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Mass Effect |OT| Alien love in an elevator
- Thread starter Mr. Spinnington
- Start date
neojubei said:
There's supposed to be some significant DLC before the end of the year.
But no, the LE gets a galactic codex, an art book, and a bonus DVD (four documentaries, five trailers, ten songs, 16 dashboard themes, 18 gamer pics, and 600 concept art images). If only that music was on a CD or capable of getting in .mp3 form off the DVD, it'd be about perfect.
And the case itself is kind of nifty. That's about it. I wish it were more like the BG2 Collector's Edition. That was badarse. But again, I'm not sure comparing this to BG2 is healthy if I'm going to enjoy it.
Ninja Scooter
Member
im picking soldier just like in any rpg i always pick the warrior/fighter/barbarian type. I hate magic.
Synless
Member
I've put in about 4 - 4 1/2 hours into the game and I'm pretty impressed with everything in the game except for one thing...The graphics, now before you flame me let me tell you why.
Ater playing Uncharted, AC, CoD4 and Heavenly sword I can safely say that this game falls short of all of these titles.
I'll start with facial expressions which seem so to be the thing that is considered on of the biggest achievements of this game and is highly talked about in the reviews as being the greatest ever....Heavenly sword and Uncharted both easily outclass this game in terms of facial expressions, the expressions in mass effect while good are still kind of robotic looking to me I've been paying close attention to this since I started and so far have been let down. Also the animation of the characters as they move is also subpar when comparing it to AC and Uncharted, they just don't move as well, there is no comparison.
The framerate in this game never seems to stay solid whether it be from me turning my camera or when something big is going on and it just get's massacred, while it's mentioned in the reviews it is pretty bad and if this were any other game I think gaf would have a meltdown.
Screen tearing is apparent in this game as well I have seen it quite a bit throughout the game.
and finally the texture work is hit or miss in this game I have seen some pretty solid textures and some down right hideous ones, some of the character models (especially humans have some horrible skin textures when the right lighting hits them.) Not to mention the Texture pop in is far more severe then another recent title that got slammed for it.
I'm not trying to beat on this game because like I said the gameplay, presentation, and story are great but I've been pretty dissapointed with the graphics so far.
Ater playing Uncharted, AC, CoD4 and Heavenly sword I can safely say that this game falls short of all of these titles.
I'll start with facial expressions which seem so to be the thing that is considered on of the biggest achievements of this game and is highly talked about in the reviews as being the greatest ever....Heavenly sword and Uncharted both easily outclass this game in terms of facial expressions, the expressions in mass effect while good are still kind of robotic looking to me I've been paying close attention to this since I started and so far have been let down. Also the animation of the characters as they move is also subpar when comparing it to AC and Uncharted, they just don't move as well, there is no comparison.
The framerate in this game never seems to stay solid whether it be from me turning my camera or when something big is going on and it just get's massacred, while it's mentioned in the reviews it is pretty bad and if this were any other game I think gaf would have a meltdown.
Screen tearing is apparent in this game as well I have seen it quite a bit throughout the game.
and finally the texture work is hit or miss in this game I have seen some pretty solid textures and some down right hideous ones, some of the character models (especially humans have some horrible skin textures when the right lighting hits them.) Not to mention the Texture pop in is far more severe then another recent title that got slammed for it.
I'm not trying to beat on this game because like I said the gameplay, presentation, and story are great but I've been pretty dissapointed with the graphics so far.
Infiltrator is a very viable class. Just be prepared to play it mostly as a soldier instead of depending on your engineer skills. The advantages is that your pistol and sniper rifles will become REALLY powerful later in the game, and you should have plenty of shields to make sure you survive combat.GuessWho said:
JayDubya said:
So basically the limited edition does not add to the video game, it is just a bunch of extra stuff. I guess I will get the regular edition, it would be much easier to cut up the cover and put into a ps3 game case.
Synless said:
Thanks for your input. I doubt a lot of people would have admitted to this.
Synless said:
I agree with you but let me defend Bioware a bit (not that I'm on their payroll or anything!).
First of all, the games considered to be this gen's graphical showcaes - Heavenly Sword, Gears, Uncharted, CoD 4, etc - are very tight, very focused games. They all have very well defined, compact worlds that allow the developers to really go nuts with the graphics. Clearly, with these games, graphics actually influence the gameplay. These games revolve around the graphics, rather than having the graphics revolve around the game, so to speak.
