Saturday, February 27, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Mass Effect 2 Trailer
Youtube link
Not that ME2 needs more hype, but this trailer makes me wish this game had a CG series.
Why not, they did it with Dante's Inferno.
Not that ME2 needs more hype, but this trailer makes me wish this game had a CG series.
Why not, they did it with Dante's Inferno.
Mass Effect 2 Haiku Part 2 (February 23, 2010)
Grunt
Tank-bred for killing
blood-splattered face locked smiling
—only a baby
Zaeed Massani
Unlikely hero
pre-occupied with vengeance
—inferno grenade
Tali'Zorah vas Neema
Trapped in her space suite
overflowing with passion
She pines for Shepard
The Vanguard
all sides surrounded
both squad-mate casualties
nothing charge can't fix
Tank-bred for killing
blood-splattered face locked smiling
—only a baby
Zaeed Massani
Unlikely hero
pre-occupied with vengeance
—inferno grenade
Tali'Zorah vas Neema
Trapped in her space suite
overflowing with passion
She pines for Shepard
The Vanguard
all sides surrounded
both squad-mate casualties
nothing charge can't fix
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Dante's Inferno First Impressions
I am on the boss of Lust right now. This is the second circle out of nine. I am assuming they get longer as you go, so I am going to toss a number out and say I am 15% done with the game. So far I am pretty let down. The circle of Lust was probably the biggest let down since Fable II. I spent the entire circle in an elevator going up being attacked by monsters. I didn't see any people suffering, or any vast expanses of storms. Just an elevator taking me to the top of some tower where I am having a boss fight.
It has already become clear to me that Visceral games spent more time and money on hype and advertising than the actual game. I suppose that's a good strategy if you only want people to impulse one of your games and then never trust you again. Among the HUGE amount of press releases and information about this game out on the internet was a set of "Dev Diaries" where the developers revealed some cool stuff about the game, and each diary was themed to the nine circles. The gameplay/cutscene footage they showed for the circle of Lust wasn't in the actual circle of lust. They either cut it, or made JUST FOR THE FUCKING PRESS. It's really sad.
Anyway on to more specific complaints. There are (so far) three types of enemies: fodder, demons, and mini-bosses. Fodder are like zombies, and demon babies stuff like that. This is the set of enemies I have a big problem with. This game incorporates this mechanic where once enemies are wounded enough, you can press right trigger next to them and enter a sort of cut scene of you killing them. You don't have to do it this way, you can just keep beating them up until they explode, but punishing/absolving them gets you bonuses so you want to do it as often as possible. Now with fodder enemies you don't need to weaken them to enter this animation. You can simply press right trigger next to them and you immediately stab them with your scythe and are given the choice to punish or absolve (X or B). Once you do this, they die immediately. While you are in the animation you are invulnerable to attacks. So what happens if I get attacked by 40 fodder enemies? I press RT+X 40 times. What happens if I get attacked by 120 fodder enemies? I press RT+X 120 times. Are they for real? Did no one catch on to this? They should at least make me hit them a little first? So 80% of the enemies I have "fought" so far die in one hit, and during that one hit I am invulnerable. Boring. It's sweet that I have all these badass scythe combos though. Thanks.
I'll give the game credit where it's due though. The combat is amazing. The moves look beautiful and the combat is more fluid than any game I have played of this genre. Even if you are in the middle of a combo, you can press any other button to cancel out and evade, or block. You never get "stuck" doing some huge move. The boss fights are epic and cool. I look forward to more combat as I level up.
Here is my big concern. I played the demo of this game before it came out and I enjoyed the combat immensely. But once I got done with the demo all I could say was "What a terrible demo! It didn't even show my anything epic, or anything vast and infinite." Usually games with badass elements give you a taste of one of them up front. I am 15% done with the game and I haven't had a taste yet. I am afraid they have nothing to show me.
It has already become clear to me that Visceral games spent more time and money on hype and advertising than the actual game. I suppose that's a good strategy if you only want people to impulse one of your games and then never trust you again. Among the HUGE amount of press releases and information about this game out on the internet was a set of "Dev Diaries" where the developers revealed some cool stuff about the game, and each diary was themed to the nine circles. The gameplay/cutscene footage they showed for the circle of Lust wasn't in the actual circle of lust. They either cut it, or made JUST FOR THE FUCKING PRESS. It's really sad.
