So coming from ME1 to ME2 Bioware had made some design choices to the overall game. Some for the better some for the worse. Let's start with what felt weak in the gameplay dapartment first, then we'll go onto story. From the beggining with their add campaign and interviews Bioware kept saying ME2 was built to be more streamlined, and that the shooter mechanics were much better than the first. This is totally fine, to make something better, but in my opinion it was worse than the first is many cases. It's more of a shooter? WHERE ARE ALL THE GUNS I CAN SHOOT WITH?! I really think Bioware dropped the ball on this one. The way items were found and distributed to your party members was very disapointing. Finding all those guns as well as armor was what made the first one so fun and gave it that RPG feel. You were constantly trying to figure out what gun worked with this battle or what armor was better than the other. In ME2 I got 3 armors to mix and match together.....and to make it even worse my party members only had 2 1-piece armors they could cycle through....wheres my customization???? It felt like there was a shortage on every gun except the heavy weapons, which by the end you had about 8 variants of? I found that a bit odd. Further, making you pick your weaponry only before the mission started also seemed to take away from the RPG element. Moving along with more gameplay mechanics is the health system. Now I know regenerating health is the bees knees in video games these days but it did not work in ME2. Why was the medigel taken out? It seemed to work fine in ME1. If Bioware didn't like the medigel system why not create a skill for a certain class or maybe all classes that could heal the party/you?? Instead, I now get to hide behind cover for 15-20 seconds and wait there till I regen becuase the next shot could kill me. How is this streamlined? If anything it's making the battles slower and clunkier. Also, speaking of hiding behind cover, this mechanic was somewhat buggy for me. If i was too close to a cover shephard would not want to get down, hed just stand there. It would also happen if I got knocked out of cover by a spell, shephard would just stand there as bullets flew at me. I do, however, aplaued Bioware for fixing the slowdown/texture popp-ins/glitches that plauged the first ME during intense battles.
Building your character with his own unique skill set also felt like it wasn't as streamlined as it could have been. It was dumbed down rather than streamlined. I could only see the difference once my spell reached lvl 4. I also think making the special ammo rounds into spells was unnecessary and a waste of a slot for another cool biotic spell. I think a much better idea would be to create unique guns that you find that already have different element attributes attached to them...that way the same pistol can have many more variants and stronger ones would have better element attributes to them. This also avoids socketing your guns (ME1) as well as using the ammo rounds as spells, in my opinion, making it more streamlined. The way leveling your guy worked also seemed off. You would only gain levels after a mission was over. This broke the game up and made the missions into levels whick took away from the open world aspect of the game. For instance, if I went into a mission, killed a few guys and got a cool weapon, I couldn't just leave and gain a level from killing those enemies. I am forced to finish the quest and then I can gain the level. Some of the player's freedom is taken away this way. This is also true for the end of the game; even after completing 100% of the game I capped at lvl 27, so I'm either forced to replay it over (bad) or I have to wait for DLC that I have to pay for (even worse). Why not just allow the player to reach lvl 30 in that one playthrough? Or am I missing something? My last complaint for this section is the hacking aspect of the game. Altough it is better and more varied than the button presses of ME1, after a while the mini-games in the 2nd one got really stale and a bit annoying at the end. I think they could be even better!
Moving on to planet exploration gameplay. So ME1 had the Mako and ME2 had the....dropship. Alot of people moaned and groaned about the Mako and planet exploration in ME1, but oh boy do I miss it compared to what was given to me in ME2. Even though I agree the planets you landed on with the Mako were absolutely empty for the most part it was still fun to drive around and see the horizon on different planets or how the planets varied in landscape and whatnot. The mechanics of the Mako were very flawed but it changed the pace of the game. It brought a different gameplay element to the table. This is why I was hoping they would bring it back but improve on it. Even though it was a bastard to drive at times it was still fun pushing on the jets and see if you could launch yourself off a certain rock. Now I'm immidietly dropped at the base of a mission with the dropship...where's my exploration??? In the first ME1 you could drive around and find minerals as well as scan the planets for mineral. ME2 has you scaning minerals off planets with a sort of mini game....its fun for about the first 3-5 planets. I will take driving the Mako lookin for stuff over the scan mini game any day. It just wasn't fun, partly becuase it's a boring mini game in the first place but also because you were searching for the same damn 4 mineral over and over. You're FORCED into it in order to upgrade the ship so that in the end your team can survive. Bioware if you're going to keep this why not throw in some randomness into it? What if I could find some sort of relic, a beacon, unique weapons only found by scanning, items for the normandy.....instead of just 4 minerals???? This would make the treasure hunt aspect much more exciting.
