What games are you currently playing?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Finished the original Mass Effect.

That took a lot of getting into before it became likable. The first five or six hours were so substandard that I'm amazed it eventually turned around when it did.

Ugly texture pops on a frequent basis, the Mako and exploration in general was a fucking chore, the original Citadel design was a confusing mess. ME2 is better by several miles, but Bioware really does need to look at some other long running franchises when it comes to exploration and discovery - I mean, Zelda, Metroid, Fallout and Elder Scrolls all make exploration exciting and fun with surprises all around - just take some fucking notes already! It doesn't have to be open world but it I do think it brings something important to RPGs all the same.

ME2 and 3 moving away from it and it is functional, even acceptable, but its chickening out, too.

MAKO could have worked if they had just done the following:

- Make it drive properly instead of a worse version of Halo's Warthog
- Make it not be one-shotted by Thrasher maw.
- Upgrades to drive it through shallow lava.
- Upgrades to weapons
- Obstacles for weapons to destroy
- Speed boosts to roadkill the rank-and-file enemy types
- An functional, intuitive map

I did Bring Down the Sky, but finding all three engineers was such a chore, gave up on finding the third one because I stopped caring. I saved a planet, what's one random engineer after that?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go tell every store on the Citadel that it is my favorite store..

[Kailea]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

had to get my Mech fix before Armored Core V comes.... playing Front Mission 4 and Front Mission Evolved, also got that broken CRT out of the arcade cab I was building, so I have started work on it again.

[Raydeus]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I guess Uncle Tasky was right about me liking the exact things people hated about the first ME. <_<;

[Taskmage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

The first mission was pretty good. The interlude on the Citadel was tedious as hell--most of my playthroughs die there. The three middle missions are ok, though I liked Noveria somewhat less. Imo, the game really hits its stride around Virmire. Virmire, Ilos and the return to the Citadel are worth slogging through the rest of the game for.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Note: ME1 only has texture pop-in if you play the sub-standard Xbox 360 version. The PC version runs fine (and doesn't have those ungodly long elevator rides either).

Just picked up my PS Vita, currently playing Super Stardust Delta (amazing) and Lumines (very, very good). The screen is smexy, the controls feel solid, but the price tag is pretty steep.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Note: ME1 only has texture pop-in if you play the sub-standard Xbox 360 version. The PC version runs fine (and doesn't have those ungodly long elevator rides either).

Can't blame sloppy code on hardware. Some of those elevators were also padded for "news" broadcasting flavor, not just loading times. I imagine that for the Citadel's pressidium it was also for dramatic effect. You know, because important people need to be waaaaaay over the other people.

ME does have some of the Metroid Prime-ish masked loading, but nothing was as ungodly as the PS3 version's load times of ME2, which was bad even with the install. I about fell asleep a few times just navigating the Normandy.

Oh, don't know if you knew this, but Vita cards run close to Class 4 SD card read/write speeds. Fun times, I can get a 16GB SD card for $20 at Radio Shack, the Vita equivelant runs you $59.99.

I'd say that was shameless, but EA actually managed to beat Sony at "new lows" with "From Ashes" for ME3 just this week.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Oh, don't know if you knew this, but Vita cards run close to Class 4 SD card read/write speeds. Oh, don't know if you knew this, but Vita cards run close to Class 4 SD card read/write speeds. Fun times, I can get a 16GB SD card for $20 at Radio Shack, the Vita equivelant runs you $59.99.

Source? That's pretty terrible. Hell, Newegg has Class 10 16GB SDHC's at $14 right now.

[Cheezeman3000]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I keep trying to get into the Mass Effect series as an RPG fan, but I just can't get past how much of a douche Shepard comes across as. His default even looks like a douche. I bought ME2 in anticipation of finally sitting down and playing enough of the series to get into it, and failed miserably. I guess that's just one popular series I will never end up playing through.

It almost seems like they're going for the football-loving college dorm student with the series, and I literally just can't connect to any of the characters. At all.

(edited because I initially blamed my dislike on the shooting aspects, but then I realized it's not that at all)

[Raydeus]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Oh, don't know if you knew this, but Vita cards run close to Class 4 SD card read/write speeds. Fun times, I can get a 16GB SD card for $20 at Radio Shack, the Vita equivelant runs you $59.99.

Does your "similar" memory card have an official Sonyâ„¢ logo in that expensive and exclusive white ink? No it doesn't!

So shut it and fork out those 40 bucks, nao!



Yeah, I don't think I'll buy a Vita. I just can't seem to get interested in the thing anymore. orz

[Nandito]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I keep trying to get into the Mass Effect series as an RPG fan, but I just can't get past how much of a douche Shepard comes across as. His default even looks like a douche. I bought ME2 in anticipation of finally sitting down and playing enough of the series to get into it, and failed miserably. I guess that's just one popular series I will never end up playing through.

It almost seems like they're going for the football-loving college dorm student with the series, and I literally just can't connect to any of the characters. At all.

(edited because I initially blamed my dislike on the shooting aspects, but then I realized it's not that at all)

But Tali is moe as fuck.

