Mass Effect

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Mem

I personally never judge a game by other reviewers or comments,I'm looking forward to this game when my pre-ordered copy is sent around the 6th June.I'll probably be taking my time with this game since I want to upgrade my 7800GT card to a HD4850 card in a few weeks time so I can get all the benefits of the extra processing power and detail etc...

I hope it lives up to my expectations.

Its going to arrive on the 6th or its going to be shipped on the 6th? You can order it from Gogamer, Amazon, and Newegg with immediate shipping. I've also seen it on shelves at Walmart and Best Buy. What was the point of a preorder if you don't get the game first?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Its going to arrive on the 6th or its going to be shipped on the 6th? You can order it from Gogamer, Amazon, and Newegg with immediate shipping. I've also seen it on shelves at Walmart and Best Buy. What was the point of a preorder if you don't get the game first?

Mem lives in the UK.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Its going to arrive on the 6th or its going to be shipped on the 6th? You can order it from Gogamer, Amazon, and Newegg with immediate shipping. I've also seen it on shelves at Walmart and Best Buy. What was the point of a preorder if you don't get the game first?

Mem lives in the UK.

Yep UK so we get it a week later ,my ME version is coming from Amazon UK.

 

[Bateluer]

I see . . .

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: AMDZen
the DEMO .exe file substituted and since the DEMO

There is no demo.

THis will inevitably happen because I do a wipe and reload at least 2 times a year.

While this is dumb (proper maint. will prevent you from needing to do this), you can reinstall and reactivate as many times as you want on the same hardware. So, unless you change your mobo every time you reinstall windows, you're not going to hit the 3 installs limit.

 

[Zenoth]

I rarely, very rarely do that for PC games (even if they were originally made for Consoles), but I decided to go ahead and reserve a copy of it without even having tried it myself. I saw it on my friend's 360 just this afternoon and I must say that I was impressed with only two hours of seeing him play around. It somehow reminds me of KOTOR, but on steroids and with more customization and more exploration, how could I possibly resist?

It's supposed to come out on the 5th or 6th, I hope for the 5th of course. By the way, is the PC version supposed to have many different things compared to the 360 version? Or was those six months only used for porting the game and no more than that?

 

[ja1484]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
By the way, is the PC version supposed to have many different things compared to the 360 version? Or was those six months only used for porting the game and no more than that?

Higher resolution graphics, much more PC-friendly interface. Frankly, I would've hated the combat in this game with an X360 controller. Like Gears of War, shooters should be played on the PC, period. They have no business on consoles.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
By the way, is the PC version supposed to have many different things compared to the 360 version?

Third-party comparison


Bioware press release

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: Zenoth
By the way, is the PC version supposed to have many different things compared to the 360 version?

Third-party comparison


Bioware press release

That comparison review is very good showing the differences between PC and 360. For all those who say DRM or whatever else is going to prevent them from purchasing this game....such a shame. This game is insane good. Its no sloppy port either, there were so many improvements done specifically for the PC it makes you wonder if the 360 version would even be playable afterwards. It also makes me cringe to think consoles are getting titles like this first (Assassin's Creed was also very good) and PC may or may not get them at all going forward. This would probably be my GOTY for 2007 if it came out on PC, too early in 2008 to say for sure but it really has me drooling for other ARPGs like Fallout 3.

Originally posted by: warcrow
Hey guys, we're going to be interviewing Al Reed (Studio Director) and Kristin Price (Producer) Demuirge Studios (they handled the PC port of ME) on our Podcast. I'm curious if any of you have any questions or comments for them. If the question(s) or comments are intersting enough we'll definiely pose it to them on the show.

Feel free to email the question as well to hotforplayed at gmail dot com.

I'd be interested to see if they're solely developing any major titles in-house. It looks like they have a lot of experience in post-production and with ports and their work on both ME and other titles is excellent.

Originally posted by: SteelSix
Any thoughts on the "Film Grain" graphics option? It's pretty cool, adds a movie theater quality to gameplay, but I can't decide if I like it or not...

I turned it off. After going HD my movies don't really look like that anymore. I didn't particularly like the film grain effect they put in 300 either. Personally I like that HD pop you see when you get a really high quality movie or an animated film.

