This will be a long post, as I will try to cover what I loved and loathed about all 3 games, be warned.
Mass Effect 1
Ah... way back in 2007 I remember picking up a new copy of this game off the shelf and seeing the name Bioware jogged old memories of old school RPGs with great storys and greater character. Considering the last game I played by this studio was KOTOR, I didn't know what to expect, but I needed a good RPG to kill time and this seemed like a good one.
Let's get specific though, gameplay, storyline and all that fun stuff.
Plot/Characters/Ending
- Great plot. Discovering the truth behind Saren and the fate of the protheans was incredibly well written and very engaging.
- Great characters, for the most part. While I found all of them to be intriguing on some level, I found some to be not much more than encyclopedias for their races ( I'm looking at you, Tali.) but overall were interesting and well acted.
- The ending. (The only reason this is a category of it's own is because I will discuss IN DEPTH the endings of all the games and compare them.) The ending was pretty darn nice from any angle. The confrontation with Saren in the end was great, watching the alliance fleet getting shredded by the Geth to save council made me question my decision as soon as I made it and it ended with a quite inspirational bang.
Gameplay/Mechanics
Gameplay- Personally I have always found the actual gameplay of almost any Bioware title to be pretty lackluster to be honest. What I saw in Mass Effect 1's gameplay was some very poorly implemented shooting mechanics wrapped around a mid level RPG. The broken user interface plethora of copy-paste weapons weapons with incrementally better stats and a level up system I was not too fond of I was not impressed. Until I found the good weapon mods. The joy of a frictionless materials sniper with exploding rounds almost made up for the rest of the game, almost. The Mako... It was not fun to drive at all, and the poor choice of environments only worsened this problem to an extreme. It wasn't fun to shoot people, and the fact that all the enemies you fight are pretty much stationary means that it was dull. Very, very dull.
Mechanics- Over all, I would have to say the way sidequests were integrated was horrible. It went like this, Talk with interesting NPC about his/her problem with some bad guys on generic planet X. Fly to planet X, spend 15 minutes slogging through a generic, bland and horribly mountainous landscape to reach generic, copy-paste bunker Y. Spend 15 minutes clearing out the bunker while your foes chant "I will destroy you!", "GoGoGo!" and "Enemies everywhere!" over and over and over. At the end of the ordeal you get 3-ish lines of dialogue and a minor decision. It sucked. The dialogue wheel was however, in a word brilliant. It let conversations flow nicely without a wall of text. Despite that, one thing that has become relevant in my mind was the form of auto dialogue that in my opinion, was far more sinister and displeasing than any form of it in ME3. I am talking about when it gives you 3 options when you say the same thing. It feels fine until you play it again with a different choice, only to realize it doesn't matter. It literally drains the magic out of the conversation. It is essentially one of the biggest reasons I hated the end of ME3 in a smaller, more hidden form.
Mass Effect 2
After completing a solid five playthroughs of Mass Effect 1 and getting most of the DLC available, I was eagerly awaiting Mass Effect 2's release. To say I was not dissapointed would be an understatement.
Plot/Characters/Ending
Plot- I feel that Mass Effect 2 was very, very different from it's predecessor in terms of where it focused. Mass Effect 1 was all about plot, with the characters there were developed slowly if at all. Mass Effect 2 felt almost... episodic. The main draw of this game was not the main plot, it was relatively short and emotionless compared to the real focus, the characters. It felt strange at times and wore a bit thin by the end, but I have never had a game make me care about a bunch of polygons on the same level as that game. It made characters I had regarded as merely a sack of flesh used to boost my morality points into legitimate and interesting characters. It also took one of the most lackluster characters of ME1, our little Encyclopedia Quarianica and completely reimagined her, making her tied for first with Garrus for my number one character. It was emotional, gripping and it sacrificed all but the skeleton of any overarching plot to do this so well.
Characters- The best in the series. The reason why I loved them all in ME3 was because they were all so well developed in this game. The section on plot has all the reasons why I loved them, because the plot of Mass Effect 2 WAS the characters.
Ending- I would have to say in terms of sheer enjoyment Mass Effect 2 had one of, if not the most enjoyable finales in gaming history. It was so incredible for several reasons. One of the most irritating ways to end any character based game is to recruit 6 or so great companions and then arbitrarily decide to bring 2 with you at the end. Mass Effect 2 blew my mind because not only was my whole team there, but I could dictate tasks. ME1 felt like a slog through a bunch of halls while Mass Effect 2 made me feel like I was actually LEADING. It was amazing.
Gameplay/Mechanics
Gameplay- if ME1 was a mediocre RPG with bad shooter elements, Mass Effect 2 is a half rate Gears of War clone with minimal RPG elements. The shooting mechanics were worlds above ME1, but still lacked any punch or finesse. Traces of the clunky controls from way back make any advances redundant. I also find it amusing how they managed to replace the Mako with something that was equally horrible. Scanning. It was mind numbing filler in it's purest form. The only reason why I like it better than the Mako was because after the first playthrough you get a massive amount of minerals, making scanning almost unnecessary.
Mechanics- The cinematography of the second game far surpassed the first, which I found to be probe to talking head syndrome. The side quests in Mass Effect 2 Managed to strike a balance in my mind. Numerous enough to occupy vast swathes of time, but with enough content to ensure that a feeling of repetitive gameplay. Paragon and renegade interrupts were brilliant. I wanted to be good when I was evil and vice-versa. The way they encapsulated in actions what each represented in actions instead of words was a much welcome addition to the game. The almost total negation of overheating from ammo sort of made sense from a gameplay perspective, but I don't think a rational explanation could be reached as to why someone would do that, but the thing that bugged me was the lack of weapon mods. It is the only thing that I feel ME1 did well and they removed it.