I think the best idea is to bring the Mako back, fix it's mechanics, make it fun to drive and instead of making 20 mineral hot spots per planet. have up to 3 hot spots per planet were you either find unique items or you land with the mako to complete a mission and on the way to the mission you can find minerals (mining minigame????). Also create obstacles for the mako and environments only the mako can interact with??? It doesn't have to be this huge barren world...you can limit the driving area to a specific distance till you reach your mission. Speaking of missions, some of them were really great in ME2, some of them had me asking "why even bother?" Bring the mako back! ....and also elevators....those loading screens were just as long as some of those elevator rides and very uninteresting. At least in the elevator I could listen to the news!
Phew. We got through the issues I thought plagued the gameplay of ME2. So what did I find problematic with the story? Read on young grasshopper!
So I definetly do not have as many issues with the story as I did with the gameplay. The issues I DO HAVE with it are major ones however. First of all, the focus of the story/game is to take down the reapers and collectors (who are new to the game) The collectors are working for the reapers and your purpose is to find out who the collectors are, why are they doing this, and to stop them along with the reapers. So even though by the end you find out who the collectors are, you sorta find out why they're doing it, and you sorta stop them for now, it happens in roughly 20% of the game. The rest of the game is spent recruiting people and trying to gain their loyalty. Ofcourse if you don't recruit everyone and don't go gain their loyalty it would be more like 50% collectors story arch and 50% recruiting story arch but like I mention before I went through every mission. So while I do like the amount of teammates you are offered to play with, I felt like I was spending more time recruiting my team then trying to stop the collectors :T My next gripe: What happened to the Citadel?! Boy, did they dumb that down. You are limited to roughly 5 rooms or so. Here I was all excited to land on a rebuilt citadel and see the changes and hear what people had to say. I didn't get much of that though. Even when I went to see the council, who in my game was now Anderson, I thought there would be some great dialog there but It was a dissapointment.
My last issue is with the ending of the game. This is by far my biggest issue and all throughout the game I was brushing off all this other stuff I have been mentioning, but this, this was like a kick in the balls. So you spend about 30-40 hours prepping your team and after all that you get a really dissapointing last mission/ending. You finally get through the Omega 4 relay. YAY! and find the collector ship/base. Awesome right?? Not really. You would think there would be some cool exploration, unique items, etc. What you do get is a ride on a bunch of floating platforms for part of the mission and for the other part walking in a biotic bubble to the checkpoint all while fighting the same collector enemies with some husks sprinkled in between. You get to your destination only to find a huge....terminator??? This was just absurd. Why am i fighting a huge terminator? Why am I not instead fighting the hive mind who I am familiar with because he's been sprinkled throughout the story and he's the one who can take over the other collectors. He could have some really cool gameplay mechanics (calling upon the swarm, using unique biotic powers, using his anatomy in an interesting way) but instead I get to shoot red tubes of human paste for an anticlimatic and rather easy boss fight. The only reason why I saved the ship in the end was in hopes I could further explore it in DLC or in ME3. It's a very unique structure and so much could be done with it, instead I'm lead down a linear path only being able to pick wich team mates split up. T_T
This my friends concludes my review/thoughts/ideas of ME2. I do not mean to go on a rant but ME is such a great universe and I want to see great things from it. I'm only trying to be helpful and point out flaws that could be looked at and possibly fixed for the third. Even with the issues I had with it, I still think ME2 was a heck of a game, especially in a time where we aren't seeing too many RPGs. Your comments/opinions are all welcome and please let me know if I've said something that doesn't make any sense.
Modifié par overseer909, 09 février 2010 - 08:46 .
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