Anyway on to more specific complaints. There are (so far) three types of enemies: fodder, demons, and mini-bosses. Fodder are like zombies, and demon babies stuff like that. This is the set of enemies I have a big problem with. This game incorporates this mechanic where once enemies are wounded enough, you can press right trigger next to them and enter a sort of cut scene of you killing them. You don't have to do it this way, you can just keep beating them up until they explode, but punishing/absolving them gets you bonuses so you want to do it as often as possible. Now with fodder enemies you don't need to weaken them to enter this animation. You can simply press right trigger next to them and you immediately stab them with your scythe and are given the choice to punish or absolve (X or B). Once you do this, they die immediately. While you are in the animation you are invulnerable to attacks. So what happens if I get attacked by 40 fodder enemies? I press RT+X 40 times. What happens if I get attacked by 120 fodder enemies? I press RT+X 120 times. Are they for real? Did no one catch on to this? They should at least make me hit them a little first? So 80% of the enemies I have "fought" so far die in one hit, and during that one hit I am invulnerable. Boring. It's sweet that I have all these badass scythe combos though. Thanks.
I'll give the game credit where it's due though. The combat is amazing. The moves look beautiful and the combat is more fluid than any game I have played of this genre. Even if you are in the middle of a combo, you can press any other button to cancel out and evade, or block. You never get "stuck" doing some huge move. The boss fights are epic and cool. I look forward to more combat as I level up.
Here is my big concern. I played the demo of this game before it came out and I enjoyed the combat immensely. But once I got done with the demo all I could say was "What a terrible demo! It didn't even show my anything epic, or anything vast and infinite." Usually games with badass elements give you a taste of one of them up front. I am 15% done with the game and I haven't had a taste yet. I am afraid they have nothing to show me.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Ammunition and Innovation
Ever since I read the ammo article from Gausswerks (Out of Ammo) I have been giving ammo a lot of thought. Another thing that made me think deeper is how BioWare abandoned it's "infinite ammo" system from Mass Effect 1 in Mass Effect 2.
Quick recap: In ME1 your guns would overheat if you fired them to fast. They work similar to the plasma weapons from the Halo series. So you either had to hold off the trigger and let them cool, or let them vent for a few seconds after overheating. In ME2 they abandoned the system (not in concept though) and use standard ammo clips which run out. Why did they make this choice? I think it's because they realized that ammo adds tension, and tension is good.
What is ammunition in games? It's a way to kill bad guys of course, but in the end it's what keeps you alive. Ammunition is the ultimate realization of "a good offense is the best defense." Imagine you are playing a FPS and you run out of ammo and find yourself in a firefight. You are probably dead. In a case like this, ammo almost acts as a separate life bar. Most well designed games have none-ammo solutions like a knife or a chainsaw but we all know that if you have 0 clips and are forced to use the knife you are pretty much toast especially if you are a hardass playing on the hardest difficulty level. The risk of running out of ammo, which you need to defend your precious life bar, creates tension in your gaming experience. This tension is good. It makes the game more enjoyable because it demands that you as a player make more decisions. You need to choose which gun you use, which ammo to save and when it's safe enough to use the knife. It also pulls you to explore the levels in hopes of finding a hidden ammo stash. I love ammo, and I love being almost out of it.
On interesting innovation in regards to ammo is limiting how many weapons the player can carry. I feel Halo is a pioneer with this concept. It was the first game I ever played that used this limit, Gears of War also adopted the system. It definitely adds more realism and decision making to games. In Doom III you get to keep every gun you find. It's funny to imagine the Doom guy carrying a pistol, machine gun, mini gun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, BFG, and a chainsaw along with ammo clips for each one. Do you guys even have any idea how much a single rocket would weigh? Well in Halo every time you come across a weapon you need to decide if you want to give up one of your weapons to carry it. Each weapon has unique trade offs. Some are better for little guys, some better for big guys. Some have tons of ammo, others only have a little. The rocket launcher is the ideal example of trade-off. In Doom III once you get the Rocket Launcher you just have it. No matter what the situation you always have it, there is no tension there. In Halo you get a rocket launcher with six rockets and one other gun. The rocket launcher is a very polarized weapon, it is really good sometimes, and really useless other times compared to something like the battle rifle which is pretty good all of the time. Sometimes the rocket launcher will be dead weight and you will wish you didn't decide to lug it around, until the tank comes. But if you didn't take it you will have an easier time fighting all the other stuff until the tank comes. That tension is excellent.
