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Giant beta testing weekend. One server listed. Full. Wait time: 3 hours. More than likely won't purchase the game anyway, so this would have been the only way I would have at least played it for a bit. Got better things to do this weekend.

Exactly. Like I get criticized occasionally for starting games WAY later than others because I get them much cheaper. However, with THESE specific games coming out this month, I can't resist. Reminded me of http://xkcd.com/606/ I have kind of started doing that. My brother might get me Skyrim for X-mas, but the only new/recent game I will get is Mass Effect 3. Last game I got close to launch was Halo: Reach due to peer pressure. The game is great, don't get me wrong, but "never again" sums up my feelings.

I've only played GC games on Dolphin, and while it wasn't as difficult to get it to work as ePSXe, it took me quite a while to get a presentable performance. Smash Melee played too slowly, and Sunshine had issues with gunk textures not showing properly, but Wind Waker, the reason I got Dolphin in the first place, played fairly well all the way through. I also tried TP, but the slowdown was terrible no matter what settings I tried. Keeping in mind, this was back during Dolphin 2.0 and with my now 2 year old laptop specs not optimized for gaming at all (other than dedicated graphics). A moderately spec'd desktop should be able to run SS easily, I would assume.

That Main Menu Theme just upgraded the game from "I'll play it one day on a friend's Wii" to "Holy hell, I really really wish I had a Wii." I haven't been enchanted by the other songs that have been played in the trailers, but that theme really caught my attention. Here's hoping the rest of the soundtrack keeps up the level of quality.

I have two theories: 1. The most likely one. TIM has been indoctrinated. Either since the events of Evolution, the second comic series; or since the operations into the Collector base after the third book or during the events of Invasion, the third comic series. And now that it has kicked in full gear, Shepard must be stopped. 2. The slightly creepier one. I'll spoiler just in case I'm right (probably not):

I believe I read on the BW forums from a dev that you can charge people as a krogan in co-op, much like Grunt does in ME2, as an example of abilities unique to different species. My friend who has played through the game many times, mostly as a renegade, is convinced that it is impossible to recruit Morinth on a NG+. I haven't tried it out myself since I mostly play as a paragon, but it could be a bug that doesn't reset morality requirements while resetting morality score on NG+ files. You can read more about the morality system on the ME wiki or the forums, but it essentially boils down to: at any particular point in time, how many Par/Ren points did you get out of the total points you could have gotten. It doesn't take all the possible points in the game, only the ones that come from situations that you have put yourself into, e.g., if you haven't talked to Grunt, then the morality points associated with his conversations aren't factored into whether you can Par/Ren talk down Tali and Legion. The Par/Ren meter is just cosmetic; it simply tracks how many points you get. If the game doesn't reset how many points you could have gotten from a previous run through on the same profile, but does reset how many points you have gotten since starting the NG+, then it could lead to a problem. I prefer the ME1 system. It's less organic, but more definite.

Unfortunately, I probably won't get it until sometime next year on a sale...

I only played the Gamecube version, so I can't speak with much authority, but this video seems to speak for itself. Also, if I remember correctly, Twilight Princess was developed solely for the GC, but when Aonuma saw the Wii tech, he was instantly convinced there had to be a Wii version, thus the delay. And a final note: Link is left handed

I went with OoT/MM/TP but mostly for Majora's style. I'm probably being biased since MM is my favorite in the franchise, but I really dig the color palette they used. It meshed very well with the story and the mood they were trying to impose. I would need to spend more time with SS to form an opinion on it, but I feel like all Zelda games use appropriate graphical styles for the stories they are trying to tell. For example: WW's style mixes well with the exaggerated emotions being conveyed. The innocence of Aryll's face while waking up Link wouldn't be as adorable in the N64's style. Conversely, I feel like WW's style would dilute (if only so slightly) the moment Anju and Kafei share together. Given that Nintendo generally knows what they are doing (within their established franchises, at least), I'd say "best style" comes down to "favorite game". Unless you mean which one is prettier to look at, in which case WW wins hands down.

Noted

I'm free tomorrow sometime after 1700 EDT, which I think is 2100 GMT... If you guys have 4 people before then, feel free to start then

/unlurk I'm tempted. School is pissing me off right now, and though I shouldn't shirk my responsibilities, I wouldn't mind blowing off some steam. If you can't find a 4th person by whenever you want to do it, send me a message on XBL. /lurk?

I actually made that connection too! Glad I'm not the only one New Game + is another shared trait. One which should be way more common in games than it is...

ME3 with Kinect I'm not saying they can't implement it well or that it could detract from the kinect-less experience, but did they have to add that purple bar to the cover? I just hope they don't leave it on the Collector's Edition. Also, I don't think that's the final artwork either. Shepard is cutting into the Mass Effect logo and it feels emptier than the previous covers. Maybe if Harbinger or the Normandy was on the background on the right... Final note: looks like the melee attacks can come in the form of blade-shaped omni-tools. Looks cool I guess.

