I don't tend to do a lot of videogame discount posts because I have a mortal fear of enriching my backlog, but when I see the entire Mass Effect trilogy and all of its expansions for around the price of a slightly aristocratic sandwich, I am compelled to share. The Legendary Edition of BioWare's ravishing sci-fi RPG series is 90% off on Steam until 13th May. That translates to 6€, $6 or £5 for all three main games and 40 DLC packs, plus bells and whistles such as 4K Ultra HD and beefed-up character models. If you haven't played a Mass Effect game before, this is a pretty good place to start.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>The most despicable, awful and down right evil thing I’ve ever done in a video game was during a Dark Side playthrough of Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. At the end of the side quest Honest Debt, you convince a man to either spare or gun down a rather horrible chap who wronged him greatly. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about that - I’ve encountered the same thing dozens of times in games - but what comes after is a real doozy.
Not content simply with nudging the fella into giving in to his worst impulses, I then proceeded to persuade him to wipe the very memory of his nemesis from the galaxy, up to and including hunting down his friends and family members. Bastilla Shan, noted Jedi do-gooder, pointed out that neither she nor the Jedi council would approve. I was giggling like a schoolgirl.
]]>The wag behind videos editing Austin Powers into Mass Effect and Mr Bean into Cyberpunk 2077 has returned to the shagadelic font. Just as Shepherd was reborn for Mass Effect 2, Powers rises again in the new video retelling BioWare's sci-fi RPG sequel with England's greatest secret agent. It remains funny and silly and an unexpectedly good fit.
]]>To me, Mass Effect ends about six hours into Mass Effect 1, when I get bored and wander off to play something else. I've had ears and eyes long enough to know that people were upset about the ending of Mass Effect 3 however, even after BioWare tweaked it. The original Mass Effect 3 had various "Happy Ending Mods" to change the close of Commander Shepard's story, and now Mass Effect Legendary Edition does, too.
]]>If you prefer Earth be but a blue marble alone in the void, two of the latest Game Pass additions might tickle your spacefancy. Microsoft's subscription service today adds BioWare's remastered Mass Effect Legendary Edition trilogy as well as the beautiful clockwork mystery Outer Wilds, which was our favourite game of 2019. The cooperative and chaotic first-person firefighting game Embr hit Game Pass today too but that has, like, gravity? So passé.
]]>Yesterday was N7 Day, an annual celebration of all things Mass Effect, and this year was a little quieter than the last. In 2020, BioWare revealed they were working on a brand new game in the series, but this year they looked back on the Mass Effect trilogy remasters that came out in May. I thought that was all they had in store until the very end of the day when they tweeted a new teaser poster for Mass Effect 5, featuring a crater shaped like a giant geth head. Geth! Mass Effect trilogy villains! Get your goggles on, reader, it's time to investigate this pic.
]]>The geth have begun launching seemingly random attacks on human colonies. Rumours are circling that ancient machines will soon emerge from darkspace. There is only one man equipped to deal with these threats: Intergalactic Man Of Mystery, Austin Powers. Someone has made a video editing Mike Myers' 60s spy into Mass Effect and I'm astounded at how well it works. I don't know what else to say. This is Mass Effect in its ultimate form. Please watch it, it's the best minute I've spent all week.
]]>Last night, BioWare released a fun infographic with stats about player choices in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Most of it is pretty unsurprising, with players mostly choosing to be the good guys, opting into peace and Paragon points. But it also has info about what backgrounds and classes players chose. And I have to know, in a game where you're able to play as techno wizards and space sorcerers, why did 40% of you decide to play the class in which your only special skill is "has several guns"?
]]>With 2021 marching on at a seemingly impossible pace, we thought it was high time we sat down in our virtual Treehouses to chat about the best games of the year we've played so far. 2021 has been an odd year for games. The first few months were front-loaded with some big meaty hitters after giving Cyberpunk 2077 a wide berth at the end of last year, while others have been pushed back even further into the depths of 2022. Indeed, a lot of the games we're really looking forward to in 2021 are still hovering away on the horizon, tantalisingly close but just out of reach.
