Mass Alex: Mass Effect - Part 13

Adventures of Shep Shep continues and her power bun

love it thanks makes my morning

This series is giving me a great deal of joy right now. Thank you.

I will destroy you!

Confirmed: Alex hates loot and information. I'm still enjoying the series, though.

Too much mass, not enough ASS.

GO GO GO!

Also Krypton is real and Superman is weak to Kryptonite, just sayin' :)

Them doing all this bad side stuff is killing me! They could be done with the game by now.

Yeah. ME1 in general is kinda boring and this is even more so.

@tr0n: The monkey hunt was the kind of stupid videogame nonsense I come here for, so I'm all for more side stuff... but also I'm only at episode 9 because it's a series I only put on for background noise.

Shep Shep keeps trucking on, won't be too long before we see some really good story stuff (I like the character specific missions for more dialogue but please keep on the story missions), I'm excited.
Always a pleasure to have more Vinny and Alex commentary, and more of this good ol Mass Effect.

So we've reached the part of ME1 that makes me just skip to ME2; collecting shit in the Mako and doing DLC.

e:

I'm excited for the series to pick up again next episode. Once they get back on track, BOY, Alex is in for a hell of a ride!

Jeweler here, rhodium might be the last precious metal Vinny was thinking of. It's used in jewelry occasionally so I imagine there are some rhodium coins out there too.

Electronics: Skill Too Low

I WILL DESTROY YOU!

Oh god this DLC. I never played it but heard bad things.

I unfortunately haven't kept up with this series. Have they met Sovereign or Vigil yet?

Love this series, if only for the reason that it continues GB's wonderful tradition of skipping through something that explains what to do next, and then being confused about what to do next.

I hate to admit that I actually played this DLC to competion, just for sake of completion. Man, does it get rough.

I suppose there are a lot of different definitions out there, but my impression was that hard science fiction generally meant fiction that was largely extrapolated from current science. Mass Effect is full of entirely made up tech like shields, biotics, faster than light travel and artificial gravity that completely break from our understanding of physics. The genre dicks at the old science fiction news group I used to hang in probably wouldn't even accept it as soft science fiction.

So Sad they missed the obvious Salt n' Peppa reference!

Vinny saying "Shep Shep" at 46:14 was a dead-on Wrex impression, I was really confused for a second.

@vicious17: nope, none of that happens until virmire and after. I haven't watched this episode yet but i doubt they have started virmire yet

Enemies everywhere!

I legit look forward to Tuesdays specifically for this feature. I hope they keep going till the end of ME3, because I would really like another decade of this.

Alex sneakily mentioning that he's playing RDR2 :(((((((

YOU MAKE ME JEALOUS SIR!

Yeah I'm so pumped they're doing this, but the side stuff is so boring I'm not even watching these ones. Hopefully they do ME2, this won't be an issue.

@vicious17: They haven't been to Virmire.

nah, that's the next main story thing or two. Alex is caught up in the weak side stuff in this game.

So I know everyone likes shitting on Andromeda (for good reason), but are you guys going to play through it for this series? Even if its just as an MST3K riffing on how bad some of it is. Though at least the combat was decent.

I don't think Vinny was being entirely serious. ME is definitely not "hard" SciFi just because they use the names of real elements.

I'm one of those crazy people that absolutely loved Andromeda, more so after playing the original trilogy and seeing all the rough parts of them more clearly than my nostalgia had remembered.

Goodness I'm so glad Alex didn't spend long in Pinnacle Station. The combat in ME1 is awful and a DLC that was nothing but that was super misguided. I hope he gets to the next story stuff soon! It's about to get real.

Absolutely loved that batarian DLC and never even bothered with Pinnacle Station. On any of my 4 playthroughs. You tell me "Combat-focused ME1," I say noooooo thanks.

Glad to know i'm not the only one who can't hear any word that's barely a half-rhyme of "Tinactin" without thinking "Tough Actin' Tonn Actus!" or whatever.

