Last game you finished, tell us about it

Bioshock 2

Never completed this one before, though I got more than halfway on my first try back around release. Not sure why I didn't go all the way, but I guess I was just bored with the style and setting.

After Bioshock Infinite, I felt the need for more Bioshock - so I decided to replay it.

It was surprisingly enjoyable - and though the premise is significantly less powerful - and the story quite straightforward, the actual gameplay is an improvement over the original Bioshock. You can dual wield plasmids and weapons now - which makes it more flexible and you have some new toys available - like the delightful speargun.

Anyway, it's pretty much more of the same - but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

One thing I will say, though, is that the visuals have not aged well - considering that it's only 4 years old. Bioshock Infinite has, pardon the pun, infinitely more detail when it comes to textures and it's just a much prettier game.

But, overall, it's a quality experience that shouldn't be missed by fans of the Shock games.

7/10
 
Well, I tried Heroes of Might and Magic II and it turned out to be even more bullshit than the first game.

So I moved quickly onto Heroes of Might and Magic III. Which turned out to be yet more bullshit.

This isn't because I was bad at the game, in both cases I topped the leader-board with my first game.

It's just that its all just so much more of the same old same old repeated ad-infinitum. It doesn't matter what the quest is or what the game's telling you you're supposed to do, it's all just 'all your bases are belong to us' repeated over and over again.

The various sequels add depth to plot and add variety to monsters and spells, but none of them address the main problems with the game. Pretty much like most cash-hungry game developers, the looks get improved but all the important problems just get repeated from sequel to sequel.

The game claims you are playing on an level playing field, but, somehow, every castle you take has a level 5 mage tower jam packed with all the best offensive spells and top-rated monster buildings while you are struggling to get your mage tower to level two and, even if you do, you get the lowest and most useless spells.

You start with one castle and if you try and build a second one quickly then the cash and resources slow you down to a crawl while the AI seems to be able to knock them up in a jiffy by the hundreds. You can defeat every AI army really quickly and take all but their last castle and they'll still be cranking out Heroes every turn and buying every monster available with nary an indication that they are low on money.

You live in an eternal detritus of 'fog of war' while the AI knows exactly when you are one tenth of a movement point too far from your castle to protect it by the 7th day. The AI will always attack just before the 7th day, even if it's a suicide run, just to waste a few of your monsters and prevent you from performing any kind of interesting build-up. If desperate, the AI will just launch zero heroes at you, cast some ridiculously over-powered spell at you then 'run away' (suicide bombing).

The AI will always have better Artifacts so you never get any kind of feeling of progress until you've beaten the 'big' army and then the game is just pointless 'going through the motions' - akin to one-shot boss mechanics in grinding aRPG games - all crap apart from that one army which is ridiculously OP as an excuse for genuine challenge.

Archers are always targeted first and the AI will spam 'Blind' on any slow-moving heavy hitters. You can lose 60 Archers without having any other significant casualties the entire game simply by attacking a couple of castles, because the bombard defences always fire first and always target archers. If you defend your archers in non-castle combat then the AI just casts AOE spells at the archer's area instead. No big issue, just repetative and irritating knowing an archer stack has limited 'time' and you always end up with an army with 57 Ents (3 dead) and no archers (103 dead), very symmetrically displeasing.

And the goodies are always a distraction rather than a goal. Often you find yourself taking out all the AI castles and then going around collecting all the loot, not because it has any use any longer, but because its there and its what you wanted to do in the first place, had it not been for all those 'irritating' enemy heroes squatting near your castle every 7th day. If an AI is about to lose, bereft of any castles, it will run around stealing all your mines, not because it has any use for them any longer, but just because its programmed to be as annoying as possible.

I'm not surprised this series has different people claiming different editions are 'the best' and the rest are so-so, because every game is exactly the same and if, like me, you try to play more than one then whichever one you played first will always 'seem' like the 'best', because there's nowhere for the game to go after you've fully beaten one version, it's all just more of the same in a different setting.

While the third game made more of an effort to expand on it's 'story', none of it made any sense or provided any genuine questing and was therefore just some bullshit you had to listen to before claiming "all your bases are belong to us", to which I found the first in the series more varied in the campaign setting even though it had virtually zero story bullshit, simply because the scenarios were at least trying to be vaguely different (in the last scenario, for example, you couldn't actually defeat all the bases, if you tried then all the 3 AI's just ganged up on you and slaughtered you - if you deviated from the goal then the game said 'no' you can't do that) which I thought was horse-shit at the time, but compared to just relentless base-owning it seems, in retrospect, like a paragon of variety.

