mjack234 wrote...
After playing all the way through Mass Effect 2, I figured I'd share my opinion with the masses (not that any of you really care, but what the hey? I got some free time. :-) )
First of all, I was a ginormous fan of Mass Effect 1. It's my favorite XBox game of all time. I'm a casual gamer because of my job, but when I popped the first Mass Effect into my XBox, I spent an entire three day weekend doing nothing but play that game until I beat it. I was obsessed with it, and engrossed in the story. In fact, the final battle with Saren and Sovreign sent chills up my spine, and I felt like I was in my very own space opera. It was truly a magical experience.
I did have a few gripes with ME1 that I think everyone else had. The Inventory system and the Mako missions drove me a bit mad, and who can forget the never ending elevator rides? But I was willing to look past those flaws in what was, in my mind at least, an otherwise perfect game.
So I was super pumped when ME2 came out. I bought it the first day, and didn't stop playing until I'd explored every planet, done every side quest, and defeated the Collectors once and for all.
However, though I think ME2 is a good game, it in no way lived up to the standard of ME1. Maybe I was expecting more than just a "Dirty Dozen in Outer Space" deal, but regardless, by hour 27 I was getting really bored with the game, whereas I never experienced that feeling in ME1.
So here's my ultimate breakdown of Mass Effect 2 (again, for those who care):
What I Liked
First of all, combat was much more improved in this game. I found it to be a huge improvement over the first game and it actually played like Gears of War, which is one of my favorite shooters, so the combat was really more intuitive than the first game.
I also thought the side quests were much better than in the first game. Exploring the different worlds gave you a great feeling of variety in terms of the quests you found than the first one did, and none of those annoying Thresher Maws to blast your Mako cannon at!
I loved the design of the new Normandy, and the characters were all great. Each one was unique and had his or her own character arc which I enjoyed playing through. I also enjoyed the new elevator system. Sure, it wasn't seamless like the first one, but the loading screens were better than the slow elevator ride. lol.
I also thought the design work was much better. The levels were all different, the characters were all unique, and the whole game just looked beautiful.
I also liked the Shield/Heal system here better. Getting rid of the medigels was a great move. Made things much more fast paced and easier on the whole than micromanaging healing.
Also, the hacking minigames were FAR better than the first Mass Effect. I really hated those twitch based button pushing things you had to do in ME1. I guess my fingers just aren't that fast.
Finally, getting to play as Joker for a level! It was really fun to step outside of Shepherd's skin for a bit and play as a different character. I was kinda hoping I'd get to play as every one of my team during the suicide mission because it was refreshing to have a different POV in the Mass Effect Universe.
What I Didn't Like
Even though I enjoyed the game as a whole and would still recommend it to friends, there was a lot of stuff in it that I did not like - more than what I did, unfortunately.
First, my biggest gripe was scanning planets for minerals. I think from reading the boards here there's a consensus for that. It was just tedious, mind numbing work. I wouldn't have minded it if there was a reticle pointing me in the direction of a mineral deposit, or simply a quick planet-wide scan function that automatically collected all the minerals for you. But in order to get all the upgrades (which, for a dumb RPGer like me is an obsession) I really had to waste valuable time sitting there, bored, while scanning planet after planet. It might have even have been nice to have some function that told you the minerals present on the planet, because I always ended up needing more Platinum than I had, compared to all the other minerals.
Second, I really hated that I had to buy fuel for my ship to travel around a star system. Did this really add anything to the game other than as a way to waste money? Fuel was cheap, so it wasn't like you really had to work to explore the galaxy and find all the side quests. And if you ran out of fuel, you just automatically went back to a system with a fuel station, so it wasn't a big deal if you used it all up! I could understand having a fuel gage if you really had to manage your exploration, and if you had to find a planet that had fuel on it when you ran out, but as of now, it just seems like an annoying gimmick that never really served any use.
Third, I was very disappointed in the type of loot you could find in ME2. Part of exploring is finding sweet stuff to outfit your character with. There weren't enough weapons, and the weapons had no upgrades you could mix-and-match like you could in ME1, and the armor options were very boring looking compared to the armor you could get in the first game. But I always took time to explore every level fully and never found anything worth getting for the most part. Maybe a couple cases of elements that didn't really contain anything substantial enough to be worth the effort of finding it. (Speaking of weapons, not being able to change to different types of heavy weapons on the fly in the game was really frustrating at times! Made me miss the old inventory system.)
