To be blunt: disappointment I can understand, but when people state point-blank that ME1 is actually a better game on the whole than its sequel... yeah, that's where my open-mindedness comes to a swift and violent end--violent enough to sheer the anchor off a geth dropship, if you catch my meaning.
I've given this a good deal of thought over the past month or so (when you're unemployed, you have plenty of time to waste thinking about the videogames you could be playing if only your little brother weren't hogging the damn Xbox), but it wasn't until I finished my recent Hardcore run of Mass Effect 1 that I realized just how many aspects of ME1 drive me BATCRAP FUDGING UP-THE-MOUNTAINSIDE MADCAPS INSANE. And that's why I think Mass Effect 2 is, objectively, a better game in spite of its lacking aspects (in summary: less emphasis on exploration, more focus on episodic character-based sideplots and less on the main plot, greater balance in focus toward action and less toward RPG elements in general, and so on, and so forth). I say "objectively" because the sheer volume of problems that can't be defended or justified is just too great for its high points to really make up for them.
And yeah, some of you may be thinking something involving the words "wall of text" about now. Stuff it, I'm a nerd and I reserve the right to be unnecessarily long-winded.
1. The first and most obvious issue is the unforgivable repetition in regards to sidequests. Setting aside the moon-buggy portions leading up to them, consider the sidequests themselves. There are a grand total of five structures which see frequent re-use throughout the game:
- Exhibit A: The Four-Room Warehouse (as seen on over 9000 planets over the course of the game).
- Exhibit B: The Underground Facility (which comes in two varieties: "filled with miscellaneous mechanical things" and "filled with really smucking big crates").
- Exhibit B-point-5: The Cerberus Facility (one big room... wow... and it looks suspiciously like the Underground Facility).
- Exhibit C: Mine Tunnels (home to crime lords, husks, rachni, and a crapload of random crates)
- Exhibit D: The Ship (No matter who's ship it is, it's always the same set of hallways, rooms, and one really big cargo bay).
Now, repeating the same four-and-a-half buildings over and over is irritating enough; when the sidequests inside them consist of occasional interesting dialogue conversations buried in a sea of random enemy groups who like to shout either "I WILL DESTROY YOU!" in horribly unconvincing stock VO (versions for both genders, equally annoying), "ENEMIES EVERYWHERE!" in horribly unconvincing stock VO (versions for both genders, equally annoying... although one wonders what enemies are "everywhere"--all I see are me and my two squadmates all huddled together behind the same crate...), "HOLD THE LINE!" in horribly unconvincing stock VO (apparently only men are epic enough to be commanding officers in Mook Squads) and the krogan growl of "WATCH OUT!", all of which feel the need to repeat themselves approximately once every one-point-thirty-eight-seconds... the blocks of texts that usually pop up to tell the sidequest's stories don't really satisfy. Like, at all. Suffice it to say that the next time I hear the words "ENEMIES EVERYWHERE!", be it in real life or otherwise, I'm going to drop something large and heavy on someone else's big toe.
2. The moon buggy. Punctuating all of the sidequests are massive empty sections of bumpy terrain where you bounce along like a drunk looking for quick-time events to play! There are never any trees, swamps, or other environmental changes beyond the shape of the mountains--just textures, backgrounds, and some meter that occasionally pops up to tell you that getting out of your vehicle in a situation where you wouldn't want to get out of your vehicle anyway is going to get you killed. Beautiful. I never thought I'd miss the random chunks of wilderness Baldur's Gate forced you to wade through between each actual location. At least those kept the gameplay coming at you. As it is, the novelty factor of exploring uncharted worlds didn't last more than two planets for me. It's times like this when I hate being a completionist.
As a side note, why the hell is a sniper rifle so good against a heavily-armored moon-tank, and why the deuce does it make a splashing sound when the bullet hits? Also, I have to sit in place for half a minute and waste 15 omni-gel to repair just enough hull integrity to withstand two hits, and my kinetic barriers take about two years to recharge. Alliance Military vehicle technology sucks.
3. The combat. My god, the combat. There are very few games where I actually actively dislike playing on the upper difficulties and swear off them immediately after unlocking everything associated with their completion, but by god this is one of them. In Mass Effect 2, and in real life for that matter, enemies and squadies strategically (or mindlessly-but-still-at-least-looking-like-they-know-what-they're-doing, anyway) stick behind cover, move from hiding place to hiding place, making an active effort not to get shot. In ME1, your squadmates seem to delight at shooting through walls when they know an enemy is present, or shooting through YOU, and even better, whenever we happen to be in close proximity during a firefight, they always find a way to get between me and the enemy I'm shooting at. ALWAYS. And the 360 version lacks the kind of squadmate-control that would alleviate these issues. The only real use I get out of my squadmates is to use them as a diversion, and to occasionally use one of their powers.
As for the enemies, they love to abuse the fact that "run around like @#$%ing morons" screws up console-controls in a shooter something righteous, especially at close range. And apparently this game's idea of a charging krogan is a krogan with omnidirectional superspeed whom you can neither dodge, shake off, melee, or otherwise avoid (pro tip: save your squadie's biotic "Throw" or "Lift" for the inevitable krogan charge if you happen to hear "WATCH OUT!" amongst the annoyingly-badly-voiced stock voices in the enemy squadron).
4. Inventory: You're Doing It Wrong.
It's great to have a lot of different armors and upgrades and weapons to choose from.
Ten versions of every item is a little much. Especially when the inventory screen scrolls by so slowly...
5. Last but certainly not least: the goddamn achievements are goddamn obnoxious. Want all of the Achievements? Well, for starters, you have to play the game twice, because there's an achievement for that, you know! And then there's the achievement for beating the game on the UNLOCKABLE Hardcore Difficulty and another for the UNLOCKABLE-THROUGH-HARDCORE Insanity difficulty, meaning you have to play three times! Because just letting the player brave Insanity mode on their first playthrough if they so desired to drive themselves mad would just be too kind. But it's a good thing you have three playthroughs on your agenda, because over the course of those playthroughs (and however many more it takes), you must:
- Play a playthrough in which you use each squadmember for pretty much the entire game--as there are six members, you will take at least three playthroughs to do this.
- Play a Paragon run and Renegade run for the obligatory morality-meter achievements.
- Use every single ability in the game 75 times AS SHEPARD, because counting the abilities of your squadmates would make too much sense.
- Use medi-gel 150 times. Yes, that's right, this game has an achievement for failing.
This is, bar none, the worst list of Achievements I've ever had the misfortune to dedicate myself to achieving. The annoying part is, I like this game enough to be obsessively kleptomaniac about it--and its achievements.
In conclusion:
With exception to the achievements, these are all major issues that dominate the experience. Frankly, the only way you can play this game without wasting hours of your life wading through one of the most tedious and repetitive gaming experiences you'll ever encounter in the RPG genre is to avoid sidequesting altogether and just play the main story missions (which are all awesomeness made awesome). And even then the inventory is bound to get under your skin.
Problems like these usually result in games being universally lambasted--the only saving grace is that most of it's purely optional. But if you're going to cite Mass Effect 1's "wide open feel" and all that jazz as a reason for it actually being better than Mass Effect 2... no. Just, no. Absolutely no. Argument invalid. Not valid. Not right. Wrong. Dr. Cox musical levels of wrong.
Say what you want about Mass Effect 2's shortcomings in certain areas--at least that game only ever wasted your time when you were probing planets that weren't Uranus.
Modifié par Solaris Paradox, 04 septembre 2010 - 11:06 .
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