I have just completed Mass Effect this morning and I have to say that the game was awesome. I have disliked almost all of the other Bioware games for various reasons, but Mass Effect refines the formula into something I truely enjoyed.I can confirm that textures pop in a lot and your 360 DVD-Drive is going to be dancing for the duration of the game, but these issues are more the fault of Microsoft for using slow as hell media in a system designed for high definition content. I hope future versions on the 360 have a hard drive cache option or something. The pop-in doesn't really hurt the game at all, until the last few cutscenes where the textures just NEVER CAME. I think they should have caught that one. Really though, the game is awesome.
So awesome sometimes that I just keep playing, trying to get to what happens next. For the crime of becoming engrossed in the game, though, Bioware punishes you harshly. You see, even if you tell the game to AUTOSAVE, it chooses to checkpoint only when it damn well feels like it and not at every key part of a mission. This means that if you are on a roll and totally into the game, forgetting to exit to the damn menu to save your progess, you can sometimes have to play entire sections of the game over again. In my case, the game took about 16 hours to complete, but I played for probably closer to 18-19 hours to get to the end. To provide an example, there is a part a the very end where you trigger a cutscene and when the scene ends you are presented with a timed sequence, which I promptly failed on my first try. Now there was no warning I would be entering a cutscene, during which I could not save, nor that after I would be going into a timed sequence in which I could not save. In fact, I had not saved in quite a while. When I died there I had to go back probably 5-10 minutes in the game, watch the cutscene again and then complete the tim
ed sequence. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. The scene at the completion of the timed event was pretty awesome, but I was just sitting there thinking, thank god I don't have to do that again. They have created a damn fine game, with an fun story, but I would have been saved much cursing and anger if they just PUT IN SOME REAL CHECKPOINTS. They don't need to change the save system at all, being able to save at any time is great for the game, but fricking hell, make sure every objective/cutscene updates the autosave, at least when the user selects to have the game AUTOMATICALLY SAVE.
Also, the items you pick up are so often repeats and nothing special, there should be a "simple loot" mode where you can just get upgraded guns between missions and you don't have to manage 10 copies of the same mostly useless shield mods. For me at least, the loot system they have was just an annoying distraction from the important part of the game.
Finally, if you play this game, note that it does not have a tutorial. What is there basically says to use the cover system, which is mostly useless as you can just stand behind walls and sidestep, which makes things faster anyway. At least on normal. Read a guide online or something to learn how the who Biotics system and stats work.
Really, I complain, but it was great.
PS: I totally failed to sleep with anyone in the game, even the alien girl who most people have to fight off with a stick. This is must be indicitive of something.
PPS: I demand Tali is a romance option in ME2, logic be DAMNED! Tali and Wrex are the best.
So awesome sometimes that I just keep playing, trying to get to what happens next. For the crime of becoming engrossed in the game, though, Bioware punishes you harshly. You see, even if you tell the game to AUTOSAVE, it chooses to checkpoint only when it damn well feels like it and not at every key part of a mission. This means that if you are on a roll and totally into the game, forgetting to exit to the damn menu to save your progess, you can sometimes have to play entire sections of the game over again. In my case, the game took about 16 hours to complete, but I played for probably closer to 18-19 hours to get to the end. To provide an example, there is a part a the very end where you trigger a cutscene and when the scene ends you are presented with a timed sequence, which I promptly failed on my first try. Now there was no warning I would be entering a cutscene, during which I could not save, nor that after I would be going into a timed sequence in which I could not save. In fact, I had not saved in quite a while. When I died there I had to go back probably 5-10 minutes in the game, watch the cutscene again and then complete the tim
ed sequence. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. The scene at the completion of the timed event was pretty awesome, but I was just sitting there thinking, thank god I don't have to do that again. They have created a damn fine game, with an fun story, but I would have been saved much cursing and anger if they just PUT IN SOME REAL CHECKPOINTS. They don't need to change the save system at all, being able to save at any time is great for the game, but fricking hell, make sure every objective/cutscene updates the autosave, at least when the user selects to have the game AUTOMATICALLY SAVE.Also, the items you pick up are so often repeats and nothing special, there should be a "simple loot" mode where you can just get upgraded guns between missions and you don't have to manage 10 copies of the same mostly useless shield mods. For me at least, the loot system they have was just an annoying distraction from the important part of the game.
Finally, if you play this game, note that it does not have a tutorial. What is there basically says to use the cover system, which is mostly useless as you can just stand behind walls and sidestep, which makes things faster anyway. At least on normal. Read a guide online or something to learn how the who Biotics system and stats work.
Really, I complain, but it was great.
PS: I totally failed to sleep with anyone in the game, even the alien girl who most people have to fight off with a stick. This is must be indicitive of something.
PPS: I demand Tali is a romance option in ME2, logic be DAMNED! Tali and Wrex are the best.
1 comment:
Awesome, I found someone else who thinks Tali should be a romance option.
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