Without even playing parts IV and V I'll score the series as follows:

1st one you play - 7/10
2nd one you play - 6/10
3rd one you play - 5/10
4th one you play - 4/10
5th one you play - 3/10

In any edition order you like really.

(assuming you play them soon after each other and don't have a multi-year gap between releases like the original fans).

It would have been nice if there was even just the slightest hint of variety, like a setting where you start with X amount of troops and have to 'run a gauntlet' with them, or have another AI actually on your side versus two evil AI's, or a quest where you get no personal castle and no fog of war and you have to just get from neutral castle to neutral castle without getting yourself cornered by the 'big boss', making loot a more important aspect of the scenario etc etc etc - now THAT'S campaign variety…
 
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Feb 10, 2014
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372
I played homm3 for a long time, but never finished the campaign.
I think the scenarios are more fun...
I used to play games with friends against the AI, or with AI against friends, or with AI against AI ...
I enjoy having allies.

Some of the scenarios are quite good.
 
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Location
Manchester, United Kingdom
I can see why III often gets better praise than most (aside from it's date of release), because it really does look like the best game. It's only by playing the first two first though that you realise that the looks are just a standard facade for the same game repeated.

I am being a tad over-brutal on III however, as III did at least bring about one single change which made a huge difference to playability - the lock and key tents. Neither one or two had these and I've no doubt these tents were implemented as a result of complaints and issues revolving around the relentless nature of AI Hero irritation methods.

These tents at least provided sections within scenarios where certain AI troops weren't allowed entry to, thereby permitting you a phase of 'secure' build-up and exploration without having to worry about the 7th day castle-attack issue. While they made heavy use of this new feature, it was never used to make more variety, just to help segregate sections of the map and to provide an alternative to digging and totems to find crucial artifacts.

An amusing example of it's failed use was in the first quest of the second campaign, where your area and the first enemy area was sectioned off from the next stage in the quest. Excellent, I thought, just take my time and build an uber army... to which the screen then starts screaming at me: "You're taking too long, if you don't finish this scenario soon the world will end!" - which turned out to be more complete bullshit as I could take as long as I wanted - because the same bullshit had earlier stated that I was allowed to take three hero's to the next campaign at level 10.

By the time the first message had appeared I had one Hero at level 9 and two at level 1. Fuck this bullshit, I thought, and just stayed on the level milking the last castle's never-ending hero supply until I had Heroes at 10 10 9 (I was just way too bored to wait for that last extra level!) which took a good 30 or so more messages telling me to "hurry up or the world's going to end"... LOL
 
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Feb 10, 2014
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372
Mass Effect

The first one, expect a post for sequels soon.

Bioware (EA) decided to go MMO with SW movie2game products and they needed to create a sci fi world of their own. Because of that, ME looks as upgraded kotor 1&2 as many ideas from there were reused, but while playing the game you'll discover so many things different from SW predecessors.

You probably all played ME so there is no reason to describe what was fun to me, what is not fun and etc. Different tastes, different outcomes. Some hated Mako, I loved it. Some adored repetitive bases and ships interiors, I was disappointed seeing so much of reused content. Etc. So I'll skip numbering those things as in the end we can probably all agree that the blend of shooter and RPG was done very good.

After so many years, a gamecrashing bug is still in. If you try to quicksave while running (Shift+W), the game will crash in 99% cases. And that's the only real bug in it. Yes, there are things like sometimes displayed getting +3653537 instead of +0 cash when you reached the cap of 10 millions, but it'd be nonconstructive nitpicking.

I'll concenrate on some writing "issues" instead.

While the world, the story, the setting, the chatter and everything is very interesting - the bloody scriptwriters forgot the most important thing. Humor. In just a few cases you will snicker. Laugh? Never. Okay, maybe all those aliens are nonhumorous species, but you're not seeing and talking only with aliens!

There is no explanation of Thresher Maw NONpresence all around the galaxy. The species can spread on so many different worlds by spores - that can survive on or within spaceships. However, you can't see a thresher maw on worlds where space travel happens frequently, it's possible to find one only where spaceships land sporadically. What, they can't stand heavy traffic or something? Yet, that species can adapt to different hazardous environments and can survive virtually anything. Just forget to see or hear about one on heavy populated planets. Maybe this oddity will be explained in sequels (of course it won't).

Your ship has different kind of scanners and probes. And you land on some moons and planets just to find out that no matter how sophisticated your probes are, still can't detect a concentrated presence of minerals. You have to drive around and stumble upon a good mining place. What kid of idiotic design is that? While I loved Mako bumping around, I was really annoyed with not-already-on-the-map searching for minerals.

