Favourite computer games of all time.

Sorry to be the bearer of very bad news Meiko but your ME dream will almost certainly not happen. Evil WB ( ) have set the lawyers on the Skyrim ME mod and at the moment its a no goer.

What??? Nooooo!!! Desperately hoping they will continue on behind the scenes anyway, I was planning on volunteering to do some of the 3D modelling, textures and load screen art. Fuck.

Not like they're making money out of it, and all film tie-in games suck. Imma go cry.

I know how you feel.

Skyrim is a boring game

I'm doing all I can to help save Merp.
Spread the word and boycott Warner Brothers games. Don't give up. I know I'm not.
The petition almost has 22,000 signers. If we all make the C&D more costly from our boycott than it would be for WB to simply drop it, I'm sure they'll do the profitable thing and drop it.

Incredibly uncreative by WB. If I were them I would have:

- provided an alternative platform (or done a deal with Bethesda)
- paid the main developers to continue work (so they can do it fulltime) and provide support team, and allow them a cut of the profits
- gain permission from the more minor creators to use their textures/mapping/modelling/coding/whatever and include their name in the credits
- market the game

WB makes money, developers make money and get to make the game, other artists/coders get promoted on a commercial product and gamers get a proper LotR game for once! Win-win situation for everyone...

Well done on getting top commment RA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1SJ7yaa7cI

Oh it's terribly uncreative of WB. They're a billion dollar corporation and they're afraid of a non-profit fan mod. Seriously that's what they said. WB claimed it would cannabalize the market and confuse consumers from officially legitimate licensed games.
That's garbage. If a company sees a mod as competition, they shouldn't be making games.
That's the real reason why WB used a C&D to solve this problem. The only way they're going to listen to reason is if we vote with our wallets and tell them to drop the C&D.

Thanks, Carly. That's one of the ways I've been trying to help Merp. It's been doing a lot for the petition. I'm a little surprised my comment on the trailer has been up that long.

Yup! Although I wasn't going to buy any film tie-in games anyway because they're usually pretty dreadful. But WB have been like this about anything Harry Potter related too - it really gets my goat and I must say I wasn't pleased when I discovered they were doing The Hobbit. I can't blame Jackson and Co for switching from New Line after the payment dramas but it's a pity WB was the alternative...

Oh my, they've turned you into a horse...a hot horse

Hot to trot.

Warner Bros. absorbed New Line a few years back (they were already sister companies under the TimeWarner conglomerate) so New Line doesn't exist as an independent studio anymore. Their name is still on the films but WB has taken over all of their properties. That's why WB is involved in LOTR now.

Eldorion wrote:That's why WB is involved in LOTR now.

Almost makes me miss EA. At least there were a couple of good Lord of the Rings titles when they were publishing. It'd probably be harder to boycott them though. And they did cancel the White Council in favor of Lotr: Conquest.

I have just played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy back to back for the first time ever.
And there is no doubt at all they get worse as they go along. And here's why I think so (warning may require a buckie or 2 to get through).

1. What's it meant to be then?

The main problem is they start out as a merging of two game genres- 3rd person shooters and RPG's, and the balance is about 50/50.
I think the meat of the issue is best illustrated by the character sheet from each game.








As you can see you get less stuff to put points on in ME 2 and 3 and the things you do get to put stuff on have less effect, and worse are less interesting (by ME3 three of the options are just different types of ammo which do different effects but all balance equally out, meaning it doesn’t really matter which one of the three you put points on-its comes down more to which special effect you like the look of most than any tactical reason).
Spending points incrementally building up and shaping your characters skills is an integral part of all RPG's- it rewards your playing and is very satisfying to finally get to that bonus power you've been aiming for. This sort of game mechanism is why so many people play Farmville.
As the 3 games progress you level up less often and you have less points to spend on less things. This just means less fun and less a sense that your character is individual to you.
Another problem to do with levels and points affects game-play.
In ME1 you quite sensibly whilst out on a mission get experience points as you do stuff. So shoot a bad guy, have some exp. Solve a puzzle, have some exp for that too. This means you can level up at any point on a mission, giving you points to spend there and then and improving your chances of success.
In ME2 and 3 the amount of exp you get for a mission is predetermined. And you don’t get it until mission over. So if, as you often can, you hang about the battlefield rather than leaving immediately and shoot an extra 20 bad guys, you won't get any more exp for doing so than if you’d ran for it having not shot any at all.
Incentive to take risks therefore is removed, and the game-play is poorer for it as a result.


