I've been a great fan of Bioware ever since I picked up the first Baldur's Gate in my early youth. Like most of us who continued on to BG2 after BG1, I was absolutely blown away by it. It was so much larger, there was so much more to do, and most importantly - I was having so much more fun while playing it. And I feel Mass Effect 2 did to Mass Effect what BG2 did to Baldur's Gate. That is, it did away with parts that weren't awfully interesting and allowed us to concentrate on what's really important (at least, this is how I feel).
While exploring the vast forests of the Sword Coast in BG1 was a thrilling experience in itself, just like I felt about the Mako initially, they ended up taking too much time away from what I find really fun due to how much of it I had to do. The best parts of most games are when you're engulfed in battle - either feeling supreme yourself, getting all gloaty inside; or when you get completely overwhelmed and might have to reload your game a few times to finally succeed in something that was truly challenging - as well as dialogue and story progression.
This is what the streamlined feel ME2 brought focus on. I spent less time going through menus to see if that new piece of equipment would give me a point or two higher on my stats, less time running around plains wondering where to go, less time getting lost in complex buildings. Instead I was shooting more people, talking to more people and generally progressing much faster.
That upped pace is definitely good.
Also gone were those times I felt I had to bring a certain squad member along just to open chests/caches with goodies in them. No matter my class and no matter who I brought, I could do it (with nice minigames to boot!). Some might feel this makes the characters feel less unique, but that's not my take on it either way. With ME2, I could focus on their personalities and combat abilities without bothering about arbitrary skill points.
On the matter of skill points, we have far less skills this time around. I must admit, first time I gained a level and looked through my skill set, I was distraught. "Where did all my customisation go?" was my very first thought. Then I realised that in this game, I wouldn't gain a level just to feel "oh yay, now my shotgun hurts 2% more". Instead each level up served a much greater purpose and truly made me feel like I was growing. Every skill was important, every skill changed how I approached combat situations or in the case of the evolved class skill - even social situations due to my increased paragon/renegade stats.
This also ultimately leads to more weapons becoming useful, leading to more variety. Since I don't have to spend skill points over the course of the entire game to keep my proficiency with different weapons up to date, I can change weapons back and forth to fit the situation instead of always relying on that one weapon type I have maxed out. And this variety makes the gameplay so much more rewarding.
There is still room for improvement however. When I want to swap out my gear (which I don't have to do often, so this isn't a big issue), it's somewhat of a pain to have to always go back to the Normandy and then go up to the Captain's Cabin, only to change my equipment and then retrace my steps back to where I was. Removing the constant inventory screen fiddling is a great thing that improves the heroic and cinematic feel of Mass Effect, but that does not mean we shouldn't still have easy access to the inventory screen when we want it.
Not to mention, when we pick up new weapons, there are no numbers to help us figure out what these new weapons are good at, exactly. Yes, we get hints from reading the flavour text (did I mention I love the flavour text?), but it's so much easier to compare weapons when we see numbers for spread, firing speed, damage etc. We get numbers when equipping helmets and shoulder pads, so why not give us some numbers for our weapons?
I don't need to get into how the improved cinematic camera movements, the paragon/renegade interrupts and other such obviously great additions add to the game, I feel. Doubt anyone has anything but good things to say about those and you've only had positive feedback on it all.
To me, Mass Effect 2 was fifty or so steps in the right direction. All in all, it was an utter joy to play, the first 360 game I went out to get all achievements for (mind you I certainly didn't play for the achievements, of course
) and it's probably the first game in a long, long time that makes me feel as good as Baldur's Gate 2 did ten years ago. I would've posted this earlier, but I wanted to wait until the initial feel of "wow, new game!" had died down to let me feel some improved perspective PS. Definitely keep the Firewalker for ME3. The later Firewalker missions really gave me a feeling of how amazing the main story missions in ME3 would be if Firewalker parts were integrated into some of them.
Modifié par KiddDaBeauty, 10 avril 2010 - 04:30 .
Retour en haut