Going more into depth about ammo, I want to talk about the reload. It's something I didn't think about until now. Not all games deal with reloading the same. Wolfenstien and Doom/Doom II back in the old PC days didn't even have a reload button. You had 145 rounds of chain gun ammo and they would magically fly out of your pockets into the barrel of the gun until you were out without a single reload animation. This was very simplistic, and it worked for the time but modern games have a little more realism.
Now you have to reload. Everyone who has played a shooter knows that reloading in the middle of a fight sucks. Deciding when to reload, looking for an opening to reload, and looking for cover to reload in all make the gaming experience more dynamic. It allows more choices for the player, and forces you to adapt to a wider variety of situations. This creates more fun.
One noteworthy game series I wanted to highlight is Bungie's pre-Halo Marathon series. An exceptional shooter with an excellent story and a unique reloading mechanic. In Marathon there is no reload command. All the guns work in clips, but you can't reload until you empty the entire clip. So if you have one bullet left in your eight bullet clip then you just need to shoot that bullet off and insert a new clip. This is much more realistic than how most shooters deal with ammo. They allow you to reload anytime you feel like it. You can hide around the corner, shoot a 3-round burst from your SMG and then while hiding take 3 bullets out of one of the clips you picked up, and insert them into the clip currently in your gun. Of course it's silly to reload partial clips with no consequences, which is why Marathon is so interesting. Playing Marathon presents a deal tension. The risk of running out of ammo is very real, but reloading in the middle of combat also puts you in serious risk. So what do you do when you have three shots left in your pistol, and 2 extra clips on your belt? You will stumble into a battle and be forced to reload after three shots. The only alternative is to just fire off the three shots and totally waste them just so you can be prepared with a new clip. You constantly faced this situation in this game with the pistol, the assault rifle and especially the grenade launcher. I think this element added a lot to the game and I wouldn't mind seeing similar reload mechanic explored in the future.
What am I getting at? Ammunition shouldn't be an afterthought. ME2 is catching a bunch of complaints for adding a "stupid ammo" system. These people are missing the point. ME1 had an ammo system which reduced tension, and decision making. Simply put, in ME1 you never ever ran out of sniper rifle rounds. You never needed to look for or buy more, and you never needed to conserve it or worry about running out. Boring. In ME2, you can carry limited rounds, and need to choose what you snipe. When you are a sniper and run out of sniper rounds, it's as if you are playing a totally different game.
Anyone who doesn't agree is stupid.
Quick recap: In ME1 your guns would overheat if you fired them to fast. They work similar to the plasma weapons from the Halo series. So you either had to hold off the trigger and let them cool, or let them vent for a few seconds after overheating. In ME2 they abandoned the system (not in concept though) and use standard ammo clips which run out. Why did they make this choice? I think it's because they realized that ammo adds tension, and tension is good.
What is ammunition in games? It's a way to kill bad guys of course, but in the end it's what keeps you alive. Ammunition is the ultimate realization of "a good offense is the best defense." Imagine you are playing a FPS and you run out of ammo and find yourself in a firefight. You are probably dead. In a case like this, ammo almost acts as a separate life bar. Most well designed games have none-ammo solutions like a knife or a chainsaw but we all know that if you have 0 clips and are forced to use the knife you are pretty much toast especially if you are a hardass playing on the hardest difficulty level. The risk of running out of ammo, which you need to defend your precious life bar, creates tension in your gaming experience. This tension is good. It makes the game more enjoyable because it demands that you as a player make more decisions. You need to choose which gun you use, which ammo to save and when it's safe enough to use the knife. It also pulls you to explore the levels in hopes of finding a hidden ammo stash. I love ammo, and I love being almost out of it.
On interesting innovation in regards to ammo is limiting how many weapons the player can carry. I feel Halo is a pioneer with this concept. It was the first game I ever played that used this limit, Gears of War also adopted the system. It definitely adds more realism and decision making to games. In Doom III you get to keep every gun you find. It's funny to imagine the Doom guy carrying a pistol, machine gun, mini gun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, BFG, and a chainsaw along with ammo clips for each one. Do you guys even have any idea how much a single rocket would weigh? Well in Halo every time you come across a weapon you need to decide if you want to give up one of your weapons to carry it. Each weapon has unique trade offs. Some are better for little guys, some better for big guys. Some have tons of ammo, others only have a little. The rocket launcher is the ideal example of trade-off. In Doom III once you get the Rocket Launcher you just have it. No matter what the situation you always have it, there is no tension there. In Halo you get a rocket launcher with six rockets and one other gun. The rocket launcher is a very polarized weapon, it is really good sometimes, and really useless other times compared to something like the battle rifle which is pretty good all of the time. Sometimes the rocket launcher will be dead weight and you will wish you didn't decide to lug it around, until the tank comes. But if you didn't take it you will have an easier time fighting all the other stuff until the tank comes. That tension is excellent.
Going more into depth about ammo, I want to talk about the reload. It's something I didn't think about until now. Not all games deal with reloading the same. Wolfenstien and Doom/Doom II back in the old PC days didn't even have a reload button. You had 145 rounds of chain gun ammo and they would magically fly out of your pockets into the barrel of the gun until you were out without a single reload animation. This was very simplistic, and it worked for the time but modern games have a little more realism.
Now you have to reload. Everyone who has played a shooter knows that reloading in the middle of a fight sucks. Deciding when to reload, looking for an opening to reload, and looking for cover to reload in all make the gaming experience more dynamic. It allows more choices for the player, and forces you to adapt to a wider variety of situations. This creates more fun.
One noteworthy game series I wanted to highlight is Bungie's pre-Halo Marathon series. An exceptional shooter with an excellent story and a unique reloading mechanic. In Marathon there is no reload command. All the guns work in clips, but you can't reload until you empty the entire clip. So if you have one bullet left in your eight bullet clip then you just need to shoot that bullet off and insert a new clip. This is much more realistic than how most shooters deal with ammo. They allow you to reload anytime you feel like it. You can hide around the corner, shoot a 3-round burst from your SMG and then while hiding take 3 bullets out of one of the clips you picked up, and insert them into the clip currently in your gun. Of course it's silly to reload partial clips with no consequences, which is why Marathon is so interesting. Playing Marathon presents a deal tension. The risk of running out of ammo is very real, but reloading in the middle of combat also puts you in serious risk. So what do you do when you have three shots left in your pistol, and 2 extra clips on your belt? You will stumble into a battle and be forced to reload after three shots. The only alternative is to just fire off the three shots and totally waste them just so you can be prepared with a new clip. You constantly faced this situation in this game with the pistol, the assault rifle and especially the grenade launcher. I think this element added a lot to the game and I wouldn't mind seeing similar reload mechanic explored in the future.
What am I getting at? Ammunition shouldn't be an afterthought. ME2 is catching a bunch of complaints for adding a "stupid ammo" system. These people are missing the point. ME1 had an ammo system which reduced tension, and decision making. Simply put, in ME1 you never ever ran out of sniper rifle rounds. You never needed to look for or buy more, and you never needed to conserve it or worry about running out. Boring. In ME2, you can carry limited rounds, and need to choose what you snipe. When you are a sniper and run out of sniper rounds, it's as if you are playing a totally different game.
Anyone who doesn't agree is stupid.
Mass Effect 2 Haiku (February 5, 2010)
Miranda Lawson
super genius
engineered perfection
please reveal your tits
Jacob Taylor
Soft-spoken fellow
fighting for the galaxy
—warrior poet
Mordin Solus
Courageous doctor
buried in his distant past
—an atrocity
super genius
engineered perfection
please reveal your tits
Jacob Taylor
Soft-spoken fellow
fighting for the galaxy
—warrior poet
Mordin Solus
Courageous doctor
buried in his distant past
—an atrocity
Friday, February 05, 2010
Mass Effect 2, a Mass Rebuttal
I have been reading some stuff on various forums about ME2. The complaints especially. I don't agree with most of them so I decided to post a rebuttal to a few. There are some that are legit however.
