I'm gonna tell you a story, one that as of yesterday has been
concluded. It's about me, who stupidly forgot to move his Mass Effect
saves over to a safe location before blowing away my PC and rebuilding
it from scratch. I do this about twice a year to keep everything fresh
and running smoothly.
The solution sounds easy enough right? Just replay the games! Well
there are a few problems with that idea. The first of which is that Mass
Effect is not a very good game. Its gameplay is slow and boring. Don't
even get me started on the Mako (the atrocious vehicle sections in Mass
Effect 1).
My next thought was to just download a save off a website that had
all the choices I made when I originally played Mass Effect. This was
going well until I learned that Mass Effect 3 would require Origin. No
thank you. I've heard way too many horror stories about Origin that I
don't want to risk paying $60 for nothing.
So there goes Mass Effect on the PC. What could I do next? Well I
could buy the game on the PS3! The comic it had allowed me to bypass
playing Mass Effect 1 while getting all the choices I wanted. It also
came will all the DLC (except Arrival which was released after the PS3
version) that I'd bought and paid for on PC. All for the excellent price
of $20. Everything was falling into place perfectly.
Well I get home from the store, pop it in, and wait a ridiculously
long time for the game to install. When it's finally done, I go to input
my code for the DLC. Welp, the PSN is down. I totally forgot about
that, but fine. I wait until 12:30 AM EST for the store to come back
online. I go to put my code in and it rejects it. At first I thought the
letter were case-sensitive (sometimes the codes are, it's rather odd).
So I input the code again, got rejected. The messages was different than
the standard "not valid" message. It said the code may have expired. I
didn't think these download codes could expire...
Turns out they can. On the fine print of the paper it says the code
expire January 1, 2012. Perfect. I then went online to find out if it
was possible to still redeem the code. Most people didn't seem to have a
problem redeeming the codes after their expiration date, but every once
in awhile I'd come across someone on a forum who was unable to get the
DLC. Nearly defeated, someone suggested I try an online chat with an EA
support person.
I spent an hour "on the line" with someone who talked like a robot.
It was all rather awkward, like the whole thing was automated and
scanned my messages for keywords with which to reply to. Anyways, he
started telling me that the DLC was in my account and that the code
should work. N0t the case. There still isn't any DLC in my account and
the code still doesn't work. I gave up once it hit 2 AM and my head was
ready to explode from a major headache.
And now we're here, the day after where I'm ready to go back and
return my copy. Or trade it in rather since I opened it and I can't
fully return it. At least I'll get something out of it (I'm expected
about $5). It simply isn't worth it to spend all that money for DLC on
the PC that I've already paid for on the PS3. I also don't want to risk
my money buying ME 3 on Origin. So I'm done, and will simply find out
how everything ends on YouTube. Chances are it'll be better that way as I
won't have to play through awful corridor shooting sections.
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