The game ends by seeing one Reaper being so unbelievably strong it needed the complete alliance fleet to bring it down. And it's just one, what will happen when a fleet of those comes which will happen sooner or later?
And what's the deal with the choice where you, a starship captain, have to choose who will be earth councilor? And if that's not idiotic enough, you can choose between only two possible NPCs. ME *is* the game of choices, almost everything you do will affect things in ME2 and/or ME3, but some things, like this one with the councilor, were too much.


Finally, unskippable few words about ME DLC. There are two:
Pinnacle Station - a grinder type of missions with no real story that in the end sells you the best items for cheap and turns the highest difficulty to easy. If you never bought it and plan to replay Mass Effect, do not buy it even now. It's wasted money.
Bring down the sky - not only it has a great story and fresh type of opponents, but you get a nice reward (one!) in the end, some more lore is introduced, and if you save certain people in the long run you'll receive their help back. And it's free on PC! A musthave. Oh and… For those nitpickers about voiceovers… Shepard's actor had cold which you can tell from his voice in this DLC. So what?

Any type of player can enjoy this game. Some will wish more of RPGness in it, some would want more shooting and some would probably adore if the whole game was made as Need for Mako Speed. But what it delivers is about 40 hours of pure fun.
And what a game with just a few questionable things, with so much fun deserves? A huge recommendation (free DLC included in it):
9/10

What a overpriced (5 dollars) DLC Pinnacle Station that brings nothing to the game deserves?
A sticker "Skip it" and:
0/10

——
* If anyone is interested, I can upload my ME end savegame with all choices that matter (that bring war assets in ME3). Or wait some more for ME2 savegame that includes choices from both two games.
 
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NWN - HotU

Finished HotU last night for the first time. I enjoyed it a lot :)

In my previous playthroughs I hated undermountain. This time though, I didn't mind it so much. I think people who love dungeon crawl will enjoy this part of the game. For me, it was a bit too much. Part of the reason was me being greedy - I'm completionist, so I wanted to explore whole area and get every single loot possible. This time though, I decided to be sensible and get to chapter 2 as soon as possible. I can't really use much of items I get anyway, being a mage without weapon specialisation and all. Oh, and Halastar is pretty cool :)

(Even though he puts geas on me, I still think he's awesome! Crazy evil mage guy)

For me, chapter 2 was most enjoyable. I finally get companions who talks to share their story with me, plus, this part really reminded me of BG2 underdark (you all know how much I love BG2). Even though I'm not a big fan of exploration, I felt HotU areas are really too small! Also wish there were more dialogues between PC/NPC and NPC/NPC…. but I guess this is an expansion, not a full game. The thing that annoyed me the most was dialogue scripts not firing due to bugs. I wanted to see Valen romance then I realised in chapter 3 it isn't going to happen because of the dialogues I've missed out because of bugs!! So I had to install bugfixes and start the chapter 2 again, which meant… I LOSE DEEKIN!!!!! :( :( :( At least I didn't have to feel guilty of seeing Deekin on the floor anymore. Deekin is so cute :D Especially when you ask him to be a Dragon Disciple and he gets little wings. Makes me laugh everytime he runs up to an enemy and breathe fire out.

I'm not sure how I feel about chapter 3.

It was full of annoying puzzles I disliked and I kept losing my spells because of constant and necessary item swaps which really pissed me off. But I immensely enjoyed the part where you get to learn everyone's true name and helping/abusing others :biggrin:

Might do a replay once I finally (one day…) finish all my backlogs :) I would give it 8/10!
 
Mass Effect 2

Everything is already said in other posts about this game? I'll try not to repeat things. Just try.
ME2, and I don't care if you disagree, is a story driven shooter with RPG elements. Unlike it's predecessor.
Probably someone thought it's fun to see choices and consequences added to a shooter and also to spice things up with skill unlockings.
I said in another thread this should be called an action RPG genre, but that title was stolen by grinders already. And ME2 is not a grinder, enemies don't respawn endlessly.
But then there is a problem. The game is not only action, RPG and story - there is a cow clicker phonegame included. And it's so unbelievably bad that if they didn't fire QA back then, they should do it now. What moron blessed adding that mineral mining crap into the game? Sure, you don't have to mine (in fact probe) on many planets, but a player who just started doesn't know how much minerals is enough to get all possible upgrades through research.

There are some problems, not big ones, but it's odd they didn't sort those. When you sprint, you can't move to a side and it's possible you get stuck on an obstacle which in some cases means - you're dead. If you pick 1st aid but the capacity was full, you should get +100 credits but in fact you get nada. Exploration turned into a bad kill hostiles then pixelhunt for items.

