Only played about 4-5 hours of single player but so far it's my favorite Mass Effect yet.

Best combat so far, plus it's a huge improvement over the totally stripped out equipment in ME2 without the ridiculous and retarded copy/paste inventory of ME1.

3/7/2012 1:20:22 AM

Re: The user reviews thing. I find them very helpful and a lot more truthful than many game review sites. It's extremely easy to read a user review and determine whether it's a blind fanboy or someone whose world ends because of some minor detail. Those reviews can easily be ignored.

After reading some of the reviews on metacritic the low average score appears to be mostly the result of backlash to having DLC on day 1 (didn't Dragon's Age: Origins do that too? I remember hitting an area early on where some guy with a wagon wanted me to give BioWare $10 for him to tell me his story). In that light I say who cares? Maybe some push from customers will get publishers/developers out of the DLC nickle/dime mindset. Probably not until it transitions from giving a game low ratings to just not buying a game.

Re: The DLC thing. Nowadays I find myself just waiting for all the DLC crap to come out, waiting some more, and picking up a version of the game (maybe a year later) that has all the DLC already bundled in and cheaper than the launch price to boot. Hate the DLC direction games have gone and I've got no problem waiting for some games.


[Edited on March 7, 2012 at 9:01 AM. Reason : -]

3/7/2012 8:48:00 AM

I'm probably not going to be picking this up until sometime this weekend but does anyone have any thoughts on how the whole "War Assets" thing works? I don't have an Xbox Live Gold account but it looks like if I want the best ending I pretty much have to do the multiplayer. I guess I could get a Gold account for like a month.

3/7/2012 9:25:42 AM

It's been reported that you don't have to do multiplayer to get the best endings, but I think you need to do most all of the side quests/exploration in order to achieve them

3/7/2012 9:38:08 AM

There was a link on the bottom of the previous page that touched on it.

It is possible to get the best ending, but will be very difficult without multiplayer.

3/7/2012 9:40:58 AM

Haha. What is that? Must have missed that detail. Now games are (all but) requiring people to go online and wade through all the annoying 13 year olds and in some cases pay for an online subscription just to get the best ending of a game.

Also, it's not bad that it's there but why does a game like ME even have a multiplayer?

3/7/2012 10:02:16 AM

ME3's multiplayer is awesome. What other reason do they need?

3/7/2012 12:35:04 PM

Quote :

"Re: The DLC thing. Nowadays I find myself just waiting for all the DLC crap to come out, waiting some more, and picking up a version of the game (maybe a year later) that has all the DLC already bundled in and cheaper than the launch price to boot. Hate the DLC direction games have gone and I've got no problem waiting for some games."

this is definitely the way to go with something like mass effect or bf3 or dragon age. BF3 had those extra maps, dao had that golem that was integrated directly into the main quest. all super lame.

however, i dont mind shelling out money for expansion type DLC like you'd get in fallout or what they've got upcoming in skyrim. Stuff thats ultimately separate from the primary game that you can do after the main story or as a break from the main story.

3/7/2012 1:15:16 PM

but then you've got companies like cd projekt who release a game with distrubtor based day0 dlc and then a week later they give it to everyone for free.

3/7/2012 1:16:44 PM

People need to stop dying in this damn game

3/8/2012 1:25:35 AM

SPOILER ALERT PLEASE

3/8/2012 9:49:56 AM

Quote :

"It is possible to get the best ending, but will be very difficult without multiplayer."

the ME games aren't exactly games you breeze through in 5-10 hours of gametime and complete...doesn't seem like a big deal to have to do a bunch of sidequests and exploring in order to get the best ending

3/8/2012 10:00:30 AM

Just plug in one of those 48 hours cards if you're too shylock to have gold. Those things are everywhere.

3/8/2012 10:09:28 AM

yeah, the one thing I hated about ME2 was that there wasn't enough side quests. hehe

3/8/2012 10:19:28 AM

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/somethingawful-the-plot-of-me3-changed-dramatically-big-big-spoilers.250066288/

meh

3/9/2012 4:45:18 PM

Just played through the intro section and I'm pleased so far. A few things:

- Ashley is way hotter in this one than in the first two.
- I'm very pleased that my character level and all powers can be imported from ME2.
- Am I missing something or is there no way to holster your weapons? I checked the in game manual and select (which was holster in ME2) is now quick save.

