Whoot, Mass Effect, whoot!
I'm a bit late in answering comments and messages on LJ, but apart for that, I'm really quite proud of myself. I mean I had icons & writing to do for the 25th, and I've done it all in time. And I had writing & icons to do, again, for the 30th and I somehow managed to finish them all (well, stopping myself to play to the Sims 3/watching OUaT did help a lot, as well as waiting until all was done before playing to ME 3 Multiplayer). And now, I won't have to worry about online pressing matters the whole time Kae will be here (from tomorrow/tonight till next week).
Also, I had the time of my life on ME 3 when I played after diner. So, a little bit of gameplay explanation or you won't understand anything. Mass Effect main (solo) story is about saving the galaxy against the Reapers, a species of sentient spaceships who come every thousands of billions of years to harvest and wipe out the most advanced species, while they leave the primitive alone and wait for them to become advanced and... well, the cycle is there. And the goal is to break it.
The multiplayer part is us, instead of playing Shepard and their team, playing the other part of the war: the foot soldiers who fight small missions. And that's something I absolutely love about ME 3 Multiplayer. It's cooperative multiplayer. Principle is simple: we're 4 players per game. Each game is made of 13 waves, where you have to wipe out every enemies. Each wave gets harder than the previous, and wave 3, 6 and 10 feature a timed random objective (if you fail it, you lose the game).
Character have, on top of their health bar, a shield/barrier bar (barrier is what biotics use). As long as you've got shield/barrier, you won't lose health. And when broken, if you take cover/wait a little, shields/barriers regenerate (if you're not hit). But, when it's broken, you lose health really really fast. Anyway, of course it's inconvenient when you die, but actually it's not that bad. Your teammates have a little time to heal you and you're back on your feet, you can also use objects to heal yourself. Except if the enemy finish you before (geez, it's always jarring when you see them standing over your character and stumble over them) or if you get sync'd: bosses and a few bastards special enemies will directly kill you in melee, as in you won't be able to play until the end of the current wave. Which is really inconvenient because the team's minus one number.
The players aren't the only ones having shields and barriers. Except for the foot soldiers, every enemies have shields or barrier we must get rid of before we can injure them. Shield and barrier don't require the same type of powers to be broken. Also: bosses and pain-in-the-ass enemies have their health replaced by armor, which is more sturdy and also require a different type of power than shields and barriers to be broken. Most of the time, a power efficient against barriers does nothing against armor. In the same fashion, weapons efficient against one type of protection, is less with the others. Or weight too much (and how much weigh you carry determine how fast your powers' cooldown are).
It's overall very focused on team play and strategy, which is why character building is important. You get to see beforehand what character the other members take and you've got an idea of what kind of play they have/what character goes well with it. Like having four examples of the same character would be a no-no and a good way to get killed.
That being said, I'm finally back with how the last two games were so good and I haven't enjoyed myself so much since last year. So, I was playing with my turian sentinel, who's a very balanced class. Their biotic power is good to get rid of armor. Their tech power is good to get rid of shields/barriers and synthetics (robots). Like every turian, they've got good shields and health. Big drawbacks are that turian sentinels don't have a dodge maneuver (I wish I had when rockets come flying at my face and I do the controls but nothing happen and my shields are broken in one shot XD) and they are a bit slow. Also, they are more of a support class.
So, now, the games XD When we launch the game, one of our team mate quitted in the first waves, which meant we were only three left. But, it went well. Even though it'd been a while since I played with my turian sentinel, and never on silver before, things were smooth. Then, starting wave 5, the fuckery began. First, I couldn't recharge my assault riffle: there are munitions boxes in certain emplacements on each map, and when you ran out of it, you basically run to them to recharge. And prayed it doesn't happen while you've got to deal with a crowd of enemies. Then, frame lags every few moments. And gliding characters/enemies as if we were on hoverboards. Omg. And that happened when we were being crowded by phantoms and dragoons, not bosses, but very nasty things: fast, powerful and basically in the "never let them approach" category of enemies. So yeah, we had to relay entirely on our respective powers to kill every enemies. And there were lots of time where we were only two to finish the wave because sometimes, you can't afford to save your mates if you don't want to die on the spot (or when there are two dragoons and two phantoms trying to kill you and you're desperately running in circle while waiting for the power cooldown to be over). A couple times I was completely alone. I was very lucky the bugs happened when I played with my turian, because I wasn't totally helpless. Also, my powers can be fired at a distance so it means I could keep running while using them, and kill the enemies one by one. Yes, it was long and fastidious as well, but damned! We fucking did it (I have to admit, at a point, there were like a crowd of three bosses and I didn't even try. Directly put the rocket launcher out and use it XD)! And I only died three times on the whole game. So. much. fun.
Second game was with the two players from the previous game, and another one. I kept my turian sentinel. And fortunately, it wasn't buggy-laggy. I really liked them: good team spirit and they play well. I had a lot of fun at sniping enemies at the other end of the map with an assault riffle (there's a weapon mod allowing that). That was one of the smoothest game I've played on silver. And bonus point: I didn't do atrociously stupid mistakes and died, maybe twice in the full game. So I can pretty much say that my turian sentinel build works well for me. I might even try it in gold, one day.
And also, I'm really happy because I finally finished the biotic challenge. Took me 74h of playing (I don't play often but when I play, it's intensively). And now, I can show off banners when I'm in the lobby waiting for teammates (also, pressure to play better XD). I've got the choice between these two:
Also, the award's name crack me up: Biotic God. It's a reference to Mass Effect 2 when Shepard stumble upon a drugged volus on their way to a boss, the one in the second banner, and hilarity ensues. See for yourself, as well, as the reaction of all of your squad mates. Also, the bits where there are a pic, are spoken by the lovely Kasumi Goto and she looks like this.
