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Post by jklinders on Mar 30, 2011 18:50:12 GMT 1
Because the Reapers will blow it up before it hits the mass relay? That's a whole heck of lot easier said than done. Even reaper weapons hitting a chunk of rock that big(roughly the same size as the one that took out the dinosaurs) would be kinda like gnats pushing against a boulder. The movies Armageddon, Deep Impact and meteor did not let real world science get in the way of a story and all three were BS according to just about any respected physicist. Reaper weapons are powerful but nothing suggests that they would be used successfully for cracking iron filled rocks the size of Mt Everest.
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Post by Knightfall on Mar 30, 2011 21:59:06 GMT 1
I hated this DLC. I knew things were going to be bad when Admiral Hackett talks to you through your model ship display.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Mar 30, 2011 22:24:05 GMT 1
Did Hackett sound different to anyone else? (maybe just the fact it's been nearly five years since Lance Henriksen last played the part?)
I'm disappointed we didn't get any alliance uniforms, too. It would have been so easy to put them in, seeing as how the cerberus uniforms are just recolours of them.
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 1, 2011 13:19:06 GMT 1
Okay, I played it. I have mixed feelings, not sure whether to give this thing 4 or 5 out of ten. Here's a list of horrible flaws.
They've spotted us! Killing the same three or four guards got old after about the tenth guard.
Silly, silly, silly FPS mechanics 'Just hold them off from three seperate directions while I type at this keyboard! Routing the satellite... correlating the computer-banks... they're.... they're in Cuba!' Seriously, that first mission I felt like I was playing Goldeneye 007 the entire time. Wandering blindly around a boring facility, shooting faceless guards, re-routing gas vents, shooting doors to make them open and dropping and lifting elevators... bugger off.
Confusing and cheap plot I have so many questions. Where were my crew during those two days? Who was that guy who radioed me from the Normandy? Why did they not simply kill Shepard when she was unconscious? Where does a science project get a literal army of pyromaniac shock troops? Why did they keep the manual mech-controls in the same place they kept Shepard? Why was that one mech so much stronger than the rest? Why did they leave Shepard's armour and fully-loaded weapons in a box next to her cell? What ARE these exploding boxes with 'please do not shoot me' written on them which are placed either side of most doors? How come the two-hour timer nearly ran out during my 50-minute trip - did I fall asleep again? Why is Shepard talking to herself? If the Batarians knew what The Project was planning, why not evacuate after Kenson's escape? Where the hell were my crew for the two days after I failed to return from a dangerous solo mission with an unknown, non-allied accomplice? Seriously!
Morality and Shepard's ultimate 'sacrifice' One of my favourite features of the Mass Effect series is the difficult moral choices. Difficult moral choices, where both options are justified if you think hard enough, which Shep always does, and commit to a left or right wing viewpoint. No-one bothered to put that into this week's £5 installment. I appreciate that the deaths of all those people were for the greater good, but it shouldn't have been. The only reason there was no clever third option was pure laziness on Bioware's part. My version of Commander Shepard wouldn't kill half a million non-combatants, or she sure as hell wouldn't do it that easily! She's never done something like that before, in fact she's solved several conflicts by refusing to 'compromise our humanity' or similar. Watching my Shepard flick a switch to 'sacrifice' someone else's people was heartbreaking. Having this choice taken away from me, having my perception of my character's morals altered for plot convenience - is not role-playing and it's not good writing. And seriously, there was a line toward the end about 'We will fight, and we will sacrifice - this is what humans do!' Yeah, we sacrifice.... batarians? Remorselessly? Through no real fault or decision of our own? Is that what we do, Shep? Well, go fucking team.
Idiocy The whole 'you must go alone' thing was so very silly. I would've preferred if they'd just ignored the whole issue rather than 'If you go in with a three-man squad consiting of yourself, a turian and a drell in a leather jacket, they will suspect the Alliance!'
Worst of all - general pointlessness Bad fiction ends exactly where it left off with no changes in character or plot. It's often rushed and driven by profits or deadlines. Apart from losing the support of the Batarians and Alliance, which I never had anyway, I appear to have delayed the Reapers by weeks or months. I didn't even know they were so close... no, strike that - they weren't. This was crowbarred in. So I crowbarred the plot back to where it was and morally-offended the batarians (and indeed, the player) without having any real choice in the matter whatsoever - me or Shepard. Oh and I got Bioware their five pounds.
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However
- The music was superb. Better than the music in either of the main games.
- There were some neat tricks and set-pieces. Controlling that mech and looking at Shepard from another character's POV was a nice change. So was losing a fight (my infiltrator did horribly, and I was royally pissed until I realised I was never supposed to win).
- It felt good to actually confront Harbinger (or the Reapers in general or whoever that was) and threaten him. It felt like this was something missing from ME2 - a solid set-up for the final act where the Reapers make some real threats. That scene (apart from the one line I mentioned...) was excellent, and quite chilling.
- The sound-muted fight with the enormous Mass Relay in the background was wonderful fun. It's a small thing, but I loved being able to see one of those things during actual gameplay.
