@deskp: I had about seven disc changes for the finished game of about eleven hours. They gave me the option an hour in of going on some mission and I have to switch discs after an hour of gameplay. I was about to stop playing after a few hours, but it picked up.
After playing this a few hours I am bit surprised by some of the critic's near-universal acclaim for this one. All this is my opinion.
For starters, I am not exactly happy as a 360 owner swapping discs after just two hours in. I apparently traveled to a bad system early on? Something with Cerebus, I think.
The voice work can be spot on, for the most part (including my femShep), but the actual dialogue going on seems like it would be from an Asian import sloppily put together. My wife was on the PC laughing at it, at times I was also. While the cast does for the most part a great job I am wondering who at BioWare wrote a part for a tough Hispanic and decided it had to be Freddie Prinze. I am thankfully with three potential squadmates now so I do not have to listen to him.
The game started off a bit slow, but that may be because of the fact I had already played it in the demo. There are some things that are puzzling from a design perspective, though. For one, what the hell is the war station when you get back on board Normandy. It is right in front of me every time I get back on ship, I have to do actual trekking just to get to the galaxy map?
Some tech issues seem bizarrely inappropriate for a AAA game with the budget this title has. Getting in and out of conversations seems to jolt the whole console, and while I may be a little put off by the Star Wars story I would like the system to translate well into some sort of RPG form. It has been done before, so it isn't like it is that big of a deal. Twice I have gotten a message saying I signed out at the menu screen, which is hard to understand as I did nothing of the sort.
The combat and gunplay are pretty good, though for a game that has basically become a shooter I may expect a bit more in 2012. I do get a rush out of some biotic/magic attack that propels me toward a target and kind of explodes the enemy. I am kind of wondering if there could be a better system for finding enemies than at times looking where my squad is shooting.
While I am happy with the gunplay and some cool powers, the basic attempt of picking up an item should not be this hard. That was the same bad system they had in 2007, and backing up to pick up something right in front of me (once again) lends to the fact that I am a bit distant from this being immersive. May be nitpicking, but I will end up doing this thousands of times. Make it easier.
On the topic of immersion in the game, the technical issues and silly dialogue really hamper it when I play. I have spent dozens of hours in the previous two games, why does everything seem so unfamiliar and unsettling? While I am early in the game from what I hear some of the cooler characters from the second game are kind of either not in the game, or you meet with them and they are too busy blogging. If the newer characters early on, including a Chobot I accidentally invited on the damn ship apparently, had some sort of spark I may not feel that way. Instead, I am stuck with imagining Prinze voicing Vega... not the best thing to do to have fun in a game.
On an end note on my thoughts, I am seeing adequate graphics but why does my femShep look and walk like a monkey? Did they do a chimpanzee mocap session or what? Again, this is just awkward for something that is apparently the greatest thing since sliced underwears.
That is about it, and I am wondering why (even though I am crazy early in the game) it seems nobody critically has really tagged the game on these things. It seems like they mention one of these things slightly, then say how it just doesn't matter. My character resembling something not human, swapping discs two hours in, near-fatal dialogue that almost makes me not want to play anymore. I understand I am not liking this game as much as the next person, but can someone besides Gerstmann give me a little input before I start playing something that apparently anyone will love?
I have had some issues on 360, but an every hour thing, no. If you have it installed this shouldn't be happening unless your console is going to die VERY soon.
I didn't know you could pre-order games like that on PSN. Is that something new? PSN is supposed to be fully up right now, right? I think the downtime was done by late last night.
It seems like it wasn't something you wanted it to be, you played through the whole thing thinking at some point it would be TES?, wondered where the damn Dragon Shouts were... and then came here to talk about your feelings.
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