Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Bought it tonight and have played it for a few hours.

The graphics are better but still nothing too special. The story so far is moving along well enough but I never like the early part of these games where my squad recruitment is absolutely limited by linear plot.

The controls are incredibly rigid and frustrating. Movement is like running through molasses. Combat is a fight against the cover system as much as the enemies. Good luck running through an area with low walls or rubble!

Crappy gameplay, bland graphics, and a mediocre story. Why did I buy this again?



... oh right.

Its okay Manchu. I like Tali too. There there.

I hated it at first, now im starting to like it more. It does feel some what a bit of a let down. Still going to play it till it tells me to buy dlc to finish the fight, then I will curse it for eternity.

I enjoy all the cut scenes and character interaction. Yes, I love Tali but I'm also really glad to see Ashely and Garrus again. I was even happy to get Dr. Chakwas back on board quickly. I had to force myself to stop playing tonight. Without having to get up for work tomorrow, I'd probably stay up playing until I met up with everyone.

That's how BioWare gets me: they know I'll suffer through the terrible "gameplay" to spend time with the characters.

There are some weird backwards steps. The Normandy, which managed to wow me in both ME1 and 2, is now cluttered and ugly. And I can't figure out why the writers thought struggling against the Council with the Reapers destroying Earth and Palavan would make for a satisfying third episode.

I'm also playing a black Shepherd but Shepherd's voice is so whitebread I feel like he's doing a Barack Obama impression a la Key and Peele the whole time. (Yeah, I'm playing him paragon, too.)

I have been playing off and on since 6 am yesterday, so far, so good :>


Automatically Appended Next Post:
then again, this has been my favorite off day as well

I bought it yesterday, and I'll get some game time in once I'm back in Chicago. Thankfully I don't have much in the way of deadlines coming up.

I'm having a lot of fun with the gameplay, myself. I love being able to vault over walls without needing to get behind them first.

Truthfully, the only problem I have is that the game has finally gone full-on Paragon vs. Renegade. There aren't any more neutral conversation options, just the paragon or renegade choice.

Other than that, I've been loving the game. Combat is fun, and getting more than one shot per thermal clip for my sniper rifle is always nice. Plus, mods are back, and credits are actually useful for a change. I've even found a nice little combo of skills and weapons that has basically allowed me to play the game without needing to get into cover just because of how quickly I kill enemies.

What format are you guys playing it on?
Are the gfx/controls better on a Pc for example or is it fairly standard across the board?

I'm enjoying the combat for the most part, but I've noticed a few inconsistencies in the plot and tone of the game that have annoyed the hell out of me. Also, the hair options for FemShep are atrocious . I'm hoping that the game will find its footing before too long, though to this point (I'm a couple of hours in) I can safely say that this is the weakest entry in the franchise's main series. Not bad, but where Mass Effect 1 & 2 were truly great, so far this game is merely above average-to-good.

You'd say ME3 is weaker than ME2? I really feel this is reverse-ooh-shiny syndrome. I'll need to play the game through at least once before making that call but I distinctly remember feeling very let down after my first pass at ME2. My second play of ME2 was for PS3 with all the DLC and I liked the game much, much more. Not only did the DLC fill in important story gaps (Lair of the Shadowbroker especially) and add much-needed meat to the bones but the time gap also gave me a chance to accept that BioWare vis-a-vis EA had turned away from the legacy of its D&D-based games.

There is no similar gap between ME2 and ME3. If anything, ME3 feels even more streamlined. There are even in-game jokes about this (Esteban's comments regarding the location of the armory). As for gameplay, ME3 is not very good at all. But then again, ME2 was flat out poor. I remember mentioning to a friend that it was a gakky third-person shooter that gets reviewed as a RPG to avoid one-star ratings. I've noticed that BioWare has tried to make some improvements (with movement, as Locclo mentioned above) but the innovations don't gel into a meaningfully different experience. It's still frustrating and would be totally unacceptable if the game was marketed as an action game or shooter.

So is ME3 appropriately called a RPG? Sure, why not? What isn't a RPG? If you're looking for story-altering choices, however, I doubt this is the series for you. I'm going by ME2 (and DA2 TBH) on that score, obviously. I've yet to run into any choice other than Pepsi v Coke Paragon v Renegade but I've only played for around four hours and am curious/optimistic regarding what the difference between "+2 Paragon" and "+2 Reputation" could be.

Structurally, I can't figure out why FFXIII is ripped on for being linear but these BioWare games get a pass. I suppose the ability to do a (one) side mission early on instead of proceeding with the main plot makes it a comparative sandbox? Wait, no. Yes, I know FFXIII took forever to "open up" but I feel like ME3 is similarly taking forever to get going. In ME, I define "okay, it got going" as I have more party members that I want to use than I can use. Because, let's face it, this series consistently shines in one area -- creating compelling and endearing characters.

The bioware games give the illusion of choice and actually have some areas to explore, while FFXIII it's just one long cooridor after another.