 

[luigionlsd]

Bought and finished this game this weekend, and I couldn't put it down. Like many of you, I loved KotOR (and II, for that matter), but I skipped over Jade Empire (aside from owning it on Xbox... maybe I'll go back!). Either way, I was just as pleased to play the PC version as I was for the PC port of KotOR. For both games, I played about 2 hours (up to the Citadel on ME) of the console version, and waited to buy the PC version of each game. I've got somewhat of an older rig (Opteron 165, 2GB DDR400, Radeon X1950 XT 512), and I was able to play pretty smoothly maxed out @ 1680x1050. There were some weird focus issues on the characters (those out of focus of the shot looked very pixellated, but I have nothing to compare this against). Perhaps a patch will fix it? I loved the game so much I'm already considering a second playthrough in the coming week. Of course, I ran through the game fairly quickly (Soldier class, 13:40 completion time, level 39, normal difficulty), so I'll hopefully do some more of the side quests. Also, with the DLC hopefully coming soon... wow.

In short: BUY THIS GAME. I promise, it's worth every penny if you appreciate good computer games.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: ja1484
Oh yeah, and not a single problem for me (except the nasty looking dynamic shadows), all I did was install and run. Of course, I run a clean WinXP installation for gaming, so who knows. It's probably more Vista shit.

So it's not just me with the shadows, then? It mostly seems like when the shadows are on a person, shadows cast on the ground look fine as far as I can tell.

 

[Bateluer]

Hmm, maybe I'll pick it up after I upgrade my video card an secure employment.

 

[MTDEW]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

Originally posted by: ja1484
Oh yeah, and not a single problem for me (except the nasty looking dynamic shadows), all I did was install and run. Of course, I run a clean WinXP installation for gaming, so who knows. It's probably more Vista shit.

So it's not just me with the shadows, then? It mostly seems like when the shadows are on a person, shadows cast on the ground look fine as far as I can tell.

Its like that on the 360 version also.
But you can make them look better by editing these two lines in the BIOEngine.ini file.
MAKE A BACKUP COPY FIRST!

MinShadowResolution=32
MaxShadowResolution=512
to
MinShadowResolution=512
MaxShadowResolution=2048

Also, these lines were listed twice in my BIOEngine.ini file, so i changed both sets.

I also changed
MaxAnisotropy=4
to
MaxAnisotropy=16


And i'd like to add that im running Vista64 w/SP1 and two 512mb 8800GTS cards in sli w/8gb ram and the game has ran FLAWLESS for me from the very start.(i dont nor have i ever had UAC enabled in Vista)

Now on my wifes Winxp system, w/512mb 8800gt and 4gb ram, i did encounter a small issue where the game wouldnt start when i first installed it.
But that was cured by updating her Creative soundcard drivers and she hasnt had any issues yet either.

Anyway, both or pc's run the game maxed at 1920x1200 / no AA and 16x aniso very smoothly.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: MTDEW

But you can make them look better by editing these two lines in the BIOEngine.ini file.
MAKE A BACKUP COPY FIRST!

MinShadowResolution=32
MaxShadowResolution=512
to
MinShadowResolution=512
MaxShadowResolution=2048

Also, these lines were listed twice in my BIOEngine.ini file, so i changed both sets.

I also changed
MaxAnisotropy=4
to
MaxAnisotropy=16


And i'd like to add that im running Vista64 w/SP1 and two 512mb 8800GTS cards in sli w/8gb ram

Hah! I suspect your changes would bring any lesser setup to its knees.

 

[ja1484]

Originally posted by: s44

Originally posted by: MTDEW

But you can make them look better by editing these two lines in the BIOEngine.ini file.
MAKE A BACKUP COPY FIRST!

MinShadowResolution=32
MaxShadowResolution=512
to
MinShadowResolution=512
MaxShadowResolution=2048

Also, these lines were listed twice in my BIOEngine.ini file, so i changed both sets.

I also changed
MaxAnisotropy=4
to
MaxAnisotropy=16


And i'd like to add that im running Vista64 w/SP1 and two 512mb 8800GTS cards in sli w/8gb ram

Hah! I suspect your changes would bring any lesser setup to its knees.

I've made those changes on my 4800+ x2/8800GT/2GB DDR400 system, and it doesn't noticeably affect performance. The shadows show some improvement, but the blockiness is still visible at times. It seems to be only the self-shadowing, particularly on character faces, that has the problem. Everything else is fine.

 

[AMDZen]

4+ hours in now doing everything the Citadel currently offers and picking up squad mates. This game is everything I thought it would be and more, just wish I'd had more time to play it this weekend or this coming week.

 

[MTDEW]

Originally posted by: s44

Originally posted by: MTDEW

But you can make them look better by editing these two lines in the BIOEngine.ini file.
MAKE A BACKUP COPY FIRST!

MinShadowResolution=32
MaxShadowResolution=512
to
MinShadowResolution=512
MaxShadowResolution=2048

Also, these lines were listed twice in my BIOEngine.ini file, so i changed both sets.

