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[Leon_Shep]

Posted this in a topic i made earlier just in case it gets locked because it's kind of similar.


Ok just finished Mass Effect on my Mac and I'm half way through Mass Effect 2 and here's my thoughts so far. Mass Effect 1 was amazing at first I was like meh but then it really started to grow on me, it reached a point I couldn't even put the pad down and I was growing a homeless man beard not leaving my room for the whole weekend. I had alot of fun with that game only gripes I had was how easy it was to die and regretfully picking the Vanguard and not being able to use the assault rifle. Once I started levelling up though and adding powers to my ammo I noticed I was surviving more battles and kicking alot more ass, It felt so rewarding taking enemies out knowing how hard they were when you have no clue how to play the game. 
Now Mass Effect 2 it's a very good action/shooter but I can't help but feel something missing, something from the first game not just the RPG elements but there was a magic the first game had that this game seems to lack, i'm only half way through but already I can tell that me being able to put the pad down while playing this and not being able to put the pad down while playing the first one means something is wrong somewhere. I'll just post this review I read about Mass Effect 2 it pretty much echo's almost exactly how I feel about it so far.

When a really good sequel comes out, like say, Ghostbusters 2 , Speed 2, or Transformers 2, people often forget the original inspiration that made the series great.
In this case, the ground breaking excellence of Mass Effect is getting lost in this swirl of unrestrained, hysterical gushing over the sequel.  These aren’t legitimate reviews we’re reading of Mass Effect 2; we are reading a tween girl’s review of a Jonas Brothers concert on her blog.  In short, it’s embarrassing.
People have forgotten what made Mass Effect such a great game, but I’m here to remind you.
And no, it doesn’t involve mining.
The original entry in the series, while being partially a shooter, is at its heart, a role playing game.  This is almost completely erased in the sequel.  Old reliable aspects of RPGs, such as searching for loot, are almost completely gone.  Experience points are plentiful in ME, and as such you level up more often, not just when some douche with a cigarette decides the mission is over.  Getting XP for each enemy killed and for exploring everything for your codex (and more XP) was a tremendous joy and for some unknown reason BioWare has deprived us of this joy.
Speaking of which, BioWare seemed hell-bent on turning the Mass Effect series into a balls-out shooter that dudes in frat houses could enjoy.  Thus, the combat system was both slowed downed and dumb downed.  While the actual fighting in ME does not flow as melodiously as in the sequel, the thoughtful, slow combat system in the original game is more strategic and less like other games we’ve already played. (*Cough*GearsofWar*Cough*)
In the original game, the ability to use multiple powers without waiting for them to all recharge at once only added to this strategy.  In ME2, if you charge your barrier, you have to wait to use pull, while in the first game you could use many powers in a row, offsetting the combat weakness of the Adept and Engineer classes.  Oh, and did I mention that you could actually duck in the original game?  That was useful.
Space travel in the original game also represents a better model than ME 2.  In the premiere game, you just pick the area of the traverse you want to go to and BOOM you’re there.  In ME 2, you may have to stop at a fuel depot?  Really?  My multiquadrillion credit space ship, run by the uber-powerful Cerberus Corporation needs to pause at an interstellar truck stop every once in a while?  Worst of all is the cheesy, little version of the Normandy that you navigate around.  The Mako may be silly, but at least it’s not this miniature craft from a random ‘80s game on the Atari 2600.
ME also had a manageable number of characters.  In fact, in a single play through, you could actually use each one of the characters for a significant amount of time.  ME2 simply has too many characters that you will probably never use, and very few that you’ll actually get to know.  BioWare’s character development is legendary and ME2 doesn’t do it justice with the misguided mantra that “more is more.”  There are too many characters, and the player never has sufficient time to get to know any of them well enough.
Driving the Mako around, while ridiculous, is about 15 times more fun than Mining in ME2.  Don’t even try to disagree with that.  You’re lying to me, you’re lying to yourself, and you’re making your mother cry.  Stop it.  Mining in ME2 is a terrible, terrible idea and how it slipped past BioWare’s quality control will forever remain a mystery.
The Flagship of the series clearly has a better villain – Admit it: Saren kicks the crap out of the Collectors.  Sure, we all know the Reapers are behind everything, but these bug people are your main antagonist throughout the majority of the sequel.  Saren had personality.  He was a dick, and you wanted to take him down.  I’m fairly confident that gamers did not have the same feeling toward the Collectors.  I know I didn’t.  I didn’t really care.  I just wanted to finish the game and hopefully get it on with every possible female crew member.  (Thane is also very handsome.)
While in some ways ME 2 seems bigger, ME feels more like an open world to explore.  The Traverse in general seems to open up with endless mission in the original, while the missions in ME 2 feel compartmentalized, linear and directed. Quite often in ME when you fly into a new system, Admiral Hackett will call on you for an extra mission.  Again, this leads to the creation of a universe that seems more open and massive.  Even the dreaded elevators in the original game not only serve to mask loading time, they also allow you to hear announcements that were often directly entered into your codex for additional side quests.
In ME2 you are on a clear path from the very beginning of the game, and for those of us that enjoyed the open world RPG aspect of the original, this is very disappointing.  Even an area like the Citadel, which was an amazing place to explore in the first game, has become constricted and goal-oriented in the second game.
Defeating ME feels like a real accomplishment.  Saren is vanquished, you’ve proven the galaxy wrong about a human Spectre, and the Reapers have been repelled for the time being.  In stark contrast, too much of ME 2 is building up to a payoff that never comes.  You spend the entire game hunting for the ridiculously large team that you assemble for one final mission that takes about twenty minutes.  Twenty hours of going from planet to planet, finding allies and gaining their loyalty, just for one relatively short mission?
ME, on the other hand, has three main missions (all of which feel very important and unique), and one amazingly well constructed sequence on Virmire involving a nuke and the loss of possibly two crew members.  Finally, the game leads you to Ilos and a game changing twist that leaves you fighting for your survival (and the survival of all living creatures) as the Citadel burns around you.  It is epic in every way that the ending to ME 2 wasn’t.
Finally, the level design and combat mechanic suffer from an extreme case of “Cliffy B Syndrome,” that is to say, it’s too much like Gears of War.  Not only is the cover system strikingly similar, the landscape of every area is deformed by an unnatural occurrence of chest-high barricades behind which you can take cover.  No fight is ever a surprise in ME 2.  Instead, you always know there’s a fight coming when you see a bunch of random objects that look like they’re about the right height to crouch behind.

