The Official "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

Bucky said:
Just finished Mass Effect 3. I'm in awe of the depth of the trilogy and its character development. One of the best games/series I've ever played. Going to start another play through next weekend with the original ME and run through it all again just a little smarter this time.
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The original ending for ME3 is bad and so is EA. That said, Mass Effect 2 was the best in the series IMHO. I enjoyed it so much I beat it three or four times.

 
Enhance89 said:
Bucky said:
Just finished Mass Effect 3. I'm in awe of the depth of the trilogy and its character development. One of the best games/series I've ever played. Going to start another play through next weekend with the original ME and run through it all again just a little smarter this time.
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The original ending for ME3 is bad and so is EA. That said, Mass Effect 2 was the best in the series IMHO. I enjoyed it so much I beat it three or four times.
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Agree on ME2 being the best. Kind of frustrated with some of the things in ME3 which is what is making me want to play it all again and steer it in a different direction. I hate that they added that Vega guy in 3 instead of opening up room for another squad member from a previous game..also could have done without EDI. I see a lot of people are pissed about ME3's ending, and I know I'm about two years late to the party but I didn't think it was that bad. What did you want to see? Personally I think Shep has to die to make it a true heroic epic. The hero can't go off riding into the sunset. That's what pissed me off about the most recent Batman flick.

Somewhat related...this made me laugh:

VelveetaAvenger_01.jpg


Unpopular ending aside it's still got to be one of the best series out there. The soundtrack by itself, especially with ME3 when they brought in Mansell, just blew me away. I'm not sure what franchises it's really competing against but I enjoyed it more than Halo and even more than Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises which I hold in pretty high esteem.

 
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The problem isn't Shepard dying, but, more or less, the situation surrounding his choices and the choice he ultimately makes don't gel together. There are significant contradictions that lead me to believe either a) something isn't as it seems and the devs did this intentionally or b) they were nearing the end of the game and didn't think about cohesiveness - instead, just finding a way to end the story. Which, if the latter is the case, is highly disappointing. And if it's the former case, then it all just seems like a gigantic waste of time.

Here's a breakdown of the major and minor flaws in a google doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QT4IUepvrU1pfv_B95oQj0H84DlCTUmzQ_uQh1voTUs/mobilebasic?pli=1 Some of them I think are a stretch or I find explainable. But, they make some really good points. I'm one of those people that really pays attention to details in a story, and when details don't match, I'm irked. And to piggy back off your Batman analogy, problems in ME3's story are exactly why I wasn't a fan at all of the Dark Knight Rises story line and ending. It's not that Wayne lived, but that there are a bunch of ridiculous conveniences suggesting lazy storytelling.

That poster is amazing by the way haha. And I completely agree - the soundtrack was great and the final battle - where all your forces exit the relays to take back Earth - is one of those most epic and breathtaking experiences I've ever had in a video game. As a series, it's one of the best.

 
Finally got my PS4 last night. Currently have NBA 2k14 and FIFA 14. Going to stick with these for a while but was wondering what everyone recommends? No way I'm reading all the way back through this thread. Too lazy for that.

 
Bucky said:
Personally I think Shep has to die to make it a true heroic epic. The hero can't go off riding into the sunset. That's what pissed me off about the most recent Batman flick.
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Don't know about that...and if you're like me, you played on Insanity (or whatever the highest difficulty is--the last battle and QTEs were just patently unfair on that setting),

Shepard lived
. And for a story driven by personal character customization, it doesn't make sense to me to kill off a player's creation for the sake of a storyline. Batman Trilogy, I agree with you, but I think since ME is in a different medium--moviegoers didn't design their own Batman as a female with red hair, for example--it makes sense that Batman should have died. It's a difference between passive and active media I feel.

Also, re: ME3, keep in mind that EA 'let go' of the writer from the first two ME games at the beginning of ME3 development because of creative differences, and this was right after EA bought BioWare. I believe it's the main reason things were so...clunky and ineffective in ME3 in terms of story and ending.

 
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tschu said:
Dammit, I had a gigantic post typed out and Chrome crashed and I lost it. The gist of it was strigori is being ignorant, typical COD BRO gamer. Nintendo has dropped the ball with the Wii U for a variety of reasons, with the console itself being bad being the least of those reasons. I own a Wii U. It's quality and the gamepad is quality. Just sad.
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Agree. Had Nintendo not settled and given it the power to compete with the XBox One/PS4, the WiiU would be a hell of a system.

 
A lot of attention given to the power of the console. The Wii U isn't very underpowered at all. People look at the 2GB RAM and the processing/shading raw numbers and think that they know the whole story but they don't. Wii U utilizes RAM and GPU differently than the other two consoles. I've seen it put this way, if Wii U had 8 GB RAM, it would basically not use 6 GB of that RAM anyway. The bigger issue than the raw power is the lack of support for unreal engine (or support finally gotten too late) and the combination of having to port games to Wii U and having them likely not sell well on the console anyway since the console hasn't sold well just makes a lot of developers say "screw it" and pass up on what would probably be a money-losing proposition. Sort of a death spiral - people don't buy the Wii U, so developers don't port games to it, so sales go down even further, etc.