Even when you get on to the overland section in FFXIII, it's still jsut a fething cooridor. Even when you get to the forest region, you're STILL in a cooridor-- the forest is nothing more than scenery you can look at as you walk along a narrow path.

This is a subtle and yet important gameplay distinction...

FFXIII opens into an open world eventually Mel, and a real open world, but you have to suffer through ten to twelve hours of corridor to get there, and then the open world section is all just extra stuff you do with near no role in the story. Heck you get there and then you go back to the corridors to finish the storyline! That said, in the department of openness, I think ME comes out on top simply as a matter of course. ME2 is nothing but corridors and it felt more open than FFXIII -_-

Melissia wrote:This is a subtle and yet important gameplay distinction...

I'm sure there is some non-substantive aka "subtle" distinction between the way ME3 and FFXIII appear but for the purpose of actual structure they seem pretty equivalent to me. We've turned quite a corner in the American-Japanese divide when BioWare gets cut more slack than SquareEnix.

I've also been wondering who was standing with the Illusive Man during the Mars transmission. It looked like a male figure from the glimpses I caught but I initially thought it could be Miranda. Given that Cerberus soldiers are being modified via Reaper technology, I guess we can all say "I told you so" in the mirror with regard to the Illusive Man's "contact lenses."

Only idiots thought otherwise when in comes to TIM and the Reapers. In terms of foreshadowing, TIM was so blatantly obvious that its not even worth calling it foreshadowing. Bioware tipped their hand on that one. Its almost like they weren't even trying. EDIT EDIT: Or maybe they were just counting on the stupidity of their fans being incapable of comprehending how bad they've gotten at crafting a story.

EDIT: Screw it, its obvious and we all know it. It's not worthy of being treated as a spoiler. Anyone who didn't figure this out in ME2 doesn't deserve to comment about storyline in anything

Yeah, I thought about putting spoiler tags on that one, too -- but between the inordinate amount of close-ups on Saren's eyes in ME1 and the inordinate amount of close-ups on TIM's eyes in ME2 ...

Manchu wrote:I'm sure there is some non-substantive aka "subtle" distinction between the way ME3 and FFXIII appear

Claiming such things are "non-substantive" is misleading, as it's quite substantive in terms of gameplay. It is utterly impossible to create 100% choice (even a game as open ended as, say, minecraft or dwarf fortress does not have such), therefor to make up for that the better the game is at producing an illusion of choice, the better the game is designed.

Note that I am NOT saying this game is perfectly designed or anything. Just better than FFXIII.

An illusion is not convincing by virtue of being an illusion. That they offer no actual choice or even apparent choice is my main criticism of ME2, DA2, and (so far) ME3 as RPGs. Once I got over that and took the games for what they were, I was able to enjoy them much more and I wasn't nearly so hard on them. I don't feel that FFXIII has gotten the same "fair chance." The idea that a game succeeds if I'm dumb enough to fall for its tricks and fails if it doesn't attempt to trick me is ludicrous.

Manchu, it sounds like you just don't much care for Mass Effect as a series, honestly. If you aren't much for the roleplaying/individual decisions in the series, and don't much care for the combat system, then why play it? Not trying to be rude or inflammatory, I'm genuinely curious.

As for why Mass Effect 2 made such a strong impression on me early where Mass Effect 3 has not, it doesn't have anything to do with the game's level of polish. The new graphics engine is a bit uneven in some of the cutscenes, but when it works, it really works. Some of the early set-pieces on Earth felt grandiose in a way that few games do. I'd be over the moon to see my incarnation of Shepard rendered so well . No, my problems with it so far have been with narrative inconsistencies and a few dips in writing quality. The way that Mass Effect 2 handled the narrative from Mass Effect 1 (or more accurately, the narrative as I played it) was damn near seamless, whereas the same treatment from Mass Effect 3 has felt shoe-horned in so far.

Early Mass Effect 3 spoilers follow.

Why did Andersen send me to talk to the Council? Because I *used* to be a Council Spectre? Andersen, you're ON THE FUGGIN Council! And even if you left the Council during one of the novels, you used to be on the Council. Me on the other hand, I made the call that killed the Council during Sovereign's attack on the Citadel. So instead of having me stay on Earth and fight (which is what I do best) and sending you to the Council (which you've been on for two years), we have the older desk jockey staying behind to fight the Reapers and the biggest bad ass in the galaxy off on a diplomatic mission. Dumb, clumsy, and not up the standards set by previous entries in the game. I understand that they needed to get Shepard off world, but they could have found a way to do it that wasn't seemingly ignorant of pivotal events from the previous two games.

On Mars, why did Kaiden and I have the same forced, poorly written conversation about my previous involvement with Cerberus twice within the space of a minute? The clumsy exposition wasn't just badly written and placed, but it actually sounded as if the voice actors were bored with their lines.

