Mass Effect... this looks interesting

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

http://masseffect.bioware.com/gallery/

What are your thoughts?

It's an RPG, apparently. And it holds a lot of promise from the video.

[Spinning Hat]

I hadn't realized it was for the Xbox 360 until the end.. it looks great, even if it was a PC game.. I like it. I played through Gears of War a few weeks ago, and it was a fun, satisfying experience, but it lacked story depth. This could be the first RPG I get for the 360...

[Spinning Hat]

BTW - For those interested in it, Gamestop says the pre-release ships 4-2-07. It's 1 day after my birthday, but I accept late gifts.

[TimberWolf]

When I clicked on the link and watch those videos I was sold. Then when I saw it was for the Xbox 360 I was unsold and refuse to every not its existence again. I don't have any Xbox or Playstation beyond PS1. The newest consol I have and use often is the GameCube (I entertain guests in my Dorm room with it and its 4 controllers). The only next gen consol I will buy, years down the road, will be the Wii. Only because its so cheap compaired to the others and its also good for large groups to play in the same room on one TV.

[Spinning Hat]

The 360 is capable of having 4 controllers connected to it wirelessly, and it is fun as you can imagine having 4 people in a Halo or Gears of war match. I respect your opinion TW, but don't jump to conclusions. I've got one, and yes, it was a little pricey, but IMO, it's worth every penny in the gaming department. The interface is nice, and the controls are easy enough to pick up, and the games are fun. maybe go to a local game stor and play with a 360 for a while. You'll find that it is fun, and worthwhile. Besides, most people who have a 360 would be willing to bring a controller over to play some multiplayer with people instead of against bots all the time, and you'd have a lot of fun.

[TimberWolf]

Sorry, forgot about some of the things the Xbox's could do. I remember playing people on Halo 2 with my room-mates Xbox. Me and him would be in our room and the other guys all over the floor. But then again Nintendo has Zelda, Playstation has Final Fantasy, both of which were games I enjoyed as a little boy when both were on Nintendo. I have some Final Fantasy's for PS1 but nothing beyond that. I am just ticked off at how everything is costing an arm and a leg, including college. It also doesn't helpt that I just screwed up the quarter that ended.

Before I can even consider a consol its time to start saving to build me a new computer. I have had this one for about 5 years, since before college started. But everything is so expensive and they no longer make the any processor that is supported by my Mother board. And everything they do make forces me to upgrade everything else. So basicly I am unhappy with things at the moment.

At least there is one bright thing in life, my nephew should be born one month from now. The only down side is my brother and his wife are working over in Belgium for the next couple of years.

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

I didn't realize it was for consoles!
Doh!

But it looks really neat! Dangit!



TW: Here are the system specs for parts that I recently bought:

ASUS Motherboard with ATI xpress 3200 chipset, socket 939 (Works great so far and should last me quite a while if I have to upgrade the processor to an Opteron 170, which I plan on doing after the new year at some point.)

Sapphire ATI x1950 (I don't care that it only has 256 MB of ram, it's still plenty fast in games)

some good RAM, at a decent price (I thought DDR 2 was too expensive at the time.)

A cooler for the video card (This thing is extremely quiet!)

A processor (Hey, it was cheap, and it still is. It's holding me over very nicely until I get an Opteron.)

A power supply (Yeah, it's 500 W, but it's a very nice power supply, and extremely quiet as well. I could have gone with a 400 W supply with my stuff that I have now, but I decided to go for some headroom in case I need it down the road.)


I went with the power supply I did for quality reasons, and I went with the video card I did because of processing power reasons. The RAM limits how fast you can load things. But I'm so googeley-eyed at how nice everything looks with that card, I haven't turned everything up all the way in some games.

The 6600 GT did similar for me, but this video card is a giant leap ahead of what I was used to.

I spent around 600 dollars total, after doing some rough math. But I think I'm good for quite a while. I'm going to get the Opteron in a while, and I'll probably get some more of the same RAM at some point. I'm going to be working on some intensive number crunching at home (trying to get some extra work through small business contracts with the government).

I already have a koolance case, but with how cool and quiet everything is, I don't think I need it at all. I might change my tune come summer and the 110+ heat, but right now, my koolance cooling setup is louder than all the other fans in the system.

[Spinning Hat]

PC parts can be had for reasonable prices, even if you only spend $110 and $100 there. Pretty soon, you'll have enough parts for a system. If your machine is 5 years old, pretty much anything you're gonna buy is going to be an upgrade for you. When I built my current system a little over a year ago, it cost me just over $1800. (That's having to buy everything. monitor, keyboard, mouse, Speakers, etc.) Now, it can be had for about $800. (Minus the speakers.) So, if you plan it out, and buy slowly, you'll get something nice for yourself.

My system:
AMD Athlon64 3500+ (Socket 939)
1Gb Patriod PC3200DDR
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
2 SATA 160Gb HDDs
450W Aspire PSU
Leadtek GeForce 6800Ultra 256Mb
17" Zenith LCD Monitor

As you can see, it's no monster of a system, but it plays everything really nice.