Gaming Mass Effect Series

Disappointment?

 

Utter confusion was my main reaction. For some reason the extended cut didn't work so I got the original ending. Looking at the extended cut it is better and has a lot more closure but I still don't particularly like the endings. They really are just bizarre in the context of the series.

 

Yeah... you're not alone with your feelings.

 

Playing the Citadel DLC will help if you haven't done so already. Despite taking place prior to the finale, that is very much the goodbye to the characters we've come to know over the trilogy.

 

Attention PS3 owners.

PSN has a deal on DLC and possibly more for Mass Effect - I bagged the Omega and Citadel DLC for £5.49 each in place of the usual £11.99!

Looks to be on until 13 March.

 

^ Not bad.

Decided to leave my New Game + soldier to wallow a bit in the fun of Citadel; just finished the third "Unusual Scores" assignment. Soldier Shep, Ash, and Garrus all with Level X N7 Typhoons and maxed-out Incendiary, Disruptor, and AP ammo ... yeah, that went nicely for the most part. Garrus went down twice at the end (didn't know how to duck when a Geth Prime opens up) and I had to save his tail, once after a Banshee teleported right behind me and I had to take it down at point-blank range.

The freaky thing? That last wave has a Praetorian, a Banshee, an Atlas, and a couple of Geth Primes. Well, the Atlas was scrap about five seconds into the wave, the Banshee gave me a bit of trouble, and the Primes fell one by one. I never saw what happened to the Praetorian after it spawned, and I don't recall shooting at it. Which means that unless it disappeared due to a miraculous glitch, Ash and Garrus wiped it out in a matter of seconds.

 

Another weapon-related case of HSQ; I decided to have my soldier bring a Venom X "shotgun" to a Super Elite Reaper challenge on Citadel along with Grunt toting a Striker X mini-grenade launcher and James packing a Falcon VII. Incendiary ammo on all weapons. Needless to say, there was much exploding and burning.

I already knew that a direct charged-shot hit with the Venom was powerful enough to take down a Brute. What was awesome was that a single charged shot (with a barrel mod, 40% weapon damage boost from armor, and all the weapon/power damage boosts I could get from intel) annihilated the barrier on Banshees and knocked them down to about three bars of armor ... which was on fire from the incendiary ammo, and I had carnage as a bonus power. Cue Banshee being turned into a flaming meat grenade with a one-two punch. Didn't even use the Typhoon and Executioner I also had.

 

Omega DLC

Enjoyed this more than expected, mostly due to the well implemented idea that if you choose to, you can try to reform Aria into making Omega less of a total dump.

Liked the first Adjutant battle, that was quite creepy.

Disliked greatly both solo sections with Shepherd, didn't care for that in Arrival, didn't care for it here with the Reactor mission and final showdown.

The one thing that redeemed that final showdown? The renegade interrupts, yeah, Petrovsky got his head blown clean off. The other element that infuriated about that showdown was the infinite enemy supply - why can't I just kill everyone and then free Aria with the room full of corpses? She'd likely approve!

Next up - Citadel DLC.

 

Yeah, somehow Adjutants creep me out even more than Banshees, despite the fact that they're weaker in all categories and I'm generally able to deal with them fairly easily. For the final fight I take the opportunity to change my loadout at that last weapon bench - usually I ditch the sniper rifle and make sure my loadout is optimized for running and gunning. Typically that means a powerful automatic assault rifle (N7 Typhoon, M-7 Lancer, or Harrier) or SMG (N7 Hurricane or Blood Pack Punisher) paired with the nastiest shotgun I can manage. I've also seen the suggestion to just equip a Venom shotgun and cluster-bomb everything in your path. Then I run like hell turning off generators and shooting Aria free. Usually I can stay ahead of most of the mooks and only have to deal with one or two adjutants and a few troopers. The nice thing is that she lets off a massive biotic discharge every time you knock out one of the restraints, which chews up the mooks a bit.

The reactor part is actually pretty easy (well, the solo bit; the first part is a bit difficult even though you have Nyreen to back you up). Again, just run for it. Often times I only have to engage one assault trooper and one mech in my way and I can just outrun the rest.

I did like how your morality had an influence on Aria; there's even a change in dialogue if you went roughly 50/50 on supporting Aria or Nyreen. Aria will basically say she can't figure Shepard out, calling him/her the most enigmatic being she's known in a thousand years. Nice to be the one screwing with Aria's head for a change.

