Recent reviews by inagy

After playing ME Legendary Edition I had to play this as well. Though I've came with very little expectations after reading so many bads about this title.

This game is a mixed bag.
The visual deatil of visitable planets are sometimes breathtakingly beautiful. The combat system of this episode is easily the best from all Mass Effect games, with much more freedom to thinker with. You can approach targets from multiple angles. Your opponents will also raid and attack you from more surprising positions. This game is also not that riggid in terms of character profiles, you can easily mix tech, biotic and combat skills and fight however you like. This part is very enjoyable.

I've read how bad the game initially was character animations and bug-wise. As a latecomer, I wasn't really noticing this, there were some minor bugs here and there but nothing gamebreaking.

The part where this game falls short is characters and the plot.

The story is much more linear than the pevious games and it's a remix of the ME1 plot. Even though you have some decisions to make throught the game, it doesn't really affect the main flow in any meaningful way. There's also no more Paragon/Renegade system in this game, and the new "emote wheel" is basically variants of the same spoken sentence.

Creating colonies doesn't really reward you with anything. The main villain is as stereotypic as it can get (he's bad and he wants to kill everyone. that's it). The Remnant labyrinths are only interesting for the first couple of times, but then becomes boring.

Most of the sidekick characters are uninteresting and you don't care much about them. Luckily some characters like Drack and Peebee were ok, so I've choosen them as company instead. But playing the other's "loyalty" missions is not something you do because you really like to know those characters better.

Ryder is not a veteran soldier like Shepard in the original game, which is probably also a big reason to dislike this game. Not necessarily for me, I think it fits the theme of exploring and colonizing worlds. The character have to fight his inner insecurities at the same time while getting familiar with all he new stuff happening in this new galaxy. The problem is, he's not a strong person and easily gets affected by others, which is bad if you consider that you can't really change how the story plays out.

There's just too much side tasks to complete, most of them are fetch quests which don't give any plus to the story. It's safe to say, you should only play Helius assignments and your allies' tasks. Then the game gets much more enjoyable and you feel like going somewhere storywise.
What really annoyed me were the everlong, unskippable take off and landing animations which makes you think twice before you leave a planet for another.

I've also didn't like how dialogs can play over each other if you rush through the ship, or just go faster in the mission as intended. You can easily skip content which you can't play back without going back to a previous save state.

This is a totally skippable Mass Effect game, which is probably not going to affect the main plot of ME4 in anyway. But it's not as unplayable either as others state. It's not advancing the universe in any important way, but it's still inside the ME universe and for someone like me who got absolultely blown away by the original trilogy, it was a nice extra.

I wonder how could I skip past this game for so many years. It's an epic journey to play through, with amazing characters, memorable moments, and a very detailed universe. If you are a fan of sci-fi, this is a must to play. The amount of care went into the dialogs, story, and characters is just insane. I found myself not able to put it down and playing for long nights. And I'm not that kind of person who easily invest so much hours into a game. The trilogy easily spawns 130+ hours to play if you finish most of the quests (I haven't even read through all the encyclopedia entries).

The Legandary edition nicely improves upon ME1 which needed the most care. It looks absolutely amazing in 4K HDR.

Even though the ending moments of ME3 is polarizing, this is easily one of the best game experience of all time for me. Heavily recommended.

This is one of those games which either annoy you or swallow you whole for the next 50 or so hours. The story is really weird, and I was constantly wondering while playing how they'll manage to pull all those strings (or strands? haha) together in the end. But they managed to do so, and it's a solid plot. Just have patience to keep going until the end, it'll not reveal itself sooner. The motion capture and acting is superb, and yeah, it's not rare that you see a whole series episode (or movie) length cutscene in between tasks.

The first 10 hours is.. a walking simulator, but after that the game opens up new gadgets and vehicles constantly which is woven into the story and changes gears up a bit. The social system felt like a weird flex initially, but in the late game you'll have those moments when you feel relief if you can cut some corners by using some other people's structures.

It's a very strange game, but felt like no other I've played so far. I'm not going to replay anytime soon, but as a first experiment it's going to last.

Very good story and animations. I think this was the best Telltale Game I've played so far, and offered the best interactivity overall. Voice acting is superb.

I've read bad things about this episode, which I don't understand. Overall it was good. It had some filler moments in the story which I didn't really like, but it was a nice closing of the series. It even felt a bit better than New Frontier which I've played before, I liked AJ's character more than I've expected first. His relationship with Clementine is very enjoyable in this.

Enjoyable, with a nice story, though from the three games I've played from the series I think this was the weakest.
I was in less control of what's happening, and it's very short. It was kind of just watching a movie.

Javier was a weird character first, but the story made me like him. Although his whole background and his past relationship with his brother was uninteresting.
If you expect to play Clem in this game you're going to be disappointed. But this is nothing new, in the first game you're playing as Lee. I didn't have issues with it, I like how she was interwoven into Javier's plot.

In the end this feels like a filler, but still an enjoyable one. But it didn't advance Clem's story too much.

Playing this game feels like learning to walk again. In the beginning you have no idea how things work, or what you should expect. The game gradually teaches you every VR mechanics with trial and error. And this continues during the whole story. I'm really amazed by how well this is designed throughout the game. There are some repetetive parts, but you are soon presented with new things to thinker with.

The atmosphere of this game is really amazing. I was constantly just stood and watched the environment as it breaths and lives. It's not uncommon to have horroristic elements, especially a very dear friend.. oh boy! :) The music and ambient sounds elevates these moments excellently.
It was a very unique moment to realize how big headcrabs are. :D Also everything sizewise feel very realistic standing next to it.

There's not much face-to-face scenes with other humans in the game, which is somewhat disappointing. Those little amount of f2f dialogs in Alyx are priceless though. Also Russel - even though you mostly just hear him - is a very good commentary throught the game. Love the jokes between him and Alyx.

The ending "bonus game" part was just insane, loved it. The closing moments are definitely something what the fans were waiting for many years.

Those who say this game could have been made without VR in mind don't know what they are talking about.
This game has many puzzles which simply cannot be translated to keyboard and mouse.

Also it has a very different feel when it's you who has to crouch behind objects to avoid gun fire, and throw back granades before they blow up. Learning how to throw stuff is very important in this game.
Also learning how to reload your weapons quickly should become second nature very fast, otherwise enemies will rush your position.

This is how a VR game should look like. Definitely something to remember.
I hope this paves the way for other big studios to get invested into the AAA VR gaming landscape.

Easy to get started, but very hard to master.
Played this for almost a thousand hours, yet there's still stuff in this game to learn.
Victory comes rarely, but those moments are golden. Very good game to play with friends in a squad.
Fare gone the days when this game run badly on my system. The new Erangel map plays much better than it was before, not saying it looks much nicer.

Excellent game, the character arch during the episodes what makes you stay, the end breaks your heart.
Not so many action sequences, but the story has some wtf moments.

Just as fun as the original '97 version. Physics, powerups and the new game modes are very well made. Though the AI is a bit dumb by some maps. There are occasional crashes, but not too often.