3/10/2012 6:02:30 PM

lol reading on some tech forums and apparently, they removed the ability to holster your weapons because of the limitations of consoles since the memory needed for such actions/animations would eat up 2-4MB of RAM.

I guess Bioware didn't care too much about putting it back in for PC since we aren't limited to a pathetic 256MB of RAM (actually less since OS eats up more).

3/10/2012 7:20:49 PM

Wow. That's ridiculous. I guess ME3 must really push the Xbox to it's limits. I guess I'd rather have a higher frame rate than a holster animation though.

3/10/2012 7:24:57 PM

actually, that's the PS3 limitation... XBox has doubled that... so blame Sony. lol

3/10/2012 7:43:33 PM

Shocking. Bioware cashed in on this one with abundant pre-order options and DLC.

3/11/2012 12:45:33 AM

Quote :

"Bioware EA cashed in on this one with abundant pre-order options and DLC."

FTFY

3/11/2012 1:09:54 AM

spoiler. i won't be mean.

enjoy your game.

[Edited on March 11, 2012 at 1:46 AM. Reason : .]

3/11/2012 1:45:24 AM

You can't holster your weapon? Fuck that, totally not picking this up now.

3/11/2012 1:45:28 AM

Might be spoiler-esque.....but you can do some FUCKED UP shit as a renegade this go around.

3/11/2012 4:12:10 AM

there's a big ass lesbian orgy at the end...

3/11/2012 5:12:33 AM

I always laugh when I get near the little virtual reality dome in the normandy lounge that's softly playing porn music.

[Edited on March 11, 2012 at 9:37 PM. Reason : ]

3/11/2012 9:37:19 PM

Beat my first playthrough last night. All and all a very epic ending to the series, and now looking forward to playing through a few more times to see how things can change.

I'm kind of a completionist and ran around scanning and tracking down everything I could, so I never touched the MP module and still had my little resource bar in the war room all the way green. So I'm assuming I was able to get the best endings available. There was only one conversation option towards the end where the Renegade/Paragon choice was greyed out to me, and I wonder if that has something more to do with Reputation or with alignment completion...the game was never very specific about what Reputation is anway.

3/13/2012 8:13:41 AM

Ugh. Now that I know some of the DLC has an effect on war contributions and such, I'm thinking about going back to ME2 and getting the stuff which I never picked up. Can you do Stolen Memory, Overlord, Shadow Broker, and Arrival with a completed (post "suicide" mission) savegame file? All of my squadmates are maxed out on all stats, and I really don't want to have to start the whole game all over again.

3/13/2012 11:00:32 AM

http://www.masseffectsaves.com/

3/13/2012 11:03:18 AM

^^ Yes, ME3 lets you import any save made after the suicide mission.

3/13/2012 11:09:46 AM

Um... yeah, but this is on Xbox 360...

3/13/2012 12:01:01 PM

Well, there's your problem right there.

3/13/2012 12:05:21 PM

Yeah, although one character from the DLC talked as though s/he went on the suicide mission when I did the DLC after the mission.

3/13/2012 12:07:22 PM

blah, fuck consoles... ruining these games by not having enough ram to put my god damn pistol away...

There has to be some parody comics about this...

3/13/2012 12:08:54 PM

[Edited on March 13, 2012 at 12:55 PM. Reason : ]

3/13/2012 12:54:27 PM

I don't get the rage about not being able to put your gun away during missions. If I were pissed at consoles, it would be because of the often poor or blurry textures (have you looked at people's hands?).

3/13/2012 4:55:03 PM

This board has made me not a fan of PC gamers.

3/13/2012 4:57:51 PM

After reading all this shit about the ending, I'm pretty glad I bought Civ V on sale instead of this.

3/13/2012 5:54:54 PM

Quote :

" Can you do Stolen Memory, Overlord, Shadow Broker, and Arrival with a completed (post "suicide" mission) savegame file?"

With ME2? I believe so, yes. I think i downloaded DLC and played some of those on my completed game save

3/13/2012 7:48:34 PM

Quote :

"This board has made me not a fan of PC gamers."

