the AI if you don't exit a cutscene into combat standing near some cover.

I cannot get my head around why BioWare felt it necessary to include 'magic' in the game, except for the fact they're incapable of deviating from the KotOR mold. And it's this niggling feeling that permeates just about every aspect of the game for me when I'm playing.

Yes, the production values are very high; yes, they've worked hard on the story and character development (so far); but I just can't shake the impression that this should have been a Star Wars game with The Force and everything else. Then it would have made a lot more sense and actually been worth the intolerable amount of hype stacked against it.

In summary: it's an engaging interactive novel with some annoying combat and an amateurish interface getting in the way.

[miffy495]

Fair enough. I didn't realize you were so early on in the game. After you rescue Liara, make sure to head for Feros. I have only played about an hour of Noveria, but so far it's much less interesting. Feros starts off like a typical village-under-seige-save-everybody sort of mission, and admittedly is still very KotOR-esqe (As you say, the whole game is. But I don't see this as any kind of problem myself) but there's a nice little twist and some cool mad scientist things going on too. Very pulp sci-fi, but that's what the game wanted to be and it does it well. I was meh myself until I played Feros.

Noveria so far has played similarly to the Manaan (sp?) segment from KotOR 1, with a lot of running around talking and minimal shooting. Would be a bit boring if the story weren't decent and the voice acting fantastic. As is, it's enjoyable, but I'm hoping for more planets like Feros as I go along through the story.

[Wrestlevania]

Funnily enough, once I'd rescued Liara I went straight to Feros. (The conversational interplay and story progression with Liara - and the general alien schism expressed by certain other crew members at this point in the story - is a current high-point for me; intriguing and maturely written throughout.)

Those "distress call" interruptions though, mid-flight as you pass through a neighboring system onto your intended destination, are annoying -- especially when it's something like, "can you recover this downed satellite, even though your characters aren't leveled up anywhere near enough to do so?" What an infuriating waste of time.

Granted, I'm not asking for hand-holding in this regard. But every single time I go and explore one of these particular types of side quest I find the planet in question in the local system, land, drive around for a while until I find the crash site, only to jump out and then be told - none too blunty - that my team has insufficient tech to recover something?

The interface doesn't even hint at how far off you are, for fuck's sake! Just a curt "fuck you very much" (yet again) and you all bundle back into the moon buggy and get on with the proper game. It's appalling, lazy filler and it makes my piss boil.

[eljay]

There's only 3 levels of hacking difficulty (essentially easy, medium and hard), visible on the skill levelling trees. So pump all your points into the appropriate trees for your tech characters as early as possible and you will never have this problem again.

It'll be better for you to get stuff later anyway as items found in crates etc all scale according to what level you are when you open them.

[miffy495]

Granted, I get a lot of "Your Electronics skill is not high enough to preform this action" messages too, but that seems secondary to what you can do on the planets for me. Open up your map and there will usually be at least 3 points of interest. One will probably be one of those, another is usually some kind of base with either character interactions or a firefight, and the third is kind of a toss up. I keep on finding new mineral deposits to survey too. I just finished Noveria (It does get much better than I'd thought. Still not as good as Feros though.) and have gotten quite a backlog of sidequests, so I'm going to try to purge the list before moving on to Virmire. I'm hunting around the Argos Rho cluster right now, then it'll be on to the Hades Gamma cluster. And I'm still quite enjoying myself. Though the sidequests are all pretty same-y, there are some standouts.

The ambassador who asks you to save her sister, who then turns out to be leading a group of bandits and must be killed, is springing to mind right now.

...I just realized that I'm having absolutely no trouble remembering the names of all the various planets and clusters that Bioware is using for their game. Without knowing it, I seem to have been absorbing their mythology and getting pretty engrossed in the universe. Kudos to Bioware for that one.

EDIT: Sorry, eljay. Started writing before your reply got posted. Now I'm not sure if Wrestle was referring to the hacking or the electronics thing. I thought they were different skills.

I will say one thing that's definitely a knock against Mass Effect. I'm almost 13 hours in now and I've only just figured out the menu interface. I think I've got it down now, but man did it take a while.

[Wrestlevania]

Open up your map [snip]

...there's a friggin' map?!

[eljay]

Sorry I should have been more clear, hacking and electronics function identically just for different objects. So there are three levels of hacking difficulty and likewise three levels of electronics difficulty, one is for opening boxes the other is for.... decrypting satellites and stuff.

I think it's a bit lame that it's just a three tiered system for each, makes your level of skill irrelevant between tiers.

[Nachimir]

...there's a friggin' map?!

Yes, it shows you (some) sites of interest where you land, and allows you to set markers. There are also some hidden things, like minerals to prospect, that will only show up on the HUD scanner, but just as you describe, they're

appalling, lazy filler

[miffy495]

...there's a friggin' map?!

Oh god, thanks. I needed a good laugh. That's about the perfect response to anything Mass Effect interface-related.

Yes, to get to your map, pause the game and press right on the stick. It's opposite of the journal you use to keep track of your quests. You can set markers with A which makes navigation a hell of a lot easier.

[n0wak]

Yes, to get to your map, pause the game and press right on the stick. It's opposite of the journal you use to keep track of your quests. You can set markers with A which makes navigation a hell of a lot easier.

Although that marker tends to stick in place sometimes so when you go to a different section, or planet, it's still there, pointing at nothing.

[miffy495]

Actually, sometimes I've opened my map and the pointer is just sitting there pointing at nothing, even when I had no pointer on my map before. It just seems to appear at random. On the plus side, it always works when you want it to. It just works some other times as well.

[miffy495]

Ok, just beat Virmire and holy shit this game is good. I didn't expect to have to make the decision that I did, and how much impact it had on me when I made it. No spoilers for anybody, I'm just saying. Damn. I will be replaying this game again as a male renegade (currently female paragon) if only to make the other choice when this point in the game comes up to see what happens. Yay for Bioware keeping the tradition of making the only RPGs I ever really get into going!

EDIT: 4 hours later

OK, so same sitting as I played Virmire, I decided to just power through and see if I could watch whatever ending I earned. Just finished watching the credits roll by. Holy hell that was good. To hell with all the little criticisms, watching the end of that game brought the whole thing together in an amazing way. Definitely one of those "wholistic gaming experience" things you hear about, where the awesome of the final product overcomes all the myriad problems with design. So bloody impressed.

I had my charm maxed out, and as such actually convinced Saren to put a bullet in his brain! I couldn't believe I skipped fully half of the final confrontation simply by talking the guy into sacrificing himself. The first of many "holy shit, what?" moments at the end game came when I watched him put the pistol to his chin. And if you're reading this and haven't beaten the game, shame on you! I used spoiler tags for a reason!

Oh yeah, and it's a very cool nod to Sci-Fi fans having Marina Sirtis voice Matriarch Benezia. No way I could have placed it before seeing the credits, but yeah, that was definitely her.