amiirasri

ME3 takes the cake for me. I am a sucker for the cheap tricks that it used to pull at my emotions. I genuinely felt sad at some points.The gameplay was much more refined: As a Vanguard on Insanity I was glad that I could actually use my biotics instead of having 2 levels of shields blocking it for all enemies all the time. It just felt more exciting and well paced.

ME1 was just OK. It's bad that I pin it all on one thing but the Mako really left a bad taste in my mouth. And when I had to sacrifice a teammate I just picked at random because I didn't care for either of them.

ME2 was great but somehow I didn't feel as invested in the characters and the gameplay was just slightly worse than ME3. ME2 does take credit for introducing Mordin to me though. He is awesome.

Amen to that. Saw a friend of mine playing on her laptop. The game looked pretty decent so out of curiosity I asked what graphics card the laptop had.

When I heard that it was integrated I was flabbergasted (also Intel HD3000).

I'm old school so I never imagined a game could look this good without a dedicated. It really does look very nice especially considering that it is using a non-dedicated card.

I used to get that for two reasons.

1) Was in school so I had loads of free time

2) I spent A LOT of time on gaming. Like way too much time. 4 hours was pretty standard, up to the entire waking day with WoW in summertime (minus food/toilet/shower breaks)

Now I am busier and I spend much more time with friends etc. So that's all gone. I actually enjoy MORE those days when I get to sit down for a weekend and do nothing but game till I beat a game because those are rare times now.

@Sin4profit said:

@Twiggy199 said:

The veteran difficulty was more of a grind than it was a challenge, more frustation than stimulation.

This is my frustration with game design. I'm currently playing Darksiders and regretting playing it on normal just because i wish the enemies would die faster, it's the environmental puzzles and such that make that game interesting and combat in these games just feel like an obligatorial chore, Mass Effect is a prime example of combat feeling like a chore against a compelling story.

One game i look back to as having a great dificulty switch is the Thief series, basically the more you ratchet up the difficulty the more you were responsible for, (steal more loot, sneak back OUT after you complete your mission, don't kill anyone) the combat mechanics stayed the same regardless of what difficulty you played it on.

Another interesting take on difficulty is the original Max Payne series where they dynamically controlled the difficulty based on how well/bad you were doing.

I don't know about this...

While I agree that games like Thief can do nifty things (i.e. non combat changes) with difficulty it seems a tad unfair to expect other games that are difficult purely based on combat to have such changes with difficulty as well. Games like ME, CoD, GoW... Those would be stuck if you expected this kind of difficulty change.

I disagree in general that changes to damage, armor, or health are 'difficulty without depth'. This CAN be true but not always. To take your ME example, on lower difficulty the angles of battle are much less important. If your cover is exposed it's not an urgent problem. This is because you can tank hits for longer time. Enemies have less armor so you can shoot it down fast and then go easy mode by using your battle powers to disable them. At hard difficulties you need to engage in the cover system a lot more because you can't take hits and you need more time to use your abilities to get rid of their armor. Just by forcing you to treat enemy fire as actual dangers and cover as a necessity to buy additional time (for power cooldowns, more shots, etc.) the combat shows a lot more depth. At normal difficulty I would easily blast their armor down and then disable them. Combat was just a way to advance the story. At Insanity I actually used the heavy weapons when I found that I was stuck in a corner and needed to just brute force my way out.

I am not saying necessarily that everyone will enjoy messing around with the cover system, because I do agree that ME does not have the best combat system (for example, it could be frustrating to move around in battle with the controls). Some people would much prefer to just enjoy the story and blast through enemies so they play on lower difficulty. But often times changing 'only numbers' can have a huge impact on how a player plays the game.

For story have you looked at NWN 1 modules? Some of the user created modules are really amazing.

I enjoyed Nox back in the day. Fairly linear but good replayability with the three classes that are very different and have different stories for the first few hours (although it all merges into a similar 'You Save The World' story towards the end)

Wow. No online? Pretty much impossible for me. I'd have answered a MOBA, either DotA2 or HoN. Which would suck when DotA3/ HoN2 comes out and there is noone to play with...

However if it has to be singleplayer I have to pick Neverwinter Nights which is pretty much the only single player game I still boot up occasionally. This is assuming I am allowed to download mods =P If I was desperate I would start making my own stories to play!

Agreed man. I always go to the hardest difficulty I can and then tone it down if I get stuck. It just feels less satisfying to me when I am just kind of sleeping through a game and enemies still fall over. I still want to be the hero who beats everyone, but I want to have to be engaged and paying attention.

Not saying I am some macho gamer and people who play Normal are lame -- but I do feel that nowadays developers have made the regular difficulty very easy. I think because more and more people are casual gamers. Whereas I have been gaming for about 12 years of my life. I don't mind that as long as they leave the harder difficulties in so that people like me who understand 'game logic' (different from 'real logic'!) can still enjoy it!

NEVERWINTER NIGHTS!

It looks a bit dated but still nice. The spells have decent effects and really it doesn't hurt your eyes. The point is that the graphics won't get in the way of gameplay.

The main campaigns are meh at first, but some are really good as you go towards more expansions.

There are some amazing modules out there to play. I still boot it up once in a while to find new stuff to play or replay anything I have 'forgotten'. There are so many stories to experience

However, combat is not as fast as anything like Mass Effect/Skyrim and ESPECIALLY NOT Diablo/Dungeon Siege so if you want action don't play NWN.

I prefer PC gaming. There are usually more options in terms of control (keyboard, mouse, plug-in controller). It also helps that the genres I enjoy a lot (mainly RPGs, some shooters & strategy games) are basically the best on PC. It is a hassle to use anything other than a mouse for shooters and strategy games in particular. Nowadays we even have a laptop connected right to the massive TV in the living room, so if I wanted, I could easily play games on that just like a console.

There is almost no disadvantage to the PC in my view -- Except that I have been lucky enough that budget is not an issue. PCs do cost more than consoles generally, especially for a fairly compact laptop that works fast and wouldn't clutter the living room decoration as much as a desktop would.

@rb_man said:

@slowpantz said:

Console for me. Im a very lazy person and prefer to pop in a disc and go.

I really don't get this. With modern PC games unless some thing is super fucked all you have to do is just download and maybe set the resolution

I don't think his point is completely invalid. For example if my friend just bought the latest FIFA and I was told him 'Come over to my place I want to try!' on console it's easy to just place it in and play. Or even better, my friend could just randomly show up at my house and tell me about this great new game he has been playing, and then show me right away.

On PC, I'd have to install for at least a few minutes first. And if it follows the latest trend of downloaded game I'd have to wait an hour for a digital download.

If you are looking for story you might want to try the older PC Baldur's Gates or some NWN mods. They might have co-op play with a good story.

But in terms of co-ops I always liked the hack and slash type of games. Like:

PS2, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance I & II. Dungeon Siege 3. No compelling story choices at all but you can level skills and find loot...

I always just enjoyed the co-op part of surviving a tough game with a friend. Story can wait for when I'm alone reading a book =P