Mass Effect

[bigstrat2003]

The marketplace isn't part of paid XBL, so that doesn't count. I'm comparing the stuff that's Gold-exclusive, here, since all the stuff that's part of Silver is on even footing with any other service.

Anyways, I simply don't think XBL adds anything to my gaming. I want to go online, get into a game, play, done. Hell, given the quality of people on XBL, voice chat is a drawback, not a feature.

[Kag]

Actually, the XBL Marketplace is better than the PSN Store, if only because all marketplace games have some kind of demo, and purchased items can be re-downloaded as many times as you like, on PSN it's a limited number of times, last I heard.

And some demos are gold exclusive, so nyah.

And who says comparing them isn't part of this? How can you be certain that the marketplace isn't supported by gold subscriptions?

More importantly, in-game access to your friends list is a damn fine feature. I guess that's not technically gold exclusive, but it doesn't really do you any good to have a friends list if you aren't going to play with them.

Anyway, it's perfectly fine for you to say that you prefer PSN because you don't have to pay for the one feature you use, but looking at the whole list, XBL does everything PSN does, but with varying degrees of superiority, for a small fee. Just because you don't think it's a good deal doesn't mean that XBL is an inferior service.

[bigstrat2003]

And who says comparing them isn't part of this? How can you be certain that the marketplace isn't supported by gold subscriptions?

Because I pay for my games just as much whether I have silver or live? In any case, Microsoft's business model isn't relevant to the discussion, the user experience is. That much is the same across gold/silver (although, as you pointed out, some demos are gold-exclusive, in a laughable attempt by Microsoft to provide "value" to the people they rip off).

Just because you don't think it's a good deal doesn't mean that XBL is an inferior service.

Actually, it does. "Inferior" or "superior" is subjective here, and can only be accurately determined by a particular person for him/herself. If we get right down to it, you and I can scream at each other all day long about it, and we'll be equally correct, because what makes it inferior/superior is whether it offers us what we need.

[Endless Mike]

Gold also gives you access to Netflix streaming if you're a Netflix customer.

And yeah, having demos for all XBLA games is objectively superior to PSN only having them for some. It's also easier to go from game to game in XBL with friends than it is on PSN.

[Kag]

In any case, Microsoft's business model isn't relevant to the discussion, the user experience is.

Actually, your only point is that making XBL free would not be to the detriment of the user experience (hence, it's a rip-off), so I'd say it's probably quite relevant. And considering that cost is the only respect in which PSN is superior, it probably warrants some consideration.

edit: Although it is worth noting that Microsoft is making ten shitloads of money from XBL, and they probably could afford to make online play free, that hardly justifies calling it a rip-off. It's not exactly expensive.

[thecommabandit]

This discussion is not about Mass Effect. This saddens me =(

[Kag]

I didn't even realize it was the Mass Effect thread, at first. Now I want to go back and play it, though. Such a great game...

[Amnesiasoft]

Demos are only gold exclusive the first week they come out. After that they are opened to everyone.

[SecondTalon]

Having finally joined the gaming world of 2007 in buying this game on Steam...... so, am I just sucking hard, am I supposed to go and grind for XP or something, or is being a sniper goddamn punishing? From the two-shot then six second cooldown to the goddamn cut scenes taking me from my fortified, behind cover position and throwing me in the middle of the damn room to get jumped by the five or six things I heard and was trying to sneak up on, it seems like the game is actively punishing me for not charging in with an assault rifle blazing.

But it's probably just me. Because I picked Infiltrator and didn't read all of the documentation or whatever that mentions how Infiltrator is completely broken and worthless unless matched with Wrex or something.

[Gopher of Pern]

Having finally joined the gaming world of 2007 in buying this game on Steam...... so, am I just sucking hard, am I supposed to go and grind for XP or something, or is being a sniper goddamn punishing? From the two-shot then six second cooldown to the goddamn cut scenes taking me from my fortified, behind cover position and throwing me in the middle of the damn room to get jumped by the five or six things I heard and was trying to sneak up on, it seems like the game is actively punishing me for not charging in with an assault rifle blazing.

But it's probably just me. Because I picked Infiltrator and didn't read all of the documentation or whatever that mentions how Infiltrator is completely broken and worthless unless matched with Wrex or something.

