Mass Effect PC

Post by **HereComesPete** » June 21st, 2008, 20:42

Right, I has just completed it. I didn't really drag my heels but I did do (I think) every mission. So the fact that KV finished it really quickly means he didn't play over half the game. Some of the side quests are really good and well worth it imo.

Things that bugged me -

- The sound, it was all over the place, maybe just a side effect of me being pikey and getting a cracked swept copy, maybe just the game on my system.

- The mako controls were okay, except when you ended up on a planet made of angles, the level designers for those planets need stabbing in the face. This anglage coupled with the sudden over/under steer of the mako made some ground missions a right pain in the arse.

- The shadow effects, both on characters and the world in general. They used a fancy multi-point light source system that sometimes spacks. When it works it looks purty, when it doesn't it's shit.

- Only 3 people in a team, as a soldier I never used the other fighter because it then meant being unable to open encrypted lock boxes or crashed probes. It should have just let me pay so I wasn't forced into taking non-fighters all the time. Granted I could have left the boxes un-opened, but that would annoy the fuck out of me, I like scavenging every single thing I can.

- Item limit of (editz for missing a number!!)150? Including the millions of shitty little armour/weapon upgrades? It's not on the 360 any more, I can hold more stuff kthnx.

- Sticking to fucking walls in a fight, I stay alive by moving about and being more accurate, getting killed by suddenly hugging a wall in front of a big angry robot is shit.

Things I liked -

- Everything else was really well done, you could do the main missions in any order, interspersed with side quests until you decided to move the plot forward.

- AI only broke for me a couple of times, most notably when the krogan stopped following me despite me pressing every command going, plus he then started to charge everything and use only his pistol. But otherwise they fight well, retreat and take cover and swap weapons appropriately. Well worked and seemingly simple, a good sign imo of good code.

- Voice acting, big names mixed with established voice actors, helped the immersion a lot.

- Getting the super ninja weaponry, I felt all special.

8/10

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 21st, 2008, 21:26

Nice, brief review. I like it. As an action game it would be good, but with the quality of the roleplay bits it's really boosting it for me. I love the big Krogan merc and his cynical attitude:

Spoiler:

Wrex wrote:Great. So now you got bugs writing songs about you.

Post by **FatherJack** » June 21st, 2008, 21:28

The non-pikey version is not without its bugs. I've had it crash a few times, had big spears of texture, the "textures visibly loading" problem from the 360 is present, but (obviously) faster and the shadows on the face look as if someone's doing shadow puppetry with the edge of a saw.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » June 21st, 2008, 22:02

HereComesPete wrote:- Item limit of 50? Including the millions of shitty little armour/weapon upgrades? It's not on the 360 any more, I can hold more stuff kthnx

Uhh... it's 450, isn't it? Four hundred and fifty. And I only ever hit the item limit once, and that was when I'd forgotten to sell my loot in like five missions in a row.

Edit: Actually thinking about it, 450 seems a bit too high. I certainly don't remember clicking through 450 items in a sell window when I finally sold it all. Maybe it was 150 or 250, but it definitely wasn't 50

I'm currently on my third playthrough. What's nice is that your achievements unlock bonus abilities for your following characters, as well as give slight buffs - so now I'm playing it on Insanity mode with a soldier, only the soldier has a bonus Throw ability and a 10% bonus to pretty much everything. Shit dies.

Post by **deject** » June 21st, 2008, 23:18

The limit for me was 150 items. The only annoying bit about that is there's no way to know how many you have, so you'll be deep in the middle of some planet with no way to sell of crap you don't want, and now you're forced to turn something you might actually want into omni-gel because the game won't let you not take the items. KOTOR let you not take items from a crate, so that you can't in Mass Effect is bizarre and and backwards.

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » June 22nd, 2008, 1:03

Item limit for me is 150 and it starts to warn me I'm close at 130. I have a problem with sound too, I put it up to a shit on board sound card screwing up the surround as I can hear all the ambient over the voices.

As for the 3 person team limit, yeah I've been using only the asari chick and the quarian only. Gives me a nice balance across the board.

How do you see your achievements? I've been looking for a way to view them as I see the flag saying I've been getting them.

And yeah, that Wrex quote is awesome.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » June 22nd, 2008, 1:06

Akiakaiu wrote:How do you see your achievements? I've been looking for a way to view them as I see the flag saying I've been getting them.

Main Menu -> Options, it's on top.

150 items, yeah. Seems reasonable. I don't usually have problems with inventory management in games, as I'm a bit obsessive about never carrying anything I don't need. It leads to situations like having 15/50 carryweight in STALKER and wondering why the hell people whine about 50 being too low.

