Mass Effect

I don't usually go for games like this, but it looks absolutely amazing. I heard all the hype about it but I don't listen to hype about games I've never heard of before - but after watching that video I'll be listening to it all now. It looks supoib.
 
Yeah been looing forward to this for awhile now. not normalyl a fan of this type of game but it definitly looks worth a try.
 
Never was a comfirmed release as far as i know. Im pleased i guess, with my uni work i wouldnt have had time to play it anyway, or i would and be doing less work.
 
Mass Effect Xbox 360

E3 Mass Effect Impressions

Before our sleep-deprived and sensory addled brains shut down last night, we were ushered by Microsoft secret agents into a hotel room to spend some time with Mass Effect. Finally, hands-on instead of just eyes-on. Although it had been a long day, we managed to find a burst of adrenaline deep down within to keep us going.

We were shown the basic in-game talk interface: get near another character and hit the A button to start talking. You can direct the flow of the conversation, by selecting your responses with the left thumbstick, choosing from a radial menu. For instance, if someone is telling you about an attack, you can pick things like "Too bad they didn't kill you" to "I'm sorry" to "Really? What happened?"

They aren't exactly what your character will say, they're more like the gist of it. We tried to piss the people we encountered off, but no one took great offense. One woman we encountered really wanted to tag along with us, and although we tried as hard as we could to dissuade her, the last talk menu we were offered with her was something like, "Sure", "Go ahead", and "Okay". No, "Get lost!" option, so she must be important to the mission.

It reminded us a bit of the chat in the Indiana Jones games, although those gave you the actual lines that Indy would spout out. Conversations are crucial to Mass Effect, and end up providing you with information and shape your relationships with those characters. It's also how you can pick up additional characters that'll join your party, as evidenced by the woman who joined up with us.

When you have additional party members with you, you'll see their health bars in the lower left of the screen, and you can also issue commands to them, which comes in handy when you want to send them ahead into enemy fire while you hang back behind cover. "Asps ... very dangerous. You go first."

The combat system is very familiar to FPS vets, pull the left trigger to whip out your weapon, right trigger to fire, and you can switch weapons by holding down the X button, which pulls up a radial menu that you can select from. We were outfitted with a powerful rifle (sans scope), a shotgun, a pistol, and a small machine gun / blaster of some type. You'll find types of weapons as you go along, and you can also pick up components and ammo that you can use to upgrade your weapon with. We found some armor-piercing rounds that we picked up, although we didn't take the time to equip them. Armor-piercing rounds? We don't need to steenking armor-piercing rounds.

We also briefly used the "powers" that you'll access in the game, namely a sort of "force push" ability that can blast your opponents across the landscape, or sort of disembowel them and kill them on the spot. The aliens we tried it out on sprayed phosphorescent-white blood all over the ground in a Jackson Pollock pattern. Ouch. There was also a healing ability that came in pretty handy, especially after we kept taking shots to the face with our clever "Distract the enemy by letting them shoot us" strategy.

We also encountered a locked door, and we were given the options of hacking the lock, using "parts" to open it, or just ignoring it altogether, We hacked in, but the development team told us that you'll be able to pick up parts in your travels, and you'll use them to modify, hack, upgrade, and otherwise cause general mischief throughout the Mass Effect world with.

The game looked very sharp, with gorgeous eye candy-like graphics throughout, although there were a few frame rate drops and a heck of a lot of clipping going on. When we spoke to the woman who joined our crew earlier, whenever she gestured with her rifle it would go clean through her body. Maybe it's a magical holo-rifle! It reminded us of the countless hours we'd spent watching Quantum Leap and seeing Dean Stockwell walk through everyone. The devs quickly stepped in and said the demo was a very early build, and that they'd been playing it over and over on the same console, and as a result it was degrading a bit. They then shoved us into burlap sacks and beat us senseless, before depositing us in an alley with a copy of the Mass Effect novel.
 
Watch a delicious, 15-minute Mass Effect preview

With the delay of one big property last week, you might be a little down in the dumps about your gaming prospects in the fall. Allow yourself to be soothed by the healing power of Mass Effect, namely 15 minutes of previewing from your friends at 1UP.

There are some dialog scenes, a look at the driving mini-game and a fairly extensive sample of the character creation. Oh, and, of course, there's some good, old-fashion shooting. You don't need to hear anything else from us. Go. Watch. Delight.