You do have other weapons you know.
I had the complete opposite problem when I played as a Vanguard. There is this one section where you are stuck at the top of a cliff with plenty of baddies down below. Only problem is they have good aim at that extreme range, while my sniper scope wobbles all over the place.
You will get better sniper rifles which can fire more than once before overheating. But, yes, alot of the game is in close quarters. I think infiltrators are supposed to rely on their sniper as a back-up weapon, and use their powers and the pistol more. But then I've never player one, so take this with a grain of salt.

[Xanthir]

Sniper rifle is just not a primary weapon, is all. It's great when you can use it if you have some skill with it, but make sure you have *some* other weapon on backup for close-quarters combat. Any will do, even the pistol, though obviously a good shotgun or rifle is better.

[Telchar]

The first one? Man, it was good at the time, but I look back on all those terrible "go take the rover and explore the planet" bullshit missions, and cringe.

I played the Vangaurd through the first one I think, and did it on Xbox. I definitely appreciated having a beefier character that saved me from having to direct Wrex to draw fire all over the place.

[Eseell]

I loved Infiltrator, but you have to build it right and it's a lot easier if you play it on your second time around when you can assign your character an extra combat skill (if you earned the associated achievement).

When you're playing with the sniper rifles as your primary weapon, choose abilities and mods that improve your weapon stability and cooldown. When you get the upper tier rifles you'll finally get to a point where you can fire high-power shots almost constantly. The sniping mechanics in ME1 are worse than in ME2, but there is one upside. It doesn't matter where you hit your target in ME1, any hit on the target does the same amount of damage as any other hit; in other words head shots do not count for anything. This makes the scope drift a little easier to deal with.

Also, there are a lot of times where having sniper rifles can be a huge boon. For example, you get significantly more experience for killing turrets on foot instead of in the Mako. It's easy to snipe them to death and avoid their rockets for large amounts of XP. The same goes for Geth Armatures and, to a lesser extent, Thresher Maws. Overall, sniper rifles rock on story missions and outdoors where you have a lot of room, not so much in the stock interior environments.

Also, as an Infiltrator do not ignore your tech skills. Those tech grenades that you can throw are actually pretty badass. They can bring down your enemies' shields and overheat their weapons and generally make fighting much easier for you.

[Ryom]

I use my sniper rifle as a one hit wonder. Scram rail + explosive rounds + combat optics. It's lovely knocking charging Krogan off their feet

Don't be afraid to no-scope, I do it on geth hoppers with great results.

[Buddha with a bra on]

Played infiltrator first time round, used pistol all the time as couldn't be bothered sinking points into sniping. Pistols are pretty damn handy anyways.

Started new game + with same character, using sniper rifles this time. The top end spectre sniper + high explosive rounds = awesome rocket launcher

But yes, I found on the first play through that sniping was pretty limited in use until you get a good few points in it (enough for it not to be totally useless at short-med distance).

[Thadlerian]

Installing Mass Effect now. Why am I not allowed to choose where to install it? Seems it automatically decided to put it on C:, where there's only barely enough room.

[Diadem]

So I'm replaying mass effect now, and decided to try hardcore. I went off to rescue Liara pretty much before doing any other mission or sidequest, since I wanted the medal for doing assignments with her. But now I'm stuck, and getting frustrated.

I'm stuck at the final battle after rescuing Liara. The one against the Krogan Battlemaster. Everything so far was pretty easy, but this battle just seems impossible. Not even "just get more skills" impossible, but outright impossible. Taking out his henchmen is no problem, they die fast enough. But that krogan is just unkillable. He regenerates almost as fast as I can hit him, and instant-kills you as soon as he gets close. (Not sure what ability it is. It doesn't seem to have a recharge time though). You can't outrun him though, he's faster than you even when you sprint at full speed. Several times now I've had the battle bug where he stayed out of the battle until I engaged him, so I was able to take out all henchmen, then recharge all abilities, before engaging him. Didn't help. I once had him bug where I could fire at him without him doing anything until he was almost dead. Even that didn't help, because well, he just instant-kills you.

Having to watch a 21 minute unskippable movie every time you try him is not helping either. I had forgotten how annoying all those unskippable movies in mass effect are. Wow. I hope they fixed that in 3.

Anyway, why I'm posting this here: Is there a way to go back? Leave the planet and get some levels before trying him again? Or even get in different squadmembers? Because he's obviously outright impossible with my current setup. Having something like throw or stasis would already help a lot. Or am I forced to replay the entire game from start?

