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Mass Effect 2.
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
It's the game we've all been waiting for, does it live up to our expectations?
In short, fuck yes.
The first Mass Effect was awesome enough, and they've totally ironed out all the faults and this one is near enough perfect. The combat is MUCH better, no more boring and repetitive side quests and more planets which are actually populated. The storyline and characters are once again brilliant, and I love how the story differs depending on the choices that you made in the first game (if you played it and kept your saved game).
Also, how fucking cool is the new Normandy??
My only criticisms are....
1.You can't seem to explore the Presidium on the Citadel this time!
2. You still can't land on Earth or Mars, which I was kind of hoping for. I think that'd be pretty cool to see.
3. I was hoping for Omega to be slightly bigger have more to look around, after reading about it in the book 'Ascension'.
In short, fuck yes.
The first Mass Effect was awesome enough, and they've totally ironed out all the faults and this one is near enough perfect. The combat is MUCH better, no more boring and repetitive side quests and more planets which are actually populated. The storyline and characters are once again brilliant, and I love how the story differs depending on the choices that you made in the first game (if you played it and kept your saved game).
Also, how fucking cool is the new Normandy??
My only criticisms are....
1.You can't seem to explore the Presidium on the Citadel this time!
2. You still can't land on Earth or Mars, which I was kind of hoping for. I think that'd be pretty cool to see.
3. I was hoping for Omega to be slightly bigger have more to look around, after reading about it in the book 'Ascension'.
Post edited by JustV on
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Comments
And so is this one...
And this one...
And if you send a Watchdog reporter round you'd better remember what happened to the last journalist who interviewed me...
I'm really loving the game. I absolutely love movies with a 'hard sci-fi' edge (2001, Moon, Silent Running) and Mass Effect 2 does a wonderful job of combining an exciting, action experience with some of those same elements.
The exploration feels great and I love the way they've tried harder to add into the game some really diverting side missions, some of the best don't even have any form of combat.
I haven't finished it yet, but it's been really easy to enjoy. For the life of me I can't quite figure out why people seem to think it's been 'dumbed down' from the first game. I can only assume some people loved have to constantly fiddle with upgrades and ammo and loot - for me it's refreshing to see that side of the game handled with such elegance.
Bioware are the current masters of decision making and role playing in games. With Dragon Age they really showed how they could play with the different options but the semi-quicktime events are a beautiful touch, as is showing other possible paragon/renegade options but not letting you select them if you don't meet the requirements.
That really means you get a sense of the different outcomes to events and waiting for a paragon option to time out so I can see a crew member plunge themselves into darkness is quite a moment.
More than anything they really have continued to build an entire mythology and culture around the universe they've created but this time everything just seems streamlined to get you into the core experience as quickly and as engaged as possible.
Maybe it's because I love Star Trek and Star Wars but it just seems a perfect combination of Space Opera and Hard-fi. I would love to see Bioware take on some of the greats from the earlier days of gaming - what they could do with 'A Mind Forever Voyaging' (not that it isn't still remarkable to this day) boggles the brain.
http://www.masseffectsaves.com
Great way to run through another character with different decisions from the first game. And to be honest there ain't no way I'm facing those elevators again...
Also I like the way you can upgrade your ship and that the weapons and armour upgrades can be researched or discovered by team mates.
I'm also quite pleased that there are no more planets to explore which are fucking pointless and dull.
Ok, so my universe has the potential to be fucked in a variety of ways: I spared the rachni (ie, the xenomorphs) and they seem to be rebuilding; I have the cure for the genophage, so I could potentially restore the Krogan to the monstrous Mongol-esque hord that ravaged planets; I've possibly redeemed Cerberus (the KKK in space) in the eyes of the council and humanity while pissing Martin Sheen off...and I've woken up the rest of the Reapers.
Mass Effect 3 is going to be rad.
We've had the rise and the fall, so the ME3 must be the "return" of Shepard, at least as this idea of him/her being the beacon of humanity.
I've been feeling the same since Dragon Age, to be honest since Fallout 3 even.
The generation has produced some astonishing single player RPGs and they've continually reinforced how limited MMOs feel. I understand the social side and the attraction of 'just one more raid...' but they seem increasingly hollow.
