or else just quit the ME universe, let’s shift the focus of the complaining to some minor issues, that can’t be fathomed from the commercial PoV.
1. So Mass Effect Two was advertised as a “cover-based” shooter. And one would expect that the cover system was well developed in this game and really rewarding for the player. Fat chance.
You just can’t take cover anywhere you like, you have to do it only in certain places where the level designer thought it up for you.
And you can’t even duck anymore (as you could in Mass Effect One) to avoid punishment while you are sprinting toward the nearest granite crate or flop-up floor panel. But watch it! Just as you think you are safe to catch some breath and hitpoints, you may quite unexpectedly leap over the flop-up thing right into the stream of enemy bullets, because the “sprint”, “take cover” and “leap over cover” actions are assigned to the same key!
But don’t you worry. Your survivability in such situations improves greatly once you texmod away the bloody “red veins” and are finally able to see where the enemy fire is coming from.
2. Moar weapons, bigger guns! says BioWare. OK, let’s test the biggest one. The “Widow” anti-materiel sniper rifle.
Range = 98m. 20 shots taken. No effect. What is this? A flintlock musket? If so, it must be a really rusty one.
Another funny thing (this one actually proved to be more funny than annoying in the end): I modded the rate of fire of the Widow to 5 shots per minute (to emulate ME1 cooldown/infinite ammo system), and think what, you can’t take a shot and switch to the SMG or Grenade Launcher. You have to wait all the 12 seconds to jerk the bolt and only then you are free to fire another 12-seconds long salvo or change to something else. Good thing you still can hurl your fireballs at your enemies and listen to Zaeed cursing at your friendly fire when you’re changing position with the long since empty barrel.
3. BioWare seems to not know left from right from time to time.
[EDIT: acknowledgement to this thread here.]
And that makes Commander Shepard (and Cerberus, again!) look bad (“inept” like some people like to put it). I mean the guy in the picture does look dumb enough, but how can a good officer (which any Shepard is supposed to be) let slip away a LEFT HAND SALUTE without even a remark or something? This is really lame, because no amount of space wizardry can change this from a dumbest first-week-in-the-boot-camp mistake to anything remotely normal. The Earth will sooner start to rotate in the opposite direction… Oh, wait…
4. Skip to 0:35
The Earth does rotate in the opposite direction in Mass Effect Two!
To be fair, it’s not so bad as the Backwards Earth in the Luna mission of my beloved ME1, but they say it was an Easter egg… Well, quite a lame one.
Which just gave me a though… A question to Aussies: Is it true that the sun goes counterclockwise in your… perspective?
5. Speaking of the Easter eggs, is the blank photo frame in the Captain’s Quarters supposed to be one? If the artists were too lazy to put something in it for the Loner Shepard, why not remove the frame altogether?
6. Nuff said, personalization items are cool, it just happened the ones I wished to see in *my* cabin most of all (Drew’s books and Shepard VI) just would not appear. And as I had no inclination to waste money on space hamsters, space fish, and space spacecraft models (even after I gibbed myself a real Cerberus funding of 950’000 credits when TIM gave me a multi-billion-credit ship to fly), for the most part of the game I was personalizing the Normandy in this way:
Actually, it was my initial idea for the last playthrough to postpone the Korlus mission until after the “suicide” mission, for the sake of avoiding the paradox of keeping an unwelcome krogan specimen aboard my warship (and of non-linear gameplay, and what-not). No way.
Oh, sorry, I just forgot it’s the 3rd person cover-based shooter we are talking about. Well, in the end of my 5th playthrough I finally decided to get me the “Thresher Maw” medal. Actually, piece of cake, but like Joker summed it up, my krogan headbutt capacity was strained to its limit. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t mind having just one more headbutt as a renegade interrupt option for the Private Pyle in the Normandy’s server room. Just ranting.
7. What the hell happened to the Citadel?
Still, why this
symmetric variant of the Citadel is not the case?
It's very odd the Reapers lack the taste for symmetry, being the self-proclaimed harbingers of eternal Order and all...
P.S. Not saving the released Grunt for ME3 import (just because f*** it), but - with due consideration - saving Morinth (because she prefers standard issue asari commando “leathers” way better than space fashion show outfits with space high-heel-thigh-highs and space cleavages).
P.P.S. And don’t tell me there is no space magic in Mass Effect Two. Because even the most fictional science can’t be capable of this:
This is a joke.
P.P.P.S. I wish to express my thanks to Gibbed, RoadCrewWorker, BiancoAngelo7, Azureum and Ecael for their work of making ME2 a better experience than BioWare wanted it to be.
P.P.P.P.S. And besides all that I hereby pronounce Mass Effect One to have been a better product than Mass Effect Two IN EVERY WAY, except for graphics and FPS*. Namely, Mass Effect One was better at Writing (main plot, side quests, dialogues, codex entries, planet descriptions), Art (armor/outfits, explosions/special effects, menus, loading screens, HUD, planet description screens), Music, Gameplay (role-playing elements, shooter elements, universe exploration elements, level design, helmet toggle, mini-games), and also user interface (Main menu, controls, HUD, minimap, hotkeys, console commands)
P.P.P.P.P.S.:
_______________
* FPS for “frame per second [ratio]”.
Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 26 juin 2010 - 07:21 .
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