I love Mass Effect, both of em. They are seriously awesome games. If you like losing yourself in a sci-fi space opera universe with BioWare's typical emphasis on story and character development, these games are really awesome.

The first game is way more complicated than the 2nd one, but the 2nd one's streamlined character development allows you to get back to playing much more quickly. I was able to beat the 2nd one in about 30 hours by bulldogging through the game.

Those prices are fantastic - really worth it. 

I get the impression Rage will work. Still think the weapon models look awful but it looks a solid shooter. 

i went ahead and got it. 10$, even if i only play half of the game i won't feel bad.

still, i really like the whole level up stuff, weighing the choice between a bunch of abilities and stuff. i liked being in the level up screen for a minute or two. :P 

I hope this isnt a 100 hr investment though :) 

Over both games you could probably spend 100 hours if you get everything, but really both games can be beaten fairly quickly for open worldish RPGs. 

for once they didnt shaft us with the prices in Aus.

Graphics look decent from screenies, what engine is this? A game specific one or some variation on Id or Unreal tech? 

for dragon age? or are you talking about mass effect?

dragon age is a new (or heavily modified version of the nwn2) engine.

mass effect is the newest unreal tech. 

i'm pretty sure dragon age is an all new engine. 

 

going for $7.50 combined on Steam if you havent got them yet. 

wow, i didn't even know there was a third deus ex coming out until i saw the add in the steam start up thing. -_- i'm so out of touch with the game industry these days! 

Welcome to the 3rd millenium. 

holy fuck the fov is small. how does anyone play this thing??? 

and it is off putting but I hope more of it is actual gameplay and less cinematics. 

need to clear my gaming calendar again. 

yeah, the intro cinematic is stupidly long.
and then you play for 5 seconds, and the game laughs at you and makes you watch MORE cinematics.

it's just... i dunno. is this because it's made for consoles? what the heck happened to bioware. 

after some dicking around, you can fix fov to non-stupid values but it really fucks up in-game cinematics (the cinematics don't reset the fov from the user setting) so you get like zoomed out cinematics and sometimes there's some kind of near-clipping on the camera. so yeah... you need to make another keybind to reset to default fov, which you need to hit before starting conversations.
but that does nothing for conversations that are triggered automatically.

it's just sad that bioware somehow managed to fuck this up.

oh, and the best part is that the .ini file you need to edit to add keybinds and such is essentially encrypted. so you have to use a user made program to 'fix' the ini or the game crashes.

honestly man... who sits there and thinks of this shit. 

That's a pretty fair response to some of the moronic decisions in various games (fixed bad fov, no key-remapping, limited graphics settings, no quicksaves, etc etc) that are so utterly and completely in your motherfucking face blindingly obvious to everyone that the mind just boggles how any developer could possibly consider it a valid (let alone good) idea to hamper their customers in such a way. 

non-skippable cutscenes 

I'll concede that there are too many cutscenes in the first area of ME2, but stick with it - it's one of the best games of the last 5 or 6 years in my opinion :)

Necros, wow I had never even noticed the fov, and I've finished the game 3 times.

Also, on a different topic. Anyone else pre-ordered / will buy Brink when its released? With the drop-in drop-out single player could be a laugh to group up for some manshoots. 

I've got it preloaded on steam already, looking forward to shooting people in a couple days. 

I want it, but I can't justify getting it right at the moment. I am jealous :( 

Necros, wow I had never even noticed the fov, and I've finished the game 3 times.

the default non-action fov seems to be 70, which is bearable. it's the 'gun mode' fov that's the worst. and it's usually where you're concentrating the most on the screen. the fov seems to shrink to maybe 55 or 60 in 'gun mode' and then when you 'aim' it shrinks further to 40ish.

i can only play ME2 in short 1/2 to 1 hour intervals... the super low FOV (especially when you're in 'gun mode') gives me headaches. :(

so yeah, it's not just me being a dick, this kind of thing actually prevents me from playing.

i may have to accept broken cinematic cameras in order to get to the end of this.

i was on the fence with getting dragon age 2, but this is the kind of shit that makes me stay away from modern games. :(

also, this is the third game where you can't skip the company splash videos (the others being Borderlands and Bioshock).
this is like the new thing now where you have to go and delete the intro videos.

oh but it gets better. you know those loading screen videos? pretty nice right? keep you entertained while the next map loads? guess what-- if the loading finishes before the video is done, you have to wait for the end of the video! if you delete the loading videos, you can usually speed up loading times by a lot (for small maps like the normandy).

fucking ridiculous. i'm sure some guy on the team worked real hard to minimize loading times, and then some other asshole put in the forced loading videos. XD 

I guess i'm either blind or lucky because I never seem to notice fov in games unless I read somewhere that it is very low in that particular title in which case I will look for it :)

For instance, I got about 30 hours clocked in bad company 2 multiplayer before I read on some website that the default fov is 55 or something, I increased it and it feels a lot better now! Would have been left at the default value without even thinking about it if I had not read that article :P 

I guess i'm either blind or lucky because I never seem to notice fov in games unless I read somewhere that it is very low in that particular title in which case I will look for it :)

not ragging on you or anything, but obviously this is why companies get away with it. :(
that and it's probably a lot less obvious on a tv screen sitting a couple of meters away.

the thing that's just weird about it all is that normally low FOV is used to speed up framerate. but the unreal 3 engine is insanely fast. it's not like this kind of thing is needed.