As for Citadel - can't wait to hear your review. When you get your hands on the M-11 Suppressor in the first part, I recommend aiming for heads and using 2-3 shot bursts; equip disruptor ammo if you have it. I think the first time I ran my soldier through there was one point where he managed to knock off three mooks before the rest even realized what was going on.

 

There were some quite hilarious massacres:

Call for backup!

Cue Cerberus drop-ship, 5-6 troopers are dropped in, 2 get killed on the ground, 2 in mid-air, 2 on the ship in one sustained burst of Geth plasma fire. OK, about that back-up.... they're all dead.

Aria found it amusing that having been advising her to play nice, I blew Petrovsky's head off!

 

Yeah, if I go that route I usually spare him - although half the time I take the first interrupt and threaten to "feed him to Aria" if he doesn't cooperate. I figure if I want him to die, I'll let Aria do it. Kind of ambivalent either way; for all that he's made out to have a "code" and be honorable, he's running a brutal military occupation force that experiments on prisoners with Reaper biotech. Not a very good job of making a sympathetic villain.

As far as massacres - where it really gets out of hand is if you have Aria unload her flare power right into the troop bay when the shuttles come in. A Centurion or two might get out alive (unless you primed them with a tech or biotic power first, then flare will detonate that and make things even worse), but the basic troopers all get annihilated. Then the shuttle hangs around for a few seconds as if wondering what just happened (either that or the flight crew is crapping themselves). Aside from the new weapon mods, having that available as a bonus power was one of my favorite bits of Omega. I picked it for my adept; given that Shepard gets faster recharge times than squadmates and can improve recharge rates with armor bonuses, intel, and a light weapon loadout it's possible to launch a flare blast every six seconds. Warp + throw is a faster way to wear down heavies, but when it comes to mobs of mooks flare is like calling in an artillery strike.

Speaking of artillery strikes, I was playing around with taking screenshots in FRAPS today. Fireworks!

 

It was pretty much the use of Adjutants and reaper tech that signed his death warrant for my Shep, oh he has a code that permits that? Not much of a code then!

 

Yeah, as I understand he was a bit more sympathetic when he first appeared in the comics. Two out of three times I figure I'll let him live just for the intel he can provide - it's the professional, pragmatic decision. That said, I have no problem with waving a pistol in his face and doing my best to put the fear of God (or worse, Aria) into him.

One out of three times? Just turn around and shake my head at his interior decorating while Aria chokes him to death and apparently gets off on it.

 

One thing I loved about ME2 was using the weapon Cain, made the final boss battle so much easier

 

The Cain was rewarding if you got the hang of it. The charge time and slow projectile speed make it tricky to hit anything that dodges. If you get enough heavy weapon upgrades and the right armor parts, you can have two shots for it, which helps in the thresher maw fight and against the proto-Reaper. The only other fights I used it for were both Praetorian battles, the Geth Colossus, and the derelict Reaper core.

As stated, in ME3 the Venom "shotgun" is pretty damn satisfying to use. On Normal it will kill all but the heaviest enemies with one charged cluster shot (sometimes multiple heavies - I've managed to kill two Brutes with one shot). Banshees and Praetorians are the only units I've seen survive a single direct hit (two will end a Banshee, not sure about the Praetorian); don't think I've tried it on an Atlas or Geth Prime yet. That was where the blast on the left in my "fireworks" screenshot came from - the other was Garrus cutting loose with a Krysae.

 

Am I the only person who loved shotguns in the original, but hated them in 2 and 3?

 

Nope, you're not. In ME1 with training the high-quality shotguns had realistic engagement ranges, and even without shotgun training you could get decent accuracy with the top-end weapons (firing while kneeling, at least). I never took shotgun training as a bonus talent because even untrained it was still a useful weapon. In ME2 the shotguns (excepting the Geth Plasma Shotgun) were pretty much worthless except at point blank range. ME3 was an improvement; at least you had the smart choke mod and some of the shoguns (Geth Plasma Shotgun, Graal, N7 Crusader, and Disciple) were lethally accurate at range.

