Smiley's Life

SmileyBarry

A geek, gamer and programmer from Israel. I'm primarily a PC gamer with a few PS3 games. I usually post gaming-related content, music and my own thoughts on plenty of things.

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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Social Network Icon Pack by Komodo Media

 

Next time, don’t disturb Garrus in the middle of his… “Calibrations”.

Gave the Mass Effect 3 demo a shot yesterday, and all the hype for ME3 I didn’t really get to this point suddenly flooded me. Combat is just the same, but the environments, soundtrack & story featured in the demo was top notch. BioWare are very good at integrating stories into their games tightly. Plus, I noticed some slightly non-linear character progression in the third game, which is a good thing compared to the abysmal character linearity in ME2. I’ve yet to try any of the power-focused classes to see if they fixed the over-reliance they had in ME2 (I played as Infiltrator), but so far I like what I’m seeing. Honestly, I used to not like Mass Effect that much anymore because ME2 didn’t have any of the familiar RPG elements ME1 had — character progression was linear and barely had room for choice (two Infiltrators were nearly alike no matter what you picked), weapons were very much alike apart from visuals (and the differences they DID have weren’t outlined cleanly and were “brushed aside”) and the game entirely felt like a shooter with a couple RPG elements attached. However, ME3 already fixed much of that with weapon customisation and some choice in character stats & abilities progression. I like it a whole lot more than I did before, and now I’m tempted to get it. Though, I’m really not looking forward to learning to live with Origin. I took tens of screenshots as I played the demo and uploaded about 36 of them. You can see them all here. (They are all spoiler-free! Unless you don’t know the starting point of Mass Effect 3 or the end of Mass Effect 2 at all, in which case these MAY be spoilers to you. Nevertheless, no dialogue appears in any of them.)

Gave the Mass Effect 3 demo a shot yesterday, and all the hype for ME3 I didn’t really get to this point suddenly flooded me. Combat is just the same, but the environments, soundtrack & story featured in the demo was top notch. BioWare are very good at integrating stories into their games tightly. Plus, I noticed some slightly non-linear character progression in the third game, which is a good thing compared to the abysmal character linearity in ME2. I’ve yet to try any of the power-focused classes to see if they fixed the over-reliance they had in ME2 (I played as Infiltrator), but so far I like what I’m seeing.

Honestly, I used to not like Mass Effect that much anymore because ME2 didn’t have any of the familiar RPG elements ME1 had — character progression was linear and barely had room for choice (two Infiltrators were nearly alike no matter what you picked), weapons were very much alike apart from visuals (and the differences they DID have weren’t outlined cleanly and were “brushed aside”) and the game entirely felt like a shooter with a couple RPG elements attached.

However, ME3 already fixed much of that with weapon customisation and some choice in character stats & abilities progression. I like it a whole lot more than I did before, and now I’m tempted to get it. Though, I’m really not looking forward to learning to live with Origin.

I took tens of screenshots as I played the demo and uploaded about 36 of them. You can see them all here. (They are all spoiler-free! Unless you don’t know the starting point of Mass Effect 3 or the end of Mass Effect 2 at all, in which case these MAY be spoilers to you. Nevertheless, no dialogue appears in any of them.)

Mass Effect (and Red Dead Redemption) meets Toy Story

I came across this hilarious crossover from Kotaku:

And in the comments, I found these gems:

I hate EA Support.

A week ago, I finished playing Mass Effect. I liked the game very much, and tried the demo for Mass Effect 2 afterwards. I couldn’t wait to play Mass Effect 2, and looked it up on Steam. “Still at $49.99?” - A month or two ago, Mass Effect 2 was dropped to $39.99, but not in Steam’s Israeli region, and it annoyed me. But this time, I checked again, and what do you know - it’s now $29.99 in Steam’s US region!

I decided to do something about it, so I started a live chat with EA Support. In it I explained the situation, and they said they would bring my issue to someone higher to look into. During that time, they claimed Steam was a retail store (lie - I left a URL and stated Steam is a digital distribution platform by Valve), that they are not in charge or prices (lie - I stated Steam Support has redirected people to publishers when they complained about prices), that they don’t know what I’m talking about, and even tried to “bribe” me (in a way) with a $20 coupon for the EA Store. Why yes, EA: I’ll take your coupon for a store I never use! Games downloaded from the EA Store contain SecuROM, and on top of that, Steam’s download network is more reliable, so why not buy on Steam? In addition: the coupon does not work. And they’ve yet to activate it yet. (The coupon was sent nearly a week ago.)  [EDIT: A live chat support rep was kind enough to create a new coupon, so at least I have that. Yay!]

Over 12 emails (in total - 6 by EA) later, they quietly admit that they are in charge of the prices, but screw me over by saying EA Support can’t do anything about it:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately this is outside of the realm of customer support, so I won’t be able to give you the specific answer you’re desiring. However, I’ve sent a request for information regarding this, and if I do get word back, I can relay that to you. Thanks!

If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to this email or visit our extensive knowledge base online at http://support.ea.com.

Thank you,

Danny K
EA Online Support

That’s it? I paid EA thousands of shekels, or maybe even over a thousand dollars, over the past 10 years and they treat me this bad? I bought every The Sims expansion pack, all but two expansions for The Sims 2, pre-ordered The Sims 3 and stood in line on the morning of release day and bought The Sims 2 for the full retail price at a pre-release event, and this is the treatment I get?

Some of you might think they will eventually resolve this, since the rep said he sent a request. Well, that’s bullshit. After over 8 different issues with EA Support didn’t get resolved and were treated just as bad, I can guarantee you they will not try to resolve the issue. Even if that request was sent, the executive recipient will not give a damn. The fact the “compensation coupon” didn’t work and wasn’t fixed yet as of this writing is additional proof that EA Support are not going to help me.

[Electronic Arts logo used according to fair use under United States copyright law.]

EA Week on Steam! (List of games on sale leaked)

This week, there are various discounts on EA games on Steam. Each day, a different game or game series goes on sale. The first game series is Crysis, making Crysis and Crysis: Warhead available for 50% off.

Apparently, Valve already uploaded the banners for the next days, so we can know the (awesome) lineup of discounted games for EA Week:

Tuesday is “Military Day”, and judging by the background, we can tell Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is going to be on sale.

Wednesday is “Command & Conquer Day”, so obviously, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight will be on sale with, most probably, the other Command & Conquer games.

Thursday is “Racing Day”, so I assume Need for Speed games would be on sale and maybe even Burnout Paradise.

Friday is “Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space & Spore” day! You can guess what will be on sale. If Dead Space is discounted enough I may get it. If EA magically lower Spore’s price to $5 or under, I may repurchase it for Steam. (Got it on disc with a SecuROM license from release day.)

Saturday is “Mass Effect Day”, and judging by the name and background image it’s very likely EA will discount Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2! The former may even be discounted to $5, like in Steam’s last holiday sale. I hope it will, I missed the last Mass Effect sale and from what I heard it’s a great game. Now, if Mass Effect 2 was also discounted for, say, 75%… That would be a lovely surprise.

And last, but not least, Sunday is “Dragon Age Day”! Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakening will most probably be on sale.