Mass Effect: Navigating the Hemorrhoid Field

Commander's Log: Stardate 122807

Hard to believe it's been a month since the last Mass Effect post - December was so busy!

Well, I'm still early in the game - maybe a dozen hours or so. I've finished the quests at the Citadel and have traveled on to the frozen planet of Noveria.

The graphical glitches bothered me much, much less during my intervening playing sessions. Everything is more flawed under a microscope, and I was obviously looking too closely. That said, the shadowing effects seem to be the biggest culprit regarding my earlier misgivings. The engine doesn't seem to have quite enough horsepower to do proper on-character shading, so why implement it?

In that vein lies many of Mass Effect's problems. Yes, the game is pretty, the conversations intriguing, the plot engaging, and the combat system promising. The underlying game engine, however, can be a chronic source of posterior pain. Why, oh why were so many of KotOR's nuts-and-bolts problems not ironed out during the development of this game?

Yes, the ME combat system (like KotOR's before it) can be unforgiving and even a bit random at times. I can deal with that. What I don't want to deal with is a minute-long loading pause before resuming combat. Why are the assets for the area I was just inhabiting reloaded each time I die? Could the code not simply check to see if the player were re-playing the same area he just died in? Obviously, if a player were to load a save in a different locale, the game would have to import those resources, but in this case we're replaying the same damn room!

Loading pause aside, I am then forced to re-watch the short video sequence that takes place before the combat is triggered. Every time I die. Ugh. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I've mashed every button on my controller trying to skip the same clip featuring the same bunch of Geth unfolding, jumping up onto a wall, and posing menacingly - for the sixth time. I know they're there - they just killed me. Let's get on with it already!

Then there are the ambiguous "where the hell do I go now?" moments - those places where the quest system seems to forget what you were doing and forgoes implying any sense of direction. I was told to go talk to Guy X, but Guy X strangely doesn't have anything to say to me - now what?? I'm also supposed to go to Place Y and do something, but Place Y doesn't show up on my map. Even so, a deadline timer is still ticking down and I have to save the people at Place Y before it expires. Grr.

Finally, one last rant - this time about combat vehicles that are strangely incapable of shooting up or down. Yes, Commander Shepard - you have a groovy prototype space tank with standard features such as Hypercrystal Ceramisteel Armor Plating, Diminished Mass Effect Jump Jets, Excited Tachyon Pulse Lasers , and a Mark IV Phasing Ultra-Cannon. A weapons turret featuring both side-to-side and up-and-down movement is beyond our technological capabilities however - so sorry!

In a way, I think that EA purchasing Bioware will have a positive ending. Bioware does so many things well story-wise, but their games can be very clunky from a mechanical aspect. In my eyes, the resources that they should be able to take advantage of under EA will hopefully enable them to create the nearly-flawless game we'd all like to play. Until then, I'll continue to be dazzled by the dialog while raging about the rough spots.

Mass Effect: Deep Space Graphical Anomalies

Commander's Log: Stardate 112807

I finally carved some time out last night to jump deeper into Mass Effect. I'm probably about six hours into the game now, and I wanted to touch on two aspects of the game that made an impression immediately:

1. The visual presentation is amazing.
2. The visual presentation is rather glitchy.

Now, to form the complete picture, note that I'm a new Xbox 360 owner, and also a new HDTV owner. I'd been holding off on buying the former until the time was right to splurge on the latter. I just couldn't see playing next-gen HD games on a standard def TV. Being a long-time PC gamer, I'm used to high def, impressive graphics. OK, I'll just admit it - I'm a bit of a video snob.

That said now, for the past few months I've been thoroughly enjoying some of what the 360 has to offer: Halo 3, Carcassonne, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Gears of War. Such great stuff. I've become accustomed to how beautiful 360 games look on my new 50 inch 1080p Samsung DLP display. Even so, Mass Effect manages to step this great platform up another notch - sort of.

Yes, the character models, facial animation, and lush environments are all gorgeous. Poking through this captivating but thin veneer, however, are some irritating problems. Firstly, the engine can't seem to keep up with the visuals. The frame rate is inconsistent and unpredictable. Awe inspiring, cinematic character conversations and cutscenes lose their punch when a slow camera pan lurches jarringly during a dramatic line delivery.

Then there's the facial modeling. Bioware has definitely taken this craft to the next bar. Why then allow this beautiful technology to be marred with strange clipping and texture anomalies?
In mid conversation, a character will spontaneously sprout a weird texture effect, like some insidious attack of rampant space blackheads. Then, seconds later, their Proactiv Solution kicks in and like magic it all disappears.

One last complaint: horizontal tearing. I know the 360 is essentially just a PC under the hood, but this is literally the first time I have ever witnessed tearing on a console game. The incidence isn't super-frequent or severe, but this is one last dent in an otherwise flawless paint job.

All this might come across as hypercritical bitching. Make no mistake - I absolutely love this game and my follow-up posts will certainly be detailing my positive experiences. I'm certain that the highly impressive presentation of this game makes these little imperfections all the more evident. In the end, Bioware is a RPG developer - not a shooter developer. So perhaps given the grand scope of their universe and the enthralling depth of the story and dialog, one should forgive these minor complaints. Developers must deal with ship dates, and these few glitches were likely one last facet that just couldn't be addressed before the holiday street date.

Myself, I'm rooting for a patch. Bioware has created another console RPG work of art, truly taking the genre to the next level, and an early patch addressing these few technical snags would leave the fans (and press) with a flawless, shining gem. I'd love to see Bioware receive the accolades they deserve, free of any minor gripes (like the ones I've ungratefully brought to light here).