what's the game you wish you had played?

I wished I could go back and time and play Alpha Centauri at release so the UI didn't bother me so much.

Maniacal said:

Me1 is a bit clunky, but still a very fun game. The whole series should still be quite playable and easy to get into though.

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I did end up getting the trilogy from the EA origin site (about $40 which was only a little higher than buying them from individually from Amazon would have been). It has some dlc for the first 2 games, but not all. The dlc seems pretty weak anyways (as all Bioware dlc is pretty weak imho).

I played ME1 a couple of weeks ago, and just finished ME2 today. I'll start ME3 soon. From a RPG standpoint, ME1 is the better game. I really enjoyed creating the character my way. Filled up my shock trooper points, and really had a massive tank at the end of the game. I hardly even had to use cover, I could just blast everyone with my shotgun, which makes a satisfying loud sound. Although sometimes my shotgun sound would cut out (like there weren't enough audio channels that could play simultaneously).

Unfortunately you can't do that in ME2. Even with upgrades, my character wasn't even close to being a tank, I got taken out pretty quickly if I stayed in the open for more than a few seconds. Character development in ME2 is rather weak. But it does have better graphics, gameplay, and is more challenging overall. Me2 is clearly more polished. My biggest complaint of ME 2 was it's a poor port to the PC. No ability to use the mousewheel for menus, no double clicking to select things. Although I could remap the keys to make it nearly identical to ME1's keys, so that was good. ME1 did have those features, which is strange they would remove them.

Took about 28 hours for ME1 (I was crazy and explored every planet I could with the Mako), and 47 hours for ME2 (again the completionist route). Actually origins shows 47 hours, but my end game save shows 50 hours. Either way, it's about right for a game. Too many games I played the last year went well over 100 hours, and I have no desire to replay a game that long. These games I may replay with the renegade route. Some of the paragon options were a little flimsy in ME2, and not very pragmatic.

Replaying as renegade (and especially fem shep if you didn't make a female the first time) is definitely worth it.

My main beef with the paragon options was with Garrus' loyalty mission in ME2. I'm really supposed to just let a criminal go? I can understand not executing him, but letting him go wasn't an option either. I just let Garrus kill him LOL.

Which did you like better? I couldn't get past the gameplay of 1, I played 2 first and tried going back to 1. It just feels too clunky on pc.

Bioware dlc is good but very overpriced. Some of the weapon packs in me2 are awesome and so are some of the side missions. Same with dragon age origins and I recently played dead space 3 awakening dlc. It's good, it's just short about 2 hours. Base price is $10. Really stupid. Should be like $2.50.

Mass Effect 2 is probably the most enjoyable, since it's mostly about doing stuff with and for your squadmates and getting to know them. Mass Effect 1 is great, but flawed. The Mako is a PITA and the gunplay is pretty mediocre, worth putting up with though as it has a lot of good scenes still. It's story is fairly self contained too, you feel really accomplished at the end even if there is still the mystery of what the reapers are.

ME3 was pretty good for the most part too. The DLC is largely a gigantic rip off, even the good DLCs are really overpriced. I found a magical complete edition for 3 to play it.

DAO dlc is awful or at least poorly done. I'm still pissed at myself and Bioware for how much money and time I wasted on that garbage.

I agree 2 has the best balance between epic story and meaningful squad stuff. 3 had great combat, even better than 2, and I loved how they made weapons accessible to all classes but carrying lower weight reduced cooldowns. It was a fantastic way to allow customizing but make it meaningful. Also thank god they got rid of the stupid mining planets thing. That was such a pita.

But two things that were worse in 3 and made it not as good for me. First was enemy variety. You basically fought cerberus soldiers non stop. All enemies seemed identical. 2 had a lot of variety. Like multiple alien species you fought, all a little different. They had different weapons, different styles, different health.

And then due to the epic kind of finale of the story the game felt way less personable. Like you said 2 is a lot about doing stuff with your squad. 3 is about saving the world which is fine but it feels fake, the character relationships are more shallow. Every conversation is about the world ending basically. It just lacked the connections 2 had.

Actually I felt the opposite. 3 seemed to have more variety in enemies than 2 did. Although I agree you fight Cerberus way too much. But you fight the reapers a lot too, and I prefer those battles over fighting endless mercenaries or bots in 2. And I feel the story is better in 3 as well (I won't comment on the ending, I haven't achieved it yet). Priority: Thessia was pretty dramatic. And a fight for the entire galaxy is pretty dramatic all around. The drama is much more intense in 3. But also the humor is much better in ME3 than both the other 2 games. Lots of good jokes. Even 3 separate jokes about Garrus calibrating the weapons (which is all he did in ME2, he almost never said anything when you talked to him). Garrus is all around much better in 3, which is good, as he's one of my favorite characters.

