Mass Alex: Mass Effect - Part 10

Vinny's corrupt Spectre voice gave me flashbacks to Adachi

Maaaaan, who doesn't recognize Towers of Hanoi? It used to be a pretty common programming excercise (solving the puzzle requires 2^stack depth-1 moves). I guess if you've never seen a physical version of it, it's not immediately obvious how it works, or how to solve it.

Man, he's tearing through everything with just the pistol. For those worrying about them missing upgrades or not using abilities, who cares. He doesn't need them.

"Yea ok I'll do it" is maybe my favorite Alex line.

I'm only at 1h:33m into the video and came here just to see how many comments reference "Hanoi". Wasn't disappointed. As a side note, even though I immediately recognized what that puzzle was, it wasn't at all clear how you're supposed to even interact with it; bad puzzle design BioWare!

Edit (5 minutes later):

That was excruciating, and I don't fault Vinny or Alex at all since the game never even attempted to explained the rules of the puzzle. I get that the devs have probably seen countless variations of that puzzle as has any programmer (myself included), but come on!

I don't recall seeing that puzzle until an intro programming class, to expect someone to solve it without any previous exposure to the puzzle or even explanation of the rules is pretty unrealistic at best. If this was a puzzle game, sure, that might be reasonable, but as an action-RPG, WTF?

Alex, please pick up the dirt-cheap, permanent upgrades to grenades and medigel that you go over at every shop but somehow choose not to buy. Those and licenses are the only things worth buying at these shops.

It's also used in a fair number of adventure games, that's how I learned it as a kid (Shivers 2: Harvest of Souls comes to mind). I played a bunch of adventure lite/hidden object games last year and was amused to see Towers of Hanoi was still out in force.

I knew Alex was going to "like" Noveria. Corporate espionage and lots of backstabbing. Glad they helped the hanar; pretty sure he was just smuggling Krogan testicles.

The pistol is pretty ridiculous in ME1.

Also Shep Shep still thinking all VIs are alive.

maybe that genetics corporation should have picked a different name, maybe one that doesn't initialize to "BH"

@alex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi

That whole part broke my brain how someone had never seen that puzzle before...

Loving this series. I remember struggling hard with that puzzle.

Watching this so I was wondering why shep just ran around helping strangers after a single conversation. Do your own smuggling man,don't ask a cop to do it.

I know upgrading equipment is important and all that but it was so poorly designed in this game.

Loving how connected this world is especially to 2.

@emphulio: I will destroy you!

@drstrangepork: Go! Go! Go!

Please!

I can bludgeon pretty hard.

Sing me a song of the shep shep

Do you see what I'm trying to do here Alex? "a buah???" I love it. The glorious adventures of Shep Shep continues~

Genuinely surprised they've played as many video games as they have without memorizing the Towers of Hanoi puzzle.

Alexxxxx!!! BUY GRENADE AND MED GEL UPGRADES!

@computron7000: I will say this one is a bit odd, because normally the specific rules are directly explained to the player, and then gravity is used to assist in making the rules more obvious. Maybe they figured that with only 4 blocks people would stumble into the solution without necessarily fully understanding it. Also they give you the omnigel escape if you still can't get it.

Never heard of the Tower of Hanoi until I looked up the walkthrough for this puzzle the year this game came out. Only other time I've ever seen it since was I think KOTOR?

I'm a big fan of Vinny gently holding up a mirror to Alex every time he steps closer to the edge of being an extralegal lawman.

Vinny: "You're a spectre... you gotta sometimes do the dirty work, you're making the contacts"

Alex: "Yeahhh"

Vinny: "Yeahhhh"

Vinny: "...You're corrupt"

Alex: "I'm not-NOOO!"

Well I guess I had a hard time with that puzzle when I first played it in KOTOR...

It's a perfectly rational choice if you count opportunity costs. There's only so long these videos can go, and there's only so much time they want to spend on ME1's shitty inventory system. "Spend a few minutes, see a cool gun, buy it" is a far more rational choice than "dick around for 25 minutes figuring out everything they can buy, making a budget, prioritizing their choice to optimize combat effectivness".

@gkhan: No. What they actually do is they go into the shops, scroll through everything, buy some garbage and ignore the things clearly marked "**UNIQUE ITEM**". If anything, the effective approach would be to just buy unique items and get the rest from the field. This way you hardly need any money and can just gel everything, which speeds up hacking, and so on.

There's no opportunity cost wins here, it's just lose-lose.

In practice this doesn't matter, he'll still be able to steam-roll everything, almost never throws grenades, and there aren't any story-reasons to buy things in ME1 that I can remember, but let's not pretend it's rational, optimal approach.

The Tower of Hanoi puzzle famously takes roughly 585 billion years to complete with 64 discs (or with 4 discs if the UI is really bad and you've never seen the puzzle before).