Watching some of the promos for the Star Wars MMO and the Star Trek game has just reinforced this. From hearing a starship described by a designer as 'the tank of the federation fleet' to watching a tester skip past any dialogue or text in the Star Wars MMO just seems to show how much they are all just feasting on an increasingly devoured carcass.
Maybe someone will do something different that isn't just the same EQ/WoW clone but they don't seem to be right now. On the other hand the sprawling decision making and long reaching affect on the world provided by ME2 and Dragon Age really feels like pushing game making to almost breaking point and beyond, in a beautiful way.
The idea of being able to play through 100+ hours of Mass Effect and seeing the vast spiral of changes you've caused by the end of ME3 seems incredible.
If anything they are that good they make me want to dig out my d10s and a copy of Traveler or AD&D rather than play another video game.
I remember everyone claiming that WoW was going to kill single player RPGs and that the future of role playing games was the MMO. Until people found out that WoW is kind of an anomaly; nothing has been able to touch it and I'm not sure if anything ever will.
I've got to imagine that the future of MMOs is a move towards more instancing of game worlds. WoW's Death Knight starting quest line was awesome because the world was changing around you. Cataclysm looks as if it's an extreme version of that. But that's Blizzard changing the world, not the players.
Blizzard does an excellent job in selling it's raids and dungeons. The build up to Ulduar was cool; an evil God is breaking free...but he'll never break free. And he'll be resurrected next time you pop in.
Absolutely epic game, I love how you can carry on exploring the Galaxy, even once you've completed it, just to finish off any side quests you may have missed. Bioware really have listened to what Mass Effect fans wanted, pretty much all of the wishes and suggestions that I read in the Bioware forums, have been fulfilled in ME2.
However, the ending felt like a bridge...like it was leading onto something much bigger. I cannot WAIT until ME3!
For now, I need to fix my scratched Dragon Age disc, and carry on with that!
Know exactly what you mean man, seriously wish it had just kept going and going.
To be honest if they started putting out dlc regularly I'd be there in a second, I don't think a tenner a time would be too bad if they just started getting it out.
On my second play through, just heading to level 30 on casual this time, trying to max out my renegade score. I'm really going for the alternate characters this time and it's great fun being an insanely cruel captain.
Then i think I'll settle in for a proper Insanity playthrough using a save of a character who did things very differently in ME1
Ahh man, I envy you. You have so much epic gaming to come... I almost wish that I had never heard of Mass Effect until now, so I could also play them both for the first time, back to back.
Just think of the elevators - soon as I did that not being able to replay ME1 got a lot more bearable...
Haha those damn elevators...they did seem to take forever. I don't see what all the massive fuss was about though... To be honest, I'd rather listen to the banter between your team, or news reports relating to missions you've completed whilst in an elevator, than just watch a loading screen like you do in ME2.
ME1 SPOILER ALERT:
... Yesterday last quest before going to bed: That weird tropical-kind of planet where you have to storm saren's facility. You need to send ash or the other guy with the salarian storm troops while you be team shadow.
I was so sad when I had to let one of them die. =((( The music in the normandy after the mission was just killer
But then again I didn't visit a single solar system that was not meant to visit for the main quest, which is a pity. They should have made more side quests that you can make while you are doing the main quest (I usually make those, because it doesn't take much time and the rewards are often worth it) and not so many side quests that totally halt your progress in the main story.
After they made so many different solar systems and designed so many planets etc. I think it would have been easy to expand the main story line for a bit (like saren having another ally not just Benezia) and add more thrilling battles. It seemed a bit "rushed" in the end, imho.
Sorry Jim, at the risk of taking your whole post and just snipping a bit out I've got to take exception to this.
I don't mind a tester skipping past dialogue in the Star Wars MMO - they're just trying to show the mechanics - dialogue out of context to the wider story doesn't tell us anything (especially as they still writing and may sharpen it up). I'm looking forward to Old Republic MMO because everything they say about it screams 'story'. Bioware have made a big deal out of how decisions you make can impact, much, much later and that due to the mutiple decision trees people will have massively different experiences.
It seems a major departure from the old WoW kill 20 rats type formula and looks like it will be as innovative (in a different way) as the Original Star Wars Galaxies - though hopefully not as buggy.
Just not getting that sense from what I'm seeing of the game, rather than what people are saying about it...