Kaylord wrote...
I am not used to taking so long to finish a game, but, you know, getting older and having a demanding job and a wife makes time a precious resource. So. Finally finished, and I crave for some more time to play it anew.
Since the mid 80s, I am into PC games and have played my share of great evergreens. It is fantastic to experience the almost movie-like quality of modern, story driven games. But at the same time, I see many old virtues disappear without any good reason.
Here my impressions:
Fantastic story, fantastic cinematic screenplay, fantastic characters and animation. Really. Fantastic.
Some plot holes are annoying, though:
- Council politics are poorly covered. Of course there is distrust after the top Spectre disappears for two years and the appears with a big powerful cerberus ship in tow. But the matter is handled too superficially to be believable; a council would not simply ignore, they would, as the absolute minimum, investigate.
- Same holds true for the Alliance. Shepard can´t even get rid of the N7 logo on his uniform. Except for a monument on the crash site, the Alliance doesn´t add anything.
- Romances of ME1 were poorly transferred. At least some time together after a happy reunion would have been appropriate. This could have been nicely expressed with a love scene.
- Dead reaper had a wonderful ghostly atmosphere which could have been explored a lot more. The trap by activating the mass effect shields, as well as the presence of a geth ship, is not really explained.
OTOH, the gameplay - as opposed to the cinematic part - seemed to me a big setback, throwing overboard developments which took place over many game generations, and replacing them with virtually nothing instead:
- The game structure seems to suffer more and more. Like DA, we have to stop by certain points to collect some stuff or squadmates and then to a fireworks conclusion. Compared with "old games" like BG1 oder BG2, this becomes boring pretty fast. It´s time for some new old ideals of free exploration coming back here.
- Inventory gone and replaced by one of the most superficial upgrade systems I have ever seen. This is arcade game niveau, folks! I expect this of old console games, but not on a high-standard PC game.
- Much advertised customization of armor is disappointing. Adding non-customizable DLC-armor adds insult to the injury. Finally, removing the helmet toggle is exemplary for lack of sense for good game-play details.
- Character screen. Armor/Weapon equipment. Journal. Well, to quote a review I read somewhere: "If you have to access in-game information via escape key, someone did not deserve his employment as a GUI designer." Besides, the effect of having no traditional inventory is that you can only change equipment on certain choke points in the game. I fail to see how this could be an improvement to gameplay.
- Heat-Sinks: Since so many RPG mechanics were removed, compared to ME1, can anybody tell me why an ammo-system is supposed to add to the game-experience? It is not coherent, it is not logical, it even contradicts the self-imposed designer philosophy! For example, the inventory and loot system was gimped because it allegedly did not add to "game-play-experience". So, having to look for ammo all the time does?
- Steering Vehicles: I know, many players hated the Mako. But this was IMO only because of the largely uninspired mission design (but I liked it anymway). The fact itself that you could mount and actively use a vehicle to do missions was a very good feature. So, completey removing vehicle missions is a big letdown for me. Patching in a 5 mission pack with the hammerhead seems to be a weak sollution. This vehicle is by no means integrated into the game in terms of the main story line.
- Mining: This is what the reknown game designers of Bioware call the exciting exploration part of the game? For me, this is more boring than driving with the Mako through some high-res graphic landscape with fantastic alien-world night skies. Remember this red planet with two mighty suns looming in the sky? Or that big, almost sky filling planet? I really miss that feeling of being really far far away on an alien planet a lot! It doesn´t come up in ME2´s "mission tunnels".
So bottomline; while it is a great game with an almost movie-like flow, the game mechanics seem to me a shortcoming in almost every aspect. Perhaps it has to do with the modern short-term attention fashion which hails from console gaming. But in my eyes, Bioware is seriously loosing its competence to do good *PC* games.
Although mining is a horrendous activity, I disagree with everything else. Although weapons and armor could use more options so you have to make more inventory choices throughout the game, the new system is brilliant. It not only mimics more of a realistic approach to arming a squad, but it also removes the lunacy of managing a 150 item inventory that follows you around everywhere.
As for the driving, I always wondered why you would be dropped half a mile from your target, the drop shuttle taking you directly there makes more sense, and the driving segments in ME1 were not pertinent to the story and the fact that the Mako managed to get involved in every major mission was silly, I was fine with it, but it was kinda strange that the Mako was in every garage you had to go through (noveria and feros in paritcular). The hammerhead will be fine.
So my bottom line is Mass Effect's new direction is fantastic, it just needs a lot of work, the new system is bare bones but once they flush it out it will be unparalleled. (flushing out will prob partly be done through DLC due to the sheer size of the game - two discs as is)
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