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » June 22nd, 2008, 1:37

Shada wrote:I don't usually have problems with inventory management in games, as I'm a bit obsessive about never carrying anything I don't need.

I tend to do the opposite in most games, to the point where I won't use an item because I might need it later.

Killavodka · Post by **Killavodka** » June 22nd, 2008, 2:07

Wrex is awesome for multiple reasons. He can have heavy armour, use plenty of biotics and he makes a good meat shield because of his massive hit box. My team pretty much always consists of Wrex + Tali as a skilled technician is always handy :D

Post by **deject** » June 22nd, 2008, 2:14

I ended the game with more HP than Wrex. Just out of curiosity, which class did everyone pick the first time through? I went Infiltrator and chose the Commando specialist class.

Stoat wrote:I tend to do the opposite in most games, to the point where I won't use an item because I might need it later.

This is me. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I was pretty much always at 59.9/50kg. I'd always have at least 500 rounds for my main rifle, if not 1000+.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » June 22nd, 2008, 2:18

deject wrote:In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I was pretty much always at 59.9/50kg. I'd always have at least 500 rounds for my main rifle, if not 1000+.

Bah, where's the fun in that at all? You're meant to be a goddamn scavenger, man. You hurf around with a backpack full of ammo and it's little more than a slightly creepy run and gun shootan game.

For classes, I chose Infiltrator/Commando first like you, because I always pick the stealth/speed/sniper class for everything. Second playthrough was Vanguard/whatever got the Barrier boosting skills, third playthrough is Soldier/i have no idea because I'm not out of the Citadel yet.

Killavodka · Post by **Killavodka** » June 22nd, 2008, 5:12

First time: Soldier, was too busy going "OMG MUST STOP THE BAD GUY" to do the side quests hence the 14 hours thing.

Second time: Vanguard/Shock Trooper. This time I told Saren to take a break from the whole destroying the galaxy thing while I went exploring and doing mainly side quests. Quite amazed by the amount of voice acting, even for tiny side quests...

Post by **deject** » June 22nd, 2008, 5:19

Yeah I thought the voice acting was really good.

Killavodka · Post by **Killavodka** » June 22nd, 2008, 5:21

deject wrote:Yeah I thought the voice acting was really good.

Lip-sync and facial expressions weren't bad either.

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » June 22nd, 2008, 7:45

Thanks Shada, been looking for that for a bit now.

I went soldier/commando. Almost at the end, too bad it's 4am and I should et some sleep.

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 22nd, 2008, 9:09

I've gone soldier (I don't know what the second bit is), because I'm a meathead in combat and don't like to multitask. I've been taking Wrex and Garrus to give me a half decent Biotic/tech and combat mix, plus I love Wrex's dialogue and get a nice good cop/bad cop vibe off the pair.

I've been considering ditching them for specialist bio/tech roles though (Kaidan/Tali?) because they don't seem too effective in combat regardless. I think I'd miss Wrex though.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » June 22nd, 2008, 10:17

Dog Pants wrote:I've been considering ditching them for specialist bio/tech roles though (Kaidan/Tali?) because they don't seem too effective in combat regardless. I think I'd miss Wrex though.

None of the split classes are good in combat at first, especially if you have autolevelling on as they tend to evenly distribute points around - even putting points into weapons you may never intend for them to use. So by the time you're at 100% in assault rifles Wrex is still having trouble deciding if he wants to use a rifle or a shotgun and what biotics he should have.

I can't say much for the blue spiky headed alien girl (she's the specialist biotics - Kaidan is biotics/tech), but Tali seemed pretty terrible as a pure engineer class. She was always the first to die and did very little damage with her pistol - but she was useful later on when she gained robot hacking skills.

Post by **deject** » June 22nd, 2008, 16:35

Since I was a soldier/engineer mix, I tended not to use Garrus that much since we were so similar in skills. I found Ashley and Liara to be a great mix, as Liara's Biotic skills are immensely handy, and Ashley is tough as hell. Wrex also works well instead of Ashley. If you're a soldier having Liara and Tali works pretty well.

Post by **deject** » June 23rd, 2008, 5:22

Oh yeah I totally forgot to pass this along, but there's a tweak that mostly fixes the shadows.

Open Windows Explorer and browse to

Code: Select all

My Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect\Config\BIOEngine.ini

Open this file and do a search for:

Code: Select all

DepthBias=.012000

You'll find 2 of these. The first one seems to have no effect, but when you change the second one from .012000 to .030000, the shadows become much, much better. There's still some wonkyness, but it's nowhere near as bad.

Click for bigger:

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 23rd, 2008, 8:36

That looks very good. Also, kudos on such an ugly, grizzled looking Shepard.