Mass Effect 3

[Winnow]

I'm buying this game on Tuesday but couldn't pass up the opportunity to play it early. (360)

Some random thoughts on the game. (no spoilers) Overall, it's excellent as you would expect.

There are three play modes:

Action: you jump right in and make no decisions except for fighting. You see cut scenes predetermined for you instead of chat wheels.

Role play: you make the dialog choices as well as have full customize control over your characters and team.

Story mode: Light on the action. This mode is is you just want to enjoy it like an interactive movie.

The opening scene (pre Mass Effect 3 Logo) is OK, but not as good as ME2.

I chose Role play which is like the original two of the series.

The graphics are improved again but the female (default) Shepard just looks wrong. The character creator is as powerful as ME2 but the characters have a neanderthal look to them in general. It would take a lot of work to come up with a good female, but it's possible. The female Shepard has a ghetto booty now.

The default male Shepard is fine. It seems like the animations were designed to work with the male avatar and then applied to the female without adjustments. I played through the opening scenes with both male and female Shepards and the female animations didn't seem to sync as well. (when running into people, interactions etc during cut scenes) I decided to take the default male Shepard as making a character is from scratch, and won't let you modify the default Shepard as a base.

While the graphics are excellent, it took awhile to get used to the faces/animations. After a couple hours, I wasn't thinking about them anymore. The flow of the game during battle encounters is great. You can tend to get lost in the Citadel and on the Normandy.

The story is excellent although it takes awhile for character development. I killed off Ashley in the first ME1 but decided not to import my ME2 game save because Ashely is hot in this game (improved over Miranda in ME2) and I want to bang her (even though she's a xenophobe).

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Her face also gets pulverized early in the game so I need to wait for that to heal up and for when she's released from the hospital! They did a good job of making her face look all messed up.

Speaking of relationships, I'm about 11 hours in and have gotten nowhere with anyone. It looks like it will take awhile to build relations in ME3.

Excellent online game manual and codex.

The Normandy's virtual intelligence (EDI) is hot.

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More disk swapping this time. I think ME2 had the beginning and end on Disk 1 and the middle on Disk 2. In ME3, on my first mission it asked me to swap to disk 2 and then on the next mission I had to swap back to disk 1. It wasn't a side mission so it seems odd I had to do that. I've been back on disk 1 again ever since.

Citadel is more like ME1 than ME2 with more things to do. You're limited on your first trip there but when you end up back there a second time, things open up.

Plot is slightly weaker than ME2 so far. Earth is getting the ever loving crap beat out of it by the Reapers and Shepard's off doing, sometimes, minor crap. At the rate the Reapers are ripping apart Earth in the beginning, I'd think nothing would be left of Earth by the time Shepard rallies the galaxy.

I'm playing on normal and combat seems tougher than in ME2. There's a lot of smoke screens and enemies come from different angles more often. The areas seem more open where you need to watch your flank more.

I restarted three times because I tried classes other than Vanguard but ultimately I ended up playing a Vanguard. It's just too much fun and fits my play style. I think they threw in a lot of enemies with huge riot shields that are impervious to the Vanguard's charge attack. Early on, before boosting armor piercing, I bounced 3 or 4 shotgun blasts off these shields with little damage done. Flanking maneuvers are key to take down these guys.

There seems to be more choices with armor in ME3. I'm getting armor drops which make big changes +/- to stats. A lot of weapon enhancements drop as well. Credits/income seems to be just about right. I can afford to upgrade my favorite weapon but can't go nuts spending. There are ful battle armor sets but they would take just about every credit you have early on.

There may be some sort of gift buying thing in the game for relationships but I haven't seen how to use them yet.

The person that sort of takes the place of yeoman Kelly Chambers is hotter than Kelly.

11 hours in and I've barely made a dent on the reputation meter. Renegade and Paragon are both low, hopefully indicating that this game is long.

Pretty much if you liked ME2, you're going to like ME3. 11 hours in and I've only traveled to two locations besides the Citadel. Besides the Galaxy map, there's also a battle readiness map which has quests that measure the alliance preparedness for battle against the Reapers. It's early but the characters so far aren't quite as memorable as ME2.

edit: grammar

[kyoukan]

thanks for the detailed list of what female models you think are hot in this game that you stole.

[Winnow]

thanks for the detailed list of what female models you think are hot in this game that you stole.

Hello frigid stalker bitch! I hope you saved enough allowance from whoever supports you to buy the game along with the rest of us because I have no doubt you're too stupid to hack anything more complex than a grapefruit with a meat cleaver.

[Winnow]

Any remaining doubts about ME3 are gone after tonight. The game really picks up right after I left off last night. All the main characters from the previous games are slowly finding their way back into the story which is making it much more interesting than the first 10 hours.

EDI rocks in as a team member. Available characters for the ground team are increasing making it harder to choose my two supporting people on missions.

Got around to scanning some systems and planets. You find various things, not the metals you found in previous games. Credits, items that contribute toward the war assets, etc. You can't continuously scan as the longer you do so, the higher the chance the Reavers detect you and send a ship into the system you're scanning.

