Final Judgement: Mass Effect 2

This final judgement has been a long time coming. I've just had too many games to play. This will be short and sweet.
Highly Recommended.

Mass Effect 2 made me care about characters in a game more than anything else to date. There is a point near the end of the game where I was physically worried about some of my crew while waiting to see if they would die or not.

Mass Effect 2 felt like a continuation of the previous game more than any other sequel. The second I saw my Shepard (the one true Shepard) with her red hair, I was transported back two years ago and couldn't wait to see what happens next, and see how the things I did in Mass Effect 1 would effect this new game.

Mass Effect 2's story starts with amazing impact and is quickly paced in such a way that somehow you forget about your old crew and are immediately enthralled by all the new crew members you find.

Mass Effect 2 initially rubbed me a little wrong, I was off put by the 'removed' RPG features of the last game like weapon/armor management and stat points. After playing the game for a bit and getting used to the new mechanics I saw most changes as improvements. I still miss loot. I think since the game is so much a gears-like-shooter I couldn't help but notice the cover mechanics timing and controls were off a little. I spent too much time mining. These are purely minor complaints.

I'm shocked by the huge amount of drastic gameplay changes that went into Mass Effect 2 compared to it's predecessor. Going logic is if a game sells really well, like Mass Effect, you should make a sequel and not change too much. Bioware really took fan and review feedback to heart. They cut away all sorts of things that were detracting from the story and core combat. Instead of making another decent RPG with guns, they made a good shooter with a story that you can truly effect, something that no other shoot has even come close to.

I applaud them for it. I can't wait to see where the franchise goes next, and I can't wait to import my save game into Mass Effect 3.

I guess my biggest disappoint with Mass Effect 2 is that it made my time with Dragon Age feel like even more of a waste.

February Goals: Yo Fiddy!

I totally completed my solo gaming goals and man what a way to start out the year. Finishing up Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2, both games blew me away, and for different reasons. Bayonetta is like the crack cocaine of action games. Mass Effect 2 is a game that I think everything else this year will be compared against.

Yeah so like Razorburn was saying, we wussed out on our coop goal, 50% of the blame is on me, the other half is on Gearbox for releasing the hot new Borderlands DLC. Razorburn was diligent and really tried to get me to man up, but I just didn't want to play anything online other than Borderlands. Sorry Modern Warfare 2 coop, you'll have to wait for another day.

That brings us to March's goals. For me I'm going to try and force myself to finish Assassin's Creed II. It shouldn't be that hard but for some reason I have never been able to get into the first game after multiple tries, it just felt kind of boring after first blush. I picked up Assassins's Creed II shortly after it came out, for some reason, against my better judgement. It has received a good amount of GotY love. I recently started playing it and I'm still really having a hard time getting into it. I hope it will pickup, anyway, my burden and goal is to finish this supposedly awesome game.

The coop goal I purpose is large and might be a multi-month, but Resident Evil 5 (my personal favorite game of 2009) released probably the best single piece of DLC last night. It is the hotness and I am just back in a RE5 mood. I want to finish up all the achievements for it, S class son! This will require a ton of coop time . I hope Razorburn will have my back as Sheva! Woooo!

Massively Effective FINAL JUDGEMENTS... Er, 2

Hoo boy. Well, if you've been looking at this blog much, you probably already know where things are going for these FINAL JUDGEMENTS. So, let's not dally. On to THE BAD.

Advertising Not really a part of the game proper, but what I feel to be the worst thing about the game was any enjoyment the advertising up to it's release denied me. Obviously, aspects of the game are, inevitably, going to have to be shown off to get people excited about it's release, but these days it's getting ridiculous how much gets spoiled in the name of that. Personally, I tried quite hard to avoid news about ME2 in an attempt to have my first playthrough be untainted. Even in doing that, advertising spoiled a couple of reveals for me. For Mass Effect 3, I'd really like to see more care paid to holding back story reveals. I feel like the brand has built up enough cred that it doesn't need to pander to news sites.

Scanning... Improved though it may have been, ME2's resource collection mechanics were still more of a tedious grind than I'd have liked it to have been. Unfortunately, I'm something of an obsessive when it comes to something like this in a game, and I quickly became uncomfortable with how much time I was spending scanning planets for just a little more, rather than enjoying the game "properly". What I did not know, unfortunately, was that there are WAY more resources available to be scanned than you'll ever need in the game. I probably could have cut a few hours off of my overall game time if I'd only known I didn't need so damned much Palladium!

Redundancies On the subject of resources, they're what you'll need to research the various upgrades in the game that you collect by either buying licences for them, or finding them during combat scenarios. One thing I wasn't fond of was that, in a couple of instances, I purchased licences late in the game with the in-game money (which is far rarer than the overkill of resources) only to find out that I'd already found and researched that upgrade somewhere else in the game. I felt a sort of bamboozled in this regard, and would have rather seen the game prompt me when purchasing something I'd already researched, rather than have me waste money in ignorance.

THE CONUNDRUM!!! As I'd posted last week, it felt at times that I was able to get too much out of the game without sacrifice. I think my experience would have been a smidgen better if I had, occasionally been forced to either compromise my morals, or sacrifice something beneficial.

