366 réponses à ce sujet

[Beeno4Life]

Massadonious1 wrote...

"Real" fans.

How incredibly insulting.

This.

[Urazz]

The only big complaints I have

1. I wish there were more interaction between the crew between missions. Would've been nice to see little scenes in the Normandy of them interacting together or having discussions when walking like in Dragon Age:Origins.  Anyways, it felt a bit lacking compared to ME1 but not by much I think.  That was one of my complaints about ME1 as well.

2. More pieces of armor for me to wear and pick through or have the extra sets broken into pieces so we can pick and choose more.

3. Would've preferred the helmet you wear to come off when you get into a conversation. It made me decide not to wear a helmet until I got that eye scopoe that increases headshot damage. I like to actually see my character's head when he's talking if I can help it.

4. Why was most of the crew not in space suits when on other planets or in space? That just felt really wierd to me. Some of the planets or missions, didn't feel like it was a toxic enviroment or in space when they were wearing their normal clothes with a mask over their mouth.

Modifié par Urazz, 03 février 2010 - 05:30 .

[MagicianCamille]

ME1's combat system had its problems. At least ME2 fixed some critical issues, even if they did steamline it a bit.

[DBHolm]

Rilke21 wrote...

(No really. Why is Grunt pure again? Maybe if we repeat “pure” over and over then people just won’t question it. We should throw “suicide” in for good measure.)

Allow me to respond to this. The rest of your points seems to me to have been addressed already.
Grunt is a "pure" krogan because he was made to be tougher, stronger, smarter, etc. than the average krogan. He is Okeer's answer to the genophage: instead of trying to cure it, he ignores it by making every single surviving krogan worth what the genophage takes away.

This is all told in-game, and it makes perfect sense from Okeer's point of view. You choosing to ignore it to attempt to score cheap points does you no credit.

[mgass]

Jigero wrote...

the combat in this game could have been about Shepard farting on a Turian for 9 hours and it still would have been an excellent game. 

And this is the difference between the older players and the newer players.  Enough said.

[Erakleitos]

mgass wrote...

Jigero wrote...

the combat in this game could have been about Shepard farting on a Turian for 9 hours and it still would have been an excellent game. 

And this is the difference between the older players and the newer players.  Enough said.

Not really, i agree with him and i played all bioware & friends games since fallout 1

[AtreiyaN7]

I happen to be one of those "real" BioWare fans dating back to Baldur's Gate, and I enjoyed ME2. Sorry, there are some of us who can see improvements and don't entirely agree that everything was perfect in ME1.

[Hiero Glyph]

AtreiyaN7 wrote...

I happen to be one of those "real" BioWare fans dating back to Baldur's Gate, and I enjoyed ME2. Sorry, there are some of us who can see improvements and don't entirely agree that everything was perfect in ME1.

Agreed but by the same logic ME2 is not perfect either; both games have their merits and their faults.  My top three faults with ME2 are planet scanning, a universal skill cooldown, and bland skill/weapon/armor development.

ME2 is a very enjoyable game; enjoyable despite its faults.

[Hathur]

Regarding the number of missions in ME2... there's a LOT more than the 3-5 "plot" missions.

* 10 party members = 1 mission each = 10 missions.

* Each party member has 1 loyalty mission = 10 missions.

* Small side quests from Illium, Omega, Citadel station = approx 25 or more short but interesting dialogue related missions.

* Anomaly missions... combat missions, about 10 minute long fights... I've seen about 10 of these but I know I missed a LOT and didn't explore the whole galaxy yet.
* Plot mission: Into, Freedom's Hope, First Collector Mission, Collector Ship, Get IFF code, Suicide Mission = 6 missions.

Total minimum missions to do = 50. That's minimum.. if you do all the anomaly stuff there's likely more.

Even if you don't do the anomaly or dialogue stories, you'll get 26 just from party member recruitment, loyalty + plot missions.

Game took me 58 played hours to finish on my first run (insanity difficulty... this likely added a few hours as when I tried on Veteran, I noticed enemies die so fast.. on insanity, you gotta pace yourself and move carefully cus you can die in a split second).

