HotChops

Not just paragon, renegade too. Regardless of how you play Shepard makes it very clear throughout the entire game that he's not working for Cerberus, he's merely accepting Cerberus' help because their goals happen to be aligned. Sure he's using Cerberus equipment and getting intel from them, but he's not under their command. He's not working for Cerberus, he's working with Cerberus. This has never been something I have accepted, especially with vanilla Shepard. With vanilla (also considered canon) Shepard, Cerberus is responsible for his unit's attack on Akuze. Plus there's also the side quests from the first game that show that Cerberus was part of a lot of sick and terrible experiments. It's a wall banger that he even ACCEPTS to work with Cerberus. I was really disappointed how shoe-horned you are to work for the bad guys. Just some terrible writing on Bioware's part (aside from the whole "you died" bit as well). Retcon is Bioware's motto I guess. I think that it's part of the moral ambiguity that Bioware wanted to inject into the franchise, much like 2004's Battlestar Galactica. The idea is that we're facing galaxy-wide extinction and you have to ask yourself what you'd be willing to sacrifice to prevent that. Indeed, the actions of Cerberus have proven to be immoral, but what if Illusive Man was truly convinced that those actions were necessary to prevent massive extinction? What if he was also convinced that the Alliance and Citadel Council were not going to take the necessary action? I've just started looking into the recently released ME comic, Mass Effect: Evolution. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that it's made me change my opinion of the Illusive Man. Likewise, I've started to speculate that there may be a big plot twist coming to the third game. This is merely speculation, but possibly spoilerific nonetheless: Or perhaps I'm just becoming indoctrinated... do you guys hear someone whispering?

ooooh, that explains a lot. Mass Effect Wikia to the rescue! Oh by the way, Ethan asked earlier what happens if you fail at the end... That sounds like a cool cutscene. I've got to see that.

I think it's pretty open ended. In my view, my super-paragon Shepard never worked for Cerberus... ... He just commanded a Cerberus vessel with a Cerberus crew and weaponry, used Cerberus intel and a Cerberus AI and wore a Cerberus uniform

I agree. Having said that though, I sure wish I had a "job" where I was given a cutting edge spaceship and no contractual ties.

I agree, and I don't know if he had trouble because he didn't have good animation to guide him or what. Hopefully it'll be better in the sequel. Fem Shepard is voiced by Jennifer Hale, who also voiced Cortana in the Halo series and Samus Aran in most of the Metroid Prime trilogy (if not all of it, I'm not entirely sure on the last game). Yeah, I know it's the same actress in both ME1 and ME2. I wasn't trying to say the actress was bad overall, just that I didn't care for her performance in ME1. She does sound kind of bitchy. That's why my renegade character is a femshep. It's a good fit imo. Occasionally she uses her tender voice, such as when she's romancing a character. To be fair, I think part of the problem is that classic double standard towards strong women. Femshep is obligated to be as strong and tough as her male counterpart. Afterall, she's the captain of the ship and a SPECTRE, arguably she's appropriately assertive. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think that she just seems bitchy to me because she's a strong female character.

Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil are so good that I'm excluding Batman: Arkham Asylum. I'm also tempted to discount Mass Effect because it's operating on an entirely different level from other games. If I'm not mistaken, ME2 had about 55,000 lines of dialogue. But I certainly have to pick Mass Effect. Tali is a fantastic example. Without a visible face, the burden of conveying emotion is almost entirely on the voice actor. If you think about it, Tali's voice actress does superb work: you sense her paranoia and strength when she's ambushed by Fist's thugs, you feel her despair when she goes looking for her father, and you can tell how pissed off she is when she joins the Cerberus crew. Similar nods go to Lance Henrikson and Tricia Helfer, who have to deliver their lines in the absence of an actual face (with the recent exception of Arrival and Henrikson.) I also agree that Red Dead Redemption has very good voice acting. Occasionally characters deliver their lines with cigars or cigarettes in their mouths and it comes together very well. Likewise, the accents are spot-on. A lot of developers outside of the American southwest employ terrible southern accents (take Crysis 2 for example). I live in a part of Texas that still holds onto it's cowboy roots, and I know a good Texas accent when I hear it. On that note, I really look forward to L.A. Noire. Some people don't understand how difficult it is today to find people who can accurately portray characters from the mid 20th century. I think that they've made some great choices for that game, and this time it won't be a simple matter of voicework either.

