Gaming Mass Effect Series

On a lark I decided to carry my ME1 soldier (my first foray into the series) over into an ME1 rerun. Referring back to our earlier discussions about cooldown vs. thermal clips, I did note that with a Level 51 soldier, an HMWSG X shotgun and Inferno Rounds X it was taking me two or three blasts to take down Fist's basic-level thugs in Chora's Den. Maybe there is some merit to clip-fed guns having substantially more punch per shot, although with Garrus and Wrex backing me up in that barfight it didn't matter much.

 

I might stick with Soldier when I do ME1 again, that's rather how I imagine Shepard started out. Biotic powers were a result of him being resurrected by Cerberus, in a similar way to how Miranda was engineered by science.

At least that's my take on it. I might try ME1 sometime with biotics, maybe if I do a Renegade run which I've not done in any of the games yet.

 

I did all six classes through the series and never changed classes with a character between games. The soldier is still a favorite for me simply because of the Badass Normal factor - well, as Badass Normal as it gets when you're still dealing with 22nd century-issue supersoldier gene mods from the get-go and then Shep gets rebuilt as a human-Terminator hybrid. The soldier doesn't have biotic superpowers or Batman-style tech attacks - just big guns and fast reflexes. I'd say the soldier is my clear favorite in ME1, while in ME2 and ME3 I can find merits in the other classes.

With the biotics in ME1, the cooldowns are a lot longer but the radius and power are far more devastating in general. At high levels it almost gets ludicrous; when I replayed Eden Prime at level 50+ Kaidan's lift practically launched targets into orbit. Since powers are also on independent cooldown timers, you can just unload the whole arsenal in one attack - so it's possible to lift a target and then use throw, which will do some very unpleasant things.

 

Well, despite episodes of cursing of camera feckwittery, sheer underhandednes - I'm looking at you, Virmire! - and some stupid details like flipping the camera 180 degrees and putting Shepherd's gun away when the cutscene ends for the final battle or doing a freeze frame for about a minute that practically mimics a game crash/freeze, did finish Mass Effect today.

Was a very impressive finish on the whole. Things built up neatly, Ilos was very well done, the timed race to the Conduit was better than expected and the zero-G firefight quite good, save for Garrus and Liara trying to take on rocket turrets without cover!

It does show up how bad a fix the motion comic prologue for ME2 was. That was better than nothing and the only option at the time but playing the game proper shows up how little it really covered.

Got a New Game + active so I can go and do the things I couldn't first time around and going to transfer Shep 1 to ME2....

Also, playing ME inclines me somewhat, in potential, to ME3's ending as Sovereign really does tear through the entire Citadel fleet and that was but 1 reaper. Did love his and Shepherd's conversation on Virmire, was suitably epic.

 

Right now I've decided to do another vanguard from scratch in ME1. Mainly this was to change her background from Colonist/Sole Survivor to Colonist/War Hero and try to mimic the appearance of the ME3 default femShep; otherwise I'm going to play the character through pretty much the same. Just hit Level 20 after Therum and 2 UNC missions; I had forgotten how much of a terror that Krogan battlemaster at the end of Therum was. I got my ass handed to me three or four times before taking him out. Doing a New Game+ with my soldier and infiltrator might be worth it just to curb-stomp him.

The annoying part is that since midway through my third playthrough of the game all my achievements got wiped and reset themselves every time I shut the game down, I've had to use console commands every time I open ME1 to get back the bonuses I had. I used that to give my vanguard sniper rifles as a bonus talent; just after Therum I finally scored a pair of Striker IV rifles and an Equalizer IV, which are typically pretty much the first decent sniper rifles you pick up. At 6 ranks in sniping taking out human-sized targets at about 100 meters isn't too bad; on the last UNC mission I needed Assassination+Adrenaline Burst to pick off five mercs from ~350 meters out in fairly short order.

 

Started ME2 and 2 things:

1. The opening is a damn sight more painful after playing ME1 - I have to watch my Normandy get blasted!

2. The lack of the on-screen map is a major step back from ME1.

 

As much as the SR-2's unveiling is one of my favorite moments of the entire trilogy, yeah - you almost want to shout, "STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY SHIP!" a la Jack Sparrow.

The other thing that's always bugged me is how inconsistent that scene is with the assertions you hear from Jacob and Joker that "almost everyone got off." The official count, not including Shepard (and possibly not including Pressley) is 20 crewmen dead; from walking around the SR-1 that looks like it's about half the crew. It's also implied that most of the losses were from the lower decks, whereas judging from the damage to the CIC and bridge I'd be amazed if many made it out of there. Twenty people also appears to be a full watch on that deck.

