Captain Cannabis, on Sep 6 2009, 07:11 PM, said:
<33333 Thanks Stu.
Details on games you played (specifically, ME2 and Old Republic) plx.
I'll get on it tomorrow. I'm fuckin' tired.
Edit: I'll get started now before I crash.
Mass Effect 2: First things first, I walked in when it opened looked around the entrance part for a bit and then spotted a giant 2 of in the distance. Needless to say I got my ass over there ASAP.
Fucking loud booth, but dispite that, the voice acting is yet again superb. And it's almost inhuman to NOT love the sound of Thane's voice. I can only imagine the sound of the Drell. The guns have improved sound, so they sound a bit less like pewpewpew and more of what you would expect from a space gun that uses blocks of metal that get chipped depending on the wind directi-- go look it up. Can't say a lot on sound because FUCK it was loud.
Visually, holy fuck. It looks fucking gorgeous compared to the first Mass Effect. I saw no texture pop-in, which always makes me pop-out (Boooooo). The lighting is fucking fantastic and the backdrop of the city in the backround is yet again another grand vista that Mass Effect pulls off so well. The details on faces are also great, as they look fucking fantastic. Better lip-synching, and my favourite, eyes that reflect how they feel, or how they are talking or what they are thinking. It makes me happy.
There is only two convo wheels in the demo, so moving past the RPG aspect for the moment, the gameplay is improved to all hell. First, squad mates are controlled with the D-Pad. Up tells the squadmates to push forward, Left and Right control one of the two squadmates. For the sake of arguement, say Wrex was on the left and Garrus was on the right. You could look wherever and press Left on the D-Pad to Wrex to get his
delicous ass over there and Right does the same for Garrus. Pressing the Left or Right buttons again after having sent a squad member tells them to come back. Down on the D-Pad just tells both to regroup with you.
For the obvious controls (A, B, X, Y), A does the obvious being running/ moving faster. Now, melee. Instead of merely going up to the enemy and pressing RT again to do a quick weapon hit, melee attacks are done with B. Tapping B does what was done in the first game, just a simple knock down hit. Hold B for about a second does a full on weapon swing, which does some serious fucking damage. I tried this out on the last enemy and I think it may have killed him with only a few shots put into him before hand. This doesn't make it easy to do as after holding B to start the attack, it will take about half a second for it to make contact, giving the AI a good bit of time to get out of the way, maybe even make you into nice picnic size slices, if you don't surprise them with it. Y... Did Y do anything in the first? I can't remember. Oh right, it repaired items in the inventory. It probably does that still. I didn't check out the inventory, as the new inventory isn't much different from the PC version's from what I've heard. X reloads, now. Under the new reticle there are red ticks in a shape similar to that of the effect timers or enemy life bars in Oblivion. Pressing X "reloads" the gun by venting heat, which I guess makes it less of a reload and more of a Heat Venting button. It's not necessary as just firing and letting it overheat requires a few more seconds than just reloading, but then again, all in the interest of saving the few seconds you may need. Left Bumper and Right Bumper do their repective jobs again, with a few (welcome) changes. First off, combat does not pause when you bring these up, which btw I never saw as a big problem as I liked being able to take a second to think. Weapons, are a bit different. The two squadmates only had two weapons, being a pistol and I think assault rifle each. Shepard was armed with a shotgun, sniper, assault rifle and "rocket" launcher. The rockets are limited, and I'm assuming will cost a good bit to buy, but they pack one fuck of a punch. And may I say, when you hit something with any kind of gun, it feels like it. You actually get a sense that they are actually being hit by bullets. LB is powers, of which I saw Biotics had one new power, Pull, which should be obvious when wayed against Push and Lift. But my FAVOURITE FUCKING CHANGE is this: When you bring up the wheel as a soldier, as far as I've seen, you can change ammo types right on the power wheel. You can change from inferno rounds to Anti-Organic ammo incredibly fucking quick, which is a fucking awesome change. I couldn't be fucked to change ammo types in the first one as you had to get into the Equipment part and do all that shit. Being able to swap ammo right there, on the fly = SEX. That's so far my favourite change.
tl;dr: Controls are better, gameplay is better, visuals are stunning, voice work is fantastic. Fuck your religions, this is the second coming.