Mass Effect on PC is legendary!

I've been a Mass Effect fan from the very beginning, but I've always only played on xbox.

After recently buying ME1 and 2 on steam for $12 (suck it EA), I started playing ME1 on PC.

And OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!

PC is the master race! There's no doubt about it.

Now all you console gamers out there! Save up for a gaming rig and play Mass Effect how it's supposed to be played!

Now if any of you fellow PC gamers can help me with the unofficial HighRes texture pack, I would be your slave for life

I have Mass Effect 1 set up on my SSD to minimize the texture popping. Can't seem to fully get rid of it, but it only now happens during level loads (for a couple seconds), and not all the time. Funny, it's the slow DVD/Blu-ray disc reading that causes texture popping, but installing it on an SSD or even a RAM disk doesn't seem to get rid of the popping.

Framerate wise, it plays about the same as Mass Effect 2 & 3. I get a constant 60 FPS most of the time.

As a console player that just recently acquired a gaming PC I'm curious as to what about it is so much better. Is it graphics or do you just prefer mouse+keyboard interface? Or is it the available mods?

Yep 60 fps and screenshot taking is nice. But, man, I wish it had gamepad support. I know M/KB is better, but still, I wanna lay down and play lol.

The game runs much smoother on PC for some reason. It was coded by another company, so that might have something to do with it.

But yes, PC is the master gaming race :P

Andromidius wrote:The game runs much smoother on PC for some reason. It was coded by another company, so that might have something to do with it.

But yes, PC is the master gaming race :P

Might have to have something to do with the 8 core processor, 16 GB of Ram, and 500$ graphics card :stick:

solidsnake78 wrote:
Might have to have something to do with the 8 core processor, 16 GB of Ram, and 500$ graphics card :stick:

That's similar to my setup.

As a console player that just recently acquired a gaming PC I'm curious as to what about it is so much better. Is it graphics or do you just prefer mouse+keyboard interface? Or is it the available mods?

I've tried playing the Mass Effect 2 demo on the PS3 just for fun, and I can't aim worth shit on consoles. I guess because I haven't used a console regularly since the SNES days. That didn't even have an analog stick. It was a button mashing controller.

You're right, I do prefer the mouse/keyboard combination.

magnetite wrote:

solidsnake78 wrote:
Might have to have something to do with the 8 core processor, 16 GB of Ram, and 500$ graphics card :stick:

That's similar to my setup.

As a console player that just recently acquired a gaming PC I'm curious as to what about it is so much better. Is it graphics or do you just prefer mouse+keyboard interface? Or is it the available mods?

I've tried playing the Mass Effect 2 demo on the PS3 just for fun, and I can't aim worth shit on consoles. I guess because I haven't used a console regularly since the SNES days. That didn't even have an analog stick. It was a button mashing controller.

You're right, I do prefer the mouse/keyboard combination.

Also a SSD helps too . And I agree, I went from playing ME3 on PC to Wii U and I couldn't hit anything. But once I am back in the groove of analog sticks its fine. I have every achievement for ME1 and 2 on 360 and Platinumed ME2 on PS3 (currently working on ME1)

Some games I prefer on xbox due to the controller, such as Arkham City, but I'm generally PC if possible.

(I'm aware you can use xbox controllers with pcs but it don't feel right)

solidsnake78 wrote:Yep 60 fps and screenshot taking is nice. But, man, I wish it had gamepad support. I know M/KB is better, but still, I wanna lay down and play lol.

It's mystifying that they can't implement gamepad support. I work on a computer all day, I really don't want to spend an evening hunched over a mouse and key board. I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of accuracy for some relief from the dreaded mouse-itis.

Eryri wrote:

solidsnake78 wrote:Yep 60 fps and screenshot taking is nice. But, man, I wish it had gamepad support. I know M/KB is better, but still, I wanna lay down and play lol.

It's mystifying that they can't implement gamepad support. I work on a computer all day, I really don't want to spend an evening hunched over a mouse and key board. I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of accuracy for some relief from the dreaded mouse-itis.

It must just be laziness right? Or an attempt to not make it look like a port?

solidsnake78 wrote:

Eryri wrote:

solidsnake78 wrote:Yep 60 fps and screenshot taking is nice. But, man, I wish it had gamepad support. I know M/KB is better, but still, I wanna lay down and play lol.

It's mystifying that they can't implement gamepad support. I work on a computer all day, I really don't want to spend an evening hunched over a mouse and key board. I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of accuracy for some relief from the dreaded mouse-itis.

It must just be laziness right? Or an attempt to not make it look like a port?

I'm not sure. I realise the interface and difficulty levels are adjusted on PC to compensate for the more precise control of a mouse / keyboard set up, but I would have thought all the hard work of creating an X-box gamepad interface had already been done. I don't understand why the game can't just switch automatically to the console settings if it detects a gamepad.

Bethesda were able to do that with Skyrim, and I actually found it easier to play with a gamepad.

One of the things I've been working on for Mass Effect 1 in the last week is trying to make a Texture File Cache (TFC) which contains all the streamed textures in the game. Mass Effect 2 & 3 use this, which is what may have solved the texture popping issues, least on the PC version of the game.

So if the TFC for Mass Effect 2 & 3 is around 900 MB (Mass Effect 3 uses two of them, I think for world and character textures), then the hard drive or SSD will use the sequential read speed for big files instead of the 4K read for little files (eg. 32KB text file uses 4K reads, as opposed to a 900 MB file uses the sequential read speeds).

