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overated & under-informed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 21
Date: June 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After antisipating the arrival of ME on PC, I was fairly underinformed of the conflict the start up would be using Vista on a Mac Parallel.
it is not compatible with ATI 2700. The hype is there, don't be discourage from trying it out, but only with the coreect specs.

Enjoy !!

Great, or the greatest? ... great will do

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 29
Date: June 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Relevant Computer Specs:
CPU: AMD 5200 Brisbane ~2.7ghz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT OC
RAM: 2gb
OS: Windows XP Professional
Details maxed, 30-35 frames per second, no stuttering or slow downs

Opening: Well I just completed my first play through of Mass Effect for PC. Clearly it was the best RPG I've ever played on the PC. But it was not without its faults. Some categories might be nit-picking that I only noticed after my tenth consecutive hour of game play, but I think it's relevant. All in all, though, a must have for RPG and sci-fi fans.

DRM: The elephant on everyone's shoulder. Well I have to give it some credit, it took over a week for pirates to crack. But, of course, they did, and the paying customer (you) are left to deal with it. The good news is that SecuRom has cleaned up their act. It no longer comes up in my AVG virus scans as a trojan, nor as a rootkit. I could also find no rogue un-killable processes running in the background. The bad news is, of course, the limited activations. The idea is that installing the game on a different computer, or a major hardware upgrade will use up one of three activations. When they are used up you must call EA support to request another activation. This is unacceptable for most people. Do keep in mind that Mass Effect will never become unplayable because of abandonment, but with a sequel planned we won't have to worry about servers shutting down for at least a decade. The activations are bad, but it could have been a lot worse, it could have been StarForce again. If you think you can handle any issues with the activation nothing should stop you from getting this game. (2/5)

Story: I'm finally able to forgive Bioware for not making KotOR2 (they gave the sequel to a different company). Leaving the Star Wars universe to make this new world was their greatest triumph yet. I'm a fan of countless sci-fi universes (Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica) but Mass Effect trumps all of them. Humanity is a newcomer to the galactic stage, and in classical human determination must forge their place throughout the stars. A handful of different species are presented to you and detailed extensively. Every race is unique in look, style, speech, and even society on a very anthropological level. The futuristic science is believable. Bioware did their homework with relativistic speeds. The short explanation for all technological advances is the Mass Effect Field which effectively reduces an object's mass to zero. The background story is a solid foundation for countless novels and games. The game's story arc is excellent. Unlike KotOR, each story-world you visit has a distinct purpose in progressing the plot. I can't rave enough about this. But I don't want to give anything away. Ultimately it's the best RPG and sci-fi story I've ever heard.(5/5)
Update- I could rant about the story for a few more paragraphs but I just need to add this. The story is fulfills its need in the main game, and the continues for those who enjoy extended universes. Sure you don't need to know the culture of a Volus, or to research the Turian Civil War, but some people (like me) just can't help themselves. I also appreciated the fact that they included a cheery voice to read the primary codex for you when I was feeling particularly lazy.

Gameplay: This has never been much of a focus for RPGs (Disclaimer: What I meant by gameplay not being a focus in RPG's is that most RPG's are carbon copies of each other.) Mass Effect really mixes it up while still remaining faithful to the genre.. Generally the extent of gameplay is to click on another creature until one of you dies, occasionally casting a spell or two, level up, and dialog until your tongue falls out. Bioware fortunately decided to inject a healthy dose of adrenaline into the action sequences. Combat plays more like a first person shooter. The PC version is designed for both the tactical gamer, and shooter gamer. I found tactical engagements tedious, but you can play leap frog with your squad mates if you want. Instead I was running and gunning. My squad mates ended up being extra meat on the battlefield and died all too often. On lower difficulties, Rambo is probably the best style though. Combat is fast, intuitive, and something of a mix between Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Gears of War. Unfortunately the combat becomes redundant. You only face a handful of different enemies, and can normally find a corner where you can pick their head off with super human accuracy while they blind fire. Just be warned that quitting that habit of reloading after each engagement (as it is unnecessary in the future apparently [read codex]) is going to be difficult. R is bounded by default to grenade. So, I probably wasted 20 grenades trying to reload. My biggest gripe is with the side-quests. There are ultimately four different ones or so. Either fetch quests, or one of three identical visit off-world location, kill, return for reward. But you need to understand when I say identical I mean carbon copies. If you visit a space ship, I assure you it's the exact same space ship you've seen 10 times, or the same underground facility, etc. KotOR had excellent side quests involving Sherlocke-ian investigations, human-robotic love affairs, and major character development. I wish MEPC had kept that in mind. (4/5)