Modifié par Hathur, 03 février 2010 - 10:39 .

[banshee768]

Rilke21 wrote...

Mass Effect 2 deserves quite a bit of the acclaim it’s getting. So why did playing it feel like a big BioWare boot to the teeth?

Fans of the original probably noticed right away that the second Mass Effect is a streamlined version of the first. Think Deus Ex 2: an unbroken system of levelling, character development and inventory management was “fixed” by eliminating it completely. (Granted, the inventory in the first Mass Effect was a little clunky, but it still got the job done.)

Clunky and very annoying. And the mind-bending amount of weapons and armor was just as annoying. And that they were all completely random. And scaled. I much prefer the upgrade system, to a half-hearted, random, scaling item-system that makes no sense at all and is as reliable as 80's Vauxhaul.

Killing enemies no longer provides experience. Neither does exploring the world, searching out codex entries, picking obscure dialogue options, finding rare items, interacting with your squad, or any of the other little details that sets an RPG apart from a shooter. For the most part, these details have been streamlined into the abyss. Where they’ve survived, there’s no longer an incentive to find them.

But you do get rewards. Upgrades, resources, sometimes new weapons and money, that you need for further upgrades. Also, now that enemies no longer gives you any XP, it actually makes sense to try and avoid fights, when playing Paragon.

In Knights of the Old Republic II, in the starting area, you are given control of a turret to gun down approcing enemies, before the reach your ship. 25 enemies to be exact. Those you miss, you'll have to gun down manually, inside the ship. But here's the catch. If you DON'T gun them down with your turret, you gain XP by killing them inside your ship. It doesn't make sense to use the turret at all.

In Mass Effect, enemies don't give XP and therefore you destroy them the most effecient way possible. Which is much more realistic.

In the original Mass Effect, your character gets to choose from a list of 13 abilities. (This isn’t much compared to the 78 spells that mages can pick from in Dragon Age, but it’s not a bad selection.) Any of these powers can be unleashed on your enemies at any time, though once you’ve used a power you have to wait for it to recharge before you can use it again. In Mass Effect 2, you get to pick from 4 abilities. (Make that two if you’re playing as a soldier, since choosing your ammo hardly counts as a skill.) Using any of these powers makes the rest unusable until all of them recharge. Since only one or two of these powers is of any use in the first place, the chances are good that you’ll max out one skill and then spam it for the entire game. In effect, where the first game lets you use 13 powers in combat, the second lets you use 1. (I’d make a snarky comment about this exciting new development in tactical complexity, but I think you get the picture.)

Yes, I agree that this sucks. I'm very much for the reduced amount of points each skill had, but the number of skills should have been kept. And it's also quite annoying that a soldier and an engineer have the same skill at picking locks and hacking.

The inventory is a pretty essential part of any RPG, and not just because it’s fun to hit the I-key and play dress-up with your characters. The reason inventories are important is because loot management sets RPGs apart from their mindless shooter brethren.  In Mass Effect 2 you’ll occasionally find new items (maybe five or six, but only if you blow 10 bucks on the DLC.) But because there’s no inventory there’s virtually no way to distinguish which gun does more damage, or which armor offers more protection. The only noticeable differences between the weapons in Mass Effect 2 are clip size and accuracy, but since each gun is about as effective as the other guns, you might as well just keep one for the entire game.

There's a huge difference in how the different weapons opporate. Some deal a lot of damage, but are slow. Others, the other way around. Some are single shot, some burst fire and others again are fully automatic. The heavy weapons are completely different from one another and from the normal weapons.

The different armor types also affect how you play the game, some by quite a lot. You can stack your shields or healther, or go after extra ammo or other benefits. Just because the items aren't stacked in an inventory, doesn't mean they aren't there. It just works differently in Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect’s inventory went down the garburator, and half of the depth and fun of an RPG went with it. Most of you remember Diablo 2, a fairly simple game that was infinitely replayable because of the sheer depth of its item system. (Certain nerds have devoted the last 10 years of their lives to finding the next cool Diablo item. I in no way condone this behaviour, but it does say a lot about the importance of a decent item system.) My point is that much of the replayability of an RPG comes from finding new items, customizing your character with them, and enjoying how much of a badass you can become. When you take items and experience out of an RPG, you take away the incentive to develop your character. You take away half the incentive to play the game at all.

