RF Generation Message Board

Don't know what to say about Mass Effect. It's an essential game everyone should play. The story is regarded of one of the best in gaming and there's just so much you can do in the game. Form alliances, break trust with other characters, become the perfect altruist hero, or become the scummy rebel. The choice is yours.

Platforms
Xbox 360
PS3
PC

Participants
Fleach
MetalFRO
Ericescapade
GrayGhost81
Neo

Checkpoints

I'm in!

I'm in. too! Played 10 hours and now got my own ship :)

Glad to have you guys on board. This should be an interesting month. I won't be surprised if we all have unique experiences.

Im in on this one 2. I really cant wait to break this game out again. been one I've been wanting to dust off for a while now. I've never beat it before so....heres to a great month. This game is going to be cool.

I'm Starting the game right now. It is 3:59 where I'm at 6/01/15. LET THE GAMES BEGINNNNN!!!!!!! YEAH \m/_

Oh yeah, Just wanted to add I'm playing on xbox 360. I bought the game a while back from the online xbox store. So I'm just playing a digital download copy.

I want to join, but I know I wont play this. Enjoy!

Why not? Don't like the game? Not enough time on your hands? Just the way you said it I was curious.

My first impression thoughts....

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 Just got done with the "Beacon Mission". I really like the combat system so far. The game looks beautiful. And I really like the way the game makes you feel so involved with the dialogue and stuff. Reminds me of star wars kotor. Guess it should, both games were made by bioware...But I am digging the story so far. Really kick ass start to the game. Im liking it so far. Loving the sci-fi/star wars/star-trek thing the game has going on. The characters are really cool as well. Like Seran, even though up to this point I don't know to much about him he ALREADY seems like a good villain. And I'm already wondering WHY he is doing what hes doing. WHY did he kill Nyhlus. What are his motives here. Game is doing a good job building the suspense right out of the gate. I like the games detail to as far as like when you look through the codex and it gives you a lot of backstory and descriptions of various things throughout the game. A lot of which are voiced in descriptions, which to me is just kick ass lol...IDK guys I'm really digging it so far...good choice for a playthough. always wanted to come back to this one.

Last night I loaded up my level 43 Fem-Shep with a measly 4.1 million credit bankroll to her name to wreak havoc on the cosmos and

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make damn sure Ashley Williams dies ASAP.

LOVE. THIS. GAME.

Eden Prime, oh the memories.

I've got 2 solid evenings into the game, and so far I'm enjoying myself.  I still am not crazy about the combat system, but I can deal with it a bit better than I could when I tried to play the game the first time about 2 years ago.

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Now that Shephard is officially a Spectre in my game, and I'm free to roam around and check out solar systems, I think the game will become more interesting, though the chance of the story going off the rails is there as well, if I'm not careful with how I proceed.  GrayGhost81, if you're reading this - why do I want Ashley to die in short order?  I've not heard that before.

The thing I've noted with the version I'm playing (PS3 via disc), the load times in the game are pretty intensive.  We're talking early Sega CD release bad.  When you watch the mass relay spin around for almost 2 minutes sometimes, that's a bit excessive.  Granted, there's a lot of data to load, but it seems exorbitant to me.  Also, it's weird seeing trees and background elements load while the game asks you to "please wait" while it loads data from one area to the next.  Reminds me of playing [King's Quest on my IBM PCjr and watching each screen draw.

I do like the sci-fi storyline.  All the political stuff reminds me of Babylon 5, or some of the more politics-heavy episodes of newer Star Trek series.  The alien designs are nice, and I particularly like the elcor, with their inability to convey emotion through voice, so their use of adjectives as part of conversation is both interesting and amusing.  I especially found the elcor chastising the volus for his xenophobia to be rather funny.

I guess the "not enough time" part? I haven't played Mass Effect, so I don't know if I will like it or not. I will get to these games at some point, however that point will not be June 2015.

@MetalFro: To answer your question:

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Ashley comically becomes a right-wing racist in later games, she's really an asshole. Check out manyaturenerd's no gun run and he really makes note of it. She's insufferable LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtdqxLs9QlM

I hear you man. Just wish you would join in on the fun that's all.

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 I've officially became the first human spectre on my game as well. And I got to say this game is REALLY enjoyable to me up to this point. I tried to complete as many of the "quest" as I could while at the council space station. The game is so detailed an elaborate as far as back story and game content I'm literally blown away at how emerced you can get into this game. I spent literally a few hours just talking to people and listening to the back story and dialogue the various characters you encounter possess. And Just doing that is fun to me. Really feel like im a commander In a far away galaxy and I think they did a good job at building an entire world to emerce yourself in.

       I did all the quest I could find. And really had fun completing them. I will say I got mad at the "scan the keepers" mission. lol...I found 20 out of 21 and spent like 2 hours last night trying to find that very last one. I looked EVERYWHERE I could find...Until WHILE doing the "STRANGE SIGNAL" mission where the A.I. Is illegally funneling money through the casino to fund his desire to join forces with the geth(which I thought was hilarious) I found his signal was being relayed through a cpu server set up behing the emporiam up a set of stairs in the rear. And I FINALLY laid eyes on the last keeper. I WAS LIKE YESSSS!!!! FINALLYYY!!! lol....I didn't even see that set of stairs the times I was in the emporiam in any previous visits. I was soooo glad to find that last keeper lol... Then I became a spectre and I pretty much just walked around enjoying the citidal station on last time before boarding the Normandy on my quest to hunt down seran and I called it quits right there for now. But I really enjoyed my time at the citidal station. It was great. Really felt real to me. The games atmosphere is great.
     
                So tonight I plan on venturing out into worlds unknown on a mission of galactic importance. The fate of the entire galaxy may very well be in MY hands. I can't wait. The game is great up to this point and I can't wait to head out into deep space. Wish me luck guys. And good luck to all of you as well. Seran is a minace and needs to be brought to justice. ........Let's take this F@#%ER DOWN!!!!! lol...loving the playthrough guys.

Oh yeah...And I also just wanted to take this time to thank RFGENERATION for sending me that copy of Space Marine. That was really nice of you guys. Yall didn't have to do that, but I really appreciate it. You guys have a great site and I'm so glad to be a part of it. Thanks for including me and for the continued hospitality. This site is great man. And I hope you guys are enjoying my company on here as much as I'm enjoying yall. There are some really talented bloggers on here. Some of you should really work for a magazine or something. Very interesting material posted by a lot of you. And I can't say how much I enjoy the community playthroughs. Love sharing these games with you guys. Thanks RFGeneration. Long live the GEN! lol...

It's fun reading through everyones thoughts. The games are still pretty recent in my mind, and I'll be curious to see what everyone thinks towards the end.

Put some serious time into this game last night, and though I'm enjoying myself, I have some mixed feelings about it.  I still think the combat is funky, and not something that is as refined as it should be.  I found myself thinking the same thing about KotOR as well, so maybe when BioWare designs an action RPG, they just skimp on the combat in favor of story and character development?  I also determined very quickly that you really have to take it slow when it comes to the combat.  You just can't run into a room guns blazing, because you'll overheat your weapons too fast, and the imprecise nature of the combat means you may not hit anything, so you'll be dying in seconds, especially against enemies that have much more powerful weapons than you.  If you want to survive long and not repeat a section a bunch of times, find cover and be methodical about how you take out enemies.  You may have to stand around and wait for your health to recharge before you can take on more enemies, and thankfully, the AI sometimes allows you to hang back and do that.  Other times, you won't be so lucky, and you'll either have to switch weapons, or say bye bye.

I do, however, appreciate the fact that, once you cleared an area of all foes and one of your teammates signals the "all clear", you can save, so if you're progressing and you get through a battle intact, you can save right away to avoid having to do that battle over again 12 times because the next one is unforgiving, or you have a puzzle you can't solve.  It also helps with the glitchiness.  I am finding this game to be quite glitchy.  I got stuck on Eden Prime at the very beginning, had my weapon drawn, and was in a corner.  It looked like Shepard was slam dancing.  Once I withdrew my weapon, I could move from that spot.  Similarly:

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I was on Noveria last night, and once I got the tank (which controls like poo), I drove it too fast trying to get out of the garage, and flipped the tank over before getting out the door.  I was unable to flip the tank back to its wheels, and had to restore my save.  Thankfully, I had saved just before entering the tank, so it didn't take long to recover, but if I hadn't done that, I'd have been repeating the battle in the garage again.

