Review: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect debuted a little over two years ago to almost universal praise, getting high marks for the rich story, endless exploration options, and entertaining gameplay. Despite the game's success, BioWare listened closely to player feedback, promising to revamp the parts of the game that needed improvement while developing the sequel. They didn't hesitate to refine the elements they wanted to keep and do away with the ones they didn't. The result is a familiar, but much more streamlined experience. Rather than being a shooter with a great story added in, Mass Effect 2 a great story that often has you shoot things. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

• Title: Mass Effect 2
• Developer: BioWare
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• System: Windows, Xbox 360
• Reviewer: Soulskill
• Score: 9/10

The Story

Mass Effect 2 starts off with a bang, immediately putting Commander Shepherd in rather significant peril and setting him to work with Cerberus, an organization of questionable morality that made a brief appearance in ME1. Shepherd often has reason to doubt Cerberus's trustworthiness and stated goals, but has little choice since they're the only ones who seem to be fighting the latest threat to humanity. The conflict between Shepherd and Cerberus's leader, the Illusive Man, is a plot thread that runs through the entire game, and you're given quite a bit of control over how trusting or defiant you want to be. After settling in aboard your ship, you're given a kick in the pants to begin recruiting a new team.

The storytelling in Mass Effect 2 can be divided into three discrete groups of quests — primary plot missions, squadmate missions, and side missions. When you go to recruit a member of your team, you'll do a mission that frees them from whatever they're currently involved with. Later on, each team member will pester you once to solve another problem of theirs, at which point they'll become loyal to you. In fact, after helping a few of them, you'll start anticipating when the next crewmate will come nag you for help. Fortunately, their missions are varied and interesting, and provide good background for the supporting cast. These stories are often quite personal, and in typical BioWare style, aren't afraid of setting up some complex moral dilemmas, which you can choose to solve in several different ways. Shepherd and his team deal with a broad spectrum of emotions, from compassion and regret to contempt and vengeance.

The side missions are minor plot lines you run into while exploring or doing more important things. Some are trivial, like finding a lost item or slapping somebody around; others have more depth, tasking you with determining guilt or innocence, making an arrangement with local criminals, or stumbling across characters you met in the first game. The main story itself follows up on events in ME1, and the scale is just as epic. The Paragon/Renegade system is back, but different. If you respond to an NPC in a typical "good guy" way, you'll gain Paragon points. If you're a jerk to them, you'll gain Renegade points. As you accrue enough of these points, dialog options open up that can allow you to persuade NPCs more strongly, either by appealing to their better nature or intimidating them. You no longer have to spend talent points on it.

Another nice change is the inclusion of quick-time events during cinematic scenes. Normally, I deplore QTEs, but BioWare did it right. At a potential turning point in the story, you'll get a flashing icon on your screen which will allow you to do something particularly good or particularly evil. The decision you're making isn't spelled out for you, but it's often obvious from the situation; for example, if a character you don't trust is inching toward a weapon and the red Renegade icon pops up, clicking it will make Shepherd end the conversation with a bullet. Similarly, the Paragon icon might pop up to give you the chance to stop a friend from doing something they'll regret. There's plenty of time to react to these, and no button mashing involved; it's just a simple way to move the story in the direction you prefer.

Of course, the success of the story rests on the characters, and the strength of the characters comes from voice acting, animation, and dialogue. The writing is very consistent; all of the major characters have distinct personalities and histories, and the different ways in which Shepherd can react to situations all come across as authentic. Some of your lines sound corny, but those are usually the ones that are supposed to sound corny. Far more often, you or your squadmates will sound like action heroes. The voice acting in Mass Effect 2 is excellent. BioWare has proven throughout the years that they take their dialogue seriously and do it well. What struck me was that the actors all sounded more confident in their readings, either through their own familiarity with the games or because BioWare got enough experience with the first game to provide clearer direction. Or both. In addition to the big name talent doing the main characters, there are also a surprising number of familiar voices doing smaller roles (was.. was that Worf?!).

What surprised me most was the quality of the animations. First of all, scenes are framed like you'd expect in a movie, and as any film buff will tell you, good framing makes a huge difference in how a story is viewed. Second, the characters are always doing something, even the ones that aren't talking; leaning against a desk, folding their arms, wincing or shaking their head. They aren't just static props. Third, the body movement and facial animations are quite good. Several times during the game, a character will react to something with only a facial expression, and not necessarily a simple one like shock. I think it's cool that video game characters look more like people than textured stick figures.

Gameplay

Combat in Mass Effect 2 is as simple or as complicated as you'd like to make it. Several of the old game mechanics have been cleaned up. You run around with a shield and a health bar, both of which quickly regenerate if you stop firing and stop getting shot for several seconds. This makes for very little downtime during fights. As you level you get talent points to spend on special abilities. Shepherd and each of your shipmates has a different set of skills — knockbacks, ammo specialties, the ability to hack mech enemies (one character makes a Unix reference) — and you get to choose which ones to level up. You can hotkey special abilities for Shepherd and your squadmates, and you can revive your allies if they fall in battle using medi-gel. Mass Effect 2 uses a cover system, and it's one of the more responsive systems I've played. Hitting your cover button by a corner will make you turn your back to it, and you can peek around with your gun to fire. Similarly, you can crouch behind a low barrier and fire over it. It's an intuitive system, and it almost always does exactly what you expect.

Unlike the first game, you don't have an inventory; just a selection of weapons and abilities. You can still upgrade your weapons and armor, but it's handled differently. As you move through various maps, you'll come across data pads, laptops, and dead foes that you can scan for upgrade information. Once you're back aboard your ship, you can spend resources to research any of these bits of information, and they'll do things like make your machine guns more powerful, or give you extra shielding against certain weapon types. It's much less of a pain to deal with than ME1's inventory. You can also easily control your squadmates, telling them where to go and which abilities to use on whom. The AI is reasonably smart; it can win a lot of fights by itself on the lower difficulties levels. Speaking of which — if you're fairly experienced with other shooters, you'll probably want to bump the difficulty up to the second highest setting in order to make fights interesting. On the other hand, if the fights are just part of the story for you, leaving it on Normal or Casual will let you go through the game with ease.

Ammo (sorry, heat sinks) is plentiful in this game. You'll never be in danger of running out, but you go through it quickly enough that you can't just rely on one weapon all the time. The loadout is pretty standard for a shooter; pistol, shotgun, machine gun and sniper rifle (with variations on each), and also a variety of "heavy weapons," which are fun, but you can only carry one at a time. I didn't find myself using the shotgun too often, but the other guns were fine. One complaint I have about the combat was the layout of the maps. It's always quite obvious when you're about to get ambushed; you'll round a corner and there will be a bunch of low obstacles on the ground, the perfect height for crouching behind. Any time it looks like you're ready to run the 100m hurdles, aliens are about to start shooting at you. The pacing of the combat, on the other hand, was good — another area that showed a director's touch. Individual missions are generally short — 15-30 minutes, perhaps — and the cinematics are interspersed with the combat such that you aren't doing either long enough to get bored.

The UI is well-refined; anything in the environment you need to interact with will be outlined, and extraneous information is kept to a minimum. Your abilities gray out when they're cooling down, and the icons fill in to show you how long is left on the timer. The relevant health bars are always apparent — yours, your team's, and your target's. Your aiming reticle shrinks if you stand still and fire from cover and expands if you continue firing or move around, but either way it's quite easy to see where your bullets are going. You can pause combat to switch weapons, activate abilities or order your squadmates around.

Throughout your missions you'll find bank vaults, doors, and computers that need to be "hacked" or "bypassed." Doing so brings up a short mini-game where you either connect circuits by matching the symbols on them (a la Memory) or match code segments from a scrolling list of lookalikes. These mini-games are cute the first couple times, but they never get harder or more complicated, so they get repetitious. Similarly, the mineral-gathering system is best in small doses. You gather mineral resources by flying your ship to different planets, scanning them, and launching probes. The trouble is that the scanning is done manually. You hold down a button and pass a relatively small scanning area over the entire planet. When you see readings, you press another button to fire a probe, which automatically gathers whatever it finds. Depending on how methodical you are, it can take a few minutes per planet. It's probably not annoying enough to stop the completionists, but anyone who dislikes "grindy" activities will probably get bored quickly.

This brings us to one of the major changes between ME1 and ME2: there's no Mako. BioWare apparently decided that the first game's ground vehicle was not worth keeping, so they excised it completely. Apparently some sort of vehicle will be added in future DLC, but details are sparse. If the Mako was one of your favorite parts of ME1, you may want to wait until that DLC comes out. If you didn't play ME1, you won't notice the lack. You can still find things on unexplored planets — you'll detect an "anomaly" when scanning for minerals, and a shuttle will drop you off, on foot, at the anomaly's location. The space ports and mission maps generally aren't big enough that you'd feel the need to drive around them. Or, if they are, they're sectioned off such that you don't need to traverse the entire area at one time.

Odds and Ends

The graphics are fantastic — exactly what you'd expect from a brand new BioWare game, and quite a step up from ME1. The humans look like real humans — fans of the TV show Chuck will immediately recognize one of your female squadmates — and the high level of detail makes the aliens look like something that could actually exist. While you'll pass through your fair share of typical shooter corridors and warehouses, you'll also see some extremely large and impressive environments. On one mission, you find an enormous crashed spaceship that's precariously balanced on the edge of a cliff. As you navigate the shattered vessel to recover some data, it wobbles and teeters, threatening to go over the edge as debris falls all around you. The audio is quite good as well. I find myself wishing I'd grabbed the version of the game that came with the OST. The sound effects are helpful and unobtrusive. You can glean a lot of information about what your squadmates are doing during a fight by just listening for them.

Another neat feature worth mentioning is that if you have a saved game from ME1, you can important your Shepherd into ME2, preserving a number of actions you took in the first game that will now affect how ME2 plays. It's a cool injection of continuity, and they'll be doing the same thing for ME3 in the future. You have a surprising amount of control over the how ME2 ends, so keep this in mind.

The game does have its annoyances. There was one bug I encountered frequently enough to alter my gameplay — walking near corners where textures meet on the ground will occasionally send Shepherd floating straight up in the air, unable to get down. It forces a reload, which sucks, but fortunately between the quick-save and the auto-save, I never lost more than a minute or two. I played the game on my PC, and while the controls were generally excellent, little effort was made to support things like Tab or the mousewheel, which can make menu navigation a small inconvenience.

Conclusion

Mass Effect 2 is not without its flaws, but those flaws are minor and vastly outweighed by its strengths. The story is top-notch, and meticulously plotted and paced to be fun and interesting from the intense introduction to the foreboding yet flexible ending. It's great to see that BioWare was willing to take feedback to heart and make significant changes regardless of ME1's success. While the sequel doesn't seem as novel and innovative as the first game, it instead demonstrates a great deal of refinement and polish. I'll be looking forward to Mass Effect 3.

Comments

I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[elrous0]

A lot of people dissed the original combat system in ME1. But I liked it. ME2 has a more "Gears of War" feel to it, and they've stripped away or simplified a lot of the RPG elements that made the original so much fun. Granted inventory management and the Mako were kind of a pain in the ass in the original, but they needed to be fixed, not completely eliminated. On the upside, the incredibly detailed story and background material is still there (the Codex still goes into remarkable depth on alien races, tech, etc.). And a lot of the freedom and sense of exploration is still there (as in the original, once you get the Normandy). And the graphics have gotten a very nice upgrade (with no pop-in or weird glitches). All-in-all, it's enjoyable so far. Again, I do miss the old combat system. But then again, I'm not a huge shooter fan (I actually prefer the old turn-based RPG's like Knights of the Old Republic).

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

The simplification in the combat is quite annoying, I especially missed more direct control of the teammates. In ME1 you could tell them to seek a defensive position or attack a specific enemy giving it a tactic shooter feel, in ME2 that is no longer the case. You are limited to telling them what power to use. You can also tell them where to go, but that never worked for me in ME2 as they always ended up running all over the place. They also removed the ability to duck to increase your accuracy, you are limited to auto-duck behind cover, grenades and health packs are also gone.

Add the lack of Mako and the much simplified level design on top of it and the combat ends up feeling quite monotone.

All that said, its still Mass Effect and still among the best games out there, but some of the changes feel a little bit like somebody just took the scissor to everything that got criticized in the first, instead of just improving it (elevators are gone, but now you have simplified flat levels and loading screens, not exactly an improvement).

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Monkeedude1212]

I highly prefered the combat system in ME1 as well. Every shooter has had the ammo management system, and a few sparingly had the heat management system. I much prefer heat over ammo managing, it means you time your shots or bursts, and doesn't leave you stranded should you miss the ammo crate after a boss.

And actually, I think that was also an integral part of the story for me in ME1. The idea that we had engineered Mass Effect technology to the point where we don't need ammo, we were capable of taking a particle of Air and propelling it at such a high speed it could rip through people. Or at least, thats what I had the impression of how the guns operated. And that the various addons you had (Heat, cold, poison, etc) were just affecting the air you were shooting.

And now they've adopted an ammo management system, which they could easily work into the story, though it DOES feel like a step backwards. I've only played say 30 minutes into the game, and I haven't picked it up again. Mostly its a time issue, I've been busy, but something about it doesn't feel the same as the original, so I don't feel the same pull to it like the original did. In the original, the storyline had me rushing home just so I could find out what happens next. This new one intrigues me despite some of its rather cliche elements, but I'm sure given enough time it will come around.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Enderandrew]

How can you write an in-depth review (like the above) and not mention these changes?

No grenades or health packs? Less control over your squad?

I almost regret preordering this. I hope the story makes the game worthwhile.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[poetmatt]

there exists no game in the last 10 years I can think of that isn't turn based in one form or another. It's just a question of whether it's done in a subtle enough fashion for people to not realize it exists.

examples:
mmorpgs: you only attack/swing/etc so fast. Although turns go by fast, in that sense, there is a set actual "turn". Example: world of warcraft global cooldown, or any game that has cooldowns on abilities.

first person shooters: you can only fire so fast, delayed by having to reload. Higher damage weapons obviously get more clips, basically lengthening your "round", so to speak. Also, in mass effect 2, bio/tech cooldowns.

Adventure games with combat: again, you can only "Swing" so fast, thus things become timing. Look at say, any megaman game. You get your turn (and chances to fire), and they get their turn (where you must avoid them).

Strategy game: zerg/terran/protoss. Look at how long the build times are for everything, it's subtle, but it's turns all the same. Tower defense: each round.

Really, turn based picked up around dragon warrior/finaly fantasy 1 era, and very few games has failed to bring the turn based concept into a game.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[svendsen]

Don't worry it will get much better. I am 25 hours in and so far all I have done is the side quests which have that "just one more mission" addiction. I find the character development and story line much better than ME1, and I thought ME1 was great in those categories. The space exploration part kind of takes me back to the Star Control 2 days.

My only pet peeve? Scanning the damn planets. Even with the upgrade it is a PITA.

Other than that I like the no inventory management system and instead focus on upgrading what you have. The selection of weapons I like in that it isn't over whelming. The anti material sniper rifle with full upgrades + Solider focus = lots of 1 head shot kills.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[flitty]

Pressing Up on the D-pad tells your teammates to attack a certain enemy. You can still tell them where to take cover and what power to use.

Grenades are gone in favor of heavy weapons. This comes in the form of Grenade launchers, Rocket launchers, and other Weapons that I don't want to spoil. As someone who never used grenades in ME1, ME2's response of Heavy weapons is much better deployed and much friendlier to use.

Getting rid of health packs is something I cheer. There was nothing worse than getting to a point where you had no health packs, low health, and were stuck in an area where you couldn't get any more health packs, stuck on a hard battle. Now, instead of such a situation being impossible to pass, is now just hard, but you can do it.

Sniper rifles are also better handled in this game. While being more powerful and faster, the limited ammo keeps you from solely relying on them.

My only complaint about the changes to the RPG elements is the lack of "create your own character with your own choice of powers", I understand they do this for balance reasons, but it still could have been done. None of the base classes were exactly what I was looking for, but it's definately a minor complaint, nothing big.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[tepples]

How is Dance Dance Revolution turn-based?

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[PylonHead]

Hah.. the planet scanning. It's almost like they said, "We're going to take all out all the boring, monotonous game mechanics for ME2... and then we'll add one back in!"

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[fatalwall]

The above review seems overly bias to me. Seems more like a press release from the company then a review as its way too favorable.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

What difference does it make whether there are health packs in an RPG? You play it for the choices and consequences.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Monkeedude1212]

I never really found the inventory management too difficult in Mass Effect 1 - You could carry a stupidly high amount of items on your character - your partners will own everything if you upgrade their armour ONCE - and you only have to worry about your own guns and armour afterwards, which is easy to compare once its in your inventory. Than anything else you pick up (Hey, no one uses pistols in my group!) you can just omni gel it.

The one thing I liked about the Pistol in Mass Effect 1 was that it had the real balance of all the weapons. Solid aim, slow to overheat, decent fire rate. You could take out many enemies if you were skilled enough to hit each shot, without worrying about overheating.

Now I have to reload, I feel like it breaks that smooth operation I had so perfectly mastered.

Then again, who wants to play a game they've mastered, right?

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

In ME1 you could tell them to seek a defensive position or attack a specific enemy giving it a tactic shooter feel, in ME2 that is no longer the case. You are limited to telling them what power to use. You can also tell them where to go, but that never worked for me in ME2 as they always ended up running all over the place.

I don't know about the console version, but on the PC you can still tell them where to go and who to attack. I think the default controls are Q and E.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Lumpy]

Or the annoying ship fuel. That was added simply to suck up the extra credits they give you in game.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

When you where under direct attack with your shields gone in ME1, you used a health pack and run for cover. In ME2 you have to die and retry from the last checkout, as your health is so little that you don't have any time to run for cover.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Monkeedude1212]

THATS what it was!

I knew some intricate part of the movement and combat was missing but I couldn't put my finger on it. And I kept trying to figure out how to Duck - thinking they changed the control scheme.

To know that it is actually missing is a huge disappointment for me now. It makes me want to play the original more.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Lumpy]

Sniper rifles are not more powerful. Grab a midrange Sniper rifle in ME1 and equip with explosive rounds. a headshot on ANYONE will kill them instantly. One shot every 30 seconds was worth it.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Gears of War, Dead Space, etc. is the idiotic view from close behind your character. Whoever thought that the over the shoulder view was a good idea should be shot. The last thing I want when I play a game is for my player character's back to obscure a large percentage of the screen area. It also feels unbalanced because the character is pushed over to the side.

Here's a better idea. Make the camera either 1st person or 3rd person from directly behind with the camera pulled back more so that you can actually see the environment.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[cheier]

Go to an arcade where it is a popular game and you'll find out real soon.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[bickle]

I think the context was that they are more powerful than other weapons in the current game, not more powerful than the ME1 sniper rifles.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Pojut]

Agreed. The viewpoint in ME2 is WAY too close to Shepard...I don't mind the fixed nature of the camera, but it would be nice if the view was pulled back a bit so his shoulders didn't take up half my TV.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

You have the same options for controlling your squadmates that you had in ME1. D-pad up will tell them to attack the current target, D-pad left/right will tell the respective squadmate to take a position at your reticle, D-pad down will tell your squadmates to hold position. I've had next to no issues with giving my squadmates specific positions to take cover behind personally. You've got options for mapping your squadmate's powers for real time orders as well, but I haven't messed with this since I always use the power wheel.

I miss the complexity of the first game as well, but you can't argue that combat doesn't flow alot more fluidly in its current configuration.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand what "turn based" means obviously. When you are in a first person shooter, you can fire off a clip (unless you're playing something like Serious Sam where there are no clips) and have to reload. During the time that you are reloading your weapon, you can change weapons, move about, jump up and down or whatever. That is realtime. Turn-based would mean that you fired off your barrage, ending your turn which means you can't do ANYTHING until your turn comes back around (no changing weapons, no moving, no jumping, etc). The same thing applies to Action-Adventure games, RTS and realtime RPGs (like Morrowind or Oblivion). Even games like Final Fantasy IV/V/VI/VII weren't turn-based by default, they were time based.

Turn-based is something like Ultima, Fallout or an early Final Fantasy where when you select an action, you cannot do ANYTHING else until the enemy has finished their entire turn.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Swanktastic]

I dunno man. Your argument kind of falls into "deconstruction ad absurdum" territory of finding something that's probably not there. The whole concept of "turn" is that I take an action, you take an action, till the game is over. Typically, the "turn" involves a significant amount of pause as I think about my action.

I hardly see how FPS, Simulators, or RTS fall into this turn thing. Turn-based vs. realtime in gaming these days pretty much falls into whether the time elements are discrete vs. indiscrete, and it really is pushing things to claim that everything is discrete.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Mongoose Disciple]

I also kind of miss the old combat system.