While this is true for Diablo, it's not necesarilly true for all RPGs. In Diablo and other such RPGs it's not your character that's powerful; it's their items. In Mass Effect it's you that's powerful and by extension, your character. It's better in my book and more in keeping with RPG than simple item collecting.

What makes up the other half of a great RPG? You guessed it...the story! And here is where Mass Effect 2 really fails to shine. Do you remember in Alien 3 when the survivors from the last movie are killed off in the first 20 seconds? It’s a plot device that writers fall back on when they’re either very strapped for time, or they just aren’t sure how to continue their last story.

The first Mass Effect introduced a brilliant new Sci-Fi universe that rivals Star Wars in its scope and creativity. In contrast, Mass Effect 2 starts off by blowing up the Normandy, killing or scattering the crew, and then magically bringing Shepard back from the dead. The rest of the story is pretty simple: Shepard rebuilds the crew, gains their loyalty (?), and then blows up a base. Game over, man. (We’re told a number of times that the crew is on a suicide mission. Unfortunately repeating “suicide mission” over and over  doesn’t make this story any more compelling.) Mass Effect 2 gleans what little narrative magic it has from riding on the coattails of its predecessor. Nothing new is added, and a lot is taken away. (To be fair, there’s one big exception here: the surprising development with the Geth is a very nice touch! If only the game’s ending made a shred of sense...)

True, the story has shifted focus. ME1 was focused on humanity's place in the universe and about getting along or exterminating other species. ME2 focuses more on Shepards personal relationships with those around him.

ME1 was all about you being a spectre and the eyes of humanity rested upon you the entire time. Everyone knew your name and what you were doing. But spectres were suppose to be covert. No records were available to the public. No one should know about you. But everyone did. It didn't make any sense.

ME2 corrects that.... sort of. It feels much more covert, much more 'behind the scenes' than ME1. I think it's more fun this way.

Mass Effect 2 promised to incorporate the decisions you made in the first game into the story of the second. And it does. (In the form of trite little emails that Shepard receives from the forgettable NPCs of Mass Effect 1.) Remember Samesh Batia? Well you’ll be reminded. Or how about that Asari who got stuck in the Thorian? Yeah, you’ll get to do a pointless little quest for her, and then she’ll even flirt with you! Unfortunately, because there’s no reward for slogging through the dull side-quest dialogues, only true perfectionists will bother with the side-quests at all. The beauty of any good story is in the details. But when the details are thrown in as filler, and the story is nowhere to be found, they just detract from the whole experience.

Again, there are more rewards than XP. You still get rescources, money and upgrades for completing sidequets. And Paragon/Renegade points.

Mass Effect 2 is not much of an RPG. So why does it deserve the praise that people have been throwing at it? The answer is that the game looks like a movie. (If you ignore the side quests and the left-half of the dialogue wheel, it even plays like a movie.) But the cinematic quality of the second game is nothing new to the Mass Effect series. And when you combine bare-bones plot with uninspired side-quests and depth-free combat, Mass Effect 2 just plays like a gutted version of the original. Lip service has been paid to what made the original Mass Effect great (the voice acting is mostly excellent and the combat is still good for the occasional adrenaline rush), but much of the substance of the origional has been removed. We’re left with a decent third-person shooter that is by no means a bad game. It’s just not what I expected from BioWare.

It’s probably apparent that I’m not a 16-year-old with an Xbox. I understand that mass (console) appeal makes money, and in principle there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m part of the old cabal of Bioware supporters, and I’ll probably buy Mass Effect 3 (even if they resurrect Sovereign as a renegade Hanar and have Shepard kick its butt in a boxing match.) BioWare is still at the top of my list of game developers. (After all, it’s nigh impossible to resent the company that released Dragon Age two months ago.)

