Any Mass Effect fans?

Yup; I just finished playing through ME1 again yesterday actually. I'm going to make a start on ME2 sometime soon.

I don't have ME3 because it's only available on Origin, and I'm not going there...

 

Mass Effect 3 was my favorite. Despite the terrible endings, I loved the game up until that point. It was an awesome blend of elements of the first and second games. The atmosphere just seemed refined. Mass Effect 2 was wonderful, though. The tension in that game was fantastic. It was just always there in the background, urging you forward. You felt like a clock was ticking.

The first game wasn't bad, but it feels that way when you contrast it against its sequels. It was long, but not for the right reasons. It's a game that can take 60+ hours to beat, but mostly because you're driving around barren wastelands for 40+ hours--if you're a completionist like me. I feel compelled to find everything in a game. I would enjoy the first game a lot more if there was a way to skip the Mako parts.

 

I just skipped them this time around; it is pretty boring. I did miss out on a lot of the sidequests though as a result and the game felt very short because of it.

 

I cried at least four times playing through ME3. Definitely the most powerful game emotionally, I think, except for the part where they dropped the ball entirely at the end.

Mass Effect was best in terms of atmosphere, though, I think. The Reapers were handled so much more amazingly, and the conversation with Sovereign on Virmire is probably one of my top five video game moments ever. Plus, everything has this much more mysterious/adventurous feel, in that you don't really know what's going on and you're just hurtling head-first into everything and picking up clues and pieces of what's going on and then suddenly OH GOD GIANT ROBOT SQUID CUTTLEFISH ATTACKING THE CITADEL! And as boring as the Mako stuff got after the tenth time, I did like it insofar as atmosphere went, because it reminded you that space is huge and bloody empty, which was a feeling that was lost in the latter games, especially ME3.

And for characters, it's some combination of ME2/3, just because there are so many awesome characters introduced and built up in ME2, but most of their storylines don't really play out until the third game, so it's hard to give this entirely to ME2.

Gameplay wise I never really found any of them super engaging, because shooter-style gameplay is rather boring to me, though I think each game was better play-wise than its predecessor in most ways.

 

I love the whole series.

 

I'm playing ME2 and it KEEPS CRASHING AT THE SAME SPOT.

 

What spot is it crashing?

 

It's not a perfect series, but the universe itself? Excuse the horrible pun, but oh my stars. I couldn't have imagined a more fully realized interstellar future. It's part of what inspired the feel for my work-in-progress space novel.

And not only is it realized, but it is so well explained with actual and theoretical science *(+10 nerd points for every codex entry read), it might as well be real already. One of my most enduring impossible fantasies is to stand on the bridge of a spacefaring warship, and until we figure out warp drives, I think ME is about as close as anyone's going to get.

 

Right near the start, at the end of the first mission where you are trying to save that Quarian and you first meet Tali. It finishes fine, then goes through the sequence where you see the new Normandy, and then crashes half way through the loading screen after that.

Never had this problem last time I was playing!

 

Hmm...

Try downloading the latest graphics drivers, uninstalling your old drivers, and installing the new drivers. Reboot. Then try again.

 

Nah it's very unlikely to be a graphics - it's crashing halfway through the loadscreen so it'll either be corrupted game asset files or a corrupted save. Steam is saying the game files are fine though... and I don't really want to try starting again just in case it doesn't work that time either.

 

Love the series, my sister and I have played through them several times. Wonderful characters, great plot, great character dynamics, great writing, great everything really. Awesome to play, best Sci Fi RPG action out there, as far as I am concerned.

Will always be my fave game series, I think. No other story lines out there can match up! In the third game we had gotten so invested in the characters and plot, so when the deaths started happen we ended up in tears the both of us! And damned, what an ending!

Brilliant, brilliant games. Oh, and the diversity of the classes you can pick and the different playing style you can end up with. I always ended up a Vanguard, smacking, punching kicking my way forward with my trusted shut gun and dart forward in a flash power. My sister on the other hand played as a kick ass biotic, using powers to smash stuff in her way. We had such a different playing style that when we switched for fun, I tried the biotic and she the vanguard, we just couldn`t do it, not on hard anyways. They`re really that different. Which I love. That they aren`t just variations of the same consept, but completely different classes that you have to play in a completely different way.

:eusa_clap

 

I can't think of any other game or series of games out there that gives the same kind of attachment as Mass Effect does. I actually cared about what happened to the characters and the gaming universe. I still remember the first time i played the collector base on ME2, i was actually shaking as i was making my choices. I was terrified that i would make the wrong choice and get someone killed. Turns out that sending Jacob down the tunnels wasn't a good idea haha.

I felt the same way during the conclusion of the Geth/Quarian war. I just sat there, shaking at the thought of what i was about to do. Luckily i'm a completionist and had full reputation and saved both races, but it was still a horrible moment just before i realised that i could save both.

One thing that has surprised me about ME fans, i read a statistic somewhere (could have been on EC) that 60 something % of people killed Wrex on Virmire! I just can't comprehend killing one of the best characters in the game! They must all be mad!

 

Yes, Vanguard makes for some very interesting gameplay when you're on Insanity difficulty... my strategy eventually devolved into "run around trying to avoid getting hit as much as possible, maneuver the enemy next to a ledge or walkway, and then ram them off". I was usually far to scared to actually go up and shoot them because pretty much anything will just kill you with as much as a look.

 

I've been playing ME3 on insanity for the first time and finding it surprisingly easy with my infiltrator *touch wood*. I've got my bonus power as flare, combine that with Liara's singularity and cloaked power bonus and it can take out huge groups instantly. I think if i didn't have the combo i'd find it incredibly difficult though :/

 

One thing I will say is that many of the aliens (Quarians, Drell, Asari) are un imaginatively humanoid to the point of being unrealistic and distracting, but otherwise I agree that the universe is one of a kind.