Mass Effect 3: Male Quarian Infiltrator
Posted by brandon in Editorial on Jun 1st, 2012 | 0 comments
I unlocked the Male Quarian Infiltrator last night. The Male Quarian Infiltrator’s three powers are Tactical Cloak (like all infiltrators), Tactical Scan and Arc Grenades. The scan seems less than useful as first, and on low level enemies, it kind of isn’t. The scan paints a big bullseye on the target that the entire squad can see, not just you. Its evolutions allow for weapon or power damage, slowing down the target’s movement speed and at 6, it can either give another damage boost or an area scan that reveals multiple enemies + doubles the duration of the scan. Since the damage boosts at 4 and 6 are for the entire squad, not just you, I went with weapon damage for 4 and at 6 it’s any type of damage. Essentially, a scanned target will take an additional 25% damage from all squad mates. This makes taking down elites much easier and if you take the level 5 evolution that slows down the target’s movement speed, you slow them down by 30%. Not a big deal on Atlases and Primes, but imagine having 30% slower Brute, Banshee or Phantom to deal with and a big glowing orange bullseye that the whole team can see. The cooldown time for the scan is pretty low, so you can keep casting it if the scan times out, so I don’t think the duration evolution is necessary at all.
The Arc Grenades are new and very nifty. The level 4 evolution can get you either more damage or more radius. The radius evolution brings the grenades up to a 10.4 meter radius. The level 5 evolution can get you an extra grenade, or, you can get an electrical field that causes extra damage over time. You can chuck an Arc Grenade into a freshly spawned group of enemies and then watch them all be effectively Overloaded in one big swath. The 6th evolution allows you to get 75% effectiveness in either armor-piercing or shields and barriers. I took armor-piercing for chucking them at bosses, but shield and barriers would be effective if you’re focusing on crowd control of trash enemies.
It’s important to note that since grenades aren’t a power, you can throw them without breaking cloak. Scanning a target, then cloaking, tossing two grenades and then unloading with your weapon deals massive damage. You’re getting 25% damage on the scanned target, 70-110% damage bonus from the cloak and 75% effectiveness against the enemies protective properties from the grenades. If you stack your abilities wisely, the Male Quarian Infiltrator is a powerhouse and a true asset to the team.
Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Bugs and the Relationship with the Customer/Player
Posted by brandon in Editorial on May 29th, 2012 | 0 comments
Switch to Harbinger voice…
I play a lot of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. Too much, probably. It’s pretty great that a game I loved, has a pretty fun multiplayer component, and it doesn’t cost anything to play (except for the initial cost of buying the game). I would pay for Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, but I’d expect game breaking bugs to be fixed faster. In particular, the Vanguards’ Biotic Charge has been broken since the multiplayer demo back in February. Yes, February. Essentially, if you get killed as you’re initiated a Biotic Charge, you charge into the ground. You start clipping into the geometry of the map and after a couple minutes, you’re so fucked into the geometry that you can’t do anything. You can’t attack enemies, but you keep taking damage. You’re a liability to your squad. Should you squad happen to all get wiped out on a non-mission wave, you’ll sit there in limbo, stuck in the geometry, and the only way they’ll get their deserved XP and credits is for you to quit, and for you to lose everything.
Supposedly, today’s patch is supposed to fix this. Great! Only took three months! But, it’s comments like this that make me think that Bioware thinks the players are assholes for complaining that things don’t work right. I know it’s a free-to-play model. The multiplayer is being funded by people buying Microsoft points to buy reinforcement packs that are totally random. If you ever go to the Bioware forums (Trust me. You shouldn’t.), you’ll see that the people who spend the most time playing (and subsequently complaining about bugs in the game) are not paying for credits. The nature of random unlocks makes spending real money on the game hard to swallow. If the money you spent on credits could be spent on anything you wanted, I probably would’ve dumped some money into the game to unlock and level up a Talon or a Paladin. Since the game isn’t competitive, I don’t see why this would be bad. We’re all on the same team. Me having a really powerful weapon isn’t hurting anyone.
It was also super annoying when the Resurgence Pack came out and for the first 24-48 hours, the existing reinforcement packs you could buy didn’t have any of the new characters or weapons in them. Bioware never said they wouldn’t, but they were more than happy to let people spend real money to buy game credits in hopes of unlocking a new character. Had I not checked the Bioware forums, I too might have wasted a bunch of credits.
I’d pay for DLC packs if I just got the characters right away with a little bit of an XP boost to start out. I will not, however, pay for credits that can only buy random unlocks. I commend those that do, because it means that I get to play the game for free. But I’d rather the DLC just cost 5 bucks a pop and I get everything at once.
I know a lot of the people that worked on Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are gone. I know that Casey Hudson, who was supposed to be the guardian of the Mass Effect universe, let the franchise fall apart (Mass Effect: Deception and Mass Effect 3′s God awful ending), but Mass Effect 3 and its accompanying multiplayer are really fun to play. Where Mass Effect had a fantastic story but wasn’t really fun to play, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 turned the series around to where the main story was bad (the personal stories were fantastic though!) and the combat got much better. Mass Effect 2 is still a fun game to replay just in combat terms, and Mass Effect 3′s combat is so much fun, I’ve put three times as much time into the multiplayer (if not more) than I did in the single player side of the game. Because of Mass Effect 3′s ruining of the story for me, I’ll have to be okay just having fun playing the multiplayer until the inevitable rejiggering of the single player story in the Extended Cut DLC that hopefully doesn’t come out while I’m in the US and unable to play it!
Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer: Drells
Posted by brandon in Editorial on May 16th, 2012 | 0 comments
Drell Adept
Reave is a lasting attack. It drains health, adds damage protection, can be buffed against armor and barriers and can set up or trigger biotic explosions.
Pull is useful against health-only enemies. It can get them out of the fight and give you a chance to focus on bigger enemies. It will also strip Guardians of their shields and you can detonate it with Reave.
Cluster grenades causes multiple explosions, cover a wide range and can detonate biotic explosions. Reaving a group of enemies and hitting them with grenades does huge damage and if very effective against tough enemies like Atlases, Primes and Brutes.
The Drell are frail but they are quick and agile. You get movement speed bonuses and you get a very good encumbrance bonus that allows you to have fast cool downs with even heavy weapons. A Drell Adept might do well to take a sniper rifle or a scoped pistol.
Drell Vanguard
A Vanguard’s most important attack is its charge. The Drell Vanguard is no different. With a fast cool down, you can charge every 3.5 seconds or so.
Pull is useful against health-only enemies. It can get them out of the fight and give you a chance to focus on bigger enemies. It will also strip Guardians of their shields and you can detonate it with Biotic Charge.
Cluster grenades causes multiple explosions, cover a wide range and can detonate biotic explosions. They are very effective against tough enemies like Atlases, Primes and Brutes. Helps if you have a Warp-capable squad mate to set up biotic detonations.
The Drell are frail but they are quick and agile. You get movement speed bonuses and you get a very good encumbrance bonus that allows you to have fast cool downs with even heavy weapons. A Drell Vanguard can have over 150% cool down bonuses with decently upgraded shotguns. Charge → shotgun → Cluster Grenades can be very powerful against big enemies, especially if you’ve got a fast firing/high damage weapons and the 25% power bonus after a charge.
URA 207: The Speaking Test
Posted by brandon in podcast on Apr 26th, 2012 | 0 comments
On this lost segment of URA, we listen in on a Japanese junior high English speaking test for “Alice in Wonderland” and a long lost friend makes one last appearance.
Vanguard Insanity in Mass Effect 3
Posted by brandon in Editorial on Apr 10th, 2012 | 0 comments
They don’t call it “Insanity” for no reason. I was called crazy for doing it. Playing Mass Effect 3 on Insanity for my first play through, that is. It really wasn’t that bad. The thing about Insanity in Mass Effect 3 is that you just get a lot more enemies and their take a lot more damage before they go down. Some might say that I compounded my difficulties by going with Vanguard for my Shepard’s class, because the Vanguard has no long game. Vanguard is fast and up close. The only ranged biotic power that the Vanguard class has is Shockwave and Shockwave’s range is limited and it doesn’t track to enemies the way Warp or Throw does. It does however have the advantage of being able to pass through cover. You can position yourself behind a wall and send Shockwave through the wall and still be able to inflict damage on an Atlas. While the Shockwave is recharging, you can pop out from behind cover, fire off a couple shotgun blasts and then hide again and fire another Shockwave.
The Vanguard’s ability to zip across the field and hit a far off enemy is the game’s most bad ass ability for sure. Combine the Biotic Charge with Nova and you can easily take down a small group of Cannibals or even Marauders with ease. Phantoms, the second most vicious enemy in Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer (only behind Banshees) are nothing against Vanguards. A Vanguard with a level 6 Nova that has a 100% boost to barrier, armor and shield damage can charge a Phantom, Nova away its barrier and then either charge the Phantom or shotgun blast it almost instantly.
The bane of the Vanguard’s existence, especially on Insanity, is the Cerberus turret. The Biotic Charge has the added benefit of staggering enemies, but you can’t stagger a turret. Because of this, Cerberus Engineers should be your first target, after shield pylons, of course. If you don’t take them out, you’re asking for trouble. Because of this, areas with lots of Cerberus enemies in areas where you can be swarmed from multiple directions are extremely dangerous. The atrium at Grissom Academy is the most frustrating area in the game by far. It’s an almost endless stream of enemies, there are lots of turrets and Cerberus keeps pressing in on you from all sides. The requirement for getting the doors to open up so that you can proceed past the atrium is unclear and I was just thankful that I made it past it.
Banshees are also a big pain in the ass. Their ability to instantly kill you is a huge problem. If you get too close to a Banshee, it can 86 you, and Vanguard have to get close to do most of their damage. My tactic was to charge into the Banshee, use Nova while jumping away from the Banshee, fire a couple rounds with the shotgun and then charge into the Banshee again (because you probably got your barrier damaged while shooting at the Banshee). Horizon’s got a Banshee-heavy area towards the end that can be a problem.
Happy charging!
Mr. Takahashi 203: Personal Uman
Posted by brandon in podcast on Apr 5th, 2012 | 1 comment
Mr. Takahashi is joined by his half-black/half-Japanese friend Breon and their “Scottish” friend Ian for a rip roaring good time down at the ol’ pub.
