So a lot of people have said that those "little things" really killed the Mass Effect experience for them.  The only real issues I came across were these:

1. Pretty terrible slow down in some fights.
2. No way to get rid of your worst equipment except for one at a time, scrolling to the bottom of the list.

are you playing on pc or xbox?

I think people might have been reffering to the texture popin etc on the xbox version. Really detracted from the game at times.

"are you playing on pc or xbox?

I think people might have been reffering to the texture popin etc on the xbox version. Really detracted from the game at times."

The gun turret mounted on the vehicle pissed me off.

well yeah, on the 360 version, forgot about that...the driving the vehicle was really bad...fixed on the PC version though.

i hated the mako driving

I was playing it on the 360.  I didn't have any issues with the driving though... maybe it's just cos I haven't played the pc version so I don't know any better.

"Rowr said:

"are you playing on pc or xbox?

I think people might have been reffering to the texture popin etc on the xbox version. Really detracted from the game at times."

Thats just a default problem with the Unreal engine, every single game running on it has that problem, when worked on it doesn't need to be applied as much, hence on the PC version. I didn't think anything got inthe way of it though, other than terrible framerates at certain fights, thats just cuz the game looks so damn good on the 360,(better than gears 2 looks also, the yjust went with a different style of art ) it just pushes the machine to its core I believe is the main thing."

There were a lot of little things that irritated me, but I enjoyed the story and gameplay enough to overlook it.

the mako was pretty terrible and the inventory system was frustrating beyond belief, but the story and gameplay was too good to take me out of the game. 

some of the graphical bugs were annoying at times but i was invested enough that they never really detracted for me

but damn, driving that mako was brutal

Yeah, there's always "little things" in every game though.

The lack of interesting or exciting subquests and not having the option to play with the english voice track (european versions) were the only noteworthy disappointments I had with the game.

Most of the technical issues were pretty much the same ones as in other UE3 games like Bioshock, Gears etc etc.......

Biggest problems it had were the shoddy autosave system, bad inventory system, meh combat, weak driving sections and the areas felt a little too "contained", there were times when I just wanted to wander around and just talk to dudes.

But yeah, that game still managed to blow me away, and I trust Bioware to fix most of those problems now that they have some of that delicious EA money at hand......

It's not the technical issues that brought it down from me, it's the artistic choices they made. The two previous Bioware games I played were KotOR and Jade Empire, and I liked them both a lot, but in Jade Empire you can already see some of the directions they went further in in ME.

Namely, they're trying to make their games into Hollywood movies, which is fine if you're making a Hollywood movie, but here it means shallower characterisations and a much less complex plot than in their previous games. When it came to when I had to choose who lived or died, I felt I hadn't gotten to know either of them very much. Hell, the only one I really cared about was Wrex. A game should be more like a tv series in terms of writing.

The game was way too damn short. It's hardly an epic quest if it's over in a week, is it?

Also, the driving sections were bad and the sidequests were all the same sidequest over and over again, you can breeze through a main planet in about three hours, all the environments look exactly the same, the voice actor for the male Shepard was very bland, and the only decisions that affect the ending come five minutes before it.

That said, I do like the game, and I hope Bioware gets back on track for the next one. Which I will buy. Even if it sucks.

Beat the game a while ago.. I'm actually playing thru again on my 3rd or was it 4th time? Trying to go for those achievments I missed the first few times.

People that say the game is too short, try playing all the quests.. I guarantee you it won' t be as short as you say.

1: The Mako
2: The uninhabited worlds being super super dull
3: The inventory
4: The lift..Looooooaaaadddddiiiiinnnnnngggggggg times
5: The quality of the side quests

The whole going to random planets and driving around collecting random shit.

The virtually lifeless boring sidequests are by far  the games biggest drawback.  The Mako worked fine for me, and the FR drops were so infrequent they weren't an issue just as the pop-in textures.  The game looked so damn good those two faults were just superfluous for me.  But aside from the main questline, the other areas/worlds were just too generic and lifeless...prolly the biggest challenge for Bioware is to flesh out those parts of the game.  I wonder how the game would run when DL'd to the HDD now???  Anyone load it and try??

There's alot more than just those two things that bugged me, but none of them killed the game for me. I heard a lot of the annoyances got fixed in the PC version though, and have been debating for quite a while whether I should get it or not. I mean, I have it on the 360, and if it's pretty much the same on the PC, then it's not worth it. But if it really has fixed as many issues as people said, then it might warrant another play through on the PC.

The Mako was absolutely horrible. Those segments pissed me off to no end. Also, I though the weapons sounded really weak, and combat was unsatisfying. Seriously, I just shot a dude in the face with a shotgun at close range, I don't want to hear a dull thud and watch him fall down slowly, I want to hear a loud 'boom!' and see his head snap back as he slams into the ground. People underestimate the importance of weapon sounds and death animations. Also, the AI was terrible, and sprinting is way too fast. Yahtzee Croshaw put it best when he said: "The word 'clusterfuck' ceases to be adequate."

Oh, and the cover system was poorly handled, and almost entirely useless. I used cover maybe once through the course of the entire game. Really, you could nitpick the shit out of this game, but you'd be undermining the awesome story, atmosphere, music, and characters.