Graphics: I was actually disappointed here. The trailers and pictures made the game seem something like Crysis. Instead you get often buggy, and lacking visuals. My major complaint is that the game does not support anti-aliasing (removal of jagged edges on polygons) even when forced by GPU software. Textures on planets and less important characters is somewhat pixelated. I even had all of the effects maxed out. But this also means that a wide range of computers can run the game I suppose. Luckily the game saves itself completely with it's art direction. The visuals and designs are so imaginative, so amazing, that you are forced to forget the UE3's shortcomings. Everything is beautifully designed that you can't help to stop and stare thinking that *this* is what sci-fi is. (4/5)

Sound:
Dialog & Voice Acting: Absolutely superb in both counts. You may recognize a few voice actors (ie. Seth Green of Family Guy fame), but they are all believable even for the most mundane roles. You don't notice any voice actor recycling (the list of VA's is gigantic). There was one particularly heart-wrenching tear-jerking speech that a Solarian commander gave to his squad before a suicide mission. I nearly bawled. Dialog progression is smooth thanks to the new speech-choice-omatic circle thing at the bottom of your screen. What you would normally say is chopped down to bite sized summaries that you can choose from. For instance if I'm given the choice to say, "Go to hell", your avatar will actually say something along the lines of, "I hate all of you, you can die a slow painful death." A brilliant but small move on Bioware's part is to show the conversation choices just before the NPC stops talking, which lets you respond as soon as the other is through. Let me explain. In most RPGs a Non-Playable Character (NPC, or AI) will say their piece, then you are given a list of dialog choices to respond. While you read out what you may or may not say, the NPC stands their looking at you like you're a moron that doesn't understand speech. This new format allows for natural progression of conversations. So much so that my wife believed I was watching a movie while she was listening in. But the system is flawed as well. The little circle of choices is limited, and each of six or so slots always hold predictable responses. You will find yourself always choosing the same top right or bottom right options as those are normally aligned with saintly good and demonic evil respectively. Still, you're probably going to look for either extreme anyway. (5/5)

Music: I had hoped for something orchestrated, but I was not disappointed with what I got. The soundtrack for Mass Effect is full of trance-inducing slightly eerie synthetic music. It always sets a fitting atmosphere to the game play in the back of your mind. But it doesn't really stand out as amazing like Halo's Riverdance-y theme, or Gears of War's hardcore orchestra. It serves it's purpose though. (3/5)

Sound Effects: Somewhere during the creation of KotOR, Bioware discovered that putting a metallic ring to Darth Malak's voice sounded really cool. They decided to include the same effect for an entire species known as the Turians. But they didn't stop there. They must have thought it was so cool that the metallic ring would be included in 90% of the sound effects. Fortunately it really is a cool sound. Sound effects are top notch. But it may get annoying while firing a future-gun, in the middle of a busy factory, with a Turian yelling into your ear. But once again it does give your arch-enemy a perfect bad-guy voice. (3/5)
Sound: (4/5)

Port: Controls are a little klunky, but one must understand that most of the graphical user interface (menus, etc) were completely redone to benefit the mouse. Also I have a mid-entry gaming rig, and the game ran 30-35 frames per second for the entire duration with no slow downs. There was a single crash in my 30 hours of gameplay so far that never repeated. Load times were very short for me, along the lines of 5-10 seconds during actual load screens, and 12-18 seconds for elevator rides. This is with the exception of launching the game which takes 40-50 seconds. But this is a major improvement over the Xbox version. Also the loading screens are very interesting to study and look at, and elevator rides are littered with conversation between squad mates or news reports. This was a damned fine port. (5/5)

Closing Comments: Mass Effect is a ground breaking RPG and sci-fi story. The DRM is a major issue, I understand that, but for this game I would gladly pay twice the money for only one play through. There's room for improvement in most qualities of the game, but that only makes me more eager to play the sequel. (4/5)

Short Follow Up: If you really like my writing for some reason skip to the long follow up.
*Combat becomes tactical and genuinely enjoyable on extreme difficulties.
*Not much need to try out the different classes, as your other classed squad mates are total puppets.
*90% of the sidequests are ultra redundant in mission execution, but the stories for each one are unique and compelling.
*The Codex is awesome. It provides detailed universe explanations, as well as extended universe lessons.
*Be warned: achievement awards are addictive.
*Minigames are a flop
*Vehicle combat in the Mako is unbalanced towards the player.