Simplification ME2 goes a long way toward simplifying things like armor, planetary exploration, hub worlds, inventory, and level-up min-maxing. Occasionally, though, I miss that complication... Just a little bit.

Honestly, though, these are small potatoes. By and large, I feel like I was forcing THE BAD a little bit, in order to feel more legitimate when I gush, unabashedly during THE GOOD.

Story and Characters Mass Effect 2 takes everything from the original and makes it that much better. It could have been the rough treatment of some of your original teammates, but I found myself being embarrassed for caring about characters like Kaidan Alenko or Ashley Williams. Hell, the characters you actually get to use from the first game are 10 times more interesting than they were in the first game.

Tunnel Vision Mass Effect 2's more guided path through a series of short burst missions was a breath of fresh air from Dragon Age's never ending dungeons. One of ME2's greatest feats is that sense that you can pick it up and do at least one mission, even if you don't have much time to game.

Suicidal Tendencies The final mission is epic, and that's coming from the perspective of someone who's only seen it done one way. As I'm to understand it, the Suicide Mission can play out several ways based upon how you've played the game overall. I've heard it poo-pooed in other venues, but I personally found the "What a tweest!", to be surprising and casting interesting concepts into the already rich ME2 lore.

Simplification Okay, I know I spoke earlier about how I missed some of the complication, right? Well, not nearly as much as I enjoyed not worrying all the time about whether yon armor is 3 points better than another, or if I needed to get rid of other armors in my inventory just to hold it till I got back to the Citadel to see if the armor I was saving for was better than it. Or, if putting points into personality, so I could get better options when trying to bang the hot alien chick, was a waste of time when I could put the points into a useful combat attribute instead. Or, how I could spend a couple of hours probing planets for ore, rather than driving the sci-fi equivalent of Heavy Rain's control scheme that was THE MAKO. Or, any number of other things. Point is, I got to enjoy the action, and the drama. Not so much with the worrying about the ones and twos behind the scenes.

Normandy II Much more of a living, breathing "camp", than other games I've played. The addition of Yeoman Kelly, who will tell you if you have new messages or if any of your crew members have pressing business they need to talk to you about.

All My Rowdy Friends I was really happy when I ran into so many minor characters from the first game, and ACTUALLY REMEMBERED MOST OF THEM. It was interesting to see how their lives had mov... Aw, what the hell, CONRAD FREAKIN' WERNER AND THA MOTHAF(whut, whut?!) WREX?! Do I really need to explain how good it is to see my old homies? Do I?!

Really, I could go on, but do I need to? Mass Effect 2 will is a really good game. Really good. So good that I feel sorry for the rest of 2K10's lineup having to be constantly ranked against it. The most telling thing I think that I can say about the game is that, after 56hrs of gameplay, I was sad that there wasn't any more to play. In many arenas, it would sound like hyperbole, but when I look back, I honestly think that ME2 is going to rank up there with my favorite games of all time. I cannot wait to see how they top themselves in the final chapter.

FINAL JUDGEMENT: OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!

Up next: Gonna make the big push on No More Heroes. Will I take it all the way? Stay tuned!

Having my cake and eating it too: The Mass Effect Conundrum

Let's not beat around the bush. I am in love with Mass Effect 2. Frighteningly so. To further hyperbolize, I feel like the rest of 2k10 is going to have a hard time stacking up to the experience that ME2 has given me so far. There is, however, something I've been struggling with. Something that the game is giving me, but I'm really not sure I deserve. I present, for your consideration, The Mass Effect Conundrum!

Anyone who's played the game is well aware of it's morality mechanics. It's hardly a new concept. You have a choice of whether to play the game as a Paragon, or a Renegade, and much of the game can differentiate based upon these choices you make. I'm the type of person who will choose the White Hat, good guy route the first time, every time. Still, no big. Mass Effect 2 has taken the game in a direction I like, where things are in more of a morally gray area. Good people do bad things for misguided reasons, and bad people are the way they are for unfortunate reasons. Things like that. The issue that I wrestle with is that, whereas I like that I've been able to get everything I want out of the game being a pure-hearted Paragon, there's a part of me that wishes that the game would ask me to sacrifice.

A large part of the game hinges upon whether or not you can gain the loyalty of your various crew members. Once gained, these characters unlock special powers and are more likely to survive through the end of the story. Early on in the game, I was asked to make a moral choice which conflicted with my Paragon leanings. I believed that, if I stuck to my guns, that I would lose the loyalty of this character. I saw things through, as a Paragon, and realized that I could gain this characters loyalty by disregarding his wishes and, basically, guilting the character into being loyal to me. This is good for me, for greedy reasons. I got what I wanted and didn't have to compromise my morals.

Since then, the part of me that loves Mass Effect for it's closer-to-life morality has been wrestling with this. Should this be okay? Would my experience have been more memorable if I'd had to choose between compromising my morals to ensure the safety of a crew member, or stay true to myself but allow this character to potentially expire? I put this question to the great leagues of people who don't read what I write and ask you, can you solve the Mass Effect Conundrum?!