Just remember in ME3 that the correct answer to "so, looks like we've got some time to kill" is "cool... well, see you later" and not "hold me tight!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaYjcadKt0

Bren R.

No! My eyes. My eyes. Why did you do that to me!

Only played ME3 for about 6 hours compared to 150+ hours of Skryim. Mass Effect 3 is such a polished game in comparison IMO. Much better game. I prefer the environments, level of detail in the characters, game play mechanics, controls, combat, the characters themselves and story telling. Has more dynamic range , but Skryim was no slouch and had a good soundtrack as well. So far it seems Skyrim utilized the surrounds more.

I haven't played a console game since... I dunno... Donkey Kong Country 2... but I saw that on Penny Arcade yesterday.

I fear for the future of video games.

Bren R.

Well I’ve been playing ME3 for about 14 hours and so far I have mixed feelings about it.

Pros – Well it’s ME. No stupid “mini-games,” like decrypting locks or computer terminals or endlessly searching for minerals. The searching is still there but now you scan parts of a system (not to bad) to find various goodies. The enemy combat AI seems better as enemies move around laterally more making them harder to hit. Traveling on the Citadel is simple so far as elevators take you pretty much everywhere. Imported character plus squad mates get lots of skill points to spend and you start with good Paragon/Renegade bonuses already (I don’t know yet if the difficulty scales to your level).

Cons – So far when you run around the Citadel none of your shipmates go with you so you don’t hear the banter between them. The overall use of surround sound doesn’t seem to create as much ambiance as in ME and ME2. You still have to run all over the ship to talk with crewmates between mission (I miss the campfire in DA). Had to swap out to disk two for the very first side mission I did and then switch back right after finishing it (not happy about this at all).

Undecided – The Galactic war is an interesting concept but I don’t see it having a very interesting impact.

Different but don’t care – Weapons have upgrades again and the interface is fine but I don’t get any big thrill out of them like sniping at bad guy’s feet in ME with HE rounds and watching them fly into the air.

A better video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe880ShbYQk

It asked for disk 2 right before I was about to go to bed. I also thought this was a bit early on (11hrs in or so) for swapping disks. That was disappointing. I was so tired at that point that I just swapped the disks then went to bed. I think I swapped disks only once or twice in about 70-80hrs of gameplay in ME2.

This is where the advantages of Blu-ray comes in on the PS3 but porting to the cell has bugs/potential crashes compared to the 360 version. PS3 ports of ME2 and ME3 are buggier than the 360. ME3 has been a clean game so far.

Oh and another thing...RANT

It started with thin, cheap game manuals that only gave you reading material like the controls , then "environmentally friendly game cases" (Skyrim, ME3) which just means cheap and flimsy.

The new trend in ME3 is no hard copy of the user manual at all. They provide you with it in game. This blows and I hate it.

How much of your ME2 character's abilities made it into ME3. Is there story line effects from the previous game like last time?

You're character's abilities are exactly copied over, with a 5th and 6th option to level them up further. (Once you have access to the medbay, you can also respec.)

From ME1 to 2, there were several dozen story options carried over. From 2 to 3 there are 1500. Sure, they're mostly little things, but basically anything you did in 2 could have some little influence in 3.

Well I managed to log about 12 more hours on ME3 today and feel like it’s picking up a bit more. I think the biggest difference is that this one feels more plot driven whereas the other seemed more character driven. This is more of a minor quibble but I did like the greater character interaction before.

I’ve only had one major glitch so far. During a fight the most of the audio dropped out and all I could hear was the shots coming from one gun. I tried everything I could think of to fix it but finally had to turn the console off and back on again to reset the audio.

I also had a minor glitch were a teammate wouldn’t jump over a wall and follow me but despite this I was still able to direct her to target her powers on enemies in a fight two rooms away. At the end of the fight she suddenly appeared in the room.

I had another problem but can’t call it a glitch. During a cut scene were two big monsters are fighting it out with a lot of midbass flying out of the mains my surge protector tripped. Granted I had the Onkyo, Xbox 360, a fan and 4 computers running off it but that’s the first time it’s ever tripped even though I’ve had all that and the Buttkicker amp going before.

I thought I had another glitch were one of my teammates seemed to randomly spawn a few feet in the air and drop to the ground and start fighting. Then I realized it was the drone they could create with a biotic power but instead of being a floating ball like before it was and exact copy of them.

I’ve had to load and unload disk 2 two more times for a total of 3. Every time was when I was starting a side quest and then again when finishing it.