Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Mass Effect

I finally finished Mass Effect this past weekend.

It's one of the best games I've ever played I think.
It took me a while to finish it, but I did try to do everything available. I spent too long going back over conversation trees to see what every option would provide.

I think they did an awesome job on the visuals. I felt like I was playing a movie. They used motion blur, depth of field and "film grain" all the time during gameplay and it really made it feel cinematic. The only things I was disappointed in were during cutscenes: (and I'm just nit-picking here...)

Lip synching. They got close, but it was mostly just flapping of lips and no real forming of phonemes.

Lighting. The lighting was awesome most all the time except in some cutscenes where they chose the use lighting from underneath on the main character for dramatic effect even when the scene lighting called for something else. Also, on full body shots the characters didn't cast shadows.

Oh, and elevator loading was a good cover, but used all too often IMHO - I didn't want to go down to the barracks on the ship because it meant an elevator ride. :(

Once when fighting Rachni they popped in with no textures. I found this glitch amusing. I could see the modeling much better. Check it out:

Yeah I just took photos of my TV cuz I'm bootleg like that.

If you have a 360 - play this game.

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