X360 - New Mass effect Screenshots

[Jedite]

Originally Posted by Soygen

I'm almost 6 hours in. I am loving the dialogue, quests and GearsOfWars'ish combat. Framerate can really suck and there are a craploap of glitchy moments in the graphics. Really surprised how unpolished it seems in that regard.

System Maitenance is your friend.. Been playing the game for about 5hrs. Have hardly had any framerate issues.

What i mean by system maitenance is the nice little trick introduced in the Spring update to clear the entire 360 Harddrive cache, it does wonders for ME, friend of mine was getting some framerate issues, cleared the cache and now its running like butter.

To clear the system cache, go to the System Blade, then into Memory, there hit Y then XX LB RB XX. you will be prompted if you want to perform maitenance then just say yes, and vuala. The red hearing is that it wipes all game updates, but thats not a big issue, since they download lightning fast anyhow.

[Soriak]

That's cool - I didn't know that... it doesn't touch any saved games, right? And what about arcade games?

[meStevo]

Saves are fine, only annoyance is the larger game updates that can take a bit to redownload when Live is chugging.

[Sean]

11 hours 35 minutes played and I've not even done a single main storyline mission past leaving the Citadel.

[Ronne]

Originally Posted by Sean

11 hours 35 minutes played and I've not even done a single main storyline mission past leaving the Citadel.

So GOTY for sure then?

[Sean]

No. It's a good RPG with lots of playtime, but it's not *great* and has many obnoxious flaws.

[Sean]

Hrm, oops, I did say "Mass Effect is great" didn't I. I'll amend this a bit. Mass Effect is a great RPG, but it's not Game of the Year Great which is like a level of Super-Great.

[Zerai]

I've had more fun playing Mass Effect than any other game this year. Reminds me why I enjoy western rpgs 100x more than jrpgs.

But yeah, this game would be a million times better if I could install to HD. I have no framerate issues or anything like that. Just load times get annoying. When I get killed by doing something stupid, I get annoyed more at having to reload everything to get back there than I do about anything else, and that is a bad sign.

[Soygen]

Originally Posted by Jedite

System Maitenance is your friend.. Been playing the game for about 5hrs. Have hardly had any framerate issues.

What i mean by system maitenance is the nice little trick introduced in the Spring update to clear the entire 360 Harddrive cache, it does wonders for ME, friend of mine was getting some framerate issues, cleared the cache and now its running like butter.

To clear the system cache, go to the System Blade, then into Memory, there hit Y then XX LB RB XX. you will be prompted if you want to perform maitenance then just say yes, and vuala. The red hearing is that it wipes all game updates, but thats not a big issue, since they download lightning fast anyhow.

Cool. I'll give this a try, but I'm hardly the first person I have seen have framerate issues. As far as the glitches, in the very first mission, when you approach the beacon, the female characters model was going halfway through the floor throughout the entire end cutscene. Heh. Really enjoying the game despite any minor problems. and am already engrossed in the story.

[Coren]

Hehe it's really funny sometimes when you land on a planet for a storyline mission, and the textures on the characters take so long to load that it looks like your party is running around in their pajamas for near a minute. =)

[Warrik]

I wish you didnt have to press nad hold the RB and LB for changing weapons and/or abilities. You should click it once, make your choices, and click it again to exit.

[Soygen]

/agree Warrik. I much preferred KOTOR's pausing of the fighting/choosing/then unpausing. Not a huge deal, but something that kind of annoys me as well.

[nosf]

Finished it last night. Got the completionist achievement before finishing, and my heart sank because I knew there wasn't much Mass Effecty goodness left.

So like, mega spoilers and shit.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Played on normal. After getting Liara I basically ignored the plot and leveled to 40 something on sidequests and by the time I went back to the plot, I was just Billy Badass. I knocked out the rest of the missions in Noveria / Feroes / Virmire order with a minimum of sidequests. Right as I was about to jump to the final planet, 5th Fleet called me about some biotic terrorists, but I skipped that one. I'm curious how it doles out those "Soadso is calling about suchandsuch mission" just as you're about to use the Galaxy map.

I was using the Spectre weapons (3 slots!) at the end and had some "special" mods for armor and a few cold based mods for weapons that appeared to be special. Other than that, tungsten VI and VII I think, and stabilizers. Did anyone find better than that?

I managed to talk down Wrex on Virmire but I hear if you do things differently, Ashley shoots him in the throat and he dies gurgling on the beach, oh well - next time he dies! Can you get the genophage cure while in the base there? I killed some Krogan doctor, but that was the only reference to it that I saw.

In the end I talked Saren into shooting himself in the head, which was the best boss battle ever. Of course, his corpse got back up but just the same. I chose to end Sovereign rather than save the council. Anyone else choose differently?

I had promised myself I'd conk out at 12, but wound up finishing at 2 am, whereupon I immediately made a new guy who is going to be the biggest above the law prick to ever travel the galaxy.

[Qhue]

I havent finished it but I know that I'm going to replay it at least one more time because there seem to be some pretty big plot adjustments you can make via your actions and I'm dying to see more of them.

I personally really like the game but more importantly I'm in love with the Mass Effect universe. It has enough sci in it (real-honest-to-god astronomical details for random planetary system writeups) and such a rich backstory that I feel very much like I'm living a movie or some epic Babylon5ish series when I play it.

My only two gripes are the Mako levels as its just tedious trying to climb mostly but just barely not climbable mountains and the was the class combinations / plot are intertwined. For example there is one character in particular that I really dislike but which I feel compelled to take with me on missions because the way our skills complement each other and another character I really want to bring along but which I dont just because we have essentially the same skill set.


I'm a Star Wars fanboi for sure, but I'd much rather play a Mass Effect MMO that a KOTOR one

[nosf]

Spoilers, zomg and discussion of decisions affecting future installments.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

So I let the council die (stab me in the back will you?) and chose Anderson as the new council leader instead of the ambassador (stab me in the back will you?) but I have to wonder how these decisions will be handled in future games. Will they carry over, or will there be a "canonical" ending where player choices are moot, much like Mortal Kombat et cetera, where only one ending is the true ending. If so, by the time they hit the third game, there's gonna be one crazy ass diagram in their office on how the plot is laid out.

Hell, what are they going to do? Dialog for Ashley, Kaiden and Wrex even though 2/3rds of those people may or may not die in the first game?

The more I think about it, the more ambitious this game seems on their part.