 

Joker should have said that

 

What choices did you make at the end of ME1, did you save the Council? Did You convince Saren to blow his brain out or did you just shoot him down?

 

Saved the Council but didn't have the points to turn Saren so shot him to pieces with my deathdealer assault rifle which would have been faster had the game not decided to have Shepherd turn 180 degrees away and holster his gu, despite having it out in the cut-scene!

 

What about a ME Blasto Edition game? Since it exists in its own universe, you wouldn't have to worry about what really happened in previous games. Blasto might be able to be any class (using biotics as a soldier only to hold weapons or use armor), and completing missions could unlock bonus playable characters.

It'd be something different.

 

Yeah, that was a big issue with ME1 - if you wanted to have the full suite of Paragon or Renegade options, you needed to sink 12 points into a non-combat skill. Want a full deck and the freedom to choose either? 24 points removed from your "kill people and break things" skillset.

Cleaning up a lot of side missions with my new vanguard femShep - I think I'm on level 26 or 27 by now, and probably won't hit Feros until around level 30. Still have five UNC missions I'll tackle before then.

 

You have plenty of squadmates to kill people and break things, but only you to influence decisions. Plus even a less-upgraded power for Shepard still lets him kick ass.

 

True, and some of the powers you could afford to skimp on. You could always have a dedicated medic in the team - I think funnily enough that was usually Garrus, since you had to pump quite a few points into his First Aid talent to unlock Electronics (plus unless you're a tech class yourself, you need a tech along to crack locks and fix the Mako, and Garrus is tougher and better with guns than Tali or Kaidan). I typically found Stasis to be of little use, since only damage over time attacks could hurt targets unless you were a Bastion Sentinel or Adept. Hacking gave you some bonuses to other tech skills, but in and of itself I never used because you didn't get XP and creds for enemy fratricide.

 

First time around in ME2 and I met this pain-in-the-arse reporter and was Paragon, despite much provocation.

Met her in ME1 and got screwed over but took the high road.

Meet her again in the new ME2 play with my transferred Shepherd, RENEGADE SMASH! Yeah, she had it coming.

 

It was a lot easier once general hacking became possible with Shepard in ME2 & ME 3. It was frustrating in the later parts of ME1 when I couldn't open certain doors or consoles and whatnot because I hadn't invested enough points on someone with the appropriate skill. In ME2 Shepard could hack anything provided you could solve the circuit puzzle

 

Yeah, Electronics and Decryption are usually top priorities; with me at least one character will have those maxed out before taking command of the Normandy. It does help that those also grant Overload, juiced-up-shields, and Sabotage so the points aren't being wasted on a noncombat skill. Max out Tali's Electronics and Quarian Machinist skills early on and she's very hard to kill with gunfire. Plus since you got XP and creds for hacking crates and computers, it was a way to level up without being shot at.

 

ME1: "I've had enough of your snide insinuations." FALCON PUNCH

ME2: "I've had enough of your disingenuous assertions." FALCON PAWNCH

ME3: "I've had enough of your tabloid journalism." PUNCH *ducks
"Ha! You want some?" SHEPARD HEADBUTT

FATALITY

 

Had forgotten how crappy the combat is in ME2, with lots of long range duels, irritating enemies that run around as if on speed, targeting icons that ignore cover and then you wonder why nothing happens. Does come across worse due to having played ME1 though.

Everything else is great, relying on line of sight to see enemies in a SF game is just ridiculous.

 

Did Wrex's "Family Armor" mission last night, which was a ball of win. First I started out by creeping around the high ground and sniping the three Turian mooks outside on guard duty (shot one poor bastard in the foot with Assassination and killed him), and then I stormed the bunker. This took two attempts; the first time I tried bull-rushing the stairs to get high ground and ended up running face-first into a sniper shot. Second time I remembered there was a power conduit or fuel tank up on the balcony there, and I had Garrus along with Overload. Glorious Michael Bay-grade explosion that took out four mooks and pushed me to the level up mark, so it sounded like hitting the jackpot. Then I just hunkered down, let three of the remaining mooks run right into two shotguns, an AR, and a Krogan, and finally hunted the last two down.

 

To be fair, it's not just science fiction games that have this problem.

 

True, but being killed by something that's come round the corner who you've no way of seeing because there's no bloody radar just throws strategy out the window!

 

Ah, just cleaned out my engineers at Poker!

 

IIRC, on the PC version at least you have the "radar" pop up in ME2 and ME3 when you go into tactical pause. Not as nice as always having it in your HUD in ME1, but it's still available.

 

It's done that once, but not consistently. Will have to do a few more field trials today.

Important Q for Mass Effect 3: All I'm interested in is the single-player game, do I need the online pass to access single-player DLC?

Will determine whether I buy it new or not.