Long Follow Up *OPTIONAL*: I restarted the campaign, this time re-using my previous character. You can keep your equipment and experience after beating the game. Playing the game a second time on Hardcore (the hardcore part is something I rarely do) is incredibly fan-dabby-fabulously fun. I underestimated the gameplay value here. Tactics becomes enjoyable instead of tedious. Running and gunning works for casual and normal difficulties, but tactical squad-based combat will ensure your survival on hardcore and insane difficulties. You being able to rely on your squad for different weapon support and biotics support (aka: magic) is a nice change of pace. It's not impossibly difficult; instead it's challenging and definitely rewarding. This time I am an evil-doer, and while improved from KotOR, the conversations don't flow as well on the bad side. An NPC will react harshly if you treat them badly, then switch gears to a pleasant tone immediately after when continuing the conversation. Bioware helps this by making the mean choices more jerky than evil. Something that a person would dislike, but not slug you in the jaw for. Additionally getting achievements is strangely addictive. A casual play through will earn you about half of them. All of the 60 or so sidequests are 90% copies of each other, but all of them have a unique reason for their existence that is compelling enough. Also the other 10% are truly interesting. Coming across a derelict totally empty space craft, discovering that the crew was murdered by a crazed lover trying to save her essentially dead boyfriend... that was just creepy, in a good way. The hacking mini game is simple enough, but is almost impossible to play effectively with the mouse, and the keyboard doesn't give you quite enough control. Your all-terrain vehicle, the Mako, is sluggish and embarrassingly easy to wipe out enemy with. Your cannon instantly fires a perfectly aimed death-shot miles away, while the enemy is reduced to firing 10 mile per hour exploding slugs. It's a little unbalanced. Still, sending the Mako flying off of a canyon wall a hundred feet up on the moon doesn't get tiring easily.

Tip: Bind quicksave to the middle mouse button, you'll need it. The autosaves in the game are not nearly frequent enough. Repeating a half hour of gameplay because you get a little sloppy is not fun.

Horrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: July 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Guess what, the pirates have already figured out away to bypass the DRM.

There is not a single security feature on a single game that has not been cracked.

Be warned that you can only install this game 3 times after you buy it. EA Games likes to abuse their paying customers while the pirates run free. You're better off just pirating the game because it'll be less of a hassle.

Worst player interface EVER

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: July 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I had some time to kill after finishing the excellent "Mask of the Betrayer" and while waiting for "Fallout 3" to come out, so I thought I'd take "Mass Effect" for a spin.

All I can say is, "Buh-bye fifty bucks!"

I played the game for a couple of hours or so, then finally gave up in boredom and frustration.

Unlike most RPGs today in which you control most of the game functions and character actions with the mouse, this game is almost totally controlled by keystrokes. This is a step backwards in technology of about ten years, in my opinion, and slows things down incredibly. Further, it requires memorizing all the appropriate key functions; like stepping back in time from Windows to MS-DOS.

The character inventory system is clunky and counter-intuitive, and very cumbersome to manipulate.

Worse yet, you can't exit cut/movie scenes to re-enter gameplay, so if you're having to repeat an action from a save, you have to sit through these looooong cut scenes repeatedly.

Not ready for Prime Time, folks. Save your bucks!

A great game with minor flaws, but DRM overshadows everything

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Firstly, I must agree with other reviewers that the DRM scheme is a major turnoff. Neither EA nor Bioware have yet to specify anywhere just what circumstances these 3 activations are triggered. Bioware and EA should be ashamed of themselves for subscribing to a DRM scheme that only succeeds in punishing loyal customers and treating them as little more than criminals.

Now, onto the game itself. The voice acting is uniformly very good to excellent. The storyline for this game is exceptionally strong. Unfortunately it's conveyed through loads of dialogue, which can sometimes slow down the pace of the game at crucial points. Also, the Mako combat vehicle doesn't handle well over hilly ground in the side-quest maps. Also, I wish the side quests had been used to explore the different cultures of the species more, rather than being told about them via the Codex. KOTOR did this very successfully - why couldn't Mass Effect.

In fact, in almost every single area except one - storyline - KOTOR overshadows its successor. The side quests aren't as good. The main campaign is far far too short, with only four...possibly five major planets in the main campaign. And the combat interface is nowhere near as good as KOTOR's.

But it's the DRM scheme that is the killer for this game. Is there really any point in buying a game (for full price) that you can only play 3 times before it's deactivated? My advice? Pull out your old copy of KOTOR instead - if only so that you can remember a time when Bioware were a reputable development company, and not slaves to a bunch of Corporate shills.

First time player reactions

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 42
Date: May 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Well I picked up MEPC yesterday(5/28) from Gamestop although I was a little worried about the install process and security measures. Regardless of having Dial-Up internet the game installed without problems. I then disconnected from the connection, took out the ME disc and the game launched fine and I was off to playing.
I have only played a few hours of the game(reason for the 4 of 5 stars), but so far it has been a great experience. The visuals look very decent and it runs fine on a pc that I personally built for less than $500. Even with the lack of extreme hardware I haven't experienced a load time of more than 5 or 6 seconds, and they are often less than that. I do not own a 360 and have not played the game on the console so I don't have a good basis for comparison between the xbox and the pc. However, one could easily believe that this was a made for pc game if they have not experienced the console version of it. The interfaces and controls all seem to work great to me and so far I have only seen 1 or 2 minor visual glitches or bugs in the cutscenes of the game.
Overall the game is fun and enjoyable based on what I have experienced so far and I believe it was worth the money. But one must remember that down the line somewhere when I run into limited install issues my opinion might change.