It's nothing serious in the end. The huge problem is bloody Origin malware. You can't start the game until it connects to whatever EA server. Yes, you can turn this off in options but sorry, I'm already connected to Origin, what another server I need more? Suddenly uPlay doesn't loook so bad.

Anoter thing to dislike: Mako is removed from the game, and there are no numerous Thresher Maws to seek&destroy on planets… :(

On a positive side writing got better than in ME1 although not completely (37 millions old reaper wreckage still working and still not looted? puh-lease) and the game is full of humor. You also get to play as Normandy pilot! Sadly… You'll just walk around as him, won't drive Normandy. :(

The game is fun. But it's simply not as fun as ME1 - I could replay ME1 any day, but not ME2. And while writing got better, everything else went down. Sorry, but this is just a little above average thing.

6/10


Maybe I should go lower than that because of rotten EA. How can they always pull through I can't understand. EA does stuff that make you sick and if they don't stop it, sooner or later the audience will follow GG's example and stop buying EA games.

This is a true story and tell me you're not disgusted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjDt3N9H210
So for you Mass Effect 2 Fans here is perhaps one of the oddest "making of stories" you will hear. This track "Lo Fi Epic" was actually composed for the EA Sports Arena Football game in February of 2006 but never saw the light of day, hitting the cutting room floor after a producer nixed it for being "Too Techno" . The track went into the music archives and lived on the main server network for years.

Fast forward to 2010 when I was sitting down with my new copy of Mass Effect 2. I am a huge Mass Effect fan, I had played through version 1 many times. So one can only imagine my reaction when I walked into the lower level of "Club Afterlife" and heard this track… At first I said "hummm that sounds very familiar" then it hit me "Holy crap I wrote that!".

Sadly I was not credited in the game for this piece of music but neither was:

Saki Kaskas - Callista - Upper Club Afterlife (Originally used in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit)

John Morgan - Happiness - Dark Star Lounge

Comaduster - To Hide To Seek - Eternity Bar

This story got even crazier when I Googled the name of the ME2 planet this music was found on, there was a user on You Tube that had extracted the file from the PC version of the game and identified me as the composer; his video had over 100,000 views with many comments about who wrote it and where they could find it. EA Traxx or whoever passed along the cue to Bioware renamed the track "The Techno Madness Mix" but had left my name in file name or metadata.

About ME2 DLC I have to make a separate post. Later.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
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Mass Effect 2 DLC

First the pic with all DLC I have:
35hh3xs.jpg


-.-

Items and itempack DLC

As you may spot there, I've bought only mission DLC and a few different horse armor DLC are not on the list. They can go sell that stuff to their mother. Bloody Maxis stuff pack milk scam.
I did get CerberusPack and ArcProjector for free - but never used them. Thus for item(s) DLC, including those free I can only say:
0/10
PLEASE DO NOT PAY FOR THAT BULLSHIT. NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

-.-

Arrival

This DLC should be titled as WTF DLC. It's completely different from everything ME series stands for. Shepard talking to himself like a common lunatic, a thing never seen anywhere else in series is just a start. The story is written so poor that you can't get an idea what the hell is going on in there. All you do is shoot a bit, pick three more +10% pretty much useless upgrades, get a few bucks, and a certain "portal" gets destroyed whatever you do.
While it has WTF moments during it, the biggest problem with this DLC is if you don't buy and play it, you'll get a few WTF moments in the sequel.
So choose. Go WTF in DLC or go WTF in ME3.
On a positive side it is not ME2 cut out content! It's actually ME3 prologue (if you want it to be)! As such it's understandable it not being free. Can't give it zero.
1/10

-.-

Firewalker

No Mako in ME2. Probably after fans got disappointed they've added a hovercraft named Hammerhead thinking it'll be fun. It's not. Who the hell wants to play a platformer in ME2? Well… A few might do. And it's free. Again can't give it zero. Damn.
1/10

-.-

Kasumi

ME2 doesn't have enough good girls. Or bitches. Or… well… females. So there comes another one - with a hood! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, yuck!
But the girl got a decent story and honestly a very good loyalty gaining mission with interesting branch of choices (example: sneaking into a room and killing two guards or conning the room guard to let you in).
Have to add that Kasumi has some hilarious oneliners if you take her frequently with you.
Two problems however. She has instateleport skill that instakills her in the suicide mission (ending) and - you can't romance her by any means. And unlike other bitches in the game (male or female, doesn't matter) I wanted to romance her, she's too hot to pass! Since I can't, well, it's not max, but:
8/10