Until those juicy morsels arrive on our gaming plates, though, these are the games we've enjoyed the most over the last six months. You'll find all sorts here, from big epic space operas and zombie horror fests to cosy town builders and err... couple's therapy puzzlers. Will any of them make it to our end of year Advent Calendar? Only time will tell. And if we've missed something you think is absolutely vital playing this year, please do shout about it in the comments. Our gaming bellies are never full these days, and the Christmas turkey is still so very far away...
]]>It's a wonder why I enjoy Mass Effect so much considering I think third-person games are a bit rubbish. Would it be the perfect game if it were all in first-person? I don't know, but someone has made a mod that adds a first-person mode to each game in the trilogy in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, so now we can find out.
]]>Last night, the Mass Effect Legendary Edition got a new patch, nerfing Commander Shepard's bank account and reducing the noise from those deafening Mass Relays. Sure, it got some performance tweaks here and there, but more importantly, you'll now find an imported Shepard from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 might have considerably fewer credits than before. Perhaps it's all linked to the Mass Relays, I wouldn't be surprised if Shep splashed out for some sound proofing on the Normandy.
]]>Leading up to the launch of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I was looking forward to comparing the decisions I made when I first played the trilogy in 2013, versus the decisions I would make now, so many years later. How much could my opinions have changed? Surely things wouldn't be too different, but I imagined there'd be at least some nuance to my actions.
Alas, much like playing the sneaky archer in Skyrim, I have immediately fallen back into old habits. But you know what? So be it. They're all the correct choices, and you can't make me change them. You're not my mum.
]]>The Mass Effect Legendary Edition has been out for nearly two weeks now, and modders are already making some handy changes to the remastered version of BioWare's space RPG trilogy. Someone has made a mod that lets players bring up the in-game console in the ME1 and ME2 remaster, allowing them to give themselves a cheeky XP or Paragon/Renegade points boost, clip out of bounds, and even add in items and powers.
]]>No Man's Sky's most recent expedition sounds like a toughy, but stick with it, because it's hiding an excellent Easter egg at the end. Hello Games have revealed that players who complete the Beachhead expedition before May 31st will be met with Mass Effect's Normandy SR1 arriving in style right over their heads. You get to keep it too - Shepard's ship will be a permanent part of your No Man's Sky frigate fleet.
Man, I always thought No Man's Sky wasn't for me, then they add something super cool like this.
]]>For those unaware, Garrus Vakarian is a kind of space-cop who joins your squad in the Mass Effect series. He's a Turian, a race of aliens who look like spindly mummified cats made of pummice. The recent Mass Effect Legendary Edition means you can play the first Mass Effect and look at the mandibles on his face in higher definition.
He's also a potential love interest for a girl protagonist from Mass Effect 2 onwards. And Garrus appears to be a popular choice vis. alien smooching, much like how everyone just knows who is objectively the best Hollywood Chris. But though Chris Evans' supremacy is self-evident, I cannot wrap my head around wanting to shag Garrus. The title is not a facetious question. I am a curious person and would like detailed answers from the Garrus-fanciers in the comments.
]]>I have played a lot of Mass Effect since the remaster came out on Friday, but I haven't really... done anything. "I know we're busy hunting for Saren," a member of the crew will say, before asking if we can make a personal detour for them. I look back at our flight history: the last six planets we landed on had nothing but space debris and the occasional Thresher Maw. Since picking up Liara, we've essentially been on a joyride through every solar system in the galaxy. Look, Saren could be hiding on any one of these uncharted worlds - it would be irresponsible of me not to check everywhere.
]]>Do you like Mass Effect?... If you answered, “I, SPACEMAN,” then you probably already own the Legendary Edition and may find the conversation that happens in this week's Weekspot redundant. If you checked the box that said, “the only renegade I know of is one-time WCW Television Champion, The Renegade, but I'd love to hear some chat on a remaster of a celebrated RPG trilogy," then I've got just the podcast for you.
]]>Mass Effect Legendary Edition received its first big update last night, bringing some helpful calibrations to BioWare's freshly remastered sci-fi RPG trilogy. Oddly, some of the changes include improved textures and lighting, which I thought was the point of the remaster in the first place. Other tweaks include achievement-tracking fixes and cutscene improvements, but the patch notes are pretty vague - especially for a patch some players report was an 11GB download.
]]>In celebration of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition release, a big group of the trilogy's voice actors, writers, and producers got together to answer questions from fans and tell old stories over the weekend. Spearheaded by femshep voice Jennifer Hale herself, you can also hear the voices of dudeshep, Tali, Liara, Joker, Samantha and more all together in the same nostalgia-ridden video call.