I thought I had screwed up romance with Ashley, but I managed to get it done despite not buying the flowers or books or whatever from the Hospital store shop. I didn't know I was supposed to do that. I had already screwed up romance with Ashley in the first game (and ended up with Liara).

All around ME3 is an amazing game, and blows the other 2 out of the water. The only problem I'm having is the final battle. I can't get past it. ME3 overall is easier combat wise than ME2. ME2 seemed tougher for me, especially the timed missions (although I did beat them, they were stressful to me). ME3 combat has been fairly easy the entire game until the second time you interact with the missile batteries. I can't even get past the first group of brutes that show up. And I generally find brutes much easier than banshees. I'm not looking forward to seeing those show up (I already read up on this battle).

I'm stuck for now. . Those brutes tear me up pretty bad. I really don't want to lower the difficulty level (I'm on normal difficulty), but I may have to. I'm generally not that good at shooter games, and I don't have fast reflexes. But despite that, this game has been easy up until now. Lowering the difficulty seems kind of cheesy when I was able to do the rest of the game at normal.

I managed to play the game on Impossible after many, many reloads and shooter games are definitely not my bag. That said, upgrade your weapons as much as possible, be as high-level as possible and take weapons and companions to suit your playing style.

For instance, I suck at sniper rifles, so despite completing the game on Impossible, I still don't have the 10-pt X360 achievement to shoot an Atlas's glass canopy with a sniper rifle.

Damn interface. I hate it when it wants to crouch behind cover when I want to sprint. Argh. I did pretty good using a mobile strategy. Where as before I stayed in one building, but eventually got myself cornered. But far too often I would crouch behind cover when I want to sprint. And then a harvester unit appeared when I still had 2 or 3 brutes left running around. I couldn't get from one building to the next without the harvester killing me.

In the end, I just dropped it down to casual and the battle was fairly simple. It allowed me to take out 1 brute with 4 or 5 shots from my geth shotgun where as before I'd have to reload which was time consuming.

4 attempts is enough for me. I'm not patient with these types of games. I don't like repeating the same thing over and over.

Now for the endings. I do have the extended cut installed, so these are new to me. I had already watched the original endings on youtube a couple of years ago.

edit: strange that the evil (blue) choice seems the best. The endings are strange to me. I watched all by switching my autosaves around. I don't really want to play multiplayer to get the best ending. Kind of pisses me off a game requires multiplayer. But despite that I still think ME3>ME1>ME2

re-edit: Although looking at a youtube video comment, I'm supposed to get that ending with an EMS over 3100 with the extended cut? I had around 3450 or so. My game got a little buggy it seems. Miranda which shouldn't have happened, because I checked all the requirements afterwards. Oh well. edit again: Okay, it seems I was still alive at the end. I didn't realize that grotesque looking thing in the rubble was supposed to be me. Still the Red ending isn't as satisfying as the blue ending. The illusive man was right. And the green ending... Well, I have no desire to give up being human. Ashley doesn't look as hot with green veins all throughout her face.

I only did one ending and that was enough for me. Don't you have to do some multiplayer to have enough points to keep everyone alive and do all endings? That kind of annoyed me.

I didn't even research the romance that much. I had romanced miranda in 2 which is basically like your default romance and super easy to accomplish, and I was looking forward to finding her in 3 and continuing that. My other potential me2 partners ended up dying cus I didn't have them friendly enough so both samara and jack died. I'm pretty sure you can continue a romance but I accidentally romanced liara and then I think that takes miranda off the table. Talking to miranda before that final battle was definitely one of the most emotional experiences I've ever had in a video game, it was eerie. It felt very nostalgic like reconnecting with a long lost friend that you knew you also might talk to for the last time irl. But aside from a few moments like that I found me3 much more empty in feeling. I think cus of the drama and scope, there was less time to bond with your small crew. Plus having not played through 1 I didn't really give a crap about tali or liara, I didn't know their backstories well enough.

That final battle was tough, the only one I died on more than once, but it's doable. I don't remember how exactly but you do need to keep moving or the banshees kill you.

If you have the Extended Cut, you only need 3100 warscore, so if you fully play through ME3, you should get that amount, even after the 50% cut for the multiplayer (which was actually surprisingly good).

Anyone ever play Jade Empire? That's another game I was thinking of many years ago, but wasn't that motivated to play it. $15 on Steam, a little pricier than I'd like for a short game. But the reviews look good. I guess you can say I'm filling in Bioware games I missed over the years. Amazon has cheaper used copies, but I don't feel like waiting, and shipping will bump it up anyways. PC version of course, which has better graphics than the Xbox version anyways.

