[360] Mass Effect

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Can someone please remove sexninja from the thread for being painfully stupid and purposefully disseminating false information. You can't finish all of the side quests in 3 hours, you spend more than three hours just waiting for the textures to pop in {:rimshot:}.

Yes, there are some problems with the game, such as the texture pops, and the buggy music that will randomly stop sometimes when you pause the game, and the cookie-cutter non-main quest locations {there is one layout for the underground base, one for the above ground base, one for the mineshaft, and one for the derelict ship, the only differences within each is the layout of the crates that are inside}. Yes, there are only seven story locations

Spoiler:

Eden Prime
The Citadel
The planet you get Liara on
Noveria
Feros
Vermire
Ilos

But the gameplay is very fun. The voice acting, on average, is pretty good. I like the dialog trees, and I like the fact that you can handle any situation however you see fit. Go to rescue a diplomat held hostage? Talk the hostage taker down or kill everyone. You don't really seem to get a bonus for being 100% Paragon or 100% Renegade, so just handle each situation however you feel at the time, if you are so inclined {the only tangible things you get for going one way or the other is that once you reach 75% either way, you unlock ONE additional quest and an achievement}.

I love the visual style, when it is actually textured. I really like the overall universe that they have constructed. The music is amazingly good. I like all of the options I am given for weapon and armor modifications; I can optimize my equipment based on my style of play and character class. I liked the story and the various story locations.

read only if you completed the game:

Though I do wish that we could have done an all out assault on Saren inside of Sovereign, that would have been fun to explore.

I don't expect to use words to make someone who didn't like the game magically start liking it; my point is that for me, they did enough right that I really enjoyed the experience. I think my first playthrough was something like 32 or 35 hours, and I unlocked the Completionist achievement, so I did complete at least 75% of the game; to me that is a perfectly acceptable game length, not much shorter than Kotor I don't think. I just feel like the nitpicky flaws are just that: nitpicky; not game breaking. The closest to game breaking is the texture popping, which I wish that they would have required the hard drive, so they could have used some better caching to help remedy that problem.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Half of Bioware has been pulled off of their current projects and put on the DS version of the next Madden game.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'd like to add another to that list.

Rear Admiral Kohoku

Spoiler:

He sends you out to look for his missing marines. Of course you find that they were lured by a dummy signal to a thresher maw nest. Later, he voicemails you that he found who was behind the dummy signal, Cerberus, in hopes that you will bring them to justice. Of course you do, but alas, Cerberus got to Kohoku. You discover his body in the third of three Cerberus research facilities that you wipe out. Earth was sad. Poor Admiral Kohoku

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?