A variation of a Tower of Hanoi puzzle is present in literally every video game ever made. Why didn't they recognize the "stack of three pyramid shapes" thing? :D

@eloj: Why do people want him to spend money on grenades? He never even uses them.

Wouldn't it make more sense to spend $100 on something you'll use than $1 on something you'll never use?

Really wish Alex would dip into Renegade more often although I understand the game doesn't do a great job of making Renegade /=/ Bad but man Paragon can be so boring

The Noverian Port Hanshan music is the best in ME1 and amongst the best in the series. That music, those concrete walls and glass, that blizzard outside... This location IS Mass Effect to me.

I don't know what other video games people have been playing (though from the sounds of things adventure games, I guess), but I've literally never seen that puzzle outside of this game. People also saying it's a programming puzzle and "how could you not know it" assumes that everybody has taken programming classes which is... obviously not true? It all comes across kinda pompous.

Ok, the Tower of Hanoi puzzle is really not hard, but man, is that a terrible interface with zero explanation as to what you're supposed to do.

Anyone else have Lorik Qui'in's dialogue memorized because of the Paragon/Renegade glitch? I honestly can't remember the last time I played ME without going through that conversation at least 20x times...

Ok so I just finished the vid and nowwww I understand all the "Tower of Hanoi" comments. I've never heard it called that but I've done a ton of those "stacking puzzles" over the years. Definitely a frustrating final 10 minutes, though I understand where Alex is coming from.

Brooklyn Turian Best Old Character of the Year 2018

Also I noticed Brooklyn Turian doesn't have face paint and therefore isn't part of whatever the Turian clans/families/etc. I don't remember the lore, but I know Seran also doesn't have face paint.

Missed the small blinking lights in the solar systems .... Please don't rush, you are missing stuff

Ugggh, I had forgotten how much it sucks navigating Noveria.

Re: Hanoi - I've played a ton of puzzle games (including *all* the Prof. Laytons) and I'm sure I have come across that type of puzzle before. But never has it been as poorly explained as here in ME1. I only played that part about a week ago, admittedly, it was near the end of a long play-session (and day in general). But I could not suss out what it was asking me to do. Once I realized that you could only stack onto a larger object, it became trivial. But I didnt readily recognize them as physical differences. I thought it was just a weird perspective thing. A fresh look the next day, and grasping the controls, and I did it about as fast as Vinny did.

Re Alex's Gameplay: So glad Alex is using throw and marksman more. He is really tearing through the combat now! (Upgraded weapons/mods doesnt hurt). You may want to put your best "combat scanner" mod on a squadmate's primary gun. That way you can always see the baddies on the radar when guns are drawn.

@kid_gloves: Shepard can come off as bizarrely naive in ME1, despite clearly not being new to space hero-ing.

Few people in here criticizing some real minor shit, it don't matter. No one gives a shit about the items, turn on marksman and click the button like you're playing Diablo - thats how you play. Discussion over, there is literally no possibility I am wrong and I'm sure everyone else agrees with me 100%.

OMG watching them try that simple logic puzzle and not figure it out was frustrating. I believe Kotor 1 or 2 had the exact same puzzle at some point. I understand that the preassure can get to you when on camera though and I might have had trouble when I first encountered that type of puzzle. At this point I've seen that specific type of puzzle several times in games.

It's a shame Alex doesn't seem to enjoy using the biotic powers, though they are admittedly janky as hell in this first game.

I get the feeling he might gel more with the Vanguard class in ME2. Biotic Charge + his fondness for the guns will make for some very entertaining battles.

@dagas: I might be misremembering but the one in KOTOR was way worse it had 4 grids, and certain nodes could only move in specific ways, that shit tormented me as a teenager. Granted i've never been good at these sorts of things. Regardless i'm glad I didnt have to do that on camera.

I wish this was longer and happened every day!

I'm waiting to get really upset about ignoring Biotics for 3, when the Vanguard glass turns into an incredibly overpowered but fantastically fun ground pounding super hero.

Power usage in ME really opens up when you use the power wheel as a tool to pause, aim and plan your actions and coordinate squad power usage. It took me a couple playthroughs to get used to that and not just treat it like a shooter. (this missing was also part of why Andromeda was ass and a half) I think 2 and 3 are much better at pushing you in that direction, in part because you can get away with just shooting in 1 more than the others.

Hey just a small tip for Alex, put medical interface mods on your party members armor. They'll recover health outside of combat that way. Very handy.

I got a good laugh out of that as well. Great comedic timing.

Mass Effect's version of the towers of hanoi is only counter-intuitive because of presentation. Ordinarily you would have discs on a central rod. With the ME presentation it doesn't explain why you can't move discs out from below another disc on the same rod.