- Although Doctor English was a little silly (I genuinely didn't twig that she would turn on me) and poorly-drawn, I enjoyed watching her attempt to reason her way through the indoctrination, as well as give us an interesting demonstation of the effect in full sway.
- It really was nice to see Hackett, and have him hinting at Shepard's possible re-joining the Alliance 'blue', and honestly, to hear my Shepard call the man 'sir'. I missed that, and it felt like a decent (if not good) conclusion to the whole 'working with Cerberus' plotline.
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So. This is lazy, lazy, confused, has a very unfortunate plot point, lazy and a bit silly. But it was relatively cheap and it allowed me to meet Hackett in person (he was poorly-drawn too...) fight some cool set-pieces, tie-off some of ME2's loose ends (if awkwardly) and talk to a Reaper. And I think I spent longer writing this than playing it.
4/10
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 1, 2011 13:35:42 GMT 1
I missed one of my plot-holes off the list -
How in the name of giddy fuck did a barely-conscious Shepard punch-out two armoured, helmeted guards, with one punch each, whilst they were firing assault rifles into her t-shirt at point-blank range?
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Post by jklinders on Apr 1, 2011 13:43:06 GMT 1
If there is one thing I learned from ME 2 it's that civilian clothing is at least as effective as Shep's full body armour. See Miranda and Jack for more details. Hell Jack does one better with her magic prison tattoos.
As fopr clocking out 2 guards...it's Shepard. S/he can do anything but survive cutscene unconsciousness. I swear that bit was taken from just about every bad JRPG out there. Don't put me through a 10 minute long battle just to have a ****ing cutscene knock me out. Just skip to the ****ing cutscene already.
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 1, 2011 13:48:26 GMT 1
Yeah well I bought armour for Miranda and I can kind of kid myself that Ko-Jack is wearing kinetic shields, but.......
****ing Nora.
xD
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Post by Tillian Panthesis on Apr 1, 2011 14:04:18 GMT 1
About the punching bit. That's how she kills them? I find it more pluasable if Shepard does neck snapping at them, but punching? I'm not going to say it anymore.
And don't get me started about the ending. The batarian government didn't do jack shit about the whole attempted mass slaughter on Terra Nova in ME1, but in ME2 they wanted to rip Shepard's eye sockets for doing the same favour? (admittedly, she pulled it off successfully.) This doesn't seem to be that balance, especially when Terra Nova had like a million people on the planet at the time. I'm not condoning Shepard's actions, but I'm wondering. That's all.
To be fair about the batarians not evacuating the system, they didn't know about the whole thing, if they did then they are constantly bitching about it like they were in the dark about the whole thing?
EDIT: My bad. They probably did...Everyone is high on stupid pills on that day.
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Post by jklinders on Apr 1, 2011 16:07:28 GMT 1
Given that the Batarians are pretty much a planet of hats in regard to their hatred of humans and the Alliance is trying to be buddy buddy with as many folks as possible I find the whole thing to be a bit more plausible than all that. The Alliance really can't afford to have a war right now and the other council races are unlikely to stand with the Alliance in light of the apparent war crime committed by Shep.
Let's not forget that Shep's evidence has been destroyed yet again so unless the other council races really are just pretending to not look into it as I have suspected all along, they are likely to just leave to be between Humanity and the Batarians. The witch hunt makes perfect sense in that respect. Meanwhile the tool behind Terra Nova was a "terrorist" and lacked "official" backing by the Hegemony while Shep is both a Spectre and an officer in the Alliance. Politically speaking the council and Alliance barely has any choice outside throwing Shep under the bus. It sucks but as Kaiden would say "that's politics Chief."
*insert Ashley whining about hating politics here*
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 1, 2011 16:18:27 GMT 1
*Ashley voice*
I hate Linders.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Apr 1, 2011 16:20:51 GMT 1
*insert Ashley's perfectly plausible, well-written character development* Fixed. I'm not sure about this. Do you think BioWare'll retcon in Arrival for people who didn't play it? I'm not sure how they could get around not doing so.
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Post by jklinders on Apr 1, 2011 16:23:14 GMT 1
Why a spoon cousin, why not an axe or a...
I said whining about politics Buch. The main difference between somebody involved in politics and me right now is that political folks get paid to do nothing...
"*insert Ashley's perfectly plausible, well-written character development*"
Yeah she was pretty shallow, but aside from Wrex most of ME 1's characters were. I just fail to see how someone like Ash could be a part of the military without understanding the realities of how politics muck things up.
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 1, 2011 16:24:28 GMT 1
There would be plenty of ways to insist that 'Arrival' happenned between games.
I figure they'll have a scene like the one in ME2 where Jacob and Miranda ask you questions about your past. Maybe the Council review your track record - Virmire, the Battle of the Citadel, your decision at the Collector Base, 'and of COURSE the more recent business at the Alpha Relay...'
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Post by Mr. Glow on Apr 1, 2011 16:24:33 GMT 1
Who doesn't hate politicians anyway? Apart from the oil guys...
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 1, 2011 16:25:18 GMT 1
Why a spoon cousin, why not an axe or a... I said whining about politics Buch. The main difference between somebody involved in politics and me right now is that political folks get paid to do nothing... Because it's dull, you twit! It'll hurt more! Also - sorry xD
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