http://www.xbox.com/en-us/promotions/sales/ultimate-game-sale

Some good games on there for great prices. I picked up The Witness and will probably grab a few other games.

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$35 for the Deluxe Edition was too good to pass up. Now I just need to find the time to play it.

-Disciple

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If I hadn't just bought 4 games on the Steam Summer Sale, that would've been a sure buy too. Btw, do check out the Steam Summer Sale, folks. Dishonored 2 and DOOM are a steal right now.

...do check out the Steam Summer Sale, folks. Dishonored 2 and DOOM are a steal right now.

I have heard good things about the new DOOM. Probably going to have to wait until the next big sale, though.

-Disciple

I'll keep you posted!

Also, I just realized I happened to find an N7 shirt that I hadn't seen in months and threw it on this morning before I knew ME:A was on sale. It was fate!

...or at least that's how I'm going to explain the purchase to my wife ;)

-Disciple

I think it was much better than most gave it credit for. The overall story wasn't terribly interesting, but I enjoyed just exploring a new galaxy, and I really liked the new cast of characters.

There has been lots of praise in this very forum. I recommend going straight for Nightmare difficulty, though, if you can handle yourself on Legendary in Halo.

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We'll get a new one at some point I'm sure. Hopefully a better one.

My biggest gripe was the overall story. I think it could have been an amazing game if it had just focused on the challenge of colonizing a new galaxy, interacting with new species, etc. The search for the missing arks would have been a neat story arc if they had spent more time fleshing it out. I enjoyed Andromeda for what it was, but I can't help seeing a bunch of wasted potential too.

Nice image. I see Borderlands, Skyrim, and Life is Strange. Not sure about the robot- Titanfall?

I'm at about 51-65% in, and let me say - WOW! This thing was a labor of love and it SHOWS SO MUCH! Plus some of the design choices they made to tell some of the stories, be they a side plot, or the main story have so far have been sheer artistry. Without giving away anything - THIS IS WHY I PLAY VIDEO GAMES WITH A STORY! This is something that only the interactive nature of games can do.

It's not just the story, but how it's told. SO GOOD! *Whisper* AAAA!:D

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Picked up Rocket League also, anyone here play?

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my GT is KidTsunami if we're not already friends

How in the hell did this game make it to release? And why are there still game-breaking bugs three months after launch!?

Don't get me wrong. The game is a fun and pretty pile of garbage, but it's still frustratingly broken.

Two bugs in particular have nearly ended my game.

When clearing the flophouse, the 2nd floor shutters wouldn't open. Did a quick Google search to make sure I wasn't missing anything and it turns out that this is just a bug that quite a few people have run into. If I can't clear the flophouse, I can't complete the task required to settle Elaaden. Luckily, I remembered Bionic Blink accidentally blinking me through ramps (nearly sending me to my death), and I managed to glitch my way into the building to start the encounter. Fixed one bug with another.

On Peebee's loyalty mission, I reached a point where I set up a turret, killed a bunch of guys, found a gate switch, set up another turret, and tried to kill another bunch of guys but died. My checkpoint placed me behind the previous gate, standing by the switch, but it only opened half of the gate and wouldn't let me get back to the encounter that just killed me. While trying to find a way around, I backtracked to where I entered the area, climbed most of the way up the cliff that I jumped off of to drop in (that you're definitely NOT supposed to be able to climb back up). That forced the enemies in the area I was just in to respawn. Once I had killed them again, the other half of the gate opened.

There are TONS of other bugs in the game but they're more the silly "I'm talking to a human shadow because this NPC's textures didn't load properly," or "Isn't there supposed to be a whole colony here?" *POP* "Oh, there it is," variety and not the "I just wasted 60 hours and can't finish the game because Bioware doesn't know WTF playtesting is" kind of bug.

The game is a lot of fun when it works. I've already put a ton of time into the game trying to explore every square inch of every planet (except the Voeld vault, because F fighting in those tiny bubbles), squeeze every piece of dialogue out of every NPC, and just take in everything the game has for me. I'm just wondering when I'm going to find the bug that will finally end my game because I can't figure out how to glitch my way around their shitty programming.

-Disciple

93% playthrough.