Some DLC, such as Lair of the Shadow Broker, was intended to be played after completing the suicide mission. Bioware said as much.

I've never bothered to go for %100, but I usually have all the characters and their loyalty missions done -- except for Legion.

Yeah, I noticed. It's a little weird to have a real-time countdown, but then to have the game take control of time.

I don't know, but I'm also curious what happens if...

Day 15 The image is a minor spoiler for the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2, so I'm keeping it in tags. I'm glad I never saw the image before playing it, because when I got to that part in the game I was like In fact, I'm starting to really consider forcing a pre-release blackout on myself for ME3. The less I know, the better the surprise.

I just finished it and I thought it was pretty good! The second half reminded me of the first Mass Effect. There's a great set piece at the end, a few intense fire fights, and some of the I've ever heard. Spoilerz Stuff:

God forbid some of us actually read the stupid article. (don't worry, it goes to the "classic" site"

Charlie says this DLC is winning!

I don't mean to sound negative (again), but that Arrival trailer seemed pretty underwhelming. Nonetheless, I'll probably buy it asap because I am a complete whore for anything Mass Effect.

One, don't refer to "Kotaku" like it's a singular entity. It's a blog site consisting of individual opinions from writers, editors and guest authors. One article doesn't represent the views of everyone on the site. Hell, they can't even agree on their game of the year pick. Second, if you go back and look at their articles about Kinect you'll see that they never neglect to criticize the "Mii too!" nature of Kinect's games. On a side note, I did like that Lisa Foiles had the humility to make fun of herself in that article.

Day 14

It's not "replayability" just games you've played 5 times or more. Well yeh, but what is a game you've played 5 times if not replayable? That's the point I'm trying to get at. Let's face it, this "30 Days of _____" has been adapted from a song/film model. Clearly, games don't exactly fit into the same mold. If we define "played" as simply completing a single player or story mode from beginning to end, we neglect many valid exceptions and limit the entire range of responses to primarily one type of game.

I really feel like FPSs are getting unfair treatment here. For starters, why are we only considering the story mode in our evaluation of replayability? A game is what it is. Some games are simple puzzles. RPGs offer a strong story-based experience. Modern FPSs are primarily designed for multiplayer. If we take into account their primary purpose, then FPSs like Battlefield, Call of Duty and Halo trump all other games' replayability because a lot of players have pumped hundreds of hours into those games. But hey, I'm like most of you. I prefer strong stories and single-player experiences to competitive multiplayer games. I just think we're being a little unfair.

Why would you play HL2 more than once, it's the same every time. And portal is... well, not a "real" FPS anyways. I'm not the biggest fan of HL2, but I played it more than once for the experience. The beginning is by far my favorite part. Yes, every time I play it I get flagged by the alien police. Yes, every time I get harassed by the cops and freed by Barney. Every time I replay the part against the striders there's a scripted part where they shoot out a chunk of building. But those parts are really badass, so I've wanted to experience them more than once. I've seen Star Wars enough times to reproduce it if I had to, so why do I keep watching it? Because it's awesome. I also prefer games that allow you to craft the narrative or ones that feature more random action (like GTA,) but I still enjoy the hell out of the games that don't. Video games are heavily repetitive by their nature. I think if you're not prepared to deal with repetition, you're not getting the most out of your games. Uh... actually, I don't think that's true at all. HL2's design is pretty narrow. Did you ever play the original PC version of Far Cry? Now that's an example of a FPS with open level design.

I've replayed numerous FPSs multiple times. Granted, after the third or fourth time I really burned out on them. Medal of Honor was my favorite to replay because contrary to what most people think, it had a good story with a very authentic presentation. Ultimately, I don't see much difference between replaying the campaign of a FPS and replaying your standard JRPG: Hackneyed story segments separated by stretches of repetitive gameplay. In one, you're just aiming and shooting over and over again. In the other, you're selecting "attack" from a menu over and over again. Granted, that's a general description, but it's just a matter of taste.