I have a sneaking suspicion this game is going to take me way longer than what howlongtobeat.com specifies.  I have a little over 20 hours in right now.  A small percentage of that time is downtime, while I change laundry loads or have a quick bite, but most of it has been wandering around doing side missions at the Citadel, or dying a lot in combat and having to repeat battle sections 10 or 12 times before nailing the strategy down (or in some cases, blind luck).  I'm not a completionist either, so I won't be handling all the side quests and optional stuff, but certainly some of it will factor in and help me gain XP so I can level my squad's stats.

I'm going to sit down with the game tomorrow. After editing the recent episode and short notice changes to my work schedule I didn't have much time left for games. That'll change soon though. I'm really excited to play this with everyone!

One other thing I'm wondering - Tali is in my squad, and it says she has over 100 HP, but it only fills up to something small like 30 or 40.  I can't seem to get her health to go any higher than that.  Does anyone know why that is, or what might be the cause of that?  Is there something with her that I need to upgrade in order to fix that?  Is it a glitch?

MetalFRO - The big thing I would mention is that the combat systems get MUCH better in the sequels. I agree, the Mako kind of stinks, and that's why it never makes a return.

Anyone playing (or played) the mission to Noveria yet? I'm stuck.

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I can't seem to figure out how to get through the confrontation with Benezia's minions. Sometimes I can take out the 1st 2 Asari commandos, but when Benezia summons the geth troops, another 2 commandos appear, and one of them always appears practically right on top of me. Even with level 3 armor and a level 3 shotgun or assault rifle, I die. I can't move fast enough to avoid the paralysis effect. The commandos always take out both of my squad as well, leaving only me to fend for myself. I run to the right of the room and take cover, and Garrus follows, but Tali bites it almost immediately. I'm not sure what else to try. If I run to the adjacent corner, they follow me and I get picked off. 12-15 times of attempting that battle with fluctuating AI makes it very frustrating!

The squad AI in this game is pretty useless, MetalFRO. I'm not too far from where you are and my companions often die quite fast. Is this your first main story mission after becoming a Spectre? I did the Feros mission first and found the battle at the end to be extremely tough. But like you said, take things slow and use cover.

Yeah, the Mako drives like poo. I can't stand the times you have to drive that thing. As for your Tali thing, that might be a glitch (this game is known for being buggy) because she heals fine for me.

What mission routes have you all chosen so far? Also, who do you keep in your teams? Right now I have Femshep, Tali, and Ashley. That's probably a terrible squad, but I like them for some reason.

I think maybe it was a glitch, because when I was playing last night, Tali started healing all the way just fine :P

My squad is Shepard, Garrus, and Tali right now.  And yes, Noveria/Peak 15 is my first major story mission after becoming a Spectre.  It's funny that, even though I have the later release with all 3 games in a single package, it's still buggy as all get out.  Why wouldn't EA patch that before re-releasing it again?  Oh wait, I forgot - it's EA!!!  I guess I just need to keep trying, and do little tweaks here and there to try and see if I can get past it.  It's just very frustrating that I've spent almost an hour fighting this battle, and have made no progress.  It's a lifesaver that I was able to save just prior to stepping into that room, otherwise I probably would have ragequit by now.

This. 100000%. The combat system in ME1 is so bad, and knowing how good it gets is the main reason why I can never go back through this darn game again.

This game was originally a 360 exclusive so there could be bugs unique to the PS3 rerelease. Some things like the sh*tty handling Mako have been there from the original.

Once you get used to the Mako it's not so bad, and the way it handles even starts to make a weird kind of sense, but it's still bizarre :P

I spent a bunch of time on this again last night.  I felt like kind of a doofus, because after about 30 minutes of making zero progress on the Mistress Benezia fight, I went to YouTube to watch a walkthrough of the battle.  Not sure how I never discovered this, but I didn't realize how it was I was supposed to access the 'talents', and just figured that out last night.  Between ratcheting down the enemy skills, making combat easier, and learning how to use my group's talents, I finally got through that confrontation after about another half dozen tries.  Holy cow, that's hard!  So now I've taken care of Mistress Benezia, and have rescued Liara T'soni.  I may side quest a bit before heading to Feros for the next main story mission.  After upgrading to level 4 armor and a level 4 assault rifle, suddenly the game's battles have become much less difficult, at least as far as the basic combat.  I find I haven't died more than a couple times since the Benezia deal, though there have been far fewer enemies in less cramped quarters than that section was.  Still, I may have just got over the hump in my character levels where I can have a little breathing room and feel less like I'm going to die every 30 seconds.