War Terminal on the Normandy tracks your Readiness Rating and Military strength, adding another dimension to the game.

The Krogans are back! Hurray! (if you don't recall, a single female Krogan can pump out 10,000 eggs resulting in insanely fast population growth)

The mission system is wide open. There's a ton of locations waiting for me to investigate both in the galaxy and on the citadel. Along with that, there's plenty of weapon and armor building/modding/enhancing. There's a lot going on. In between missions, it seems like I spend an hour running around dialoging everyone up. I choose every option on the chat wheel so it takes awhile.

Hot chick update: Miranda has best ass in the game but her face didn't get updated. She can borrow Tali's helmet!

Sometimes just running by random NPCs without even stopping allows you to hear enough of a conversation for your journal to get updated with a new mission or lead. They also did a good job in sometimes allowing dialogs to take place without the abrupt switch to the chat wheel. Characters might be saying some important things but you can just walk away if not interested.

ME3 is at minimum as good as ME2 and has a change to be better depending on how it ends.

[Aslanna]

“While Mass Effect 3 supports cloud saving for new or successfully imported Mass Effect 2 saves, it does not support the importation of endgame saves directly from the cloud. Additionally, this can cause it to not recognize save files that have been transferred via cloud to a console other than the one where they originated,” publisher EA confirmed in a statement. If you’re able to go back to the console in which you originally saved the game and create a local copy of the save file, you’re good to go. But if you no longer have access to that system, you are screwed. EA has given no indication that this problem is fixable.

Another win for "the cloud".

[Fairweather Pure]

I played half of 1, never touched 2 or any of the DLC I bought on sale. I'll wait a year when this has a goty edition with all the DLC for 20$. I'm just too far behind in the series to bother with a day 1 purchase.

[Funkmasterr]

I played half of 1, never touched 2 or any of the DLC I bought on sale. I'll wait a year when this has a goty edition with all the DLC for 20$. I'm just too far behind in the series to bother with a day 1 purchase.

You need to cut back on some of the throwaway games you play to make time for mass effects awesomeness, sir!

[Fairweather Pure]

I played half of 1, never touched 2 or any of the DLC I bought on sale. I'll wait a year when this has a goty edition with all the DLC for 20$. I'm just too far behind in the series to bother with a day 1 purchase.

You need to cut back on some of the throwaway games you play to make time for mass effects awesomeness, sir!

I'm trying to catch up on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Revelations in time to play AC3 in the fall! I'm further behind than I have ever been thanks to WoW and goddamn Lego games. Did I mention I still have Dragon Age 1&2+all DLC and they've never been played? Hey, at least I've beaten Fallout 3 and all it's DLC...except I haven't touched New Vegas yet. Still working on Bioshock 2 and Dead Space 2 as well! These are just off the top of my head!

Goddamn. Too many games! I'm severely cutting back this year on day 1 purchases. I have hit my personal wall on what I am willing to tolerate from my own stupid spending when it comes to this hobby.

[Funkmasterr]

Haha. I still haven't finished AC Revelations. I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to buy AC3, they've already started to suck the fun out of the game for me with the once a year releases.

Picked up ME3, I forgot to pre order it and best buy was sold out, found it elsewhere but that was surprising.

You get armor and a weapon for playing the kingdoms of amashit demo so I'm downloading that quick before I start.

[Animalor]

The story bits in Brotherhood were relevant to what's going on in the world. As far as Revelations goes, it was a fun game and will ties Brotherhood to AC3 but it was complete filler material.

Don't get me wrong, the game was (mostly) fun and there's come good background info on Desmond but you can get the good bits from a YouTube montage and skip it pretty easily.

I wouldn't skip Brotherhood however. The ending to that one was pretty great.

[Animalor]

I got hit with the "we can't determine your character's custom face" bug =/ What a pita. I loaded back ME2, took a picture of my FemShep and recreated her as best I could.

[Jice Virago]

Did you take a moment to rub one out before returning to ME3? Oh wait, you are not Winnow....

On a serious note, the horse face factor had me adjusting the appearance of my femshep. The new graphics engine is nice, but their face animations/construction leave a lot to be desired. Looks like they wasted all of their time making Ashley look like a supermodel. The weapons and combat interface seem clunkier than in ME2, but the cooldowns are less ludicrously long. The carry less guns means shorter cooldown thing is a neat idea, but it really makes my Adept completely ridiculous, as I can spam Singularity almost faster than it refreshes.

Story is sort of uneven at the moment. A better prologe explanation of what happened to everyone at the end of ME2 would have been nice. The idea of shopping for candy and flowers at the citidel while earth is being assraped by reapers who blew past the main battle line seems a bit immersion breaking too.

I need to play more before I form a full opinion, though.

[Winnow]

I need to play more before I form a full opinion, though.

Besides the orc painter's personal jab, he echos what I already said. The story and game in general gets better after about 10 hours. Just give it some time.