The improved cover thing is kind of cool, but I miss heat vs. ammo and longer but non-shared cooldowns on powers. The major selling point of playing Adept or Sentinel in ME1 in my opinion is that you have so many powers that later in the game you can just cycle through them to keep casting -- it's not exactly that you have better powers than a half-caster like Vanguard or Infiltrator (although that's slightly true). In ME2 with all powers sharing a cooldown I'm not really sure why you'd want to pick one of those classes.

That being said, although it's not a perfect game and in several ways is a step backwards from ME1 to me, I'm still enjoying it.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[wwfarch]

This was also a major one of my gripes with ME2. The classes lost a lot of their differentiation. All classes are highly skilled in every firearm they're capable of using. I preferred ME1 where you could use any gun but you may suck with it. Due to the shared cool down every class has to use guns. I much preferred playing a biotic that never needed to use the gun. I think a better system would have been one used in many games. If you use power A then powers A and B will be unusable but power B will become available first.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

How is Dance Dance Revolution turn-based?

You have to turn a lot when you dance?

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Guspaz]

A better question is why you were out of cover to begin with. My shields go down often, and I usually have enough health to make it to cover. The rare few times that I don't, it's usually my own damned fault for letting myself get exposed.

What you're really complaining about is that ME2 forces you to use cover, and you don't like that. ME2 doesn't let you run and gun, it punishes you for that.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[sammy baby]

And now they've adopted an ammo management system, which they could easily work into the story, though it DOES feel like a step backwards.

I think that above everything else, this is the thing that had me asking "why?" Did they feel that the guns in the original were too powerful? It drives me crazy for two reasons: first, because from a story perspective, it asks the player to accept that having what amounts to an infinite supply of fire was unacceptable because they couldn't quite get the shots of fast enough; and second, because being used to having an infinite supply of ammo in other games, I have a tendency to reload reflexively when ducking into cover or at breaks in the action. Now every time I do that, I curse myself for having discarded a nearly-full clip.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Guspaz]

The in-game explanation was that the guns shaved off an extremely small sliver of metal from a block, and then accelerated them to extreme speeds in order to get the same energy as a traditional projectile. The ammo was unlimited because the shavings from the ammo block were incredibly small.

The in-game explanation as to why they added "ammo" was that they decided that dissipating the excess heat from weapons was limiting their firing speed too much (you could only fire as fast as you could cool). The new system dumps the heat directly into a sink (the cartridges), which you discard. In one sense, you're not emptying your ammo clip when you fire, you're filling it.

So, they do explain this all in the story, through the codex.

It's important to remember that the ammo that you pick up is universal; you pick up one clip and all your weapons get more ammo. I found that this changed the weapons dynamic in a way that I actually enjoyed. In ME1, I used nothing but the assault rifle and on rare occasions the sniper rifle. In ME2, because they made the weapons more unique, I really find myself changing up my weapons based on the type of enemy, the distance to the enemy, etc. in order to conserve ammunition. The fact that there is only one ammo type for all weapons (except heavy) simplifies this to make it work much better.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Fneb]

The weapons are explained in the first Mass Effect book, Revelation. They don't fire particles of air, they rely on ammo. To quote from the book about assault rifles: 'The ammo clip on each weapon held over four thousand rounds; miniature pellets smaller than grains of sand. When fired at sufficient velocity, the nearly microscopic projectiles were capable of inflicting massive damage.' In ME2 (don't worry, not really a spoiler), a soldier near where you arrive on the Citadel talks about a dreadnaught firing (numbers/facts may be wrong, this is from memory) a 20kg iron bolt at 1.3% of the speed of light, with the resultant impact being on a similar order of magnitude to a nuclear bomb.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the best mechanic ever! You get to probe Uranus!

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[HaZardman27]

Whoever is saying there are no health packs is wrong; you just have to use the Unity ability to use them instead of hitting whatever key you mapped to medi-gel.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[HaZardman27]

The fuel is cheap enough to be considered trivial.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

Correct, even after 35h of play time on the PC version I somehow missed that, as on the PC move and attack or both bound to a single key (q for one team mate, e for the other), it didn't occur to me that the move key also works as attack key. They also removed move/attack from the pause screen, only the special powers remain there, which likely added to the confusion, as Mass Effect 1 had all that in the pause screen.

Funny part is, even the medipacks seem to still work, contrary to what I originally said. But they now restore your shield instead of your health, as you don't really have a separate healthbar. Kind of confusing and the little text explanation doesn't even mention that.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[elrous0]

I'm always suspicious of reviews these days. When is the last time you saw a major release that didn't get glowing reviews from pretty much every site out there (sites who are also heavily supported with advertising $ from the very companies whose games they're reviewing)? Many of us remember the Gamespot fiasco a while back. I suspect that's the tip of the iceburg. Too many games today get way too many glowing reviews, with too few reviewers bothering to point out any flaws.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[HaZardman27]

If you can actually apply "turns" in the way you did here, reality is turn based.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

The annoying part with ME1 was that it took ages to keep the equipment of all your teammates up to date, as you had to do a ton of clicking to equip every weapon and then also every weapon module. A way to just auto-equip the best stuff and auto-omni-gel the useless stuff would have been welcome. I think there also was no way to directly switch between teammates, so you had to click on the storage locker of each teammate individually.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[pluther]

How can you write an in-depth review (like the above) and not mention these changes?

Because the review here is a press release. Although the author apparently added his own opinions in at the end, for the most part it is word-for-word what bioware wrote and other media have quoted in their "reviews". I've read several, and a surprisingly large number of them are almost identical.

No grenades or health packs? Less control over your squad?

Grenades have been replaced with Heavy Weapons, which do basically the same thing, but are more varied.

The author above was incorrect when he stated that you can't tell your squad where to go or who to attack. You can send either of your two NPCs to specific locations by targeting it and hitting either Q or E. If there's cover next to where you send them, they'll automatically move to it and use it.

And the same screen you use to tell them which power or ammo to use also tells them who to target.

And health packs aren't really gone. The mechanic is somewhat different is all. You still have medi-gel, which you can use at any time. Each use heals your entire squad instead of just you. You also regenerate faster during fights, so you don't always need to use it.

I almost regret preordering this. I hope the story makes the game worthwhile.

That seems to be the case so far.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. I like the new NPCs, and the variety of the missions.

The new conversation "interrupt" system is fun, too. Cutting a bad guys rant short by throwing him out a window was just too much fun to pass up.

I hate the new "scanning" system for finding planetary resources so far. You need the minerals you find on those planets, but scanning is 2-3 minutes of slowly passing the scanner over the planet and watching for a signal change showing where they are. Supposedly you can discover new missions on uncharted planets as well, but I've scanned a dozen or so without finding any. For planets with nothing but minerals, I like the old system of just clicking scan then being told what you found.

I also miss driving the mako around, bouncing around, fighting thresher maws, or just trying to climb up steep hills in it. It took longer to thoroughly loot a planet using it, but was a lot more fun.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Colonel Korn]

The simplification in the combat is quite annoying, I especially missed more direct control of the teammates. In ME1 you could tell them to seek a defensive position or attack a specific enemy giving it a tactic shooter feel, in ME2 that is no longer the case. You are limited to telling them what power to use. You can also tell them where to go, but that never worked for me in ME2 as they always ended up running all over the place.

You can still tell each party member to target a specific opponent. Movement control seems more effective in ME2 as well, since they do a better just of finding the cover you intend for them to use when you tell them to go stand near a wall or crate or something. Overall I think ME2 offers the same level of party control as the PC version of ME1, and thus much more than the console ME1. Also, grenades were replaced by the much more varied, useful, and interesting heavy weapons. Health packs still work, but you need to research them (+health during unity, and +shields during unity as a separate upgrade). I, too miss parts of ME1's system. I miss the incredible crowd control abilities of a biotic character. Now that sort of ability only works when it no longer matters (once shields and armor are down, at which point the target is already a couple seconds from the end). Additionally, sharing a cooldown between every ability eliminates the lift/singularity/push combos that allowed a single character to completely direct an encounter without firing a shot.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

Camera behind your character would be pretty useless, as then your character would always obscure what he is aiming at (Tomb Raider: Underworld does that and its completly useless). Over shoulder camera is used to avoid exactly that while still giving you a visible character instead of just a floating pair of arms as the average FPS.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[rcuhljr]

You don't lose ammo by reloading early, which further kind of breaks the 'clip' mechanic. It really feels shoe horned in. Since I've got to wait around longer before I can post, I enjoy the fact that during the grindfest that is planet scanning you get to repeatedly hear Cyclon number 6 telling you 'Probe away.' Why yes, I will.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Liquidrage]

I actually believe something like this (or the reverse of this) has happened with Mass Effect 2. I just can't fathom how this game has gotten the reviews it's gotten. For the 360 there are 42 reviews at gamerankings with the avg score over a 96, and not a single one below a 90.

I can understand some or many reviews like that. But seriously, the game has very slow combat, annoying ammo problems, incredibly lacking skill/ability trees, horribly tedious resource gathering (that's basically forced on you to get upgrades for your stuff), and almost all missions are very brief compared to ME1 and other games. With it's dumbed down RPG system, lack of loot almost altogether, and subpar shooter mechanics, I can't imagine that in all those people that reviewed no one thought it less then a 90. Some, sure. All? No.

I like it. I think it's an 8. But the flaws I point out are echoed by a lot of players. So how in this case are all the reviewers in agreement with just nothing but glowing praise and incredible reviews when the player based isn't, especially since what they changed surly should have pissed off the hardcore RPG players that surly must do a lot of the reviews?

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

Camera behind your character would be pretty useless

And yet many other games have successfully done it this way. I didn't play Tomb Raider Underworld, but Tomb Raider Anniversary had superb control and never did I feel that Lara was in the way of the action. I could always see what I was aiming at, while simultaneously being able to see the environment and enemies around me.

Either way, it certainly beats having 1/4 or 1/3 of your entire screen taken up with just your character's back. First person or a normal third person view would be much better.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Nathrael]

You can still tell squadmates who to target by pointing at an enemy and pressing their respective command key.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[blahplusplus]

"ME2 has a more "Gears of War" feel to it"

It is gears of war in the ME universe, it uses the same engine, it's little wonder the game essentially IS a shooter in the vein of gears of war psuedo-3rd person style (since it really plays more like first person with teh avatar merely being able ot be looked at while aiming).

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[TheCarp]

Its funny how harsh of a review you can give and still give it an 8. I think that's kind of the point though. All of those negatives, still add up to a good time. Admittedly, I liked the variety of options in ME1, choosing my rounds, who carried which guns etc. However, once I figured out what I liked, I was done, I hardly ever switched it up.

So overall, the simplification takes out something, but nothing that made a huge difference overall. The lack of inventory management is actually nice.

I started ME2 one notch down from the top, and its pretty challenging. I think I have to restart the first collectors mission now because I am at the praetorian battle with no medi gel, as an inflitrator with the salarian doctor and jack. Its been...rough.

So far though, it seems to be mostly improvements over ME1.

-Steve

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[poetmatt]

what I mean is, there are delays put into everything, which creates turns, in a sense. Turns have been streamlined into "you and your opponent take turns at the same time".

It's a concept a lot of people don't want to wrap around, but it exists in most games. I was trying to explain that before.

Sports games, another easy example. FPS just doesn't feel like it because it's fluid. However as an example there, left 4 dead 2 is one. The speed at which you run, the time limits on the respawns, the things the director changes to balance a game (such as more Tanks on the team with the higher score down to making games come within ~100 points very commonly at the end of a map) - it's no accident, but lots of people do not notice these concepts. Where do you think the concept of damage per second is in a game, and I don't mean MMORPG's, I mean first person shooters? That damage # represents a turn.

What you are thinking of turns is a 2d "I take a turn, you take a turn" ala dungeon warrior/pokemon. Most games don't do that anymore because it's considered too simplistic. Just because the turns go faster individually doesn't mean it's not still turns.

In reality, an action is a turn. Ergo, all games have turns in different ways. Just because something else goes on at the same time, to make it feel like things are constantly going on, just hides that "turn".

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[prockcore]

You need the minerals you find on those planets, but scanning is 2-3 minutes of slowly passing the scanner over the planet and watching for a signal change showing where they are.

It may be different on the PC, but I've found some shortcuts on the 360.

I just hammer the left trigger to turn the scanner on and off really quickly, this lets me move the scanner quickly, but still scan at a "lower resolution". I move the target up and down while I spin the planet underneath. Then I only bother with prominent spikes. I can scan a planet and be done with it in less than 30 seconds... and I don't even bother with any planet that's not Good or Rich. Sure I don't get *everything* from the planet, it'll often still be "Good" when I'm done with it, but please, by the suicide mission I had upgraded everything and still had over 100,000 iridium etc.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[prockcore]

I don't see how you could miss it, considering the mission on Freedom's Progress required you to plant your squadmates on either side of a door in order to advance.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking idiot.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Liquidrage]

ME1 gave you a Bioware style RPG with Guns...in space. Which is a lightly itemized (but still itemized), dialog driven quasi turn-based RPG.

ME2 has to have pissed off a lot of the traditional RPG guys though. Like I'm wondering if RPG-guy did the review, came back with a 7 or 8, company said "no way, we're not pissing off Bioware and EA, let's have SIMS-guy do the review". I really do like it, (an 8's a good score), but really, it's a movie not an RPG or a even a great shooter.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[prockcore]

And now they've adopted an ammo management system, which they could easily work into the story, though it DOES feel like a step backwards

They did work it into the story. After the attack on the citadel, scientists studied the Geth weaponry they collected. They found the Geth weapons used the heat sink "ammo" which allowed them to fire faster and hit harder.

At least that's what the codex says on the subject. I don't much like the ammo system in ME2.. I have run out a few times during battles across the map where my only option was to sprint across the battlefield to snatch up some dropped ammo. It doesn't help that my favorite assault rifle only carries 96 rounds.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

I didn't miss the movement part, I was well aware of that, just didn't use it much as the squad ended up running all over the place anyway instead of staying exactly where I put it.

What I did miss was that targeting an enemy and then pressing the movement key actually causes the squad member to shoot at the enemy instead of moving to him.

As said, in ME1 all those commands where part of the pause screen, in ME2 that is no longer the case and the pause screen only allows to switch weapons or start special powers and so I assumed they removed the attack feature.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

I too at first and still feel a bit like the combat in certain parts is not as good as in ME1, though after a while playing I have come to enjoy it mostly. The only real disappointments are the guns that get extremely low ammo count, mostly true for the shotgun and is mostly what makes it so worthless besides its crippled range. Ditto for the 2nd pistol that comes with lower fire rate and much much lower ammo count. This essentially means that if your character only gets these two weapon types, you're really stuck with the starter pistol for most of the game while you rely on your powers more.

While I am glad to not have to sift through inventory screens with pages and pages of useless cantrip loot armor and weaponry, I have so far (after about 16 hours of play) only found 2 variations on each core weapon type and wish there were a few more to find to level up to. It would be neat especially since the difference found in the guns are purely on their firing/ammo capacity characteristics rather than just which gun does X more damage than the last. For instance choosing the burst fire assault rifle versus the fully automatic rifle gives more precision at long range, but means you can't go all Rambo on enemies if they get close up.

Besides that, I do like the new role biotic powers play with respect to which ones can be used only against shields/armor, or can't be used until the target has no more shields/armor. It really adds an interesting layer of tactics missing in ME1, which at times just felt like the best tactic is to just rush towards enemies and circle strafe them. Now it feels a bit more like Gears of War, which I kinda dig.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Mongoose Disciple]

For me, it's like this:

I can point out what are, for me, a lot of flaws in the game... but in spite of them, it will probably end up being one of my favorite games of the year. The parts I like about it outweigh the parts I don't.

Or to look at it another way, there are a lot of games I can't point out any/many flaws in, because they couldn't keep my interest. That doesn't mean being able to point out many of a game's flaws mean it's good, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, either. For everything I could grumble about in ME1, I sure did want to start playing it again immediately after finishing it. As a working adult with not that much time to play games, that's a pretty strong endorsement and would be the kind of thing that would make me score a game highly even if there were a lot of things that pissed me off, too.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

But then again, I'm not a huge shooter fan (I actually prefer the old turn-based RPG's like Knights of the Old Republic).

"Real time with pause" is not the same thing as turn-based combat.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[TheCarp]

Define traditional RPG guys? I only once played a game involving rolling D20 to attack (physically speaking, plenty of games that simulated it under the covers), and have been a fan of final fantasy since the day I killed Garland (the first time).

Now, as much as I like futzing around with items and figuring out what armor is best... removal of much of that complexity has not been a buzzkill for me, it was never a major part of the game. For me, the RPG is kind of more about the movie, especially these sort of "choose your own adventure" types where you get to make decisions, and choose a "path".

It still retains the "talk to everyone" aspects (though there seem to be less people to talk to than in ME1, but I am still only 12 hours in). It still lets you choose many conversation points, and choose to get more info or not, still has side quests, added the paragon and renegade interrupts...

It seems on par, if not ahead of, many of the FF games, even going back to 7 or so, when the first 10 hours or so became very much a marginally interactive movie.

I never saw RP as being about inventory management, and more about the story/ movie aspects.

-Steve

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[sammy baby]

I just can't fathom how this game has gotten the reviews it's gotten. For the 360 there are 42 reviews at gamerankings with the avg score over a 96, and not a single one below a 90... I like it. I think it's an 8. But the flaws I point out are echoed by a lot of players.

So I'm confused - you gave it an 8 out of 10, but you can't fathom how all of these people are giving it a 9?

It seems to me that you agree with the reviews much more than you think.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Swanktastic]

Hmm... I dunno if I can possibly convince you otherwise, but essentially what you've done is textbook begging the question / circular reasoning. Let me paraphrase what I think you're trying to say.

1) A turn is any action taken in a game.
2) A game is a series of actions.

Therefore:
3) A game is a series of turns.

Nevermind that you're the only one on the planet that defines turn this way, you've also defined turn in such a broad way that anyone doing anything in any context is taking a turn. Via your definition and logic, it's impossible to make a non-turn based game making your categorization a sort of "0 equals 0" trivial solution.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Z8]

I really find myself changing up my weapons based on the type of enemy, the distance to the enemy, etc. in order to conserve ammunition. The fact that there is only one ammo type for all weapons (except heavy) simplifies this to make it work much better.

This seems logically contradictory to me. If there is only one ammo type, then you should be able to use all of it up by firing one gun. If there are multiple, incompatible types then you may need to switch guns to use up all your ammo. The ME2 system doesn't make any sense to me. (Disclaimer: I also thought the heat-management system in the original game was more fun.)

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[ShakaUVM]

>>But seriously, the game has very slow combat, annoying ammo problems, incredibly lacking skill/ability trees, horribly tedious resource gathering (that's basically forced on you to get upgrades for your stuff), and almost all missions are very brief compared to ME1 and other games.

Well, ME1 suffered from horribly linear missions (usually you were limited to a single track that you ran down), trivially easy difficulty once you got your barrier skill maxxed out, ugly graphics (though not as bad as Jade Empire's angular robots) and otherwise was quite boring outside of the storyline and world background itself (which I loved - I liked the effort they put into making a future world that was relatively compatible with real-world physics).

ME2 has an amazingly boring leveling system, has ammo, and very limited supplies of bullets too, in a world where guns create their own ammo! Oh, they're "heat clips". So why the fuck can't I pull one out of my pistol and stick it in my sniper rifle so I can shoot it more than 10 times in a row?

It does have beautiful graphics, the ability to hotkey the abilities of allies (which makes up for the relatively simple character design), the ability to do paragon or renegade actions in the middle of conversations, and isn't so bad (yet) that I forget about it. I'm also playing it through on veteran difficulty my first time through, which helps with the fact that Bioware expects the average player to be wearing a bicycle helmet.

I think an 8 sounds about right to me, too. (You hear that, Metacritic?)

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to die, you can use a medi-gel, which heals your whole squad. There's even an upgrade available that also recharges your shield when you use a medi-gel.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Guspaz]

It might not make sense logically, but it does encourage a certain type of gameplay that I've found to be a lot more engaging.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[NotBornYesterday]

I wish there were camera position options (1st person, behind, over the shoulder, etc). I tend to prefer 1st person, but OTOH, from over the shoulder, it is easier to see if an enemy has gotten beside/behind you in a blind spot.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that would be nice too. Just a simple option to switch views depending on player preference. They can go ahead and make whatever they want default, but I want to be able to change that without hacking game files.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

The part I didn't like was in the story, they explained the "ammo" away as being thermal clips, or small removable heat sinks. So I was expecting that after I run out of these thermal clips, the weapons would return back to the old heat management system, but they don't. You just can't use them anymore until you get more clips.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

So how in this case are all the reviewers in agreement with just nothing but glowing praise and incredible reviews when the player based isn't, especially since what they changed surly should have pissed off the hardcore RPG players that surly must do a lot of the reviews?

I think the problem is simply that the games are left to the reviewers that actually like that type of game, thus receiving noticeably high scores then they would get when you would hand the game to an average gamer.

The whole problem with the gaming press in the end is that its more of a "buyers guide" then proper gaming critique. So games end up being praised for what they do right, instead of giving you a good overview over all the things that could have been improved or things that might not match every gamers taste.

That said, even so I don't like all the changes, ME2 is a 10/10 for me, the mix of shooter gameplay and dialog driven story telling is still pretty much unique and just way more interesting then most other stuff I played over the last years.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it was 1.3 times the speed of light, not percent.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

If I recall correctly, Mass Effect guns were pretty much all rail/coil guns.
Element zero allows for the acceleration of very small slivers of metal to very high speeds easily, these slivers had a specific shape so that they broke apart on impact.
The gun has a block of metal that gets "shaved" for every shot, allowing for thousands of shots without putting in a new block.

The ammo mods ? I have no clue what that was all about.

Unrelated to that, in my opinion the Mako was a fairly fun way of killing enemies, it's just that there was so much pointless driving over generated terrain, the missions that made use of the mako were top notch, however.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[incognito84]

No one is saying its perfect. What people are saying is that it does everything else so well that the flaws you've pointed out don't really matter all that much in the big picture.

The combat system could entirely consist of a "whack-a-mole" clone where your mallet was replaced with a dirty sock stuffed with an expired carton of milk that was left behind the radiator for six months and the game would STILL score over 90 because of all the other non-combat aspects that are so fucking awesome.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Mongoose Disciple]

ME1 suffered from horribly linear missions

I'm not sure what your standard of comparison for linearness is, assuming (and this may not be a safe assumption) that you like games that have a story.

Pretty much all the sidequests and unexplored planets can be done in any order you like. A bunch of the sidequests can be done a number of different ways depending on choices you make. The main plot planets can mostly be done in whatever order you like. Lots of the parts of the story planets can be done in different ways -- for example, all the different routes you can take to getting a garage pass in Noveria, or how differently things play out if you do things differently or in a different order once reaching the labs there. Try going to the Hot Labs first or last and you'll have a fairly different experience, seeing or not seeing a bunch of different sidequests, etc.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Skal Tura]

I'm with you there: I hate to see combat simplified, and changed this radically. I always thought Mass Effect's combat system was very near perfection, absolutely amazingly good. I enjoyed the epic battles just as much as the story line, sometimes the battles were slightly monotonous when it got too easy, or too hard, mostly on the too easy part (despite playing on harder difficulty level). Well, then again, i have quite a lot of experience of top-level CS, and almost always found myself way into winning even against cheaters, so i'm probably not your average joe.

I really hope the combat is still enjoyable, and not made too simple and too monotonous, that would ruin Mass Effect 2 for me. I'm quite fearful already and sad just hearing these changes. Lack of Mako i don't care that much tho.

Mass Effect is the best game i've played in a very long time, so Mass Effect 2 is going to have some very high standard to reach, for me atleast.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[aaron552]

Medi-gel still exists. It's used to revive fallen squad members instead of restore lost health. As stated previously, grenades have been replaced by heavy weapons.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[ShakaUVM]

The missions themselves are horribly linear. It essentially puts you into a very long corridor, down which you walk and shoot things.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

What do you mean? I can tell squadmates to seek a defensive position quite easily. Aim your crosshairs at a defensive position, and push Q or E. They run over there and take it. Do you mean you can't order them to take any defensive position, you have to pick one? They automatically take defensive positions, in my experience.

I'm not sure how to make squadmates generically attack someone, but I suspect it's possible. The AI seems pretty smart in who it attacks, they attack people who can attack them or other squadmates first, and then work on the people they're shielded from. The only trouble I've had are 'boss fights', or whatever you call them, where sometimes they decide to attack something that is invincible or regenerating because something else needs to happen first, instead of attacking other things where they'd be useful.

All in all, there's maybe been half a dozen times where I've needed to say 'No, not that guy, get this other guy', and I usually just have them use a power or get in a different position and they're fine.

Also, you don't have 'flat levels'. Most of them are somewhat flat, but there's plenty of places where they aren't. For example, you can walk up four floors at the Citadel. So it's not some sort of game limitation.

It's only flat compared to the first game, and the first game was absurdly unflat because of the loading gimmick elevators. Yes, sometimes the characters talking in them was hilarious, but there's plenty of character interaction, all over the place, so it's not much of a loss. (Yesterday, I had to break up a damn fight between two of them on the ship.) Complaining they changed the 'elevators' loading screen to a different loading screen seems somewhat silly, as the elevators locked them into some weird area layouts to justify them.

And while straight grenades are gone, you do have an RPG. Sadly, it's a heavy weapon, so only people with heavy weapons can carry it.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

Sniper rifles are also better handled in this game. While being more powerful and faster, the limited ammo keeps you from solely relying on them.

See, that's what's driving me crazy. Because I do solely use sniper rifles.

I would be much happier if they had a 'less powerful, but more ammo' rifle. I thought I ran across one, but it's more a 'much less powerful, and accurate, but faster and more ammo' rifle. I don't mind the speed, I don't mind if it's less powerful, but I do mind if it's less frickin accurate, as that the entire point of a sniper rifle.

Look, I'm sorry, but 11 shots are not enough for anything. (And I think 1 of those is from a research project that gave me 10% more ammo) Half the firing rate, half the power, whatever, but for God's sake give me enough ammo to actually kill everyone.

And the damn pistol isn't much better. When i run out of sniper ammo, I switch to that, except that I only get, what, 24 shots with that? And they're like a third the power of the sniper rifle? So it's the same amount of killing power?

Seriously, this isn't some survival horror game. I'm getting really tired of absurdly having to switch to automatic weapons or heavy weapons to finish a level, or wander around for five minutes finding damn 'heatsinks'. (Hey, here's an idea. If they're 'heatsinks', why don't I save them so I can use them when they cool off?)

Also, sniper rifles aren't more powerful than in ME1, although you do start with a better one than you started with in that game. In that game, headshots pretty much killed anyone, too, and certainly anyone without shields.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[suyantoamikom]

wow cool effect for game inspiration

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

the game would STILL score over 90 because of all the other non-combat aspects that are so fucking awesome.

No shit. People, Mass Effect is how you do action RPGs. Awesome universe, amazing plot, incredible characters, awesome acting. And the sequel managed to be at least a good, without being a cookie cutter of the first game, and while continuing the plot.

Now, you might not like action RPGs. Perhaps you like only pure RPGs where no combat skill is required. Perhaps you don't like RPGs at all. Fair enough. You like the genres you like.

But if you like action RPGs (A term I am trying to coin to mean 'RPGs where combat skill is required.'), then the Mass Effect series is the best at the moment in time, period.

It even manages to beat Fallout 3, and that's pretty high praise from me. (Specifically, it has much better characterization, and somewhat better plots. Fallout 3 is technically very good, but falls down in the writing.)

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

Yeah, someone is playing the game rather odd. Running around openly like a one man army doesn't cut it in ME2. And, frankly, it didn't really cut it in ME1, unless you were overusing health packs.

Perhaps more to the point, it really shouldn't have cut it anyway. This isn't some FPS. This is an action RPG. You have to _plan_. That means getting behind something and deciding what to do. Half the time, it's not even 'shooting', it's something like 'throw them across the room with biotics' or 'AI hack them to shoot each other', or, at least, 'shoot them enough to get rid of the shield and armor, and then do that'.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

Fuel costs money? Do probes? Seriously? How much?

I'd never actually noticed. Although I am continuing from ME1, so ended up with an assload of credit...although, actually, only about 300,000, IIRC, and as I've repeatedly spent 75,000 on various upgrades, and still seem to have plenty to buy stuff with, I'm forced to admit it doesn't really matter.

The thing that I always seem to be short on is eezo, to build stuff with. Other stuff, I can find by scanning easily, but eezo seems rather elusive. (Which makes sense, in game, but it's annoying.)

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

The new conversation "interrupt" system is fun, too. Cutting a bad guys rant short by throwing him out a window was just too much fun to pass up.

As I'm playing a paragon, I'm not allowed to do that, I end up stopping people from shooting other people and giving first aid before they die while talking to me. (Finally. Letting people die while they're talking to you was always a somewhat idiotic premise in a universe with the tech of Mass Effect. You can Unity squadmates back from the dead, but can't save someone slowly bleeding to death from an gunshot?)

I need to finish up my renegade game in ME1 and get her over to ME2 also, so I can bust some heads. ;)

But, yes, it is very nice to actually have input during cutscreens and feel like 'This is really happening, and I can make something else happen if need be', instead of just 'Here is the plot. Listen until you are done'. A very slight change, but it does provide more immersion than either straight cutscreens or dialog trees.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[sorrowsjudge]

Must be a bug. I've told my squadmates to take cover behind something, and a few minutes later I'll realize that they're not assisting me at all, because they're still in the previous room, exactly where I told them to be.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Masami Eiri]

I must be the only person that didn't have ammo problems. I'm hitting the final boss now, and for the first time I'm running seriously low on everything. Part of that has to do with me being too damn chicken to pop over a barrier and run over to where I killed a few guys. You'll find yourself running low on sniper and maybe pistol ammo, sure, but there's always "thermal clips" laying around to pick up.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[bmatt17]

Health packs aren't really gone. You can use unity to heal as well as revive down squadmates.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[grumbel]

What do you mean?

In ME1 you had a dedicated function to tell them to seek cover, you didn't have to actually have to tell them where to go, they would figure that out automatically. And they also felt more responsive, in ME2 they never really seem to follow my orders, but always ended up running all over the place.

I'm not sure how to make squadmates generically attack someone, but I suspect it's possible.

It is possible by aiming at an enemy and pressing the walk-to key. I however overlooked that on my first run as I assumed they had removed that function, as its no longer part of the pause screen as it was in ME1.

It's only flat compared to the first game,

Well thats the point. Have you ever seen a bridge in ME2? ME2 is extremely flat an primitive in its level design, for the worst case just comprare the presidium in ME1 to the one in ME2. In ME1 its a huge complex space, in ME2 its three boring rooms connected by stairs and a fourth room that isn't connected at all to the rest.

Complaining they changed the 'elevators' loading screen to a different loading screen seems somewhat silly, as the elevators locked them into some weird area layouts to justify them.

The problem is that the loading screens are terrible, for one they break the immersion, as they pull you right out of the game. Same goes for the annoying mission end screen. And they often don't fit, the shuttle pickup animaiton for example often shows you how you get picked up from the ground, when that already happened in a regular cutscene before. I would have much preferred if they would have used shorter elevator rides, then those ugly loading screen.

Sadly, it's a heavy weapon, so only people with heavy weapons can carry it.

The problem with heavy weapons is that they are a dedicated weapon and you have to switch to it first, with grenades you could just throw them in the mid of a fire fight, which felt a good bit more fluent in terms of gameplay.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

I *am* a shooter fan and I really miss the old combat system. I hate the new one, It takes all the tactics out of the fight. It forcing you to use those tactics grew on me. I hope they fix this in the next one.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[HaZardman27]

I've only found a couple planets with decent element zero supplies, but luckily not many of the upgrades require it.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[empty_other]

A bit useless with all the models and a miniature giant space hamster in my captains cabin, when i get a closer look at my back than at the bling. This game seriously need a first person view to make it easier to take a closer look at the well-done details.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[DavidTC]

Have you ever seen a bridge in ME2?

Uh...yes?

The citadel is very simplified, OTOH, that's because it's not really your 'base' anymore. You don't have to keep reporting back there, and you don't get stranded there for the first quarter of the game. In fact, I'm not entirely certain you have to visit it at all, although you really should to get your 'dead' status straightened out and back in contact with the council.

The problem I had with the first game is you had this huge citadel, with all sorts of things on it, which was nice...and then you had nowhere else. Seriously, no planet seemed to actually have, you know, a mall in their spaceport. Or even a duty-free shop.

For some, like dirt-poor colonies, this was justified, but there was a damn free trade human planet...without any shops on it. (Well, one smuggler-ish street vender.)

ME2, while making the citadel 'smaller', or at least, less accessible, makes up for it by having other places that actually seemed to be communities of people, not just mission entrance points. Like Omega and Illium.

Strangely enough, it does this as it also requires you to buy a lot less, hence most vendors end up having almost no inventory.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[poetmatt]

Well, you're right, via the way I was wording it was a faulty circular logic. It's a hard thing to put what I'm implying into specifics, and my explanations have been horrible if not misguided.

I'm just trying to make the concept of actions and turns in a video game less abstract, and achieving the opposite, apparently due to shitty wording.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[Creepy]

True to that, but I've found the RPG market as a whole is moving toward being interactive movies just as the adventure game market did before them. I've found ME2 tends to require more dedicated attention than most other RPGs due to the shooter aspects - I can't half ignore it like I can with Dragon Age: Origins.

The game suffers from the same problems I see in every bioware game
1) linear, on rails level design - there is NEVER two ways to get to the same place or complete the same objective. This has always been my main peeve with Bioware RPGs.
2) 'best setting' graphics tend to be about one generation behind the rest of the industry.
3) when they have mini-games, they tend to be repetitive and get old fast
4) ambushes - unavoidable, undetectable and completely surrounded. In other words, lame.
5) boring, predictable influence/romance chains. Haven't got to the ones in ME2 yet (in fact, I'll probably skip it since I imported a character in a romance), but DA:O didn't really change the general formula. Its always talk talk talk screw. How about, you know, having a date that turns into an adventure? Kidnapping? Variety?

That said, those are really minor quibbles - it isn't like gameplay is totally broken, and linear level design has its perks when trying to drive a story, which is usually a flaw in sandbox games like Fallout 3, aside from the many other issues I have with Bethesda games - terrible character development (and by that I mean the character, not the stats and stuff they own), bad model movement, boring repetitive quests, no emotional attachment to any characters (yes its a solo RPG, but you could, say, have friends... Amata was sort of a friend pre-game, but not really during the game and has almost zero character development). I don't even know why they let you model your character - what sex you are and what you look like pretty much has zero impact on the game whatsoever. Not that Fallout 3 is bad, but I feel only the first Gothic game got both Sandbox and social parts right (unfortunately, the combat and the sequels sucked).

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[TheFrunk]

Yep, same system I'm using. This is how you do it and not waste time.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[WWWWolf]

A lot of people dissed the original combat system in ME1.

Ugh. In modern shooters, the most annoying problem is that AI allies run in your line of fire all the time. In Mass Effect 1, that happens a lot. In Mass Effect 2, that still happens a lot. But Mass Effect 1 made this far more annoying: While your squadmates run around every-frigging-where like headless chickens, don't worry, so do the enemies. Mass Effect 1 combat can turn into incredible jawdropping clusterfucks with everyone running all around the place and shooting in random directions. You can't make sense of that mess.

At first, when I played ME2, I thought "oh, damn, they've turned this into a Gears of War clone". Then I thought, "hey, Gears of War isn't a bad game at all, come to think of it." Enemies taking cover in firefight. You and squadmates doing the same. Frigging brilliant.

Yeah, I'm not 100% happy with some of the things they did (this thing they call a squad screen just isn't a proper character sheet any more, and what's up with ammo all of sudden), but if there was one thing that they fixed properly and fixed well and fixed for a good reason, it's combat.

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[kalirion]

When is the last time you saw a major release that didn't get glowing reviews from pretty much every site out there (sites who are also heavily supported with advertising $ from the very companies whose games they're reviewing)?

Kane and Lynch?

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[smcn]

I hate the new "scanning" system for finding planetary resources so far. You need the minerals you find on those planets, but scanning is 2-3 minutes of slowly passing the scanner over the planet and watching for a signal change showing where they are. Supposedly you can discover new missions on uncharted planets as well, but I've scanned a dozen or so without finding any. For planets with nothing but minerals, I like the old system of just clicking scan then being told what you found.

Yeah, the scanning does get tedious after the first couple of systems, but you don't really need as many resources as you'd think for upgrading. Focus on titanium and you'll be good on weapons. I ended the game with over 100k of each resource (around 40k eezo) and upgraded nearly everything.

As for side missions, EDI will tell you as soon as you go into orbit whether or not a planet has a side mission ("Anomaly detected")

I also miss driving the mako around, bouncing around, fighting thresher maws, or just trying to climb up steep hills in it. It took longer to thoroughly loot a planet using it, but was a lot more fun.

The PC version has keybind settings for vehicle control, and the Collectors' (get it?) edition art book even hints at DLC involving a new and improved Mako: "For future vehicular missions, the Mako was reimaged as a hovering tank."

Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system

[spire3661]

I kept hoping that there would be some star systems that you could only reach once you upgraded fuel. I was disappointed.

Will I be lost?

[MBCook]

I haven't played the first, and don't really intend to based on the reviews I've read. I'm thinking of getting this game though.

Has anyone who hasn't played the first picked up this game? Will I be lost? Does it explain things well enough for people who don't have all that training in the way the game works?

Re:Will I be lost?

[elrous0]

You won't be lost. The Codex will tell you everything you need to know on the background stuff. The rest is pretty self-explanatory (when someone shoots at you, shoot back).

Re:Will I be lost?

[Monkeedude1212]

Kind of. Sort of like if you watch Star Wars for the first time - you will pick up on exactly whats happening, but once you watch the entire series, and then re-watch the original Star Wars, you know so much more about the characters and what leads up to each event.

I would -HIGHLY- recommend playing the first one first.

Re:Will I be lost?

[Draek]

Gameplay-wise you shouldn't have a problem, specially if you've played any shooter with a cover system. Story-wise, however... I'm not that far into it but from what I've seen, while knowledge of the story of the first game isn't necessary, it does increase your enjoyment of it greatly.

Can't see why you wouldn't pick up ME1 but be interested in ME2 though, care to elaborate on that one?

Re:Will I be lost?

[Itchyeyes]

Most likely, yes. Like all Bioware games, Mass Effect is very story and character driven. There are a lot of returning characters and a lot of references to previous events from the first game. In addition, actions and decisions you make in the first game are carried over to the sequel (ie if you killed a character in Mass Effect, they won't be showing up in ME2 and vice versa). I would seriously recommend playing the first game. The sequel is a vast improvement over it, but it's still a decent game. You can find it for less than $20 now, and if you burn through the main plot line, without veering off on side quests, you can finish it in less than 15 hours (you'll also avoid most of the much hated Mako sections).

Re:Will I be lost?

[hansamurai]

You'll be fine, but you'll be missing out on all the callbacks the game has to the first. Nearly every side quest in ME1 is worked into the game somehow, be it just an email from one of the persons involved, or even the basis of an entire mission in the game.

Re:Will I be lost?

[deadmongoose]

I just picked it up and haven't played the first one. I did download a lvl 60 save game so that I could start with all the perks of someone who did play the first one. I caught on right away, there were a few times I had to start a mission over because I was running in and trying to kill everything at once instead of ducking and shooting. Overall it is very easy to play and it is very enjoyable, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys action games with a good plot and gameplay.

Re:Will I be lost?

[grumbel]

I would strongly recommend you to play the first Mass Effect first. You might not be totally lost in ME2, as most missions are rather self contained and most characters in your squad are completly new, but you will miss out a lot when it comes to reoccurring characters and all those little references to the first game and the game really is full of those.

That aside, Mass Effect 2 is simply more Mass Effect universe to play in and if you enjoy that, there is absolutely no reason to not enjoy the first one too.

Re:Will I be lost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the wiki.

Direct link: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Storyline

Re:Will I be lost?

[brkello]

To each their own, but I would recommend giving the first one a chance. It is actually quite well done.

Re:Will I be lost?

[flitty]

Your enjoyment of this game will increase greatly if you play ME 1 first. it's kinda like watching Serenity without seeing Firefly first. While an enjoyable experience, some of the most emotionally engaging moments won't have the same resonance. There are too many callbacks in the second game that the context will be sorely lacking without plaing the first game. They explain the story fairly well, but the story, I would argue, isn't the most important part. It's the development and interaction with other characters that makes the story so good, and without knowing the characters from the first game, the story, while well realized and fleshed out, won't be nearly as good.

It's worth going through the first game, but if you have limited time, only focus on the missions in your Journal. Most of the planitary exploration gets tedious and can burn you out on the game. I'm planning on going through the game again (even though i'm still on my first playthrough) and i'll probably go through ME1 first with a new character, to start from the beginning.

Re:Will I be lost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't played the first, and don't really intend to based on the reviews I've read. I'm thinking of getting this game though.

Has anyone who hasn't played the first picked up this game? Will I be lost? Does it explain things well enough for people who don't have all that training in the way the game works?