Fourth, the lack of exploring really kinda got me down. I can remember spending hours running around the Citadel in the first game. I thought the levels in ME2 were a little too straight forward, and the lack of a map really irked me on some missions. Not because I'd get lost, but just because I like to see what the level looks like. (Yes, it's a geeky complaint, but that's how I am darn it!) I would have liked more areas to explore without having to blast my way through generic mercenary bad guys constantly. Also, having a radar that I didn't have to hold RB down to see would have been nice too.
Then there was the new ammo system. The thermal clips really got annoying, especially to a casual gamer like me who can't aim to save his life. I kept running out of "ammo" and would have to switch weapons. I understand this can add a layer of strategy to the game for the hard core shooter fans out there, but I thought the heat system of the weapons in the first game worked just fine and wasn't too easy or challenging to manage in the big gunfights. Not sure why this system was changed in favor of ammo clips, but I didn't think it was a smart choice.
Then there was the level up system. i thought the system of leveling in the first Mass Effect was far better, because it was more robust. The streamlined version in ME2 didn't make me feel like I could really tailor my characters as much as I would have liked. This could be a small gripe to some, but I felt the dumbed-down RPG aspects kinda hurt the overall experience of playing through and leveling up.
But probably the biggest problem I had with Mass Effect 2 is the story. Gameplay overall was great, and I really enjoyed it, but the magic of Mass Effect 1 was its layered and compelling narrative, which this game really lacked. I know there are lots of people here who probably think the story was great, and I'm glad they enjoyed it, but I don't think it lived up to the standard the first game set and I'll tell you why...
Problems With The Story
I'm a writer by trade and have worked in the movie industry, so I'm a sucker for a great narrative. Mass Effect 2 is basically a character drama that wants to be an Epic Space Opera. I think they were going for more "Empire Strikes Back" which was a very character-centric movie, but they fell short in the epic-ness that made the first game so fantastic.
In Mass Effect 1, there was a mystery surrounding Saren and what his plan was. I was curious about the questions the characters uncovered as they dug deeper into his treachery, and felt compelled to unravel the mystery. In ME2, they tried to make a mystery out of who the Collectors were and why they were kidnapping humans, but you spent 90% of your game time doing quests that had absolutely nothing to do with that mystery! At its core, ME2 is 3 missions worth of plot and 30 missions worth of character development. And even though I liked the characters, there were some I just don't find interesting enough to care all that much about doing a 60 minute long loyalty quest for.
So that "propulsion system" of a building tension & drama which ME1 had in spades was nowhere to be seen, and it made ME2 a weaker game in my opinion.
Also, the lack of a major nemesis for Shepherd was a big drawback. In ME1, we had Saren as Shepherd's nemesis. Yes, Sovreign was the major bad guy, but Saren was the one Shepherd had to fight. He was a real, tangible threat, and an enemy to rival Shepherd's heroics. In ME2, Shepherd had no one to really fight against. he had the main Prothean Overseer who took over bodies of his minions, but Shepherd never had any face-to-face time with the guy, and he was never able to mock or harm Shepherd in any way that was credible like Saren did. This lack of a central nemesis for Shepherd to rage against made the over-all story kinda boring because I never felt anything was really at stake. A good hero needs a good villain, and though the Collectors as a whole were a good enough "big baddie," there was nothing personalized about them to make me want to root for their defeat like I did with Saren.
Another big story gripe was that there was no clearly defined Rising Action to the main storyline. In ME1, Saren is constantly 1-upping his plans to usher in the Reaper threat, and Shepherd is constantly racing to stop him, eventually leading to the revelations on Ios and culminating in the Battle for the Citadel. There was a clear sense of rising action in that game. In ME2, the rising action goes something like this:
You're told you have to go on a suicide mission.
You find out the Collectors are Protheans
You Steal an IFF from a conveniently found dead Reaper ship
Your crew is kidnapped
You go on suicide mission that you were gonna go on in the first place.
