LogFAQs > #966396198

Mass Effect

I do actually have experience with Mass Effect, although it's been many, many years. I haven't played it since 2008 or so, but it turns out that Mass Effect is an incredibly memorable game, because I feel like I remember most of what happens in it (some of the plot recaps helped though). Wasn't sure what to expect out of this run - 1h 30m definitely implies that some fuckery is going to happen, but I wasn't sure how much fuckery because I've never seen a Mass Effect speedrun before and I have no idea how broken the game is.

The answer is - a fairly significant amount of fuckery, although the game mostly does get played normally. On a scale from 1-5, where 1 is glitchless and 5 is wrong warping to the credits, this is about a 3.5 or a 4 - most of the game's objectives are completed in a roughly normal order with a bit of sequence breaking, there aren't any HUGE portions of the game skipped entirely, but there's a ton of cutscene skips and out of bounds galore, which makes this run super fun. Although I prefer to play glitchless runs when it comes to speedrunning games myself (glitches can just be so hard and annoying to perform and don't feel fun to do), when it comes to a showcase like this, I love a glitchy run, showcasing what happens when you break the game as much as it can be broken. And so far, on that glitchiness scale, this is the first run that's glitchier than a 2, which makes this the most fun run of the marathon so far for me. I also just like runs of adventure games where there's strategizing to the macro-level routing and you get to see things pay off later in the run.

Great commentary throughout this entire run, and it's well paced without a whole lot of boring downtime, aside from a few terminally boring Mako sections that you can't do anything about. The combat in ME isn't the most interesting to watch and it's hard to tell what's going on, but they explain most of it well enough that it's easy to follow. But the out of bounds stuff is the real star of the show here.

- "You're gonna see me blowing myself up with a grenade to put myself in combat just so I can run." This is the original version of the game rather than the Legendary remake, and in this you can only run if you're considered 'in combat', which doing damage to yourself can trigger. I love stuff like this.

- This run almost IMMEDIATELY begins with what feels like a surprisingly easy out of bounds that skips a bunch of the first mission. Nihlus lives! (Not really)

- I also love the glitched cutscenes that happen as a result of not getting certain characters. We don't pick up Ashley early on so we're just talking to nobody. Sadly, we do get Ashley later.

- Speaking of which, Garrus and Wrex are never recruited in this run, which is bullshit. We do get Tali at least though (and Liara much later).

- "There's an important shot right here, gone but not forgotten in Legendary edition, and that'll be in just a moment here, right... now." And it's a shot of cleavage, of course. It's a good cleavage shot, I admit.

- "We're gonna go talk to Joker, played by Seth Green. RIP to his apes."

- The Citadel is so awesome, so it's really a shame that most of it gets skipped in this run. Oh well!

- I enjoyed the glitched cutscene where you get a cutscene to play while you're in the pause menu and the subtitles come up.

- When you're the captain of the Normandy, you don't just walk into the Normandy. You do a quicksave/quickload, fall through the top of the skybox and the entire planet, and crash through the Normandy's ceiling, completely skipping talking to everybody. That's the kind of privilege you get being the captain.

- We end up in the skybox a lot this run.

- I enjoy the runner/commentators apologizing for the fact that they have to do renegade options throughout a lot of this run just because it's faster most of the time. Poor Rachni queen!

- The Mako "controls like an RC car" and "is a bouncy castle on wheels" and that sounds about right based on my memory and my experience watching this run. There's really only this one difficult Mako section in this run, but it's something. Love the part where they get it through the narrow section it's not supposed to go and it just barely has enough maneuverability to get through everything else.

- There's a sort-of-softlock glitch at one point where Femshep just randomly turns into Broshep. I don't see this as a problem; we stan a transmasc king. Yeah, all your abilities drop to level 1 and you can't do anything, but that's just how transitioning goes.

- Riding a box out of bounds like Silver the Hedgehog was probably my favorite trick of the run. It just sort of... works? It's barely even a glitch, they intended for you to pick up a box and move it around, although probably did not intend for you to be riding it at the time. I like that they level up Liara and bring her basically JUST for this one trick (it doesn't feel like she does a ton in combat since they have an awesome pistol by this point).

- The game ends with one of the few paragon options saving the council after a mostly renegade run, which is funny.

- There's a Mako glitch exhibition at the end and it's comic gold. It's a great cap to my first "highly recommended" run of the marathon.

- I feel guilty that I have so much more to say about a run like this than others but I guess that's natural, it's the longest and most involved run so far.

---Highly Recommended---
Mass Effect
---Recommended---
Shadow of the Colossus
Rolled Out!
---Maybe Recommended---
WarioWare: Touched!
---Not Recommended---
Sonic Generations

I will be skipping Kirby and the Forgotten Land for now, but I WILL come back to it once I've beaten the game, which will definitely be before I finish this project. Pokemon Snap will be next.