You won't be lost (I've never played the original). ME2 is exactly the kind of sci-fi experience I've been craving and it delivers! I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Re:Will I be lost?

[poetmatt]

I'd suggest watching something awful's "let's play" for mass effect 1 (they play through the entire game - ~30min video by video, with explanations of the what and the why, they speed up past boring parts, etc), and also to pick up a savegame from mass effect 1 to go with it. Once you understand the first game, the savegame you select and it's rammifications, it'll make the second game more fun.

As a note: lets play for mass effect 1 costs you $0 to watch. So you're "picking up" the first game, in a sense. Also you can get mass effect 2 on PC via demonoid quite easily if you want to see if it's worth the buying. I'd say that it kinda is, except that you get shafted on having to buy DLC either way.

Re:Will I be lost?

[MBCook]

I've already got a log of games I'm playing through (I'm currently going to through the Ratchet and Clank series, among others), and ~40 hours for a game that isn't quite my style is just a lot of time. I'm not sold on playing this either (it does look a little too third person shooter), but I'm currently interested.

Re:Will I be lost?

[PylonHead]

Can't see why you wouldn't pick up ME1 but be interested in ME2 though, care to elaborate on that one?

Yeah, this is what got me. ME2 is very much a continuation of ME1. They are both excellent games.

If you weren't going to enjoy ME1, you're probably not going to enjoy ME2 either.

Re:Will I be lost?

[Liquidrage]

This is the most scaled back, hand-held *game* I can remember. It's basically an interactive movie. a monkey tied to a chair could *beat* the game without playing the first and never feel lost.

Re:Will I be lost?

[Lumpy]

Pick it up, It's $6.00 at most gamestops in the used bin and is well worth it to play before you drop $70.00 on this one (Plus the cost of DLC as it start emerging....)

Re:Will I be lost?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?! modding a pirate informative?!

Re:Will I be lost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirate? I don't live on the high seas, and there's nothing physical or otherwise that is stolen or lost. How much business is lost from the 0 to be gained in the first place?

So please, lets not go there.

Re:Will I be lost?

[antdude]

Same here, but I'd like a playable demo. there wasn't one for the first game for PC. :(

Re:Will I be lost?

[incognito84]

You should get the original. It would add quite a bit of depth to the story. Its not required, however.

Re:Will I be lost?

[CitizenCain]

Can't see why you wouldn't pick up ME1 but be interested in ME2 though, care to elaborate on that one?

Well, I didn't pick up ME1 because of its ridiculous DRM... but picked up ME2 because it didn't have over-the-top DRM, and assumed it would be the same role-playing goodness that everyone told me ME1 was. Honestly, I'm kinda regretting it, having finished the game already, with no desire to replay it. Seems like such a waste to have such a rich, well developed world you can't really interact with meaningfully. Maybe if I'd played the first one I'd care about doing a second play-through, but as it is, I just don't see enough variety to make it worthwhile - essentially no inventory, no loot, a painfully simple good/evil (err, paragon/renegade) system, and a very limited number of extremely linear quests and side quests. As far as I can tell, "exploration" beyond the tightly scripted missions on "hub" locations involves moving your ship to a planet/moon, hitting the scan button and hoping that *this* planet has more than just fscking minerals to harvest. I honestly had almost completed the game by the time I realized I was past the beginning stages - I guess I just expect a radically different type of game from something billing itself as an "RPG."

Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[AutumnLeaf]

Quite a year for Bioware. Dragon Age and now this. Interestingly, playing Dragon Age caused my wife re-purchased Baldur's Gate to play through it again.

Re:Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite a year for Bioware. Dragon Age and now this.

Except that Dragon Age was 2009, and it is now 2010.

Re:Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[Dunbal]

Except that Dragon Age was 2009, and it is now 2010.

      I know I'm splitting hairs, but technically "quite a year" can also refer to a 12 month period spanning 2 calendar years...

Re:Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[Blakey Rat]

The problem for me is that EA bought them, and now I can't bring myself to buy their games anymore...

I know EA hasn't turned them to shit *yet*, but I also know they *will*. Plus, the last thing the Games Industry needs is more people lining EA's pocket.

I do have a copy of Mass Effect that I got before EA bought them, maybe I'll just replay that instead.

Re:Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well EA is not the worst of the butch atm... At least their steam versions dont have secondary DRMs anymore(unlike Ubisoft that wants to add even more stupidy to their DRM).

Note: I still hate EA(I remember Earth and Beyond and their stupid Sims MMO) and they do alot of crap but at least they did not infect Bioware yet with stupidity (and westwood is still half decent).

Re:Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to your blog you played left 4 dead. Sorry dude, EA published that one too.

Re:Bioware = Blizzard of RPGs?

[Blakey Rat]

Not on PC, only on consoles. And I only played it on PC. Blam! I win on a technicality! Suck it down, Anonymous Coward!

The last EA game I bought was Battlefield: 2142, on the very strong recommendation of my PC gaming friend. Being a PC gaming friend, he's developed a healthy Stockholm Syndrome about bugs and shitty quality... so while BF2142 met his extremely low standards, I couldn't stand the piece of shit.

Before that... I don't remember the last EA game I bought, I've been boycotting them since they signed the exclusive deal with the NFL and shut-out other games companies from making NFL games.

Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Kagura]

I hope they fixed the terrible monotony of all the side quests in Mass Effect 1. The voice acting in Mass Effect 1 was spot-on, and the story was intriguing. I will be playing this game, regardless of side quest monotony...

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Rik Sweeney]

Aren't side quests generally quite monotonous anyway? Mind you, if the reward doesn't outstrip the effort then it's not worth it.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Wyatt Earp]

So far (I'm level 12 or 13) the side quests have been much more fun than they were in ME 1. I did one last night where I boarded a ship and had to fight mercs, it was a solid 20-30 minutes of good fighting.

I think the skill and combat system is a little dumbed down, I find it to be a better game that ME1 or Dragons Age.

I like the planet exploration in this better than the old drive the Mako around thing. I never got why they'd drop the Mako 10-20 minutes away from where you wanted to be.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[RobDollar]

They got rid of the car that you drove around in ME1 for just that reason. The side quests are a lot more diverse and unique, and add to the whole immersion.

That said I did miss the mkv (if that's what the vehicle was called) as it made the scale of the game feel larger. In ME2 they have cut a few corners when it comes to large maps and higher res textures for some reason, but the game on the whole does feel better than the first.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Itchyeyes]

It has been fixed. In general the balance has been shifted so there are a lot fewer side quests and a lot more plot-relevant quests. Also, there's a lot less empty space. You can't land on a planet unless there's a mission for you there, which means that instead of wasting time creating a lot of repetitive environments you'll never see, a lot more effort has gone into making each mission and environment unique.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Enderandrew]

Most of the voice acting in ME1 was good, but the Benezia sequence makes me cringe because it is so bad.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[grumbel]

They didn't fix it, they basically completly cut it out. There is no more Mako driving or planet exploration. There are also no longer recycled level architecture, every mission is unique.

This in turn makes ME2 a much more streamlined game, sometimes however it ends up being a little bit on the repetative side at times. As the Mako and open planet exploration did add some good amount of variety to the combat, even so it might not have been perfect. Now its basically all Gears of War. With the openness removed and tactic shooter elements cut down, all enemy encounters kind of feel the same.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[flitty]

If by "openness" you mean "time spent driving vast expanses with nothing to see" then yes, it is more linear. If you can go somewhere, there is a reason for it. There is much less of wandering around, either driving between 2 points on a planet, or backtracking across the G*D* citadel for the 5th time to do a fetch quest.

There is so much Game here, i'm happy to throw out a little bit of open-world feel.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[JSBiff]

I never got why they used a tank at all in most of the missions. . . we're talking about a deep future, advanced technological civilization. So. . . why don't I have a flying vehicle instead of some kind of tank? It's a lot faster to fly over stupid mountains than to crawl over them.

Mass Effect, as a franchise, missed a truly awesome opportunity - they could have combined the first-person shooter elements of the game with a sort of flying shoot-em-up for exploring the planets. Why have an entire planet with one dinky little building and a dozen guards? Why not have lots of buildings, encampments, etc on a planet, air defenses, ground-based anti-air defenses.

I suppose what it comes down to is that it would take a lot more time and money to put a lot of stuff on every planet, but it's pretty cheap to just make a 3km X 3km patch of land on a planet, and put one building, one mineral deposit, and one crashed space probe, then give you a tank which moves slowly, so that you spend a lot of time on each planet, even though you are just exploring an area the size of *one small town* in the rural midwest.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Wyatt Earp]

Well, they were limited by how much they could fit on a DVD (or two).

But yea, the Mako was a crappy way to explore, I think the new system is more "sci-fi", you scan the planet from orbit for metals and sometimes you find an anomaly and send an away team down.

We noticed last night that the audio of an anomaly's beacon got clearer the closer you go to it, neat stuff.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[wwfarch]

While I hated the fetch quests in the citadel I was disappointed that you couldn't wander the same areas as in ME1. It seems like they explicitly went out of their way to avoid letting you wander the presidium. I understand that they did this to avoid having too many branching possibilities based on decisions in the previous game but it still irked me. I was sorely disappointed that each of the main "cities" you visit are so tiny.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Guspaz]

Yes. One of the biggest issues with all the ME1 side quests were that they all shared a very limited subset of game maps. Clearing out the same damned underground bunker for the umpteenth time wasn't really made any more interesting by "Oh, this time they're crazed biotics that you need to quell" or "This time it's a crazy computer".

Of those kinds of side quests, perhaps 15 hours into the game, I have not had a single one that duplicated content. One side quest, in fact, had multiple locations, and completing one aspect of it unlocked the next part.

There are still the random tiny things, like "Oh, so and so lost his credit chit, look around to find it" or "Chef wants better food, buy him some", but those are the kind of quests that virtually solve themselves; you'll get the assignment and at some point you'll say "Oh, here's the food I was supposed to buy." It just sort of gives a little bit of depth to the world without really taking any effort.

So, the situation is quite improved over ME1.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[Kielistic]

I preferred having reused environments to having next to no side missions. How many systems were in ME2 that were only there to scan for resources. Resources you can't use because you've found all the upgrade options and used up all the credits available in the game and can't afford any more purchased upgrade tokens.

If you didn't want to land on those planets and clear out biotics you didn't need to. But for those of us that wanted to do that the option was available. Now there is only a handful of side mission. They were fun but there certainly wasn't enough of them. I hope they didn't do this so they could charge for DLC later. I am hoping the Hammerhead will allow more random exploration.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[NotBornYesterday]

I could never figure out why the Mako survive any drop at all (from mountains, speeding spaceships), but you would die if you fell off the path on Noveria.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[aaron552]

If you read the codex, it explains that the Mako has a small Element Zero core that, while it can't entirely nullify the Mako's mass, reduces it enough to make the descent survivable with just the weak thrusters.

Re:Sheer monotony of quests in Mass Effect 1

[NotBornYesterday]

Right ... so if I can survive a drop from a spaceship with it, and if I can survive falling off mountains while searching for uranium boulders, why can't I survive falling off Noveria's mountains? It's still inconsistent.

Your thoughts???

[gandhi_2]

Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

you mean your inner monologue actually sounds like a press release / paid game review?

BioWare listened closely to player feedback, promising to revamp the parts of the game that needed improvement while developing the sequel. They didn't hesitate to refine the elements they wanted to keep and do away with the ones they didn't. The result is a familiar, but much more streamlined experience.

Re:Your thoughts???

[AstrumPreliator]

This is the third person I've seen use the word "streamlined" to describe ME2. The mere fact that this game has limited ship fuel, limited probes, and manual planet scanning completely negates the description of "streamlined".

Re:Your thoughts???

[Pojut]

I used the term "streamlined" in my own review. Here are six reasons why:

1. Weapon upgrades apply for your entire team, not just a single character.
2. Once you research a weapon, anyone on your team who is able to use that type of weapon can use it simultaneously.
3. Armor upgrades that have been researched apply to the characters specified regardless of what armor they are wearing
4. You can completely customize each individual piece of armor you are wearing from a single screen
5. Yes, weapons require "ammo" of sorts now...however, with the exception of heavy weapons, any magazines you pick up add ammo for ALL of your weapons, not just one type.
6. There are far more side missions that share a common location...you will typically complete 2-4 side missions on one planet.

Based off these things (and more), the experience is much more streamlined.

Oh, and my apologies for the continuing pimpage of my review throughout this Slashdot story.

Re:Your thoughts???

[Fallon]

Having played through about half of the game so far, I'd have to say the review is pretty much spot on. It's a dam good game & it does address some of the annoyances of the first one.

F-ed up combat system

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the game right up to the point where they combined use, sprint and lock to cover in the SAME BUTTON.

I've gotten killed a LOT on insanity due to this, oh yeah and give me a crouch back.

Re:F-ed up combat system

[jbigboote]

I'm with you. I'll be sprinting and I want to stop near cover, and the game decides I want to be in cover, invariably on the wrong side. and then death quickly follows.

Re:F-ed up combat system

[grumbel]

Speaking about buttons, does the game actually have a jump button or did they somehow miss that? There where numerous situations in the game where you had to climb on a small ledge and the only way to do that was to go into cover on the ledge and then do the jump-over-cover action, which felt quite weird with no enemy around and just a small ledge to climb.

Good story?

[fastest fascist]

When you say the story is good, do you mean it's "good" in the way ME1 was, or that it actually is good, and not just a mashup of the most worn space epic clichés combined with wooden characters and a ridiculous idiot for a main protagonist? I'm not just being facetious here - I like Dragon age, even the writing manages to be quite tolerable, but the original Mass Effect was one of the few games I genuinely regretted paying money for. So is this more of the same old or did they do it better?

Re:Good story?

[Simulant]

      Well, it's a cheesy, implausible space opera through & through but it's VERY well done.

I'm not much for RPGs but I might actually finish this one. It seems to have the right combination of action & cinematics. I played for 7 or 8 hours this weekend and I'm itching for more. The characters have as much if not more life in them than any other video game I've ever played.

Re:Good story?

[Mongoose Disciple]

It just goes to show that everyone has different taste -- I honestly can't think of a better story told in any video game than ME1. (Although there are a few that are on about the same level for me.)

Re:Good story?

[grumbel]

In terms of story it is mostly more of the same. The story this time feels however a little less connected, as you are mostly doing self contained side missions to collect your squad. The main quest itself felt rather short and uninteresting, as there are no big plot twists or discoveries going on and the ending is kind of meh this time around, ending in ME1 was far more interesting.

Re:Good story?

[fastest fascist]

And that's why I asked. I'm suspicious of ME2 precisely because the reviewers say the story is good, and they said the same thing about the first one. The question for me is: is it radically different from the first or not. I assume not.

Re:Good story?

[Brandee07]

The story has much more depth, and more interesting, fleshed-out than Gears of War or Halo.

I kind of want to kill myself for that sentence.

For a BioWare game, it's weak. Really weak. I'm not done with it yet, but there's so much LESS choice than even ME1. Your choices from ME1 come through loud and clear with consequences and characters who remember you, but there are no NEW choices I have made, and I am 15 hours in. The dialog wheel doesn't control Shepards actions, it just controls how much a dick he is about them.

So, does it have a good story, compared to Jade Empire or KOTOR? Hell no. It's horrid. Compared to the average shooter fans that I think BioWare was trying to attract? It's a story of amazing depth and quality, with a combat system that they know and are comfortable with.

Re:Good story?

[Blakey Rat]

I honestly can't think of a better story told in any video game than ME1.

Really? You haven't played Bioshock? Prince of Persia: Sands of Time? Hell, even Halo 2?

A good game story leaves you so emotionally involved at the end of the game that you're either running around the room yelling "that was awesome!" (like Halo 2) or in tears (like Bioshock or Sands of Time). When Mass Effect ended, I just said, "eh" and moved on to the next game.

Now I'm not saying Mass Effect is a bad game, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it's not even in the top 5 of good game stories. Maaaybe the top 10.

Re:Good story?

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'd have put Bioshock up there as well, yes. I don't think it's better or worse than ME1's story exactly, just good in different ways.

Re:Good story?

[Nathrael]

I guess that's a matter of taste, then. I, for example, found the story in Bioshock rather meh. Sure, it had an epic background story, discoverable through all these nice audio logs you find, but the actual story was just steampunk System Shock 2 mixed with some anarchocapitalism. Halo 2 had some nice moments, but it's ending was kinda meh; I found Halo 1's ending far more climactic. Both Mass Effects made me go both "OH OMG THAT WAS EPIC FSCKIN WIN" and "Awwwww".

Re:Good story?

[DarksideDaveOR]

I think you're forgetting this is the middle installment of a trilogy. (At least that's the impression I've got.) That means there's going to be a lot of consequences from installment 1, and setup for installment 2. There's a lot of potential for galaxy-altering consequences to the character "loyalty" quests, and the end of the game, if Bioware chooses to make use of them, even if they mostly won't happen till the third game.

Re:Good story?

[Mongoose Disciple]

The thing about Bioshock's story that will make me remember it is the way it played (trying to keep this relatively spoiler free) with the medium of a video game and used it to spring a plot twist on you that I don't think would work as well in another medium where you aren't used to ignoring certain things. In effect, they did the closest video game equivalent to a something like a novel with an unreliable narrator.

Re:Good story?

[prockcore]

The dialog wheel doesn't control Shepards actions, it just controls how much a dick he is about them.

We must be playing a different game... because not 1 hour into the game I went the paragon route and let the guy Zaeed was chasing get away and thus failed to secure Zaeed's loyalty.

Re:Good story?

[Brandee07]

The problem is that there hasn't been any continued setup. The story is, up to this point, frustratingly linear. My characters are either loyal or they're not. I can't piss them off and make them disloyal. I can't shove Miranda out the airlock. Compare to Dragon Age, where I can piss off half of the party so bad that they try to kill me.

Every mission in Mass Effect had some kind of major choice. Free the rachni or kill them? Ashley or Kaiden? Wrex? At this point in the game (about 15 hours in), I haven't made a single decision that felt significant like those in ME1. If they're setting up for ME3, they're making it so that they don't have to deal with the complications they undoubtedly had in importing characters from ME1 to ME2.

Re:Good story?

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'm about as far in -- did you get to the bit with a trial yet? That, to me, feels like a choice on the ME1 level -- especially getting an e-mail afterwards cluing me in that I hadn't been as slick about something as I thought I had.

Re:Good story?

[Kielistic]

Halo 2? I thought even amoung Halo fans nobody liked that game for more than the multiplayer.

Mass Effect is a deep universe, very fleshed out. The story was extremely immersive. Even with its flaws it is likely my number one game.
I've never played Sands of Time but I've also never heard it acclaimed for any outstanding writing.
Bioshock I've witnessed most of; good but not great.
Halo only had half a story. A good foundation but no depth.

As a sci-fi fan Mass Effect was incredible to me. Something tells me you are not.

Re:Good story?

[dintlu]

I hate to break it to you, but playing a game in which your actions have significant consequences for the story and your party is unpleasant for a lot of people, myself included.

I walked away from Dragon Age because I didn't want to have to commit to multiple playthroughs to enjoy all the content the game had to offer. The game was a chore - when you have to look online for character primers so that you don't make the mistake of leveling up characters whose alignment doesn't match your playing style, when you have to sacrifice following interesting storylines because you'll lose the perks or powers that come with strong loyalty, when you have to play the game through 2-3 times to access all the content, it's just no fun!

I've been playing Mass Effect 2 for a couple days now, and and very happy with it compared to their previous titles. The story's interesting, the gameplay doesn't get bogged down with complicated inventory items or repetitive sidequests, finishing a mission deposits you back on the ship (eliminating travel time), and the cutscene renegade/paragon triggers are lighthearted and enjoyable, as opposed to being moral quandaries.

Re:Good story?

[Blakey Rat]

Halo 2? I thought even amoung Halo fans nobody liked that game for more than the multiplayer.

Really? It's much, much, much better than Halo 1 in pretty much every way. The story is better, too, and Arbiter is one of my favorite characters in video gaming.

Mass Effect is a deep universe, very fleshed out.

True; that doesn't make it good. Plus its universe is nothing compared to, say, The Elder Scrolls series if that's what you're after.

The story was extremely immersive.

I disagree; I found it mostly annoying. I tried replaying it a few months back, and I couldn't even bring myself to finish the extremely looong intro before you get your ship and freedom of movement. In retrospect, I'm not sure how I stood it the first time.

I've never played Sands of Time but I've also never heard it acclaimed for any outstanding writing.

Well, ok. But despite that, it's one of the best written and best acted stories in gaming. (But don't bother with the sequels.)

As a sci-fi fan Mass Effect was incredible to me. Something tells me you are not.

Actually, I am. Which is why I found it mostly predictable and cliched... I don't think there was a single original sci-fi idea in the entire game, frankly.