I'm seriously considering grabbing this on sale on Amazon...

Do it Noise! This game is great. Kind of dry at times due to static delivery of non-story dialogue, but that doesn't hurt the game.

The Benazia fight only took me two tries. I wonder why you're having such a hard time with the combat. One thing I know I haven't learned yet is how to command my squad mates. Is that even possible?

well after playing thru Dragon Age Origins (and loving it) I had already had an urge to play the first ME, and this is a good excuse (along with Trilogy being on sale for $9).

I'm finding a hard time creating checkpoints for this game. This is my first time playing it so everything is new to me. I guess we can all go at our own pace as long as we finish by the end of the month.

Floyd, I was just about to PM you about checkpoints but I'll just post it here. If you've done Feros, Noveria, and Liara's dig site, you're almost halfway home if I remember correctly.

If you do a ton of the side stuff the game can take forever, but if you push through the story it can be quite short. Make sure to check your mission log and do a main mission every now and then and you'll be fine.

Also, the combat rules in this game, and so does the MAKO. This is by far the best game in the trilogy.

Anyone else playing as femshep? Jennifer Hale's voice acting in this game is possibly my favorite ever. Also femshep's ass looks amazing in the right armor. I think I'm going to go all female the whole game (with T'ali and Liara).

On my way to Peak 15 right now. Cracked the 5 million credit mark and level 45.

I'm going girl power for this playthrough too. Got Femshep, Ashley, and Tali in my squad. Tomorrow I will get Liara then do some side missions.

Jennifer Hale is pretty awesome. I loved her in BioShock Infinite as the female Lutece.

I just remembered, as I'm about to do Feros, that I wanted to say that on that planet it is a good idea to follow MetalFRO's advice and hard save often. I remember the first and maybe even the second time playing through the game dying and having to play a huge chunk of the game over, because the autosaves can be like four hours apart depending on how you play.

Just got to level 49. I'm wondering if the cap is 50.

So, spoiler for Noveria, did you guys:

Spoiler (hover to show)

Kill or release the Rachni Queen? I released her, yet again.

It's funny, I keep trying to go full renegade on this playthrough but as usual, my conscience won't let me go total villain. Bioware's great writing is a big part of that.

I haven't found a way to do that, other than telling them when to use certain talents.  As for why I'm having such a hard time with the combat, I think it's because you can take damage VERY quickly, and if you overheat your weapon as an enemy is approaching you while you're taking cover, you're kind of screwed.  You either wait too long for the weapon to cool back down, or wait too long for your character to change weapons, and by then, you're dead.  I find that especially true when fighting asari: with their Stasis ability, they can freeze you, then you're immobile for a couple seconds, all the while they and possibly 3 or 4 others may be pumping your soon-to-be-lifeless corpse full of lead.  The aiming and the "stability" factor is also difficult when you're moving around to avoid enemy fire.  I find that in order to get off clean shots, not overheat my weapon, and actually take out enemies in a relatively timely fashion, I have to find a spot, take cover, and pop out to get off a few rounds.  If those enemies advance toward me, and I'm forced to run around to avoid fire, either they're way more accurate than I am, or I just avoid firing and run away so I can try to find another cover spot.  I have found that some enemies, if you leave a room, will NOT follow you.  I found that especially useful with the geth and rachni on Noveria.  I could open a door, blast a few rounds, then back away so the door closed again so I could regenerate health.  Rinse, repeat.  I dialed the combat down to the easiest level, which has helped, but I feel like the inaccuracy during movement hurts the game.