I know, right? It's like nobody understands the idea of being a casual gamer anymore. I can respect someone that enjoys spending thousands of dollars and reading tons of tech blogs getting boners over getting 6 more FPS if you watercool your quad GPUs (really, no sarcasm. hobbies are fun) but some of these people need to understand that they are in the minority and most people don't want to put up with all that shit in order to just play a fucking game for the like 2 hours of the day they can find to relax.

3/13/2012 8:55:27 PM

first of all, its not just "6" frames.


Second, PC GPU's pump out way more power and are considered "bleeding edge", specially compared to console technology. If the developers actually code the PC games right (if its a port), it can look 10x better. That's what they did with Batman and why it took extra time for the PC version to come out. Also compare the graphics in BF3 or Dirt3 on the PC vs. Consoles. Plus we get the benefit of running AA and have higher levels of image quality; shit I'm running 16-32x AA in most games with 96x CSAA SLI that augments that, PLUS 4-16x transparency AA and still hit 60-120+fps. Even then with that much power, it doesn't stress all the cards.

I mean realistically, an average person in their right mind isn't going to spend $1000+ for a device/gaming console that just plays games. Remember when PS3 first came out for $500? They tried to sell it as a multimedia device that plays blu-rays, surf's the net and does email... I mainly bought mine for the Blu-ray player more than anything, plus the upres of PS2 games to 1080p. (before I got fed up of waiting for GT5 and sold it)

At least with a powerful gaming computer, you can do other non gaming things like content creation or production apps; or just fucking multi-task and do stuff. Shit, the biggest trend right now is the shift towards GPGPU operations using CUDA and OpenCL which I'm a big fan of since it allows me to tap into the massive power of the gpu's for content creation software like CGI with 3ds max, photoshop and video editing.


third, its not just a hobby, its a lifestyle... PC gamers are a different market segment and yeah, we are a minority specially since that are millions more gamers that are today than there were a decade ago thanks to the popularization of mainstream gaming; Phones, PC and consoles. The coined "casual gamers" is only a recent thing.


fourth, most PC gamers I know will devote entire days to play a game and such. But again, I know console gamers who would do the same. It's all relative to your lifestyle and who you know that dictates your perception of "gamers".


The sad fact is that with so many casual gamers on the market now, it has dumbed down the level of intelligence to play most modern games now. Everything has switched over to cut scenes and just pressing a button. Rarely find a decent game that actually challenges the mind. Even then, single player games are becoming a bit obsolete as everyone wants MP and it sucks cause I do enjoy a good single player game from time to time.

3/13/2012 9:32:46 PM

tl;dr

not even to mention this is the wrong thread to get into a gaming platform war.

I didn't have a huge problem with the ending (for my first playthrough) for the most part I think all the outrage is more about actually having this series end rather than how it ends. Lots of displaced emotions.

3/14/2012 8:02:49 AM

Quote :

"not even to mention this is the wrong thread to get into a gaming platform war."

True, but I didn't start it or have misleading thoughts about PC gaming. I realize this thread is about Mass Effect 3....which I totally support. Hear me out, maybe I can offer some insight.

I am in outside sales, which is currently salary+commission, but will move into straight commission starting at the beginning of July 2012. I have been in this position since July 2009. I have competition from several direct manufacturing sales reps, large distributors, and local distributors. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Direct Advantages: Immediate knowledge of new technology, no middle man mark up, one shipping bill (paid by manufacturer or buyer of goods), access to larger range of non-commodity items, control inventory, have access to many distributors that can effectively sell their goods which increases market share, and set prices of commodity they manufacture.

Direct disadvantages: Typically have 1-3 sales reps per region (i.e. southeast, mid-atlantic, northeast, etc.) limiting the number of accounts they can successfully manage/cold-call, lack physical customer service or physical technical service available to or affordable for smaller users or altogether, are sometimes not trustworthy because they will go in behind their distributors that sell their commodity to one account in large quantities (i.e. they missed a big account, and have found out about it through a distributor selling their particular product) which leads to the distributor not selling their product anymore, have too many distributors selling the product ultimately driving the set price down through deviations, possibly rely on distributors to actually sell the product, and competition from other direct sources.