[Funkmasterr]

I want to know if I can romance Ashley and still bang Miranda like the filthy gutter whore she is, without pissing Ashley off. Can't seem to find any infos.

[Zamtuk]

Yes. But only if you slept with Ashley in the first one and Miranda in the second one. I sexed up sweet Liara in the first one, so alas that sex triangle won't be happening, but I had Tali in the second one, so this will pan out nicely. There is something a bit off with this game, but it is still amazing. I am only 12 hours into it so far (I took yesterday off of work to play, ha), and the story has me engulfed. You can just tell something huge is going to happen, which is great.

[Funkmasterr]

Nice. Now if only I could bang Miranda on the toilet to make her feel real dirty. Can't win em all I guess.

[Funkmasterr]

By the way, the beginning of the song that plays at the end of the genophage mission is totally from the movie legend.

[masteen]

So I ordered from Gamestop for the first time in years because of the pre-order stuff. Didn't shell out for overnight, so it just got here. It's for the PS3, which I do not own. Last time I ordered from these cocksuckers, same thing. And no, I did not buy the PS3 version, because I am not a fucking illiterate.

If their CS is as awesome as last time, I'll end up having to contest this shit with the cc.

[Zamtuk]

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Just got done with the Genophage mission. It should be noted that I've been straight Renegade for the trilogy. HOLY SHIT I KILLED MORDIN! I was seriously conflicted on if I should have done it or not, because he was one of my favorite characters. Bioware did everything they could to wrench some emotion into it, and it really showed. That was easily the saddest thing a video game has ever put out period.

[Funkmasterr]

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Just got done with the Genophage mission. It should be noted that I've been straight Renegade for the trilogy. HOLY SHIT I KILLED MORDIN! I was seriously conflicted on if I should have done it or not, because he was one of my favorite characters. Bioware did everything they could to wrench some emotion into it, and it really showed. That was easily the saddest thing a video game has ever put out period.

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I've been the good guy the whole time, and he still died for me. I definitely felt bad though, I liked him, he was hilarious in this game.

[Winnow]

No spoilers needed for this! Mordin is the most entertaining character in ME3.

I looked up Mordin's voice actor and the messages I saw said he didn't return for ME3. If that's true, I didn't notice the change. The ME3 voice actor did fine.

[masteen]

So who's going to do the patter songs in my all-Normandy production of Pirates of Penzance?

[Jice Virago]

Nerd rage over the endings is amusing, but I had no issue with the ending I got (Synth on full paragon femshep), given the scale of the plot. I might have made some of the dialog involving the reaper leader less ambiguous and fleshed out the backstory a bit, though. Nice idea, if borrowed from older stories, but just not sufficiently executed. I also understand the lack of epilogues, so they can have something to work with for future stories without putting themselves in a corner by establishing something they regret later. If you look at the Geth/Quarian (and EDI/Joker relationship) conflict as a microcosm for the entire main plot, I think the ending is less ambiguous.

As for the actual game, Adepts are still unstoppable, even on insanity. Once I got energy drain, literally nothing lasted longer than a few moments and I only ever died to the reaper snuffatron beams themselves. My advice, take one gun and spec damage and accuracy, then wear armor that boosts cooldown refresh. I had something silly like +75% cooldown in addition to the +200 for only carrying around a pistol and I could chain biotic explosions as fast as I could press the buttons. My multiplayer Asari adapt is sort of setup like this too, with warp for team support. Cooldown refresh is seriously the most powerful stat in this game.

I liked the structure of the game itself, with the missable aspects and side conversations. The biggest issue I had is that the RPG element is completely quashed in this one, as upgrades are so few and infrequent that your playstyle basically does not really change from the beginning to the end. My second play through will be with my imported ME2 Infiltrator, so we will see how that goes.

Also, if you did not have a save to import from ME2 and intend to play as a paragon, do not bother. The default plot choices fuck you hard all over the place and basically make the plot extremely unlivable.

[Zamtuk]

I just finished this game and wasn't upset with the ending at all. I was full Renegade and picked the "Red Door", so I'm not sure on the alternative to what happened, but I liked it. I especially liked the part with old man at the end (voiced by Buzz Aldrin!). The ending is definitely a bit generic, but Jice pretty much hit it on the end. I thought for the scope of it, it was pretty well executed.

[Animalor]

I got the same ending as Jice and I was quite happy with the way they wrapped things up. Loved it.

[Jice Virago]

Still playing the hell out of the MP on this on the PS3. The fanboi nerdrage over the ending is overblown, but it certainly could have had a more fleshed out ending. I am on my third playthough to see if I can clearn it on Insanity with a VG.

[kyoukan]

insanity on a vanguard sounds like a sucker's game.

[Jice Virago]

Once you get past the first couple stages (with the bugged walk meshes) and you can start using the good squad members, its not too bad. I am not looking forward to the quad banshee fight at the end, though. Take Stasis as your ally power for when you have to tackle centurians and spam charge nova like you are captain jackass the multiplayer VG and you will crush most opposition.