There's talk of the developers' kids now playing the games for the first time, actors hugging lots of fans, and getting a little emotional in the recording booth. It was honestly just swell to hear the team talk about the joy of working together, whether or not you're planning to jump back in for the remaster.
]]>The snazzy new packaged up and fancied up version of the original Mass Effect trilogy is now out, so I imagine there are plenty of you who clocked double digit hours into it over the weekend. As they do, modders spent the weekend remastering the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition even further. There are a good handful of mods available for the new edition already, utilities and reshade presets and all.
]]>Striking up a romantic relationship with a character in Mass Effect 3 will earn you a lovely picture of their face that sits on the desk in Commander Shepard's quarters. It's a nice touch, but for Tali romancers it's particularly special, because it means you actually get to see her face without her helmet on. Unfortunately, in the old ME3, that picture of Tali was a stock photo of a model edited to look a bit alien. But now in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, BioWare have swapped it out for a much more "realistic" pic.
]]>It's here! It's here! Put on your best space shoes, it's time to chat up some aliens. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out right now, remastering Commander Shepard's trilogy of adventures, and bringing back all your extraterrestrial pals with some spruced-up graphics. It's been a long while since I last explored BioWare's epic sci-fi RPG series, and I can't tell you how excited I am to zoom off into the Milky Way again.
]]>I love Mass Effect. I am the BioWare liker. Give me an RPG with a weird setting and some non-humans to be friends with and possibly smooch, and I'll have a hell of a time. When people ask "what is your favourite game?" (which used to genuinely be on the interview set questions for Gamestation when I worked there) I usually say "Mass Effect 2, but with the context of having first played Mass Effect."
As such, I am the consumer who is targeted by the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. All three spaceventure ME games in one remastered package? Sign me up! So far I've only played a bit of the first game, in its spiffy new 2021 get up, and all I can say is "Hooboy, this sure is some Mass Effect!". That's good, because Mass Effect is good. And it's the only thing that really needs to be said, because it doesn't really matter what any of the reviews say: you already know if you're getting it or not.
]]>Bioware have taken great pains to show off all the swanky new visual enhancements coming to their remastered Mass Effect Legendary Edition tomorrow, including support for 4K resolutions, ultrawide monitors, revamped lighting, sharper textures and loads more. The difference is plain to see in screenshots and their before and after comparison video, but in terms of being able to fiddle around with those settings yourself in the game's PC settings menu... well, what's the equivalent of an intergalactic tumbleweed?
]]>Which Mass Effect has the best control scheme can be a pretty dividing topic. Now I don't want to shame anyone who enjoyed how Mass Effect 1 controlled, but to be clear, I do think you're all masochists. I was delighted to find out that BioWare would be bringing the first game more in-line with the sequels with the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. As well as tweaking the combat, the devs are making some much-needed changes to the Mako. However, if for some reason you want to experience the infamously unwieldy vehicle just like old times, you can.
]]>We're but a mere eight days away from the release of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. In writing that, it's just dawned on me how close I am to seeing my hi-res alien pals and bombing around in the improved Mako. To tide fans over until the remaster's launch, BioWare have released a free content package containing loads of Mass Effect's iconic music, as well as digital art books and comics. They've also created an online tool that lets you select your favourite squadmates to make some personalised cover art.
]]>I hope your interest in Resident Evil Village goes beyond the tall woman with the pale face, because we're going deep on the the next big game of 2021, on this week's episode of The Weekspot
]]>Mass Effect: Legendary Edition has the tough job of upgrading the visual appearance of games originally built to run at 720 or 1080p on an Xbox 360. That's a mammoth task even if it was just one game and not the entire Mass Effect trilogy.
A new trailer and blog post on the remaster's official site breaks down how BioWare went about upscaling 30,000 textures, and shows exactly how the results look.
]]>I've twice tried to get into the Mass Effect series and both times I've given up a few hours into the first game. 'That's where it starts to get good!' my friends tell me, while also saying that Mass Effect 2 fixed a lot of the first game's problems.
I'm therefore pleased to learn of how Mass Effect Legendary Edition will tweak the first game to make it more consistent with its sequels. A new blog post on the RPG remaster's official site goes into detail on how they're tuning combat, boss fights and the Mako "without outright scrapping the spirit of the original games."