Re:Good story?

[Anonymous Coward]

The choices seemed a bit more disguised in ME2 but they're still there. For example, you can actually kill off one of your squadmembers and replace her with her daughter. Also, during the last area of the game, your actions and planning determine who lives through the mission and who dies (literally anyone can live or die, even shepard has the possibility of dying, storywise (e.g. the cinimatic continues a bit and the game ends).

Re:Good story?

[Kielistic]

I found Halo 1 much better. Halo 2 was the only one of the games that I played once and never even thought about touching again. That's pretty subjective though.

I found the story great, perhaps nothing that hasn't been done in sci-fi before. They did take a unique twist and coalesced many different ideas into one large universe that made it seem very alive and real. They would throw seemingly useless bits of information at you making the scope of the universe feel especially large.

You may be bored of the intro sequence but I enjoyed it and found it to be an important part of the game. It was the set up for your quest, the initial research. In fact I missed the Citadel in ME2, but I seem to be pretty alone on that one.

I find it odd that you find the Mass Effect story cliched and predictable but like Halo. Which is unarguably cliched and predictable.

Re:Good story?

[Blakey Rat]

I dunno, Halo is part of the Marathon universe, and I felt Marathon was very creative and fresh from a sci-fi perspective. That's not to say that the elements hadn't been written in a book somewhere before, but I hadn't encountered them. For example, the Pfhor/Covenant being an (extremely) loose coalition of aliens instead of a single race. The Marathon concept of AI "rampancy" (which doesn't seem to appear in Halo.) Durandal's insane evil scheme to shield himself during the Big Crunch for the purpose of emerging as God in the next iteration of the universe.

Re:Good story?

[Kielistic]

Awh yes, I never had the pleasure of playing the Marathon games. I could see how any extension to a good universe could be a good extension though.

The great assortment of life in the Mass Effect universe I feel allows for many interacting sci-fi elements. there are wholly different forms of life (Hanar), Misunderstandings/bad judgments causing wars and centuries of conflict (Quarian/Geth). Completely incompatible views of morality and honour (Human/Batarian). Throw some pseudo mysticism in there for fantasy fans (Asari). And of course you have scientifically explained magic powers.

I've always wanted to delve farther into it. I have played through many times and gotten every achievement in Mass Effect 1. To me Halo never got into enough depth. I would have loved if they did because the basis for the story was great. But you could never find out more about the Convenant, or its member species.

Re:Good story?

[Blakey Rat]

You could read the books.

But yah, it's not like Elder Scrolls where the books are literally *in* the game itself.

Re:Good story?

[grumbel]

I found that to be an extremely poor gimmicky plot twist that did nothing for me but destroy the immersion. It was like "Oh, so they can't actually build a game where the player has proper choice, so instead they try to explain it away with that useless one-trick-pony of a plot twist". On top of that Bioshock didn't have any proper character interaction. Audio logs are nice and good to add backstory, but when they are basically the only story going on its just not fun any more, it feels like having missed all the interesting stuff and now being left to do the cleanup. Bioshock had what I would call an interesting and original setting, but the actual in-game story was rather meh.

Kind of same with Halo1, sure backstory is quite nice and I like reading about the universe in the Wiki, but in the actual game it was just awful. You just run around in circles doing one thing, just to try to cancel your doing in the the next mission down to the point of your whole running around being 100% pointless in the end, since you just blow up the very ship where you started from. When the backstory is a hell of a lot more interesting then the actual game story, something is seriously wrong.

PoP:Sands of Time on the other side was really good, the way the story and the way it was told worked hand in hand with the gameplay was just spot on and the character progression was great too. It is basically storytelling at its best. But thats quite a different beast then Mass Effect and not really comparable as its a 100% linear game.

Mass Effect, by the nature of its gameplay, has to have a less focused story and some more mundane stuff going on, as that is simply needed to make the world seem alive. Not every conversation with a random stranger can or should be an epic master piece of story telling. But when it comes to the main quest it was just great. An epic ending and a lot of slow discovery upfront that made you actually feel like being in control and doing the work. It felt like a bit like Elite meets XCom meets Full Spectrum Warrior in that sense, just with some great dialog, character interaction and story on top.

That said, not everything was perfect. Where Mass Effect failed a bit was with its pacing, as on one side you have to hurry to save the galaxy and on the other side you are slowly trotting around fixing some random colonists minor problems. Some better separation between doing one thing or the other might have helped. ME2 fixes that somewhat by allowing you to solve side quests after doing the main thing, but also feels much weaker in its main plot, as there is not much discovery going on and it lacks an antagonist.

But in the end what makes Mass Effect so great is the mix, having a really good story is one thing, but having serious amount of freedom to explore the game world on top of that with some very good tactic shooter mechanics just elevates the experience to a whole new level. Mass Effect feels like and epic adventure and not just like series of script-triggers, like so many other "cinematic" games these days. On top of that RPGs normally bore me to death, as I can't stand the passive fighting systems, so having a game that has solid action elements and still be able to perform precise squad commands at the same time was just awesome.

Re:Good story?

[bigstrat2003]

Halo 2? I thought even amoung Halo fans nobody liked that game for more than the multiplayer.

Not in the least. I find the multiplayer of Halo to be rather uninspired in general, but the single-player blows every other shooter I've played out of the water (story-wise, there are others which are far better game-mechanics-wise).

Re:Good story?

[DavidTC]

ME2 fixes that somewhat by allowing you to solve side quests after doing the main thing, but also feels much weaker in its main plot, as there is not much discovery going on and it lacks an antagonist.

Erm, it does?

Okay, I've not actually beat the game yet, or embarked on the final mission, so I don't want any spoilers, and also I don't want to spoil things:

But everyone in the game, and all the supporting material, seems to be implying that the mission you are working towards going on is, in fact, a suicide mission. An actual, literal suicide mission.

Now, there is an accomplishment you can unlock for surviving that, (and one for everyone surviving that.) but the game itself actually seems to imply you are, in fact, expected to die even if you beat the game.In fact, the current pre-release material for Mass Effect 3 says, flatly, that you can import Shepard from ME2, and play as him, if Shepard survived.

So I'm not entirely certain you should plan to 'solve side quests' after you have, in fact, solved the major plot in the game. You should, in fact, plan to be dead.

Also, 'lacks an antagonist' is just dumb. The game has both a 'race' of enemies, like the Geth in the first one, who shoot at you in the first damn cutscreen, and a major enemy in charge of them.

Re:Good story?

[grumbel]

An actual, literal suicide mission.

Well, just because they labeled it that way doesn't make it true. Its basically just a "you don't know whats coming" mission. You actually can die, but you have to screw up pretty badly for that.

a major enemy in charge of them.

Saren was a much more interesting character then that random insect thing. Also there is basically no discovery going on, the main plot is "there are insect things, go kill them", no twists, no turns, thats it. Its extremely straight forward and all the interesting facts of the backstory you already know from part one.

The core problem with the game in terms of story is simply that its just to mechanical, you spend most of the time doing unconnected missions to collect your teammates and a tiny few relativly uninteresting main story missions in between. ME1 had a lot more interesting stuff going on.

Re:Good story?

[Nathrael]

I agree that Mass Effect 1's story was far better, but I also think ME2 is but a 50-hours premise to ME 3. It's not about telling a complete story - rather it's about setting the mood, introducing some new, interesting characters and, in the end, leave you asking for more (instead of solving everything up nicely, like ME1 did).

Re:Good story?

[Nathrael]

From what I've seen in some dev interviews, the canonical ending has you and your romance option surviving. Everything else depends on the save you import. Should Shepard die, you obviously won't be able to import him and have to create a new one in ME3.

Re:Good story?

[malkavian]

The trial is an obvious example. Then there's the merc's quest, letting various side characters go.. The huge choices are right at then end, where I get the suspicion you can completely alter the way things go.. The choices you make with Legion's quest.. The side missions you can find in the uncharted areas..
What it seems is that Bioware have come to the conclusion that they can have a huge, epic storyline. A game that on its own would be absolutely phenomenally long. Instead of trying to produce it in one with DLC making small increments, they can tell a book's worth of story per game, with major 'checkpoint' resolutions, and massively expand the world, or at least the area that'll tell the story, in the next 'volume'.

On the DAO front, I quite enjoy the isolating options away from you if you make a choice. If a character appeals to you for particular reasons, then play them. To hell with 'optimum choice'. Life isn't optimum choices, it's getting by with what works, and trying to strike a good balance of compromise. Really, I like the concept of putting "consequence" in the world.
In reality, you can make yourself a pretty powerful person. The cost is that a lot of people will be marking a target on your back. You can gain the far more subtle power of having a group loyalty where many people will guard your back for you, making life easier and more efficient, but you'll not stand out as "The Big I Am". You choose.

These games are now starting to be about the story you tell, not about some linear no-consequence mish mash. Just like life, if you make certain choices, you deny yourself certain 'content'. Date person A, and you deny yourself Person B. Though if you choose both A and B, word may get around at a later date that means C won't date you. I like the choice, and freedom to choose what I accept, and what I reject. Choose what you want, and live with the consequence.

Why the dislike of taking responsibility for consequence in a game?

Re:Good story?

[blahplusplus]

"It just goes to show that everyone has different taste"

More like largest market is the one for shooting games, if you got a game, turn it into a shooter for maximum sales. Has little to do with "Everyone has different tastes", they purposely took gears of war game mechanics and plopped them into mass effect universe, that's all mass effect is - mass effect universe /w gears of war shooter gameplay.

Let's face it the first person/psuedo third person shooter (ala gears of war) are the most popular gaming genre's, so much so that companies saw the success of Modern warfare 1 and MW2 and just could not stand the kind of money those games were making.

Re:Good story?

[SuiteSisterMary]

I went the Paragon route, and still managed to secure Zaheed's loyalty. That's what kind of game this is. I also appreciated that one of the 'paragon' responses was to slug him in the face and call him out.

Re:Good story?

[Voyager529]

Like it's been said before, if you didn't like the first one, you won't like the second. I haven't finished ME2 yet, but so far I think that ME1 had the better story.

Mass Effect really started to get me thinking about how one could exactly design a game where the user has freedom to make choices that impact gameplay, but the player doesn't miss anything as a part of the gameplay. The two seem to be polar opposite to each other. I'd hate to be among the group of people who has to sit there and plot out the decision tree in either game.

To directly address your statement about ME's story, I'll agree that it's not original. When I got Legion in ME2 and he was all "we are geth" I was like "uhm...cybernetic beings lacking individuality and subservient to the hive mind...Borg much?" I'll absolutely agree that lots of it seems to be a mix of things from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon 5, but there are two major differences: the characters and the feelings. I was so glad when Tali came back on board, and I felt an urgency to help her out in order to help clear her name on the Flotilla. I was so happy when Miranda was able to find her sister. I shared in Samara's rage when the outcome her daughter's actions was shown through Diana. I felt the gravity of my decision on Garrus' loyalty mission, literally deciding whether this man lived or died. Not a single Star Trek or Star Wars movie, episode, or video game made me feel that way.

Completely original plots are extremely rare these days, but an old theme brilliantly unfolded is still worth lauding.

Great game

[hansamurai]

I still haven't finished it (hey, I've put in 25 hours in the last six days!), but BioWare has improved literally everything that was broken in the first. I do miss some of the RPG elements during combat, but there are still a ton of fun RPG things to do while in the hub worlds or on your ship. If you've ever played a game in the Suikoden series, you have to play Mass Effect 2.

ME1 is one of my favorite games of all time, and it's incredible how much BioWare improved on it.

Re:Great game

[Yosho]

If you've ever played a game in the Suikoden series, you have to play Mass Effect 2.

I'll be honest, I had pretty much completely written off ME2 because the first one left me unimpressed, but now I'm interested. This is definitely the first time I've heard anybody compare to ME2 to one of the Suikoden games. Why is it that you'd recommend it to Suikoden fans?

Just for reference, things I like about the Suikodens:
- Large casts of colorful characters, with a core set of characters that receives a lot of development
- Old-fashioned, turn-based combat that has a few twists due to the weapon, formation, and spell mechanics, plus the army and duel-style battles for a bit of variety
- Intricate plots that are highly political in nature with magical influences; very rarely do the games concern themselves with the common "save the world from the ultimate evil" trope
- A very original, intriguing history of the world

Suikoden 5 had two scenes that managed to make me cry, which is something that no other game I've played has done.

And things I didn't like about Mass Effect:
- FPS-style combat that was repetitive and bland compared to "pure" FPSes; you fought the same enemies over and over again, just on a differently-colored planet
- Boring, frustrating Mako exploration sequences
- Predictable plot with few twists; from almost the beginning until the end it's all about saving the universe from eradication, and you don't really even manage to do that
- Most of the "choices" you make in the game aren't between good and evil; they're not even between different shades of gray, they're just between being nice and being a jackass.

I will say I liked Mass Effect's characters (well, most of them), but I was disappointed that they had almost zero involvement in the game's actual story. Pretty much all of their development was through talking to them on your ship and discovering their backstory.

Re:Great game

[DavidTC]

I don't know anything about Suikoden, but I will attempt to answer your question:

- Large casts of colorful characters, with a core set of characters that receives a lot of development

Hrm. I don't know what 'a lot' is in this context. They sure as hell are colorful (As I mentioned elsewhere, yesterday I had to break up a damn fight between them. Seriously, don't make me turn this ship around.)

If you actually take the time to talk to them, and do their missions, yeah, they get a lot of development.

And I don't know why you thought the characters didn't have much effect on the plot. The two other humans, sure, they were just soldiers along for the ride, but most of the others had good personal reasons to be on your mission.

- Old-fashioned, turn-based combat that has a few twists due to the weapon, formation, and spell mechanics, plus the army and duel-style battles for a bit of variety

No. No turn based combat.

- Intricate plots that are highly political in nature with magical influences; very rarely do the games concern themselves with the common "save the world from the ultimate evil" trope

I'm confused by this, as you said you played Mass Effect 1.

'Highly political' doesn't even begin to describe that game. In fact, ME2 is a bit of a relief in that you don't have to deal with those asshats anymore. (You instead have to deal with your morally ambiguous and lying boss, but at least he's not trying to score political points.)

- A very original, intriguing history of the world

This is almost the definition of Mass Effect.

- FPS-style combat that was repetitive and bland compared to "pure" FPSes; you fought the same enemies over and over again, just on a differently-colored planet

ME2 is actually appearing to have much less combat, period. Or maybe I'm just misremembering ME1.

- Boring, frustrating Mako exploration sequences

Gone. No Mako at all. (Which sucks, as the combat areas with the Mako rocked.)

- Predictable plot with few twists; from almost the beginning until the end it's all about saving the universe from eradication, and you don't really even manage to do that

Erm, you found the plot of Mass Effect 'predictable'? Really?

There's a lot of really weird stuff going on that it would be, frankly, amazing to guess that's what's happening.

- Most of the "choices" you make in the game aren't between good and evil; they're not even between different shades of gray, they're just between being nice and being a jackass.

Well, that's a problem with every alignment system. Either they take speech into account, at which point you can be some sort of tower of virtue simply by being polite, or they don't, and you can play as a jackass in speech, and a nice person in actions and be fine, which really doesn't work either.

However, there were plenty of actual choices that really did matter. For example, on the planet with the 'possessed by the plant' people, you could either try to traq everyone, or you could just blow them away. The later, of course, is not a very moral choice, but much easier. Likewise, there were plenty of places you could blackmail or extort your way into a solution, or, hell, just into some quick cash. There were plenty of places where you could turn criminals into the authorities, or work with the criminals.

I'm not quite sure what you're complaining about there. All that did was open was additional dialog choices that often gave you better solutions to problems. It was a sort of 'experience for morals', and about as reasonable as any other alignment system.

In fact, moreso, because you could go in both directions at once, you could be a person who'll bully a criminal but help someone who deserved it, which in most alignment systems would end up canceling out. (You can look at 'paragon' as 'good' and 'renegade' as 'chaotic'. It's not exact, there are plenty of paragon choices

Re:Great game

[Yosho]

If you actually take the time to talk to them, and do their missions, yeah, they get a lot of development.

And I don't know why you thought the characters didn't have much effect on the plot. The two other humans, sure, they were just soldiers along for the ride, but most of the others had good personal reasons to be on your mission.

They had reasons to come along with you, sure, but they didn't have much effect on the plot after they joined. Liara got the scene with her mother; Wrex got the scene where you had to convince him not to be stupid; you got to sacrifice either Ashley or Kaidan; and that's pretty much it. Did Garrus or Tali actually ever do anything? I can't remember any scenes that involved them as important characters.

'Highly political' doesn't even begin to describe that game. In fact, ME2 is a bit of a relief in that you don't have to deal with those asshats anymore. (You instead have to deal with your morally ambiguous and lying boss, but at least he's not trying to score political points.)

There are politics in the game, but they don't really have much of a bearing on the story. Heck, the entire point of your character concept is that you can do whatever you feel like and just forget about what the government thinks. There was no political intrigue, manipulation, backstabbing, or intricate schemes. The council were a bunch of jackasses, sure, but their goals were always completely obvious.

Erm, you found the plot of Mass Effect 'predictable'? Really?

Absolutely. Maybe it's a result of having read too much sci-fi. To be fair, I had the whole "evil machine race is coming to kill us all" thing spoiled by one of the official trailers. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Saren was being controlled by them. Given that BioWare always structures the plots of their games in the same way, that made it pretty obvious that you were going to accomplish the next four objectives in any order and then have a showdown with Saren. And, guess what, the evil machine race is still coming to kill everything. I will give it that I didn't expect the "conduit" to just be a teleporter back to home base... but I thought that was a pretty awful deus ex machina, honestly.

However, there were plenty of actual choices that really did matter. ... I'm not quite sure what you're complaining about there.

My complaint is that if you're going to give the player the ability to make choices, they should both be hard to make and have significant impacts on the story. Choices that are obviously good or evil are bad because you're really just choosing whether you want to be nice or to be an ass; also, knowing that the game will give you rewards either way lessens the impact of picking one over the other.

The Witcher, for example, did a much better job of providing morally ambiguous choices that had significant impacts on the plot. For example, early in the game, a merchant asks you to defend some crates of medicine he has from monsters that are going to attack it at night. You show up and defend the stuff, and then a group of Scoia'tael (elves with a very anti-human bent) show up and ask you if you'll give the supplies to them, saying they desperately need the medicine. Do you refuse to hand the stuff over, or accept payment for it and let them take it?

If you agree to give the supplies to them, later in the game it turns out that the crates actually contained arrows designed to kill unarmored targets (like peasants), and the Scoia'tael take a village hostage. Oops!

That's what I didn't like about Mass Effect -- all of the choices are very obvious about which one is "nice" and which one is "mean," and the outcome is almost always exactly what you'd expect.

Re:Great game

[grumbel]

They had reasons to come along with you, sure, but they didn't have much effect on the plot after they joined.

In ME2 its basically the same, even worse actually, as the plot follows a very strict structure of having a "find squad member"-mission and then a "do something for squad member"-mission" repeated 11 times for all members. Along that are a handful of main story missions, but they don't really do much, its basically" insects are abducting people, go kill them". With no real twists or turns or connections to the squad missions.

That said, I don't really mind that. The universe is still among the most interesting around and characters and dialog are very interesting over all, but its more of a point&click adventure kind of story without puzzles, then a big branching thing with lots of choice and consequence.

Re:Great game

[DavidTC]

Did Garrus or Tali actually ever do anything? I can't remember any scenes that involved them as important characters.

Garrus hated Saren, and Tali's people just hate the Geth in general.

My complaint is that if you're going to give the player the ability to make choices, they should both be hard to make and have significant impacts on the story. Choices that are obviously good or evil are bad because you're really just choosing whether you want to be nice or to be an ass; also, knowing that the game will give you rewards either way lessens the impact of picking one over the other.

Yes, in Mass Effect 1, the choices didn't really do anything...however, in 2, I've run across a lot of things that would be different if I'd done ME1 differently.

And as someone who's played ME1 both ways, there's actually a lot of places where you can skip areas by choosing the 'renegade' option, which, as I pointed out, isn't really bad, it is more 'chaotic'. The two choices are 'good plus slightly lawful', vs 'chaotic plus slightly evil', it is not a 'good vs evil' axis. You can't actually play as outright evil. All you can do is play as a person who's willing to let innocents die, cold-bloodedly kill people, and ignore rules in an attempt to save the galaxy, a 'Dirty Harry'-type character.

Which, frankly, works a lot better than most RPGs, where you nonsensically 'evilly' risk your life to save everyone. Yeah, it's justified that if the world goes, so go you, but that's a rather thin justification...you still should be last in line to help. In ME, you can throw your weight around, intimidate people, shoot them if they don't help, or you can pause and help everyone you come across, and turn people over to the authorities, and generally be nice, but you're a good guy either way. (Although juries probably wouldn't see it that way.)