I'm checking out a Let's Play on Youtube right now. I like to get a feel for the game. A game that was on my wish list for games I wished I played, but never got around to it. Other games that were in this category I finally got around to getting on Steam, but was disappointed in, like Civ4: Colonization and Xenonauts (this is actually a fairly new game, but it was cheap so I got it). So I'm trying to avoid getting more games I never play or finish. Maybe one day I'll finish those latter 2 games, who knows.

Sid Meier's Pirates (the newer Firaxis version) is also on my wish list. I'll probably get around to playing this game eventually.

Jade Empire is definitely worth £10, but see if you can get it on GOG instead (no Steam DRM). I really enjoyed my playthrough years ago on the Xbox and it sports an early Paragon/Renegade karma system.

I should have checked GOG. I did end up getting it. Just a bit of warning for anyone else looking to play, it takes a little bit of work to get it to work on Windows 7 (especially the Steam version because it can't locate Steam until you tell it where to look for Steam). But it does work, and look pretty good (be sure to put ClampFPS=0). The game starts off slow, but it's picking up.

edit: and whatever you do, don't run the configuration utility. I think my system is so awesome, the configuration utility just tripped out when analyzing my system. It didn't know how to recognize my awesome rig . Okay, my rig isn't that awesome except my video card. There's a workaround by renaming the execute files for the configuration utility and the game execute.

By the same token, whatever you do, don't run the configuration utility for Mass Effect 1 either LOL. That causes the game not to work, and may require to reinstall the game unless you have the Origin version (then you can delete a few files and click repair game).

I should add that Jade Empire is a fairly difficult game. Much more difficult than the Mass Effect games. I'm finding it challenging.

I got it off gog, they have it on sale often. Got it for around $6. It worked fine on win7 for me, and the config utility was only was to change resolution. It doesn't seem to be widescreen though, everyone is stretched. I'll have to look for a user patch or something.

But I only played maybe 2 hrs and haven't been back. It was fun but really hard. Even that first major fight on the beach was really difficult. Maybe it's cus you have no skills and just spam buttons. It didn't really grab me, but that's probably my issue more than the game's. Nothing really keeps my attention these days, I played da3 for like four hours total in three months. I just don't have time to get engrossed in anything right now so I used my hour gaming spurts on dota2 matches.

I liked ME1 more than 2. It could at least be called an RPG with its mechanics. The Mako was decent and made the words feel like worlds, not some collections of areas. My main problem with the vehicle was that it made all of the outdoor fights trivial. I wonder who thought it a good idea to give it a hitscan cannon when all the enemy heavy weapons were slow projectiles. ME2 had some nice choice and consequence with the companions, though. Avoided ME3 altogether because it appeared to be even more of a shooter. Would have been nice to finish the trilogy, but not nice enough to bother installing Origin.

But back on the topic, most of the variety of the games I play are single player, so if I missed something, I can still play them. I do play multiplayer games too, but those are a smaller selection with much more playtime per individual game. Hmm, I don't like MMO and really steered away from monthly payment, but I wish I had checked out Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies on their prime. For single player, I wish I would have checked Planescape: Torment earlier. Wouldn't probably have gotten very far, I wasn't so good at finishing games back then, but it would have been an experience.

Recently I have been revisiting some old classics I couldn't finish back then like Ultima IV and Arcanum. There's a sense of closure in that.

I have never yet finished Arcanum, despite installing it multiple times.

I should say Jade Empire is a pretty cool game, although it does have some weird balance issues. Fighting human enemies, or even demons is very easy, but spirits are tough for me because my favorite styles can't be used on spirits. Support styles like storm dragon, and melee styles like demon sword can't be used against spirits. My martial style legendary strike doesn't seem to do much damage. You can use magic styles or transformation styles against spirits, but they burn through your chi. And spirit fonts aren't that plentiful to find. Of course taking a lot of damage will burn through my chi with healing either way. Worst part is some areas they respawn.

I couldn't do all the flying missions either. At least not the optional ones with the mechanic. I even lowered the mini-game difficulty to student, and it didn't seem to make any difference in the difficulty. The main story orientated flying missions were fairly easy. I just couldn't get the first one with the mechanic. And lore wise the flying missions seems strange. If I have guns on my flying craft, why not personal guns. With the exception of John Cleese's character, you can't get any sort of gun.

Overall a pretty fun game.

I have never yet finished Arcanum, despite installing it multiple times

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This is a pretty fun game. I think there are some interesting characters, interesting quests, and I like the main plot quite a bit. The only down side is the combat isn't the most fun.