Mass Effect

[Deejay]

Mass Effect gets a 9.4 from IGN

[Exoduso]

And it seems like it's not a 10 because of technical issues too... I hope they patch it up.

[MisterBob]

And it seems like it's not a 10 because of technical issues too... I hope they patch it up.

A lot of those are loading times and cant be patched. Penny Arcade put it best, the fact that none of the game can be installed to the HD means something of this nature is guaranteed to suffer from massive load times.

[Exoduso]

The video review was talking about more than just loading times... stuff like buttons not working, AI malfunctioning, party members not doing what they're told, textures loading slowly, and a crapload of frame rate drops.

[SupHammer]

Load times between areas are rather short and to be expected with large maps tho.

The most noticeable glitch being the fact that textures load about 3 seconds after a cutscene starts.

The worst glitch by far is when you highlight an elevator or any other object, you click on it... and nothing. It's happened to me twice, and it;s a f-ing pain to reload or to walk to another "zone" just to get by.

And there's times where some enemies will just stand there and allow you to kill them. That's not always a bad thing tho.

[Yangsing]

Does it play like KOTOR?

[Exoduso]

By looking at that video review alone, it plays like Gears of War on crack... or so it seems.

Is the pausing really annoying though? cus it seems like you would need to hit the ability from that submenu, which would stop the game entirely every time... (then again, MGS does this too and it works quite well..)

[SupHammer]

Never played Kotor. So can't help there.

Game play is a mix between GoW and Halo. Gears in that it's TPS and the fact that you can run like GoW. The shooting and enemies remind me alot of Halo.

The pausing to select a power isnt so bad. You can set up the RB button as a hot button for your most used power. The powers early in the game aren't too worth it imo, hopefully they get better/more useful.

Oh yeah ally AI is completely worthless, the only good part about it is you can tell them to stay away and not die, then you can go kill the enemies yourself.

[Exoduso]

So have you distinguished the best class yet?

[SupHammer]

I dunno. I played about 4 hours as a soldier. Then I started over as an infiltrator, just because it said they had better healing. Honestly though... they both play similarly. I haven't tried a biotic user yet, but those powers seem worthless too.

I think the biggest difference is when you get the upgraded jobs later in the game.

[Bweigelt]

From what I've been reading its not that any job is a lot better than the others its just they play completely different. For isntance Soldier plays like its a shooter, you don't use many powers and blast through everything. Biotic on the other hand plays more like a straight up rpg, you mostly use your powers and coordinate with your sqaudmates to handle battles. Engineer is the one I'm not sure on, he seems to have a bunch of abilities that take out mech enemies which seem to be the majority and can hack stuff. I haven't actually played the game yet of course, but I've been super hyped on it for a long time and this is what I've read.

[Hellboy]

i heard it wasnt worth it to play the engineer and adept classes, so i figure i'd go for the soldier/adept hybrid. anyone know if the hybrid classes are any good? other thing thats been bugging me is if you get any special bonuses if you go full blown renegade or completely by the book nice guy..

so if anyone has the answers to those questions, it'd be nice to hear 8)

[Bweigelt]

i heard it wasnt worth it to play the engineer and adept classes, so i figure i'd go for the soldier/adept hybrid. anyone know if the hybrid classes are any good? other thing thats been bugging me is if you get any special bonuses if you go full blown renegade or completely by the book nice guy..

so if anyone has the answers to those questions, it'd be nice to hear 8)

I don't think there's really anything for going full blown one way or another. I think the decisions you make have an immediate impact rather than a long term effect. It's like at one certain points you make a renegade decision and once you do you open new side stories and close other ones just by making that decision, even if you played the rest of the game making paragon decisions.

[SupHammer]

Mass Effect made me late for work this morning. I can't remember the last game that did that for me. Well, not counting the first year of FFxi

[Exoduso]

I'm about 2 hours in, just got the spectre status, but the story is pretty boring so far and there's barely been any combat outside of the Eden Prime area... does it get any more interesting/more combat-like later, or is this the way the entire game is played?

[Elesirdur]

Bumping this topic as I just rented this yesterday and am having a really hard time putting it down. I'm really amazed at the game, I love it so far.

Any tips on side missions that one might pass by normally?

[Hellboy]

Bumping this topic as I just rented this yesterday and am having a really hard time putting it down. I'm really amazed at the game, I love it so far.

Any tips on side missions that one might pass by normally?

agreed, this is probably one of my favorite games of all time and i havent even beaten it yet. im up to level 50 but i think im approaching the end of game.. i wonder how it'll be possible to max out to 60 with just a few more missions left..

also the revelation about the reapers was really badass. it might be a little cliche, but still pure awesomeness

[Kiarax]

im up to level 50 but i think im approaching the end of game.. i wonder how it'll be possible to max out to 60 with just a few more missions left..

Your level caps at 50 first playthrough. Second playthrough raises the cap to 60.

[Hellboy]

cool, i see now

beat it just now, greatest fucking ending ever... really, not even an exaggeration

[Rotsu]

I'm thinking of getting this game. How long does it take to beat by average player?
Does the "technical issues" that i keep hearing about that bad ? such as slow downs and stuff like that.