The standard paragon choice is often slightly more annoying, as you often end up agreeing to help more. I can't count the times, paragon-wise, I agreed not to do something that would make the entire mission much simpler. I mentioned one above, with the 'plant possessed' people. Getting back into the camp is a bitch if you're playing as a paragon, you have to carefully traq each person...and if you're a renegade, you can just blow them the hell away, they're really defenseless and bad fighters. Likewise, you end up in at least two hostage standoffs...with hostages you don't actually know. You can spend time and effort trying to save them...or, you know, not.

Of course, once you've gained points in paragon, you can use the additional choices to skip things, too, but that's no different than points in 'charm' or whatever. (And renegade is points in intimidate.) That's standard RPG game mechanics. But the baseline paragon option is often harder than the 'neutral' option, which itself is often harder than renegade.

That's what I didn't like about Mass Effect -- all of the choices are very obvious about which one is "nice" and which one is "mean," and the outcome is almost always exactly what you'd expect.

That's actually changed a bit in ME2. I already let one cowering person, who claim they hadn't really understood what was going on when they joined a gang and hadn't killed anyone, go during my attack on a group who'd murdered someone...only five minutes later, to find logs indicating that she was, in fact, specifically the killer.

Likewise, at least one 'good decision' I made in ME1 has backfired. Although it's hard to tell what the outcome of the other would have been.

Given that BioWare always structures the plots of their games in the same way, that made it pretty obvious that you were going to accomplish the next four objectives in any order and then have a showdown with Saren.

Well, yes. That's about the only way to do 'wide open' RPGs. You make everything funnel. Give people multiple choices, and when they finish they all, give them a new objective, or a new set of them.

DRM?

[Kamots]

I refused to buy or play the first one because of their DRM. Essentially it turned your purchase into a lease... of unknown duration.

I'd be interested in this one, however, despite the lengthy review, I didn't see any mention of DRM. Given that this is slashdot, I'm kind of surprised and dissapointed. Why bother hosting reviews here if they're not going to focus on the geeky side of things?

Re:DRM?

[TheKidWho]

DRM on the first game was removed with an official patch AFAIK.

Re:DRM?

[Kamokazi]

That's because other than a simple DVD check, there is no DRM. EA actually learned their lesson, believe it or not.

Now the included 'free' DLC to inhibit used game sales is another story...

Re:DRM?

[Lumpy]

the free DLC given though is quite useless and all fluff the same gear with a different look. the Blackhole gun is pretty darn crap compared to the grenade launcher. Big mechs are killed far easier lobbing grenades at them than the damned free black hole gun.

and I'm not sure the free mercenary guy is worth it. Garrus is a better fighter in most combats.

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

"free" DLC for new copies of the game to discourage used sales is a great idea. My only issue with it is the implementation (enter key, go to website, get dlc/patch, install, restart game). Can't that have been handled in the game? My understanding is that dragon age handled it with an in game UI.

The game has massive amounts of content, and if you buy it new, or buy a used copy and buy the dlc for $15, you get even more. Fair deal.

Re:DRM?

[Guspaz]

I'd both agree and disagree. The DLC weapons/armour/etc were essentially crap. The DLC armour doesn't let you customize anything, and the DLC weapons are better than your default weapons, but very quickly get outpaced.

But the Normandy crash site mission was a nice little link to the first game (and about the only place that the death of the XO gets any coverage), and Zaeed, while useless in combat, has a lot of fun stories to tell if you go back to him after each mission. Also, you can't play with the trash compactor without him to unlock that room on the ship :P

Re:DRM?

[Guspaz]

Not only that, it makes even less sense for the Steam version. Not only is it not in-game (and the game keeps saying "New content available" even though I've downloaded it all), but it doesn't integrate even slightly into Steam. Steam has a whole system for handling DLC, but ME2 has you going to some EA website, registering stuff, and running installer apps to shove stuff into the Steam game directory.

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same at first, but now I'm not so sure. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me to be an awfully slippery slope to violating first sale rights, if they haven't already been violated.

I should be able to resell a package containing the physical media, my game license, and the licenses to any DLC I purchased. The buyer should be able to have all the content I did. As it stands right now, we can't do that. I am not okay with that.

Re:DRM?

[grumbel]

It should be possible in theory to simply give over your EA account to the person you sell the game to, assuming of course that you created a special account for Mass Effect 2, instead of one that you already used for other games.

Re:DRM?

[Kamokazi]

Exactly, but they're largely going after Gamestop et. al., and they don't have systems in place to handle stuff like that. But if this crap becomes common, then maybe...

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM on the first game was removed with an official patch AFAIK.

Sorry, that's not quite right

Re:DRM?

[mjwx]

That's because other than a simple DVD check, there is no DRM. EA actually learned their lesson, believe it or not.

Nice to hear, it still has SecuROM but that leaves a slightly less bitter taste in my mouth then activation. I think ME2 will be on my "when it gets cheaper" list as I cant justify A$72.00 for the Digital Download copy from Impulse for an RPG.

Re:DRM?

[Kamokazi]

I did some quick googling to be sure, but it's not even SecuROM. Just a plain ol' DVD check.

$72? Where are you getting that figure from? Are you outside the US and have ugly exchange rates or something?

Also, there is the standard edition that is $10 cheaper:
http://www.impulsedriven.com/masseffect2

Mass Effect less than perfect

[Enderandrew]

Every side quest in the game uses the exact same map. The story for many of the side-quests is the same. A soldier or family member is missing. Go to location X, kill enemies, and find the dead body of the missing person.

Some of the voice acting (Benezia scene) is embarrassingly bad.

Exploring in the Mako is fun at times, but on some worlds the Mako struggles with really steep climbs which is just frustrating.

You are handed most of the companions very early on. They don't have great introductions. I feel like I barely know any of them even by the end of the game. In many ways, the story falls short of Bioware standards.

They created a universe that I find interesting. The story isn't bad, it just isn't great. I love the overall concept. Mass Effect is *ALMOST* a great game. I hope Mass Effect 2 improves on the first, which was a near miss.

Re:Mass Effect less than perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your post fell through a time warp from 2007.

Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet scan

[SoTerrified]

I finished the game on Sunday. It is a very different game than ME as far as game mechanics, but they kept what made ME great, the sense of controlling a riveting story. The story in ME2 is just as good.

My one flaw with the game is the obvious planet scanning time sink. For those of you not playing the game, when you come to a new planet, you need to scan it for usable minerals, minerals needed to progress in the game. The scanning consists of holding down your right mouse button, then slowly waving the mouse back and forth over a picture of a planet from orbit. You slowly move back and forth until a graph on the right side spikes. Then you click the left mouse button to extract the mineral you 'found', and then you do it again.

Even explaining that, I'm almost falling asleep. It was so jarring to find this obvious time waster in a game that was so tightly scripted and enjoyable. All I can think is they completed the game, and said "Hey, we need to add another 5-10 hours onto the gameplay." "Ok, so instead of just pushing a button that says 'Extract all usable minerals from planet", why don't we make them mouse over every square inch of the planet? That's gotta add 5-10 hours! IN FACT, even if it only adds 5 hours, it'll make the game seem much longer because it's so boring!"

And that's why this game is good and not great.

Planet Probing

[lorg]

It is an ok game, I prefer Dragon Age tho. Mostly due to them little mini-games. The "hacking" and door opening pair matching once are fine cause they are done very quickly. But the resource gathering planet probing gets OLD really fast. Certainly after seeing what some of the things cost to buy/research (medic bay for 50k plat comes to mind). It's not WOW (or some other MMO) there is no need for insane time sinks like that. Also using space to skip and start the dialogue options might not have been the best usage of keys.

Warning

[hyfe]

This game is essentially unplayable on a regular CRT TV. The text is really small, and the conversation choices aren't bounded in small coloured boxes. The colour-bleed of a regular TV will make it impossible to read. Other than that, it is a great game, but really didn't capture me like the first one did. The mining mini-game is essentially hell on a XBOX too. The last one worked great on XBOX, but this one really is best on the PC.

Re:Warning

[d34dluk3]

I have to disagree about playing it on XBOX. It's gorgeous on XBOX, and the mining was actually fun for a little while. Even after than, it wasn't too bad. To be fair, I'm playing it on 50" 1080p, so you can see where you fall between the two extremes here.

Re:Warning

[alen]

what is a CRT TV? is that some kind of new technology?

Re:Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely true.

The game may be unplayable in a 14" SD TV with the composite cable, but in my 28" SD widescreen TV with a RGB cable the text is entirely readable.

Re:Warning

[Lord Ender]

CRT TV ... a regular TV

A "regular" TV? Where do you live, that a CRT is considered a "regular TV"? You can't even give CRTs away these days! HDTVs are the new "regular," and have been for a couple of years.

Next thing you know, some guy will be complaining that the game is unplayable on his reel projector because his phonograph keeps getting out of sync.

Re:Warning

[Blakey Rat]

Where do you live where a CRT is still considered a "regular" TV? Somalia?

Re:Warning

[Guspaz]

Considering that you can buy a new HDTV/monitor for about 2/3 the cost of your 360, I'm not sure your complaint is really all that valid.

Yes, if you use a $300 console with a $20 TV, you will not get an optimal experience.

Re:Warning

[jgtg32a]

Weren't they more commonly called rear projection?
 
I think it was the same tech when it comes down to it.

Re:Warning

[Rich0]

Uh - you can pick up a standard 27" SD TV for about $200, while an HD equivalent looks like it would cost you closer to $500.

Maybe if you only play your 360 on your desk you might have a point. For a typical sofa/TV setup an HD TV is still a fairly expensive investment - especially when you have an otherwise-fully-functional SD TV available.

I don't see myself going HD for a while still. Sure, it looks nicer, but it is FAR more expensive and I don't really see that you get much for it. Plus, everything is DRMed to death and my DVR will need 10x the disk space just to deliver what I already get today.

Re:Warning

[Guspaz]

You're clearly looking in the wrong place. For 26-27" LCD HDTVs, they go for about $280 USD, cheaper than your Xbox 360. Much less if you find them on sale. Clearly, with LCD HDTVs at that price, a 27" CRT is not worth anywhere near $200 (not that any local stores carry CRTs anymore).

So again, the question is, why would somebody pay $299 for a console and then saddle it with a TV that is worth a fraction as much? It'd be like putting an F1 engine into a 1993 Honda Civic.

Re:Warning

[Wyatt Earp]

We just got a 36" HD LCD TV for $312. A Samsung.

Re:Warning

[Skal Tura]

Yes, that's a bad combination, but with good oldie combination such as Formula Atlantic engine in a '81 corolla is an really amazing combination ;)

That being said... I can't think of a comparison with a monitor and console like that ... Maybe Wii + old CRT TV makes it look softer and thus better? Doubt so ...

Re:Warning

[Rich0]

Hmm - just tried froogle. Haven't actually gone shopping in a while. In any case, I didn't pay a dime for the TV the console is attached to now. I also didn't pay $300 for the console either...

My point is, if the console is going to have an SD interface, then it should support SD resolutions. If MS isn't going to provide a quality SD experience, they shouldn't have an SD output on it...

Re:Warning

[DavidTC]

No, the phonograph is staying in sync fine. Perhaps you need to check your needle alignment.

So what was the UNIX Reference

[MaroonMotor]

the ability to hack mech enemies (one character makes a Unix reference)

OK, I'll bite. What was the Unix reference?

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

"Executing sudo command". You'll be hearing it frequently during a particular level

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

While hacking into a computer terminal, one of the characters makes a reference to issuing a "sudo" command.

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[zero_out]

Having not played the game, I wonder if it was spelled 'sudo' or pronounced. The word 'psuedo', which means "very similar, but not quite the same" is pronounced the same as 'sudo'. They are both pronounced 'sue-doe' (that's 'sue' as in patent infringement, and 'doe' as in female deer). If it's not spelled out on the screen, then a psuedo-command would make as much sense, if not more.

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the character's refer to using sudo in reference to obtaining root priviledges.

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[ParanoidJanitor]

It is spelled sudo in the game (it's spelled that way in the subtitles.) Legion is the character who says it. The only time I encountered that line was when he was hacking into a turret.

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for not spoiling and spilling out the beans on everything unlike the GP. Jerkface

Re:So what was the UNIX Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

One character will say "Executing sudo command" when in a fight.

Flaws in the original

[d34dluk3]

I'm really surprised to hear you say this. The original was good, but there were glaring flaws too. In 2, the graphics are much better and the flaws have been corrected.

Mass Effect:

- The Mako was incredibly annoying to drive until you figured it out. Once you did, the Mako sections were incredibly easy.
- Abilities were not balanced at all. Some in particular were wildly overpowered *cough Immunity cough*
- Classes were not balanced. The Soldier was pointless, as you could get a Vanguard or Infiltrator with the same weapons strength + cool abilities
- Checkpoints were incredibly far apart
- Levels were not focused. I always had the feeling of running around pointlessly until I finally got to the boss.

Mass Effect 2:

- No Mako! Yay!
- Gorgeous graphics
- Unified paragon/renegade with intimidate/charm - much more intuitive. The scars on Shephard's face changing with your paragon/renegade score is a brilliant touch.
- Balanced classes that provide completely different play experiences.
- I feel more emotionally connected to my squad. They did a nice job of fleshing out their characters.

Overall, Mass Effect was nice, but Mass Effect 2 is one of the best games I've ever played.

Re:Flaws in the original

[poetmatt]

lots was improved, but new bugs introduced. I get that "you tried to walk up onto a crate that you can't normally walk on" shit constantly. Also, the game is a little *too* linear. It's very clear when you hit the point of "from here on these are the only things to do other than finish the game"

Maybe playthrough 2 will be different. I don't know.

Re:Flaws in the original

[d34dluk3]

I've only gotten the bug once, and I was able to use cover to teleport out of it.

I guess we have different perspectives on the story. ME1 frustrated me because I felt like the story wasn't moving along when I had to go back and do Noveria after Virmire. The story has to be linear at some point, you can't just design your own storyline. I like it when I know where I am on that storyline. It's still way more exploratory than COD or Halo.

I'm anticipating high replay value because of how different the classes are. I'm a Vanguard right now and it's very much charge and shotgun. I'm thinking Infiltrator next. Stealth/sniper will be a totally different playstyle.

Re:Flaws in the original

[Pojut]

I will say that I'm pissed they took out the elevators. Excerpt from the review I wrote up for my website:

"...it's a good thing the new loading screens are so interesting and well done, because you are going to be staring at them a LOT; there are some truly epic load times in ME2 when played on the Xbox 360. I would just like to take this opportunity to say a sarcastic "thanks" to the idiots that complained about the long elevator rides. At least with the elevators we got back and forth banter between our team members...now we just get repeating wireframe schematics. GG for reducing side discussions, complainers. I appreciate it."

Re:Flaws in the original

[pluther]

I rather enjoyed the elevator banter for load screens, too.

But, it wasn't the complainers fault - it was Bioware's for not realizing that when people were complaining about the elevators, they were really complaining about all those times having to wait for another area to load.

So now we get the same long waits, but without the NPC banter that makes it at least slightly interesting.

I am apparently, however, the only one who *liked* driving the Mako around.

Re:Flaws in the original

[Pojut]

I really enjoyed the Mako too. Driving a versatile machine across an uninhabited planet, realizing just how small you are, and realizing how things can get along fine without any life present? That's an experience tough to beat in a video game.

Re:Flaws in the original

[poetmatt]

yeah. I have a 300gig raptor along with 6 gigs of ram, an I7 920, a 4890, and a basically serious machine, and I will definitely say that the load times are noticeable even for me at times. I pity anyone on PS3 or Xbox360. I do like the elevator concept but as you notice, all it's doing is hiding a loading screen.

Re:Flaws in the original

[badboy_tw2002]

Just curious, is that with the disc installed to the HD or not?

Re:Flaws in the original

[elrous0]

The Mako was a pain to control, but the cannon was a lot of fun. Driving up on a enemy camp and blasting the hell out of them before I even got out of the vehicle was a lot of fun (picking them off with a sniper rifle from a nearby hill was nice too). Now, with the lack of Mako and the lack of unlimited ammo, this is no longer possible. I hate having to play the game the way the developers WANT me to, rather than taking a more innovative approach.

Re:Flaws in the original

[Pojut]

Not installed. From what I understand, the load times are significantly reduced on the 360 if you install the game to the hard drive first. I just don't have the room to do so -_-;;

Re:Flaws in the original

[aaron552]

I will say that I'm pissed they took out the elevators.

One of the most amusing moments in ME2 so far was (whilst on the Citadel, Zakera Ward, whilst walking up some stairs) Garrus asking Tali if she missed the long elevator rides and conversations. Her answer: "no"

Ramirez does everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

STAR

Re:Ramirez does everything.

[prockcore]

that has nothing to do with this game.. but since I don't want to get shot...

TEXAS

Ammo (heat sinks)

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two problems with the switch to ammo in this game:

1) They try to spin it like it's an advance in technology.

In both the manual and the game, they explain how the ammo heat sinks are based on advanced Geth technology and how the Alliance went through the trouble to retrofit every weapon with it. But it feels to me like moving backwards when the old weapons allowed unlimited shots.

2) Leaves me searching for ammo when I should be rushing forward.

I'll finish a battle, and one of my teammates will say, "Hurry! The bad guy is getting away." I fell like I should run after the bad guy, but I'm searching every square inch of the battlefield for ammo. Part of the problem is that I play a sniper (10 to 13 shots). In 90% of the battles, I use all my sniper rifle ammo.

Re:Ammo (heat sinks)

[lattyware]

Well, I presume the idea is the weapons are all x times more powerful (just so happens everyone's armour is/shields are too) and so output so much heat it can't be handled by non-ejectable heatsinks. It's a little weak, but at least they tried to explain it.

Re:Ammo (heat sinks)

[Anonymous Coward]

My biggest problem is that it essentially goes against the previously defined canon for how the mass effect weapons work. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to fire any of my weapons after their normal cooldown period even if I'm out of ejectable heat sinks.

The argument that the weapons are more powerful/generate more heat now doesn't work for me seeing as 90% of them are of the same make and model as the first game.

I personally liked the cooldown mechanic from the first game.

Re:Ammo (heat sinks)

[wwfarch]

I'm torn on the heat sink issue. On one hand it breaks canon but on the other hand it kind of force a more tactical play style and weapon switching. I would have preferred a hybrid system. Maybe increase the cool down time from ME1 but keep it there. A quick way to force cool down would be to eject a clip. If they made ammo more rare and the natural cool down long enough then this could have had the same effect on weapon switching without breaking canon.

Re:Ammo (heat sinks)

[denarii]

Chances are you're relying on the sniper rifle too much. I'm playing an infiltrator and I had that problem at first, but I started mowing down the mooks with the SMG and biotics and saving the sniper rifle for when I needed to take out heavily armored/shielded enemies. I also bring 2 other biotics for my squad. Even with the cooldowns, between all three characters I can just bounce all of the enemies off walls/the floor or use a Pull/Warp to nuke the lot of them instead of wasting ammo.

Re:Ammo (heat sinks)

[elrous0]

Yeah, it would be pretty stupid in the real world to design a weapon with unlimited ammo that just stops working completely if it runs out of heat sinks. I would rather they had just kept the old unlimited-ammo system from the original (I never knew anyone who complained about *that* particular aspect of the original).

Re:Ammo (heat sinks)

[malkavian]

It's not unlimited, merely highly efficient (won't run out on a mission, though may need a service in the armoury between trips).
If you can't dump the heat from it, I suspect it'll be like running your car with no oil or water. Two shots, and it jams to a useless mass. That's what I inferred from the explanations.. Maybe just one shot would do that.
Guess they could put a 'risk' option in there with a chance of jamming your weapon for the mission, but allowing say one shot every 2 minutes with no heatsink.

"Trusting or Defiant"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Commander Shepard is given NO choices of serious consequence. Being defiant or rolling over like a pet dog doesn't change anything about how the Illusive Man treats you, or what he does. None of your choices seriously alter the game world, they just change a bit of local color. I don't believe you can even fail to gain your party members' trust.

None of the choices in the game are choices.

This plus an exceedingly poor AI, an aggressively oversimplified combat system, and painfully shallow inventory, leaves you with only the writing. Which would be good enough to carry the game for me if I didn't get fatally stuck on geometry so often, or was able to DOUBLE CLICK MENU ITEMS instead of having to click "select" to select them.

My Review

[lattyware]

(Just quickly, no major spoilers here. And no minor ones, hopefully.)

Mass Effect 2.

I'm going to answer the main question simply. Yes, You should buy it. It's an excellent game and you will get more hours of quality enjoyment out of it than most.