The RPG elements of ME1 are not confined to the stats screens either. There is a lot of exploring to do in ME1.
When you enter a system you fly your ship to a planet by means of dragging it about with the mouse and you enter orbit. You get a description of the planet and either the choice to scan it for anything interesting- mainly collectibles, or you can land on it if that's an option.
Landing on a planet involves driving a very bouncy vehicle round a big sandbox, in which there can be anything from a huge thrasher mall Dune style sand-worm to fight, or a smugglers base to infiltrate, as well as collectibles to uncover.
You can spend a good 10-30 minutes exploring a single planet.
And every so often you stumble on one that's less a prefab copy of the usual planets and is a longer pre-scripted event- finding yourself unexpectedly involved in one of these is like being in a good episode of original Star Trek, and a large part of that is the stumbling across it when you go down to a planet.

Now compare this to ME2.
In it you enter a system in much the same way as in 1. But now you have to manually scan every planet with a round scanner, which takes about 5-10 minutes of actual time to cover an entire planet- just scanning- if you find minerals you fire a probe and recover them- minerals are valuable and needed to research upgrades to equipment and weapons- but by the end of the game you will end up with far more than you need most likely- and as during the game you don’t know how much you might need you will probably waste hours of your time boringly scanning planets over and over for minerals you will never have a use for. And despite their apparent value you cant sell the excess- so you can have a ship containing half the wealth of the galaxy on board but still run out of fuel from a lack of funds.
There is no going down to the planet and exploring in ME2 and ME3 either. Just scanning but not even for minerals by 3, you just scan the system in several presses of a button.
Any ground missions in ME2 and 3 are now scripted side quests only. This makes them more structured and with more of a story than the more random ME1 side missions- but it greatly reduces them in number and takes away all the stumbling across it not knowing what it is that makes some of ME1 side missions so memorable and exciting.
ME3 is the worst. Now all you can do is enter a system and scan in a radius of your ship- but each scan alerts the big bad guys, Reapers, so you only get 3 or 4 scans to try to find something before you have to flee the system. And worse the Reapers stay there until you do a mission- a proper mission mind, not a side one either. This means you are forced along the main story line towards the end like it or not just to clear all the systems of Reapers so you can go back to find what you missed, which will probably turn out to be fuel anyway and not worth the trouble.
And what else do you find? Its mostly fuel to be honest, and usually less than it took you to go find it. Sometimes you find something of interest and you can board a ship and shoot some more stuff.
Like ME2 there is no going down to planets to explore unless its prescribed- ME3 features less side missions and exploration than any of the other 2.

In short the trend is to simplify the RPG elements until by 3 they are a tacked on after thought. And the games are poorer for this happening. As they got simpler they got dumber in game play. There is less to think about in 3 than in 1. Your tactics need only be very basic to see success most times and so it is a less rewarding experience.

2
Shooting Stuff

The other half of the game-play to the RPG in ME games is the shooting stuff.
All three games have the same basic premise here- a 3rd person behind the character view. Walls and the like for cover and you can freeze the game-play to call up a screen to issue orders to your two team mates or use special abilities.
But all three games take a different approach to these elements.
In ME1 the shooting is a little clunky, but perfectly functional. Use of the your other characters abilities is a very good idea, although AI will use their powers for you it is nowhere near as effective, or as satisfying as doing it yourself. And it is worth doing in ME1 as it will greatly enhance your chances of success. Tactical use of your squad mates is a crucial element in the shooting sections.
In ME2 the emphasis has moved more to the shooting side. You can still freeze proceedings and choose powers but if you leave it to the AI the difference is less crucial. In fact you could easily get through ME2 and 3 without ever using your squads powers manually, and not notice much of a difference to how battles unfold.
This sadly is not a testament to improved AI, rather that the design of levels is more favoured to the solo player shooting things rather than the use of tactics. Battlefields are too confined and don’t seem well put together for tactical play in the way ME1's often were.
And another niggle is that in 1 you pressed a button to get in cover behind something, in ME2 and 3 its automatic as soon as you move against a wall- which is fine most times but it does mean if you accidentally get too close to a wall you stick to it like you’ve been velcroed, usually when you didn’t want to and where the bad guy with the rocket launcher has a great shot of you.