]]>Flee, gentle reader, for she has come again! It's not too late for you to escape her: Horaszdóttir the Endless, she of the big boots and bear fur. Alas, our fate is sealed. She visits us every winter to split open turkeys from her eldritch flock, and soothsay our most anticipated game releases for the year to come.
She shows us many a game in those birds, reader, and we must impart the dread knowledge to you. We've already done strategy games; what hideous vision of the future is forced on us today? Ah yes, of course. It is the time of the storytellers, the quests and levelling, the congress with aliens. RPGs!
]]>I suspect we all saw this coming when it was reported earlier this month that Electronic Arts would be deciding the fate of BioWare's sci-fi romp Anthem. BioWare have announced today that they will no longer be working on their overhaul called Anthem Next and will instead be focusing their attention on the next Mass Effect and Dragon Age 4.
]]>All BioWare had to do to garner some love from their dejected fanbase was partially remake the first Mass Effect, and also remaster its two sequels. Stick with what works, I guess.
]]>BioWare are currently sprucing up their RPG sci-fi trilogy for the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, but what will the remasters mean for existing mods? While the future is unclear, BioWare have at least said they're in touch with some modders and have some sort of plan for... something. They're not revealing much for now, saying they plan to talk more about it later. Fingers crossed for some modding goodness?
]]>Electronic Arts have gone and had their earnings call for the quarter, that event where execs tell interested parties how many boatloads of money they've made and plan to make in the future. It's also a time for them to answer questions about their products and studios. On the subject of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect developers, EA CEO Andrew Wilson acknowledges that BioWare have had a few recent stumbling blocks but that they're "an incredible studio filled with incredible people".
]]>The remastered trilogy of Mass Effect Legendary Edition contains almost all of BioWare's sci-fi RPG epic, with two notable exceptions: ME3's multiplayer, and ME1's Pinnacle Station DLC. While the absence of multiplayer is a glaring absence (I'll honestly miss it), when BioWare announced the release date yesterday I'd initially not noticed Pinnacle wasn't in the big long list of included DLC. Turns out, the source code was corrupted, and rebuilding it from scratch would've taken ages.
]]>The adventures of Commander Shephard, legendary hero and shopper, will return revamped on the 14th of May in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. BioWare today announced a launch date for the remaster of their sci-fi RPG trilogy, which is coming with new prettiness and character customisation options, plus a whole heap of old DLC. No multiplayer, though. Have a gander at the refresh in the new trailer below.
]]>Look at this official Mass Effect PC case. I love it, but I hate that it's a Mass Effect case. It's as though NZXT thought: "What would Commander Shepard herself play video games on?" But they should not have done that because - for as amazing as she is - Shepard clearly has boring taste.
Shep's casual clothes are like, what, an N7 logo hoodie, an N7 logo leather jacket, or *checks notes* an N7 logo bodycon dress. All stylish clothing items, obviously, but to follow that pattern for a PC? No! It should look like a spaceship.
]]>It's been seven years since the original Mass Effect trilogy ended, and even now modders are working on all kinds of additions and improvements to Commander Shepard's adventures. During the N7 Day celebrations on Saturday, BioWare announced the official Mass Effect remasters, but the modding community also took it as a chance to show some of the unofficial upgrades they've been working on over the last year.
They made a video to showcase it all - and it even has a cameo from DudeShep himself, Mark Meer.
]]>Talk about the worst-kept secret in the galaxy. After months of rumbling and speculation, BioWare today announced the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, bringing all three (quiet, Andromeda) Mass Effect games into one remastered collection next year. While not full remakes, the Legendary collection spruces up Commander Shephard's ageing space saga with better visuals, smoother performance, and all the extra DLC packed into the Normandy's cargo bays.
]]>Video games are great at transporting us to different worlds, but none capture that feeling quite so perfectly as intergalactic space games - and 2023 looks set to be one of the biggest years for space games yet, with the launch of Starfield, Homeworld 3 and more all on the horizon. But what games have gone before them and staked their claim already on the dusty planet surface known as 'Best Space Games'? We reveal all below, with our carefully curated list of all the best space games you can play on PC right now. Whether you're a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there's a space game for you.
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