darkjak

I own a 360 right now. I don't see much of a point to buy the PS3.

Love how everyone reboots everything all the time like this. However, the term has started to be used way to loosely. For example, apparently the new Ghost Rider is a "reboot". Even though they haven't even changed the cast. And how do you "reboot" a franchise which doesen't even have a coherent story? Or gameplay style? This is literally as logical as rebooting Mario. Or Tetris.

Somehow, I believe the ending turned out the way it did to make sure it'll be the end. I think they tried to close all doors so that EA couldn't force them to do anything. I personally don't think it NEEDS to end. Of course, you can't make games with the Reapers acting as antagonists forever. But when the Bond movies had over-used SPECTRE, they got rid of that organisation and had different ones.

Love the Vega one. But where the f**k is Ashley?

Just started over the first Mass Effect. I completely forgot about Cerberus being in it.

Well, define "collectable". I think that in due time, all systems will be collectables. Lasers have limited lifespans, so do harddrives. Not to mention that the Xbox has a reputation for poor build quality. That being said, if you by collectable mean things that will be sold for huge sums in the future, none of them will for quite some time. Things that sold poorly will be sought after, so Gameboy Micro and Pokemon Mini are sure to get attention. Probably early Nintendo DS-units: For the Wii I imagine the old Classic Controllers with analogue shoulder buttons and also the white Gamecube controllers which were launched with the Wii.

Well, the actual theme wasn't the upsetting part. I'm okay with characters getting killed off, I'm okay with the reapers attempting to indoctrinate him. The problems are more quality-related. 1) It's one ending, completely unaffected by your previous decisions. The war assets, which I was really anal about collecting during my playthrough didn't matter. 2) We're at a point where you either can take everything in the ending completely literally, in which case it's illogical and full of plot holes. 3) If you instead listen to the indoctrination theory, you realise it's not an ending AT ALL. From what you can read in the artbook, the current ending took its current shape in november 2011. So essentially, Bioware were forced to cut corners to make the release date. Because that late in the development, you don't add new features, and if you're at all serious, you've got the storyline penned and finished. Preferrably, EVERYTHING is finished, programmers are ironing out bugs, designers are tweaking the game balance and artists are working on promo art.

VICTORY!

Also, that source claimed the Wii U of having performance that's worse than the PS3, when in fact Team Ninja claimed it was closer to the PS4.

If I were to decide, there'd be the following endings. They would consist of three sections: the space battle, indoctrination and the final outcome Space Battle 1) Shephard gathered too few war assets. The reapers almost immediately annihilate your fleet, the crucible gets destroyed and the ground forces are quickly destroyed and the Normandy gets destroyed, killing everyone before you even reach the ground. The game won't continue after this, instead you see a cutscene and epilogue explaining that within a few weeks, the organics have no capability of continued space travel. All organic life is doomed and the cycle starts over. 2) Shephard has gathered a fair amount of war assets. The crucible gets in position in the nick of time, but nearly all the organic space fleet is wiped out. Shephard has a limited amount of time to defeat Harbinger before the Reapers manage to break through the organic defence perimiter and destroy the crucible. If Shephard doesen't hurry, the Normandy gets shot down, killing everyone on board. 3) Shephard has gathered a large force. The crucible gets in position and the organics can hold their own for a very long time. If Shephard takes too long, the Normandy disengages and escapes. 4) Shephard has gathered a huge force. The organic forces can defend the crucible indefinitely and even has fighters to spare, to give close air support to the London assault. If Shephard takes too long, the Normandy disengages and instead helps Shepherd out. Indoctrination After being hit by Harbingers laser, Shepherd's being indoctrinated. 1) Shepherd chooses control. Shepherd's indoctrinated and leads the organics to their doom. 2) Shepherd chooses fusion. Shepherd dies. a) Organic forces get annihilated. b) If you've gathered enough war assets, the organics make a straight-out victory against the Reapers. 3) Shepherd chooses destroy. Indoctrination fails and Shephard wakes up in London. Final outcome If you choose destroy, this ending becomes available. Shepherd beams aboard the Citadel. There's a battle of its own going on in there, with organics fighting Reapers for survival. After saving lots of people from getting (literally) liquidated, Shephard faces off against Harbinger. 1) Renegade Shephard: Shephard sacrifices his squadmates so he can activate the Crucible. Shephard lives on, declared a hero by the alliance, but never speaks to the surviving members of the Normandy crew again. 2) Paragorn Shephard: Shephard sacrifices himself so his squad mates can activate the crucible. Shephard dies and is remembered like a saint and mourned by his friends. 3) Paragorn Shephard (full loyalty with squad mates present): Shephard and his squad fight together and manage to survive. Shephard lives to receive his medal and everyone lives hapilly ever after.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. In the end, nothing you did seemed to matter. While gathering war assets, I expected that they would change the outcome of the final battle. That maybe if I'd max it out completely, the organics would make a straight-out victory. Or maybe while storming London, I'd get to actually see some of the forces I've gathered in action. Or just having the ammount of war assets change how much time I have to activate the crucible. I was more than ready to see members of my crew get killed, or even see Shephard die. But Shephards relation to the crew was central to the franchise. I was expecting to see some kind of reaction from the surviving crew members. Hell, just making your choices affect whom you see in your flashback before you die would make things better. In my ending, it was my squad that left the wreck. The whole wreck scene made no sence at all. Why did Joker pick up my squadmates? Why did my squadmates stop running towards the beam? Why did they leave Shephard to his fate? Why did Joker then decide to leave the sol system? Did my entire crew and squad turn out to be a bunch of cowards whom bailed literally minutes before victory? The thing is that if they make a sequel set even centuries in the future, you'd still need to take in to consideration what Shephard did in the first three games. Are there any Rachni? Are there Geth or Quarians, or even both? Are there any pure organics, or were they all merged? Is the genophage still around? So if the reasoning of killing Shephard off was to avoid taking factors from the previous games in to consideration in sequels, they've failed. Even worse, if they make a prequel (atless it takes place in a previous cycle), they are limited to what they can do, as they can't do anything that messes up the continuity. Players won't be able to prevent the genopage from happening, you can't stop the quarian genocide of Geth, you can't kill Matriarch Benezia or Urdnot Wrex.