The counter-argument here is simple and I’m not sure how to address it: Mass Effect 2 is almost uniformly more fun to play, especially during combat situations.  Admittedly, this is a pretty big deal.  However, what BioWare has taken out of the Mass Effect franchise should not be forgotten.  I won’t forget it as I play through the original for the eighth time.

Mass Effect 2 is an awesome game but I felt way more immersed into the first one. I hope they at least put some of that "magic" back into Mass Effect 3.

[Gatt9]

Lunatic LK47 wrote...

Coming from a guy who is condescending who wants to impose his definition of an RPG and calls them idiots to the point it being your catchprhase practically, and then acts like an elitist snob by saying it's "his way or the highway" and acting innocent for being righteously butt-hurt, I find that hilarious.

You make a habit of linking to FPS marketing articles demanding that RPG's should play like an FPS,  you outright refuse to invest any time to learning how to play an RPG,  and you insist everyone play Shooters because "It's stupid for me to have to learn how to play a game",  and then you call other people elitist?

Seriously,  if there's anyone "Elitist" on this board,  you would be him.  You absolutely refuse to learn how to play an RPG,  consistently demonstrate that you hate RPGs and like Shooters,  and anyone who disagrees that every RPG should become a Shooter you curse at.

The rest of us are actually having discussions on what constitutes RPGs and to what extent.  You sir,  are the Elitist.  One of the worst sort actually,  not only are you Elitist,  but you even refuse to learn anything on the subjects you demand everyone else conform to.

[Furtled]

AlanC9 wrote...
Well, you've got the same freedom to define character that you ever did. It's just that characters who aren't going all-out P or R won't be very good at Charm or Intimidate. It's not great design, but I wasn't super-bothered by it because I don't really worry about min-maxing too much.

*snipping my *shudder* planet scanning bit*

I can see why they went wrong here. Exploration in ME1 didn't make a heck of a lot of sense. Planet scanning was an attempt to integrate this into the main story rather than just having it there because it's supposed to be there. Would just giving you the resources the moment you orbit have been any better? My bet is it would have just made it look even sillier. (Being silly didn't matter in ME1 because credits were pretty much worthless in the game, so you could just skip the whole business)

Yeah - the charm/intimidate points thing isn't a game breaker for me, just something I was thinking about when comparing the two games, probably more an illusion of freedom opposed to actual freedom thing.

On the exploration, it worked for me, you're out there in the universe exploring other planets on the way to shooting things/just after shooting things (yay Star Trek overtones) but that's likely to be personal preference. I always like having a poke around game worlds and some of the planets were utterly gorgeous, plus it added to the 'I'm a space marine' role play feel for me. Vaguely worded journal entries justifying the hunt for materials and other space fun were fine and it was fun to imagine the state of the ground team after some of the 'oops just fell off a mountain' moments in the Mako.

