Thank you both for implamenting my statements and clearing out waht I left out.

It was space. The least they could do is have like... weapons. Even a lightsaber knock off or a stright up needler. I got tired of using the same 4 weapons like, hours before I even started Mass Effect. Cus they are in GTAIV, among other things. That is a 'real' game. So a realistic game has more weapons than a sci fi game.

I guess they made up for it in thier 900000 augmentations. not.

hey gz i disagree!  i think the positive thing about the sidequests in the game was that in most games, they are just THINGS TO DO and do not really contribute anything whatsoever beyond being timesinks.  i've seen a lot of people (even you, i think) talk about LIVING BREATHING LIBERTY CITY and it is sort of a bunch of bullshit because all of the npcs except the 1% you directly interact with are lifeless husks who just do pre-programmed shit like SWEAR WHEN YOU WALK PAST.  the thing that i liked about the presence of sidequests in mass effect is that they added some level of believability/dimension to the world around you.  they helped it seem like an actual world or whatever and not just a setting for the main story filled with a bunch of mannequins.

i didn't do nearly all of them because i just didn't feel like it but the ones i did seemed like they were more than GO HERE, KILL THIS GUY.  i mean, that was essentially what they were, but ignoring the reasons you did it and that for generic npcs, the quest givers could be surprisingly fleshed out as characters, is taking it out of context.  you're the same person who called gta 4 a GREAT GAME or w/e and that is also pretty much solely "go here, kill this guy", so i don't understand how you can consider it one-dimensional in mass effect's case, but not gta's, because in both cases the saving grace is pretty much WHY you are doing it.  gta 4 is better at it because the characters are better and you give more of a shit, but it's essentially the same thing.

i'm not going to bother arguing about the renegade/paragon thing because i also think that shit are just silly, vague attempts at being nonlinear sandbox shit, and i agree it's pretty obnoxious and half-assed.  i liked the dialogue, though.  i mean, i wasn't sitting there being like FUUUUCK YEAAAAH but you calling it horrible or whatever is definitely a gross overstatement, i feel.  most of the time it is just INDIFFERENT which as far as games go is pretty alright.  the thing that i enjoyed about it was precisely that they didn't just make the choices good/bad/worse, because i actually really hate that kind of shit.  your character never feels like he is a convincing mirror of yourself or, really, any human at all, because no one would say shit like "heh.... kiss you're ass goodbye >​)) *cuts throat steals spacecreds*".

i think you're looking at it from a perspective that assumes that the ultimate purpose was for the game to make you feel like your choices would make you good or evil, but i think the real goal was to just make your character seem like a more convincing person for the player, which is probably why you were given various dialogue options, often none of which are especially good or evil, that ultimately have no effect on things.  they want the thing to happen, but they want you to choose how you accept it, and i think this is alright.  i can't really blame you because there's shit like PARAGON/RENEGADE and other stuff that implies the game is supposed to be open-ended in letting you decide whether your character is good or evil, but that isn't what i got out of it.  i could see you saying that the dialogue choices weren't necessary and didn't add anything to the game, and should've been replaced with just regular dialogue, and i would probably agree, but i think the choices for the dialogue itself were decent, especially the part where you just chose the general gist of what you wanted to say.  it seems like a step in the right direction in realizing that players are not GOOD/EVIL 99% of the time so having choices that reflect that is dumb.

there were a lot of items but idk i just scrapped the large majority of them right off the bat so no big deal i guess!  i don't think the battle system was garbage, and i don't even really understand what you are comparing it to.  what level of strategy did you expect?  it is pretty basic TAKE COVER, SHOOT GUYS FROM COVER stuff, but what shooters are you playing that aren't like this?  there was as much an element of strategy to having to take good cover to avoid dying as there is to pretty much all shooters i play (maybe i am not playing ones that are complex enough idk).  the cover system worked pretty well with the environments, especially stretching outdoor ones, and the target system was functional.  also, there were actually decent differences between the weapons themselves, which i think made up for the fact that there were only like four types (i prefer this to fps with a ton of weapons that all basically function the game-- also who gives a fuck about the weapons in gta 4 because i beat the game and rarely felt compelled to use anything other than a rocket launcher and assault rifle/uzi) and even though i am PRETTY HARD ON PARTY AI i didn't have a huge problem with my teammates in the game.  they were kind of dumb and not good at taking cover and half the time they would just fire at no one for a long time and weird stuff like that, but they rarely, if ever, IMPEDED progression, or needed babysitting, which is more than i can say for most other games.  again i am finding many similarities between it and the battle system in gta 4, which relies on BATTLE as part of the fundamental experience more than ME does, and yet you did not seem to have many problems with that! 