Every game has a master budget. From this master budget, funds are allocated to graphics, optimization, animation, writing, etc. It's obvious that, as with every other Bioware game, the focus is story, story, story. There's only so much time and money to go around. Plus, this is Bioware's first adventure with UE3 & next gen hardware. I'm actually 100% impressed with the graphics, CONSIDERING the huge universe they've managed to create. It's really mind blowing.
As we've seen from the previews, the game has always been in various states of optimization, with a huge crunch at the end to get the game to where it is today.
The frame rate has NEVER been solid. The textures were always popping in. Every preview video featured tons of v-synch issues. Nobody should be surprised with the final product.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
neojubei said:
Haven't people been admitting to it since the game dropped? And in every review?
Lostconfused
Member
neojubei said:
Maybe not a lot of people care. I played this game for 8 hour straight after getting it and my only complaint is that i would be nice to have a bigger variety of weapon and armor models, oh and i want to get rid of that damn eye piece Garrus is wearing. But then again this game could have had kotor visuals and i would have been happy.
Synless
Member
RSTEIN said:
And there is a ton of variety and I know we as a forum have talked about the graphics, but they seem to be praised and hyped up way to high by every reviewer out there, frame rate problems hurt other games and everyone bitched about those but in this game, because it's a bioware game it's a non-issue and is treated lightly, yes it's mentioned but still it's treated way to lightly look at Uncharted for example and I know this is kind of a stupid argument to make because it falls in that area you mentioned earlier but how does it that a game that had some screen tearing and rarely any slowdown to speak of get rated by every reviewer out there less then mass effect did? (I'm only talking about the graphics here not anything else, I know mass effect is far deeper in gameplay and story) I just think after playing it that the graphics were over given too much credit because in the end, they arean't as good as Uncharted or AC.....yet it rated higher in that department, it just doesn't make sense to me.....regardless of how many planets they made.
Synless
Member
BenjaminBirdie said:
No the reviews say things exactly like this.
-Some texture pop-in
-Framerate gets hit every now and then but it doesn't mess up the gameplay (And it hits quite often and sometimes really bad.)
-Facial animation is top-notch (which it isn't, it's good but not up to par to other games)
graphics 9-10 it's like wtf to me it's really more like an 8-8.5, it makes no sense to me.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Synless said:
I don't know, the IGN video review sounded exactly like what you were saying.
GauntletFan
Banned
Synless said:
Two things.
1) With a limited amount of dialogue, you can keyframe the mouth shapes for perfect facial animation, which is what both those games do. ME has to use an automated system which breaks down the audio track phonetically. Big difference
2) I believe the cutscenes in both Heavenly Sword and Uncharted are pre-rendered video, not realtime.
Impressions and reviews seem to really go to different extremes on a lot of subjects. Combat is genius (bryan-egm) to combat leaves a lot to desire (eurogamer). Some say sidequests are awesome, others think they are very repetitive. A few posts up the poster claims the graphics aren't as good as expected, while other state they blew them away and are the best they have seen yet. Some finish the game in 20 hours with the completionist achievement, others with the same achievement in 40 hours. The only thing everyone seems to agree with are the technical issue's, but even there are a lot of different opinions in how much they occur.
Oh well, on friday i can finally make my own opinion about it.
Oh well, on friday i can finally make my own opinion about it.
Synless
Member
BenjaminBirdie said:
Yea, I don't know maybe I just hyped the game's graphics up beyond measure in my own mind and when I read 9's and 10's for graphics I just went nuts and then playing it was I was like shit......doesn't look all that impressive after all, looks good but not "great" like the reviewers put it.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
beerbelly said:
You know, I'm loathe to make those sorts of statements but I think it all comes down to the scores and what that really illustrates is that the PS3 is lacking in more large scale experiences this holiday and the reviews are reflecting that. Mass Effect might not be as polished as Uncharted but it's reviewing better because it's a deeper experience. And yet there are so many posts that compare the scoring of the two (already dangerous) and compare only the "polish".
Synless said:
I don't disagree with your other points, but you have to keep in mind that while facial animation is better in HS and Uncharted, they're all "prerendered" real time cutscenes, by which I mean that the scenes never change and the facial animation is preset.
Mass Effect certainly has the best dynamic facial animation I've ever seen.
