I want some Battlefield with my Mass Effect

Back on Valentines day, EA made lonely gamers day (probably gamers that arn't lonely aswell) by not only releasing the Mass Effect 3 demo (which I happened to enjoy except for everything being bound to one key which you couldn't change but I've already had a little rant about that) they also announced that upon pre-ordering Mass Effect 3 through their Origin service they would get a free downloadable copy of Battlefield 3. This offer was supposed to last until the 5th of March, but 2 days after announcing this they decide to pull the offer without a explanation in site. As you may have guessed this has pissed off a lot of punters. The deal was frankly amazing and no doubt would have dragged a lot of new clients over to their Origin service, which if they want to catch up with Steam and for it to be successful they will need to play hard ball which they seemed to be doing with this offer. But for them to suddenly pull it as I said before will piss people off. It's a bad move on their part. What ever the reason behind, this is unacceptable really, it's bad business offering something, getting peoples hopes up then taking it away just because you can. While they obviously have a reason behind doing this, it yet to be announced to the public. If you did happen to get in on this deal during the two days it was available you will still get your code by the 8th of March. Below are a couple tweets for the Origin account pretty much saying what I just did, minus me ranting of course.

PC Version of Mass Effect 3 Will Not Support Controllers

Mass Effect 3 on PC will not have controller support. While this won't phase most pc gamers at all as they are happy enough with there keyboard and mouse to play. Despite this Biowares senior designer Manveer Heir explained why this is on twitter.

“There is a development cost in terms of time/effort to get all the graphical user interfaces so 360 buttons show up on PC. It may seem minor, but our GUI team was already stretched thin, and things were coming in at the last minute, so we couldn’t add more work.”

This seems like a pretty legit reason for it and I believe the previous games in the series didn't support gamepads on PC either (don't quote me on that though). While there are third party programs out there which will allow you to play on PC with your controller if you wish to do so, I still believe in this day and age all games should be compatible with both, regardless of platform. Of course you will get those that think playing on PC with a controller is blastphemy, you will find these morons everywhere that allows you to post a comment who say things such as "I'm glad it doesn't support gamepads. Keeps console noobs from screwing their teammates over in multiplayer. Mouse + keyboard = best shooter controls". Just because you prefer a certain type of controls doesn't give you the right to be a complete asshat.

If you are a gamer it shouldn't matter about your choice in peripheral. Everyone knows aiming with a mouse is much more accurate than thumbsticks, therefore making them better for games such as shooters and RTS games. On the other side of the coin you have fighting games, driving games and the majority of sport games which gamepad controls have the edge over keyboard and mouse. I am primarily a PC gamer and do prefer using keyboard and mouse for most games. But sometime I just want to sit back with my feet up on the desk and play a game, you can't really do that with a keyboard and mouse, at least not with my desk setup. So I occasionally break out the Xbox controller and use that instead. Due to me not wanting to sit up at my desk that makes me a 'console noob' according to the muppet who I quoted above. All this makes me is lazy. Sure it's less accurate than aiming with a mouse, does that mean I can't play game? No of course it doesn't, it just means I have to spend an extra half a second aiming.

Mass Effect 3 Demo

I downloaded the Mass Effect 3 demo last night through Origin and played it earlier today, encountered no problems with it. It was my first experience of the Mass Effect series. I have been meaning to pick up the first 2 games but have yet to get around to buying them. First thing I noticed is the lack of advanced graphics options, which doesn't really effect me as I tend to leave graphics settings on default but I know a lot of people won't be too happy about this.

Also with the key bindings use, cover, and jump all use the same button. I'm playing on a PC I have a entire keyboard to use and don't need one button to do numerous things, I'm not limited to the amount of buttons like consoles with controllers. They need to make separate keys for each of these. It's doesn't sound like that big of a deal but I find it interrupts the flow of the gameplay. It's more annoying when your in cover and need to get up and run somewhere, there are times when I was running along with some cover in front of me and I went to jump over it but ended up ducking for cover behind it. I should be able to jump when I choose to not when the game says I can. The controls seem very console orientated and not at all optimised for PC, you know because it's a PC port of the game, the least you could expect is some decent controls. It's a shame because throughout my play through of the couple levels available in the demo I actually enjoyed the story and the gameplay, except the not so brilliant controls. If they get some decent controls implemented for the full release, I would definitely consider getting it.

On the plus side of things, the combat is pretty swift and accurate, both melee attacks and weapon combat. Also you don't have health regeneration like a number of recent games, which is a good thing, unless you play a cyborg character, have robotic implants or have some actual reasoning behind it doing so it isn't acceptable to implement into the game. It does have armour regen though which considering the game is set in the future, the concept is definitely plausible.

Overall the game seems pretty cool, but it's the consolised controls I can't get past. So I will probably give the game a miss until it turns up cheap on sale in a few months time or so. Also I feel I should play the first two games before I before I play this anyway. I know very little about the series or the characters in it so playing previous games seems like a good idea.

Mass Effect 3 will require Origin

News has it that Mass Effect 3 will require Origin for both physical and digital copies. So for those not a fan of Origin you may want to give this a miss.

Biowares Chris Priestly has come out to say quite obvious things related to the games connection to EAs digital distribution system like both digital and physical copies will require "a one time, single authorisation for the for the single player" and that "there is no limit to the number of installs. Playing Mass Effect 3 multi-player will require will require a constant connection". 

Who would have thought playing multi-player would require an online connection. You know because we haven't been playing multiplayer games online for years now have we. Why he even mentioned the limit on the amount you can install a game you have rightly purchased I don't even know. I install games I own on a number of different computers and have uninstalled and reinstalled games numerous times. I don't need someone to tell me I can install my game where ever and when I want, I already know that. 

According to IGNs piece on this he has mentioned it not being on Steam due to their "restrictive terms of service", the exact phrase that was used last time Valve and EA had problems, I think with Battlefield along with some other games getting pulled. We can sit and debate all day long about the reasoning behind it whether you think Steam have got restrictive ToS or it's EAs way to narrow the competition a little. The thing that annoys me most is the fact that neither side have actually came out and said exactly what these terms are. Every bit of news about this is vague, "it limits how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content". That doesn't explain anything. How does it do that? It can't be about only selling DLC through Steam as many GFWL games do exactly that, Bioshock 2 being a prime example as I have bought DLC through the GFWL store for my Steam copy of Bioshock 2, I'm sure many other games apply to my theory here as well. I would be less annoyed if they just came out and said we don't like it due to this, this and these parts of your terms and actually provide these terms for people so they actually understand what is going on, rather than sitting behind vague and blatantly prepared comments on the matter. I want actual answers, not pish (I'm bringing pish back it's not used enough) people will be "yeah, okay, whatever" then forget about.

Anyway I digress, long story short if you were hoping on picking up the latest installment of Mass Effect on Steam, think again. Just remember you have an unlimited amount of installs when you get it.......