[cidbahamut]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Mother 1 is just not providing a fun experience for me. I think it's the level design, there just aren't enough distinguishing landmarks to navigate by when wandering around, so I constantly feel like I'm going to get lost and trapped outside of town. Also the interface/control scheme is pretty annoying. I know they only have four buttons to work with on the NES, but honestly it's just really poorly designed.

So I've given up and moved on to Earthbound, which has inherited some of the interface issues, but not enough of them to make it unpleasant. I'm having fun with it so far.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Source? That's pretty terrible. Hell, Newegg has Class 10 16GB SDHC's at $14 right now.

A fellow at Gamefaqs, among those that paid the price for earlier access, did the testing by measuring the time it took to move a comparable amount of data between the Vita and PC by way of the Sony media center and what a class 4 SD and class 10 SD could do. Vita cards classed at a class 2 write speed, which is the write speed for class 4 SD cards.

SD cards are marketed at read speeds and the write speed is usually half a read speed.

Thing is, games downloaded to a vita card seem to load even slower than that. Most demo kiosks run Uncharted off the game format, which is faster, but the Gravity Rush demo took a minute and a half to load from its own start up screen. I almost gave up and walked away before it finally loaded.

[Raydeus]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I keep trying to get into the Mass Effect series as an RPG fan, but I just can't get past how much of a douche Shepard comes across as. His default even looks like a douche. I bought ME2 in anticipation of finally sitting down and playing enough of the series to get into it, and failed miserably. I guess that's just one popular series I will never end up playing through.

Get the first game instead. I can't recommend 2 at all after playing it for some time, but I'm the weirdo that loves the MAKO missions and elevators in the first game. <_<;

But Tali is moe as fuck.

Enduring all of ME2 just to virtually get into Tali's pants just wasn't worth it for me. Even though she is obviously my favorite char.


But then again, that's what fan art is for.

[Cheezeman3000]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I just beat Zelda: Minish Cap for the first time yesterday, and wow, what an awesome game. I totally missed it first time around because it came out when I didn't have a working GBA system and I just never got to it... so when it came for free through the ambassador program, I was quite excited. One of my favorite Zeldas now.

Now I just gotta fuse all the remaining kinstones!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I keep trying to get into the Mass Effect series as an RPG fan, but I just can't get past how much of a douche Shepard comes across as. His default even looks like a douche. I bought ME2 in anticipation of finally sitting down and playing enough of the series to get into it, and failed miserably. I guess that's just one popular series I will never end up playing through.

There are some elements that transfer over from the first to second to third game based on what you chose in the first. As I said, the first six hours of the first ME are pretty terrible, but once you get past them its a bit more enjoyable.

Step 1: Make Female Shepard. Mine is a mature late 30s/early 40s redhead. The only mode Male Shepard has is sounding like a douche, FemShep feels more like she earned her place.
Step 2: Don't put much stock into your paragon or renegade ratings, just do what feels right at the time
Step 3: In ME2 do planet scanning early so you don't have to deal with all the boring scanning later. In ME1, skip MAKO bullshit whenever you can.
Step 4: Talk to the people you like, ignore the people you don't need to talk to.
Step 5; Let the people you really don't like die if there's a story option for that. I let Ashley die, but kept Wrex. Pretty much the same thing for ME2.
Step 6: Other pivotal choices? Same thing.

It almost seems like they're going for the football-loving college dorm student with the series, and I literally just can't connect to any of the characters. At all.

I only get that feeling about them when they're forcing ME2's approach onto Dragon Age 2. The way I see it, its a sci-fi game and things have room to be more streamlined because of scientific advancement. A fantasy game is supposed to be dealing with more crude elements, though, and for all of Skyrim's accessible elements, there's just tons and tons of crude, convoluted little things to do that make it feel like you're living in a older fantasy age full of magic, which is how Dragon Age should do things as well.

Characters like Mordin, Wrex, Liara, Samara, Garrus, Tali, Grunt and Jack are all characters I find highly likeable, its just a shame that due to the structure of the game - and ME2's core mission being a factor - that they don't get the layers that characters from Dragon Age: Origin or Knights of the Old Republic did nor do you get the whole sense of an angel or a devil hovering over your shoulder because Bioware feels the need to make the protagonists talk now. I like Morrigan and Alllistair acting as as my character's conscious better than having a lead that takes up screen with talking and gives them less room for talking.

I kind of look at Mass Effect the same way I do Kingdom Hearts - there's just a lot of story-based wank in these games, but they can be endured to get to their better better moments. I think Bioware has a ton of room to improve, its just they're now faced with EA's deadlines and have to have a game every year. This is what's forcing their design choices, the streamlining, the more action based direction. its only worked for Mass Effect because it was planned as a trilogy, its not something you could succeed with a stand-alone game on and its not working for Dragon Age. Some games just need more time in the oven and EA does not undrstand that.

They need someone like a Todd Howard or Sakaguchi that's going to put his foot down and say "I need three of four years to make this" or "No, I'm not going to put multiplayer into this or shoehorn this IP into an MMORPG." Bioware does not have those people with that kind of restraint.