Mass Effect Thumbs up or down

[QUOTE="acidBURN1942"]One Thumb Up, Two Thumbs Down (im an alien)

Mass Effect is not GOTY. In fact its not even 9.0 (AAA) material.

1. Paragon is fun, Renegade is just a jerk thats no fun to play as. Oh wait everyone will have the same dialogue reactions whether your paragon or renegade oh YAY!!!! At leeast your character will say something different, 1 out of 10 times. WTF is that!

2. Story is short, story is told in three plot worlds. Its just thrown at you on those worlds, other than that there is no main story. They should have spread it out, made it longer, and made it a much longer RPG stroy and mystery.

3. Side quests are lame, gonna go drive across a barren planet that looks the same on every planet, then drive up to the same building i drive up to on every planet, to kill the same kind of enemies i kill on every planet. rinse and repeat

4. Inventory management, omni gel, money, is all a joke

5. did i mention that the dialogue options are a joke and cover up piss poor writing?

6. Graphics SUX!!!! Yup, make a different model than the defualt model and youll see polygon displacements, look anywhere other than teh faces and you'll see low polygon models. Texture pop in, clipping issues, audio issues.

The thigns I love about Mass Effect is the combat. Its tactical, intense, and skill advacement and leveling is fun and well balanced. very RPG **** yet very real time. Best RPG combat system ever imo.

Bioware should have released it in a year, and made it 40 hours longer (i beat it in 15 hours on hardest difficulty 100% side quests) with no glitches and more varied ROLE playing elements like tehy advertised.

Mass Effect is nothing compared to KOTOR. Kotor has personality everywhere you went, the choices you made affected characters greatly, even no name NPCs. The quests were original and entertaining acroos beautiufl landscapes and colonies (not barren planets like Mass Effect with generic buildings everywhere)Brutal_Elitegs

Dont waste your time with this guy, hes a joke.

I also dont think someone can judge this game if they only spent 10-15 hours on it.

I spent 37 hours on it and still missed a few side quests.

Mass effect is a game you have to take your time with and enjoy ALL IT HAS TO OFFER.

Again, I enjoyed Mass Effect. What kept it afloat in my mindwas the story, the dialogue, the sound effects (the satisfying echo of a shotgun blast), the score (epic)and the graphics (Ilos and Virmire were gorgeous). But I'm gonna go on a bit of a rant, since it DOES have flaws, and people seem to be laughing them off for some reason.

I thinktheir 'galaxy' design was too ambitious. General concensus I got from the previews was there would be a ton of exploration involved, but instead what I receive are: solar systems consisting of 5 planets, 1-2 of then being surveyable (for experience points and credits), and then 1 of them you're able to land on. There isn't ONE system with more than one landable planet in it. That breaks down to roughly 30 'explorable' planets. On each of these landable planets, you can drive from one side to the other in about 3 minutes. They all have the same rocky, barren, lifeless template, with varying color schemes. No rivers, no flora, no fauna, no variables in the environment. Just mountainous terrain. That really bothered me, and totally killed the illusion ofa huge, living, breathinggalaxy. There are 3-5 surveyable resources/dead bodies/artifacts which in turn, provide more xp and credit. Then there is usually 1 building that you can enter: these come in 3 different varieties. Combat ensues within. Opening containers also ensues. And opening allthose containers becomes quite a chore (kind oflike readingthis rant). Exploration in general was NOT fun, and I wish it had been excluded altogether. And why are there no distinctly 'alien' planets, with a particular race/culture living on it, with at LEAST a small town?I mean, KOTOR has ME beat in this case.Instead, what we get is the Citadel, thatserves as your central hub, and the only 'civilized' place in outerspace that you're givena chance to explore.

On top of those 30 or so traversable planets, there are a few space stations: these aren't particularly well craftedand are also identical to eachother (and take about 5 minutes to explore, kill everything, pickup all items). I found that with all the money I accumulated, I NEVER had to buy ANYTHING. Keep in mind, I played through the first time on the hardest difficulty setting. Even so, money was largely redundant. And there were never any items worth buying, either: I would fortuitously discover items that were MUCH better statistically than the purchasable items. More on the items: there is a set limit of 150 items. I was always receiving the "you now have ___ items, you are close to your 150 item limit" message. Every so often, I would have to go through the 'horrible to navigate' menu to turn all of my useless items into omni-gel; this all-purpose gel (hence the name) lets you open encriptedand lockedcontainers, if and when you screw up a 'timed-button pressing sequence' that feels out of place and is also a bit of a chore...Again, I could save those items for trade-in value with merchants, but since there was nothing worth buying, that would be a waste of time. And whats with the COMPLETE lack of unique items in this game? Did no one else notice this? No super-special prothean assault rifle that you discover deepwithin aProthean pyramid? No special key that youfind on one planetthat unlocks some great series of catacombson another, leading to another unique item? Whats with that? And I know theresome 50different side quests, most of which I played, but none of themcome close tothe quality standard thatthe main quest sets.

Vehicle controls/combat left a lot to be desired. Basically, your roverhas a wimpy machine gun,and a cannon that has splash damage and was generally the onlygun worth using. Combat revolves around you shooting your cannon at turrets and the larger geth (you can run over the weaker enemies easily), while jumping, yes, JUMPING, to avoid taking fire. This is the most ridiculous fighting mechanic I've ever seen in a game of this nature. Its not that it doesn't control well (although on that note, itDOESN'T control very well), its just a really poorly developed concept. I mean, disbelief of realism on my part, as it is a videogame I'm playing, but if the year is 2500 whatever, its safe to assume some kind of heat/moving object seeking technology would be available, so that you can't just literally LEAP over missiles?Its silly, andmore importantly, not as fun ascombat on foot.Some sort ofhovertank would've fixed this, with strafing to dodge... then there could've beensomefaster paced,vehicle vs vehicle combat, and it wouldve beenmore enjoyable than ridingthe unflippable, clunky-handlingrover.

