| Mise said: Yeah, I'll have to break this up, I hate long quote columns.
Thing is, the universe is bending over backwards for her from the first minute of Mass Effect 1. She basically becomes a Spectre just because she asked to be one, she can read garbled mind messages just because she's Shepard, everyones completely gaga over her and her informed abilities from the word go when all you have to go on are a few paragraphs from the intro, and she is reconstructed and raised from the dead since humanity would either fall or isolate itself from the galaxy just because she died. I know Shepard's a super-elite soldier and all, but goddamn. Bear in mind one thing - Shepard is unique in additional ways after the first Mass Effect - due to his firts mission, he's the only human who has the Cipher, as well as Prothean memories from the beacons - he knows the single most about the Reapers out of anyone in the galaxy, this naturally makes him invaluable. Mirandas fourth tier talent gives a persistent 25% damage bonus to the entire team. That's bloody insane in this game. I didn't realize that - that's beyond insane. Welcome to permanant member status on my next playthrough. * Removing free ducking and grenades Grenades were poorly implemented in ME1 anyway, I don't miss them.
I dunno, I would've preferred actually throwing grenades at entrenched enemies instead of casting bloody arcing Hadokens with the power of SCIENCE~ . Pyrokinesis is fine and all, but I would've still preferred proper grenades. I don't know what you mean. Thing is, the ability cooldown would make sense if, for example, all biotic talents had a group cooldown - so you could still use your tech talents right after biotic talents, ammo powers or physical talents (like Fortification). That would've made more sense, been internally more consistent and added a tactical element to the fights, all at the same time. The current implementation doesn't exactly add up, IMO. Fair enough, I suppose - but the cooldowns are so short, if tech and biotics were seperate, you could spawm them non stop, wouldn't even need guns. I wouldn'tbe surprised if there was a reason for it though... aside from asari, nanites are needed to access biotic abilities, maybe these also interface with your omnitool to coordinate tech abilities?
I guess what I'm asking is to make the fights stand out from each other more, in terrain, tactical possibilities and enemy behaviour. Now, you can basically win every fight with the same tactics - the only variables that matter are your starting position, cover positions and boss enemies. Fair enough, but ME is now a shooter, and shooters need a body count. As awesome as different and interesting fights would be, if they reduced the number of enemies in favor or more interesting ones, there'd be a lot of running and minimal action. I think they balance they chose, story to keep you involved, numerous enemies to provide action, was a good one. Maybe if you look at it from it's primary plot points, there weren't many.
I was looking for the main plot points, yes. In those, Mass Effect 2 doesn't really hold up. At all. Why not? The game is right smack in the middle of an epic story. It seems to me we're just playing a part of the story most games glaze over - you either start with a loyal, or encounter people and they join your merry band, end of story. Now you get a chance to assemble a best-of-the-best team, and it's not some arbitrary detail along the way. You're gathering strength and allies in preparation for a single, critical mission. That's the plot. Granted, it's not what ME1 was, revealing new and exciting things as the story grew larger and more interesting, but really, ME1 was the reveal, ME2 was preparing to strike back, and scoring a blow against the reapers and their allies, and it leaves room for an epic showdown in coming games. Also, there were some very confusing things in the meager plot, as well: * Why does Shepard even want to work for with Cerberus anyway, when it's completely obvious what kind of people she's dealing with? Even a full-blown Renegade Shep would have some issues working with a shadow group that's apparently about as powerful as the rest of the Systems Alliance itself. He doesn't want to, he makes that clear... but if they are the only ones who will give him a ship and the resources he needs, he doesn't have much choice. * EDI's comments at the crew capture scene were slightly off. They should've read: Shepard, you just passed the point of no return and no one with a brain bothered to script the following sequence. Please distribute these Idiot Balls to your entire crew and go joyriding in the middle of buttfucking nowhere so the collectors can capture your crew and give you a pointless extra reason to go kill yourself as soon as possible. When I first got the reaper IFF, I wasn't done with all the side missions I wanted to do. This entire game took place in a relatively short time period, considering what was accomplished - and given the choice to twiddle their thumbs for hours, or complete a mission, taking a shuttle out didn't seem like a terrible idea. Yes, it was done to move the storyline, but it didn't really take away from it, it wasn't ridiculous.
* Why isn't anyone more shocked by the fact that Shepard's been dead for two years? Even when you meet people you've known for years, the exchanges amount to basically this: "Shepard, where the hell have you been for the last two years? Nobody has heard anything of you since the Normandy was destroyed" "I was dead. I'm better. I'm your goddamn Jesus, worship me, you maggot." "Oh, ok. Cookies?" As entertaining as it would have been to include a 3rd DVD, entirely filled by hour long conversations catching up on the last two years, hugging friends and family, telling them long stories about the Collector attack and his reconstruction, etc, Bioware remembered that people were playing a game, and that adding 10 minutes of explanations to literally every former acquaintance you run into would not make for a better game. Besides, he was a Spectre. If you knew a friend of yours was a high level government agent, and he vanished for a while, you might know there's more to it than your clearance entitles you to. There are more silly things, of course - I remembered those off the top of my head. This one suggests you acquire a sustained existence and begs one recall that this is merely video entertainment. (I know, I'm one to talk) * Removing quick keys that were present in ME1 (honestly, what the hell?) Didn't play the PC version.
The PC version of ME1 had quick keys for ie. Journal, Codex and Squad windows. Missing these isn't exactly the end of the world, but coding them in would've only taken a few minutes, and they were there in ME1, so I see no good reason for removing them. Fair enough. If you want a score, I'd give ME2 about 84-86 / 100, while ME1 was 80 / 100. Sacrilege. On my personal scale, 6 is an average game, 7 is good, 8 is great, etc. I also grade them on a curve of sorts - it isn't that hard for a game to score a seven on my scale, but eight and above require quite a bit of work. Still Sacriledge! |
