Canada gets in on the Mass Effect LCE fun [update] - Xbox 360 Fanboy

Canada actually gets LE, world explodes, etc.

You win this round Canada... THIS round. Is the limited edition worth a shit? Gonna have to read up on it admittedly, but yeah, trend of LE not really being worth a shit yadda yadda.

We tie this round, actually. Initially we weren't gonna get it at all, and then all the sudden it's like "hey you actually get it now". The only round we ever won was in the Forza 2 CE thing, since we got it, and Europe got it, but yankees missed out.

Why now? I'm not sure. Bioware bugged the publisher? Fan outcry? Misprint or mistake made originally? Fuck if I know.

Also LEs are rarely worth it if you don't get a hard on for extraneous bullshit. The extras here are a small "handbook" (for lack of a better word) that gives you a bit of detail on various species and other universe info. Think Oblivion's Guide to Tamriel included with that CE. There's a small artbook which is probably just like the one for Call of Duty and Gears of War, being tiny and although nice, too small and short to be of any redeeming value, and a bonus DVD with making of, trailer shit, some themes/gamerpics, and assorted bullshit of that nature.

Also comes in a much nicer box.

SOLD! -- I MEAN, WAIT!

In a lot of these games with fleshed out games, I really don't see the necessity at times for "guidebooks", especially when half the time the information on the world is staring you right in the fucking face.

I don't mean, like a guide or walkthrough or something, but a little bit of extra reading material about the history of a race, or it's place in the universe's lore. Stuff that's not often explained implicitly in the game proper. That's what I expect this handbook to be like, although I obviously can't confirm.

The guide book itself actually comes in two flavours. An LE, and a regular one. What the LE's got in it besides a hardcover is not something I know, though. Probably posters/interviews/maybe yet another art book ala the Gears of War guide or some other bonus like the Zelda TP hardcover books.

Also don't knock that. I bought FF12's LE because the tin was sexy. That's really it. I'm kinda weird though, so...

That's a healthy interest, young man. Don't be ashamed. Don't tell anyone either, but don't be ashamed!

Oh, and I had meant world reference materials. Sometimes if the world is massive I can understand having information on the world on hand, especially if you're just a fan and have a desire for it as you already pointed out. But sometimes its just superfluous stuff that really doesn't grant much insight beyond what you already know. I remember seeing the Mech Assault bonus material from a friend and just thinking how lame that "Developer" interview was. It was just a vague masturbation about how they like Battletech and it influenced Mech Assault.

So I bought it. Amazing stuff.

Only gripe would be the overall "grainy" effect of the whole thing. Do you need like HDMI of this game or something so that it looks a bit more "clearly"?

Cutscenes I don't horribly mind, really.

You can turn off the film grain in the graphics options. it's only an effect.

Some people say it helps the frame rate a bit if you disable the filters too. I don't really notice a huge difference with them on or off, though.

The only time I've had framerate problems really was when blowing up canisters/gasbags on Eden Prime, which caused the Husk robot things to explode too. Too much exploding at the same time.

My only complaint is that loading wasn't handled very gracefully in this game. Although it's minor, it's somewhat annoying to be running and freeze for the game to load the next area or something. I haven't tested if it is better when you turn off the music, though.

Been playing it for 6 hours and loving it, though I suck at the combat cause I fail at aiming and shooting...

I play a female Shepherd, and realised recently that she's voiced by Jennifer Hale. I love her work in this game and like to request an audio rip of her dialouge if possible.

Played roughly an hour and a half last night before going back to CoD4.

They're not really zombies. They're Husks, which are cybernetic creatures created by the Geth, in the shell of human bodies.

The moan. They shamble towards you. And they're reanimated humans.

Zombies.

I'm playing it right now, and I'm not sure Bioware RPG "Now with more: Like a Movie!" was worth my 60 bucks. I like the combat, though I'm admittedly not a huge fan of Bioware's stuff.

Their gameplay animations have always got on my nerves. And this is no acception. You watch beautiful cutscenes, and then when you go to snap to cover which is a pretty big part of the game he just slides up against it. They're nowhere near bad, just unbalanced.

The performance of the game however DOES bother me. Stuttering and textures popping in everywhere. Especially when starting a cinematic.

The game is great, but more variety in side quests and a bit more time under the polisher and this game could have been something that trancended time. Oh well, I'mm off to save the galaxy.

This game is very much more of the same from Bioware. I'm sure (as I've seen already), this isn't a bad thing to most players. I was expecting something of a different play structure as far as dialogue and quests go, but it's using the same Bioware template and I'm wondering when the KotoR esque PLOT TWIST is going to kick in. I will say that (barring the graphical glitches themselves), this is a beautiful looking game. Turn off the Film Filter and it kind of hurts the texture of the character model skin, making them look more like dolls. More importantly, this game demands an HDTV to be played on.

It's a lot more intricate though, with a lot of animation in the dialogue... like intimidating people by actually grabbing them or holding guns to their head. Very impressive. I'll admit it's just a refined KOTOR system, but uh.... hello? Most games do this same thing by just refining a engine they already created.

I'm not going to be overly critical on them for it. And at least they TRIED to make a new interesting battle system -- even if some of it is unbalanced and poorly done. It's still reasonably fun and isn't truly the focus of the game anyway.

