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Mass Effect 2 Next Year, Says BioWare
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BioWare and EA said that Mass Effect 2 will launch next year.
BioWare and EA said earlier today that Mass Effect 2 won't hit store shelves until next year. In the meantime, retailers across North America and Europe are offering pre-order incentives by providing codes for downloading special items such as special-ops armor and weaponry for Commander Shepard. These items will be usable when the game is eventually released.
According to GameStop, consumers who pre-order Mass Effect 2 will get Terminus Gear which includes the Terminus Assault Armor and the M-490 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon. BioWare's press release stated that the armor increases run speed and personal shields. It also augments weapons with an additional magazine of reserve ammo. The weapon, on the other hand, generates a cool high-powered localized gravity well.
Other retail outlets will supply the "potent" Inferno Armor, providing an increase in run speed and augmented damage from combat powers. BioWare said that this armor is typically used by officers to monitor battlefield conditions, recognizing heart rates and regulating sub-systems for greater response times.
So when does this game actually hit retail shelves? BioWare said that Mass Effect 2 lands the Xbox 360 and PC just after Christmas: January 26 here in the States and January 29 in Europe.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
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Mass Effect Ported from Xbox 360, Mass Effect runs very well on the Radeon HD 3870 X2, except that the card is incapable of applying the antialiasing demanded by the drivers. But that proved to be useful at 1920*1200 (but not at 2560*1600, since the game became simply unplayable at that resolution). Another advantage is that it didn’t keep the GTX 280 from leading the field, since the 9800 GX2 doesn’t do well with this game and for once was soundly beaten (34% at 1920*1200 + filters and 62% at 2560 *1600). The GTX 280’s lead on the 9800 GTX was 220% at 1920*1200 + filters, and here the GeForce GTX 260 easily came in just behind its big sister.
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For this test, we used our reference configuration, and as usual tested the games exclusively with Fraps and under real gaming conditions. Most of the games used previously were used again, and updated as always (with the latest patches installed), but two new items have been included: Mass Effect, the space opera RPG by Bioware, which despite its Xbox 360 origins has been successfully ported and which we felt we simply had to use (also since it fills the gap left in our protocol since we dropped Fable). There’s also Race Driver: GRID, which despite its interface, is still a tester’s nightmare (like the earlier Colin McRae Dirt from the same publisher, Codemasters). The title is also visually very attractive and inaugurates the latest version of the Ego Engine. All the synthetic DirectX 9 tests were run under Windows XP because of their instability under Vista (Fillrate Tester, RightMark 1050, ShaderMark 2.1 and SPECviewperf 10). RightMark 3D 2.0 (DirectX 10) was of course run under Windows Vista (without SP1 due to its instability with it), and Vista SP1 was used for all the games, CUDA tests, environmental measurements and overclocking. UAC, Aero, SuperFetch and indexing were disabled to ensure stable results. We used only two resolutions for this test, 1920*1200 (24/26"), and of course the 2560*1600 used by 30" monitors – in this case a Samsung 305T. That’s because we feel that they’re the only two resolutions this type of very-high-end card will be running. Below them (up to 22"), you wouldn’t need to cough up the price of this breed of 3D card to get a good, fluid display on the majority of current games, as we noted during our latest tests Plateforme.jpg Test configuration: Asus P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38) Intel Core 2 Quad QX6850 (3 GHz) Crucial 2 x 1 GB DDR3 1333 MHz 7-7-7-20 Western Digital WD5000AAKS Asus 12x DVD player Cooler Master RealPower Pro 850W Windows XP, Vista, Vista SP1 ForceWare 177.34 beta (GTX 260 and GTX 280 under Vista) ForceWare 177.26 beta (GTX 280 under XP) ForceWare 175.16 WHQL (9800 GTX, 9800 GX2, 8800 Ultra) Catalyst 8.5 WHQL (HD 3870 X2)
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One of the greatest weaknesses in modern titles are often menus and displays showing information like life or stamina. The possibility of including photo-realistic displays are there, but these are not used. One example of this is Oblivion. The game world is intended to look real, but if you switch to the inventory, the magic menu or to the map, you are punished with a raw mass of pixels. This has even gone so far that the players themselves have put together a high resolution map modification. The reason for this often lies in the origin of the game. For example, Oblivion was produced for the Xbox, and thus the developers assumed a TV screen would be used. As TV screens very often have a low resolution, and the writing needs to remain readable, the menus were designed for use with a lower number of pixels. As a result, PC gamers with high-res LCD displays are subjected to the full horror of colorless areas flickering. This problem is less understandable when it comes to games developed for the PC, though. Why have the graphics designers of Stalker: Clear Sky gone to all the trouble to draw the PDA specially, when a photo-realistic background looks more professional? Game producers should take a page from the Hollywood production book; they are much better when it comes to futuristic displays and consoles.