I'm just gonna leave this here. Also, this and is why I hate Ashley. On one of my many ME1 runs, I decided to do a non-Renegade, non-Paragon run, and read that acquiring Wrex's family armor would be enough keep him alive. Doo-dee-dah, going about my business and--WTF?!?!?! I never liked either human squaddie in ME1 all that much, but I got over my "Carth hate" very quickly for some reason...

I know it's been a while, so maybe you already know this, but it seems they're due on April now. And the second set got canceled.

I think it auto-checks your connection when you go to their website. If it's good enough, there should be a pop-up that asks if you want to play Mass Effect 2. I don't know what the requirement is, but the net at my uni seems to be good enough. EDIT:@dean: Hadn't seen the facebook integration, that definitely will help them. I wonder if it could spawn a surge in interest in non-casual pc gaming from the masses that use facebook... Priceless comparison btw. Haven't seen that movie in ages.

Anyone else tried this? Just finished playing a bit of the Mass Effect 2 demo. Plays pretty well. I haven't played OnLive in a few months, so they may have improved, but I feel like the lag is less noticeable in Gaikai. The only times it interfered with the gameplay was during shooting and decrypting, but not enough to detract from the overall experience. The graphics show very little anti-aliasing. I assume it's just run on the lowest settings that the game supports because it looked noticeably worse than even the 360 version. The audio quality was pretty bad. It's better than small-scale livestreams but considerably worse than, say, an ESPN3 narration. Gets the point across though, so I guess it's good enough. All in all, I'd say it does its job very well. You get a taste of the game and the saves carry through to your purchased copy, if applicable. If enough companies adopt this method of letting players demo their games, then maybe pirating numbers will better approximate "lost sales." So yeah, anyone else tried this?

I always thought companies don't sell their games with DD at reasonable prices because retail stores can/have threaten/ed to not sell those games on their stores, cutting off a massive portion of the available market.

First of all, maybe I'm not as astute as I thought I was, but I have no idea what that "so... bad" promotion is trying to say... Secondly, I'm surprised that a late night rant from an engineering major gets tested out as an article. Next up, multiplayer: I thought the same thing, until the teaser video released last year was indeed for Mass Effect 3 and not a spinoff. This is old (about June of last year), but I feel it's a pretty good indicator that it will have multiplayer. Yeah, I knew that's the way it was gonna go, but I just had to vent some. I do think my claims were partly justified though, and weren't borne from some blind hatred of Playstation 3 owners. Besides, if I ever get a comfortable amount of money, one of the first things I'll buy is a PS3. It is true, it does seem there is only one left. I must have gotten confused with the fact there are 2 total pre-ME3 DLC, Lair was the first one: Posts #2 and #4 It just makes me think though: If Lair was the first pre-ME3 DLC, why wait so long to release the second one? Shouldn't both of them have been released closer to ME3's release if the second one is going to come out less than a year before the three-quel? I'm not budging on this point. I'm almost certain the PS3 version delayed this next DLC. Yeah, that's just me being butthurt about my special content not being special. There are games that do keep console/preorder exclusivity though. It just bummed me out that the only thing that couldn't have been downloaded... Actually, the Dr. Pepper visors were also unavailable. Except now, all the visors and the Collectors' equipment are available through the Recon Operations Pack, which is only available on the PSN. That's another thing that bothers me: Why only PSN? If you're going to sell previously locked content to people, why only on one system? Meh, w/e

