As in, the Medal of Honor achievement for the first complete play-through!
The past few chapters of the story were really engaging and kept me coming back for more. It’s a shame the story didn’t start off strong; perhaps I’d have stuck with Mass Effect and finished it a long time ago.
Shepard finished at level 47. The Medal of Honor unlocks levels 51-60 but I haven’t looked into how to actually continue the game for another play so I can get the higher levels and some of the achievements I missed that I might be able to get as a Soldier class. The rest will have to wait until I play as a class with biotics. I just clicked "resume" a bit ago and the game loaded me back into the final confrontation with Saren so I’m not sure how to keep going with my current character. "New career" makes me nervous since those tend to delete your game save and start fresh but I don’t see any other choices so that must be it.
Upon finishing Noveria, which I wrote about earlier, the romance sub-plot began. I think it had started before that but I hadn’t been engaging in idle conversation with the crew much between missions so I had no idea until we finished the Noveria mission then suddenly Shepard is in a confrontation with Ashley and Liara and being asked to choose one or the other. The James T. Kirk "chase the hot alien chicks" in me drove me to choose Liara but then nothing ever happened after any of the other missions. I did a little reading on the forums today where I learned the whole Liara romance is very dependent on how soon you find and rescue her after leaving the Citadel at the beginning of the game. Uh oh. All the hype and publicity when the game released about romance and sex and I botched it up? Nope! Just before heading out for the final mission Liara shows up in Shepard’s room to consummate the relationship.
One of the ethical parables on one of the missions made me pause the game and think for a few minutes. I’d sent Ashley to help some Salarians capture an anti-aircraft tower so the Normandy could land. While she was doing that, Shepard’s team was clearing the area so the Salarians could manually place a nuke to destroy the facility. Ashley’s team was starting to get heavy resistance so I decided to leave Lt. Kaiden with the team setting up the nuke. Before I got to Ashley attacks start on both sides. There’s only time to save one of my crew. Whom do I sacrifice? I took Kaiden quite often because I had his electronics and decryption skills very high. Ashley only specialized in combat, with no tech or biotic abilities so I very rarely took her. In the end though I chose to save Ashley. That decision pushed me over the 75% mark for the Paragon achievement although later during the Ilos mission no one on the crew had a high enough decryption to get any of the extra loot there. Kaiden made his final stand as the last person with the nuke as it’s being overrun and he detonates it once he sees the Normandy safely leave the atmosphere. The ethical parables were great to have but also a bit nerve-wracking since I typically don’t look up walk-through guides online and I didn’t know if I’d end up gimping my game or not. On Ilos I seriously thought I was screwed after sacrificing Kaiden and then some of the interactable objects were labeled "control panels" and "repair panels" and I couldn’t use them. There was an elevator shaft which I never did manage to get open; did the control panel open it? Ugh! At least BioWare designed alternate methods of getting through the levels so I could still complete the mission.
All in all, fantastic game even though it starts off a bit on the slow side. I never did find the last Keeper on the Citadel, and still had a few of the resource collecting quests to finish. Maybe I’ll get to keep those when I start over? Anyway, Mass Effect now has the honor of being (I think?) the third single-player RPG I’ve ever actually finished in my entire life, Ultima III: Exodus and Final Fantasy VII being the previous two. Here’s hoping the Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf has what it takes to become #4 later this year because I don’t see anything else out there that I think I could stick with. I keep picking up the box for Square-Enix’s The Last Remnant and I know Final Fantasy XIII is coming at some point but… I suspect I changed somewhere along the line. I thought Final Fantasy X was vastly superior to VII but yet I couldn’t make myself finish it back in the day. I just don’t think I have that place in my heart anymore for the JRPG way of doing things.
Mass Effect complaints, I can limit to two. The Mako, which I think every single Mass Effect player has complained about. From basic steering control to hitting the target you’re aiming at, pretty much every aspect of the Mako was poorly executed. I suppose that’s what you get when a strictly RPG studio attempts to add some action game elements. My second complaint is the Unreal Engine. I swear that thing is utter crap for anything other than what it’s designed for: small maps. Constant loading (installing to the hard drive helps immensely but it’s still present), unstable framerates with larger environments (not good when combat starts and the framerate is all over the place), and the ever-present texture pop-in that even rears its ugly head in Epic’s own games.
Every time I see the Unreal Engine being stretched, it seems its limits are fairly narrow which makes me very nervous when I think of the studios who licensed it last year for their upcoming MMOGs — 38 Studios being top of my watch list. I see how badly the engine performs in Vanguard and even Lineage II and I have to question the wisdom of using an engine for something it was not built for simply because it has good name-brand recognition among players and a good toolset for the developers. Having that awesome toolset to make content will be a moot point if players leave in droves if the engine is a system killer chugging along with unstable framerates and frequent loading. I hope 38 Studios can make UE3 perform like no one else has managed to, but I’m not holding my breath just yet.
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Simply start a new game, but choose an “existing” character. You restart the entire campaign with fresh choices (although all equipment, stats, etc. stay the same – and item drops are scaled to your level even on the starting missions.)
I am on my 3rd playthrough with my first guy (now level 57 – I rushed through the second playthrough for unlocks. Third time through I am working on different story elements – being the renegade (instead of paragon), different romantic choices, and trying the game in different ways (doing more side missions, for example.)
I have also stepped up the difficulty each time and found the more strategic elements of combat (a lot more spacebar pausing) to have your squad use special tactics, etc. The first time I basically just runned and gunned it. (Yes I know runned isn’t a word. It does rhyme, though).
In fact, this is the most I have ever played a single player game. Loved Bioshock, but couldn’t replay it. ME has me coming back a few hours each week. The tasty treat is that Bioware has said to keep your saved game files for Mass Effect 2 – it will take the choices you used in ME1 (who dies, who lives, how you treated people, different quest choices, etc) and mold them into ME2. Will be interesting to see. I am also working on getting all the unlocks – I have an inkling Bioware will have bonuses for that in ME2 as well. It’s a good thing none of them are “kill 10,000 Geth”, or I wouldn’t bother.
I completely agree with you – the story started off so slow I had a hard time getting into it at first. Once that started to ramp up it went from a good to a great game pretty quickly. I am now a big fan and am worried I haven’t heard much about ME2 (is Bioshock using all resources for SWKOTOR?) – the IP has always been planned as a trilogy, and would love to see that realized.
I didn’t mind the MAKO too much – the aiming issue, well, the turret doesn’t have much horizontal movement so if you are on an incline it naturally fires high (I am supposing you are pointing out that the reticules themselves should aim better, and take those inclines into account?) – and I actually kind of liked how it drove and bounced around. I can definitely see how that area could be more polished though.
I am on the slipperly slope of “fanboi”-ism! OH NOES! I did write a couple pieces about Mass Effect on my own blog, and I think I am just excited to read someone else who enjoyed it as much as I did, and blog about it too.
Thanks for the read!