Mass Effect: ?BRING DOWN THE SKY? Now Available.

[warcrow]

Just got this press release from EA--can't wait to try it out!

FREE DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT NOW AVAILABLE

FOR MASS EFFECT PC



?BRING DOWN THE SKY? EXPANDS THE MASS EFFECT ADVENTURE



Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (July 29, 2008) ? Leading video game developer BioWare?, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), has announced that ?Bring Down the Sky,? the first piece of downloadable content for the award-winning space epic Mass Effect?, is now available for PC gamers to download free1 of charge.



Fully optimized for the PC, ?Bring Down the Sky? is the first in a series of planned downloadable content that will further expand the Mass Effect story and universe. It includes a new uncharted world that introduces the deadly Batarian alien race, approximately 90 minutes of new gameplay and an original soundtrack. Instructions on how to download and install the new content is available at http://masseffect.bioware.com/downloadablecontent/. ?Bring Down the Sky? is currently available for international languages including English, Spanish, Italian and German, with additional language versions coming soon.



The storyline for the new content begins as Batarian extremists have hijacked a mobile asteroid station in the Asgard system, setting it on a collision course with the nearby colony world of Terra Nova. Only Commander Shepard can save the millions of innocent civilians before the asteroid completes its deadly descent.



Originally released for the Xbox 360? videogame and entertainment system, ?Bring Down the Sky? has received critical acclaim as one of the ?must have? downloadable expansion packs. Mass Effect has also received critical acclaim throughout the world with more than 80 awards including Console Game of the Year and Role-Playing Game of the Year, with the PC version achieving several perfect 10/10 scores and an overall review average of over 90%2 (http://masseffect.bioware.com/previewsawards/).



PC gamers can download and install ?Bring Down the Sky? by simply launching their registered copy of Mass Effect for the PC and following the instructions at the launch screen. For more information about Mass Effect, please visit www.masseffect.com.

 

[s44]

And the patch! Awesome.

EDIT: Hah, it looks like the forums crashed. I guess this is what yesterday's server downtime was for, though.

 

[TridenT]

Oh who gives a F, 90 minutes? Honestly... LAME. 90 minutes = 1 hour 30 minutes... That's like a short movie.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
Oh who gives a F, 90 minutes? Honestly... LAME. 90 minutes = 1 hour 30 minutes... That's like a short movie.

Well, at least it is free on the pc... the 360ers have to pay for it. A free Bioware adventure pack (even if it lasts only 90 minutes) is good.

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
Oh who gives a F, 90 minutes? Honestly... LAME. 90 minutes = 1 hour 30 minutes... That's like a short movie.

no, it's like a FREE movie. it's better than say, downloadable content to change the color of your uniform

 

[s44]

Both the patch and the DLC seem to have texture issues. Hold off for a bit.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Hopefully the patch will allow me to actually play the game...

 

[chizow]

Nice! Any patch notes? There's definitely some quirks with this game, but nothing game-breaking that I found. The biggest challenge was getting EAX to work bc the config tool is buggy. Oddly, upgrading to a GTX 280 got rid of the fuzzy noise on my X-Fi when loading which was my only major gripe while playing through the first time.

 

[Piuc2020]

The patch notes are incredibly disappointing, basically they didn't fix anything meaningful and added lava texture issues on top of that.

People are still getting rendering thread exception and general protection faults as well as freezes. Seriously, why can't they focus on preparing a big juicy patch, the 90 minute DLC can wait.

 

[chizow]

Hmm I'll definitely check it out when I get home.

Also see if these help your problems at all 177.79 Beta from NV

They support all 8-series and higher cards. The one with official 8-series PhysX support will not be avail until Aug. 5th or so. Although the software PhysX titles like Mass Effect don't benefit from GPU PhysX yet, overwriting and changing the libraries can definitely have an adverse impact on the game.

 

[Kev]

Why is this free for the PC? What the fuck?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Kev
Why is this free for the PC? What the fuck?

The 360 had Mass Effect and Bring Down the Sky before they were released to the PC. This is Bioware's way of saying sorry for the delay (while they count the cash that Microsoft payed them for timed exclusivity).

 

[Kev]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: Kev
Why is this free for the PC? What the fuck?

The 360 had Mass Effect and Bring Down the Sky before they were released to the PC. This is Bioware's way of saying sorry for the delay (while they count the cash that Microsoft payed them for timed exclusivity).

heh... More like Bioware's (and every other game maker) saying "We can screw over our customers with DLC on consoles because most of them don't know any better"

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: chizow
The biggest challenge was getting EAX to work bc the config tool is buggy.

