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[b.lumpkin]

I really love that hydra map too.
Last night I opened a crate to unlock the asari and krogan vanguards with a shotgun shredder mod all in the same pack. I was pretty excited

[bkthomson]

Amazon has a deal today for ME3 at $30.00, is the game worth it if you never played any of the games before?

[Strict31]

Amazon has a deal today for ME3 at $30.00, is the game worth it if you never played any of the games before?

Eh...for 30 bones, sure. They make an effort to explain what the fuck's been going on for the past two games, but it seems rather difficult to get as emotionally invested about events when they're just telling you. Plus, the default Shepard for people whop haven't imported characters from previous games is really kinda ham-strung in terms of actions that affect the outcome of the game.

For example, in the first game, you've got the option to kill or not kill a character named Wrex. Wrex is a cool character with an impact on both ME2 and ME3. If you start a character in ME3 without having played the previous games, it just assumes you killed Wrex. It also assumes a number of characters from ME2 were killed, and that difference can have a drastic impact on events in ME3.

You can technically pick up ME3 and play without having played the first two. But doing so means you have to depend on the history Bioware has chosen for you. And it is not at all a favorable one. Just keep that in mind, y'know?

[Jack Burton]

Eh...for 30 bones, sure. They make an effort to explain what the fuck's been going on for the past two games, but it seems rather difficult to get as emotionally invested about events when they're just telling you. Plus, the default Shepard for people whop haven't imported characters from previous games is really kinda ham-strung in terms of actions that affect the outcome of the game.

For example, in the first game, you've got the option to kill or not kill a character named Wrex. Wrex is a cool character with an impact on both ME2 and ME3. If you start a character in ME3 without having played the previous games, it just assumes you killed Wrex. It also assumes a number of characters from ME2 were killed, and that difference can have a drastic impact on events in ME3.

You can technically pick up ME3 and play without having played the first two. But doing so means you have to depend on the history Bioware has chosen for you. And it is not at all a favorable one. Just keep that in mind, y'know?

Also not importing a character makes your Shepard significantly weaker in terms of abilities.

[AaronW]

Amazon has a deal today for ME3 at $30.00, is the game worth it if you never played any of the games before?

Probably. I think I would have liked the game better if I hadn't played the prior installments since the crushing disappointment wouldn't be there.

[Strict31]

So, in order to complete the weekend "Operation" goal, we finished a map on Gold difficulty.

Had to have the right two people as the core of the group. In this case, that turned out to be my friend Hector, who is effortlessly awesome at this game, and me, who is significantly less awesome but at least knows what in the fuck he's doing.

Because I'm awesome at biotic combos, Hector and I devised this plan to make use of a Vanguard's ability to detonate mass biotic explosions set up by the Asari Justicar. Area Reave combined with Biotic Charge, set up to hit more than one target at a time.

This shit is simply UGLY. It drops entire crowds of enemies. And if the Charge doesn't get every target in a crowd, a Nova follow-up will finish them off.

Since Hector was not around, I tried to set this up with a group of other friends. But the fear of Gold got to them. I was using Area Reave to set up whole crowds of enemies for the vanguard to detonate. But the Vanguard was too scared to do anything but shoot. So, we got owned.

Since this tactic can be used (on a smaller scale) with two Adepts instead of an Adept and a Vanguard), we tried that set up. Now, the key to this is to remember one simple goddamned fact about the game:

aside from the rocket launcher, no weapon in the game can do as much damage as a successful Biotic Explosion.

As such, there is no weapon in the game that an Adept can equip that will be more useful than the ability to fire off Reave/Warp/Stasis as fast as their power cool down time will allow. That means no Adept needs to load up on heavy-ass goddamn weapons. A single pistol will be more than enough, and you probably will only use it in rare emergencies.

So...this one guy in the group takes an Adept to compliment my Justicar. I'm rocking a Phaeston X, which is so light that I get a bonus cool down reduction of 200%. It's actually lighter than some of the pistols...no...most of the pistols, actually.

This guy loads-out with a heavy-ass sniper rifle and a heavy-ass pistol. So, I try to explain to him why he's gonna need weapons less than he's gonna need a quicker cool down rate.

But he goes with the sniper rifle and the heavy pistol. And predictably, he's unable to hit the Biotic Explosions. He just posts up and starts snipering enemies. Which is the Infiltrator's job, right?

This style of gameplay worked for him, I guess, because he was only getting killed and revived every two minutes instead of every one and a half minutes. He's off in some corner throwing Stasis on enemies that don't need to be Stasis'd in order to be killed, scoring easy headshots on unimportant targets.

Okay. So, tryiung to accomodate him, I take a Vanguard after we all got horribly killed. I tell him to set up the combos and I'll detonate them. This will give him the lion's share of the kill stats and points, because the system is designed to credit the guy who sets up the combo, not the guy who detonates it. I figure, I can detonate Stasis just as easily as Warp or Reave.

But again, he's off in his own corner, throwing Stasis on one or two Cerberus grunts at a time. We get a little farther this time, because I'm still fairly good with the Krogan Vanguard, rocking a Geth Plasma Shotgun. But I got stuck in a nasty "revive chain" with a turret that just would not die, because he was not supporting me with the combos. I got tired of wasting medi-gels, and then waited for the last two party members to die, and then I bounced.