Personally it would have felt more in line with the character and situation to have something like 88mphSlayer suggested upthread (assuming exploration was totally off the menu) although one planet at a time would be plenty for me:

88mphSlayer wrote...
should've had a "shoot and retrieve" method, the ship automatically scans and finds the resource hotspots, then you drop retrieval drones who automatically goto those hotspots and then work in the background while you go do missions, then you receive a notification the resources are ready to pick up and you go back to retrieve the drones and resources, maybe have an upgrade system where the drones can pick up more resources, mine faster, or automatically ship the resources to your ship so you never have to go back to the planet, also give the player the ability to do this to more than 1 planet at a time, have some drones break after awhile so you're getting new ones at the supply depots

But like I said, everyones idea of an RPG differs and my preferences aren't necessarily any better or worse than anyone elses

Modifié par Furtled, 09 mars 2011 - 06:31 .

[The Spamming Troll]

SpaceDesperado wrote...

well said spamming troll, i like the Mass Effect 2: Episode 2 analogy

i know right!

its almost like ME2 didnt use anything established from ME1 other then the name shepard. i really feel like ME3 is going to be a disapointment, which is crazy, because how do you screw up a game the already had ME1 to establish everything its sequal would have needed. ME2 is nothing but a shell of ME1. it might seem fine to some people, but when i bought a game labeled Mass Effect 2, i wasnt expecting gears of space.

ME2 gives me blue balls. honestly. i want mass effect 2, not stupid mcstupid game.

Modifié par The Spamming Troll, 10 mars 2011 - 01:03 .

[Vena_86]

Neither game had great depth in character customization but ME2 just crossed the line and had way too little. You can play the whole game with the same armor and weapon on insanity from start to finish without any reason to ever change your equipment. It's missing the feel of progression which is key to RPGs. I don't really feel my character becomes stronger over the course of the game in ME2. The upgrade system is pointless as you never have to care for what to upgrade (just upgrade all).

I don't feel like my Shepard is growing in power to a satisfactory level.
Also there is very little variation in how your character plays and acts. You can't focus on speed or health/resistance (3% with a armor piece doesn't do anything) or abilities. You can't make your character a masterfull technician, tactician or caster. It is the same for every player. There is only one exclusive ability for each class (do techs even have a special ability?). Everything else is shared among everyone over and over again with a tiny selection of unique powers in total.
ME1 didn't have too much in that regard to begin with.
ME2 just crossed the line and left the game with almost no progression and customization, which are key RPG strengths that are beeing translated into other genres for the past 10 years. Going backwards is NOT good.

[Lunatic LK47]

Gatt9 wrote...
I love making a habit of saying people are stupid for not understanding an RPG,  and I love to insist that everyone play an archaic RPG set in a fictional Dark Ages fantasy setting just because "it makes the player more intelligent and will make them love the genre." If you think otherwise, screw you."

Seriously, I love to be an elitist just to stroke my ego for being so smarter than the average joe. I love to twist other peoples' words just to make them look like idiots and absolutely refuse to do proper research about real life events and military training. I always believe that RPGs should *ALWAYS* have a convoluted system just because it makes us look smarter. Anyone who disagrees should play sub-par overmarketed games.

Modifié par Lunatic LK47, 10 mars 2011 - 02:41 .

[Iakus]

Lunatic LK47 wrote...

Gatt9 wrote...
I love making a habit of saying people are stupid for not understanding an RPG,  and I love to insist that everyone play an archaic RPG set in a fictional Dark Ages fantasy setting just because "it makes the player more intelligent and will make them love the genre." If you think otherwise, screw you."

Seriously, I love to be an elitist just to stroke my ego for being so smarter than the average joe. I love to twist other peoples' words just to make them look like idiots and absolutely refuse to do proper research about real life events and military training. I always believe that RPGs should *ALWAYS* have a convoluted system just because it makes us look smarter. Anyone who disagrees should play sub-par overmarketed games.

I guess it's true:  Haters gonna hate

[Il Divo]

iakus wrote...
I guess it's true:  Haters gonna hate

Well said, as always, Iakus.

[Bourne Endeavor]

The Spamming Troll wrote...

i dont think anyone is here saying they want 1 option in terms of a weapon. nobody wants just the avenger. we want more depth in weapons like modding or even color schemes.

personally i hate the fact that the 3 so called caster classes get stuck with sidearms. if theres no advantage of an adepts skills over an infiltrators, then why does the adept get lesser weapons?