Another major difference between 1 and the rest is your health. In 1 you collected medi gel and you could then use it when your health was slow to heal some points back up. Your health would also recover over time, slowly. This would often lead in a big fight to you cowering behind a wall, praying the big bad guy with the dual canons doesn’t spot you until your health has recovered.
These tense moments of near death are what make a shooter.
In the other two your health just recovers whenever you are in cover, and it only takes a couple of seconds. Its as if the game doesn’t want to interrupt you shooting stuff. But it takes away a lot of the tension and the need to stay stocked up on medi-gel. The only reason for it in 2 and 3 is to heal squad mates, as their AI doesn’t seem to stretch to staying in cover when their health is low.
By 3 your character is basically a big gun. Worries about your health is reduced to 'can I get in cover for 3 seconds. Oh yes I can. Lets shoot some more.'

Summing up, 2 and 3 polish the mechanics of shooting- they are both less clunky than the original. But they over the piece reduce the importance of using your squad mates tactically to be successful. To the point where their help is a bonus but no longer a necessity. Enemy numbers also increase- by 3 there is wave after wave of them, but they take a lot less shots to kill most of them. And rather than increase the sense of danger they just feel like what they are- cannon fodder to mow down.

3
Story

ME at heart is a huge space opera about the end of everything. Its universal apocalypse stuff.
The first game quite rightly goes out of its way to set up the universe you are in. You can talk to loads of different people of different races There are stacks of side missions too, from going off to disant planets to find lost relatives to clearing someone’s name of slander. And every side mission you do you learn a bit more about the different races and the universe of the game world.
Conversation decisions are taken on a moral basis, depending on how you are playing your character. Be nice to everyone or treat them mean? Or be indifferent?
Decisions you make feel like they have real weight, it alters how people react to you, how the ensuing story unfolds, even who lives and dies in your story.

The story is the best thing in the ME games and 2 continues on where 3 left off.
Here however I have to say something about DLC. ME2 had 22 dlc- and whilst a lot of it fits in the 'new hats' category of dlc there is one piece I have to take issue with- Project Overlord- this bit of dlc is a large story based piece in which (spoilers!!) a moral decision is made to destroy an entire colony world to prevent a Reaper invasion.
This act is the reason you start ME3 grounded on earth and striped of your rank. That a major plot point and major character decision should only be in the dlc- especially as it underpins the opening of ME3 is not on!!
In fact ME2 without a lot of the dlc- particularly the extra characters and the few story driven missions, is a much slimmer and poorer game. The dlc goes some way towards making up for the lack of exploration that was available in ME1.
So ME2 continues the first story based tradition. Which brings us onto ME3.
ME3 is in every conceivable way a more streamlined version than 1 or even 2.
Its main concern is its main story, side missions are fewer and whilst the story still works, and those elements, whilst a little saccharin for my tastes at times, are just as good as they were in 1 or 2. Even if there feels like a lot less of it.
Another problem is with how the side missions fit in to the plot in ME3. In 1 and 2 they feel organic. You meet someone who asks you to go investigate something, or you get a tip off, or you just stumble across it. In ME2 they fit with the plot of going about the galaxy recruiting its most dangerous people. Side mission often spring out of information gained on a main mission.
In 3 however you leave earth under reaper attack to gather up the other species into a big fleet. But not before you do the equivalent of go fetch their coffee for them. Every race, despite universal Armageddon, has some reason for why they cant help unless you do something for them. After the first few it becomes increasingly stretched and ludicrous.
But then there is in the infamous ending.
Its not that they broke their promise of ME1- that the ending would be dependent on choices made, it would not come down to an A. B or C choice, it is an A, B or C choice and none of your decisions in any of the previous games, or even in ME3 for that matter counts for a jot. Bad though that is, its worst crime is that it makes no sense. It neither fits with the back story of the Reapers as told in 1 or 2 or with how any of the characters would act.
The perfect example is Joker, your ships pilot. He is loyal to a fault. When the ship was going down he had to be physically dragged form the pilot seat to abandon it.
He has broken every rule and reg to carry out your characters orders, through thick and thin he has stood by you.
But according to the end sequence in the heat of the galaxies biggest every battle, with his commanding officer in a fight for their life on Earth below, and his home-world on the brink of destruction, Joker decides to leave. Take the ship and nip off somewhere nice- where he is going, why he is going, why your crew let him go, including if you’ve gone down the romantic route your supposed partner, is all unknown and unexplained. Everyone just acts completely out of character for no explicable reasons.
The purpose of it seems to be so they can crash land on a distant planet and be marooned there together.
The ending is riddled with poor story telling like this which betrays every single element of the plot and characters you have invested in for 3 games.
What happened to your decision over curing a species infertility plague? Who knows the game doesn’t bother resolving it. Was there any point to all the rachni stuff? Not any you find out about.
There is a list of unresolved story threads like those it leaves dangling. To say there is no satisfaction for the player in any of the 3 endings (which are almost all identical) would be a gross understatement.
There are too few words for saying how much the ending of this trilogy stinks from a purely narrative stand point.
When you add in the poor pick a number choice it ends on that only adds insult to injury.