To contrast, I had been putting time into Medal of Honor: European Assault before this playthrough started.  Now, I know it's apples & oranges, since that's a FPS, and ME is a 3rd person action RPG, but it's a PS2 title.  The overall focus of that game is combat, but it's published by EA and is similarly glitchy.  Still, even though you take fire frequently in that game, the cover system is way better, and when you're moving around and firing, you can be confident that at least some of the shots you're firing are hitting the target when you're just shooting from the hip.  ME never feels like that to me unless the combat is real close quarter stuff, which always makes me nervous, because harder enemies tend to mow me down quickly in those situations.

@GrayGhost81: Release.  Also, HOW ON EARTH DO YOU HAVE 5 MILLION CREDITS?  :o  I've done 2 main story missions and a bunch of side quests, and I'm only around 86,000...

How did you manage to tell your team which talents to use? I hope I'm understanding what's meant by talents because there's still so much to the gameplay I haven't figured out yet.

Your approach to combat is similar to mine. If I can hide behind a door I will, but I had to change my strategy when I went to rescue Liara. Those geth armaments are tough.

I released the rachni queen also.

On the PS3 controller, you hold down L1 to choose your weapon, and you hold R1 to choose your talents.  So if you have Liara with you, for example, you can use (assuming you've leveled them) her Stasis skill to freeze enemies, or her Lift skill to pick them up.  But you have to make sure your targeting reticle is aimed at what you want her to interact with, and likewise for your other companion, unless it's a passive skill, like Overkill or Shield Boost.  Hold R1, use the thumbstick to move to the skill, and press X.  I'm assuming on 360 it's R1, thumbstick, and A to select.  Each talent, after use, has a recharge period, so be specific about when you use them.  If both of my squad members fall in battle, and I need their help still, I'll use Shepard's "Unity" talent to resurrect them, and then often I'll use one of their talents right away to ensure they have a fighting chance of regenerating enough health not to get taken out again immediately.  Or I'll just bring them back and use Overkill on each to give them a stronger attack right out of the gate.

I've found that in close quarter combat, use of those skills becomes a major lifesaver.  In more open areas, where you're only dealing with 2-4 enemies at a time, as long as they're not overly strong or are advancing at you all at once, it's just as easy to take cover and pick them off one by one.  And especially when you're in the Mako, since it has (slowly) regenerating shields, you can drive in, pick a few units off, then back away and let your shields recharge a bit before going in for a second strike.

Thank you soooo much! You just made this game so much better for me. I know L1 brought up the weapon wheel, but nothing happened when I pressed R1 (didn't know it had to be held down).

How slowly do the Mako's shields regenerate? I guess I haven't been able to do repairs since I don't have enough omni-gel.

It's kind of slow.  If you get damaged and are nearing hull failure, back off the battle and wait a while - you'll see the shields slowly recharge.  I'm guessing that, besides the wonky control, that's another reason the Mako didn't "make-o" a comeback (sorry, pun squarely intended!) in future installments.  It's annoying that it takes so long, but at least it's an option.  After a while, you'll learn how to sort of inch up to the locations and pick the units off quicker so you don't have to keep going back and forth.

Well, It's a billion credits now...almost.

[img width=700 height=393]http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h32/grayghost81/IMG_20150613_073512_041_zpsux5fw0iw.jpg[/img] (http://s60.photobucket.com/user/grayghost81/media/IMG_20150613_073512_041_zpsux5fw0iw.jpg.html)

This is my third time playing through the game with this character. Speaking of which, 50 is not the level cap. I'm at level 52 now. Basically I can one shot everything with my damn pistol, and I'm basically invincible. I'm playing the game the same way I played 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, which is to charge out and cap anything that moves!

Now that you guys have figured out the combat system, do you feel better about it? Remember, this is an action RPG, not a Gears of War 3PS. You have to spec out your character and upgrade your weapons to actually "get better" at shooting. Further, did you know that if you are out of cover you can click the left stick to crouch, increasing your accuracy? Then, aim down the sights for even better accuracy. You will notice how much your reticle changes in size between hip-firing and crouching while aiming down the sights.

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Finished Feros this morning and for the first time I didn't get lost once! Just bumping around scenic Virmire now.

***

Got properly geared up for my weekly grocery shopping trip this morning. Damn I love this game. It may just be my favorite of all time, but wait, Persona 3, but wait Super Mario World, but wait Fallout 3. I dunno. I do have two Mass Effect t-shirts and a Mass Effect wallet (that you can see over my shoulder there) and I can't say that about any other game!

