Rock, Paper, Shotgun

11/02/2010 at 10:51 D says:

Is this spoiler free at all?

11/02/2010 at 11:04 Helm says:

I laughed at the line ‘I’m a fully certified yoga instructor’

11/02/2010 at 12:19 sana says:

That’s… utterly terrible.

11/02/2010 at 15:40 Jesse says:

This game is still better than the hacking mini-”games” in ME 2. I would rather play this than scan for minerals, open wall safes, or hack doors.

I think that’s awesome. Well done. Thanks for the link! This is just what I was whining about (sorry) the other day in the ME 2 Wot I Think comments. This game is almost more sophisticated in the sense that in your absence, other crew members can interact with each other, and even have romances of their own. I think Bioware should consider adding that feature in the next game, if they can do it for less than $500,000.

11/02/2010 at 19:48 sana says:

Also, what the hell is wrong with the hacking minigames? They’re fun. It’s like memory, but without the memorizing bit. For me they started getting tedious on my SECOND playthrough. You’re all bloody wusses, that’s what you are!

12/02/2010 at 13:38 robaal says:

Long loading times is actually some sort of bug with the UT3 engine.
If you set MassEffect2.exe affinity in Task Manager to only one CPU, click OK and then set it back to both cores everything in the Normandy loads in less than 5 seconds.

19/08/2010 at 21:42 Firndeloth says:

I found this rather tedious. It wasn’t exactly biting satire. It was more … “Oh aren’t modern action RPGs a bit silly sometimes? Especially that second spacey shooter one Bioware did?” If you really disliked Mass Effect 2 or were severely disappointed by all the potential it deftly evaded, I suppose I can see why you would feel light-heartedly validated by this game. But I was severely disappointed by the side-stepped potential as well* and this just didn’t do it for me. Maybe I’m a satire snob. I just don’t think specifically frustrating or crappy gameplay can effectively satirize a game that had very specific issues with gameplay. In a general sense, the gameplay in ME2 worked as a customizable off-rails gallery shooter (which was certainly upsetting if you were expecting a more compelling and varied gameplay experience). I guess I just didn’t understand what is was saying with the game sections. Gameplay in ME2 is bad? Gameplay was too linear (it’s supposed to be pretty linear …)? That’s not satire … that’s generalized commentary. For me satire has to be in itself well crafter enough to entertain on it’s own merit whether or not the intent is to mock. Without something separately compelling, it’s just mockery. Which is fine, there’s lots of amusing mockery–this one just didn’t hit me right.

*Partly because the things that went right were so well polished and executed that the things that weren’t at least first class were painfully incongruous and anything mediocre to annoying was outright appalling–it’s the Special Relativity of Entertainment Quality. And partly because bits of the later were … mediocre or annoying. Hacking min-games, the sheer volume of the crew as an exchange for depth of interaction, lack of connection between crew members (I wanted to see things like Grunt and Thane interacting … they could have had some interesting chemistry in conversation … alas the most I remember getting was Miranda and Hot Topic throwing stuff at each other). And the time scale was just silly. The way I played the game, I never felt Shepard came unduly close to his new crew members; but the game certainly had some unreasonable levels of emotional attachment in the cards if you, say, tried to romance Thane as the female Sheppard. I also was utterly befuddled by my inability to interact with Liara in a way that made any sense given that she was last game’s love interest … which didn’t make terribly much sense in the first place, but I preferred my Shepard moving way faster than his character would to telling her to bugger off. The lack of middle paths in ME1 and ME2 got really frustrating. Why couldn’t I say “I really like you, but we’ve been together for maybe a day or two , and I’ve known you for at most two weeks. I mean, we’ve had four in depth conversations, not counting on-duty conversations during Recon in the Mako. How about we leave sex off the table until after we hopefully-not-die on Ilos?” Meeting her in ME2 left me wondering if her character thought of the relationship as more than a one-night stand … which was weird given how hard she worked to find my body and her speech about spirituality and special bonds … in different playthroughs the only thing I could tell made having Liara as a love interest different was a hug and maybe a single dialog option. It’s been two years, so I expected awkwardness, but I expected to be able to watch the awkwardness and confusion unfold and effect the way Liara acted and spoke.