I'm no expert with the Unreal Development Kit, but I know how to cook packages and the basic stuff.

Jade! You made it here!

I know, I've always been a PC gamer.... until I lost my job and couldn't afford to keep upgrading.

Stuck with 360 for now.

I'm all for PC gaming, I think it's awesome. PC Master Race ftw and that sort of stuff.

But in all honesty, I don't think Mass Effect is a proper example of what PC gaming has to offer. In fact, it was a rather piss-poor port (not the worst PC port, but still a bad one).

The menus are horrible, there are a lot of texture glitches (Garrus's face among others) and a lot of terrible frame drops (and no, it's not the fault of my PC rig, my PC rig is a true machine-god).


If you want a game that is truly significantly better on the PC in comparison to the console version, play The Witcher 2. Now that's a game PC gamers can brag about!

Iggy Koopa wrote:
If you want a game that is truly significantly better on the PC in comparison to the console version, play The Witcher 2. Now that's a game PC gamers can brag about!

Max Payne 3 was pretty good. The PC install is a whopping 30 GB in size with HD textures (or uncompressed and not blocky, maybe not 4096x4096, but it looks good), HD audio, as well as HD rendered cutscenes.

magnetite wrote:

Iggy Koopa wrote:
If you want a game that is truly significantly better on the PC in comparison to the console version, play The Witcher 2. Now that's a game PC gamers can brag about!

Max Payne 3 was pretty good. The PC install is a whopping 30 GB in size with HD textures (or uncompressed and not blocky, maybe not 4096x4096, but it looks good), HD audio, as well as HD rendered cutscenes.

Another game that's much better on PC is Battlefield 3. The LOW preset is about what the consoles run at. Now, think about that for a minute, and realize that there are four presets, and they just get better from there. I would also say that Crysis 3 is going to be a PC killer app much like the original Crysis. I mean, the MINIMUM specs require either an ATI 5770 or a Geforce 450. That's right, it's DX11 only. PC FTW!!!

Edit: Also, with Max Payne 3, not only do you get textures that go up to 4096x4096 (Rockstar said they're up to four times the resolution of their console brethren, and since consoles usually bounce between 512x512 and 1024x1024, that sounds right), but you also get Tessellation, SSAO and HDAO, MSAA, higher resolution reflections and shadows, and better shaders. Of course, I'm basing part of that on the assumption that the Normal settings are what the consoles run at. That would seem logical, wouldn't it?

draconian139 wrote:As a console player that just recently acquired a gaming PC I'm curious as to what about it is so much better. Is it graphics or do you just prefer mouse+keyboard interface? Or is it the available mods?

Personally, it's all of the above. Oh, and the Steam sales. Don't forget those.

Dwaling wrote:
Another game that's much better on PC is Battlefield 3. The LOW preset is about what the consoles run at. Now, think about that for a minute, and realize that there are four presets, and they just get better from there. I would also say that Crysis 3 is going to be a PC killer app much like the original Crysis. I mean, the MINIMUM specs require either an ATI 5770 or a Geforce 450. That's right, it's DX11 only. PC FTW!!!

Edit: Also, with Max Payne 3, not only do you get textures that go up to 4096x4096 (Rockstar said they're up to four times the resolution of their console brethren, and since consoles usually bounce between 512x512 and 1024x1024, that sounds right), but you also get Tessellation, SSAO and HDAO, MSAA, higher resolution reflections and shadows, and better shaders.

Now there's a game that puts my 4 GB of video RAM to good use.

magnetite wrote:

Dwaling wrote:
Another game that's much better on PC is Battlefield 3. The LOW preset is about what the consoles run at. Now, think about that for a minute, and realize that there are four presets, and they just get better from there. I would also say that Crysis 3 is going to be a PC killer app much like the original Crysis. I mean, the MINIMUM specs require either an ATI 5770 or a Geforce 450. That's right, it's DX11 only. PC FTW!!!

Edit: Also, with Max Payne 3, not only do you get textures that go up to 4096x4096 (Rockstar said they're up to four times the resolution of their console brethren, and since consoles usually bounce between 512x512 and 1024x1024, that sounds right), but you also get Tessellation, SSAO and HDAO, MSAA, higher resolution reflections and shadows, and better shaders.

Now there's a game that puts my 4 GB of video RAM to good use.

Oh man, I WISH I had a GPU with 4 GB of VRAM. Unfortunately, due to certain financial constraints, I'm limited to a wimpy little ATI 5750 with 1 GB of VRAM. Still, it's better than what the consoles have.

Edit: Also, holy shisno you have a lot of VRAM!

Dwaling wrote:
Oh man, I WISH I had a GPU with 4 GB of VRAM. Unfortunately, due to certain financial constraints, I'm limited to a wimpy little ATI 5750 with 1 GB of VRAM. Still, it's better than what the consoles have.

Edit: Also, holy shisno you have a lot of VRAM!

I used to have a 1.28 GB GTX 570, but with using the HD texture packs from Smarteck, I decided to get a GTX 670. Not just for the texture pack memory, but the GTX 670 has also benefitted my flight simulator with better peformance during thunderstorms. So it was a good investment.

The extra video memory can also be used for things like high levels anti-aliasing and such. Not just textures. Less jagged edges, but the performance cuts in half or at least a third with most games, so you need to compensate for that with more GPU speed.

That's one thing I didn't turn up much with Mass Effect 1 was the anti-aliasing (using Nvidia Control Panel. Unreal Engine 3 does not natively support it, but Unreal Engine 3.5 does--which Mass Effect 2 & 3 are based off of).