This review tends to focus on the negatives. Don't be fooled, it's a great game that will provide more enjoyment than most, and for a lot longer. I got 23 hours out of my first playthrough, and have already started on another. The replayability here is massive, and I'd expect most people would be able to put 100 hours into this game easily without loosing enjoyment. If I havn't pointed it out here specifically, you can presume it's excellent, otherwise I'd mention it. That's what I'm saying.

To put it into perspective, this is from one 23 hour run through of the game, as a soldier and going for the paragon (good) side. I've started another (around 2 hours in) as a renegade vanguard, and the experience is very different, and I'm still finding new stuff and hearing new, interesting dialogue.

Is it better than the original? Probably not, but it's not worse either. I'd say they kept it on the same level somehow, which isn't a bad thing - Mass Effect ranks up there as one of my favourite games of all time.

I'm going to go for the storyline first. You are playing as Sheperd again, this time fighting for Cerberus, a pro-human group, instead of the alliance.

It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing. That said, what is there is fun.

The team over at BioWare seem to have taken the issues people had with the original and focussed on them: the inventory, the mako, the way people tended to play with the same companions and weapons all the time. Unfortunately, they seem to have overcompensated.

The inventory system in the original was a little overcomplicated, and did have it's problems - especially the 150 item limit that forced you to turn items to omni-gel one at a time if you went over it. I would have settled for a little bit of simplification and a 'turn all to omni-gel' button. Instead they have pulled the entire system and give you a choice of weapons each time you leave the ship or come across a weapons locker. Nice idea, but the problem is that the choice of weapons is abysmal. You get around 2 of each type of weapon, and around 5 heavy weapons. It's also not a case of buying weapons much, but rather finding them as you progress through the game.

The mako in the original was a little annoying. The tasks often seemed dull and without much reward. The driving segments were not the best ever, but they were not horrible. Again, I think a little change, offering mako upgrades, reducing the amount you had to use it, etc... would have been fine. Instead they have completely removed the mako from the game. Replacing the mineral analysing bit with a boring planet scanning/probe dropping minigame, which really isn't an improvement. If anything, it's worse as the mako at least had good moments. The scanner is just dull.

The way people tended to keep the same weapons in use has been taken on with the ammo system. They have replaced the overheating mechanism (which I liked) from the original with a system of 'heat clips' (clips of heatsinks that take the heat from the weapon). At least it's well explained. Most people would say this was to try and create a more standard shooter experience (like the move to a crosshair over a reticule). This is probably true, but I'd say it's more to try and get people to vary which weapon they use more. Ammo (which is standard accross all weapons) is always in short supply, mainly due to the fact you can only carry very limited ammunition, with all of the armour upgrades that allow increased ammo capacity, it amounted to around 12 rounds for the sniper rifle, 30 for the shotgun

Re:My Review

[Lumpy]

one glaring problem. Combat is predictable. so predictable that you can fire a shot and watch the guy pop up and get killed as you start the combat sequence. bosses act the same, they typically ignore your team mates and zero in on you.

Re:My Review

[Remus Shepherd]

The games best strength is in it's dialogue.

But...if I want dialogue, I'd rather read a book.

In fact, I'm getting sick of these linear, story-based games that neglect good gameplay. If I want to experience a story while having little or no interaction with how it comes out, I'll read a book or watch a movie. Games like this just look to me like a movie (or two, since there are two endings) that you have to perform work for in order to see the ending.

I played ME1 and it was okay. ME2 sounds like it's a better story but poorer gameplay, and that's exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I don't think I'll be getting it.

Re:My Review

[lattyware]

Depsite my warnings, you took my message wrong. It's not bad gameplay, it's just not perfect gameplay. It's still excellent fun to play.

Re:My Review

[Nathrael]

I played ME1 and it was okay. ME2 sounds like it's a better story but poorer gameplay, and that's exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I don't think I'll be getting it.

I found ME2's gameplay better; in my opinion, it easily rivals any cover-based tactical shooter (just replace all the nice gear you get in these with all the nice abilities you get in ME2). It's just a matter of taste.

Re:My Review

[assemblyronin]

Excellent post, I agree with you on a lot of your points; especially about the dialog (Best in class, imho) and ranking/experience system (ugh). I hate it personally when a RPG studio decides that they need to dump-down the leveling/ability structure to "reach a wider audience". It makes the game feel hollow.

What makes less sense is you use the same ammo for all of your guns, and yet when you pick it up, it gets automatically allocated to one, and you can't use it in any of the others.

I maybe mistaken (or picked up so many that I tricked myself into thinking something opposite), but I think when you pick up a 'heat-sink' clip it does apply to other weapons on a smaller scale. At the very least, I believe the game will top off your current weapon, and then start filling up your auxiliary weapons that have depleted ammunition. Also, all weapons will get some sort of recharge when you find a "Power Cell" box.

It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing.

I feel like this game actually provides a lot of main-plot forward motion. I consider it to be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the ME trilogy, and Bioware delivers in spades. (Can't go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil it for others).

Re:My Review

[lattyware]

Yeah, you are right about the way ammo is handled, apart from the power cell box - they do your heavy weapon's ammo. Hey, the dumbing down could be worse - look at the RTS games on the market. The last good one was Empire Earth 2.

Re:My Review

[francium de neobie]

bosses act the same, they typically ignore your team mates and zero in on you.

This is necessary given your teammates' AI. If the enemies did anything that made sense your teammates would have been dead within 3 seconds for all combats.

Re:My Review

[Z8]

You're both right. When you pick up a heat sink it gets split between multiple weapons as you said. However the grandparent meant that once what you picked up gets allocated to one weapon, it is stuck in that weapon.

Because all the weapons use the same interchangeable heat sink, logically you should just be able to use your "ammo" in one weapon the whole time—all the heat sinks you have shouldn't be stuck inside your least favorite weapons.

Re:My Review

[jpmorgan]

Mordin Solus is the best character, definitely.

"I am the very model of a scientist salarian."

Re:My Review

[lattyware]

Indeed. His comments and actions are hilarious.

Re:My Review

[DavidTC]

A human trying to explain to some aliens what a bachelor party is in a bar.

The real joke is he's trying to throw one for a Salarian, a species with, and I quote, 'no concept of romantic love, sexual attraction, or the biological impulses and social rituals that complicate other species' lives.', He is not, in fact, getting 'married', or any equivalent for it, or even mating with anyone, as his species doesn't do that. If you read the in-game codex and know about his species, it's clear he has, instead, received permission from his government to fertilize some eggs. And the human has, inanely, gotten him a table dance.

Likewise, in the same bar IIRC, there's a turian whose stuck in a 'let's just be friends' relationship with a quarian who's complaining to him about her failure at her love life and not picking up his hints. It's hilarious to eavesdrop in ME2.

Re:My Review

[lattyware]

Indeed, I didn't want to explain too much as I felt if you havn't played the game, it's better to hear the conversation for yourself.

Re:My Review

[SuiteSisterMary]

It's the little inconsistancies. Like they say that the Galaxy has changed over to this new method over the last two years, but then you find a ship that crashed ten years ago, and has been out of contact ever since, and surprise! They drop heatsinks when killed.

Now, if, when out of heatsinks, the weapons reverted to the overheat method (possibly with a much shorter usable time, to reflect that instead of massive heatsinks, they have smaller ejectable ones) it would make sense. But me, I'd *vastly* prefer the ME1 style when going traipsing through the outer edges of the Galaxy.

Re:My Review

[trueguru]

It could only be better if he went to Shepard's room and did "Knock, Knock, Knock, Shepard?", "Knock, Knock, Knock, Shepard?", "Knock, Knock, Knock, Shepard?"

it's Shepard

[jbigboote]

Come on, get his name right.

Re:it's Shepard

[jbigboote]

or her name, if you played as a female.

A few other points...

[Anonymous Coward]

A very good summary, but I'd like to add a few points.

I've just started Mass Effect 2 and am already enjoying it immensely. The story has
grabbed me, which is key to my game-playing, and the action is just about right. (At
least so far.)

- You can save the game at nearly any point. I mention this because as a casual gamer
the recent trend to checkpoint style saving is a real pain. When I need to stop playing,
I need to stop *now* - not wait another 10 minutes for the next checkpoint. Checkpoint
saving has stopped me playing Assassins Creed II, Batman Arkham Asylum, Gears of War,
Fear 2, ...

- I sometimes become "stuck" on cover. It's quite easy to take cover, but sometimes you
can't just walk-off and it's frustrating, especially when you're shot shortly afterward.

- The mini-games are fun at the moment, but I can see how they'd become boring. And as
you *can* save at any point the mini-games are largely pointless. You'll succeed eventually.

- And finally, there's the addition of the Personal Assistant. You no longer need to ask
each of your team whether they want to talk to you each you're on the Normandy or
continuously check your mail as she just lets you know. All of which saves a lot of wasted
time.

Just my tuppence worth.

Re:A few other points...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can save the game at nearly any point. I mention this because as a casual gamer the recent trend to checkpoint style saving is a real pain. When I need to stop playing, I need to stop *now* - not wait another 10 minutes for the next checkpoint.

This was a feature in the original Mass Effect (at least on 360; no idea on PC). The only time you couldn't save was if you were in a combat situation. Get out of that, and your save option returns.

Rent - Don't buy

[Liquidrage]

If you're on the fence, don't buy this game. Rent (360), or borrow (PC). You should get about 20 hours of it. But the replay value is small.

There is no depth to the combat system, the characters skills and abilities.

It's a glorious interactive movie. The ending (last few missions, a couple of hours worth) perhaps the best ending of a game ever. Some parts are annoying. The ammo system is horrible. Very few equipment upgrades. Scanning for resources is incredibly tedious and repetitive.

Worth playing for the theatrics of it all. But not a real "game" at heart. Also, I wonder how the reviews for this thing are all 9+'s. It's one of the highest rated games ever. Which leaves me suspicious (EA is behind it after all) because the faults in the gameplay are enough that *some* professional reviewers couldn't have loved it as much as they claimed.

In case anyone is interested...

[Pojut]

Here is my own review of Mass Effect 2

Of course, it would have been nice ...

[Keyslapper]

if they had followed through on their promises to continue Mac support ...

A great many folks begged, pleaded, and even volunteered any and all input or support needed to help Bioware follow through with their promise to provide a universal executable for Neverwinter Nights. Bioware waffled for years on this promise before they finally admitted they weren't going to do it. By then a lot of folks (myself included) had bought several of the premium modules in good faith. There are still several I haven't bought, and now I won't be buying them. Too bad. It's the one game I always wanted to come back to when I get an itch for gaming.

Sorry, needless griping, and off topic to boot, but there we are.

Re:Of course, it would have been nice ...

[King_TJ]

No, I agree with you here! I wasn't even much of a fan of most RPG games, but I'd probably play this one, since it's more like a 3D shooter merged with a typical RPG.
The thing is though, I've pretty much switched to all Macs at home, and my only Windows PC left doesn't have a graphics card capable of playing these games very well.

I can boot into Windows 7 on my Mac Pro (or I've got XP Pro on my Macbook Pro notebook I can boot into) and play a game like this, but I don't WANT to! I hate having to reboot into a second OS just for the sake of playing a game. For me, gaming tends to be an "impulse activity" anyway, when I get a little free time at random and perhaps get tired of some other work I was doing on the computer. If I have to exit out of everything, boot up Windows, and then probably do numerous updates too - just to play a game? Chances are good I'll just skip it and play something else instead that runs natively in OS X.

Macs may still only have a "niche market", but it's slowly growing and growing. (I'm also of the opinion that most of the Mac buyers/owners of late are the people who actually still have decent-paying jobs and are willing to buy something like a new game title at full price. Meanwhile, the recent "netbook craze" has caused a lot of new Windows PC purchases to be ones driven by the low cost of entry -- and these won't be people with machines capable of running a game like Mass Effect 2, nor are they as likely to want to pay for the game either!)

Re:Of course, it would have been nice ...

[Blakey Rat]

Dude. They're owned by EA now. Just be glad the game doesn't kick you in the nuts every time you start it.

Re:Of course, it would have been nice ...

[Guspaz]

Ordinarily I'd say that the effort to do the port would not be worth it considering the small market share. However, ME2 uses Unreal Engine 3, which already has OpenGL bindings (it has to, it runs on platforms that use OpenGL ES like the PS3).

Instead, I'll just point out that you can play the game under Mac OS X under WINE (http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=19125&iTestingId=49026), but that it will look like crap, run slow, and crashes on occasion.

Re:Of course, it would have been nice ...

[mjwx]

If they had of followed through with their promise of Saturn support...

A great many folks begged, pleaded, and even volunteered any and all input or support needed to help Bioware follow through with their promise to provide a universal executable for Neverwinter Nights. But eventually it made sense to me, why should Bioware waste resources on a dying platform that at it's height comprised less then 4% of a potential market.

Re:For Microsoft fanboys only

[Pojut]

Instead of complaining about "Microsoft fanboys", why don't you stop being a fanboy and purchase a system outside of your petty preferences?

I never understood the idea of artifically limiting yourself in the world of gaming. If you can only afford one console, that's fine...but if money isn't an issue, the only thing preventing you from playing Mass Effect 2 is yourself.

I hope there are lots of long elevator rides!

[mattegger]

that really made ME1 for me.

JK of course. cripes they were boring, although the voiceover stuff played were interesting.

Fare thee well, Mako!

Warning - believe system specs.

[Bl4d3]

I can report that the dual core minimum spec is for real.

The game can't be played on a single core machine, tried with my old FX-57 @ 3 GHz - it was a no go.
It couldn't even play the first video after creating a new game. Found a fix, which just replaces the video files with empty ones, but I still only get 1 - 2 fps ingame.

To me it seems a bit odd that just adding another core would give me playable frame rates, but I can't test since I don't have a FX-60.

Re:Warning - believe system specs.

[grumbel]

Isn't that more a matter of the graphics card then the CPU?

Anyway, speaking about system requirements, they are not higher then those for Mass Effect 1, I think the game actually runs a bit smoother while looking better on a Core Duo 6300 with Geforce 7600LE running at lowest graphic setting in 800x600.

Re:Warning - believe system specs.

[compro01]

CPU is important for the AI and physics. The "send 'em flying" biotic tricks aren't cheap.

I'm using a below-spec videocard (ATI HD3200 in my laptop) and it runs good at 800x600.

Re:Rent - Don't buy

[grumbel]

When you play the side missions you can easily get 35h out of it, which is freakishly long for a shooter or even an interactive movie game and 10h longer then the first Mass Effect was.

I agree that the combat got a little to much simplified, but its not really a game breaker, its still a ton of fun to play.

Even so I prefered the original Mass Effect, in my book Mass Effect 2 is still a 10/10. It is not a perfect game in every aspect, but it comes a hell of a lot closer then everything else, there just isn't anything else around that mixes story with fun gameplay the way Mass Effect does.

Re:Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet sca

[Lumpy]

You do know you can cut planet scanning time in 1/2 by scanning at the edge. press left on both sticks and the scanning speed is doubled. simply rotate and slowly move up or down depending on where you started.

Re:For Microsoft fanboys only

[Anonymous Coward]

Only rich americans can afford to have more than one console.

Re:For Microsoft fanboys only

[Pojut]

As I noted, if money is a problem then it's fine.

The fact that the OP used the term "Microsoft Fanboy" in their post tells me that they are ignoring games on Microsoft platforms by choice, not by necessity. I could be wrong, but I doubt that I am.

My friends hate it

[lymond01]

Maybe it's because they just finished Dragon Age and are as such underwhelmed with the story and characters of Mass Effect 2. They also complain about the gameplay and think that Bioware should stick to RPGs and not try to insert shooter-style gaming into their products. They're pretty confused about the good reviews the game is getting.

Re:My friends hate it

[Nathrael]

Well, I personally found Dragon Age pretty mediocre. It has decent characters, but it's gameplay was abysmal and it's story wasn't too great either (and dude, was it tolkienesque). Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, may be a space opera, but it's a pretty damn well done space opera with both a nice story (although everything feels it's just a premise to ME3) and great gameplay.

Re:My friends hate it

[assemblyronin]

One question that comes to mind for me: Did they play ME 1, and import their character?

My personal feelings are that ME2 is more rich and enjoyable, if you have a character from ME1 that you transfer over to ME2. It adds extra depth to the game.

Re:Rent - Don't buy

[rcuhljr]

For overall game play I preferred the the first mass effect, but only because I miss numerical information on weapons. I'm left guessing about which weapon is superior to others, and trying to read something definitive out of vague wording. On the character development and cinematic side I much prefer mass effect 2. The characters feel richer, there is more humor throughout the game, and characters actually swear. (A good bit for realism, how many gang leaders are polite and well spoken?) Honestly if they inserted Mass effect 1's combat system into mass effect 2 it would be my perfect game, as it is I'm going to get 75+ hours of this game.

Fun game- but not a good BioWare game

[Brandee07]

Western RPGs, and BioWare games in particular, really draw from the openness of D&D at their roots. The main character is an avatar, whose name and face and personality the player fills in, and whose choices affect the entire game. In direct contrast, Japanese RPGs offer fully-fleshed out main characters, whom you follow but don't control the decisions of.

Mass Effect has lost sight of this, and is edging towards the Japanese model without looking like it is. The good/evil system is crap. Paragon and Renegade are suppose to be an evolution of good and evil, but ends up being a nice guy/jackass system, since the final results of Shepards actions are always the same when it matters- he's just more or less of a douche about it. There's not a whole lot of the interesting moral choices that made Jade Empire, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age so much fun. In ME2 this problem is far, FAR worse. I've played about 15 hours, and I've made countless dialog selections... but I haven't made any CHOICES.

There is a depressingly small amount of dialog with the party members. The characters are largely flat and uninteresting, and following through on their side missions doesn't flesh them out much.

The combat is Gears of War lite. The hacking minigames are better than the previous Simon Says, but the planet scanning is just as monotonous as driving the Mako around, but without all the fun that comes with trying to get the Mako to flip over.

I'm having fun with it. It's just not the kind of game I expect from BioWare. I'd be ok with that, but they tried very hard to make it seem like it had the same depth as Dragon Age or KOTOR, which it absolutely doesn't.

Difficulty Level

[denton420]

Being the kind of gamer that enjoys a good challenge I am pretty disappointed with ME2

The story is great! The game is a cake walk even on insanity difficulty. I think they made combat way too simplified and the AI is simply annoying. There could be a few simple changes to make combat a lot more enjoyable.

There could be "behavior" buttons to toggle for your AI partners. Defensive, somewhere inbetween, and full out attack.

Yeah I am playing on Insanity but it is annoying when my AI partner decides to not take cover when he/she has just been hit by 2 rockets in rapid succession and thinks its a good idea to keep firing his/her heavy pistol at 5 synthetics. I just end up killing all the enemies and then waiting for them to get back up, not worth the medi gels lol.

To counter this I pause the game and make an effort to set up my AI partners behind cover that is wide enough to support 2 people. This way you can alternate cover positions to keep the AI moving which keeps them from getting hit. It works well but a simple button to tell them to take some damn cover is not asking for too much.

However after getting to around level 14-15, after the collector ship, its a non issue since any enemies encountered are dead within seconds. (tip: cloak + incisor rifle = win)

BioWare get it together please. Dragon Age on insanity was not easy on my first play through, but it was not hard either. DA was much harder than ME2 though.

I wouldn't even dare put Baldur's Gate 2 on the highest difficulty. That game scares me with how hard it can be. I want to have some respect for the hardest difficulty level in a game on the first play through at the very least. It could just be that I was about 12 when I played BG2 for the first time though =)

Re:Difficulty Level

[Sumadartson]

If you enjoy a challenge, give Demon's Souls on PS3 a go. Hours and hours of play, good, innovative multiplayer mode and an insane difficulty level. It's more of a hack-and-slash than an actual rpg though.

Re:Difficulty Level

[elrous0]

I always hate games where I have to put up with AI teammates. They're almost always cannon fodder, especially on the higher difficulties. It's especially annoying when you have to deal with them on an escort missions (or in a game where you have to keep them alive). The AI marines in the Halo series were especially annoying. On the insane difficulty they were just there for comic relief (except for the occasional invulnerable one, like the Sarge).

Re:Difficulty Level

[bigstrat2003]

BioWare get it together please. Dragon Age on insanity was not easy on my first play through, but it was not hard either. DA was much harder than ME2 though

O.O

What the heck are you talking about? I played Dragon Age on normal, and it was still a stiff challenge (and I'm not a newbie to RPGs here), and at times was balls-to-the-walls hard. The hardest parts of the game were still fairly tough even on easy. Unless you played the "special more-easy" version of Dragon Age, I'm going to go ahead and say that your sense of difficulty is completely out of whack.

Re:Difficulty Level

[Apparition-X]

I will second that. Hardest game I have every played (and I started with Wizardry on an Apple IIc). But it is also in the top 5 in terms of best/most rewarding.