Wow, beaten 4 posts ago and I didn't even realize it.
Synless said:
Maybe part of it is the hype. I'll buy this game today to see for myself.
Kildace said:
Well in uncharted the facial animation isn't limited to cut scenes. When Drake is talking or other characters in game, their lips and face moves.
As for best dynamic facial animation? I'll have to play Mass effect to find out.
Synless
Member
GauntletFan said:
Heavenly sword was real-time and is far better in facial animation, and animation in general then mass effect, but that's a non issue. I was just saying I expected something on that level when the reviewers and the creators were talking it up like they were going to be the best ever. (and the creators do say this it's on the pre-order disc)
GauntletFan
Banned
Synless said:
The cinemas weren't. You could see the compression
And my point is, the facial animation is about as good as you're going to get with such an anormous amount of spoken dialogue, unless you want Bioware to hire 300 key frame animators to work a couple of years keyframing every word. Different games, different scale entirely.
Synless
Member
I'm not crying about the uncharted score, I think mass effect is far better story wise, gameplay, and presentation which is why it got the higher score it deserves I'm only talking about the graphics praise it got in the reviews and I just can't see a way to wrap my mind around the high scores it got only in the graphics departement.beerbelly said:
Facial animation is top-notch. It's just that you're comparing it to HS and Uncharted, which use motion capture to perfectly recreate an actors facial movements in mostly offline rendered cut-scenes.Synless said:
How do you think facial expressions in Mass Effect compares to Oblivion?
Synless
Member
It's no contest there, it's leagues above but when you make statements like "facial animation is incredible" or "facial animations are top of the line" it doesn't matter if it's motion captured or not if it's good it's good, and this isn't as good as some other games.danwarb said:
i'm not trying to turn this into a game war, I was just pointing out some of my frustrated nitpickings about the graphics, I've excepted it for what it is now, A great game with pretty good graphics.
GauntletFan
Banned
Synless said:
What part of Mass Effect are you at?
Synless
Member
I just got past that that bar part in the begginging and was on my way to a new planet. id say 3-4 hours in, I've been playing for about 4 1/2 because I kept dying at first because I was using a weapon my character didn't know and the reticule was massive and I couldn't hit anything.GauntletFan said:
I'll post again about what I think later tonight after I get done with class and get a bit farther. I still don't think it can improve any, I'm sure there are some sweet ass looking planets that I'm going to love but I can tell you from what I played I will continue to stand by my previous statements.
people say the frame rate and texture poping issues don't make you walk away from the game, but i'm still disappointed that they are there in such high-production-value game. here's a hope that bioware will release somekinda patch to make a better use of the hardware, but i doubt they really care what we think.
Synless
Member
Piper Az said:
That's another thing I was thinking about too, I can't remember a game where the framerate was ever solid on a bioware game, Kotor 1&2 had this problem and so did jade empire so I've gotten kind of used to it from them. but the texture pop-in is a pretty decent problem in this game.
SlasherJPC
Banned
Ok so what does it mean when the enemies have a green bar on their health bar. Is that there sheild? also whats the additional little blue rectangles next to their names as well. I looked in the instructions to see if this was mentioned and couldn't find it anywhere. I only ask because I stumbled on a planet, found a hidden building, and there was like 8 guys in there and they just demolish me. I dont know if I'm doing something wrong or if there just too strong for me right now. Anyone have any ideas?
Kabuki Waq
Member
RSTEIN said:
From a gamers perspective and not someone who is a on Bioware's payroll this excuse sucks ass. A title this big with this much hype should not be released in an unpolished state. They have delayed the game multiple times might as well have delayed it a bit more. In regards to the huge universe? eh it can be done specially since it is not seamless and there is loading.
i get the game today i hope the graphical issues are just exagerrated.
Synless
Member
Belgorim said:
They have pre-rendered scenes in mass effect I've seen a few time's already where the charter model for the main character improves while he/she is talking to someone in a cinematic scene. I think you might be confusing pre-rendered in realtime with just pre-rendered scenes, and heavenly sword and mass effect uses pre-rendered in realtime graphics for it's cutscenes.
BenjaminBirdie said:
If this is how reviewers are really looking at it then that's bullshit. Judge a game on it's own merits and not how it compares to other games, expecially games in completely different genres. By your logic games like Gears and Bioshock and COD4 should've been scored lower because those games are certainly not large scale like Mass Effect.