-.-

Normandy Crash Site

You're ME2 fan? Okay, a question. How many ppl were killed when Normandy was destroyed? This DLC will provide you an answer if you don't know it.
And that's all it does after you pixelhunt for all dogtags on some badly designed area. Why the hell I've bought this? Oh, I did not, it was free. No wonder. But since it's free, can't put a zero again.
1/10

-.-

Overlord

You like horror themes? And think that graphics design could be better in ME2?
This DLC is something you simply have to buy.
Free Hammerhead DLC is required for it, but here flying around is not annoying but fun. You're up against a crazy AI… That in the end is not a crazy AI but that's something you'll discover on your own. It's not cut out content, it's not even story critical mission, but it's something that shows how ME2 could have been designed much better than it was. If only you could use a NPC from it in missions against geth it'd shine even more, in current state it is near perfect:
9/10

-.-

(Lair of the) Shadow Broker

This DLC has so much in it it's not even possible to get it completely in one playthrough. And it's world critical stuff, this DLC will turn your ideas about ME world upside down on one hand and on another it's a well hidden criticism on today's human society. Even more, it's content gives a completely acceptable answer on a question - if we're not alone in the universe, why aliens didn't contact us yet?
Oh and you get Liara as a sidekick during this DLC. Imagine Shepard, Liara and Garrus in ME1, ME2 and ME3. Do you need anyone else to save the galaxy? Thanks to this DLC you can play the dream team again in ME2.
An absolute masterpiece, a must have and a must play. ME2 should have been Overlord and Shadow Broker combined!
10/10

-.-

Zaeed

A boring mission with a new NPC. NPC without tits. Okay, his oneliners do rock. Luckily, it's free. Mediocre.
5/10


That's it. Bag 'em and tag 'em.
Expect ME3 post(s) in a few days. With an input on the ending mod made by fans compared to original and extended ending DLC.
 
Last edited:
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Apr 12, 2009
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Risen

Completely forgot how fun this game is and thanks to it's GOG DRMfree release (bought it instantly) I've replayed it.
The real reason I went on it immediately was to "forget" utter letdown with ME3 (will write soon also about it, but just can't sort thoughts yet).

As in all PB games, the early game is superhard, just when you think you have a scheme to win, another mob comes and slices you down with 2 hits.
But hey, is this RPG or Pet Society? Of course your "baby" hero can't win every fight. While combat tends to feel clunky, at least it isn't unrealistic and nonexisting gravity acrobatics used in storypoor visualsrich consolegames.

Choices or not? Risen has something you can't see anywhere else. If you don't play carefully, you will have no choice. Yes, unlike other RPGs with choices, in Risen it may happen you can't make one. Your hero in Risen is not born to make choices, if you want to have a choice, you have to "fight" for it!

Imagine a game where, no matter how high level you got, there are still challenging mobs to fight against. And those are not bosses! Not only that, by killing them you won't get some superOP power, ability, skill or item. At least not on all. Risen is like that. No matter what level you are, there is still a mob somewhere tough to nail. And what's more important, once you kill it, it will never return. In this game there is no mobs resurrection power. And still you can't finish the game in just a few hours like you could all those petty grinders where you waste time on killing already killed mobs over and over!

Secrets and puzzles… One can't believe that there are so many and so well made. You never know if there is something on a roof just waiting to be picked up and won't believe how many possibilities you have to enter somewhere you think initially you can't break in.

Sounds too good to be true, right?
Yea, there are some "problems". Some bugs were not fixed, but don't worry, those are unimportant ones and besides, robbing the weedtrader then selling goods back to him is funny at start, but as any kind of grinding, you won't really go exploit that thing all day long just to get a level or two more.
Music is not fantastic as in Gothic3. Okay, they had less funds so I'll forgive that. It's simply too mediocre for an nonmediocre game.
Landmass is big, but after G3, it feels not big enough. Yes it's fun to explore, but an explorer in you wants to explore more of it!
Finally the end fight is totally different from the game, it feels like playing something else, not Risen.

This game needed just a bit more to be a masterpiece and if you didn't play it yet, don't wait more as it's never coming to phones, those crap gadgets can't run this gem, believe me:
9/10
 
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Apr 12, 2009
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Thank you. I still have the CE here which I had bought last year for incredible 10 Euros.

I think that I should play this game one day. I really liked the demo back then.
 
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Nov 5, 2006
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Mass Effect 3 Part 1

It'll be two posts. Sorry, but it has to be for one and only reason. Two different perspectives.

For whatever reason, EA decided that it has to be Origin exclusive and that the game has to have integrated MP. Knowing EA, isn't it odd that multiplayer is not sold separate as DLC? Not only that, if you check MP part instantly, you'll discover that everything in it can be bought by ingame money, you don't need to pay a dime for it if you don't want to. Did EA go crazy?