That said, I’m writing this to remind BioWare of what makes a game great, and of what Mass Effect 2 is sadly lacking. For the real fans out there, maybe we’ll have better luck next time.

I still think that this has all the makings of a RPG. And while the cinematic quality is nothing new, it's still very enjoyable. And I will go out on a limb here and tell you that Mass Effect 3 will feature more of the same. It's one of the defining features of Mass Effect. It's the first thing I think of, when asked about Mass Effect and what I think of it.

I'm not a 16-year-old with an Xbox either. Or any other console for that matter. And I too have played a lot of Bioware games in my time. But unlike you, I actually prefer Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 1. Eventhough I was very sceptical to begin with. Especially since I was hugely disapointed with Mass Effect 1. The half-hearted item system, the completely irrelavent side-missions, that you were forced to do to get XP, the ridiculous amount of money gained for no effort at all and that you were just about as 'covert' as Megan Fox dancing nude on a public beach.

[Cat Fancy]

I haven't read everything in this thread, BUT:

Rilke21 wrote...

Mass Effect 2 promised to incorporate the decisions you made in the first game into the story of the second. And it does. (In the form of trite little emails that Shepard receives from the forgettable NPCs of Mass Effect 1.) Remember Samesh Batia? Well you’ll be reminded. Or how about that Asari who got stuck in the Thorian? Yeah, you’ll get to do a pointless little quest for her, and then she’ll even flirt with you! Unfortunately, because there’s no reward for slogging through the dull side-quest dialogues, only true perfectionists will bother with the side-quests at all. The beauty of any good story is in the details. But when the details are thrown in as filler, and the story is nowhere to be found, they just detract from the whole experience.

That is a problem that the first Mass Effect had, too. I like ME2 better, even though I recognize its flaws, because it took me just as long to complete as ME1 but there was much less pointless sidequesting- although what did exist, especially the random mercenary side missions was really damn tedious and boring. And exploring the universe! Ugh. So much to see; not much of it particularly interesting. I'd argue the problem was worse in Mass Effect 1, as literally 75% of the levels, of which there were many more, were exactly the same. My favorite part of Mass Effect 1 was the opening on the Citadel- it was focused and beautiful and intriguing. ME2 had more interesting locales and protagonists at the cost of a weaker main story, it's true, but I'm fine with that.

When it comes to the gameplay, well, in ME1, some powers were clearly much more powerful and useful than others, so it didn't matter that were many of them since most could obviously safely be ignored (strategy: invest in a single weapon, probably the pistol, and some kind of defensive power. Proceed to not die, ever.). So I don't mind that ME2's skill system was streamlined, but hey, to each her own.

ME3 will be terrible, though. There's no way all the variables are going to interact in an interesting, satisfactory, or coherent manner. Who knows, though? 

Also, the Asari were so much less deplorable this time around. That's really important.

[stillnotking]

I actually think ME2 has more tactical complexity than ME1. There's a much greater variety of enemies and scenarios, squad members' abilities figure more prominently, and the restrictions on biotic abilities prevent them from being "I WIN" buttons to the extent they were in the first game. The cover system is also better-developed and more essential to success. IMO most people who complain about the game being too tactically simple are playing on lower difficulties where you can actually get away with spamming one ability the whole time -- believe me, that doesn't work on Insanity.

The inventory system in ME1 was not merely clunky, but downright annoying. The "right" weapons and upgrades to use were obvious 99% of the time, and the player had to spend way too much time selling junk to vendors or converting it to omni-gel (not to mention that lugging 100 rifles around didn't exactly make sense). ME2 is not perfect either; it needs more variety in armor and weapons (so did ME1), but what is in the game is handled pretty smoothly. It's a deficit of content, not function.

[nicodeemus327]

I liked the streamlining that occurred in Mass Effect 2 for the most part. My only suggestion is to take the armor customization and bring it to a whole new level. Diversify it a bunch more. Make is so some armor pieces are clearly for biotics, techs or other classes. Then expand it to the whole squad.

