SC2 was my clear favorite. Played it quite much when it was on game cube. Would probably have to check out SC5 if this is true 

Don't game much nowadays but I've been unwillingly sucked into the Halo 4 vortex to occasionally play with friends online. I must say that 343 are deserving of a lot of praise for what they've achieved. They've ripped elements from other games but it's still Halo at its core, more so than Bungie's last efforts.

I've dug up my Astro MixAmp and plugged the HD800 straight into it for Dolby Headphone. Sound design is phenomenal in this game.

Mass Effect remains one of my favourite games ever despite its flaws. ME2 was undoubtedly more polished but I found it less engaging and could only muster one play through. Haven't bothered with ME3.

Demon Souls and Dark Souls are also at the pinnacle this gen for me. Chromehounds (online) is untouchable in the multiplayer realm.

I enjoy challenging games, but normally their challenging because of the multiplayer aspect.

D* Souls Games are just masochism, in my opinion.  I find them so far away from the realm of fun that I feel I should be getting paid to play them.  IMHO, of course.

Yep, the DS games are about choosing your battles. You need to be prepared and equipped for particular areas and enemies. I don't think they're unfairly difficult, but you'll be punished for your own stupidity every time.

Quote from: Anathallo on November 09, 2012, 05:41:44 PM

ME2 was my favourite of the trilogy.  The ME1 story was the best, by far, but some of the mechanics in the game prevented me from enjoying it.  ME2 felt a lot more polished from a gameplay standpoint, and the whole "recruit a crack team to defeat evil!" story line was super fun for me.

ME3 was still a great game in my opinion, but I agree that ME1 and ME2 were much better.  DA:Origins was infinitely better than DA:2, but I still think DA:2 is the more 'polished' game overall in terms of gameplay mechanics.

A buddy of mine is a project manager for EA and he says the company is just toxic on the inside - everyone is jaded and people who enjoy their job are far and few between.

Pretty much agree. ME1 was a good story with Bioware polish, but clumsy gameplay and execution. ME2 was a decent story, but with better gameplay and definitely polished up like a triple-A title. ME3 was basically just concluding what they had set up before. Gameplay didn't change a lot from 2 and the story was ok. I liked most of it until the ending. Still one of my favorite franchises. I have the N7 logo on one of my customs.

Here's yet another TL;DR rants about why I dislike ME3.

Story. The first two Mass Effect games were mostly written by Karpyshyn, and they set a rather clear (from a narrative / structural perspective) trajectory. The third game was written by a new lead writer when Karpyshyn left, and they basically threw his original plot out the window. Karpyshyn was called in to deny this as damage control, perhaps owing someone at BioWare a favor, but it's pretty obvious. The entire plot behind the Quarian race's (and in particular Tali's) research into dying stars, the plot details behind Mordin's recruitment which establish the genetic diversity of humans, linking this fact to the diversity of the Protheans, and finally, most of all, the entire reason for the Reaper's fixation on human beings and their construction of the Human Reaper lead by Harbinger and his Collectors Project is basically rendered meaningless in the third game, left to hang limply as awkwardly inexplicable events. Hell, there are even facets in the third game which make no sense in the present context that are probably holdovers from Karpyshyn's original script: the Reaper's focusing so much damn attention on Earth, bothering to move the Citadel to Earth and not, say, the center of the galaxy or Dark Space. Perhaps the most tragically hilarious casualty of this last minute script rewrite is the very title of the game itself: Mass Effect. With the old plot, the mass effect phenomena has a pivotal role. Now, at best, it's just kind of high spirited nod to the discovery that makes it possible for humans to explore the universe and---OPPS!---end up being harvested.

This is because they got rid of the original dark energy plot wherein the consequences of using mass effect fields was leading to a cataclysm and instead went with the "yo Dawg" plot of an out of control AI finding the most retarded solution to the organics vs. synthetics conflict imaginable. At least the Leviathan DLC made the 3rd game's story slightly more interesting and therefore tolerable.

