ENEMIES EVERYWHERE!

Wow. Suddenly I understand why Augusta was so hooked on Mass Effect for so long. This game is awesome.

I've been playing for a few days now pretty much whenever I get the chance, and so far I've got only one major complaint (which I'll explain in a moment). As a whole, though, the game is beautiful - it's got an engaging storyline, likable characters, controls and a camera that don't throw you through a loop, great combat mechanics, brilliant AI, simple team management controls, and an absolutely awesome ability/item customization menu. Oh, and it's graphically pretty. Basically, it's an really fun, engrossing game, and I love it. The cinematic branching conversation system is really cool, and makes the voice acted conversations that you can have with NPCs in Oblivion look like a load of crap - due in no small part to the fact that all characters with which you interact are totally unique, with defined motives, personality traits, and, of course, unique voice actors and dialogue.

With one exception. This is that complaint I mentioned.

When you're in combat, both your squadmates and your enemies will occasionally throw bits of dialogue at you, as per usual - status updates from your team and taunts and such from your enemies. Well, your organic enemies, anyway. When you're fighting the synthetic Geth, all you get is their cool electronic murmuring. Your naturally-evolved foes, however, use English. I'm honestly very disappointed at how quickly these taunts get repetitive, especially given the stellar quality of the voice acting and the dialogue in every other aspect of the game. When storming Fist's club, however, and fighting through his bouncers and bodyguards... well...

"ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! I WILL DESTROY YOU! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! I WILL DESTROY YOU! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE! ENEMIES EVERYWHERE!"

... And so on. I'm dead serious. That's practically a direct transcription of those very grating five to ten minutes. It's amazingly frusterating; I actually found myself becoming so irritated that I was literally yelling back at them to SHUT UP. If they either didn't feel the need to scream something EVERY TWO SECONDS, or, failing that, at least had more than just two voice clips to choose from (one of which, as you might have noticed, seemed to be greatly favored over the other), it might not be so bad. But jesus christ, BioWare. That was a mistake. I'd be happier if they didn't make any noise at all.

Thankfully, from what I've seen so far, it looks like I'll be fighting mostly Geth, and therefore won't have to invest in a pair of earplugs for the combat sections of the game. And since the rest of the game is so well done, it's definitely not enough to ruin the overall experience. But it's a major inconsitancy in an otherwise brilliant game, and a major oversight, in my mind. I'm suprised that the developers couldn't find the time to put a little more focus on upping the quality of this combat dialogue.

Oh well. At least I can kill 'em. That tends to shut them up, even if nothing else will.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I went to Augusta's last PYO concert yesterday, which was wonderful. Maxine came too, so while we waited for Augusta's group to come out, we sat and doodled on our programs. And once she DID come out, they did awesomely - played some really great pieces, and played them well. After the concert, we all went back to Augusta's house and hung out and ate pizza, and generally had a lot of fun. And I actually talked to Mike, too! For the first time in just about ever! He says he'll e-mail me finally, but we're still waiting on that one. Putting him on speakerphone was fun for all, though.

So not much else going on at the moment. David's got the Mass Effect DVD at the moment for installation, and Dad's out, so we can't watch disc 2 of Heroes right now, so I think that since David's wandered off, I'll steal the disc back and get back to the Normandy once his installation is done. More news at eleven!

(probably not)