 

Hated using the sniper in ME1

 

The sniper rifle stunk until you put enough points into it and got your hands on the higher-quality guns. Then it turned into winsauce; it could one-hit kill almost anything and do it out to 500 meters. A lot of UNC missions turned into sniping massacres. On larger targets like turrets and Geth Armatures/Colossus, you could stay very far away and behind terrain while you pecked it to death with impunity. I played the soldier first and got the assault rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifle achievements, which gave me three options for a bonus weapon talent. Except for the infiltrator, which is already proficient in sniper rifles, my other four classes all got sniper rifles as a bonus talent. I could do without assault rifle or shotgun training, but I found the sniper rifle essential for making long-range kills without using the Mako and taking the 50% hit to the kill reward.

 

I've never been that into Sniper Rifles, I prefer Assault Rifles.
I mostly used Garrus & Ashley in ME1 and both of them used sniper rifles anyway.
I prefer Shepard to be the run guns blazing type while Garrus is the guy to takes out people unseen and that's why they're a great duo

 

My preferred builds are "Soldier Assault Rifle" or "Biotic Pistol That's Not As Fun As Throwing Enemies Around The Level".

That said, I have tried a sniper, and DarthCane is absolutely correct about ME1. The draw distance is pretty much maximum, and ME1 was more stat-based than the later two games. Level it up and you can wipe out entire contingents without coming anywhere near them. Pretty awesome.

 

The problem I found with using Garrus and Ashley as snipers in ME1 is that they will only return fire when targets are distant - i.e. if you drive up to an overlook a few hundred meters off and the enemy units aren't shooting, they won't fire. You either have to attack the enemy yourself to get them shooting (in which case I find I'm about ten times more effective in getting kills), or get so close that assault rifles are actually a better pick. The other problem is that unless there is convenient sticky cover around, they'll stand in the open and get dropped. I recall one time Ashley got nailed by a Geth rocket turret on a UNC mission and took a LOOOOONG ragdoll fall down the side of a mountain, which was actually kind of funny. Most of the time I actually order my squadmates away so I can work my magic alone without them attracting splash damage from rockets and siege pulses.

Relying on the sniper rifle also helps because it gives you a way to take down lots of enemies, including heavies, at a safe range without taking the 50% XP penalty from using the Mako's guns. That's why my infiltrator was my highest-leveled ME1 character and the one with the best equipment; she made it to Level 59 in a single playthrough.

 

Citadel DLC

Absolute garbage. Irredeemably crap. Worst game design I've seen in ages.

 

Ok, let's hear it. What's the issue?

 

That it practically kicks itself in the kneecaps, punches itself in the balls, a kick to the stomach and a baseball bat to the head all in the space of 5 minutes and never recovers from it - it could, instead it compounds it.

It starts off OK in the apartment, then you go out, the mercs turn up and it nosedives. I loathe the concept of solo Shepherd, hated it in Arrival and the final Omega mission, hated it here. Oh and they restrict your inventory to a suppressed pistol! Isn't that adorable? So innovative and clever! Such total crap. Shepherd downs a guy and only picks up a pistol? Rubbish, he'd grab a rifle easy, but never does! Were it not for Shepherd's punch-of-death, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Then the level just drags on.

Thought it was getting better when you finally meet up with Liara and Vega, but then it gives me a crappy Geth Spitfire, decides infinite adversaries are the order of the day and fails to make it easy to work out where the damn extraction point is. If you're going to block players from using a map, you need damn good signposting and this didn't have it. Got out and back to the apartment.

Conversations were fun, then onto the next bit - the Casino mission.

This started off just about all-right despite my loathing of such sections. To a point the whole mechanism of bypassing cameras while distracting guards wasn't bad, until the final one. Checked everything, not in any of the scan areas, so get Garrus to distract a guard and bypass the camera - blam, detected. Despite being in none of the sodding zones, detected, tried it again, same result. At which point I've got a dull, boring, pointless level that can't even stick to its own sodding rules! Screw that.

So between them? These levels killed the Citadel DLC dead. Probably more accurate to say they killed it and then crapped on its corpse.

Had the DLC not been sold as this fun ride, I likely wouldn't have responded so harshly but it was sold as that and failed to deliver it spectacularly badly! In a way, it's caused more damage to how I see ME3 than the endings! Those at least I was forewarned about and the EC took the edge off of. It may be the stuff at the end is brilliant but as it requires I go through a pair of deliberately constructed turd sandwiches to get to it, no, I'm not going to get there.

It's a shame sure, but that's the way of it. It's rare for me not to complete a piece of DLC, the only other one is the Harley Quinn one for Arkham City due to the stupidity of allowing her infinite goon supply - which stunk on the final Catwoman level with Two-Face too.