Utterly frustrated.

Hector finally showed up, and we started up a game.

We decided to use the Asari Adept/Asari Justicar team-up. We chose Firebase Glacier and as the enemy, we picked the Geth. We posted up in the lower section of the lab behind cover in a two and two sorta deal. There are only two ways to get into that room, so we could have two guys holding each entry point.

I would set up a target with Warp and Hector would detonate with Reave. Or vice versa. We ran that shit. It was almost criminal what we did to the Geth Consensus. The only time I had to use my gun was to light up an invisible Hunter or three, in order to be able to target them with my biotics.

The Objective Rounds were problematic, because we kept getting Hacking/Upload Objectives out in the goddamn open. We lucked out with the final Objective, because that was an Assassination Objective, and the targets literally just came right to us.

We got our timing down right, and I don't recall anyone even needing to use a rocket. This worked better than the infamous "FBWGGG" formula (Firebase White, Geth Engineers, Geth Enemies, Gold).

So, after a night of frustration, we finally earned our individual Commendation packs, which will be awarded Wednesday or some shit.

[Grayson]

Looks like the Extended Cut of Mass Effect 3 should be available for free on June 26th.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/22/mass-effect-3-extended-cut-coming-next-week

[Jack Burton]

So the new endings are out.

What did you think?

I haven't seen the others but I liked the "changes" to the Synthesis ending. It cleared up a lot of the vagueness that was left in the original. If this had been the original ending I'd have been pretty satisfied.

[prozacman]

So the new endings are out.

What did you think?

I haven't seen the others but I liked the "changes" to the Synthesis ending. It cleared up a lot of the vagueness that was left in the original. If this had been the original ending I'd have been pretty satisfied.

Still the same plot, but definitely more satisfying than the original endings. Also glad that they added a fuck the choices ending.
This youtube channel has them. Though only the no choice video has all the new diologe between Shepard and the Reaper Kid.
http://youtu.be/czKq9H0tSCo

[fieldy snuts]

i just logged on and saw my multiplier was back at 50%

fucking hell...have to waste hours on multiplayer again.

[fieldy snuts]

Just played it. First off, while they lived up to their promise of retaining the key themes of the ending it was great to actually have some closure about wtf happened and some more info about the kid.

As for whether this redeems the shitfest we got before, I'll just say that the ending went to me from a 0/10 to about a 6/10. It's serviceable (unlike before) but I still have the bad aftertaste of the original hack ending.

Seemed pretty rushed though...having still images instead of cutscene video's seemed sloppy. And the scene of The massive armada in the aftermarth of the battle stationed at a broken but salvageable mass relay seemed like beta developer CGI after some of the scenes we'd just gotten earlier in the cutscene

[fieldy snuts]

The control ending came off just as dark as I expected in this version

To use an analogy everyone here will get, it's like Shepard accepted the Phoenix Force and wil do whatever the fuck he likes to ensure no threats arise again.

[Strict31]

I played through the red and green endings. They were okay. Only did the red ending because that's the only one in which Shep physically survives, but it seemed really kinda watered down. No mention of EDI or what happened to the Geth, so I guess you can pretend they survived or some lame shit.

I've been playing MP pretty much non stop for months, so my GR is 100%. That wasn't a problem. Have promoted a bunch of characters so War Assets ain't a problem. Only problem is having to sit through at least a half hour of cutscenes and shit every time you want to go through the final scene.

UNSKIPPABLE.

[fieldy snuts]

No mention of EDI or what happened to the Geth, so I guess you can pretend they survived or some lame shit.

When Hackett was talking about sacrifices I got a shot of Legion. But in retrospect I guess that's cus he sacrificed himself to stop the Quarian/Geth war

Yeah, glad Shepard still survives at the end...ensures that he'll still be available for ME4.

Refusal seemed to confirm that the star kid was a reaper ploy to trick you into finding the synthesis and control endings more appealing.

Synthesis seemed too happy for me. And the part with the husk being hit by it was weird/creepy. It seemed like a last ditch effort to carry the Reapers over through forced evolution going against its natural course just to appease the Reapers. It was the happiest of the endings, but all in all.......

Destroy is definitely the right way to go morally. Coexistence with a race of machines spawned by a defective AI into cleansing advanced civilizations to preserve a hypothetical 'balance'? Kill the bastards

[Strict31]

Destroy is definitely the right way to go morally. Coexistence with a race of machines spawned by a defective AI into cleansing advanced civilizations to preserve a hypothetical 'balance'? Kill the bastards

Nah.

Just because they made sure not to include any reference to the Geth and EDI doesn't mean "destroy all synthetic life" didn't destroy all synthetic life.

I mean, I guess it would be okay if you killed the Geth during the game and didn't give a shit about EDI. But if you helped the Geth gain their freedom so they could co-exist with organics and help out against the Old Machines, then, yeah, killing them is kind of a dick-move, morally speaking.

With the Green ending, the only thing missing was a double rainbow shooting out of EDI's ass while Krogans and Salarians hold hands and take warm showers together into the wee hours of the morning. It was the most ideal ending because everyone in the galaxy is happy. You can say that this means it was evidence of Indoctrination because it's too candy-coated and perfect. But there's no evidence that this was anything other than some theory spawned by Internet hatred.