If I didn't have issue with Bioware's RPGs, I wouldn't point out how it is more of the same with negative connotations behind it. And before I even go into this, how people feel about video games and "objectivity" are like oil and water. They don't mix, yet we try so hard. Watch me now.

The writing and, in turn, dialogue and story still suffer from bland exposition. It has come a long way in Mass Effect, but there are still old flaws in the wood work. And the fact things are more animated in this respect are just cosmetic enhancements that are layed over the wrinkled and tired old face of Bioware's writing.

Just because I can see Shepard pull a gun on someone during a threat, doesn't mean I wasn't applying imagination to the other games where I've threatened people in a dialogue tree. It isn't that I feel it shouldn't be there, it's that I feel it masks things that haven't changed that probably should have. Again, the writing and character development structure. We're still playing Good and Evil with "Neutral" jerking off in the background of blandness. I hate alignment in Bioware RPGs.

I hate their quests and I hate the fact that every time I do want to be "evil" or "not goody two shoes", the writing makes the player character come off as a little bitch or just an ass. Still, it isn't by any means a horrible game. I'm just not inclined to say it's that great either. I hate the fact that I can still say two things that contradict themselves and move along with people as if nothing happened.

See, that's the thing. I love the new combat system... and I have to spend a great chunk of time devoted to shitty quests that are similar to previous games like Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Republic. Not every quest is enjoyable, sometimes you're just running around fetching shit. Making the tedious "more animated" isn't exactly what I'd call a triumph of video game design.

I will preface this post by letting you all know that I am a gigantic fan of Knights of the Old Republic. Absolutely love it. So it should be no surprise what I am going to say next.

Mass Effect. Game of the year.

Now that I have that out of the way, I really enjoyed the combat system. I just completed a playthrough using the Soldier class, so I can say that on normal difficulty, shotgun is mad overpowered. I basically used an armor that gave a huge boost to Shield, and used modifications on my armor that further boosted shield, so once I figured that part out, I had no worries with running straight into combat and laying down the law with the shotty {or a well placed elbow when they got too close}. It also helped a great deal that I had a party of Soldier {pure combat}, a pure tech character, and a pure biotics character. I would sometimes try to run into the middle of things only to have three or four enemies AND random crates just go flying into the air because my biotics person would be using skills. Walk up towards an enemy filled platform and watch them all just sort of start floating around. It's hard for them to hurt you when they are flying through the air.

Now I'm going to have to do a playthrough with a different character class; maybe see how overpowered a biotic can be in the wrong hands.

I picked this game up along with my 360 so I'm having a blast so far. I even made a decent looking custom character which I'll start playing on my second run through.

Minor complaint: The game doesn't explain the controls clearly enough, and I had to actually look in the manual in order to find out how to do something or other.

Still an awesome game though.

Anyone else running into glitches where NPCs aren't showing up? I would like to speak to Major Kyle, but apparently the Biotics and myself are just imagining him.

((Edit: Nevermind, he exists, I just ended up having to choose violence over negotiation to get him to appear in the bunker.))

At first I LOVED this game. However, 30something hours in I'm starting to get annoyed. The texture loading is ridiculous and I'm encountering huge stuttering in almost every battle now.

Am I just not paying attention, or does the music not play too often unless you're in battle?

As for the alignment system... ugh. It's the same as KOTOR, just with Paragon and Renegade insteadd of Light Side and Dark Side. The writing could also use some work...

I am enjoying the game, despite any complaints I may have. I just don't think that it deserves the 9/10's it's been getting everywhere.

So, russ, care to give a more detailed explanation as to why this is game of the year for you?

I'm a little bit disappointed by this game. Graphical glitches & hiccups aside, it just pretty bland. Don't get me wrong, I'm 10 hours in, and it's fun. But the mixture of RPG and Shooter isn't executed well. The Shooter side is poor and the RPG side to seems a little too simplistic.

I think it would work a little better if you only had 2 side characters in the whole game instead of five. It's dumb now, because I was end up take the same to characters because 1 has full decryption and the other has full electronics, and you need those skills to open have the boxes and stuff in the game. The rest of the characters just fall to the waste side, and none of them seem to much of an impact in combat anyway.

And the uncharted worlds are all the same boring worlds that you just drive around on looking for resources, and all the buildings on them seem to have very simplistic and often times identical layouts.

The quests are fun to do, but they are were just as fun on previous Bioware games.

I think the game is fun, but mediocre.

With KOTOR I believe some of the problems you mention stemmed from having a silent protagonist. It didn't bother me, particularly, but not hearing a voice or the inflection with it can really hurt a character for the audience.

I only played an hour or two of Mass Effect at a friend's house, but I was struck by how much better I felt playing a strong lead.

The dialogue is still divided, yes, but I think it is closer to what you might expect someone in real life to say. And I think that is in part because they're using an original universe, instead of falling back on "light" and "dark." You can act as the mediator, or the "renegade," or the neutral guy who just wants to get to the point, but all of them clearly have motivations that go beyond the black and white of past games.

I'm going to assume when you say more of the same, you mean dialogue trees. It's disingenuous to say so, though. The exposition sticks to dialogue trees because that's how they can best design a game with predictable results. What you're ultimately asking for is a virtual world, which, until technology catches up with us, is kind of silly to expect from any developer. Much less Bioware. Making them the standard for failure in story interaction is kind of shortsighted.