Story is ME strong point, and for ¾ of the 3 games playing time its holds up very well, its intriguing, well paced, it uncovers a mystery, the characters are mainly good and engaging, but the ending is such an appalling let down on so many levels at once that it sours the entire trilogy.

ME1 is the game I would recommend most. Yes its clunkier, yes the exploring can get repetitive eventually. But its ambitious, you need your brain on even in the action bits and it tells a good story well.

ME2 with the dlc also tells a good story very well. Its controls are better tuned but it starts the slide into loosing core RPG elements and requires less brain power.

ME3 is much more focused on the action. Its main story dominates everything else and side missions feel out of place. The RPG elements are just a side issue, simplified to pointlessness.
The poorest of the three games even though its the sleekest and has the best shooting/action controls.

Well I think Mass Effect's glory days have passed to be honest. Like you said there has been a notable decline in its RPG elements. It's much too streamlined now. That's really my mine gripe with the franchise. EA bought out Bioware and now we see Mass Effect trying to appeal to the shooter crowd, a move which no doubt secured a fortune for EA. It's also why Dragon Age 2 is absolutely nothing like Origins; I don't get why Dragon Age had to become Dragon Effect.

The things that's always appealed to me about the Mass Effect series are the characters, the setting, and the atmosphere.
Mass Effect 1 set up the stage really well in my opinion. It gives the player the option of a few different backstories, which play some role however minor. It has an interesting secondary and main villain: Saren and Sovereign. Sovereign being my favorite antagonist, " You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." With that Shepard meets the threat he faces. A threat which is punctuated by the death of either Ashley or Kaiden.
There were a lot of important decisions to make throughout the game like that. Saving Wrex, the Rachni, killing or letting Balak go in Bring Down the Sky. It added a sense of depth. The problem being with the added sense of depth is it mostly derives from the player's imagination; by the time the sequel rolls out, the player has spent time wondering how this decision is going to alter the game. The end result is less than satisfying in most of those examples.
Mass effect 2

Mass effect 2 in my opinion has the best character development out of the three. In fact Shepard sort of takes a backseat in that the game is almost entirely about your crew. The addition of Paragon/Renegade interrupts was genius. The combat system is streamlined though which means no more loot. Doing that and adding an ammo system (thermal clips) was a mistake, I think. I can get passed that though for the story. Really when coupled with all the DLC, Mass Effect 2 has quite a bit of story; not main story, but side quests.

Garrus and Tali are my favorite characters in the Mass Effect series. Though the thing I like most about Mass Effect 2 is the fact that (with the two additional dlc) there are twelve companions to get to know. One could look at the game from Garrus's perspective, where he's coming to terms with the death of his squad and his supposed faliure. One could look at the game from Grunt's perspective, where it's his coming of age. One could look at the game from Miranda's perspective, where she's watching over the results of the Lazarus project, Shepard.
Mass Effect 2 was rich with characters. It's entirely subjective what makes a game good or bad and for me it's characters. The gameplay could do with a little (or a lot) more complexity or deeper elements, I'll agree to that. But when I consider the excellent dlc which fixes a lot of the problems the original game had (lack of exploration, where's Liara? more sidequests), the already great ensemble, and the suicide mission, Mass Effect 2 is my favorite in the series.