[Sailears]

I'm a little busy at the moment meaning I haven't read the last five pages, only the OP.



And yes, well said OP. I fully agree with you.

It's not bashing ME2, but criticism like this is needed to make ME3 more satisfying.

[bjdbwea]

The more I play ME 2, the more I miss the Mako missions. It was certainly much more fun than scanning planets, and the scenery and beautiful skies gave a better feeling of actually travelling through the galaxy. It's just one of several things that BioWare threw away without providing a better alternative.

[durasteel]

Actually, I found the Liara dialog in ME2 to be pretty moving.  Once you discover what she did for you, and why she's out for the shadow Broker's blood, everything falls into place, and you can hear in her voice the echoes of the fear of losing Shepard, which sells the whole package on an emotional level.

The inventory system is such a dramatic improvment that all I can do is laugh when I see people lament the loss of the mess from ME1.  You can still outfit your squad with whichever weapons you choose, but you don't have to deal with the stuff you don't want in your inventory, and you don't have squad members carry around hardware they can't use any more.  When I play ME1 now, I use the codes to hand out rank 10 of whatever the default armor is for my squad mates, simply because I have no interest in playing Barbie Dress-Up with my crew.  ME2 handles that for me, and I appreciate it.  I also really like the fact that you can upgrade all the ARs or sniper rifles or whatever in your crew instead of trying to tweak out each weapon individually.  That was fun, to a degree, in my first play-through of ME1, tedious thereafter.

With regard to the selection of abilities, I can definately see where BioWare is coming from, and I agree with their approach.  In ME1 there was a great deal of overlap between classes, and the player could have a pretty similar experience between play-throughs even with two altogether different character classes.  In ME2, they have really focussed on elements that are distinct between classes, so that your Soldier and your Infiltrator will use entirely different strategies, especially on boss fights or in a timed challenge.  Another advantage is that you can do much more without pausing the action; I really enjoyed the new control structure, once I got used to it.

I could be wrong, but I think a lot of the frustration eloquently expressed in the OP comes as much from missing familiar and comfortable game mechanics from the first game as from an objective assessment of their relative strengths and weaknesses.  I think had the poster played ME2 first, then picked up the first game, those mechanics would have little appeal.  That's just my opinion, I could be full of crap.

[durasteel]

deku2106 wrote...

... and I just can't bring myself to like the new Normandy. It's so sterile looking...

Hang out in Zaeed's cabin, it looks like it could give Tali a life threatening infection if she even sets eyes on  it.

[Ozymandias23]

Well said OP

[WillieStyle]

The inventory is a pretty essential part of any RPG, and not just because it’s fun to hit the I-key and play dress-up with your characters. The reason inventories are important is because loot management sets RPGs apart from their mindless shooter brethren. In Mass Effect 2 you’ll occasionally find new items (maybe five or six, but only if you blow 10 bucks on the DLC.) But because there’s no inventory there’s virtually no way to distinguish which gun does more damage, or which armor offers more protection. The only noticeable differences between the weapons in Mass Effect 2 are clip size and accuracy, but since each gun is about as effective as the other guns, you might as well just keep one for the entire game.

This is not even remotely close to true.

In ME2, unlike ME1, different guns actually feel different. Each gun isn't just the same as all the rest with slightly different stats.

You get a different gameplay experience using the Vindicator battle rifle vs. using the Revenant Light Machine Gun. In ME1, Specter X assault rifle was the same as Specter VII except it did more damage per shot.

Similarly, the Viper Semiauto sniper rifle plays differently from the Widow bolt-action sniper rifle.



In ME2, you get fewer "options" than in ME1, but the options you do get are more meaningful.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

What I'm curious about is why so many people seem to criticize the side quests in ME2. I'm not saying there's dozens to choose from, but ME was so focused on the main quest it's not even funny. Side quests were 5 minute distractions where you either blew up a base or scanned for minerals

[kraidy1117]

Am I only one that did the research projects......