No it didn't. Sadly. But let's see what's the singleplayer game about.

As I've said about ME2, it went more action and less RPG. ME3 returns back more RPG, but also gives better action than ME2! It's not just better skills upgrade system, it's also biotic and tech explosions on combining powers and stuff like ability to turn a hero while sprinting. Suddenly playing an adept class for example is not a torment like in ME2 but is unbelievably fun!

The galaxy is at war. A race of OP synthetics called Reapers is about to destroy all civilizations and your only hope to stop them is to unite everyone against them. This won't be an easy task. Your hero can't just be heavy on guns, he has to become an expert in diplomacy and (try to) pick a choice most benefitial to the end cause. A bit here, a bit there, every deed or word in the end counts as a war asset, more assets you gather, more chances you'll win a war against Reapers.

And thus you play mission by mission, planet by planet, system by system, carefully bringing everyone who can help on your side. You'll even ask a certain batarian terrorist (if he survived in one of previous games) to join you - the past is past, but you can't risk the future. Or you can, you still have a choice not to get help from everyone you can.

And while the game carefully written to let you choose most of the times who to get help from, in some cases it's made (almost) beyond frustration. For example, to get both Geth and Quarian fleets, Tali has to be alive, has to be an admiral and Legion mustn't be "sold" to Cerberus. Wrex, if you didn't let him die in ME1, you can kill him in this game and lose him as an ally. Miranda, if you romanced her in previous game and are now romancing anyone else - automatically dies. I mean, wtf. Such a good school education, if you break someone's heart, he or she will die.

If you follow everything carefully you'll find plot holes. Those are not big ones, but were definetly avoidable. Just as an example I'll mention Ardat Yakshi. In ME2 you learn there are only 3 of them. In ME3, their number is suddenly infinite.
Still, you will forgive all of those as stories are full of humor and very interesting lore. Hoping it'll all clear out when you put a nail in Reapers' coffin.

And then, after hours of interestingly designed missions and gathering as much help in the galaxy as possible, you're facing the ultimate threat. Your job is to activate a certain "gadget" that will finish them for good.
What you'll discover is that you have 4 choices. Yes, FOUR. Not just 3 as many sites suggest.
Suddenly, you're all alone. All those assets don't matter at all. All those hours, emotions and choices you've made during the game become irrelevant. Noone can help you. It's you and only you. And all you have to do is to is to click.
Remeber all those good games where as epilogue we learn what happened with characters that mattered? Remember FO2 ending? Gothic 3 ending?
No. You don't get it here. No. You don't learn what happened with Garrus who turned into probably the best friend you'll ever have in a game. You don't learn what happened with Liara who is solely responsible you're still alive after being vaporized by collectors. Hell you don't even get to see Tali's face!
And the best ending choice is the biggest plot hole that could exist in a game.

If you want to play a game with the worst ending ever, don't search for more. Artistically the ending can be described as brilliant, but technically it's just a confusing part in a nonconfusing game that isn't ending at all!

No, the "enhanced" ending didn't fix it's core problem. The plot hole is still there, epilogue is still unfinished. The fans mod tried to correct at least the epilogue part where you at least see your crew, but it still didn't (actually couldn't) correct the biggest plot hole.

From Bioware, this was an unbelievable letdown.


You've read my ME2 post where I wrote about DLC separately. Sadly I can't write it about ME3. All those DLC are tightly connected to the story and all feel like cut out content. Yes, all. Even Citadel.
And they're not cheap. As a fan, you'll buy them all. They're very good, they're even better than the game itself - in one you finally get Aria as a sidekick, in another you get to know how Reapers came to existence, in one you get knowledge about Protheans and in one you get to play with the whole crew from the ship including Wrex! And all of them bring you more war asstets.
If something is cut out content, all ME3 DLC are.

Lemme remind you on one thing more. I've mentioned that ME1 DLC is obviously not cut out. Shepard's voice sounds differently - the actor had cold when he recorded it.
In ME3 DLC, there no such things. I dare to say that Bioware lies when they say it's not cut out.
But one can say, okay. Everyone does DLC and sells it separately. I'm not okay. These things are too connected to the game and if they had to go DLC to get some more cash, hell cut out the MP part!

But they didn't cut out MP part. Multiplayer is integrated in the game as it, for whatever reason, is more important to player than the story? Sorry, but it is not.
I've played MP a bit, it's unbelievably stupid, dull and crap experience I couldn't bring myself to play more than just a few hours.