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/13855
 
Mass Effect Trilogy Completed Within This Gen
BREAKING: Mass Effect is on the 360! Actually, in what is sort of news, BioWare president Dr. Greg Zeschuk said he would like to see the Mass Effect trilogy completed within the current generation of hardware.

Certainly out intent is to have all three iterations or installments of Mass Effect to be on Xbox 360. That's the goal...I hope, I hope, I hope that this cycle is longer than the last one.
Zeschuk still hedges on whether or not the series will be exclusive to the 360, but if Bioware is aiming to complete (what is hopefully) one of the most innovative/awesome/bestest RPG franchises of all time in just one generation of hardware, they're going to have a bit of difficulty bringing those titles to the PS3 as well.
 
Mass Effect Collector's Edition details released
masseff.jpg

Here's a bracing thought for your Thursday morning: Have we become spoiled by Limited/Collector's Editions? Take, for instance, the recently revealed contents of the of the forthcoming Mass Effect Limited Edition package.

Fiction Book: Galactic Codex: Essentials
Mass Effect Art Book: A Future Imagined
2nd DVD with exclusive videos about Mass Effect (Art of Mass Effect, Interactive Storytelling of Mass Effect)
 
I need more old school RPGs. Finished BG1, now playing BG2, just got Edwin.

Ah, how I miss the golden days of CRPGs.
 
According to the wikipedia article (which we can probably assume to be valid), famitsu gave it a 14/40 based on "lack of grind and seriousness, constant action, and the difficulty in "finding the proper dialog path for the true ending."

Ha Ha they gave Nintendogs 40/40

So lets see...they want to grind and they want the game to walk them by the hand to the good ending. Why is MS trying to build in Japan again?
 
Mass effect scores 10/10 in Australian OXM
The mag review was a 3 page spread but there was not much to the review itself as most of the space was filled with large glossy pictures. Call of Duty 4 also copped a 10/10
 
From the Australian OXM:

About the ending: (no Spoilers) "Your actions along the way will shape your destiny and the games eventual outcome, each and every one of your actions in fact - the game doesn't merely resolve with one light side and one dark side ending, it has an entire matrix of completely different resolutions to arrive at depending on how you decide to play it."

About the gameplay options: "When you're not capping enemies on foot or cruising around in the Normandy or mako, you're running around talking to locals and indulging in numerous side missions. As with KOTOR, you can choose to help people, ignore them, or pretend to help them and then doublecross them later. Side quests often overlap andalot of the time you can play two parties off against eachother for your own underhanded benefit."

There is an attempt to say that this game is an RPG like KOTOR but also plays a bit likeHalo and Gears of War. There isone mention of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion where the reviewer writes "the narrative (ME) is tighter and more focussed than Oblivion's while still allowing for plenty of excursions off the beaten path in a variety of sumptious locations." Overallits decribed as an action RPG.

The reviewer comments on the graphical beauty of thegame saying that ME feautures some of the best character models and sprwaling landscapes he's ever seen.

Closing Comment: "ME is an RPG with certified mass appeal, and along with Bioshock its one of the finest forms of pure escapism the video game medium has served up in this console generation. Don'tmiss it."

The Verdict: Exceptional squadcombat, Silky smooth dialogue system, Stunning worlds to explore, Alien strip clubs.

Extra Observation: there is a mild sex scene that if you play as a female character you can play this out with a male or a female!?!?

Furthermore the combat is all real time like a fps and by holding down teh A button you can do a roadie run like in Gears and you can take cover by pushing up against an object using the left stick, and then pushing away from it it to leave it. You can press the right trigger to pop out from behind the cover to shoot and use the left trigger to zoom.

Squad control: "Squad movement controls are mapped to the four directions of the D-pad." I love this next bit "Smart use of your squad is essential for surviving attacks against large groups of enemies in the game - we were overwhelmed and killed several times during our first major encounter because we tried to 'Rambo' our way through (if one your two sqaud mates dies you can keep fighting, if Shepard dies its game over), but once we learned a to issue a few commands and abilities we became more comfortable operating as a unit."
 
Re: Microsoft XBox 360

Looks good, a bit too much like GOW though, I was hoping for something more like KOTOR.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom