Well, no. I actually have a few gripes with the Suicide Mission, which I'll list here:
1. It was pretty damn easy to get the "perfect ending" if you actually paid attention and played the game.
2. Regardless of whether or not it looked like the Terminator, the final boss wasn't much of a challenge, either.
3. Huzzah! Assault rifles for everyone! Can't wield them in-game? Who cares?!
4. Commander Sherpderp strikes again with the occasional hilariously bad line and logic fail.
... and then some. So yeah, not perfect. However, the Suicide Mission, or rather the concept behind it, was genius, and here's why.
My God, the Variables!
Your survival depended on how well you played the game up to that point. It tested your preparedness, your ability to make command decisions, and the bond between you and your crew. Yes, in many cases, the smart thing to do was obvious (and the Magic Red Circle of Protection mechanic was a bit too simple and repetitive, if you ask me), but seriously, if you did one thing wrong, one of your crewmates was gone. Forever. And if you really f*cked up, you lost. It didn't matter how good you were at shooting stuff--if you weren't ready, you got a game over that hit so hard you had to start over if you wanted to play the next installment in the series! Granted, you had to really, really f*ck up to lose that badly, but the fact that failure was possible, and the fact that every single person on the Normandy could die (except Joker and EDI), even though several of these people could possibly be important in ME3, made things pretty intense.
Now let's crank things up a notch. Pretend this is Mass Effect 3. Replace your squadmates with entire civilizations, the Collectors with an armada of god-like sentient dreadnoughts, a few colonial outposts with the whole damn galaxy, and push the factors that could possibly affect the outcome all the way back to the trouble you got into in ME1. Make things more difficult, the situation more dire, and the solutions less obvious. Epic sh*t, I tell you!
Personalized Cutscenes and Dramatic Tension
All those variables can be hell to program. However, Bioware found a rather slick solution--cutscenes that could be completely changed by something as simple as swapping a character model. Now, you may argue that this is pretty damn cheap, and it would have been, but the way it played out led me to believe it worked well enough. Maybe it had something to do with the music and the pacing or whatever, but even if I know for sure that my fire team leader is both loyal and qualified, I still hold my breath when (s)he takes that bullet in the stomach. Maybe I'm just gullible--an easy audience to manipulate--but each loss or narrow escape still felt real and not all that cut-and-pastey, thanks to some sneaky cinematic tricks. Could use polish, sure, but how often do you find a way to solve a problem that is both economical for you and personal for the player?
Anyway, in one of the GI interviews (I forget which one--here, have the hub page until I cite the proper video), Casey Hudson mentioned that the Suicide Mission was largely an experiment in using this technique. They intend to impliment it on a much grander scale in ME3 and smooth it out in the process. Which is nice. It's a good system, one that won't sacrifice dramatic impact and cinematic quality if implimented properly.
There is No "I" in "Team"
One of my biggest complaints about ME2 was that each squadmate was largely isolated from one another. It's like they each existed in their own little bubble which they only came out of when it was time to solve their daddy issues or you needed someone to spam warp for you. Granted, I loved them all and genuinely cared about them--damn you, Bioware, for duping me into giving a sh*t about an imaginary character--but the least they could do is acknowledge each other's existence more than frickin' twice.
But then, suddenly, we get this:
Suddenly, you have the whole team out at once, working together, and looking to you for command. They discuss strategies, argue with each other, help each other out, perform special tasks, and actually behave like a cohesive unit. Sure, it wasn't much, but it made recruiting their angsty little butts worth it. The only thing that could have made it better is if there was more squaddie-to-squaddie interaction, but that was lacking throughout the entire game. ME3 fix plz kthnx.
Now, the coolest part of all this, for me, at least, was that they were my team. I spent a whole game rounding them up and getting them to put their personal baggage aside, and finally, finally, I get to reap the benefits. In getting to know them, in caring about them, in convincing them to trust each other and being smart about my command decisions, I could not only blow through that base like it was tissue paper, but I could do it without losing a single man. Frankly, I'm surprised that I got such a hard-on for Teamwork and the Power of Friendship, but damn, did it feel good.
Coulda been a helluva lot harder, though. I'd be way more satisfied with my butterflies and rainbows if I had to bust my ass a little to earn them.
In Summary
I loved the Suicide Mission because:
1. Nearly everything I had done up to that point could affect the outcome.
2. Total victory was possible, but so was absolute failure and everything in-between.
3. Cutscenes and gameplay were programmed in such a way that decisions and outcomes could be woven in fairly seamlessly, making them both easy on the developers and satisfying for the players.
4. The squad actually behaved like a unified team, interacting with Shepard, their environment, and each other in both universal and specific roles.
5. Forgot to mention it in the main body of my wall-o-text, but this.
Yes, every single one of these points can be improved upon. However, I was damn impressed by what I saw the first time, and I still get psyched every time the Normandy jumps through the Omega 4 Relay. The Suicide Mission wasn't perfect, but it was a helluva start.
Your mileage may vary.
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