Looking at the picture, it seems like the game will have sex in it again. Of course, China will censor this out... possibly Germany too?
There was sex in the first game?
Note to self, got to finish Mass Effect
somehow she doesnt turn me on.
By next year do they mean 2010 or 2011? because if its in 2010 its more like in 3 months then next year...
Sweet.
I'm generally positive about the game, but I always hate it when companies offer preorder incentives when you buy from specific retailers. I've also read from Gamespot that Gamestop preorders will allow people access to special weapons in-game, that non-preorders won't be able to use (3rd paragraph, "The download will also unlock a wider variety of heavy weapons than will be accessible to those who buy the game after the game launches."). I have to wonder this would change the game for those who preorder it. will this be available early and make most future armour upgrades unnecessary?
as much as I like the game, the publisher is doing this because they KNOW they can. and they know they'll get away with it. I have no qualms with the game itself, but I have to question the preorder scheme.
^^ I second that - I mean if I were buying a pepsi from vending machine A i wouldn't expect (or accept) if the flavour was different than if it was popped out of vending machine B. It's the same product, costing the same - so how is that fair?
Basically, I think this whole pre-order incentive thing is to get people to buy the games at full price instead of waiting for a price drop. I waited till Steam had a deal on DoW 2 and got it for 19.99, but I decided to Pre-order the Aion Collectors Edition for the items and paid full price(I don't even really like the game). It looks like the incentive will work on me again with Dragon Age. The games creators are not seeing any money when people buy used games, and they don't make as much profit when people wait for a price drop. I think this is a great idea to get people to pay full price, but only so far as to not ruin the game for people who don't pre-order. I could see this being taken too far and people who don't pre-order getting screwed over with an incomplete game.
There was sex in the first game? Note to self, got to finish Mass Effect
It was good.
Made it worth playing through multiple times.
Go BioWare, you're fucking awesome!
It didn't just have sex... it had LESBIAN sex too. I mean WOW.
More sex please.
It didn't just have sex... it had LESBIAN sex too. I mean WOW.
I don't think I played long enough....Where abouts was this??? The only thing I saw remotely related was the strip club.
One quesiton, will it have invasive DRM. I boycotted mass effect over drm. If they do it again, another lost sale from me.
I don't think I played long enough....Where abouts was this??? The only thing I saw remotely related was the strip club.
Play it with Shepherd as a female
The "pre-order" downloads are quite annoying. If they are going to include them, I wish it was the same content from all retailers. Gamestop is quite far away from me, but Game Crazy is close. I prefer to save gas if at all possible and I have to burn at least $5 to go to Gamestop. $5 isn't a lot, I know, but I'll take the $5 savings on a game purchase. Yes, I can just order a game online .. but then to get it the day it comes out, it's another $10. Oh well, for most games, it's not a big deal.. but I do love Mass Effect 2.
I just also recently purchased and am loving Magna Carta 2 (Hyung Tae-Kim is an awesome artist). However they had some downloadable content available the day it came out. I went ahead and downloading it, thinking it'd just be some cool weapon skins, plus it mentioned that it unlocks a couple of in-game movies. I go to try out the weapons and they are so overpowered that it was like just entering a "god-mode" cheat. I un-equipped them, because I enjoy a challenge along with a good story, instead of just feeling like I cheated my way through.. but geez, some downloadable content just makes games trivial. I like DLC that expands a story, adds new skins or costumes, etc. Cosmetic changes, maybe a few gameplay additions, etc. What I don't like is basically downloading a cheat-mode. /shrug
Looking at the picture, it seems like the game will have sex in it again. Of course, China will censor this out... possibly Germany too?
The MPAA in North America are the ones who censor out sex, or even a nipple, while Germany is mature enough to leave that sort of stuff in the games, but censor our the gratuitous violence, instead. Apparently, the MPAA thinks violence is good for our kids and the human body is evil.
Play it with Shepherd as a female
How far through is it???
How far through is it???
You don't have to play as the female Shepard. It's near the end of the game.