Actually, I believe having one solitary weapon open to an enormous customization system would be genius, provided it was properly implemented. Consider for a moment everyone begins the game with the same Assault Rifle yet through their own choices develop it to adhere to their individual preferences. We could alter the RoF, DPS, accuracy, probable protection penetration, ammo capacity and even add a scope, silencer or change the appearance based on a cosmetic creation system.

Essentially by end game although you may only retain a single gun throughout the adventure. It has been built to precisely your satisfaction and preference. Virtually no game has attempted such a unique design due to the level of depth and bold nature behind it.

AdmiralCheez wrote...

Agreed.  I don't pay fifty bucks for an expansion pack.

If Mass Effect 3 plays akin to ME2, wherein the prior entries in the series were forgotten, such as no returning squad members. Then you pretty much already have.

My troll post.

Modifié par Bourne Endeavor, 10 mars 2011 - 04:59 .

[The Spamming Troll]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

The Spamming Troll wrote...

i dont think anyone is here saying they want 1 option in terms of a weapon. nobody wants just the avenger. we want more depth in weapons like modding or even color schemes.

personally i hate the fact that the 3 so called caster classes get stuck with sidearms. if theres no advantage of an adepts skills over an infiltrators, then why does the adept get lesser weapons?

Actually, I believe having one solitary weapon open to an enormous customization system would be genius, provided it was properly implemented. Consider for a moment everyone begins the game with the same Assault Rifle yet through their own choices develop it to adhere to their individual preferences. We could alter the RoF, DPS, accuracy, probable protection penetration, ammo capacity and even add a scope, silencer or change the appearance based on a cosmetic creation system.

Essentially by end game although you may only retain a single gun throughout the adventure. It has been built to precisely your satisfaction and preference. Virtually no game has attempted such a unique design due to the level of depth and bold nature behind it.

woah. are you sure your not me posting while im sleep walking? ive been thinking about that idea for a long time! starting with a pistol and adding mods turning it into whatever you desire would be alot of fun. even if its just a sidearm, we could all have our "own" version of a sidearm. but then ask yourself, why not let all the guns be modable. oh crap, ME did have modable weapons. oops!

[rubyreader]

Commander Waha wrote...

jbg927 wrote...

Yeah but slam only works on an enemy with no defenses so it's useless IMO. I think both games complement each other and I love the fact that they are not the exact same game but with a different story

Choose any other power then. Warp is a good example. Warp 2 is much better than warp 1. Of course the biggest increase is in Warp 4, but in ME1 warp 10 wasn't much better than warp 9 or warp 8.

For my RPGing I like how Etrian Odyssey did it....where you got a power and it gave you some new skill, but you had to level it 4 more times before it got really good, and then had to decide if you wanted to devote 5 more levels of advancement (ie you only got one skill point per level) to make it maxed. The steps in between were usually piddly....so most of your points were divided into 10, 5, and 1 pt chunks.

For me very gradual improvements in skills with periodic Eureka moments are how I learn anyways so it makes sense, but YMMV.

[rubyreader]

AlanC9 wrote...

Furtled wrote...
Still undecided on not being able to spread points in charm and intimidate, would probably need to play through both again and consider how that impacts freedom in defining the PC's character the way I want it.

Well, you've got the same freedom to define character that you ever did. It's just that characters who aren't going all-out P or R won't be very good at Charm or Intimidate. It's not great design, but I wasn't super-bothered by it because I don't really worry about min-maxing too much.

Planet scanning however, I grew to loathe, mainly because logically I couldn't get my head around why a ship with automated systems and yeomen aplenty wasn't capable of running an autoscan and sending out probes on it's own; let alone why a multi-billion credit asset was being wasted scanning planets when they really did have better things to do - role play wise that and the loading screens were the biggest immersion breakers for me in ME2.

I can see why they went wrong here. Exploration in ME1 didn't make a heck of a lot of sense. Planet scanning was an attempt to integrate this into the main story rather than just having it there because it's supposed to be there. Would just giving you the resources the moment you orbit have been any better? My bet is it would have just made it look even sillier. (Being silly didn't matter in ME1 because credits were pretty much worthless in the game, so you could just skip the whole business)

I don't know Cerberus had already dropped billions on you to help save the galaxy and more importantly humanity from a present threat of unknown future peril. Making you scrounge around looking for ore and looking around looking for random weapons to learn upgrades in light of that threat seems more silly actually. It's one thing to be frugal when other people DON'T believe in you, another when a mega billionaire does.

Modifié par rubyreader, 10 mars 2011 - 06:51 .