A Bit Behind The Times – Mass Effect From The Start
I am just a little bit behind the times, everyone is raving about Mass Effect 3 (look out for our initial thoughts soon) but I have never played any of the games in the series. I thought it was time to change that and get stuck into the very first Mass Effect.
First task, find the game on Steam and get it downloaded, easy enough. Second task? Find out what DLC there was for the first game, a quick look at Wikipedia reveals to me that the DLC for the PC version of Mass Effect was released for free. Great news I thought, but where could I download it from? A quick scan of the Steam forums led me to this ancient webpage which let me download the Bring Down The Sky content, but the links provided on that page which were meant to provide a code for the DLC didn’t work. Fortunately a helpful Steam forum post gave me the details I required with a universal code which allows the DLC to be installed. Note, I have for the time being decided not to download the Pinnacle Station DLC, it doesn’t really sound worth it, anyone able to shed some more light on it?
I have just started the game and created my Shepard (the ugly chap seen above), he is Earth born with the psychological make up of a Sole Survivor and he combines the tech and combat classes to be an Infiltrator. That is all I have done for now, god only knows how long it will take me to get anywhere near Mass Effect 3, it probably won’t be this year if I am honest. As I begin my journey, what advice can you all offer me?
Update – As you can guess from the new image, I have changed for a FemShep after some Twitter discussions. A slightly more enjoyable experience in those early moments than when playing ManShep.
2 thoughts on “A Bit Behind The Times – Mass Effect From The Start”
Well, the biggest thing to know about the Mass Effect series is that it suffers that whole Assassins’ Creed problem of the gruelling first installment. AC1 was a nice looking game with an intriguing universe but with terrible variety problems in its content. ME1 is pretty much the same deal, though intrinsically a lot deeper and probably twice as long. Oh, and it possibly has the single worst inventory / item system in the history of gaming.
In retrospect, I probably went through the first game a little too thoroughly. It’s not really imperative that you max out your level (you can’t even level above 50 during your first time through anyway), so if the Mako-driving side missions are starting to grate on you, don’t force yourself to do them. Only a handful have some kind of pay-off in the next two games and you only receive a token exp boost for having put the effort in. ME2 is a fine reward for having slogged through the first one, and you’ll be able to look back on the first game as a worthy time investment… but you will wonder whilst you’re actually playing it.
If you’re getting Pinnacle station free then why not give it a shot but I wouldn’t bother spending money on it, it’s nothing interesting unless you like a lot of combat. DLC for ME2 is very good definitely get that when you get round to it!
My biggest bit of advice is don’t think too much about how you want to play the game, just jump in and enjoy it. I started on ME1 without knowing anything about it. Everyone that I know has had unique playthroughs of 1&2 and if you try to follow any pre-acquired idea of how it should be played you might not enjoy it as much.