Mass Effect - "the" Xbox360 title to get

[Banshee16]

Unfotunately, I've died a couple times now because the party AI wasn't smart enough to walk around a simple obstacle (like a small crate or a table). I either have to waste time finding a spot they'll go to, or survive the fight without help, then lay down a path for the NPC to baby-step around. It was really amazing to me that I had to do that, because even fairly mediocre, low-budget games have AI's that draw very elaborate paths to reach a destination. I'm not saying it happens very often. Just enough to be noticable.

I suppose it's not a difficult question....but I've wondered lately whether several games that have been released lately, and have been commented on as feeling incomplete (Hellgate: London, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed) have come out like that because the development teams were pushed to launch these titles and start generating revenue, by management who needed to make their numbers for this quarter? It sounds like a few of them could have used a few more months of development.

Banshee

 

[Vocenoctum]

I imagine like anything else, it comes down to Cost/Benefit. If they'd pushed it back 6 months to go over dialogue options more, would that have been enough of a benefit to warrant the push?

The other thing is, sometimes priorities shift, and the dialogue options may have just shifted in style from the original intent.


There's also always a matter of player preferences. I might be in the minority, but I think Halo's Warthog is the epitome of a fun vehicle to enter combat with. Everyone should copy it, unless the objective is a vehicle simulator. ME's car is so-so, it takes some getting used to but should be okay.

Couple that with just coming off of Tabula Rasa, where run&gun works great, vs Mass Effect where combat feels tedious and awkward for me... I'm not expecting FPS mechanics, but there's a big difference IMO.

I still don't know why you can't jump, it feels like an action game, but falls short.

If I had to review it at my current point, I'd probably give it 7/8 of 10. It's a game that's good, but has a lot of fundamental flaws in gameplay. The fact I've been taking breaks from it to play Carcassonne (which I got for free on Live) is a bit telling.

 

[Felon]

So, I've been playing pretty hardcore over the holiday weekend. I can actually say now that it's a pretty great game, with a lot to do. I don't know that it will have replay value for me because I do every mission that comes my way. The missions on the whole are ptetty fun, and the main missions are brilliant. Very cinematic, with characters I like as much as any character from a Final Fantasy game. I would happily watch the story play out as a movie, if they captured the feel.

There are lots of hair-pulling elements in the game. Here's my top three:

1) The AI pathing problems have become more pronounced, with them having a major problem with ramps. Try to send the squad up a ramp, and they'll actually walk around it and go underneath it. And they get stuck a lot and need to be guided out. Also, te AI does not compensate well for obstructions in line of fire. You crew will happily blaze away only to have all their rounds go into some obstacle right in front of them. OTOH, the AI also never misses at any range, which also problematic for would-be snipers. Imagine you're trying to snipe some guy from five hundred away. You'll be having to compensate for your sight wobbling (making rifle scopes sway around so that it's hard to get a clean shot is apparently all the rage in shooters these days), and meanwhile, the AI can pull out his sidearm and start popping you.

2) Interior design is often svery drab, very mundane, and fails to give the impression that of a sci-fi setting. Go to a "gentleman's club", and the only thing to distinguish it as such is a flat cutout of a woman's silhouette on the wall. I want the Coruscant treatment. GIve me some flashing, colorful, holography. And when I have my first big confrontation with the BBEG, learning the enemy's true nature and the galaxy's darkest secret, why am I standing on a room of bare concrete walls and metal grate floors? A set designer would get fired for handling one of the high points of a film that way.

3) The ground vehicle is very frustrating to operate, and you can burn an hour of your gaming time getting very little accomplished because of this PoS rolling over end over end, and getting 90% of the way up a slope only to stall out just shy of the peak and come tumblign down.

Still, been having a blast with the parts that are polished. I'm interest in seeing what they'll come out with in the way of downloadable content.

 

[mmu1]

3) The ground vehicle is very frustrating to operate, and you can burn an hour of your gaming time getting very little accomplished because of this PoS rolling over end over end, and getting 90% of the way up a slope only to stall out just shy of the peak and come tumblign down.

Weird. I've seen this complaint repeatedly, and I actually didn't manage to roll the Mako once - despite being intentionally careless a number of times. (Hey, let me fire the thrusters as I come off the edge of this 50' drop, to see what happens. Whee!)

Mind you, I never actually sat down for a few minutes to try to roll it - I'm sure it's doable, I came close a couple of times...

 

[Vocenoctum]

I'm enjoying the RPG aspects of it, but so far the explorer and combat aspects are lacking.

One of my main irks is changing party members only at the ship (when you can't hop back to the ship automatically) and having to run across lots of ground to reach anything.

 

[Felon]

Yeah, you can't even look at all of your party members' skills at once to make comparative decisions. You can switch their equipment around at the lockers in the ship bay, so why didn't they give a class development window as well?

Another thing that's come to light: this is a short game! In terms of scope, we are not looking at another Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I mean, two weeks should be ample time for most folks playing casually. And that's doing side quests, not just knocking out the main storyline. There's supposed to be downloadable content coming down the pipeline, but by the time it gets here ME will be past tense for the majority of folks.

 

[Enforcer]

I really like it so far. I love the all-audio dialog, for both NPCs and Shepard. I like the combat too, it's a nice way to add some shoot-em-up satisfaction to an RPG. I also really like the setting and story so far. I can already tell that this game will join the ranks of the Baldur's Gate and Fallout series as a game I will replay, a lot.