Gameplay. As clumsy as the gameplay in the first game was, it was for me a much more memorable experience because it presented one of the most successful amalgamations of role playing and cinematic presentation I've ever encountered. Yes, combat was basically an annoyance / source of frustration at first and quickly evolved into a minigame wherein you select something like "marksman" or "carnage" and simply blow everything away by holding down a button for a few seconds. However combat was only one small part of an overall package, and when you get to a high enough level you can either ignore it for the most part (as stated above) or invent ways of adding interest like using biotics or tech. The different classes, while less balanced than the later games, felt like they all offered something unique instead of all being variations on a theme (ie: all basically soldier characters like the 3rd game). Yes, the Mako handled like you were driving through mashed potatoes, and having to find artifacts on the various planets got tedious quickly. But at least there were planets to explore, alien landscapes where you could drive around and just stop in your tacks to look up at the starry skies and the various crater-specked moons. That, for me, was one of the game's strongest qualities: the sense of scale, of vastness to the galaxy. You felt like there was endless possibility out there, an infinite array of directions to take (enhanced by the fact that there were two more games slated to be released). It was all about exploration of this vast expanse, and so I could forgive some of the details like all the labs looking nearly identical.

In the second game, they boxed things in and confined the player to a more linear path, compartmentalized the environments (and the game itself--- loading screens, mission completion screens, the scanning "minigame" that replaced planetside resource mining, etc.). They made everything finite: ammo (from a purely narrative standpoint, how is going from a system wherein you have infinite ammo to one where you HAVE to use clips to cool your weapon a technological improvement? If they retained the infinite ammo but made clips optional to circumvent overheating and use them faster, that would make sense), fuel for the Normandy, metals and other resources, and even credits which were so much easier to amass in the first game. Still, they made up for this. By streamlining things they were able to zoom in more and focus on diversity. Having modular environments meant for a wider array of environments. Instead of one massive world with a central hub, there were several smaller hub-worlds with more variation between them. By limited the weapons to individual examples, they could focus more on their unique designs. That's what ME2 was all about: multiplicity. You had the largest, most wide-ranging crew of any of the games, the most unique locations, and the biggest variety of mission types. Especially with the DLC, the game ended up being a grab-bag of different ideas, from infiltrating some rich thug's birthday party to driving around a volcano in a hovercraft, to kicking a math wizard's ass in virtual reality, to film noir-style crimescene investigations and flying car chases, etc. etc. There was something for everyone.

The third game took the linearity too far and rallied behind a singular concept: the Reaper war. It relied far more on its cinematic element than the other games, basically stripping away most of the RPG elements beyond some token economies like choosing between two ways of evolving a power, a weapons upgrade system, and the weight restriction / load out mechanic, and the goofy war assets system. With the exception of that last one, these elements were all basically combat-oriented. Any RPG-like mechanics related to social and character development were severely reduced.

Also those elements which allow you to customize your gameplay---well, the combat; which is more-or-less the same as "the gameplay" in the case of ME3---are largely superficial. Selecting one of two power upgrade paths often resulted in little difference in the end. The weapons upgrade system, while more realistic, was actually less interesting than the other games because it still kept the second game's ammo types as powers delegated to specific members, while doing away with the second game's heavy weapons category, forcing you to use whatever you find on the battlefield as a stage prop. Why can't I bring the Darkstar (the cool gun, not Ray's stupid amp) back to the Normandy with me? It's not like Shepard was shy about decorating her cabin with Reaper tech in the past LOL. As for the weight restriction, what was meant to add balance ended up unbalancing the classes. As an infiltrator, you got a big "fuck you!" from the developers in having to choose between using your powers and using a pistol.

There are so many games out there that focus on run 'n' gun combat, and the emphasis on battle in the third game, while allowing it to be refined compared to the other two, basically took what made Mass Effect unique in the first place and sidelined it half the time, transforming the game from a stelar RPG hybrid to a mediocre third-person shooter. It was pretty tragic not being able to engage in actual dialog with my crew, instead standing around listening to pre-determined banter. While it was nice to see them showing up in different parts of the ship and engaging with other characters, it actually made for a maddening game of "comb the ship" after every single little event. Basically, the "social element" consisted of visiting the same parts of the ship over and over and over to hear the next little blurb of pre-determined dialog, almost like pulling the strings of a crew of plush toys to hear them cycle through their phrases. This was what BioWare did in the second game with their "throw away" characters that were last minute DLC additions. Now it applies to the whole crew.

