The Gaming Den

I have very complex feelings on Mass Effect 3.

On the one hand, the only part of the story I really liked was curing the genophage. There were individual character moments I liked, but on the whole...

On the other hand, I genuinely think they got the combat right. They had a huge number of guns which had unusual features/firing patterns, and power-heavy classes went from being the Master Race in ME1, to gimped thanks to all protection nulling all powers in ME2, and then they seem to have hit a happy middle for me, and added things like armor-piercing ammo shooting through cover.

I spent months playing the multiplayer, and enjoyed the license to experiment and find new approaches. It greatly improved my singleplayer game.

But I have to call it overrated.

Other overrated games: Dead Space, Halo, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dragon Age...

The multiplayer in ME3 is quite fun, I'll definitely agree with you there.

I thought it was kind of strange that they explained why it is the Human Reaper was a giant human, but then all the invading Reapers looked identical.

I think even the core of Mass Effect 3's story is clunkier than 1's and 2's, but it's hard for me to get mad at ME3 for that since none of the three remotely fit together, and honestly it's not all that clear that the Crucible/Star Child shit in 3 was that much stupider than the Cerberus shit or the Human Reaper shit in 2. But ever since the end of Mass Effect 1, where we were told simultaneously that a single Reaper is individually about as powerful as the entirety of galactic civilization's massed military might and also that there are untold millions more Reapers waiting to invade, they'd made a bullshit unsatisfying resolution all but impossible. So then in Mass Effect 2 you do a ton of stuff that amounts to doing nothing whatsoever, but you do it for terrorists for some reason, and they hint that dark energy and exploding stars are gonna be a big deal. And then they change their mind, and everything's really about biotic/synthetic tensions.

Agreed that the combat in 3 was really great. If only there had been a few more kinds of enemies to fight.

ETA: I consider both Fallout 3 and New Vegas to be garbage, and the works of Obsidian in general are wildly overpraised. After the fourth different publisher under which they release a shoddily-designed bug-riddled mess of a game, you have to wonder if "The publishers rushed them and forced them to put out a crappy game!" is really the best explanation.

I don't like Fallout, but I can see why people do. I enjoy Skyrim, but don't think it's the GREATEST THING EVAR.

Skyrim was hamstrung by an underlying engine that has not aged well at all. I'm not talking about the graphical engine, but rather the game engine itself. It was so simple and limited that doing things that should be basic functionality required kludges.

I really don't care that much about buggy games. Obviously straight CTDs need to be fixed and Obsidian always has a few of those, but most bugs don't bother me that much.

Weirdly, I've never had a ctd with an obsidian game.

John Magnum wrote:And then they change their mind, and everything's really about biotic/synthetic tensions.

They didn't change their mind - the plot writer (Drew Karpyshyn) jumped the ship, and all plot threads made by him were abandoned. I like Karpyshyn, and I consider Darth Bane thrilogy to be the only good SW books, so I believe that he could have made a decent ending.

So how do you guys feel about the bald tattoo'd prison lady who wears a belt bra and is super tough but got gang raped in prison and you have the option of giving her sexual healing. Is she a well developed character?


Garrus is cool as fuck though, he's got Phoenix Wright hair. I'd play a game that was just The Garrus Adventures

Aside from the sexual healing thing, which I never did, I liked Jack's overall story. Her loyalty mission is quite solid. However, I do wish you could make her put on a shirt.

Meh, the only character introduced in ME2 who was worth a damn was the salarian.

I thought ME2's characters were okay, but the second round of ally-gathering was just placed too late in the game. Especially Legion, but who honestly starts using Samara or Thane after they've already got their groove on with whatever away team they've been using previously? It feels like they needed to get your team together much earlier, and then have actual big chunks of content after you have your entire crew so you can get to know them and do stuff with them. As it was, unless I recruited a character asap I only ever interacted with them on the recruitment mission and the loyalty mission.

You could sort of argue that ME2 works as a game that's nothing but the putting your team together phase of the story, except it's the second game of three and you replace half of them in 3 anyway.

The ally gathering was originally meant to be a lot more free-form, with you doing stuff like Horizon and the Collector ship after gathering X number of allies.

But then they found out they couldn't fit it all on one disc so they had to split the allies into two groups for the consoles and kept the same structure on the PC.

I liked Mordin, Garrus, Legion...Jack was a nice character in that there was more than one way for you to help her get her life together. Her as a teacher in ME3 was one of those character moments I liked.

name_here wrote:Aside from the sexual healing thing, which I never did, I liked Jack's overall story. Her loyalty mission is quite solid. However, I do wish you could make her put on a shirt.

Once you complete her loyalty mission, you can switch her to her alternate costume, which does, in fact, include a shirt.

So you can make her put on a shirt, but only after the point when you'll never bring her on another away mission.

Seems like ME2 would have benefited from more ME1 style identical merc base missions on planets, in that regard.

Maxus wrote:Other overrated games: Dead Space, Halo, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dragon Age...

Why do you think Deus Ex:HR is overrated?

It didn't have as much as I'd like it to. I heard plenty of hype, even got the game...but didn't like a lot of what happened. Both combat and stealthy felt clunky, and the ability to gimp yourself with the wrong powers...

That said, I did like a lot of the tech and the first Chinese section of the game was just solid awesome.

Meikle641 wrote:Seems like ME2 would have benefited from more ME1 style identical merc base missions on planets, in that regard.

What it would really have benefited more from is more main plot missions. There are seriously exactly four main plot missions after you get out of tutorial land, and one of them is the gate to getting the second set of recruitment missions. It gives the whole thing a somewhat disjointed feeling, because almost all your missions are recruitment or loyalty missions.