I couldreally put the beats onthe combat system, but I'll keep it short: needs more customization, and better AI.And less explodable fuel cells conveniently strewn about every location enemiesare found.

Lastly, the Paragon/Renegade choice is not Good/Evil. Its Good/Jerk. Disappointing...

Again, I enjoyed Mass Effect. What kept it afloat in my mind was the story, the dialogue, the sound effects (the satisfying echo of a shotgun blast), the score (epic)and the graphics (Ilos and Virmire were gorgeous). But I'm gonna go on a bit of a rant, since it DOES have flaws, and people seem to be laughing them off for some reason.

I think their 'galaxy' design was too ambitious. General concensus I got from the previews was there would be a ton of exploration involved, but instead what I receive are: solar systems consisting of 5 planets, 1-2 of then being surveyable (for experience points and credits), and then 1 of them you're able to land on. There isn't ONE system with more than one landable planet in it. That breaks down to roughly 30 'explorable' planets. On each of these landable planets, you can drive from one side to the other in about 3 minutes. They all have the same rocky, barren, lifeless template, with varying color schemes. No rivers, no flora, no fauna, no variables in the environment. Just mountainous terrain. That really bothered me, and totally killed the illusion of a huge, living, breathing galaxy. There are 3-5 surveyable resources/dead bodies/artifacts which in turn, provide more xp and credit. Then there is usually 1 building that you can enter: these come in 3 different varieties. Combat ensues within. Opening containers also ensues. And opening all those containers becomes quite a chore (kind oflike readingthis rant). Exploration in general was NOT fun, and I wish it had been excluded altogether. And why are there no distinctly 'alien' planets, with a particular race/culture living on it, with at LEAST a small town? I mean, KOTOR has ME beat in this case. Instead, what we get is the Citadel, that serves as your central hub, and the only 'civilized' place in outerspace that you're given a chance to explore.

On top of those 30 or so traversable planets, there are a few space stations: these aren't particularly well crafted and are also identical to eachother (and take about 5 minutes to explore, kill everything, pickup all items). I found that with all the money I accumulated, I NEVER had to buy ANYTHING. Keep in mind, I played through the first time on the hardest difficulty setting. Even so, money was largely redundant. And there were never any items worth buying, either: I would fortuitously discover items that were MUCH better statistically than the purchasable items. More on the items: there is a set limit of 150 items. I was always receiving the "you now have ___ items, you are close to your 150 item limit" message. Every so often, I would have to go through the 'horrible to navigate' menu to turn all of my useless items into omni-gel; this all-purpose gel (hence the name) lets you open encripted and locked containers, if and when you screw up a 'timed-button pressing sequence' that feels out of place and is also a bit of a chore...Again, I could save those items for trade-in value with merchants, but since there was nothing worth buying, that would be a waste of time. And whats with the COMPLETE lack of unique items in this game? Did no one else notice this? No super-special prothean assault rifle that you discover deep within aProthean pyramid? No special key that youfind on one planet that unlocks some great series of catacombson another, leading to another unique item? Whats with that? And I know theresome 50 different side quests, most of which I played, but none of them come close to the quality standard that the main quest sets.

Vehicle controls/combat left a lot to be desired. Basically, your rover has a wimpy machine gun,and a cannon that has splash damage and was generally the only gun worth using. Combat revolves around you shooting your cannon at turrets and the larger geth (you can run over the weaker enemies easily), while jumping, yes, JUMPING, to avoid taking fire. This is the most ridiculous fighting mechanic I've ever seen in a game of this nature. Its not that it doesn't control well (although on that note, it DOESN'T control very well), its just a really poorly developed concept. I mean, disbelief of realism on my part, as it is a videogame I'm playing, but if the year is 2500 whatever, its safe to assume some kind of heat/moving object seeking technology would be available, so that you can't just literally LEAP over missiles? Its silly, and more importantly, not as fun ascombat on foot. Some sort of hover tank would've fixed this, with strafing to dodge... then there could've been some faster paced, vehicle vs vehicle combat, and it wouldve been more enjoyable than ridingthe unflippable, clunky-handlingrover.

I could really put the beats on the combat system, but I'll keep it short: needs more customization, and better AI. And less explodable fuel cells conveniently strewn about every location enemies are found.

Lastly, the Paragon/Renegade choice is not Good/Evil. Its Good/Jerk. Disappointing... and yet, I still recommend buying this game.

For me, I give it a thumbs up because I love sci-fi.

For anybody else, I recommend renting it or playing it before buying.

Maybe you should look at my posts concerning lair. I do not think its a 10 game, I rated it a 10 because there are people out there that rate games a 1 lowering the average rating, I highly defend lair to its grave as a great game. I put a 10 to try and average it out. This isnt about Lair. Im not angry either. Im just a passionate gamer who likes to discuss more than just a score, more than just an experience.

I like to discuss the intricies of the gameplay and the experience as a whole. I consider this industry as an art, and I will always discuss intelligently about it. These forums are a waste of non-intelligence, the pc forums are usually better but come on people, lets grow up now, the industry needs it.

You think Mass Effect is a fantastic game, I think its merely good. This is a forum to discuss video games, am I the only one wanting to discuss?
acidBURN1942

I agree thanks for the reply sometimes people use these forums for repressed anger issues. You have to weed through these replies sometimes to find could conversation.