Re:Difficulty Level

[BoredAtWorkWhatElse]

What the heck are you talking about? I played Dragon Age on normal, and it was still a stiff challenge (and I'm not a newbie to RPGs here), and at times was balls-to-the-walls hard. The hardest parts of the game were still fairly tough even on easy. Unless you played the "special more-easy" version of Dragon Age, I'm going to go ahead and say that your sense of difficulty is completely out of whack.

It mostly depends on the class you played since they were completely unbalanced. My first play through was on hard with a warrior and it was reasonably challenging (especially because it took me a while to get Wynne). However my second play through was on nightmare with a mage and it was ridiculously easy, I must have played 20 hours before dying and it was only because I did something stupid. And that was after the Cone of Cold nerf.

They turned ME2 into gears of war ish fps

[blahplusplus]

The truth is ME2 is basically now gears of war in the Mass effect 2 universe, the RPG system is laughable, the only thing you end up doing is upgrading your powers but most of the time you can rely solely on guns and powers are kind of redundant.

They took out some of the best parts that just needed fixing from ME1, I loved exploring planets in the mako but even I knew it could get tedious and boring only because the team didn't know how to improve it or where to take it, they could have done a lot with it if they had the right people who knew where to take it.

Also if you are going for paragon/renegade you pretty much have to go soldier for the bonus's or import a mass effect 1 save (which you can now find online).

http://www.annakie.com/me/

Re:They turned ME2 into gears of war ish fps

[francium de neobie]

At first I was unconvinced as well. An RPG without a complicated system like D&D or SPECIAL?

But after playing it for a few hours, it's still an RPG and it has all the fun of an RPG. The role playing in ME2 is in your conversations and in the cinematic. There're still some leeway for you to optimize (e.g. Geth Pulse Rifle for your squad, upgrades) if you still want to do character optimization.

Btw, unless you're playing on insanity, adept is a lot of fun too.

Re:They turned ME2 into gears of war ish fps

[Viewsonic]

I'll probably avoid this then. I enjoy a good story now and then, but I prefer it to be way at the bottom of everything else in the game. I want it to just guide me, not be at the forefront, otherwise once I get past two hours into a game and it's nothing but story story story, it becomes like watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy all in one sitting. No thank you. I must be getting too old for games. I used to be able to devote hour after hour to games, and all I want now are quick and easy 10 hour RPGs that are more like playing a spreadsheet with some story below it all.

Re:They turned ME2 into gears of war ish fps

[blahplusplus]

The point is, while the game is entertaining it's the cinematic qualities that you enjoy the most, the actual game is quite monotonous but they hide this fact by using great art and VA, making each shooter level a contained experience.

I'd say the artists are really what really made mass effect, the amount of detail in the art is just amazing for a video game, the way faces move, animate, and the VA in the conversations and how conversations are skippable as well as having subtitles (in most cases you can read faster then someone can talk).

While the game is enjoyable they took the easy path, they covered up the game's deficits with voice overs and high quality cinematics and cinematic level design to keep your interest, so you don't notice the fact that they basically took the easy road in making ME2.

Like for instance the first part with Shepard on the ship where you are out in space, the artistry was just amazing, they couldn't have pulled the experience together without the artists.

Re:They turned ME2 into gears of war ish fps

[blahplusplus]

You should check out Torchlight, it may be up your alley.

http://www.torchlightgame.com/

Re:Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet sca

[wwfarch]

I play on the PC and I just upped the sensitivity of my mouse. It helps that I have a g5 so I have the sensitivity buttons built in though. Even with this the mineral scanning was a mind-numbing experience. It was kind of cool the first couple times but after that it gets extremely tedious.

EA? No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I will not purchase anything EA has gotten their grubby paws on, regardless of how good the game may be. They'll end up screwing you over somehow.

Finished it, on PC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a major BioWare fan, played all their games, and honestly it's a good game.
It's different than ME1, it's a bit "casual-oriented" in a way that everything has been simplified, but I'm okay with that. The upgrade system is waaaaay better and immersive than the "Hydra V, Hydra VI, Hydra IX" bullshit of ME1. The ammo system is okay too, though seeing red-flashy ammo clips everywhere breaks immersion a bit. Scenario of ME1 was better, I think, much more epic. ME2 scenario seems a bit old-fashioned, classic, not many surprises...
Well, this game is really straightforward, it works like this: enter room, things pop, shoot things, mission debriefing.
I know I make it sound like it is a bad game, but these are details. Overall, this is top-notch quality. Quests aren't all the same, and some of them involve deep-thoughts dialogs, about ethics and all, and the gameplay is great, there are many companions with interesting plots and personalities, and graphics are great sure, though not as good as I'd have thought. And it will take you several days to end it. It's not as long as Dragon Age, but above the average at least.
I feel like they worked their asses off to produce this game.
Many mistakes are corrected, and they didn't take any risks.
Very good game, good Mass Effect, average Bioware

PS: I fucking hate the mini-games

Re:Rent - Don't buy

[mythosaz]

While I'm certainly in favor of renting games in general, this certainly has at least ONE replay in it. The difference between a a good, evil, or even "middle of the road" adventure provide quite different experiences.

Re:Rent - Don't buy

[Liquidrage]

I did every single side mission I could find, got to level 27 by the end, and a decent amount of resource gathering, and it clocked in about 22 hours for me.

Replay value is limited though. So much much of the game is the cinematography and story which is pretty much static no matter what you do. A game like Borderlands, which has far better gameplay but much worse presentation, has more replay value to me because the shooter/rpg aspects are more indepth and the archtypes play much different.

Re:Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet sca

[Xveers]

Given that the ME1 exploration system was grappling with the Mako and getting to some of the deposits was a cast-iron nightmare and EASILY took longer than five minutes, I think the scanning mechanic is far better. Unless you enjoyed driving over jagged terrain that made your rattle like a can in a paint mixer...

Mako map

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted inventory management and the Mako were kind of a pain in the ass in the original, but they needed to be fixed, not completely eliminated.

I actually liked the Mako once I figured out you could press 'm' to get a map of the whole section. I was just driving around aimlessly looking for random icons to pop up on the radar before that... I wonder how many other people didn't clue in, and if they could have fixed it just by having an NPC keep pestering your "Shepard, use your map" until you clued in.

PC and XBox, USA

[CritterNYC]

If you're doing a PC game, bringing it to the 360 isn't a huge undertaking and vice versa. Development is designed around that. The PS3 is a bit more work, being a very different architecture. And if you're doing a western-style RPG and are mainly US-centric, focusing on the 360 makes a lot more sense. It has nearly double the install base of the PS3 in the US.

Re:Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet sca

[Nathrael]

Do that in the first two or so clusters you're exploring and you likely won't have to scan any other planet for anything but anomalies for the rest of the game.

If you are an old fart, don't buy it!

[Spliffster]

I am still waiting for ME2 but ME1 has changed my expectations on games.

The first time i was playing computer games was as little boy in the early 80ies. Offline, with more or less stupid AI. Then in the 90ies online games became popular (LAN actually). The new millenium brought us online only games, it was important to be online as often as possible to keep up with the game.

When ME1 came out, I was pretty tired of most online games, since I could not keep up with the online times of teenies, it became a bit frustrating. But ME1 changed that. An offline game quiet good AI, and it adopted to my game experience. ME1 had a very interesting story if you like RPGs, quiet some shooting was going on and exploring planets with a ground vehicle -- the mako -- was fun at first (a little boring after some time).

I warn you, because after ME1 I did not enjoy any newer games. I am spoiled -- am looking forward to ME2. Who on /. doesn't like zapping the universe, solving questions, hot women in tight suits, space ships, guns, fights and gambling?WTF!

Cheers,
-S

Re:troll

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG WTF. twitter and facebook links for each story? slashdot finally jumped the shark! lol, rofl.

"OMG WTF", "lol, rofl"...I think Slashdot was catering to you when they added Twitter and Facebook links...

Re:Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet sca

[Sechr Nibw]

First, let me preface by stating I don't own the game, I've just watched my roommate play some.

As far as I am aware, the minerals aren't *required* to progress in the game. It's for upgrading your ship - might make the game easier, but not required, near as I could tell. Further investigation indicates that upgrades will keep certain characters from dying in the final battle. Again, not *required* to get all of them, at least.

Best RPG ever!

[francium de neobie]

Beats Fallout 1 and 2, beats Bauldur's Gate, beats even Planescape Torment.

This game rocks! Brings back the memories!

Re:Best RPG ever!

[natespizer]

How can you call this an RPG in relation to the games listed?

why all the humanoid alien races?

[jollyreaper]

I can forgive television scifi for having bumpy forehead aliens. They have limited budgets, can't afford to go all James Cameron (who still didn't diverge that far from the human form.) I understand that any aliens too alien us humans will not be able to interact with in a significant way. Intelligent clouds of charged gas living inside gas giants are not compelling characters. Self-aware sea slugs floating in the methane seas of some poison world won't be on your ship any time soon. But given that the game isn't limited to using human actors, you'd think that they could be a little more inventive! I mean shit, Star Control had more variety, even though strictly speaking all of their aliens were still impossibly human-friendly, even the ones that were completely inhuman like he Illwrath, Umgah, Spathi, etc. It's strange to think humans have more in common with lobsters and trees than with whatever truly alien thing we encounter out there.

Re:why all the humanoid alien races?

[rcuhljr]

The Hanar are pretty non humanoid. http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Hanar as are the Rachni. http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Rachni Both are intelligent races. I think part of it might be conformation bias, perhaps you're more likely to interact with races that you can communicate and share facilities with easily.

Re:why all the humanoid alien races?

[atilla filiz]

Also they need to provide more possible sex partners to attract shy 14 year olds.

Great except PC version is an after thought.

[ageoffri]

In a lot of ways I've got to disagree with the overall review. I'd call ME2 a good but not great game. Bioware took my RPG and infected it with a shooter.

First off is the lack of two basic PC settings. Anti-Aliasing and mouse sensitivity. Since I've got a pair of ATI 5850's and bought the Steam version of ME2 I don't have any AA and can't fool the ATI drivers into forcing it on. Hopefully ATI will update drivers to recognize the exe soon. Then having no real control of mouse sensitivity is a bit of a pain, particularly with the circuit board style bypass. Both of these issues only impact the PC.

The next big thing that the game lost is the open-ended feeling. Sure there were a few missions in ME1 that just ended and took you out of the area, but the majority didn't. With the new method you get to the end of a mission and when you hit F, you are taken back to your ship. No more running around the Citadel figuring out 3 or 4 missions at the same time.

I'm also not a fan of the heat clips. While it is true I've never run completely out of ammo playing a solider, I have run out of assault rifle ammo. This is really a pretty minor thing and if you never played ME1 you won't miss it.

Now not all is bad. The ability to influence a cut scene with a right or left mouse click is awesome. I've "solved" several problems with a bullet. The story and character interactions are very good. I'm just about done collecting my team and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Good Review

[TheRealGrogan]

I mostly agree with that assessment. I love Mass Effect 2, even though it's a lot different than the original in terms of game play. To me, Mass Effect was not really much of a shooter or combat game so I don't mind the "dumbing down" of inventory and tactics. I've always kind of thought that stuff was a nuisance (I don't like RPG games much) and thought of Mass Effect as more of an interactive story than a "game". The fighting isn't half bad, and in some ways it's better than the original. It's easier to shoot from cover for one thing, and more realistic to have to reload your weapons and collect ammo. I bought the deluxe edition, so I got some downloadable content including an "Incisor" sniper rifle that fires 3 shot bursts. (my favourite gun in the game) I love exploring and going back and replaying it with different choices to see the story unfold a bit differently. It's certainly good dollar value (keeps me occupied for hours on end when I should be doing work) The graphics are (still) somewhat mediocre, at least in terms of scenery (I'd agree that the character detail is fabulous) but good enough for this type of game. It looks decent enough.

This is a "true" RPG.

[incognito84]

Played through the game myself over the weekend. It took around 25 hours although I was aiming for 50, I suppose this had something to do with me making some bad choices which forced the game to pick up the pace in order to compensate for my mistakes.

I've never been a fan of RPGs, actually. I've always liked the concept of RPGs and have always hated the execution. The idea of being the centerpiece in an epic story has always had a strong appeal, however the trend in RPGs over the years has been one of catering to one group of people who preferred one style of play. Picking up items, heavy redundancy, no reliance on twitch combat or any conventions FPS games have relied on to make them succeed. I've always been cornered into playing FPS titles for this reason and despite a few major releases over the years, FPS titles have -- for the most part -- lacked in story telling. I've always wondered why no developer tried to bridge the gap between an action game and an RPG and I've always wondered why RPGs, even in the 21st century, relied so strongly on the "book & board game" mechanics, even when contemporary hardware could go well beyond that (I think my hatred of traditional RPGs stems from going to a friend's house and spending hours watching him play Final Fantasy VIII, thinking "THIS is the CRAP that everyone keeps going on about?!")

But yes, Mass Effect 2 goes beyond that. I hope that it will set a new standard for RPG games and that many developers will choose to follow Bioware's example instead of Final Fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons. Not to say there isn't a place for those sorts of RPGs but I would like to say that there hasn't been much for those of us who like our tactical shooters to have a great story. Mindless action is fun to a point but a great story puts that action in context; it gives you a reason to fight. For me that makes it infinitely more entertaining.
As an aside, its proper Science Fiction, too. I wonder how much of an upset this is to the more "entrenched" RPG gamers who insist on picking up their countless inventory items in worlds populated by elves, dwarfs, knights etc. I love how the ME games are a slap in the face to the other sort.

I think a lot of people agree with me here. Traditional RPGs, MMOs and FPS games don't nearly overlap enough when they could very well learn something from each other. Here is looking forward to other developers picking up on this idea!

Re:This is a "true" RPG.

[SuiteSisterMary]

I felt much the same way, I think. I never understood why people said this wasn't an RPG. Indeed, it's a more pure RPG than most. Simply because it forgoes stats and skills, doesn't mean you're not playing a role.

The Salarian game salesman even lampshades this when he laments the good old days of RPGs, when your character died if you didn't command him to drink water, and when travel from point a to point b took five hours of real time.

KOTOR isn't Turn Based

[PaganRitual]

Old? Turn Based?

Knights of the Old Republic is neither.

One of the biggest shames in PC RPG history is the amount of RPGs that use real-time or pause time combat. Baldur's Gate should have never been pause-time, and all those first person RPGs (Ravenloft etc) that have this idiotic mouse hammering real time combat ... ugh.

endless exBOREation options

[moxsam]

Mass Effect was inexplainably hyped for no reason. Whoever tried to do all the side-quests (and survived the boredom) knows how badly the game was able to look and be played.

Re:endless exBOREation options

[grumbel]

Which other game is there that comes even close to matching the amount of open exploration and deep story along with good gun play that Mass Effect has to offer? Mass Effect is pretty unique in what it does.

Also the side quests wheren't half bad, it was actually quite a bit of fun and gave the game a good feel of openness and freedom, missing in most other games.

Re:Rent - Don't buy

[grumbel]

Not really, the outcome of your action stays pretty much the same most of the time, its more a choice between nice guy and asshole then between good and evil. This is one of my long standing core issues with Bioware games, its always about flat black&white issues, its never about actual choice. There are no two ways to solve a problem as a nice guy, there is only the play asshole one, which when you play as a nice guy is of course a non option.

Re:Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet sca

[grumbel]

It's for upgrading your ship - might make the game easier, but not required, near as I could tell.

The ship updates are required, at least when you want to see the good ending, and minerals are also used for normal weapon upgrades, so they are a central part of the game. You can of course still skip those, but then nobody forced you to go all planet exploring in the first Mass Effect either.

Sniper player

[empty_other]

10 shots is just the first sniper rifle and the 3rd friggin huge sniper rifle. You will get a sniper that can shoot 60 shots; 5-10 shots per reload to making up for the low damage. So to use only sniper rifle you have to be good at headshots, using shield-penetration, get a few upgrades, and move a bit around to collect enemy-dropped ammo. No problemo. I usually prefer killing bosses by empty two clips of ability boosted sniper-bullets into their thick skulls. That usually do the trick.

Bad troll is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

MAJOR SPOILERS

I will go on a limb and tell all of Slashdot declaring Mass Effect 2's story 'good' implies you are officially declared candidate for some obligatory book reading. The story is as follows: you set up a team of space heroes and destroy the great big evil. That's it for you, that's the story. That's the intrigue, that's all of it. It's just a few little blandly sketched out side-stories for your teammates whom only relate to the main story by being present, nor their personality and backstory nor your actions with their presence make any difference. And let me spoil it for you, the final exceptionally dangerous enemy is the oversized top half of a Terminator's body that can be killed by shooting at it's eyes; and let me break another thing to you, the bad guys model their incredibly all-powerful superweapon after the race they're going to destroy by.... capturing every member of the species first and making the incredibly all-powerful superweapon out of them to kill eh.. CAN I HAZ STORRY?

What Mass Effect 2 is is a narratively bland rollercoaster.

(I am serious although I understand I am a fat not so new here troll)

Et tu BioWare?

[bhalos]

Every PC gamer knows about it and frankly I don't care about it that much anymore until I played Mass Effect 2. I am talking about the effect of multi-platform development of games. Games that are concurrently developed for consoles as the PC have lead to PC games with a somewhat deteriorated quality. In other words they have been dumbed down.

BioWare has a reputation for releasing quality RPG's but lately their formula has slightly changed and that's definitely not for the better. ME 2 is the pinnacle in the dumbing down of BioWare PC games. Now I was already used to this new development method but I just didn't expect BioWare to utilize it in such a way that has lead to this new version of the RPG.

Take the elevators for example. Now I know a lot of people complained about them. And yes I agree that the rides sometimes took too long. But they were also an important part of the RPG experience. First off instant travel breaks immersion. Especially in the way Mass Effect 2 has it implemented. Instead of an elevator ride, filled with character dialogue and news broadcasts detailing Shepards achievements as in ME 1, we get a very simple looking menu screen. This screen has huge bars that can be seen from the other side of your room. A bit on the excessive side. Also why must I move my mouse to the "select" button instead of simply being able to double-click one of those huge bars?

The next issue, combat. I have nothing against 3rd person combat, even though I prefer 1st person, but its another step into the console direction instead of the PC. Aside from that I rather enjoy the combat the only other negative aspect about it is the waves of enemies. I despise waves. You can never tell when the battle is over. Unless you, which is what I do, constantly check if your shield is suddenly regenerated or one of your fallen comrades is resurrected.

Also this "RPG" has no inventory. How can that be? Looting enemies and equipping your characters to form the best possibly equipped squad is simply not possible. Perhaps BioWare thought that moving through an inventory screen was simply too much of a hassle when using a gamepad?

And what is up with the cover/sprint/use key? Did they run out of buttons? I often find my character crouching behind cover when I simply want to run past conveniently placed cover #634. Its annoying. Separating cover from sprint would have very easily prevented this.

I've often heard people describing Mass Effect 2 as a RPG-Shooter hybrid. I would be fine with that if the game actually was an RPG-shooter hybrid. But dumbing down an RPG and using TPS combat does not make this game a RPG-shooter hybrid. They have simply taken a fine RPG, ME 1, and stripped down most of the essential RPG elements. And because of that this game plays like a dumbed down RPG. It simply was not designed to be a RPG-Shooter hybrid.

A fundamental aspect of the RPG is immersion. One should actually feel like one is playing a role. This is practically impossible with this game. Excluding the appearance customization there is no way to roleplay. Shepard shows too much of his own personality and verbalizes his own dialogue, in contrast to for example Dragon Age. And the dialogue choices are child's play. It is often reduced to picking what color matches your alignment choice. Blue is for paragon and red is for renegade. BioWare has relieved you of the burden of actually reading the dialogue. No longer do you need to endure the hassle that comes with understanding the effect of your moral choices instead you now simply choose to be either blue or red and then continue to choose blue or red during the various conversations.

To conclude, I've been very negative about this game and with good reason. Nonetheless this is still a great game that deserves praise. One of the improvements for example is the enhanced variety in the side quests/assignments.

I think the fact that BioWare released Dragon Age an RPG that does seem to be developed for the PC before rel

Re:Et tu BioWare?

[bhalos]

And here's the screenshot link. Just looking for replicants...

Wasn't as good as the first

[tsotha]

ME 2 looks gorgeous, has good acting, and a good story. But it's not as good as the first Mass Effect. It moves along a lot better than the first version, but it's not nearly as immersive.

My biggest gripe is how the game was console-ified. The interface is dumbed down, along with inventory. They took a fun game and removed some of the stuff that made it fun in an effort to release it on lots of platforms, turning it into a relatively mediocre game. And then apparently it's unplayable on consoles unless you have a high-def TV.