I also changed
MaxAnisotropy=4
to
MaxAnisotropy=16


And i'd like to add that im running Vista64 w/SP1 and two 512mb 8800GTS cards in sli w/8gb ram

Hah! I suspect your changes would bring any lesser setup to its knees.

No actually the same settings run fine or her pc with 4gb ram/ winxp / 512mb 8800GT / e6600 @3.2ghz.
And as someone said, the blockiness is really only noticeable on the characters self shadows, and those settings help it to be a bit less annoying.
I didnt choose those settings myself, i got them from a thread on the official ME forum.

So its possible a different combination of min and max values could yield better results to get rid of the blockiness, i just never tried other settings because the game is so good, im too busy playing to care about tweaking it.

 

[Gunslinger08]

How would it run on my computer? I've got a C2D E6600 @ 3.0 and a 7900GT with 4 gigs of memory on Vista x64. 1680x1050.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
How would it run on my computer? I've got a C2D E6600 @ 3.0 and a 7900GT with 4 gigs of memory on Vista x64. 1680x1050.

I'll let you know how it handles on my Vista x64 with 7800GT/3800+ X2 CPU,4GB.

I just received my UK copy a few minutes ago from Amazon UK,very speedy service ,espcially since its only officially released today in the UK.

Seems to be installing ok,I'll report back later.

UPDATE: I had to set ME to run as admin for it to run,anyway settings I'm using are no motion blur or film gain,V-Sync off,anisotropic filtering and rest on medium,I did try it at 1680x1050 res but not smooth enough ,so in the end I settled for 1440 x900 res,where's my HD 4850 card when I need one .

The game has not crashed once(apart from when I did not set it to run as admin) and so far its very interesting and I'm enjoying the game .

 

[rivan]

I've been playing for a couple days now; generally love it and totally see the KOTOR-ness of it. Couple questions for those smarter than me:

- Can I somehow track my achievements? I've seen a few pop up on the screen but they fade quickly and I don't see any way to look them up again.
- Startup and alt-tabbing are maddeningly slow, but otherwise the game runs beautifully. Initial startup was probably 4 minutes, long enough that I thought it was locked up. Subsequent startups are faster but still in the roughly 2-2.5 minute range; tabbing out is fairly fast (though not as fast as most games) and tabbing back in takes nearly as long as startup. I've got a e6300, 2G, a 3870 and it's installed on a raptor 150. A120 is installed - does that have anything to do with it?

 

[AMDZen]

J - is your jornal which tracks your missions and side quests

 

[Sylvanas]

This thread prompted me to go pick it up as it was just released here yesterday. I am loving it so far and makes me feel like the first time I played Kotor (which is one of my all time favourite games) in the way that I can't wait to find out what happens next! The start of the first mission I was still finding my feet however by the end of it I understood what I was doing and how combat worked and it's ALOT of fun! If you haven't got this game already go out and give it a go!

 

[wbynum]

Played Mass Effect for a good 5 hours or so tonight (I am a slow gamer). It took a bit getting used to the game play but by the time I got to the Citadel it started to get fun. I've never been a huge fan of the "select a dialog" stuff but it isn't to bad in this game. I'm forcing myself to not try and go down every tree of the dialog. Trying to make the conversation real.

Game seems to play well at 1920x1200 on my 8800gt and e2180 CPU oc'ed to 3ghz. Few slow downs here and there but not to bad. Mainly while loading new areas every now and then. No slowdowns during battle yet. Is there a way to show the frame rates while playing?

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: wbynum
Played Mass Effect for a good 5 hours or so tonight (I am a slow gamer). It took a bit getting used to the game play but by the time I got to the Citadel it started to get fun. I've never been a huge fan of the "select a dialog" stuff but it isn't to bad in this game. I'm forcing myself to not try and go down every tree of the dialog. Trying to make the conversation real.

Game seems to play well at 1920x1200 on my 8800gt and e2180 CPU oc'ed to 3ghz. Few slow downs here and there but not to bad. Mainly while loading new areas every now and then. No slowdowns during battle yet. Is there a way to show the frame rates while playing?

I use Fraps for framerates.

I am amazed at how well this runs, love the UE3 engine I play maxed 1920x1200 16xAF Trilinear with some Texture tweaks in the Ini file and it stays at around 40fps in most areas if not at the 62fps cap.

 

[Nightmare225]

BIG thumbs-up to EA and Bioware on this one. Excellent porting job, and great performance optimizations. I just beat the game and it was such a blast, that I only played it in 3 EXTRA-LONG sessions.