also man idk i didn't find it that hard to choose a decent class.  i forgot what i chose but TO BE HONEST all these games that make you choose classes use a pretty similar set of archetypes so i don't really understand how anyone could find it that difficult/complicated to choose a good one.

yeah, but how many of the sidequests are LIKE THAT?  "go to planet x and get my shit/codes".  i barely played any like that, and that's not to say that there aren't any, just that i don't think nearly all of them are like that.  most of the ones i did involved going to some other planet i already had to go to to find out some shit about someone, not any FINDING OF CODES.  maybe i just steered clear of the really bad ones but yeah, my experience with them wasn't all that bad!  i only went to a planet like once for one, and the rest of the time it was voluntary exploration on my part.  on that note i don't really think complaining about buggy controls is especially valid, given how little of your time you spend in one, and how most of the time you just have to drive in a straight line.  what i really liked was being able to go to a random planet and just find a body with a journal on it in the middle of fucking nowhere; that kind of stuff is really cool to me.

also, i played as a good guy and i might never have chosen any of the EVIL options, because that's not really my style, so maybe that's where the disparity between our experiences is coming from too.  i agree the story is generic SCIFI EPIC but idk, i guess i didn't expect much more than trashy popcorn epic to begin with, so that's not a big deal.  i thought most of the supporting cast was lame but there were a few decent characters, and in general most are MUCH BETTER than standard rpg fare, and there were also parts where your main character would be pretty good too.  all in all i didn't especially give a shit either, but that doesn't change the intent of the sidequests, i don't think!  one thing that stands out as being lame was that ridiculous choice between WHO DIES.  i really got the feeling like this was supposed to be one of the shining dramatic moments in the game, and it was honestly so predictable and the characters so uninteresting that i didn't give a shit at all.

but i mean, weapons differed on the most basic of levels.  i didn't find the sniper rifle useless at all and in fact looked for opportunities to use it, the shotgun was great for short range, and i switched to the assault rifle or whatever for longer range stuff.  the weapons all have pretty distinct functions, albeit fairly uninspired ones (i.e. sniper rifle for STEALTH shit, shotgun for powerful short range attacks, assault rifle for long range and general attacks, pistol if you can't use anything better).  i never used any magic except cure/shield or whatever, but i saw my party mates doing some pretty cool shit from time to time.  i agree it was a lacking system if you were trying to use it as your main offense for your own character.  what shooters are you playing where the guns feel more different than this?  i play shit that people rave about and with few exceptions the guns usually feel almost completely identical, and like 95% of the games with huge lists of weapons don't bother making any but a few of them interesting or desirable.  i don't think having to find different types of ammo would've done anything but annoy me.

you're looking at the combat as if the game is an rpg, but i think it's important to note that it really isn't, beyond HIT POINTS.  it's more than an action game than anything, and idk what "standard shooters" it is supposed to be on par with but most action games i play are right around this boring!  AIMING is virtually nonexistent in games that let you target, outside of sniping.  i could see you saying that it got OLD after a while, but that's how i feel about all action games.  gta had variety, but the cover system is clunky and lacking, and i felt like they utilized environment/level design a bit more when working out mass effect's combat.  yeah there was driving and getting blowjobs and i appreciate the variety, but i think i could make the same basic complaint about like every action game where by 5 hours in you're like "so this is all there is huh?"!  even god of war, which people love, suffers from that shit.  don't get me wrong, god of war has much better action than mass effect, but it doesn't stop it from having the same issues.  i also don't think gta missions had more variety, because those FELT like you were being sent on fetch quests and other stupid shit.  the sidequests in mass effect at least weren't like "______ GO DO THIS" and "OKAY BYE" with not much added on (at least, not in my experience they weren't).