Don't use the tool at all! It messes stuff up. Use the in-game config menu and manually edit the files if necessary, but don't launch the tool.

 

[Piuc2020]

Originally posted by: Kev
Why is this free for the PC? What the fuck?

Because we PC gamers didn't take the whole payed DLC shit because it's never been that way on PCs.

10 million console gamers, on the other hand, payed happily for a COD4 map pack.

The point is, Bioware/EA can get away with stuff like these on consoles, charging for maps and stuff like these in PCs is unheard of.

In any case we deserve as much for the instability of the game on the PC.

 

[Canai]

I can't wait to try it out!

 

[chizow]

OK, installed these and played for a bit and noticed a few things:

1) If you tweaked your BioEngine.ini at all, make sure you SAVE your existing one or are at least familiar with what you changed and why. The patch basically defaulted all my settings and added a few new things in there as well. I had an older .ini and did a quick glance over and compare to reset my settings, but I wouldn't recommend just recopying the saved to the new one since there are some new settings in there.

2) Start-up is even faster for me now. Its down to 8.5s or something. I originally thought my load time dropping from 36s to 18s was due solely to RAID 0 but it does look like there's some memory management issues as well. Alt-Tabbing is also much faster and more responsive.

3) In-game settings. Make sure you change in-game settings, then exit the game and launch again. Textures look like crap otherwise and the game needs to restart for new settings to take effect. This might be what people were referring to with messed up textures.

4) Shadows. It looks like they turned off lots of the settings in the .ini to compensate for the ugly self-shadows when Dynamic Shadows are enabled. I just increased min and max resolution to get them to look better and the rest of the dynamic shadows are done well and add significantly to eye candy.

They also managed not to break EAX in the patch, for which I was grateful.

 

[TheVrolok]

w00t! Now that I'm moved I wanna get my comp set up to get this going!

 

[Excelsior]

Argh. I go on vacation and this is released. Will check this out when I get back.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Any changes to the inventory screen? That really needed some work - basic stacking, sorting and filtering options should be there, and preferable more then 7-8 items on screen at once. And a 'convert all to omni-gel' button, considering how Diablo-esque the useful stuff to garbage ratio is.

 

[Sylvanas]

Awesome! I have been waiting forever for this. Time to continue on with my 2nd play through as a Soldier.

 

[s44]

To fix the texture issue: delete the upk file in My Documents/Bioware/Mass Effect/Published/CookedPC

(Not the install directory, the user directory)

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
Any changes to the inventory screen? That really needed some work - basic stacking, sorting and filtering options should be there, and preferable more then 7-8 items on screen at once. And a 'convert all to omni-gel' button, considering how Diablo-esque the useful stuff to garbage ratio is.

No changes there, that I noticed.

I did have issues with sound, though a sound driver update fixed the issue (Realtek HD on a GA-P35-DS3L r.2).

I still have SUPER long load/alt-tab times (20-30 seconds - I haven't times it) but they do seem a little shorter than they were, with a 3870(512) and a raptor X.

Nice little bit of added content. Stress there on little.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: rivan

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
Any changes to the inventory screen? That really needed some work - basic stacking, sorting and filtering options should be there, and preferable more then 7-8 items on screen at once. And a 'convert all to omni-gel' button, considering how Diablo-esque the useful stuff to garbage ratio is.

No changes there, that I noticed.

I did have issues with sound, though a sound driver update fixed the issue (Realtek HD on a GA-P35-DS3L r.2).

I still have SUPER long load/alt-tab times (20-30 seconds - I haven't times it) but they do seem a little shorter than they were, with a 3870(512) and a raptor X.

Nice little bit of added content. Stress there on little.

Yep it was very short,however it was free added content so I'm not complaining,content wise (without spoilers)I liked it.

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: rivan

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
Any changes to the inventory screen? That really needed some work - basic stacking, sorting and filtering options should be there, and preferable more then 7-8 items on screen at once. And a 'convert all to omni-gel' button, considering how Diablo-esque the useful stuff to garbage ratio is.

No changes there, that I noticed.

I did have issues with sound, though a sound driver update fixed the issue (Realtek HD on a GA-P35-DS3L r.2).

I still have SUPER long load/alt-tab times (20-30 seconds - I haven't times it) but they do seem a little shorter than they were, with a 3870(512) and a raptor X.

Nice little bit of added content. Stress there on little.

Yep it was very short,however it was free added content so I'm not complaining,content wise (without spoilers)I liked it.

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy for added content, especially free content. The production quality of this content is also very high so I'm doubly thankful for it.

:thumbsup: