Mass Effect - "the" Xbox360 title to get

[takyris]

Thanks again, Takyris. My main concern has to do with the FPS portion of the game. I've always been puzzled at how popular FPS's are on a console that doesn't have a mouse accessory--thumbpads are lousy for work that requires both speed and accuracy IMO.

I guess it's what you're raised on. I know people who have no trouble with things like Halo (or even Rainbow Six) on the Xbox. I am, frankly, pretty bad either way, so when I wasted a metric ton of ammo on a splicer in BioShock on the 360, I didn't think, "Man, I wish I was using a mouse," as much as I thought, "Ah, Patrick, you still can't aim."

Now, I think you've already addressed this somewhat in a previous post, but how much time do you think players will spend just wasting ammo hitting nothing? IBioshock had a lot of great gameplay features, but the FPS element soured me on it. I could not understand why they'd have highly-mobile enemies bobbing and weaving to evade shots that aren't easy to make in the first place. I know in ME that there are bad guys that scales walls and hop around a lot. Is there any auto-aiming that assists a player? Or is the need for accuracy minimized by things like explosives, homing weapons, spraying with automatic fire, and using the various tech and biotic powers?

This is where I'm on shaky ground, because that stuff was being iterated on well after I left. My understanding (and take this is rumor, not gospel) is that there are a few important things that would address your issue. First, you can pause at will in order to adjust your aim (not just pausing to go to the bathroom, but pausing in a tactical mode that lets you adjust your aim and tell your followers what powers to fire off)... so while guys will be running around all crazy-style, you can still pause to get a lock on 'em.

Second, I believe that there is some form of aim-assist. When I was there, it was weird, in that it only kicked in when you were locked on someone and only lasted until you moved the trigger yourself (like cruise control only lasting until you hit the brake). This ended up giving people who wanted targeting assistance good help, but only if they were patient enough to lock on and then let go of the thumbstick. It took a little getting used to, and I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work that way now (although once it was explained to me, it worked just fine, and the issue would likely have been solvable with a decent tutorial GUI). Whatever there is now, it's at least that or better -- so if you lock onto somebody, it's easy to keep shooting at them.

Third, there's no ammo for you to worry about. (There are other balance features that keep you from wandering through the entire level with the trigger held down, but you'll never run out of ammo.) I know that's not the core of your issue, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I'm much more interested in exploration and problem-solving than killing stuff, so I hope the action part is nice and streamlined.

I won't lie: there's a whole bunch of combat. But if you want to put points into Persuade, you'll be able to avoid some nasty fights (often with better results than going in with guns blazin' would have gotten you).

 

[horacethegrey]

Hey folks, the review is up on Gametrailers.

9.5? I am so getting this game.

 

[Thanee]

That looks really good, yep.

Hope they won't take too long to port it to the PC (as far as I see, it's only a question of when) and hopefully they will sort out the few small technical deficiencies then, too.

Bye
Thanee

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmmm, PCWorld gave it a 60/100

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139724-page,1-c,games/article.html

Probably sour grapes, but it also sounds like it's Jade Empire in space.

(If you want to read the PC World review, but don't want to scroll though 16!!!!!!! pages (1 paragraph per page) try this

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8656981&postcount=156

(Some language at the end from the poster who copy and pasted it, he was a bit irked at the effort)

Though the ironic thing is, that first page is still probably as long as typical 1up reviews. I dunno how they get away with that.

 

[horacethegrey]

Hmmmm, PCWorld gave it a 60/100

What business does a PC gaming magazine have in reviewing a console title?

I mean, sure, everyone's entitled to make their own criticism of the game. But the source of this critique leaves me feeling a bit suspect. :\

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

The guys over at Penny Arcade have done a few comics on the game over the past week. While they certainly seem to enjoy the overall scope of the story, it sounds as though Mass Effect is full of horribly frustrating quirks, like a befuddling menu system and never-ending load times. Obviously everyone's got their own opinions, but I've come to trust these guys because often their opinions align with mine

I'll still be picking up the title, because I loves me some Bioware, but I think Assassin's Creed will be my next purchase for the 360.

 

[takyris]

I wouldn't say "Horribly." But yes, first game in the tech-stream, done on an engine that was still being completed as we worked on the game, so there are definitely some hiccups. And the elevators get old. I'm the guy who wrote the banter and news-vids to try to make the elevators seem less dull.

The game's averaging 93 on Metacritic right now (30 reviews), which implies that it does more things right (and some of those things right-er than they've ever been done before) than it does wrong.

If you have a 360 already, it's currently the 6th-highest-rated 360 game on Metacritic (behind a few well-established IPs, Rock Band, and BioShock, and hats off to them). That's still comfortably in "safe buy if you like RPGs and buy 3 or more games per year" territory.

 

[Felon]

So, I played part of the Eden Prime mission last night as an infiltrator. I have about thirty minutes worth of gameplay under my belt. I'll hit it hardcore over the holiday weekend, but while I'm frittering away the work day, I'm interested in seeing how my first impressions match up with other folks'.

Traditionally, tutorial missions are sublimely easy, with the opponents doing so little damage that you have to work hard to get killed. The goal is to create the illusion of danger while concealing the primary objective of teaching the player the core elements of gameplay. Not so with ME. I got killed several times, mainly trying to learn how to use the controls at a faster pace than the game's tutorial allows.

The first opponents are some little bots that are hard to see without the red markers that indicate their position. They are light work, easily dispatched. Next are some geth bots. They can punch through shields, so they ain't using nerf-weapons, but they're basically sitting ducks.

I get tutorial tips on how I can pause the game at any time to switch weapons and use special abilities. This is supposed to bridge the gap between real-time and turn-based combat, but the player has to hold down a shoulder-button to maintain the pause. With the analog stick being somewhat over-responsive when it comes to selecting items on the dial, I really don't need that extra bit of hassle going on with my index finger. It's basically using physical discomfort as a way of keeping the player from spending too much time making choices.

I head up the hill, and face the sci-fi version of undead: borged-out corpses. They run up and promptly die, with the goal being to get close enough to catch me in their death-throe blast. I experience my first demise in ME, and honestly it's kind of lame. I just finished playing Clive Barker's Jericho, and that was a game that got really bad reviews for throwing these kamakaze foes at you. Suicide bombers are about as un-fun to fight in a video game as they are in the real world. I hope I won't see much of those in the rest of the game.

Time to do some hacking! Unfortunately, the approach to hacking is a real granny shot, as it joins the ever-swelling ranks of games that see some value in incorporating "Simon"-style rapid-fire sequential button-mashing. It's exactly what hacking shouldn't be: a twitch game which doesn't seem to incorporate any benefit for the character's point-based abilities or a player's innate puzzle-solving talents (q.v. Bioshock).

Then I get to thr train station, and I start realizing that those red markers are coming and going, not always indicating enemy positions. I guess I'll figure it out for myself eventually, but if anyone can explain why the markers aren't always visible, I'd appreciate it. Without the markers, those geth popping out from cover blend in to the background too easily, since they're basically grey furniture. Some blinking camera-eyes or something would have been a good idea IMO. I basically have to play sitting duck myself and let them shoot to figure out where to aim.

So I get the train rolling (or sliding) and arrive at the station. Geth are firing across a bridge, and for whatever reason I can't seem to faze them, regardless of using my marksman, overload, dampening, or sabotage abilities. After a couple of deaths there, I decide it's time for bed.

I'll jump back in tomorrow, maybe respec my character from infiltrator, which seems to not really incorporate many of the benefits from the combat tree. And there really isn't stealth in ME, so the title "infiltrator" is kind of misleading. Also, the Infiltrator skillset seems kind of crappy, but I don't know what a "tech mine" is yet, so it's hard to judge.

On the positive side, the game definitely feels cinematic, and there are a lot of character options right from the go.

So, to sum up my issues so far:

Tutorial = teaching you to swim by throwing you into pool
Combat = twitch-heavy
Suicide bombers = unfun foe to fight
Hacking = granny shot (not worth having hacking if it's going to implemented this way)
Enemies behind cover = squinting to find them

 

[Arnwyn]

Good, but rated far too highly considering how buggy it is. Unfortunate.

Oh, and a quick "screw you" to M$ for not releasing the LCE in Canada. Up yours.

 

[mmu1]

The guys over at Penny Arcade have done a few comics on the game over the past week. While they certainly seem to enjoy the overall scope of the story, it sounds as though Mass Effect is full of horribly frustrating quirks, like a befuddling menu system and never-ending load times. Obviously everyone's got their own opinions, but I've come to trust these guys because often their opinions align with mine

I'll still be picking up the title, because I loves me some Bioware, but I think Assassin's Creed will be my next purchase for the 360.

I've played for a couple of hours so far, and I'd call some of the issues mildly furstrating, at most. (keep in mind that they often exaggerate for comedic value, and Gabe apparently has the attention span of a mayfly, so just because something is frustrating to him...)

The menu system could do certain things better - I can see how it could get clusmy to manage your inventory once you have a lot more stuff, a couple of places could use a "cancel and exit" button, and I'd like a hotkey for the map, but if you're a serious gamer, chances are you've seen much worse.

The load times - so far, anyway - haven't been bad at all. Most of the time, KotOR had longer ones - though granted, I didn't spend much time in the larger locations. (never mind a game like The Witcher... now those are damn long load times, and the game still rocked)

The combat definitely takes some getting used to, but I found it ok, and it's slowly growing on me.

The hacking "mini-game" is silly and irrelevant, but hasn't really gotten in the way of my enjoyment of the game at all. We'll see if that's still the case when I have to open some harder locks, I guess.

Overall, I'd say this game is as good as if not better (and no more frustrating) than any other top Bioware title (KotOR, BG2) - it has its flaws, but I think many people are exagerrating them and their impact on gameplay and the enjoyability of the game, because of the hype and insanely high expectations.