[PC/PS3/360/WiiU] Mass Effect 3

[Keroko]

Bweh? The entire game? The ending, sure, but Tuchanka was one of -if not the- biggest hallmarks of the whole trilogy. And Rannoch, while the conclusion doesn't quite catch up to Tuchanka's level for me, was also a treat to play.

[BetoJR]

Complain about the ending, by all means. But, please, don't lump the whole game with it.

[Keroko]

http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/04/mass...lc-discussion/

[Terrestrial Dream]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The entire game itself was rushed out the door. The only reason the combat and gameplay feels so solid is because it was already 75% complete since it was basically pulled from ME2 and then tweaked slightly.

But the story, the dialogue, the animations, the texture art, the other art assets, and even the voice acting all feels very slapdash.

I would not say that. Lets be honest Mass Effect 1 and 2 were not perfect games. There many glitches, and some bad animations especially in Mass Effect 1.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Bweh? The entire game? The ending, sure, but Tuchanka was one of -if not the- biggest hallmarks of the whole trilogy. And Rannoch, while the conclusion doesn't quite catch up to Tuchanka's level for me, was also a treat to play.

Originally Posted by BetoJR

Complain about the ending, by all means. But, please, don't lump the whole game with it.

Yep, no doubt the journey in Mass Effect 3 was great. The end of Tuchanka with Mordin is my favorite moment out of the entire franchise.
It really makes you wonder what has happened with the ending when the game overall had many great moments.

[Key Board]

they obviously ran out of time and had to run with what Casey Hudson had in mind

and no one bothered to challenge him

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Key Board

they obviously ran out of time and had to run with what Casey Hudson had in mind

and no one bothered to challenge him

This is what I'm saying.

Edit: ME3 is an awesome game up until the ending.

It was rushed, it's full of weird graphical glitches (disappearing hair in Javik's room lol), there are sometimes errors with importing savegames, ME1 facegens won't transfer to ME3 from ME2 if you didn't modify them, the voice acting isn't as good as ME2's, you don't get as much control over Shepard's dialogue as you did in the previous two games, the spacebar does too many god damn things, it crashed to desktop a few times (less than FONV but more than Skyrim did, and ME2 never crashed once), the digitized characters (especially Vega and IGN bitch) look Photoshopped in next to facegenned characters, and dynamic/smooth shadows look horrible for some reason.

Despite all of that, ME3 rocks. I marathoned the game in two days flat, in three separate sessions of continuous play totaling 28 hours from start to finish. I don't often do this with a game.

[Linkark07]

Yeah, from a gameplay view the game isn't even as good as ME2 and also ME1. Less sidequests, journal doesn't update, many glitches, less dialogue options, graphics are worse than ME2 and no hacking minigame nor explore planet minigame.

Sure, in some aspects it is better than ME2 but overall this is the worst game of the entire trilogy. It surprises me reviewers gave this game a 9 or even 10 considering how inferior this game is compared to 2 or even 1. A 7/10 in m books, 6 if it wasn't a Mass Effect game.

[Aqua Knight]

Yeah, after sometime when ur head cools down you begin to understand that 2 previous games, even ME 2 which I thought was inferior to ME3, look better and feel complete compared to this one.

[LoweGear]

Originally Posted by Linkark07

graphics are worse than ME2 and no hacking minigame nor explore planet minigame.

Now while I myself will agree with the previous points before that (not to the game's detriment in my opinion, but certainly aspects that can't be argued with), but I replayed the entirety of ME2 just immediately before I played ME3. And to my eyes, ME3 looks tons better than ME2. Before anyone tries to tell me about how ME3 "degraded" itself to using sprites... ME2 had them too (look at the people in the upper floors of Nos Astra... and tell me those don't look VERY BAD). I honestly cannot be convinced that ME2 looks better than ME3.

Also, the hacking and planet mining minigames were just padding that made the game unnecessarily longer than it should be, as much as I didn't mind them, though I don't miss them either.

ME3 basically takes the parts that ME2 did do right and focuses on them, which is why it feels "shorter". To me, it doesn't make the game feel "less complete" though. The story of intergalactic war already requires the story be streamlined so as to not break the flow of the story with sidequests more than they already had. It was okay in ME2 when you had all the time in the world to do sidequests, but I personally feel that having the majority of the sidequests be non-intrusive aids in the immersion, rather than against it.

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Originally Posted by Linkark07

Yeah, from a gameplay view the game isn't even as good as ME2 and also ME1. Less sidequests, journal doesn't update, many glitches, less dialogue options, graphics are worse than ME2 and no hacking minigame nor explore planet minigame.

Sure, in some aspects it is better than ME2 but overall this is the worst game of the entire trilogy. It surprises me reviewers gave this game a 9 or even 10 considering how inferior this game is compared to 2 or even 1. A 7/10 in m books, 6 if it wasn't a Mass Effect game.