I do have some nitpicks though:

-I wish they showed you the complete lists of talents for all the character classes during character creation, so that I don't have to go through the process a bunch of times to compare.

-I wish you could unequip weapons that you or your squad are not proficient in. It's silly for Wirex to carry a sniper rifle that he can't use, for example, and it looks silly visually.

-I wish the manual actually told me what the hell the stuff in the status bars meant. Took me a while to figure out the white bars are your shields. And why does my Quarian Machinist squadmember have way more shields than my heavy-armor wearing Shepard? Likewise, I found out by accident that the Mako has a cannon in addition to its machine gun.

-I can't figure out what, if anything, First Aid does if you assign points to it. Neither for Shepard or my squad.

-Shouldn't more points in Sniper Rifle make the cross hairs shake a little less eventually? I only have five or so points in it, but still, it's annoying. I'm fine with the shake, but it should taper off the more I devote to it.

-I wish the Primary Codex stuff had an option to turn off the voiceover. I read much faster, and it's not nearly as entertaining to listen to as in-game dialog (which comes with facial expressions and other visual goodies).

 

[takyris]

-I wish they showed you the complete lists of talents for all the character classes during character creation, so that I don't have to go through the process a bunch of times to compare.

-I wish you could unequip weapons that you or your squad are not proficient in. It's silly for Wirex to carry a sniper rifle that he can't use, for example, and it looks silly visually.

Ditto and ditto. Note that you can use weapons you're not proficient in, though. You just can't zoom in with them. A high-level shotgun with no training at point-blank range can still clear out a room.

-I wish the manual actually told me what the hell the stuff in the status bars meant. Took me a while to figure out the white bars are your shields. And why does my Quarian Machinist squadmember have way more shields than my heavy-armor wearing Shepard? Likewise, I found out by accident that the Mako has a cannon in addition to its machine gun.

The button that said "Cannon" on the vehicle-controls page didn't help? That page also notes that you can zoom with the left trigger, and zoom MORE by tapping the right thumbstick while zoomed, which few people appear to have noticed. While ragging on the manual is always good fun, most of the stuff I've seen people complain about is actually in there.

Your Machinist has a bunch of shields because one of her skills (at work, but you can find this on BioWare's boards somewhere) increases her shields in addition to serving as a tech power. Electronics, Decryption? Something like that. It's a great skill. My Sentinel is using it to stay alive in fights.

-I can't figure out what, if anything, First Aid does if you assign points to it. Neither for Shepard or my squad.

As I recall, more points heals you more, and if multiple people in the party have First Aid, the effects stack. I don't know how they stack (total the health healed or total the points to generate the new equivalent score or what), but I know that they stack somehow.

-Shouldn't more points in Sniper Rifle make the cross hairs shake a little less eventually? I only have five or so points in it, but still, it's annoying. I'm fine with the shake, but it should taper off the more I devote to it.

It does. At very high levels with the right upgrades, it's almost dead-still, and even at low levels, it's almost dead-still when you fire up Assassination.

-I wish the Primary Codex stuff had an option to turn off the voiceover. I read much faster, and it's not nearly as entertaining to listen to as in-game dialog (which comes with facial expressions and other visual goodies).

Ditto.

 

[ohGr]

-Shouldn't more points in Sniper Rifle make the cross hairs shake a little less eventually? I only have five or so points in it, but still, it's annoying. I'm fine with the shake, but it should taper off the more I devote to it.

takyris answered all your questions well, but i'd like to add here that kneeling (clicking the left stick) dramatically reduces the cross-hair shaking effect. It's Accuracy that affects this, by the way, so anyway you can increase your Accuracy will have an effect, whether it's a more accurate sniper rifle or a weapon mod that increases accuracy.

 

[Felon]

-I wish you could unequip weapons that you or your squad are not proficient in. It's silly for Wirex to carry a sniper rifle that he can't use, for example, and it looks silly visually.

Yeah, I have a character in the crew who's wearing some light armor that's actually vastly superior to Shepard's medium (which is weird, but whatever), but I can't get it off her unless I actually buy her another suit of armor to wear.

-I wish the manual actually told me what the hell the stuff in the status bars meant. Took me a while to figure out the white bars are your shields. And why does my Quarian Machinist squadmember have way more shields than my heavy-armor wearing Shepard?

Well, the electronics skill states pretty clearily that it boosts your shields, plus Tali has a racial skill that boosts it even more. I did not get that the white bars were shields, and I'm not sure what their function is. Are they just extra hit points that regenerate quickly? I guess so. Oddly enough, that makes techies good tanks in some respects.

-I can't figure out what, if anything, First Aid does if you assign points to it. Neither for Shepard or my squad.

On your status bar next to your crew's health/shields there's an icon with a Y on it and a number. The number is how many medkits you have. Hit Y and you'll use one to heal your entire crew. This took me a while to figure out. Btw, the icon right right under that pertains to your grenades.

Oh, and if you find yourself dying while on a planet for no apparent reason, it's because it's got a hazardous environment. That meter filling up on the bottom right represents how long you can stand outside.

-Shouldn't more points in Sniper Rifle make the cross hairs shake a little less eventually? I only have five or so points in it, but still, it's annoying. I'm fine with the shake, but it should taper off the more I devote to it.

It does, but you have to make a significant investment before it's really noticable. The sway is simply too pronounced. It's not like there are many opportunities to snipe as it is, since most firefights are in tight quarters, so I don't understand why it's so heavily penalized.