That's not the best example, the new trilogy's been bashed to no end. I wrote my personal oppinion. I admire the Mass Effect team to no end, they've done an excellent job and I do believe that they are fully capable of creating an interresting continuation. But to me, personally, continuing Mass Effect without Shephard and his crew would be like... Gran Turismo without the licensed cars. I understand why they wanted to finish the Shephard saga. Firstly, I believe that they sort of wanted prevent EA from forcing them into doing things they didn't want to. And as you said: it would be a complete nightmare to make a second trilogy. Mass Effect 3 had a (literally) thousand factors from the previous games weighing in to your game experience. Imagine how many variations of the story that would have to exist by let's say the end of a second trilogy. But still: I've invested like a hundred hours in to my characters path.

We're going a bit off topic right now, but more and more things are indicating that the current ending isn't supposed to be the ending at all, and that there'll be a free DLC with the real final chapter in a month or two.

The Xbox version did. As far as I recall, SM2 was never released for the Dreamcast in the US.

What do you think of the future of the ME franchise? Supposedly ME3 is supposed to be the end of Shephards story. But is it? I mean, wasn't Halo 3 supposed to kinda be the end of Master Chief? To me Mass Effect is all about the Shephard and his crew. Personally, I'd prefer to get just a straight sequel. More Shephard, more Normandy, more Joker, Tali, Garrus etc. But to make a sequel or sequel trilogy, you have to top off the old trilogy. And what could possibly top off a multi milion year old race of machines that anihilate most life every 50 000 years? After watching the Iron Sky trailers, I started thinking. What if not all protheans were killed? What if this hyper-advanced race sent out a few ships to other galaxies, where they colonised a bunch of planets? And after 50 000 years of technological advancements and mobilization, they return to take back the galaxies? These guys should be even more advanced than the reapers. I mean, while being really old, the reapers hibernate most of the time. What do you think of my idea? And what are your ideas?

My Dreamcast's busted, so I haven't played any of the Shenmues for years and years. I wonder how the game's stood the test of time.

A quick question: what do you guys think about the ME and ME2 DLC's? Which ones are worth a look?

This image brings hope, even though I'm not sure it's true:

Thanks for the feedback. As a matter of fact, the concept started out as a modern interpretation of the Saab Sonett, and I was in talks with Saab to have a cooperation. Unfortunately, they pulled out in october. I don't really get the complaints about the born from jets-ads. It's more true than most people believe. Also I just want to point out a few things. The Porsche 911 is rear engined, while Ferrari F430 is mid-engined. As I've previously stated, Streetjet was originally intended to be a Sonett. In other words, I shrunk the car as much as possible lengthwise. I spent a lot of time investigating how the car could look sleek and aerodynamic, despite its short length. I'm going to make a new rendering shortly, where I'm hoping to have up to maybe a minute of footage of just the car. The plane scenes took so much space mainly because they were quick to render. All the aircraft action took me an hour to render. The car sequences took me somewhere around 30 hours.

Here's the final result...

Well, using the Wiimote is like playing Football with a ball that's got spikes on it. Using the zapper is like playing with a ball that flies in a random direction when you kick it. The only way to play Goldeneye properly would be to use the Top Shot... but that's not possible. I've had military training and I want to hold my "gun" with a vertical grip, to which the trigger is attached. I find it infuriatingly uncomfortable to hold my Wiimote like a flashlight and using the Zapper feels, like Jeremy Clarkson would say: meaningless. The thing is really light, it's got no stock, your hands are really close together and the trigger is at the front. Trying to readjust myself to this from a gun, is like for you to go from a modern car to a T-Ford. I've played first person shooters with a controller since Goldeneye and I'm much more comfortable doing that, than using ergonomically incorrect attempts at simulating aiming. So I'm sorry, but I'm doing it wrong because Nintendo were cheap basterds and made their stuff even more wrong. Why couldn't Nintendo put a hinge on the camera at the front, so you could hold the Wiimote vertically when playing first person shooters? Why couldn't Nintendo make the Zapper something more than a piece of plastic? They should've given the Zapper a stock, a built in analogue stick and buttons in places that would make sense.

I've always hoped the Wii would be the ultimate shooter console. However, the Wiimote is ergonomically wrong (shaped like a pistol... with no pistol grip), so is the Zapper (no stock and the trigger is on the foregrip? REALLY frustrating after eleven months of learning how to handle an assault rifle). I play with the GC controller whenever I can. Activision should be castrated for not having this game support the Top Shot!