What's this Mass Effect thing then? n00b questions

~J~

~J~

~J~

Soldato
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Had a lovely day. Mother in law came and dropped off a belated birthday pressie (it was in April!!!), £200 of <competitor> vouchers - nice!

Have been looking at the releases upto Xmas and this Friday looks the mutts nutts of a day, so will be venturing into Llanelli to pick up some new stuff.

Been hearing all you lot rave about Mass Effect, so have spent a few hours today reading reviews, screenies, videos etc, and, I don't get it!

18 months ago Ultra Extreme sold Oblivion to me. I'd never played 'that kind of game' before, and I still owe it to him for introducing me to a game that caused me to have nearly 2 week of absolute joy.

Looked on wikipedia for what it all is, but doesn't really help. Never played KOTOR or Farenheit or other games that it says it's like so it's all new to me.

And all these Mass Effect videos, I'm having trouble understanding how it all works:

http://masseffect.bioware.com/gallery/index.html
http://uk.media.xbox360.ign.com/media/718/718963/vids_8.html
http://uk.media.xbox360.gamespy.com/media/718/718963/vids_5.html


Why does the screen keeping pausing and you having to select icons?
Why are some of the videos like an FPS, others like an RTS?
Some places are saying it's 30hrs of gameplay. Is that good for an RPG?
Do you actually control the player?
Is it a linear or non-linear game?
Is it big like Oblivion?
And more importantly, is there a Plantronics in it?

It's all confusing! It looks ok, but don't know what to expect from it. Any comparrisons to current games? I liked Oblivion and other Sandbox games but didn't reckon that much to FF VII or these Japanese cowabunga level up +3 strength, -6 karma, *2 Punch out stuff.
 
~J~ said:
Why does the screen keeping pausing and you having to select icons?
It can be played as a turn based RPG (which was how you played kotor).
Why are some of the videos like an FPS, others like an RTS?
It can also be played as a shooter.
Some places are saying it's 30hrs of gameplay. Is that good for an RPG?
There are RPG's that last longer (I put 70hrs into Oblivion) but 30hrs is a good amount for any game imo.
Do you actually control the player?
Yes
Is it a linear or non-linear game?
Non Linear.
Is it big like Oblivion?
Probably bigger. Oblivion was one large world, Mass Effect is a whole Galaxy/Universe.
And more importantly, is there a Plantronics in it?
No Idea.
Click to expand...
 
Firstly go buy KoToR and KoToR 2 they are amazing.

Mass Effect is from the same guys BioWare - its an RPG game, so consits of you exploring, talking to people - getting quests etc.. etc.. only this is on a very large scale - with an entire Galaxy to play with, exploring planets etc...

The pausing is because you can choose your teams special abilities - i.e. one may have a bionic power of disable an enemy, so you can force them to use that, so its a tactical way of combat - the combat itself is much like Gears of War in that you can use covers, its over shoulder cam.

You only control 1 person (Shephard) but can have anotehr 2 people in your team, depending on the class you have choses you may want a Soldier type team member, or a Techy type character.

Then its down to you to explore and kill things :)

Mass Effect is much much larger then Oblivion.


I prefer this over oblivion because not only is it 100x better but i prefer SciFi RPG to magic and olden day crap - this also reminds me a lot of Stargate which i love as our technology was boosted forward by the discovery of an Ancient race who left "Relays" about to aid intersteller travel
 
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Mephisto said:
Mass Effect can be played as a turn based game? Errr... I don't think so. The pausing and selecting thing is just for telling your team members what to do, what attacks to perform...etc.
Click to expand...
You're right, it's not actually turn based, what's the correct term, tactical?

I know one thing, if it's the same as kotor, it will be extremely dull. :p
 
cokecan72 said:
lol sorry, nothing to do with thread really but that made me laugh :)
Click to expand...

;)

So it's a full on FPS, but you've got like squad members whereby you dictate what to do by, say, pausing the game, picking a target, then an action, and resuming the action?

Sounds pretty good then.
 
wedgie said:
It's 3rd person though isn't it? Or did you just mean in gameplay style?
Click to expand...

Yeah, just in style.

It sounds good. Just couldn't understand why 99% of the videos were stopping every few seconds and all these icons appearing. I didn't want anything like the 'other' genre of games where you need to level-up or you could perform some kind of uber-cannon effect if you're squad member has +4 in aiming, +2 in stealth, -2 in fear and +10 in accuracy and all that. Just bores the pants off me.
 
That's how kotor was, very boring. Mass Effect is also like that, but from what I hear you can also play the game as a shooter if you prefer (although I've seen the shooter element get criticised in reviews).
 
wedgie said:
That's how kotor was, very boring. Mass Effect is also like that, but from what I hear you can also play the game as a shooter if you prefer (although I've seen the shooter element get criticised in reviews).
Click to expand...

Hmmmm. Might be a MM job then like Assasins Creed.
 
I might take the chance, but I'll have to read up on a lot of reviews to get an idea of whether or not I will like it. It's always a bit dodgy when you see a game get such high praise, but in the back of your mind you know it's just not your type of game. I did take the chance with Oblivion though and loved it.
 
~J~ said:
Hmmmm. Might be a MM job then like Assasins Creed.
Click to expand...

No way!

You do have skills, but at the start of the game you could just choose to be a shooter so you are well adapted to use all guns, or you could be techy so you are not so great at guns but can disable enemy shields...

Its the best ever game
 
ahhh thanks !

that's one game knocked of my list, couldn't get on with oblivion and never played the other 2 mentioned.

will give this a miss also.
 
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