Rei plays Mass Effect

[Yureina]

The shooting was OK if a little clunky, and I really enjoyed going round talking to people. A good game, although a little rough around the edges.

Also, what's up with your screenshots? The low-res textures make my eyes bleed!

I only discovered this recently, but apparently there was some checked box in my graphic settings that made everything have a "film grain" to it, which is why it looks so fuzzy. In truth, despite the weakness of my PC, that is a 1600x900 resolution with decently high graphics. I checked that box off recently and have sort of been playing ME1 again, or at least thinking about it, but it is too late for this review I am afraid. >_<

And I still need to go about doing the other reviews I had planned...

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

The shooting was OK if a little clunky, and I really enjoyed going round talking to people. A good game, although a little rough around the edges.

Also, what's up with your screenshots? The low-res textures make my eyes bleed!

I only discovered this recently, but apparently there was some checked box in my graphic settings that made everything have a "film grain" to it, which is why it looks so fuzzy.

Yeah... that's not at all what people are mentioning - now that I look closely at your screenshots I can indeed see the film grain effect in evidence, but the texture issue has nothing to do with that. Allow me to demonstrate the problem - for my example, I'll use your screenshot of Garrus, since it was the most obvious offender of the bunch:

Here is a picture of Garrus (from Mass Effect 2, but the graphical improvements Bioware made between games wasn't that pronounced) I pulled off the interwebs just now:

This is essentially what Garrus should look like in Mass Effect.​

And now for comparison purposes here is your image of Garrus:

See what they're talking about now?​

If it was just that one shot I might think there was the usual Unreal 3 engine texture pop-in issue rearing its head when you took it, as I own the game on the PC and I can confirm that at times you'd open up your inventory/switch to a new suit of armor/load a new zone and characters would be in "super blurry mode", but it usually just took a second or two before the proper textures loaded, and looking at your screens at their original size clearly shows the same texture issue in all them; it begs credulity that you'd have texture pop-in issues every time you took a screenshot. That you didn't notice the extremely low-res textures in your screenshots would also suggest that what you showed us is what you've been seeing all the time - I would therefore seriously recommend looking into your configuration because something is wonky (like textures set to "low").

 

[Yureina]

Snip

I'll go ahead and give you some ME2 pictures I have:

I cut the resolution for ME2 down to 1360x768 from the 1600x900 ME1 runs on. I think ME2 looks vastly better, but it still has its own problems.

Sad fact is... my computer is 3 years old, is running an awful graphics card, and was never meant for gaming. I consider it a miracle that this thing still can run current-gen games, though some (Mafia II, Crysis 2) outclass this PC too much for me to be able to play them. As for "going into configuration", I don't know exactly what you mean.

*sigh* I'd kill for a new PC.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

As for "going into configuration", I don't know exactly what you mean.

From the Mass Effect Launcher, select the "Configure" button. Then on the Video page there should be a drop-down box for Texture Detail - I have a hunch yours is set to Low. Of course, if the game defaulted to that then there is probably a reason and bumping up the texture details might render the game unplayable at the resolution you have set, but you never know until you try something.

The Mass Effect games worked just fine on my old old video card (well, just fine apart from the issue with bloom not working forcing me to perform a convoluted work around that I then had to reverse later when I upgraded to a different model that didn't have that issue), what sort of ballpark "awful" are we talking about exactly?

 

[infohippie]

Mostly, I like that combat is closer-range. The first game is really geared towards snipers - if you are a sniper, you rule every single encounter besides boss fights. In the second game, the encounters are better balance (some sniper encounters, some up-close encounters, some mixed).

I know your post is four days old but I just had to - You really found ME1 to be a sniper paradise? I hardly ever found a point in ME1 where the sniper rifle was useful, for me it was pistol and shotgun all the way. ME2 on the other hand, I stuck to that sniper rifle like glue. It's funny how two different people can find such a big difference in how they play through the same game.

EDIT: Whoops, a month and four days. Who necro'd this thread again?

 

[Yureina]

From the Mass Effect Launcher, select the "Configure" button. Then on the Video page there should be a drop-down box for Texture Detail - I have a hunch yours is set to Low. Of course, if the game defaulted to that then there is probably a reason and bumping up the texture details might render the game unplayable at the resolution you have set, but you never know until you try something.

The Mass Effect games worked just fine on my old old video card (well, just fine apart from the issue with bloom not working forcing me to perform a convoluted work around that I then had to reverse later when I upgraded to a different model that didn't have that issue), what sort of ballpark "awful" are we talking about exactly?

Mine for ME1 is set to Medium, actually. As for my graphics card, it is a ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT... so... basically a card that is ~5 years out of date in a 3 year old computer.

Narf

Oh my god!

IT'S GENDO!

 

[Souplex]

Actually, Tali received a lot less characterization than the others. I'm surprised she received such a following since all she got was privileged nerdy bigot.
She supports the enslavement and genocide of sentient beings! ...Plus she was kind of useless.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

As for my graphics card, it is a ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT... so... basically a card that is ~5 years out of date in a 3 year old computer.

Ah... one of those. If memory serves it's actually worse than that, until you get somewhere in the 3000 range of the HD models I'm recalling them actually being worse than say... an x800, which came out before they did. I kind of hate how video card models are numbered really, they seem intentionally designed to trick you into buying pieces of crap unless you do thorough research before hand (higher numbers should be better damn it!).

The good news is that if you have a 3 year old computer, you probably have a PCI Express slot and could replace it easily enough, though acquiring a "cheap" but still decent video cards like mine (Radeon HD 4850) will still set you back around a $100 or so. But hey, mine lets me run Mass Effect 1 and 2 on the Ultra High setting just fine, and Mafia 2 with almost all the graphical settings cranked won't even stutter (I think I turned off anti-aliasing because I honestly didn't notice that pronounced a difference to justify the framerate drops I saw in the demo loop), so there is that.