[maybeagnostic]

Start from a previous saved game? You can restart the mission but I don't think you can just leave it once you've started.

I would suggest using fire abilities on the krogan all the time- they prevent regeneration.

[Diadem]

I don't have an earlier save I'm afraid.

Does ME1 even have fire abilities? I sure don't. I'm a soldier, and I brought Wrex and Garrus. Neither have any useful skills for this fight (well Wrex has throw, but not yet. Next playthrough I'll definitely switch off auto-level-up for allies. That's one thing I learned *lol*). Hmm. I remember from my first playthrough that this was the hardest fight in the game by far, so I was expecting a tough fight. I hadn't counted on it being quite this hard though

[ArgonV]

Aren't there useful gun mods, something like polonium rounds, that stop health regeneration?

[VectorZero]

I think lift also stops regen. Which doesn't help you either, sorry. Yeah, it's the hardest fight in the game IMO.

[Ghostbear]

Depending on how desperate you are, if you have the PC version you can just cheat past it. Normally I'd assume you wouldn't want to, but you were willing to try to take advantage of a glitch to try to get out... KillCurrentTarget or GiveSuperGun sound like they would get you past that area (you could then gel the gun afterwards to remove temptation).

[maybeagnostic]

That's weird. I don't think I even died there on either playthrough and that was the first mission I did on insanity. So there are no weapon powers yet but some special ammos (definitely fire but possibly others) prevent regeneration and make krogan much easier to deal with. I would suggest just having an ally use fire ammo at all times and hopefully you have some in your inventory right now.

[JudeMorrigan]

A lot depends on how you build your characters before doing it and whether or not you do anything else before hitting it up or not. I did an insanity playthrough recently, started with a vanguard and ran into a brick wall on this battle too. I wound up restarting my whole durned game, played as a soldier, build up my defensive abilities and made sure I wasn't in my starter gear for the fight and it was easy-peasy. Unfortunately, no, I don't think there is a way to leave or to even swap out characters short of going back to an old save.

[maybeagnostic]

Restarting a mission lets you choose different teammates in ME3. I never had to restart a mission in ME1 though so I am not sure if that's the same.

[JudeMorrigan]

I don't think there is a restart mission option in ME1. It's just not organized that way.

[Diadem]

A lot depends on how you build your characters before doing it and whether or not you do anything else before hitting it up or not. I did an insanity playthrough recently, started with a vanguard and ran into a brick wall on this battle too.

Yeah this is pretty much my problem too. I put most of my points into electronics and intimidate (my previous play-through was paragon so I wanted a change). I have very little combat abilities. And my allies were on auto-level-up so they spent all their points not very effectively either. Well I guess I learned something for my insanity play-through.

One thing I learned is that electronics is useless. I took it as my bonus skill, thinking it would allow me to open locks and stuff. But that turns out to be decryption. Meh. Guess I'll just have to put an engineer in my party next time 'round.

Anyway, the good news is that I finally got past the fight. Still not quite sure how. Guess I got lucky. Both my allies died of course, but meh, fuck 'em. They seem to be a lot better at staying alive in ME2 than in ME1 I have to say

[Dark567]

The first one? Man, it was good at the time, but I look back on all those terrible "go take the rover and explore the planet" bullshit missions, and cringe.

I have mixed feelings about the rover missions. They were kinda lame, but they made the universe seem a lot bigger. In ME2 and ME3 without them it seems like the universe only has a few important planets.

[maybeagnostic]

Exploring with the rover was the most fun I had replaying ME1. Sure, it moved in the most perplexingly physics-defying way and the planets didn't have enough stuff on them but it made me feel like I was actually flying across the galaxy and exploring alien worlds. ME2 lost a lot with the loss of the rover but at least had several segments on space ships. ME3 only had two missions that were clearly not on Earth.

[VectorZero]

ME1 really captured the austerity and desolate frontier nature of space exploration and exploitation. Seeing the little prefab shacks and the spartan accommodation the explorers used really brought that home. Even Noveria, with all it's illegal/unethical corporate money was of utilitarian design.

I think the improvements in graphical fidelity in later games took away some of the gritty, life on the edge sci-fi. Still great fun, but a different world. So to speak.