Mass Effect 3
At this point, Mass Effect was by far my favorite ongoing series and having completed 11 playthroughs, I could safely say that this was the most I have ever played a non-MMO game. To say that I had high hopes for the third game was an understatement.
Plot/Characters/Ending
Plot- Great overall in my opinion. It was dark, funny and emotional, all the while fitting in huge set pieces, epic space battles and lots of nice little references to the previous games. There were some flaws, namely the handling of the Rachni and Anderson. Why was Anderson off the council? These could have been at least elaborated upon to minimize confusion. Another problem was that in my main playthrough I killed the Rachni because I thought that they might fall under Reaper control again. I was right, but it didn't even matter. Personally I wish there were a few more side quest because it seems like you run into a familiar face every mission. It seemed to be a pretty small galaxy where everywhere I go I meet an old acquaintance. The crucible was a bad, bad idea, for reasons I will detail in the ending
Characters- Mass Effect 3 built off of the characters that made ME2 great. The conversations were well done and the fact that they moved about the ship gave it a nice layer of realism. James Vega was pretty decent, but his slot could have easily been filled with another familiar face from the past in my opinion. I don't have any complaints about how previous squadmates were handled for the most part. I now understand that if you romanced a non returning character you'r in for some dissapointment but one of the things that bugs me the most was how Liara is the default character in the last flashbacks. I romanced Tali! Why is Liara in my head?! While we're on Tali, why did they put her face in if they did such a rush job on it? I was always in favor of never showing it, leave a little to the imagination. But anyways, the characters had possibly their highest moments and their lowest in the same game. Overall I was pretty damn satisfied with the way they turned out.
Ending- This will probably be the single longest section of this review, for obvious reasons. I will split it into 2 sections, mechanics and narrative.
Ending Mechanics- This ending felt like a downgrade in so many ways. It took out one of the major reasons why I loved the end of ME2, which was actually leading and replaced it with "pick 2 squaddies and slog through waves of enemies." Why? The gameplay of the mission itself wasn't horrible, but compared to the previous game and hell, other missions IN the same game it was pretty lackluster. Not to mention a very perturbing lack of variance in the endings. They may have radically different results in theLong run, but who cares? We get the same cutscene with a color change. What ever happened to varied endings? What happened to no A B C? There could be many reasons, one of them being the ending was completed very late in the development cycle according to that final hours app for the game. Everything from corporate pressure to plain bad writing is a viable reason at this point.
Ending Narrative- Why? This is such a departure from previous games. In every situation prior, Shepard can respond to claims of inevitable defeat with a heroic speech and a can-do attitude. Instead S/he gives up. S/he doesn't question the glowing blue kid, doesn't ask about what happens, just kind of nods and lurches towards inevitable death and devastation. The way they played out seemed almost deliberately antagonistic. You care about the characters? We'll stick 'em on a random planet so they either starve or live in depressing isolation from the rest of the galaxy. Do you care about the incredible galaxy we let you partake in? We'll blow up the mass relays, so the galactic civilization you fought to protect collapses into a handful of isolated worlds, with those incapable of growing food doomed to starve. I don't have a problem with the choices presented, but there should have been an option to refuse if you have a fantastic amount of war assets, to the point where you had to have made every decision based on maximizing it through the series. Overall this is the main reason why I hate the ending. Maybe the upcoming director's cut or whatever will fix it, maybe not.
Gameplay/Mechanics
Gameplay- I will honestly say this is the first time Bioware has truly nailed it. They brought back weapon mods, my favorite gameplay aspect of ME1 while refining the shootier parts to be pretty great. One of the major flaws I found was the overuse of the "cover button" for everything. One of the main reasons U died was because I would try to fall back and just glue myself to an exposed wall by accident, promptly getting massacred. The scanning in Mass Effect 3 was more palatable in my mind, at least and overall it was a very solid game from a player's perspective as opposed to a fan's.
Mechanics- One of the things that bugged me the most besides the ending was the auto-dialogue. It crept up a bit too often, and the only reason it didn't bug me as much as it should have was the quality of the lines and voice acting in general. It still detracts from the experience though. One example to me would be drunk Tali. It was very funny and touching despite being auto-dialogue, but imagine this… You sit down with her and open a bottle yourself, soon you both are drunk, and reminiscing about childhood.Spacer- you both remark on the difficulty of growing up on the move, with Shep being worried about his motherColonist- you both reminisce about the pain of losing parentsEarthborn-you remind Tali how lucky she is to know her parentsSee how much more enjoyable that is? My main problem with auto-dialogue is lost potential of moments like these more than anything else. Onto the side quests, far too few of them even if they were almost always brilliantly done. I feel the same way about hub worlds, only one, no matter how well done can really cut it. It really is just a matter of variety which I hope will be solved by DLC
That wraps up my review. The end of what should have been my favorite SciFi franchise ever. I guess the big question is will I buy from Bioware again, with the misleading pre release statements, the vague and uninformative PR and the bad end to Mass Effect.
My answer is yes. I will remain a Bioware customer because whatever the Retakers and Mac Walter may say, I didn't buy Mass Effect 3 for the ending, and the journey is not worth more than the ending. The main reason I buy Bioware games is because of who you share the journey with. Mass Effect may have ended on possibly the sourest note imaginable, but the fact remains that out of my top 10 favorite video game characters Bioware put 7 of them ob there. Mass Effect may have failed as a narrative but I will always remember the people I met in the game, and Bioware hasn't really let me down in that department yet.
Modifié par Clumsy Astronaut, 06 avril 2012 - 06:11 .
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