The worst bug I experienced: I was fighting one of the Architects and died. It respawned me in the same location, but the Architect was not visible. I could hear it. The NPCs yelled, "chase it before it gets away!" I could hear the sound getting fainter. I was never able to encounter it again. I found a bug report on the official site that was basically the same thing, but there are lots of other, more similar bugs, that made finding this bug very difficult.

Some cool stuff happens in the story later in the game, but the beginning was pretty slow. I hated how big the planet Elaaden was. Big and empty, took forever to go anywhere.

My Ryder grew on me during the course of the game, but I prefer Shepard.

I liked Jaal and Drack. Some of the character models seemed to suffer from uncanny valley more than others, like Addison and Cora.

I think the graphics are good in a technical way (long draw distance etc), but I prefer the art style of Mass Effect 3.

Mission tracking: Ugh. I really didn't like the way that was handled. I prefer a skyrim-type solution, where you can turn as many quest markers on or off as you want. Menu/UI was problematic--really hard to tell what things you haven't read, because as you scroll down a list, it marks them as 'read' as soon as your cursor goes to the next item in the list that was off-screen.

The controls are wonky--you can never be sure your character will actually grab the edge of a ledge you're trying to climb up. In previous MEs you felt solid, heavy, almost cludgy, and in MEA you're light, floaty, and drifty. Less predictable.

I've been playing the Multiplayer a decent amount, and they're making it way easier by making the player characters much stronger. (At launch even Bronze was super hard.) I think the shooting game in ME3 was more stable, predictable, and rewarding, but there are some good tradeoffs. Character mobility makes a massive difference in play, which changes the paradigm from mid- to long-term strategic play to more immediate jump in, damage, jump out.

Overall, a real mixed bag.

I hated how big the planet Elaaden was. Big and empty, took forever to go anywhere.

I think Elaaden may actually be may favorite planet. I love tearing off across the dunes in the Nomad. I usually prioritize getting all of the forward stations ready as soon as I'm dropped onto a planet, so I can fast-travel whenever I need to, but on Elaaden I'll usually drive if it's not more than two or three stations away.

Kadara, on the other hand, bugs the hell out of me. 95% of the content is in the slums, but every time I need to go to the slums, I have to load into Kadara Port, turn around to the console that would normally take me back to my ship, tell the game to take me to the slums instead, then wait to load into the slums area. Can I please just get another landing site at the Outpost once I've got that set up? That would be great.

I liked Jaal and Drack. Some of the character models seemed to suffer from uncanny valley more than others, like Addison and Cora.

I still can't decide if the lip-sync bugs because it's poorly done, or if it's so much closer to life-like than other games, that I'm it to be perfect and so I'm noticing every tiny thing that's off. The non-human characters don't bother me at all.

Peebee and Drak (sounds like a bad cop show) are my go-to team, though Peebee may see less game time if there's less Remnant stuff in the later game.

Mission tracking: Ugh. I really didn't like the way that was handled. I prefer a skyrim-type solution, where you can turn as many quest markers on or off as you want. Menu/UI was problematic--really hard to tell what things you haven't read, because as you scroll down a list, it marks them as 'read' as soon as your cursor goes to the next item in the list that was off-screen.

Fully agreed on all points. Most frustrating is that while you can only have one active mission at a time, some missions only seem to work if they're the active mission. At the very least, you can't tell that the random NPC standing twenty feet away when you turn in one mission, is the one you need to talk to to turn in the mission you finished forever ago, but forgot about because it's buried in the "Additional Tasks" page instead of the "Nexus" page.

The controls are wonky--you can never be sure your character will actually grab the edge of a ledge you're trying to climb up. In previous MEs you felt solid, heavy, almost cludgy, and in MEA you're light, floaty, and drifty. Less predictable.

I think I like the feel of my more nimble Pathfinder character over my tanky Spectre, but I've definitely been hosed by not grabbing a ledge that I definitely should have grabbed.

I've been playing the Multiplayer a decent amount, and they're making it way easier by making the player characters much stronger. (At launch even Bronze was super hard.) I think the shooting game in ME3 was more stable, predictable, and rewarding, but there are some good tradeoffs. Character mobility makes a massive difference in play, which changes the paradigm from mid- to long-term strategic play to more immediate jump in, damage, jump out.

I've only done the Apex missions with a strike team, so I still need to check out multiplayer. Not sure I'll ever actually get around to it, though. I'm mostly just in it for the campaign.

-Disciple