Most side missions are basically permutations of this: simple fetch quests that require you to find an artifact a la Dragon Age 2 and return it to some random NPC standing in the corner of the Citadel. You'd find some inexplicable magical slap-bracelets in a Cerberus base (I guess they were studying alien slap-bracelet technology?) and then bring it back to what has to be the narrowest hospital in the entire galaxy---what amounted to a Beverly Hills home's walk-in-closet---and deliver it to an Asari on a cellphone. She specifically thanks you for them, which in and of itself is an improvement over DA2 with its random dialog that often doesn't even match the item (I can't tell you how disturbing it is when you come up to some peasant and give him the remains of his dead grandpa and he proclaims joyously "so THAT'S where that got to! I wont lose it again."). When you turn around and talk to her---okay, you aren't actually talking to her at this point, more like triggering her conversation with someone else---you discover that in the span of those three seconds she has somehow given this item to the Asari back on her homeworld and they are already seeing great benefits from these slap-bracelets.

Of course, that's just goofy. The real tragedy lies on the meta-gaming level. Your choices from the previous two games, the main selling point of the series itself, are reduced to ultimately meaningless window dressing. I don't just mean the ending. Take the "Rachni choice," or the "Wrex choice" from the first game. Turns out those things mainly result in a slight difference in how your war assets get distributed, and in the actual narrative not much differs. The developers simply replace the objects of those choices with nearly identical "second cousins," and you end up doing and saying the same thing sans a few madlib-esque noun substitutions. All the fuss over the in-game relationships? You confront your first partner about cheating in the second game, and it's basically "Oh--well--do you want to continue with me? Yes? Okay I forgive you ROFLMAO." In the end, who you choose really makes no difference, merely allowing you to access cutscene A or B or C.

There's a weird bipolar quality to the third game. On the one hand, EA is pushing for more sales and so BioWare is pressured to make the game more accessible. Who the hell starts a trilogy on the third game? I'm sorry, but fuck you: either go back and play the earlier games or read up on the backstory. Dumbing things down to that denominator isn't doing anyone any real favors. On the other hand, the game is more fragmented than ever, with important events offloaded onto other forms of media. Looking forward to seeing Shepard's trial? You know, the cliffhanger on which the second game ended? Sorry, but that doesn't happen in the third game; you'll need to read a printed comic about it. Oh, and this comic---depicting a crucial plot point and introducing one of the new characters---is extremely hard to get, only existing as an in-store promotion for comic shops. So we'll introduce Vega in the beginning of the game, and he'll know Shepard (and Shepard will know him), but you the player wont have a clue who he is. Brilliant. Oh, and let's focus on Kei Leng and his awesome character design which looks more at home in a Tekken game rather than the Mass Effect universe. He'll be as flat as a cutout in the game, because any character development and exposition related to his character takes place in a serious of hilariously bad novels written by someone who has little to no knowledge about the franchise for which he's writing.

Quote from: ocswing on November 09, 2012, 08:25:45 PM

Quote from: Anathallo on November 09, 2012, 05:41:44 PM

ME2 was my favourite of the trilogy.  The ME1 story was the best, by far, but some of the mechanics in the game prevented me from enjoying it.  ME2 felt a lot more polished from a gameplay standpoint, and the whole "recruit a crack team to defeat evil!" story line was super fun for me.

ME3 was still a great game in my opinion, but I agree that ME1 and ME2 were much better.  DA:Origins was infinitely better than DA:2, but I still think DA:2 is the more 'polished' game overall in terms of gameplay mechanics.

A buddy of mine is a project manager for EA and he says the company is just toxic on the inside - everyone is jaded and people who enjoy their job are far and few between.

Pretty much agree. ME1 was a good story with Bioware polish, but clumsy gameplay and execution. ME2 was a decent story, but with better gameplay and definitely polished up like a triple-A title. ME3 was basically just concluding what they had set up before. Gameplay didn't change a lot from 2 and the story was ok. I liked most of it until the ending. Still one of my favorite franchises. I have the N7 logo on one of my customs.

*Too long; but I read anyways....*

I agree with every point of this rage driven tirade, and have absolutely nothing of value to add haha.  This pretty much sums up the trilogy for me as well, except for the fact that, as it's own entity, I enjoyed playing through ME3 - despite it's glaring narrative flaws and action-oriented gameplay.