like i had the difficulty on a pretty decent level, so it wasn't just TAKE COVER, SHOOT, GO BACK TO COVER.  i took quite a bit of damage and had to regularly switch cover and i'd have like four enemies coming and i'd have to switch to the shotgun and etc etc.  it was pretty decent for what it was!  i can't think of very many action hybrid games that have had combat as good as it.  were you playing it on a low difficulty setting?  i could see it being uninteresting if that were the case, because the repetition would definitely have a chance to sink in without some amount of challenge/danger/demand to actually move around and use different weapons and adapt present.  i guess i agree that mass effect would've benefited from more variety, but very few games wouldn't!

also like ryan said every game ever makes you choose your class in the beginning.  i feel like i was able to alter my character a pretty good deal as the game progressed in mass effect, but it's been a while so i could be off base.  i can't really argue that the class system was ideal, though, because it's not!

and i mean HEH IF YOUVE PLAYED GOOD RPGS what games are you even talking about man?  i hope it is not going to be some shit about FALLOUT because seriously either the game was never particularly good, or it has just aged horribly, because i have honestly never been SO BORED, SO QUICKLY with a system of gameplay (especially combat).

DOUBLEPOST again but okay i think it should be clarified that i don't think mass effect is a great game and i was actually pretty bored by it (could be because i had this big five day vacation from work and i got sick the first day and basically spent the entire time PLAYING MASS EFFECT and feeling like shit), i just would say it is of above average quality.  so really it seems kind of silly to argue over it even though we are not really ARGUING so much as talking about it when you say it is decent and i say it is PRETTY OKAY/GOOD.  it probably seems like i disagree with you on the quality of the game, but really i only disagree about the quality/implementation of the systems!  you seem oddly down on them for saying it was a decent game.

yeah that controls thing was addressed at whoever said SHIT VEHICLES which they were but w/e

i'm surprised you didn't use the cover though!  i seriously just DIED QUICKLY without it so idk what's up with that.  this seems like sort of a difference in opinion as i think the level design/progression is decent, as was the balance/cover system, so i don't really wanna press it, but i agree with the rest more or less.  HEADSHOTS weren't such a big deal to me but i guess it would've been nice.  that would've required a very different aiming system though and i'm not sure how that would've played out.

also probably a 7.  i felt it was a pretty solid game and when i think six i think more of like... games that are JUST BARELY worth playing with shit 5 and below being stuff i intentionally avoid, and i felt that ME ended up being a relatively enjoyable, if mindless, experience!  i don't really understand why people say AMAZING either but i strongly suspect it is because it is like a scifi channel original series in videogame form and if you just think about that you will understand the appeal for giant nerds with no taste.

to be completely honest you're probably right about fallout 2 in that respect; i never got more than 2-3 hours into it before i literally never wanted to play it ever again.  it was OFFENSIVELY boring to me.  i might check out baldur's gate because i never played it and all bioware pc rpgs (nwn etc) bore the shit out of me so i assumed it'd be more generic STUDDED LEATHER ARMOR high fantasy pc rpg shit.  also i never beat hl2 but aside from the gravity gun the weapons really DID feel the same to me, so i dunno about that!  it's been years since i played it so feel free to CORRECT but yeah, that's how i remember it.  anyway, most if not all of these games did certain things right at the cost of doing other things very very wrong (probably not hl2 but all the others for sure), so i'm not sure how fair it is to cite them as examples BETTER GAMES when they're really only better in a single respect.  i mean the same "well x did this better than that one game, and y did this better too, etc" argument could be said for pretty much all games that kind of break genre conventions.  its story isn't as good as fallout's, and its combat isn't as good as baldur's gate, but its combat is better than fallout's, and its story is better than baldur's gate, so idk i'm not sure you can really say it is clearly underwhelming in comparison to any of those games except for half life, because it is almost universally BETTER in some other respects and it seems like it kinda evens out.

I was gonna play Mass Effect. Then my 360 got nerfed by my roommates and they fucked up my TV and I only got ability to play 360 again when GTA4 came out so needless to say I haven't really played alot of Mass Effect (just fucking around in the first city).

If the rest of the game is like the beginning though, like the opening resque shit and the first city then idk if I'm gonna keep playing it. It kind of reminds me of KOTOR IN SPACE (if only KOTOR wasnt in space already). Seriously, the beginning of Mass Effect bores me to no end so PLEASE someone reply and tell me it gets better 'cause I am expecting grrrrreat stuff from that game.

also why are so many people hating fable
its a pretty cool 'n simple game yo i dont see no reason to be h8n'