The game is fun. Honestly it is. Till the very end it's fun, onliners are hilarious, all you have to do is to ignore some plot holes, forget that it'd be nice to see an explanation of something or someone (for example how the hell Udina become Cerberus' puppet and who the hell is Kai Leng), forget how bad quest log design is, ignore the fact that Normandy is (again) completely useless and enjoy all those great visual design moments.

But in the end, the cow kicks the bucket and spills all the milk. you get a good game with questionable stories and utterly bad ending of the trilogy.
If you plan to play it without DLC, just don't. Without DLC this game is worthless junk and deserves mostly 2/10. With all (not items! only missions and NPC) DLC that were cut out no matter what they say to you, despite all flaws, it's above average game I have to recommend:

7/10


But we're on RPGwatch and we're not Homer's blind audience, right?
And we can write here stuff forbidden on EA forums.
Is there more to know about this game? About cut out stuff, milking fans, being evil wherever and whenever possible?
Oh, yes there is. The sad story about not crediting Afterlife score composer was not the only thing EA deserves to be hated for.
Later. I still need to squeeze out some numbers.
 
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Mass Effect 3 part 2

As a trilogy's grand finale, ME3 introduced one more aspect to the game.
Multiplayer mode.

And by everything ever written anywhere, no, you don't have to use it. It's there just as a bonus and for you to enjoy it.
And has a nice feature for all players who like it - more success you have inside it, more value will war assets have in the singleplayer game!
Awsome!

Yea… If you care for multiplayer. I tried it, it's crap and I don't want to play it. My choice. And will be not just mine.

Anyway, you're, let's assume, a player just like me. Who finds ME3 multiplayer very bad and not fun.
On the other hand you know that ME3 ending is based on war assets. Oh, you don't know?
Okay. The more war assets you collect in the game, the better outcome in the end you'll get. There is a number you need to reach in order to get as many survivors as possible. And you, as singleplayer only person, wants to save everyone possible to save.

So there goes a simple question.
Is it possible to get the best ending by not playing multiplayer ever?
EA/Bioware's answer: Yes, it is.
It's not a lie. But it's not the whole truth.

The answer should be: Yes it is - ONLY IF YOU HAVE ALL DLC BOUGHT.

The war assets table (almost complete):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sy6kZVuOfVQDiXf07hvCtgX2mf305W_uCT9IvA8kj70

As you may assume I played through all the trilogy, used previous saves, checked this table, HAD ALL DLC and in the end this is the war assets total I ended with:
2s9f2mv.jpg

Galaxy readiness is 50% because I haven't touched multiplayer and had no MP toons to add as assets.

Three things I didn't take as assets although I could.
1. Let Kaidan to join back (25 points asset) - deliberatley let botoxed bitch in ME3 Ashley to die
2. Let Chakwas to join back (10 points asset)
3. Let plastic went wrong Kelly Chambers to die (10 war asset)

Pretty ignorable difference, right. Especially where my EMS (effective military strength) was enough to get the best ending. How do I know that? Thanks to wiki:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Priority:_Earth
If EMS is 4000+
- and the Destroy option is chosen, Shepard is seen barely alive, gasping for breath (if Anderson is shot by the Illusive Man, the player needs 5000+ EMS to see this short scene).
- then three crew members will exit in the Destroy and Control endings; Joker and two of the player's most-favored crew mates.

WTF do I want, you'll say, I have a couple of hundreds more than 4K EMS just from singleplayer missions!

I say this. Lemme number it, from wiki and from the table of assets above:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/War_Assets
- Mass Effect 3: Leviathan features an additional 620 War Assets
- Mass Effect 3: Omega features an additional 405 War Assets
- Mass Effect 3: Citadel adds 70 points
- Mass Effect 3: From Ashes adds 100 points
- Mass Effect 2: Overlord adds 30 points
- Mass Effect 2: Kasumi adds 25 points plus more because you get both assets in corresponding mission
Mass Effect 2: The Arrival adds 50 points

Hopefully I didn't skip some. But it's total of whopping 1300 war assets!
Now tell me can you get the best possible ending without multiplayer?
Yes you can!
IF YOU BOUGHT CUT OUT CONTENT.

It doesn't stop there.
A puny phonegame called Mass Effect: Infiltrator can also bring you more than 100 assets. Yes, yes, buy, buy, to win you buy. Well, not me you bastards! No buy!

This is the most disgusting pay2win scheme I've seen in my life. And it's hidden so carefully you won't see it on EA/Bioware forums.
And what they did? They PUNISHED fans who love singleplayer games and rewarded all those who adore to grind in multiplayer! You grind, grind, grind and get the best ending. No, if you're the audience they want, a grindlover, you don't need to buy any DLC, you don't even need a savegame imported from ME1&2!