Hard to get a definite list of the best games ever. I've had fun with Tetris and Doom, been moved to tears by Dreamfall and had my mind crushed by Pathologic, but they're all completely different experiences.

I don't think any game left me with complete satisfaction and made me think "this is a masterpiece". There was always some lack in gameplay, story or storytelling.

Been playing Super Robot Wars: Original Generation.

The series as a whole is a strategy RPG of giant robots from various different anime, but OG is only characters and mechs native to the series. The others don't have official English releases because that requires the agreement of everyone with licensing rights in the US, and one of the series is Macross, so Harmony Gold wouldn't sign on because they convert hate into money or something, plus sometime in the last decade the ridiculous Robotech legal tangle got even stupider and I don't know if anyone is actually sure who would have the rights to it anymore. They don't have many unoffical English releases because my god is there a lot of talking in this game.

Anyhow, the game itself is pretty fun, although the interface could use some work and the story has some irritating habits. You get a couple warships, plus mechs and pilots. The capital ships are really tough and have fairly powerful guns, but they don't have any good weapons to use after moving, are somewhat inaccurate, and cannot dodge. Still, they're really pretty useful. The mechs all have a bunch of weapons of varying ranges, damage, and ammo count, and can be refitted or upgraded as well as having slots for adding parts with special effects. And many of them can transform or fly. There are also planes, but they are made of paper and poorly armed. Pilots have stats, passive specials, and activated abilities and get XP and skill points. Those are on separate tracks, with XP upgrading base stats and skills as well as unlocking triggered abilities while you can spend the skill points on extra stats or on either getting new passives or upgrading existing ones. The triggered abilities take varying amounts of Spirit Points, with costs assigned on a per-character basis. These points are non-regenerating without shelling out a bunch of skill points. They do all kinds of crap and the pricing at least vaguely conforms to how useful they are to the character in question; for instance warships pay out the ass for auto-hit or bonus range. I really like the variety in mechs and pilot abilities, although the skills are a bit costly.

My main gripe with the underlying gameplay is the interface. You can't view skill descriptions in battle, you can only check what activated abilities someone has by going to the menu to use them that you can only access before moving, and there are some specials associated with specific mechs that I haven't located descriptions for at all. For instance, my flagship, Hiryu Custom, has an ability called E-field, which expends energy to reduce incoming damage by some amount under some condition. I would absolutely love to know either of those facts, especially when going up against bosses with the same ability. Also, some attacks can't be fired after moving and you don't seem to be able to check which in battle except by moving and seeing if you can use them. Finally, it's annoyingly inconvenient to find out who is in which mech, although honestly I hardly ever move people between mechs.

The campaign structure is sometimes kind of a dick, with guys vanishing off into the ether with their mechs for an annoyingly long time. And it'll sometimes force-deploy people in their personal mechs. Also, every damn mission has sudden enemy reinforcements at arbitrary locations at least once, with an annoying habit of triggering halfway through your turn. Happily, the way I've been spending my points gathering everyone into a giant blob around the flagship is an optimal strategy.

The story is, well, about what you might expect from a series that started as a huge mashup of characters from hot-blooded giant robot anime. You fight a bunch of different groups for various stupid reasons and overcome superior odds through guts. However, I am totally in love with the characters. They're so gloriously silly. Sangar Zonvolt, The Sword That Smites Evil, is in fierce competition with the cheery unprofessional sniper lady for having the best battle quotes, and the others aren't bad either. The main character serves as a wonderful straight man by being a totally stoic hardass.

Unfortunately, it has a bad habit of recurring bosses overstaying their welcome. Most of them reoccur at least three times, and the way the game is structured actively works to make that extra infuriating. Mechanically, the bosses aren't particularly interesting or distinctive; they're just normal units with very high stats and occasional irritating special abilities, so a repeat boss doesn't mean an interesting special mechanic returning. Also, they frequently withdraw at partial health so you don't get a kill credit. The story sucks all the potential fun out of facing an entertaining character repeatedly because you want them to hurry up and defect already.

Also, at the point I'm at in the story, it seems to have developed an annoying habit of getting female characters kidnapped. It's happened three times in a short period now, and has begun to grate. The funny thing is, it actually doesn't feel like it carries the inherent assumption that players will care more about a female character getting kidnapped and yet that actually makes it more annoying. They're fun characters to have around and two of them were very effective combatants.

I'm playing Might and Magic X currently. It's pretty cool - it's challenging at first, which has become a rarity in modern games, the magic is fun, the dungeons are mostly fun. There are a few things that could have been better - travel is slow, so something like a scroll of town portal would be nice, Dark and Light magic are a must - you can't find secrets and traps without them. Also the quests are a bit confusing - I'm way overleveled right now, because I didn't know where to go and spent last ten hours wandering in high level areas.

MaM X has became the second game this year I've dropped without finishing

EDIT: third, actually. Forgot the Banner Saga.

So apparently EVE had an apocolyptic fight, with the highest number of Titans lost in a single engagement (74, the previous record having been 12). It was a brutal slugfest lasting over twelve hours and costing the equivelent of ~$300,000 worth of ships. What caused this? Well, apparently in EVE you need to pay upkeep to retain control over your systems, and someone forgot to pay the bill. So the primary staging ground in an ongoing war suddenly went uncontrolled.

EVE sounds boring to play but is hilariously awesome to read about.

EVE players are weird. It's like they have a second job or something, except it's in the Matrix.