[img width=640 height=480]http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h32/grayghost81/IMG_20150613_081408_521_zpsc1yp9v5v.jpg[/img] (http://s60.photobucket.com/user/grayghost81/media/IMG_20150613_081408_521_zpsc1yp9v5v.jpg.html)

Yes, Is did pick up on the fact that upgrading and increasing your stats helps you aim and shoot better. I was not aware, however, that ducking gave you accuracy! It makes sense, but I didn't realize they implemented that. I'll have to try it!  But how do you earn that many credits? Do you sell off every non-essential item and know all the dialog choices for side quests that garner the most cash?

I'm not sure why, perhaps it has to do with my high level, but I get 10 or 20K credits for each kill. I did sell everything I had at one point when I hit the inventory cap, but that only increased my bankroll by about one million.

Think I'm about to wrap up the game. Just finished Virmire and

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sent Ashley Williams to Hell where she belongs, BWAHAHAHAHA!

I'm on Noviera. Trying to find the matriarch beneazia or something like that. I'm not the best speller. But I'm enjoying the mission a lot.

Grayghost - I like your shirt and wallet and stuff. That's some cool gear man.

Thanks man! Maybe I'll show off my other shirt next weekend.

Aaaaand, that's game! Just finished the last main story, and had the final confrontation. Pretty sweet ending. The game glitches out on me during the major battle cut scenes, though, and all I heard was dialogue, no music or sound effects. Also, during the final pass with the Mako, it was clutching BAD. PS1 level screen tearing, the likes of which I haven't seen in years. Still, a rewarding experience overall.

Glad you liked it FRO! Thanks for joining and we really appreciate your well thought out contributions to the discussions as usual!

On another note, if you thought the Mako was bad (and it isn't) get used to this screen in the second game:

[img width=500 height=281]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7hpp0OfKd1qzxvd3o1_500.gif[/img]

Probing Uranus joke aside, that's right, you have to mine your resources.

...and then there's "Galactic Readiness" in the third game.

[img width=640 height=432]https://coreyvandersleen.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mass-effect-datapad-review-galactic-readiness-640x432.jpg[/img]

Give me the Mako over this crap any day.

I guess that makes me wonder, to MetalFRO specifically and everyone else who eventually finishes the game, are you going to continue through the trilogy?

Galactic Readiness is simple to get around for ME3 if you play Multiplayer.

I plan to continue the trilogy, though perhaps not immediately. I still have an active game of Xenoblade Chronicles I need to put time into, I haven't started my MM2 & MM3 plays for the retro side yet, and I've so been neglecting my Game Boy project a little bit :P

And fun, too!

Haven't finished the game yet, but I'll be playing the other two games for sure. This game has surpassed my expectations.

I have to echo this as well.  As somebody who never plays online multiplayer, I played the ME3 multiplayer just to increase my Galactic Readiness and really had a lot of fun with it.  I highly recommend it to anybody who starts playing ME3.

For those that haven't heard, Mass Effect is now backwards compatible on the Xbox One.

Just made it to the Virmire landing area and convinced Wrex not to betray my crew. Hopefully I'm not too far from the end.

Nope, you pretty much have three major sequences left. Keep pushing, you're almost there.

That's not so bad. I've enjoyed everything up to now so I don't want things to end too abruptly.

Woohoo! Finished with that pesky Seran. I actually charmed him so I didn't have to fight his first form which was nice. I'll update later tonight with my thoughts. Now that we're all more of less done, what did everyone think of Mass Effect?

So many feels.

When I found out you can talk him into killing himself that was pretty much what made me play the game a second time. BioWare used to be so awesome.

hey sorry guys. I wasn't able to really play much here recently. Just didn't have any time. So I didn't get to complete mass effect. Ive had a lot of family stuff going on. Seems like every time I have a little time to actually sit and play I have to get up and do something. lol....It's honestly like I have to fight for free time here recently. Sorry I didn't participate much on this playthrough. I wanted to believe me just had too much going on. I'll see what I can do for this next months playthrough.

Don't sweat it, man.  "Real Life" is more important than video games...if only slightly ;)