Ok, full-on, unreasonable rant follows: Why I don't like the fact that Mass Effect 2 got released on the Playstation 3 First of all, let me state that I am happy that more people get to enjoy this marvelous game. Even though without the first one, it's a neutered version at best; which brings me to my first bullet point: - Without Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 is a regular AAA game Mass Effect 2 is a game free of most technical flaws that "plagued" the first game. I write that with quotation marks because I do not believe they were that bad. Maybe I'll get into more detail about that later. The main point is that Mass Effect 2 is without a doubt the superior of the two games on a technical level. However, what made Mass Effect 2 so great is that you got to continue your Shepard from the first game. Mass Effect 1 introduced the player to the universe, and it did so at whatever pace the player chose to do it. The story was intriguing and little bits of plot points were handed out on a regular basis unless Shepard went on a side quest frenzy (which still handed out their fair share of plot). By the time Mass Effect 2 came out, we were all accustomed to the universe and were ready for more character development, thus the dossier and loyalty missions. I can't imagine what it would be like to jump into Mass Effect 2 without knowing anything about the universe or the gritty details about the first game (I'll get to Genesis in a sec), but I have 2 friends that experienced something similar. Friend #1 jumped on the bandwagon after the second game was out, and being the action FPS player that he is, my friends and I decided it best not to make him play the first one beforehand (we tried that with another FPSer friend who got bored before finishing Eden Prime). He played the game, with no proper introduction to the series, and enjoyed the combat, but cared little for the story. Friend #1 represents one extreme of the spectrum of Mass Effect 2 PS3 players, the ones who won't even play Genesis, and move on to the next AAA title. Friend #2 however, represents the one who maybe played the original on Xbox or PC years ago. Friend #2 played, and loved, Mass Effect 1 on his Xbox 360 a few months after it came out. Being the achievement... I'll use the word "hunter" that he is, he quickly played through it a few more times and hasn't touched it since then. After the sequel released, he found himself with a copy to play, but not having a good idea of what his decisions were, he foolishly chose default Shepard to begin his fight against the Collectors. Now, I have not played all the way through a default Shepard campaign on Mass Effect 2, but only because the default choices are beyond ridiculous: You don't get any e-mails from anyone you met in Mass Effect 1, and you don't get news referring to events from Mass Effect 1. All those little (and big) things that made you think "Oh yeah! I remember that!" are taken out of the game. And what you're left with is a game that my friend, who adored Mass Effect 1, felt indifferent about. I think that speaks volumes about the importance of playing the first game and importing your save file, and it supports the idea that Mass Effect 2 is only great(as opposed to very good) because of Mass Effect 1. "Yeah, but that's what Genesis is for... right?" - Mass Effect: Genesis was a bad decision Earlier today, I saw a video on Joystiq that showed you how a full run through Genesis looked like. First of all, the artwork was pretty bad. I don't think the Redemption or any of the other comics look all that great (and I'm the farthest from being a graphic novel connoisseur), but at least they didn't mess up the proportions to make angles look unnatural. Wrex is the biggest disappointment for me in those panels, and anytime he was shown, I could barely focus on what was going on, I just kept staring at him: I understand that from a quantitative perspective, Genesis is better than nothing, but if quality is of any concern, Genesis may be the single worst piece of Mass Effect available (haven't played Galaxy, can't know for sure). And just to add insult to injury, you only get to make 6 choices: - Who Shepard bangs - Rachni's destiny - Wrex's fate - Human sacrifice on Virmire - Council's survival - Shepard's Council nomination The last of which you had to make in any version anyways since Mass Effect 1 never saved that. Of note here is that Feros gets completely ignored, as well as the fact that there are multiple inconsistencies (necessary to cut time, but still, wtf?). You never meet Gianna Parasini, you only know who you banged (not really who they are), and a bunch of other things that get left out. Obviously, you can't fit a 30-hour space opera into a 12 minute comic, but I'm a firm believer in "if you're gonna do something, do it right"; and I feel like Genesis is an insult to what Mass Effect 1 represents: a deep and fantastic introduction to the almost incredible universe of Mass Effect. "What about the Codex?" GTFO, I've read both of them multiple times, but I'm not naïve enough to believe that most people who play Mass Effect read all of it. - Mass Effect 2 on PS3 delayed Mass Effect 2 DLC Mass Effect 2 had a slow but steady stream of DLC coming out ever since the game's release. Some of it was worthwhile, and others not so much (looking at you, Alternate Appearance Pack). However, it was constant, and the worthwhile ones were some of the best DLC I've ever played. Unexpectedly though, the releases stopped. BioWare kept saying they had more DLC on the way, but kept quiet after Lair of the Shadow Broker. The PS3 version got announced, then Mass Effect 3 got announced, then the PS3 version got released, and it's been 4 and a half months since a DLC release with no further DLC announcements. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that they wanted the next couple (maybe more?) packs to come out at the same time for all versions to rake in more money. After all, any further important DLC would have had no reason to not be included in the PS3 version. Keep in mind, I don't think having Mass Effect 2 available for PS3 owners was a bad decision in itself, but it is directly responsible for keeping more Mass Effect 2 DLC from being released, and that peeves me. Last, and probably least: - My special content isn't special anymore I preordered Mass Effect 2: Collectors' Edition from Amazon and was looking forward to having the non-GameStop bonus as well as the Collectors' bonus and the Dragon Age armor (even though I didn't like Dragon Age all that much). The night of the release though, news reached my ears that due to a glitch in the system, all downloadable Mass Effect 2 content was free to download through the Xbox Marketplace on the internet. Quick as a fox, I jumped on the opportunity and got the rest of the DLC, including the Dr. Pepper specials and the GameStop preorder bonus. Feeling satisfied with myself, I gloated in the fact that only the most hardcore of Mass Effect fans and/or people who were awake at the right time, had the complete Mass Effect 2 special content, and I was one of them. Months went by, and little by little, BioWare decided to release most of the bonus content in paid DLC format. It bummed me out a bit, but not too much, because the sacred Collectors' bonus were still locked to Collectors' and Deluxe Digital Edition owners (and late night prowlers). I never even use the armor, although the rifle came in handy for a while, but I enjoyed knowing I was one in a relative few. Then the PS3 version comes out, and I find out that anyone can simply buy any and all DLC for Mass Effect 2 ever released, including my beloved Collectors' equipment. Call me childish if you wish, but I felt betrayed and a bit angry (thus, the rant). Why bother releasing super special content if you're only going to offer it to anyone willing to pay later on? My only consolation is that no one can take the physical specialty from my Collectors' Edition away from me. The poorly printed DVD's, the grey-scale booklet (whose cover is mangled a bit by the case itself), and the default Shepard on the tin can will always remain the difference between a standard edition owner and myself. sigh tl;dr: Sad is he who measures his happiness with possessions. This post has been promoted to an article