Will there be a day when I'll say EA doesn't make me sick.

Not knowing all this and in search for more of the story I've bought ME comics (except the last one) and they're all decent if not spoilerish maybe too much. The movie however is one WTF more and one huge plot hole to add to the whole series so skip it if you plan to watch it.

But after this I'm promising you one thing.
I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER EA GAME WITH PAY2WIN DLC.
They can go scam their mother next time.

The smartest person here on RPGwatch is GothicGothicness. She decided to ignore EA games for good. Today I wish I did.

What did I say, ME3… 7/10? Not a chance.
DO NOT PAY FOR THIS FRAUD!

0/10
 
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Thanks for your humorous biased reviews Joxer.:lol: Now excuse me while I replay all three Mass Effect games for the tenth, or is it 12th time.
 
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Which one of those three above is biased? And in what way? :)

And don't worry. There will be more.
I promised Sims 3 post ages ago but I think I never really made one… No. Enough of EA games DLC, at least for a while.
 
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I honestly can't remember if I've ever played an EA game. I guess that's a good thing! Oh wait, DA:O was published by EA; I guess that's the only one in my recollection. I don't foresee myself being given cause to break the streak any time soon.
 
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Cmon, you didn't buy at least one of dozen FIFA games? Or one of Battlefields? Need for Speed?
What about the EA Humble Bundle where you got Crysis 2 among a few games?

With every new game EA gets worse and worse. Just when you think they can't go more evil, they prove you wrong.
But all bad things have also positive effects. In this case, it's a success of crowdfunding.
 
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Which one of those three above is biased? And in what way? :)

And don't worry. There will be more.
I promised Sims 3 post ages ago but I think I never really made one… No. Enough of EA games DLC, at least for a while.

You did the review with an agenda, and with a goal you hate the game. It never changes, and I'm tired of the negativity to all things Bioware does on this site.

So keep the reviews coming as I said there at least good for a laugh.;)
 
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And that is why I not only quit playing Mass Suckage 3, but also demanded my money back. And got it. Least it only claimed 20 minutes of my life, it so annoyed me I never got far enough in to know just how bad it really was.
 
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Now listen.
I actually finished a game! That's something … I haven't done this in quite some time because most of the games I play nowadays have no finish line.

What's more: I finished a game I started back in 1994 … and I never got past the first level back then! Too difficult, I thought, but 20 years of gaming and some lessons in patience did help, actually.

It's CyClones!

I remembered this little gem by Raven after I ran into a picture of something I dubbed a 'CyClone'. So I pulled the case from my shelf, installed the game, overcame the frustrating first level (see below) and played on and on and on … until the end. Okay, I ate and slept in between gaming sessions, but it was a fun game.

The visuals: Not bad for a 20-year-old game (I'm still playing games older than that, so there), but a bit too dark in places (especially on the CyClone ship). It took me some time to get used to the symbols on the HUD because they are clearly different from other games.

The controls: Interesting setup and layout, but the mouse is so slow it got me killed over and over again (just like it happened back then). Once I decided to just leave the crosshairs centered and have a better look at my surroundings only *after* I had cleared the vicinity, everything worked out fine, though.

Sound: None. I didn't even try to play this with sound and music activated. Activated sound is what makes Strife unplayable, so I was cautious here, and to be true, I don't need sound to play a game. I even played tournaments deaf because I didn't get my soundcard to work … it just means you need to rely on vision instead of sound (and thus move faster and with more use of natural cover).

Story: It's a shooter, so what do you expect?
Yeah, but it's by Raven who also made ShadowCaster, so I expected a shooter-y action adventure, and CyClones delivered. It even has a plot twist! A twist that's pretty obvious right from the start if you just pause to think about it, but still a twist.
And one of the puzzles actually made me consult a video walkthrough … the color coded keys trope is so deeply ingrained that I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I just could not open a certain door on, was it level 9? It was because
the door lock in question was blue and the card I had found was red in color. Had I paused to think there for just a minute I might have noticed that the door asked for 'maintenance clearance', not 'blue clearance', and the red keycard in my inventory was labeled 'maintenance'. But there had been color coded keycard clearance in some of the levels before that one,
so I just didn't get it without help …

All in all I enjoyed the ride. While the older ShadowCaster was clearly more innovative and had more pleasant visuals, CyClones was fresh enough to make me want to beat it, and … I did :).
 
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Raven started out with their peak, actually.

Black Crypt > ShadowCaster > Everything else.

I remember being so disappointed in Cyclones after ShadowCaster that I just never bothered playing it.

Maybe I should give it a go one of these days :)
 
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