Large distributor advantages: have access to other commodities that go hand in hand with other manufacturers (poor example- grocery stores sell milk as well as cereal), get direct pricing, many locations regionally or nationally easing the shipping burden of buyers with multiple locations, personal service either customer or technical, many sales reps that are able to cover a broader territory, access to multiple manufacturers of the same commodity allowing to keep prices in check, service programs that smaller companies can't offer and direct providers can't match in price or value, and experts of many many commodities as opposed to one or a few.

Large distributor disadvantages: smaller local distributors creating price wars (think Michael Scott Paper Co vs Dunder-Mifflin), direct mfg's going in behind and stealing business, limited access to all of the mfg's (you won't find Harris Teeter name brands in Food Lion and visa versa), can't truly set prices because it's based on both supply and demand, territory management, and tough growth prospects in slower economies (this is true for direct as well really)

Local distributor advantages: Typically a good ol' boy setting where the seller and the buyer know each other for years (this does happen at all levels, but mostly at the local level), local folks are right down the street and can be used in emergencies, if the local guy buys at high enough volumes then there is no shipping charge to the end user, and access to both direct mfg's and large distributors.

Local distributor disadvantages: easily beaten in price, array of commodities, array of technology, lack of trained staff, low cash flow, etc etc etc.

This is what I have noticed in my six months, I am sure there are plenty more that need mentioning. The way I am setting myself apart as a sales person is this: I go after the big accounts right now while I am new. The big accounts, if I land them, will take care of me while I am new and building a customer base. The money made off of those allows me to focus free time on smaller accounts that get me higher margins. I build up big accounts, I would like to have 5-10 of these, then get 20-30 medium accounts. If I lose 1 or 2 big accounts, the 20-30 medium accounts keep me afloat while I go after new big accounts. I don't really waste time on small accounts simply because they basically pay for breakfast or something really small.

I will say this, if you can't get a big account in the first 6-8 months (assuming you have cash flow that you can ride this long) you could be in a world of trouble. If you can get one, it will really make going after the others a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. It's simply just very exhausting wasting any time on anything other than big accounts in the very beginning. You work just as hard on the medium sized accounts and see 1/3 to 1/36 of the money in my situation.

3/14/2012 10:29:33 AM

mass effect 3 really does look like a turd though. bad animation, ultra low res textures, no AA, just bad bad bad all around. the environments are so small and they still couldnt make them look good. everything is bland and shitty.

3/14/2012 1:58:41 PM

Thanks for the info. I'll probably just skip this one and replay ME2 if I ever feel the need to get an ME fix.

3/14/2012 2:03:37 PM

Mass Effect uses the new Unreal Engine right? How does it stack up to Arkham City on the PC? I guess if you put no effort into it even the Unreal Engine wouldn't look all that special.

3/14/2012 2:13:36 PM

Not going to read through the last couple of pages because I want to avoid spoilers, but I am really enjoying the game, probably more than the last two so far. There seems to be more difficult important choices that you have to make in this one.

One minor thing that seems to be designed just to irritate the hell out of me is that security field you have to stop at when walking to and from the tech labs/war room.

A more major thing is that absence of any sort of more detailed breakdown of mission objectives. You have no idea how far you have progressed on a mission, and there is no inventory of items you have found. It's impossible to keep up with it all.

3/14/2012 2:16:08 PM

^That last one is a big annoyance for me too. Sometimes I swear I've gotten something someone was looking for, but couldn't find a way to confirm it.

3/14/2012 2:32:52 PM

Quote :

"mass effect 3 really does look like a turd though. bad animation, ultra low res textures, no AA, just bad bad bad all around. the environments are so small and they still couldnt make them look good. everything is bland and shitty. "

It's pretty much better than ME2 in every way.

So if you liked ME2 I don't see how you could dislike ME3.

3/14/2012 2:43:49 PM

Quote :

"This board has made me not a fan of PC gamers."

I completely agree... but tread lightly with this topic of discussion, lest ye awake the tww dragons of PC gaming (case in point: a few posts up, and also the BF3 thread)

3/14/2012 3:27:18 PM