Mass Effect 3 is a different story both literally and in terms of how I view it as a game.
I like the emotional investment I had in the story; seeing characters that you get to know in the second and first titles getting killed off is pretty gruesome. Especially since you spend the entire second game trying to prepare them all for the suicide mission.
However this is where Mass Effect 3 fails. Almost all of the Mass Effect 2 squad is ignored. Mass Effect 3 introduces James and EDE, but that doesn't matter. If the Mass Effect 2 squad came at the expense of those two, then they shouldn't have been introduced at all. Really that's my biggest criticism toward Mass Effect 3. Not only do we not get to see what's happening with the rest of the squad to any great extent, it also kills any sort of replay-ability the game may have had left from the ending.
The ending of the game was.... interesting. I didn't like having everything that you did the entire franchise prior to it to be made void and for everything to come down to 3 choices. Introducing a character that so radically effects the entire plot in the last five minutes is poor writing. However, if I can defend Bioware for a moment, they did fix a lot of the plot holes you listed, petty, with the Extended Cut. Now with the EC, we get to see glimpses of what happened after the game ends. Faint glimpses, but they're there nonetheless. What happened to the Krogan if you cure the genophage. If Wrex or Wreave is alive or if Eve survived. If the Quarians and Geth made amends.

Though the EC is really just a band-aid. If I step back and look at the direction Bioware is going, I know that their glory days are over. Soon their games will be little more than interactive movies. Guess I'll see how Dragon Age 3 does; I don't plan on buying it unless it abandons the direction Dragon Age 2 took the series.

I like the second one the most for its characters, the Lair of the Shadow Broker and the Suicide run. Mass Effect 1 had Sovereign, Virmire and Bring down the Sky. However Mass Effect 3 had the Tuchanka Story arc, which I feel had the most substance out of anything in the entire series with the Rannoch story arc coming in at a close second.

I agree 2 with dlc has the strongest characters and story lines. But putting a lot of the better stuff into the dlc is not on, especially not major plot developments.

And I also agree a big problem with 3 is a lack of pay off during the game for past characters. The whole thing is too focused on Shephard and the main story thrust- its a pity therefore that all the drive and sense of hurrying against the clock the main story relies on is completely at odds with doing most of the missions, which feel like fiddling whilst Rome burns.

I still think overall 1 is the best as a game experience. Yes its a bit clunky and there is too much walking between places and hanging about in lifts. But it feels the most like exploring space in a ship and having adventures- and thats what made it good in the first place.

Speaking of exploring space in a ship, Mass Effect 1 is the only one that allows you to remain on the ship when you've docked; You have to go to the airlock to leave the Normandy. This is a really minor point, but why did both Mass Effect 2 and 3 simply warp you outside? The same happened when you want to get back onto the Normandy. In Mass Effect 1, you go through the airlock and then you have to go to the navigation room before the ship leaves the dock. In the second and third one, you get in the Normandy and it just leaves.
Again it's a very minor point, I just never understood it.

I do plan on doing one more complete run through of the Mass Effect series once Bioware's done releasing dlc for Mass Effect 3.

I played ME 1 and loved it, hopefully I can pick up the other two soon!

Speaking of Mass Effect, it seems Bioware is pulling out all the stops in the hype train to keep Mass Effect 3's DLC alive after the so-so reception the Omega DLC brought. Possible spoilers.
http://guide4games.com/index.php/news/2758-bioware-mass-effect-3-untitled-new-dlc-will-feature-an-eight-person-writing-team
I think this was originally announced like two days after Omega came out. Hope it's good. Certainly has potential if this is the last DLC for the Mass Effect trilogy.

Wow, DLC too. The cash cow never ends.

Well I just played through Mass Effect 2 and have started on 3, and I continue to be impressed with each game in the series. Fantastic storyline that continues to surprise and be epic. Absolutely love the series.

3 is my least favourite- 1 I reckon is the best rpg- 2 is the best trade off between rpg and action and 3 is, well, mainly about shooting stuff sadly. The curse of EA.

While I do agree that the RPG elements are very much lacking in 3 in comparison to 1 and even two, I have still been very entertained with it, even more so than with Halo 4's campaign, and the cut scenes have been very awesome. I'm not sure which one is my favorite in the series yet, well see after I finish 3. I like different elements of each.