Insomniac: FFXIII Superior on PS3

[rocketpig]

vlad321 said:

rocketpig said:

vlad321 said:

WilliamWatts said:

vlad321 said:

coolbeans said:

How the hell is ME:2 only a little above average? 

Shitty story, pixelated textures, weak mechanics. In short. I can write a whole paper on the problems.

Having finished Mass Effect 2 I have to agree with you on the mechanics, they were pretty weak. I liked the story and characters though but I can see how other people may not have liked them. As for textures well I didn't go in looking for Crysis and it ran extremely well on my system so I wouldn't really fault them, it looks fine if you don't look too closely.

DOn't mistake character development for story. They had amazing char dev in the game. The story is literally, gather a team and kill the aliens. That's really it. THe only development the story had, and I mean the ONLY development, is learning who the Collectors are. I can't even call it a shitty story because there was no story.

As for textures. I didn't think they game looked bad. It definitely looked better than ME1. However I played the game on my PC at full res everything as high as it could go, and talking to people you can still see pixelated lines and textures on their armor. I mean if you spend so much time talking, they should have at least made sure the people were looking sharp above the belt.... Also while Garrus' markings weren't as bad as in ME1, they were still pixelated in this one.

Ah, okay. I see where you're going with this. I can understand your points... the game is far from perfect on a technical level. The thing is that it does so much so well that I'm willing to forgive its technical problems, which are FAR fewer than ME1.

The story isn't shit but it's not brilliant, either. It's pretty standard sci-fi stuff... which I'm okay with considering how much effort is put into allowing the player to choose so many different world outcomes by the time ME3 rolls around. When given that many choices, it's not as if BioWare is going to be able to create the next Battlestar Galactica (an example of very good sci-fi) when players are given the option to do something like surrender to the Cylons 1/3 of the way through the story arc.

This is a different media and cannot be held to the same standards as cinema UNLESS the game is linear, which the Mass Effect series is obviously not. Mass Effect did so many things well and broke down so many game barriers that no other developer has tried that it deserves the marks it is receiving from gamers around the world. The game basically took the WRPG genre, which had been stagnating badly since early last decade, and shook it around. It has life again and new ideas have now been introduced to the genre. That shouldn't be overlooked and by itself, puts the game well above average.

I really enjoyed the game because of what BW did with the choices. Though I wish some choices I made in ME1 had a little more effect (Rachni Queen for example). While I'd give it an a very very solid above average 85, it is solely based on the fact that they explored the video game medium to tell a story. As you said I did not enjoy the technical things, such as mechanics and graphics and actual plot, all that much.

It's interesting because on the flip side of this you have MGS4 which has some pretty damn good mechanics and gameplay, yet an absolutely horrendous story and extremely linear. In that case I thought the game was not worth my time to finish considering I can watch all the Godfather movies (to me the 3rd one didn't exist) in the time that it took me just to get through some of the most godawful story and laughable attempts at directing.

So I agree that BW got the story right, but simply a story does not make a great game. It makes a good one. Just the same way that a game with an absolutely painful and shitty story cannot be saved just by good gameplay. Of course there are exceptions, Serious Sam for instance is simple mechanics + simple story and it's thoroughly awesome.

Remember that this is a trilogy. The game hints pretty heavily that the Rachni Queen WILL be making an appearance before all is said and done. My friend and I discussed this the other day and we both agreed that it would be massively disappointing if BioWare drops the ball on that one. I'm willing to give them the third game before judging all the repercussions from the first two. Overall, I thought they did a pretty amazing job with the party members, the loyalty quests, and the consequences from the first game. Hopefully they continue to bring elements from the first game into the third, which could make the series the greatest trilogy in videogame history in my eyes.

As for MGS4, pretty much everyone here knows my opinion on that game. I loved elements of it (the "time warp" fight near the end, the boss battles, some of the gameplay) but the story was horrendous and drawn out about 5 hours longer than it needed to be. Overall, I liked the game but I will not give a linear game like that any kind of praise for having what would be an incredibly sub-par story by cinema standards. It's also the reason why I tend to enjoy games like Splinter Cell more than many others... they don't even really TRY to make an incredible story, they just go for standard action fare and let the player enjoy the gameplay itself. I can respect that. Not everything needs to try to be the next Hamlet.