CoryHolmes

Don't forget that Mass Effect almost certainly will have downloadable content in the form of new planets, missions, side quests, etc. to whet the appetites between the actual games. That should keep people happy during the long winter nights, unlike Halo which left us all flapping in the wind with a giant "to be continued" sign. I'm more interested in figuring how they'll make the Mass Effect 2 story take into account all the possible variations that each player can/did play through in the first game. Knights of the Old Republic II did that with a line of dialog where you could specify which route Lord Revan took in the first game.

He speaketh the trutheth. At least I'm not the only one I even took a few days off of work to get a block of free time One of the places this game falls a bit flat on is the number of different actions that happen due to your responses. As you said, some of them are very obvious, but there should be more results due to choices the player makes. Once again, so true. I've played most of my game through with Ashley and Wrex, and I really like Ash's sense of humour. "Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. Actually, it's not that nice a place to visit now that I think about it." Next time around, I think I'll take Garrius and Wrex to see how they interact (since we all know that Turrians and Krogans just love each other).

No, they only speak in burbles and blips.

But we get major Boxing Day sales to make up for it.

I hate that. It's too destracting from what's on the screen that it becomes hard to figure out exctly what's happeneing (a complaint often leveled against the Transformers film). It also ruins any sort of suspension of disbelief, too.

But like Firefly (and unlike BSG) it does so with subtlety, and not with all the grace of a 2x4 to the face.

That Legioss still has the mosquito-like nose, and the Soldier mode still looks like someone put it in a vice and stretched it out. It doesn't look terrible, mind you, but not something that I'm going to spend vast amounts of money on.

Hopefully some of those Mass Effect issues can be corrected with DLC and patches. I'm reading some of the posts on their forums and apparently they had to cut out lots and lots of stuff in order to make the deadline. Hopefully this means now they'll have a better chance of getting it into ME 2 and ME 3 since they've already worked (most) of the kinks out of the engine.

Here you go. It's hard to tell, but the shocks really do connect the forearm plates to the shoulders and thus provide the support and strength to the power armour.

Also, the boots telescope in battloid mode, so the rider isn't bearing all the weight on his own fleshy bits.

If you look at the battloid mode picture on page 1, you can clearly see a gap between the hand-guard/shoulder area and the main body. Definitly is detachable.

After this, I'm going to be chomping at the bit for a VHT/Spartas. If it transformed, all the better. Captain, will you be taking pictures and let all us non-skilled types the chance to see how it's done?

More than they're worth, less than we're willing to pay.

At the moment, I'm looking on getting one from Toynami and one from Megahouse before I consider going any of the other models. I like the proportions on the Toynami Rider and hate the ones on the Megahouse version. But the Megahouse version seems to be more accurate.

Five days, 13 hours, and 56 minutes until I can buy it. But who's counting? And yes, I still blame you for this. One of the things I'm looking for in Mass Effect is how they say that the main story will be the same no matter how you play. Instead of being able to save the galaxy or rule the galaxy, your job is to save it, period. You can choose to be slow, meticulous, and overall a goodie-goodie, or you can choose to step on a few toes for sake of expediency. But trillions of lives are on the line. Do a few toes really matter? Plus with the converrsation system, playing as a Bad Cop should get you some humourous dialog options

Nice to know I'm not the only one to do that

I think I'd believe that more if I hadn't seen what they'd done to the Invid mecha, giving it that weird non-accurate texture and trying to tell us it was "better".

The reviews I've seen have skewered the story and how it was given away within the first five minutes.

I hated the way CMs Beta looked like someone put it in a vice and squished it front to back; too short lengthwise and too tall height-wise. That more than any other specific design feature made me hate it. Same thing with their Alpha, it was way too tall and skinny, which resulted in a stretched out fighter mode.

No digital camera, sorry. My cellphone takes crap pictures that don't scale very well. But look around the internet, there should be review sites with tons of pictures for you.

I should clarify, by defect-free I mean that the joints are tight and there's no noticable paint miss-applications. it hasn't fallen apart with transformation nor exploded in the box during shipping. It still has the normal design issues like the bannana back. But I still count myself lucky given the horror stories.

I still prefer this design to Beagle/Megahouse with that freakishly long neck and other exxaterated joints. I'll probably end up getting several of each, but it's just a matter of taste.

The only problem is that I really don't like CMs design for the Alpha and Beta. Too wonky and artsy for my taste. I was lucky enough to get a defect-free MPC Alpha and I love it to death.

I don't even rate GITS that high up the list. The Stand Alone Complex series' are great, but I wholly diislike the first movie and can't bring myself to watch the second. To me, GITS is over-hyped and purile.

Right now I'm using Halo3 to fill up time until Mass Effect comes out. That game is going to consume many, many more hours of my life than is recommeneded by the Surgeon General.