Also, I had the time of my life on ME 3 when I played after diner. So, a little bit of gameplay explanation or you won't understand anything. Mass Effect main (solo) story is about saving the galaxy against the Reapers, a species of sentient spaceships who come every thousands of billions of years to harvest and wipe out the most advanced species, while they leave the primitive alone and wait for them to become advanced and... well, the cycle is there. And the goal is to break it.
The multiplayer part is us, instead of playing Shepard and their team, playing the other part of the war: the foot soldiers who fight small missions. And that's something I absolutely love about ME 3 Multiplayer. It's cooperative multiplayer. Principle is simple: we're 4 players per game. Each game is made of 13 waves, where you have to wipe out every enemies. Each wave gets harder than the previous, and wave 3, 6 and 10 feature a timed random objective (if you fail it, you lose the game).
Character have, on top of their health bar, a shield/barrier bar (barrier is what biotics use). As long as you've got shield/barrier, you won't lose health. And when broken, if you take cover/wait a little, shields/barriers regenerate (if you're not hit). But, when it's broken, you lose health really really fast. Anyway, of course it's inconvenient when you die, but actually it's not that bad. Your teammates have a little time to heal you and you're back on your feet, you can also use objects to heal yourself. Except if the enemy finish you before (geez, it's always jarring when you see them standing over your character and stumble over them) or if you get sync'd: bosses and a few bastards special enemies will directly kill you in melee, as in you won't be able to play until the end of the current wave. Which is really inconvenient because the team's minus one number.
The players aren't the only ones having shields and barriers. Except for the foot soldiers, every enemies have shields or barrier we must get rid of before we can injure them. Shield and barrier don't require the same type of powers to be broken. Also: bosses and pain-in-the-ass enemies have their health replaced by armor, which is more sturdy and also require a different type of power than shields and barriers to be broken. Most of the time, a power efficient against barriers does nothing against armor. In the same fashion, weapons efficient against one type of protection, is less with the others. Or weight too much (and how much weigh you carry determine how fast your powers' cooldown are).
It's overall very focused on team play and strategy, which is why character building is important. You get to see beforehand what character the other members take and you've got an idea of what kind of play they have/what character goes well with it. Like having four examples of the same character would be a no-no and a good way to get killed.
That being said, I'm finally back with how the last two games were so good and I haven't enjoyed myself so much since last year. So, I was playing with my turian sentinel, who's a very balanced class. Their biotic power is good to get rid of armor. Their tech power is good to get rid of shields/barriers and synthetics (robots). Like every turian, they've got good shields and health. Big drawbacks are that turian sentinels don't have a dodge maneuver (I wish I had when rockets come flying at my face and I do the controls but nothing happen and my shields are broken in one shot XD) and they are a bit slow. Also, they are more of a support class.
So, now, the games XD When we launch the game, one of our team mate quitted in the first waves, which meant we were only three left. But, it went well. Even though it'd been a while since I played with my turian sentinel, and never on silver before, things were smooth. Then, starting wave 5, the fuckery began. First, I couldn't recharge my assault riffle: there are munitions boxes in certain emplacements on each map, and when you ran out of it, you basically run to them to recharge. And prayed it doesn't happen while you've got to deal with a crowd of enemies. Then, frame lags every few moments. And gliding characters/enemies as if we were on hoverboards. Omg. And that happened when we were being crowded by phantoms and dragoons, not bosses, but very nasty things: fast, powerful and basically in the "never let them approach" category of enemies. So yeah, we had to relay entirely on our respective powers to kill every enemies. And there were lots of time where we were only two to finish the wave because sometimes, you can't afford to save your mates if you don't want to die on the spot (or when there are two dragoons and two phantoms trying to kill you and you're desperately running in circle while waiting for the power cooldown to be over). A couple times I was completely alone. I was very lucky the bugs happened when I played with my turian, because I wasn't totally helpless. Also, my powers can be fired at a distance so it means I could keep running while using them, and kill the enemies one by one. Yes, it was long and fastidious as well, but damned! We fucking did it (I have to admit, at a point, there were like a crowd of three bosses and I didn't even try. Directly put the rocket launcher out and use it XD)! And I only died three times on the whole game. So. much. fun.
Second game was with the two players from the previous game, and another one. I kept my turian sentinel. And fortunately, it wasn't buggy-laggy. I really liked them: good team spirit and they play well. I had a lot of fun at sniping enemies at the other end of the map with an assault riffle (there's a weapon mod allowing that). That was one of the smoothest game I've played on silver. And bonus point: I didn't do atrociously stupid mistakes and died, maybe twice in the full game. So I can pretty much say that my turian sentinel build works well for me. I might even try it in gold, one day.
And also, I'm really happy because I finally finished the biotic challenge. Took me 74h of playing (I don't play often but when I play, it's intensively). And now, I can show off banners when I'm in the lobby waiting for teammates (also, pressure to play better XD). I've got the choice between these two:
Also, the award's name crack me up: Biotic God. It's a reference to Mass Effect 2 when Shepard stumble upon a drugged volus on their way to a boss, the one in the second banner, and hilarity ensues. See for yourself, as well, as the reaction of all of your squad mates. Also, the bits where there are a pic, are spoken by the lovely Kasumi Goto and she looks like this.
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