Anyway, the #1 problem has always been Nintendo's marketing and release strategy with this console. If they hadn't botched it, Wii U would be doing a lot better. I don't think it ever had a chance to beat the PS4/XBone, but Nintendo's goal was never to compete with those consoles anyway.

 
matthew_m_g said:
Agree. Had Nintendo not settled and given it the power to compete with the XBox One/PS4, the WiiU would be a hell of a system.
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I go back and forth on this...on one hand, let's say Nintendo produced a very powerful console that was easy to develop games for. It sells for $450, has a standard controller, and comparable features to PS4/Xbone (Blu-Ray, streaming, accessible online friend network, etc.). Do you think that

A) Nintendo hits it big, having both the draw of their blockbuster first-party games as well as 3rd party support from developers who can use the console's power

or

B) Nintendo has a poor/mediocre performance, adding a 3rd console to an already saturated console niche containing two brands who have solidified their place in that niche and have some great dedicated exclusives and first-party games of their own.

I don't know. I change my mind on these options all of the time. And it's quite the quandary for Nintendo to be in as well, given what their reputation is now and how much market space they've given up.

 
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tschu said:
A lot of attention given to the power of the console. The Wii U isn't very underpowered at all. People look at the 2GB RAM and the processing/shading raw numbers and think that they know the whole story but they don't. Wii U utilizes RAM and GPU differently than the other two consoles. I've seen it put this way, if Wii U had 8 GB RAM, it would basically not use 6 GB of that RAM anyway. The bigger issue than the raw power is the lack of support for unreal engine (or support finally gotten too late) and the combination of having to port games to Wii U and having them likely not sell well on the console anyway since the console hasn't sold well just makes a lot of developers say "screw it" and pass up on what would probably be a money-losing proposition. Sort of a death spiral - people don't buy the Wii U, so developers don't port games to it, so sales go down even further, etc.

Anyway, the #1 problem has always been Nintendo's marketing and release strategy with this console. If they hadn't botched it, Wii U would be doing a lot better. I don't think it ever had a chance to beat the PS4/XBone, but Nintendo's goal was never to compete with those consoles anyway.
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Utilizing basic components that the rest of the hardware (which with the xbone, PS4 and PC basically all being one architecture now) is a catastrophic problem. Both the Unreal and Frostbite engines dont run to playable levels. I'm not sure on how exactly its using the CPU/GPU/RAM, but that RAM number seems like the root issue, I don't know of any CPU/GPU tricks that can get around not having space to store textures. For too long nintendo has relied almost exclusively on the in house titles for software. And while that is important, there are some titles that you really need to be able to run regardless of platform, and that has just killed the Wii U.

 
Regardless, I have a Wii U, and I know exactly why I got it - My library will end up something like this

NSMBU/LuigiU

Mario 3D World

Pikmin 3

Wind Waker HD

Mario Kart

Smash

DKC Tropical Freeze

Rayman Legends

*New Zelda*

*New Metroid*

And probably 3-4 other titles, Nintendo or otherwise.

And I'll be quite happy with that. But obviously that's me being a big Nintendo fanboy - which is really the only reason to purchase the console. Fully recognize why people who would rather play Battlefield and Halo and FIFA would get something else.

 
The problem/knock on Nintendo has always been that their first party titles kill any third-party title sales. Frankly, if Nintendo would stop acting like it was 1988, communicate their release schedule to their third party developers and promise, say, a one-month window between AAA Nintendo releases (e.g. Zelda, Mario) and third party AAA titles (e.g. Battlefield, Tomb Raider, CoD) make a system powerful enough to run the games, and invest in their network infrastructure/online play and virtual console library, they would be golden.

Hell, there's no reason that Nintendo, with it's vast and accredited library, should not have something like a Netflix for videogames service set up--$10/month or $80/year, and you get all the VC titles you can consume from Nintendo's back catalog. Hell, I'm sure you could even get Sega to port Genesis/32-X and Dreamcast titles, get TG-16 titles, etc., and people would go apes**t over that.

This alone wouldn't sell the console, though--for that, Nintendo needs to take a bath on the WiiU and come up with a system that can compete with the big boys. One that can be both a media center and a game console. And frankly, there's enough experienced former Sony and Microsoft execs from the PlayStation and XBox launches that they could help make this happen in short order.

 
I really hope that Nintendo can release a totally badass console again in my lifetime. I just don't think Myamoto and Iwata are the guys to do it. The game has passed them by. Literally.

By the way, a shout-out to Retro Studios. They absolutely kick a$$ and have basically been Nintendo's MVP studio the last decade.

 
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