@doncabesa: Yeah, I didn't hate Andromeda, I actually thought the gameplay was a lot of fun. But it was so clearly done in the mold of Dragon Age Inquisition, where they just created a bunch of giant ass maps and filled them in with things to keep you busy, rather than to keep you interested. Even the main story line felt like a weird carbon copy of the original trilogy. And the teammates were mostly forgettable, which was kind of the final nail in the coffin.

@blacklagoon: It's hard science fiction in that they attempt to explain things based on scientific theories about what would happen if you could create a field that raised or lowered the mass of the things within the field near infinitely. This "mass effect" explains almost all technology in the series. Soft science fiction is like Star Wars, it just a different setting for magic, they don't try to explain things. Mass Effect is some of the hardest science fiction out there.

@darkmortainius: Oh boy, I always see Andromeda on sale for literal pennies but I've stayed away - hearing it's like Inquisition which I had an absolute blast with makes me kinda think about picking it up.

I haven't watched this yet, but immediately upon reading "Pinnacle Station" I scrolled down to see if he was actually going to play through all of it.... thank goodness he's skipping most of it.

Bring Down the Sky, on the other hand, I think is one of the better ME1 sidequests.

I haven't read through every comment but I'm glad they're taking their time with ME1. I actually really enjoy the weird planet exploration and generic quests. A big part of it was that it felt like you were actually on the frontier. Created a great setting for the world. I really liked Andromeda but ME1 did a better job of feeling like your actually exploring a planet.

Andromeda isn't nearly as bad as most people make it out to be. The environments look great, it can be fun to explore, and the combat is fun. But I completely agree with @darkmortainius in that it can get boring and the characters are completely forgettable at best.

Not a terrible game, but not the sequel Mass Effect deserved and the tone feels nothing like the original trilogy (cough Star Wars). It's very much in the vein of Inquisition, but I don't think it's as good of a game as Inquisition.

If I recall they just sorta crapped out Pinnacle Station shortly before the release of Mass Effect 2. Definitely not great.

Edit: You finally found the missed twinkle! I guess it was important.

Some of the side content can be tedious, but the game as a whole is far from boring. There is a reason so many people consider this their favorite game in the series. The world building, characters and main story are all incredibly compelling. If it's not for you, that's cool, but I am glad Alex is taking the time to soak it in and explore the world at his own pace. All the complaining that Alex isn't finding all the side quests, doing too many side quests, not using the powers enough, using the wrong guns, picking the wrong dialogue choices - that's what killing me. The only wrong way to play Mass Effect is to not play it the way you want to play it. Y'all need to just let Alex be Alex.

Boy, I've been ready for the amazing last third of this game for weeks now. I respect Alex's dedication to doing a bunch of random stuff but a lot of it just ain't that great.

A brick is more like 1lb

So many unwitting (for Alex and super not for Vinny) teases for when they get to ME2. Cannot wait.

I'm jealous of Alex, because he doesn't know that with every trip to a random planet to kill the same guys in the same room with the same boxes he's delaying his opportunity to play like one of the best games of all time (and some of the best sequences of this game as well). I think doing all this stuff is the right approach, but boy howdy does it remind you that it is some of the dullest content in the entire franchise.

Andromeda is odd in that I wouldn't call it a bad game, but the ways that it is bad are incredibly frustrating, especially as a Mass Effect follow up.

The combat is fine, but it doesn't feel like Mass Effect combat (no pausing via power wheel to set up your stuff, it's too open, there's too much mobility, too few chest high walls- things that arguably are better in general, but render it just another video game). The characters are all just off (and none have the engaging personalities of the first three, and the ones that try the hardest miss the most). It feels more like they made a space video game and then tried to slather some Mass Effect on it. Especially in the sense that with an opportunity to expand upon this universe we love, they made something totally detached from that and didn't even get terribly creative in doing that.

The Vaults were cool tho.

pinnacle station was the one dlc i didn't buy from mass effect, and i even have the mtn dew helmets from me2

glad to see holding off on it was a good idea