Mass Effect on PC

Good news for all PC geeks, who desperately waited for any news about a PC version of Mass Effect. Today it has been announced for may:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080212/20080212005536.html?.v=1

I'm just a bit behind you, zyklop, but this is now posted on the front news page.

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, GOOD GOD what a game. Spent the whole day playing it for the first time. Unbelievable!

Yeah, reinstalled it last week to get a save game ready for Mass Effect 2. I was a bit surprised at how much fun it still was for my third playthrough (for a modern day game ).

Remade my good old Soldier first, might make an engineer after I've finally finished the witcher

I had always avoided it as I dislike FPS and shooter style games. But enough people convinced me it had some RPG aspects. While I still think it is a heavy shooter I am somewhat enjoying it. hard for me to play on a PC (I am just not good at fast reaction aspects of shooters) but just put everything on super easy and really enjoying the story and different setting - since i tend to stick to fantasy, so a nice change of pace.

Should be done with it just in time for ME2.

Definitely my least favorite Bioware PC game by a good amount … but then again I still like it quite a bit. I also reinstalled this week.

The production values are just NUTS. My gf keeps looking over and going "my god" and she can't even hear the sound track, which is world class. Whatever its faults (which I havent found yet), it is an amazing production. The combat isnt that hard either. I'm lost in the plot. Great stuff.

Originally Posted by ToddMcF2002
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, GOOD GOD what a game. Spent the whole day playing it for the first time. Unbelievable!

You seriously never played ME till now?

Not their best work imo, but still a very fun game. I've enjoyed it a lot more than I ever did KotOR or Jade Empire.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You seriously never played ME till now?

Not their best work imo, but still a very fun game. I've enjoyed it a lot more than I ever did KotOR or Jade Empire.

Nope never played it. I usually don't play sci fi stuff.

Well you picked a perfect time to play it. You can go right into ME2 as soon as you're finished.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Well you picked a perfect time to play it. You can go right into ME2 as soon as you're finished.

Yes sir. Now I remember why I didn't take a look at it back in the day. Wasn't Mass Effect a console only release? I remember being aggravated with BioWare back in 06. I'm assuming ME2 is on the PC at launch?

Aye, it took a while before it was ported to PC. And yes, ME2 will be available on PC the day it's available on consoles (or close to that).

Originally Posted by Davion
Aye, it took a while before it was ported to PC. And yes, ME2 will be available on PC the day it's available on consoles (or close to that).

Good. Looking back on it, 2006 means a 7900 GTX or an x1950, not exactly up to the task of rendering this thing. I'm guessing that is one of the reasons for BioWare's late PC release. Now I've got ME on my laptop (9800 GTX). Today the 360 is a joke compared to even my laptop. I guess I can expect ME2 to run pretty well on my laptop right out of the gate. Funny how that works

Right I have been surprised how run well DAO but in fact I could thanks the 360 for that even if I never get any. At least one positive point coming from consoles!

Originally Posted by Dasale
Right I have been surprised how run well DAO but in fact I could thanks the 360 for that even if I never get any. At least one positive point coming from consoles!

Yes studios are going to avoid another Crysis like release going forward. Alienating 90% of your target market with sub 20 frames per second won't be an issue now that a corresponding 360 release is mandatory. Still, graphics on these dual releases look great and scale on the PC nicely. What else could we ask for?

The game does look fantastic and has great voice acting.

Unfortunately I only played it for a few hours - I could not get it to run well on my PC, as soon as combat started the frame rate dipped into slideshow mode

The thing is I've played other games that supposedly ran terribly on "lesser" PCs like Oblivion and NWN 2 and those ran fine (only using a 1024x768 res) and other more recent games like Drakensang and Fallout 3 run fine as well (have a somewhat decent graphics card considering my aging system: an overclocked Nvidia 7800 GS).

But could not play ME at all, no matter what I tweaked.

Anyway, I did play it a bit later on a friend's "modern" PC and just hated the combat. A lot.

Just recently installed it again and played through. It's an ok-ish game but way overrated and too damn linear. I really hated the geth or whatever those robotguys were called. I hope ME2 is done better and "feels more real". Can't really explain it in english.

I won't buy it as long as EA doesn't change the installation limiting and the DRM. Sorry.

Recently bought it for $15, but have a few direct2drive games that are first on the list, before I forget about them.

I hated this game. It felt so much like an action game made by people with no understanding in how to make an action game. Cover system was bad and level design was not adequate for a cover shooter (oftentimes you are attacked in long, featureless hallways with nothing to hide behind).

The game loves to throw pointless cutscenes at you that end up ruining the gameplay. For example, you come to a clearing, then a cutscene shows a group of enemies approaching, and when the cutscene is over you're out in the open, already getting battered! No matter how you approach that clearing, as soon as that cutscene triggers you're back out in the open and screwed. (I'm speaking specifically of the mining planet where you find Liara here)

The AI is terrible, content to charge at you and fire recklessly… which seems to work out for the enemy, but notsomuch for you. The whole point of a cover-based shooter is that both sides keep a distance from one another! Teammates are the real problem, though. They need to be babysat, but you are given neither the vantage point nor the level of control necessary. They are useless for flanking and providing covering fire, which is just about the only two things that they can do.

The RPG bits fail to convince with a very limited amount of sidequests that amount to things like "Find all the bugs in the citadel" and typically Bioware good, neutral, evil dialogue trees.
It's not so much an RPG as it is a bad shooter where you can make fairly meaningless dialogue choices now and then and with limited stats you can raise. So it's about as much of an RPG as No One Lives Forever 2.

I would say that the graphics make up for at least some of its flaws, but with the glitchy shadows in the PC version and the heavy UE3 jaggy aliasing… eh, notsomuch.