Actually it makes sense to streamline the planet scanning as well as the mini-games.

Scanning every planet for resources got tedious after a few minutes.

Then having to do that mini-hack game also became tedious. You have no choice but to go through that path anyways so instead they replaced it with you just bypassing it automatically but leaving you vulnerable for a few seconds.

If it was like Deus Ex Human Revolution where you had an alternate path then it'd make sense to have those mini games but they don't.

[synaesthetic]

I was actually happy about the removal of the hacking and override minigames. They weren't very well-done or entertaining and just served to be a bump in the road. DXHR's hacking minigame was much more well-designed.

Graphically ME3 looks better than ME2 did, but the graphics are less polished and more glitchy. Hair going completely transparent when in areas of dense fog (like Javik's room on the Normandy) and weird animation glitches. But overall the game looks like an upgrade of ME2, which is exactly what it is.

It's not the same massive overhaul that took place between ME1 and ME2.

The journal really irritated me, though. And the glitches with sidequests, where you couldn't turn in and had to save, quit and reload in order to make them interactable.

[FlareKnight]

I didn't have a problem with the hacking mini-game from the second game. They weren't hard and at least made it seem like you were doing something to get what was inside. They took an even further step into lazy compared to the first game. Just click, wait a sec, and you've got it. Just odd that they joked about the medi-gel in the second game and made it even easier than that.

Don't mind the planning scanning being mostly gone. Though the journal was just terrible. So bad that I just stopped using it. Also it just got jarring at times when you'd expect some kind of conversation option to come up and yet the talk just continued. Probably tying into needing to get the game done as fast as possible so a need to minimize the amount of conversation choices given.

The game had some pretty epic feeling moments, but after that ending it really does all feel pointless. Feel bad for those other playthroughs of ME2 since those characters will never get a chance to do anything now.

[Alchemist007]

I bet ME4 is the plan. ME makes money, and EA likes money. Wouldn't be surprised is Shepard is canonically alive in that either.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

I thought ME 3 was supposed to be the end of the series. But then again when Halo was supposed to be finish it turned out that a new and exciting series was to be developed was.. Halo 4 - a totally 'new' series. So taking it like that ME4 might not involve Shepard, and could be a few hundred years into the future with a grittier galaxy as everyone tries to get back what they lost. Or a prequel, bitches love prequels.

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Except Halo had a proper ending. Both the Covenant and the Flood were defeated and Earth survived. There was closure there and we even had a glimpse of what would happen afterwards.

Mass Effect 3 had an ending that required tons of spectulation and apparently from what I heard that stargazer scene takes place 10,000 years afterwards (correct me if I'm wrong).

The ME universe could follow Halo in that you would have to deal with the galactic rebuilding as well as the tensions that would arise; ie Krogan, Vorcha, etc.

[Key Board]

ME3 is the end of Shepard's story

but the franchise can go without him

and it should. If he returns as the hero, it means that Bioware really doesn't have any artistic integrity, and it will hold back the franchise.

What ME4 needs is a new start, and a new direction. They shouldn't have to worry about importing save files from previous games.

[synaesthetic]

EA's not going to kill ME, it's a cash cow. My guess is the next game will be even more actiony, less RPG-y and have a standard FPS/TPS multiplayer component.

Dumbing down is fun and profitable!

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Missed the point, both series were supposedly ending yet because of their popularity they get a continuation. Not a bad thing per say, but when they say something is over it used to be you'd get a new IP, now it's all remakes/reboots/restarts/re*insert*. Nothing ends anymore, it's just dropped when the money stops coming.

ME RTS, rebuild the galaxy!

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

Missed the point, both series were supposedly ending yet because of their popularity they get a continuation. Not a bad thing per say, but when they say something is over it used to be you'd get a new IP, now it's all remakes/reboots/restarts/re*insert*. Nothing ends anymore, it's just dropped when the money stops coming.

ME RTS, rebuild the galaxy!

IP necromancy. Keep the zombie IP alive until it disintegrates into dust!

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by Key Board

ME3 is the end of Shepard's story

but the franchise can go without him

and it should. If he returns as the hero, it means that Bioware really doesn't have any artistic integrity, and it will hold back the franchise.

What ME4 needs is a new start, and a new direction. They shouldn't have to worry about importing save files from previous games.

I think with that ending Bioware sacrificed any claim to artistic integrity or just integrity in general .

It probably will continue in some form or another. Though thanks to the the Shepard trilogy being over they have no ability to lure me back in . Pretty much had to get this one to see how it turned out, but I'm in the clear.

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

EA's not going to kill ME, it's a cash cow. My guess is the next game will be even more actiony, less RPG-y and have a standard FPS/TPS multiplayer component.

Dumbing down is fun and profitable!

But aren't they killing it by making it into a cash cow? Well this is EA though, they have to keep pushing out games until people stop showing up and the series is left as an ugly corpse on the road.