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Reply With QuoteIndeed.Originally Posted by Fragony
People who like to play games? I guess, yeah.
Indeed.
Eh, why not. I never did manage to use Sten effectively, anyway. In my first playthrough the idiot would charge in and die faster than a Christian baby parachute-dropped in the middle of a Roman Arena and in the second one I was a manly warrior myself, so I never needed him.
That's not to say I wouldn't expect Mass Effect to piss me off even more; I do recall that the only one time I tried to play the game I had to drop it, because expecting my brain-dead party members to cover my sniping ass proved consistently frustrating. And there was also a space-vehicle that controlled worse than an ice-skater suffering from Parkinsons somewhere there.
first thing I do in DragonAge: disable all tactic slots.
And yeah, you just mentioned the 2 biggest mistakes in ME overshadowing almost everything (apart from Shepard being the most unsympathetic and moronic hero of all time): party AI/control and the Mako Sequences.
the combat of DragonAge and NO stupid mako driving would have catapulted that game from OK to GOOD.
@mothra: Isn't Shepard's personality highly dependent on how you play him, combined with whether you've got a male or female Shepard (I'd imagine that a lot comes down to the voice actors)? What is it that makes him (or her) unsympathetic and moronic beyond the player's choices?
i played him as man + woman and they got exactly the same lines. they tried to make him a little han solo, a little schwarzenegger and that somewhat didn't fit if you tried to play the thinking, diplomatic and patient type. Also for the background he had and being that 100% soldier he is he sure was quick to hire anyone he stumbled across during his missions without precautions. I would have liked to be able to lie to or manipulate my mates as well, not only the wrex "decision".
I found the female Shepard's voice-acting much more engaging than the rather bland bloke.
Also, I got heavily into replaying this a few months back, and I discovered a resolution to a quest that was most satisfying that I'd never discovered before.
I actually got the administrator and the undercover cop to kill each other (the corporate planet where you confront the matriarch). Awesome solution for my renegade-hardass-bitch Shepard, and a piece of Bioware writing that actually surprised me for once.
Well she is voiced by Jennifer Hale and anything she does usually ends up being awesome(eg. MGS1,KOTOR1 and many many other games/animations). I have no idea who voice Male Sheppard but I know what you mean, he was pretty boring dialogue wise.
at least I have two eyebrows instead of an upper beard.
It's just a tiny thing, but Mass Effect's overlapping dialogues (if you click to proceed to the next bit of dialogue, the sound overlaps, so it sounds like one person is interrupting the other) made a huge difference for me in terms of how natural, and accordingly how credible, the voice acting felt. To my mind, Neverwinter Nights 2 is the worst offender in terms of stagy-sounding dialogue, because everyone gets these arch lines and waits patiently until the other person's finished their turn. Even with good voice actors the effect is often that of a really bad amateur play. I'm hoping to see more overlapping dialogues in other RPGs.
Neverwinter Nights 2 is the worst in everything. Total disgrace of a game compared to the first one.
I didn't like the first one either (at least as a single-player RPG - never played MP), but both NWN games had great expansions. Mask of the Betrayer was the best D&D RPG I'd played since Planescape Torment, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm playing Test Drive Unlimited, and it's amazing. Seriously, you should check it out. If you can buy it cheap (which I suspect you'll be able to), it might be worth it just to have a huge seamless island environment (Oahu) to drive around at your leisure, even if you were to complete ignore all the races and assignments that you can do.
Everything in the game seem to be incredibly well-integrated. Your winnings can buy you cars, upgrades, houses (which are modelled inside and out), and even outfits for your character. It's just a really impressive piece of work in general.
edit: I was just searching for other mentions of TDU here at TTLG, and Jason Moyer says that the dev team behind TDU also created the wonderful NFS Porsche Unleashed (aka Porsche 2000).
Last edited by Shadowcat; 17th Dec 2009 at 12:35.
I heard that it received a pretty bad port from 360.
Dang, Test Drive is still going? That sounds pretty sweet, Shadowcat.
Not any more. Atari sold off their European operations to Namco and are now headquartered in US, focusing primarily on MMOs these days. Alone in the Dark 2008 was their last major traditional title for the foreseeable future.
I dunno if I'd say it's still going. I think TDU was the last game in the series and it came out a few years ago. It's also far and away the best one, though. It has some issues (the roads are a little low-poly compared to the fidelity of the physics engine, which causes some weirdness on a few of the freeways) but it's probably the best CarPG ever made.
I played it offline, but the online aspect was almost universally praised. I'm not sure how big the userbase is now, but the online mode is exactly the same as the offline mode with the addition of other humans driving around the island at the same time, with the possibility of challenging them to duels around the island.
Edit: According to wikipedia, Eden Games is working on TDU2.
Last edited by Jason Moyer; 17th Dec 2009 at 13:51.
I don't know man, the first one was pretty amazing when it came out for the Amiga/C64 way back in the day. The second one was good too, but after that the series did gradually turn increasingly more shit with each new entry, untill TDU came out and blew everyone away by being not shit. It was, in fact, quite good.
I really should get my copy out and play it again.
Yeah the first 2-3 TDU games were great. Same with the first Need For Speed game. I never really understood why those series moved away from the sim-ish focus they had early on, because it just ended up creating a pile of shit games (NFS:PU aside) until they moved back to the sim-lite style with their most recent incarnations.
Um, what? Need for Speed (4): High Stakes pretty much was NFS3 SE, it had all the same tracks (in addition to a complete set of new ones) and expanded upon the foundations that NFS3 had established, eg the greatly improved Hot Pursuit mode. A visible damage model, polygonal driver cabs instead of 2D ones (the dashes actually lit up at night), a "campaign" mode, etc.
Added to which, Need for Speed: Most Wanted was great fun. Arcade doesn't automatically mean "pile of shit", just like simulation doesn't automatically mean "best thing since sliced bread, just with more controls and keyboard shortcuts".
This * infinity.
Also Most Wanted was pretty good, gameplay wise. The presentation was between "so bad it's good" (storyline, characters and cutscenes) to down-right horrible (THE MUSIC, FUCK ME. AFAIK, there's no mod tools to replace the tunes either. Also the general Pimp My Ride/Fast and Furious tone was pretty naff.).
Most Wanted was good. There aren't enough good police chases in modern arcade racers, imho.
I've had TDU on my shelf awaiting renewed effort for a few months now. I'm not usually into racing but I like the sandbox aspect, along with buying houses and fleets of cars.
I was disappointed though that the character customisation wouldn't let me recreate Jeremy Clarkson.
I have a very soft spot for High Stakes (used to play the shit out of it, one of my first PC games), but looking back, it probably didn't do as much as a new title after NFS3 should have.
Also, how come Hot Pursuit 2 never gets any love? I love this game.
So... it seems Mass Effect doesn't like my system (which is odd, because I had run this game before without any issues) and every few seconds it gives me a half a second freeze which is really, really annoying. It's not an issue with the graphics either, because I tried to lower everything and it didn't go away. Maybe I should roll back to an older version?
I refuse to play the game like this, though, so I guess I'll go for Witcher now, since last time I never got to finish it (HDD died and took the saves with it).
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