This didn't really bother me until I played Fallout 3, but the side missions in Mass Effect were god awful. Aside from a few dialog and cutscene changes there was really nothing different about any of them.  Most everything on side planets was cut and pasted. Even some integral parts of side missions were ignored. Like when you went to go get Wrex's family armor, you open a safe and the missions over. Nothing there, no cutscene, no image of armor or anything. Terrible. I really like the game but they need to step it  up with the side missions for ME2.

"The Mako was absolutely horrible. Those segments pissed me off to no end. Also, I though the weapons sounded really weak, and combat was unsatisfying. Seriously, I just shot a dude in the face with a shotgun at close range, I don't want to hear a dull thud and watch him fall down slowly, I want to hear a loud 'boom!' and see his head snap back as he slams into the ground. People underestimate the importance of weapon sounds and death animations. Also, the AI was terrible, and sprinting is way too fast. Yahtzee Croshaw put it best when he said: "The word 'clusterfuck' ceases to be adequate."

Oh, and the cover system was poorly handled, and almost entirely useless. I used cover maybe once through the course of the entire game. Really, you could nitpick the shit out of this game, but you'd be undermining the awesome story, atmosphere, music, and characters."

Despite how much I really did enjoy Mass Effect I disliked the load times, the bugs, the clunky inventory system and most of all the texture popping. However I didn't hate the driving as much as most people, I was annoyed with the strange controls of the Mako at first but I eventually got used to it and felt comfortable driving the Mako.

"The virtually lifeless boring sidequests are by far  the games biggest drawback.  The Mako worked fine for me, and the FR drops were so infrequent they weren't an issue just as the pop-in textures.  The game looked so damn good those two faults were just superfluous for me.  But aside from the main questline, the other areas/worlds were just too generic and lifeless...prolly the biggest challenge for Bioware is to flesh out those parts of the game.  I wonder how the game would run when DL'd to the HDD now???  Anyone load it and try??"

The framerate dips are there, so is the pop-in, the volume inconsistencies, the Mako controls, hell I'm not even that big on the core gameplay.

But the story and immersion, they're what keeps me playing. The empty planets aren't that dull to me because I love that feeling of being on some uninhabited world, seeing the system's other planets alligned in each unique skyline, awesome.

The only things that bother me about ME (wich is a great awesome game) are the texture popin and the Mako.

SPOILER WARNING, I SUPPOSE!!!



I think after a while, all of the same-ness of the side-quests start to get to me. Yes, there are some cool side-quests like the Moon and the multi-planet geth strongholds, but mostly they're "Go to this location, fight off these things in an identical bunker, return to the Citadel and pick up EXP." That said, they make fantastic gameplay while catching up on your latest podcasts.

The only other parts of the game that I really didn't like, hilarious, have some of the best "OH SHIT!" moments near the end of the game, namely when you drive the Mako through the Conduit to crash into the Citadel, and when you're elevator stops mid-rise and you SHOOT YOUR WAY OUT! I felt like all the damn time I spent waiiiiiiting in elevators was pardoned by that one great moment, followed by the totally awesome scaling-the-side-of-the-elevator sequence. Very well done.

"are you playing on pc or xbox?I think people might have been reffering to the texture popin etc on the xbox version. Really detracted from the game at times. "

NOW SEE I DIDNT THINK THE TEXT POPING UP WAS ALL THAT DISTRATING IT ONLY HAPPENED WHEN THE CENTER AIMING THING WENT OVER SOMETHING 
> FORGOT THE MAKO SUCKED YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT HUMANS CREATED A SHIP THAT IS THE BEST IN THE UNIVERSE AND WE CANT GET A ROVER TO CLIMB A VERY TALL HILL EVEN IN SPACE?? 
>ALSO WHEN I WAS PLAYING AS A SOLDIER AND HAD GARRUS ON MY TEAM HE KEPT DYING EVERY TIME WE WENT INTO BATTLE ON HARDCORE AND INSANE, HE NEEDS AT LEAST MEDIUEM ARMOR OR SOMETHING
>WHEN I GOT TOMANY WEAPONS I HATED DELEATING THE UNNEEDED ITEMS ONE AT A TIME REALY GOT FRUSTRATING.
>NEXT  WAS WHEN I WENT TO A SHOP AND AFTER I WAS DONE BUYING SAY HUMAN ARMORS I HAVE TO QUIT THE CONVERSATION, START A NEW ONE AND THEN GO TO THE NEXT EQUIPMENT TYPE TO BUY
>LETS NOT FORGET WHEN FIGGEN KROGAN START GETTING HIT THEN CHARGE AND SINGLE U OUT, I DONT KNO HOW MANY TIMES IVE DIED BECAUSE OF THEM ON A HARDER SETTING
>ELAVATORS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE LONG AS HECK AND THE RECHARGE TIEMS FOR ABILITYS ARE ALSO LONG
NOW I THINK I COVERED EVERYTHING LOL

For me the little stuff was overshadowed by the awesome stuff, which is what I remember when I think about mass effect.

Playing through it again at the moment, I can definitely say its the physics when using your biotic powers. I'm about to reach level 60 and as you can guess that means I've got to the end of the progression for all my attacks, which is bad when I fight anyone in an open area as they can often float off the end of the map and refuse to die. 
 
This is made even worse by the fact that half the time its Kaiden throwing them across the other side of the map, meaning I have to chase them down if killing them is mission related.