Great game, horrible copy protection scheme !!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: July 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

A great game, still playing it. What kills it is the fact it will only allow you to install the game 3 times on your PC. That is simply OUTRAGEOUS. This is what pushes people into pirating PC games. Horrible !!!

Paid too much and hasn't arrived

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 25
Date: June 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Well, my copy of the game hasn't even arrived, and yet I see that I paid $10 too much for it (49.95). That's not a very good starting point for a game that I bought on the reviews alone.

I'll write a review when I have some time to play, but I wanted to air my sour grapes about the price drop.

One of the best Sci Fi RPG's ever made.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: July 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I own a PS3 and salivated over this game since it came out for the xbox and was deprived. But I had a secret weapon. A decent PC gaming machine and patience. It finally came out for PC and despite the awful reviews and horror stories, I just had to risk it.

Okay, this game got butchered for the DRM and the crashes. I agree with everyone as I suffered through an install meltdown. I installed the game, I tried to play it and the dreaded red x box came up stating some wierd technical reason. My heart sunk and I felt like I just bought a 50 dollar coaster. I decided to go to their website for some help. Don't do it! The website was not helpful in the least. So frustrated, I called technical support. Surprisingly, he was extremely helpful despite the thick indian accent. He moved me step through step every click of the way and solved the problem! Throughout technical support was great, but it should have never gotten to that point in the first place. So I agree with everyone on that point. DRM punishes honest customers. It's total (explative). By no means do I plan on playing this game on more than one computer so why put a limit. This is a pure one person game, it's not an MMO so what's with the paranoia? Why limit it to 3? Worse is you need to be online to authenticate the game not once but forever! Once again, this is not an MMO so now you are punishing people who do not have internet access in their homes. Not cool. If this was any other game, I gaurantee I would not buy it. It is only because I don't have any other means of playing it.

Okay, now to the game. Does anyone remember Starflight for the Sega Genesis back in the day? Yeah I'm showing my age. Anyway this is Starflight the next generation! I always hoped for a sequel for the PC or next gen consoles. Alas it never happened but Mass Effect is the same exact thing! From the the free form explaration map, to your alien crew, to even the Mako! Except for the true imersion from exploring your own ship to exploring other worlds on foot, to traveling in the mako. On and on and on. The graphics are beyond amazing in my opinion especially during dialog sessions. The faces are amazing looking. The voice acting is top notch, the music is amazing too. I kind of want the soundtrack of this. The story line is great with plenty of side missions to keep you very busy and a neat little romantic subplot which adds to the space opera feel. This led to some paranoid attacks from fox news and middle aged men and women who not only never played this game but never played video games in their lives. When the so called "sex" scene came to fruition. I laughed. This stuff is so mild compared to MTV which "your kids" watch every single day. Tila Tequila is hardcore porn compared to this.

Now for the bad. The combat system truly sucks. You cannot control the AI characters period. I just let them go and do their thing and pretty much fight on my own. The shooting and targets are not crisp and definite like 1st person shooters which is what this combat is trying to be. The inventory system takes a long time to get used to and is not efficient. It's so unpractical that you end up amassing equipment just because you dont want to go into the inventory system. The game certainly lags and I have a decent rig which I will list at the end of this review. I have never had a crash but at times it seems like it will freeze for a few seconds when I move to the main menu and makes me think it is ready to crash but eventually goes to the menu. Dialoge sometimes skips but not often. These gripes are trumped by the fun factor. The fact is the game played through without crashing once and even though your have combat a lot, your interest lies more in the story and advancing the story.

If you have an x box 360 get it for that, but if you don't have one it just might be worth the risk, but make darn sure you have the right pc specs!

As promised my spects:

Sony Vaio Desktop PC
2.8 Dual Core Pentium D
2 Gig memory
300 gig hard drive
Nvidia 8800 640mb GTS Graphics Card
Windows Premium Vista

Glad I didn't buy it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 23
Date: July 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After reading page after page about the nightmare people have had with this game, it's not being purchased by me. DRM (along with limited installations of any software) is nothing I care to deal with.

I will never buy DRM protected music, or DRM protected software. Sooner or later DRM will be dead (or at the very least, fixed).

Games for Windows is a joke. Vista is a joke. DRM is a joke.

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