But because we never really understand what the Collector's motivation is, why they need humans, and what's at stake for the galaxy, it all falls flat, at least until its time to rescue your crew. Then, finally, there's some sense of urgency, but until that point, the Collector threat doesn't seem very far reaching or urgent.
Which brings me to my next story nit-pick, which was I never felt there was really anything at stake for the characters or the universe as a whole. In ME1, Sovreign was trying to usher in a fleet of reapers to destroy all life in the galaxy. So the stakes were pretty high. In ME2, some human colonies were disappearing, and it was suspected it has something to do with the reapers. That's it!
Even when you finally get on the Reaper base, and you find the big human reaper that's only partially finished, you wonder to yourself: What's the big deal? What's the big threat to the universe here? Will this reaper try and usher in the others like Sovreign did? It just wasn't as big a revelation as what we got in ME1. It was small in comparison, with no real build up or payoff. In ME1, we needed the entire human fleet to take out 1 reaper, while desperately fighting his proxy inside the Citadel, with the fate of the Galactic Council and all life in the universe in the balance. Here, we got three guys in a remote starbase fighting a giant robot that's being pumped full of human goo for some reason. Again, I felt like nothing big was really at stake.
There were also massive plot holes in ME2 which never got fleshed out. I felt the story in ME1 was really tight and well written. It gave you all you needed to know and left enough questions unanswered to get you to want to find out more.
In ME2, however, there were just too many things that didn't add up. Why were the Protheans making a human reaper? I got the fact that each reaper is modeled after the race it conquored, but why was it necessary to make a human one? It was never made clear why the Protheans were doing this other than they had been "enslaved by evil." But what was the endgame? What would the human reaper accomplish? And why did the Reaper require vast amounts of Human genetic material? And if the Human Reaper was completed, what was the consequence for the galaxy? None of these were made absolutely clear in the game.
How'd Shepherd and his team leave Omega-4? I thought you needed a Mass Relay to get out of there, but they just seemed to shoot off using their own drive somehow, even though they were surrounded by black holes. It might have been cooler if they were "stuck" in Omega 4 as the Reaper threat closed in from Dark Space and were unable to warn others about them coming. But as it stands, not even Shepherd knows the Reapers are on their way.
At the end of ME1, we had a clear set up for a sequel which was dramatic, personal, and made me wanting more. At the end of ME2, we got a cool shot of tons of Reapers heading for the galaxy, but nothing that made me go "Holy Crap I Need To Find Out What Happens Next!" In short, the cliffhanger, while decent, wasn't as good as it could have been.
Over-all, I'd give the story of Mass Effect 2 a C+ compared to Mass Effect 1's A+. Each mission in ME2 was, in and of itself, a good story, but I never felt like I was part of an epic galactic struggle like I did in the first one. The more character-centric stories were good, but they weren't properly balanced with the over-all story of the Reapers and their threat to the universe. Maybe if each story has somehow tied into the Collector's plot, it would have been better, but as it stands, it was all too episodic and disjointed. It felt like a bunch of side-quests strung together that had no real payoff beyond character development.
I really hope in ME3, Bioware gives us an epic conclusion to this amazing game franchise with a story that rivals or surpasses both the first and second Mass Effect.
Sorry for the long rant, but I just wanted to share my gripes with the faceless masses. :-)
Every writer and designer working on ME3 needs to read this. Every executive in charge of budget needs to read this. Basically every Bioware employee, or EA employee that has anything to do with ME3 needs to read this.
This needs to be made into a 10 foot tall poster and hung in a highly visible place in the studio.
The OP is dead on about everything posted.
Except the part about the Thresher Maw's.
ME3 needs to have planet exploration with Threshr traps and it also needs to explain how they get from world to world. Maybe they latch on to ships at a larval stage or something.
I know many of you had a cry about getting killed by a Thresher while recklessly galavanting across a hostile alien world, but that is what made it awesome. You are on a hostile alien world. The threat of Thresher Maw attack reminded you that you are not safe on this hostile alien world.
As a writer the OP should have recognized this... but people get all teary-eyed when they are killed in video games and want to blaim things so I understand.
Retour en haut
it seems as if the Protheans where interfering with humanity at some point.