Why is the Shadow Broker on my team? Or more importantly, why is one of the biggest secrets in the galaxy apparently no longer a secret. Hackett asked Liara to investigate the Mars archive because she's the Shadow Broker? Why does Hackett know that she's the Broker, and why is she totally fine with owning up to this fact in the middle of a hostile base? From the events of Lair of the Shadow Broker, it seemed the Liara would be a lot more careful with her alter-ego.

Maybe it's a side effect of having just played through Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 for the first time over the past two weeks, but the writing and characterizations in Mass Effect 3 have seemed surprisingly inconsistent up to this point. It certainly hasn't made nearly the same impression on me that the first couple of hours of Mass Effect 2 did. Of course, I still have a lot of game to get through before I make a final judgment.

As I mentioned in the OP, I rate the ME series on a couple of points:

Presentation: Average

Gameplay: Below Average

Story: Average

Characters: Best In The Business *

* Shepherd aside.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm conflicted over whether this game should have started on a Reaper-besieged Earth. It's supposed to provide the game with energy and Shepherd with a conflict that makes him relatable to the party members and NPCs. (Seriously, how many times have I seen the dialog option "I can relate" so far? At least three or four, I think.) But that very conflict leads to some crises in the suspension of disbelief. Your point about Anderson having been on the Council is a good illustration although I'm sure ME fluff nutters would respond that Anderson has a bad relationship with Udina or something.

I'm absolutely amazed at the whining going on over on the Bioware forums over the ending. People are way too emotionally invested in this, it's just a video game. It's like people freaking out over Harry Potter...for the love of reason...it's fiction, not reality.

The first game was meh, second was really good, third is getting simultaneously slammed and praised right now. I'll wait until the price drops before I bother with it.

I must say that if you like the cast there is no reason to pay attention to the rage in deciding when to buy it. OTOH, I can understand the investment people have in their favorite stories. Whether I agree or disagree with their appraisal, I appreciate their passion ... to a point of course. As a medium, the internet does not encourage measured and reasonable debate.

When someone says I've spent 24 of the past 48 hours in a thread discussing the ending of a video game there is something seriously wrong with that individual.

There are some nutcases out there. ME2 is the best game I've played in years and I like the story, but I'm not so emotionally invested in that I'm going to freak out simply because I dislike the endings.

It reminds me of the backlash over the Dark Tower ending.


I'm mainly not buying it because SWToR turned out to be mediocre despite excellent voice acting and pretty good class stories and because Bioware apparently dumbed ME3 down even more so than ME2. The dialogue was one of the stronger points of ME1/2, if they've reduced options than I'm not paying full price for it.

I think the dialog is written well enough. Mind you, I'm not just judging it by what is said but also by who is saying it. So again I am confirming that I like the characters and think they are well made. Even the new ones seem good to me. As far as dumbing the choices down ... I don't know. ME2 was pretty well red v. blue, too.

Eh, there were a fair amount of neutral choices even though I typically went renegade for the lulz. I've seen a lot of posts claiming that there is a severe lack of neutral choices in ME3 and I don't like the new gung ho Marine character simply because I've yet to see a video game pull of a believable military character. The ones from the first two games were passable, but this new guy looks like a severely stereotypical tatted up jarhead prick. While there are many individuals like that, they typically do not reside in special forces.

Anyone find any big bugs yet? I'm doing this one citadel mission where



Anyway, I have to go to the Dock holding area to find the guy I need, but the game freezes up when I'm between levels, just a black screen (on PS3).. I can go to other levels just fine though. I'm gonna try and leave the citadel and go do a mission then try and come back I guess

I think I may be close-ish to that point and am also playing on PS3. I'll let you know if I encounter this issue.

Necros wrote:Anyone find any big bugs yet? I'm doing this one citadel mission where

Spoiler:

I have to get the blue suns to side with me, and their leader is in jail, so I gotta convince her 2nd in command to take over

Anyway, I have to go to the Dock holding area to find the guy I need, but the game freezes up when I'm between levels, just a black screen (on PS3).. I can go to other levels just fine though. I'm gonna try and leave the citadel and go do a mission then try and come back I guess

I found a pretty annoying one on the mission where you have to rescue the female Krogan from Cerberus (on the Salarian planet). I was trying to get into a piece of cover, and actually wound up getting stuck in it. I just couldn't move at all, and had to restart the mission to fix it.

I'm honestly surprised that so many people don't like the gameplay. It didn't change all that much from 2, there's just more acrobatics and the ability to move around in cover. I'm not having any issues with it whatsoever, other than the odd moment where I hit the wrong button and accidentally step out of cover. What's the big deal with the gameplay that everyone's so mad about?

As for me, the issue is not that ME2's gameplay was wonderful and ME3 ruined it. It's that ME2's gameplay was fair to poor and none of ME3's improvements really address that.

The gameplay is fine for me, but I'm more in it for the story stuff anyway. I would have preferred a 1st person shooter kind of view though instead of 3rd. would be great if they could give you the option for both

Well my first reaction was the opening scene of Vancouver getting destroyed: What in the hell?! Don't they know only New York is supposed to get destroyed like that.