"Ammo Clips Suck"
ME1 didn't have ammo. In ME1 your guns would fire until overheating, and then you could have to let them vent or cool for a period of time. During this period you couldn't fire that gun and had to hide behind cover or switch to a different gun. In reality I pretty much always let it vent and never switched guns. Or better yet, fire the gun carefully and never reach the point of overheating. What was the effect of this method? You always used the same gun, which ever is best. There is never a reason to change guns unless it's practical like going from sniper to a close range weapon. Boring. The bottom line is ammo is fun. Ammo adds a tension to your game. Not having infinite sniper or shotgun rounds can make you think differently about how to go about battles. In ME2 I often find myself out of sniper rounds and having to drastically change my plans. Ammo conservation also plays a role. Finishing wounded and fragile enemies with a worse weapon is something to consider and adds strategic depth. The addition of ammo in ME2 makes combat much more dynamic.
"Planet Scanning Sucks"
I didn't hate scanning as much as other people did. I never did it all that much, but I agree it is boring. It is much faster than ME1's Mako planet explorations. But it isn't something you need to do. It's extra, it's grinding. The only reason you need to scan planets is to get minerals to upgrade your armor and weapons. This isn't something that needs to be done. On my first playthrough I probably only scanned for a total of 2 hours to get every upgrade in the game. I did this blind without any guides as well. You can easily find a guide online and only scan the best planets for all your mineral needs and spend half the time doing it. But there are two factors that you should consider when complaining about this. The first is, in ME2 there is absolutely no need to grind. You never need to "level up" as you are never "underleveled" part of the brilliant enemy scaling system Boiware uses. The second thing is, on your second play-through you get a big bonus in starting resources and you likely hardly have to do any scanning at all. It's a minor inconvenience yes, but not everything in an RPG can be super mega fun or it won't ever feel like you earned anything.
"lvl 30 cap"
Honestly I didn't even know there was a cap, I never reached it in my first playthrough. But there are hardly enough skills to even use that many points? This isn't something I see as a problem but at the same time I am not sure why it's there. I don't see any problem with allowing you to gain infinite experience and just keep getting stronger and scale all enemies accordingly. I am assuming there is some reason for the cap, but I don't know what it is.
"Unappealing characters"
This one is simply false. The characters in this game are all interesting, well developed and wonderfully voice acted. Some of them even develop and change as the story goes on. If you just don't like the characters, thats fine. But this is hardly something to complain about. The game has 12 characters how can you find them all unappealing? They are all so different.
"Less choices for weapons and armor"
Another complaint that is totally wrong. ME1's weapon/armor system was HORRIBLE. It was my biggest complaint. ME1 has four weapons: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun and sniper. Then each other those had thirty iterations where each was better than the last. So lets just call them upgrades. Four weapons with 30 upgrades each. ME1 did have different attachments you could use which was cool and I am sorry to see that go, but that was replaced by ammo skills in ME2 and thats fine. Armor was the same: heavy armor, light armor and medium armor. You ran around with armor VIII and sniper rifle VIII hoping to find armor IX and sniper IX. When you finally found them they acted exactly the same as the previous ones but did slightly more damage. So did ME1 have 200 guns? No, it had 4. ME2 however has more guns, it has different types of assault rifles and sniper rifles and they actually act differently. You can actually make a choice on which is better rather than always just picking the best. There is also a large number of heavy weapons which all act totally differently. There could be more unique guns, but I am sure they will be DLCed in.
"No XP for Killing Enemies/Hacking"
This complaint is silly for two reasons. The first is, ME2 uses scaling enemy difficulty so you never need to grind. There is no need to just kill re-spawning enemies to gain XP. I am not sure if enemies even respawn anywhere in ME1 or ME2. The only enemy I remember respawning was the thresher maw on random planets. But when you complete a quest in ME1 you killed a finite number of bad guys, and got experience for them. They didn't respawn. In ME2 you killed a finite number of enemies but get the total XP at the end of the mission. It's really not a big deal.
"Lack of ME1 to ME2 Carryover"
This is a legitimate complaint however it's clear why they diminished this (although they did overhype it). If you need to have played ME1 in order to understand ME2 then you are asking consumers to invest 120$ and well over 60 hours into the series. This would be a big hurdle in getting people to buy this game. ME3 will face even more of a problem with many people feeling like they can't buy it if they didn't play 1 and 2.
"Loading Time"
These complaints are silly. No one enjoys loading times and everyone wants the minimized. It's not like Bioware "put" them in and made them extra long.
"Ammo Clips Suck"
ME1 didn't have ammo. In ME1 your guns would fire until overheating, and then you could have to let them vent or cool for a period of time. During this period you couldn't fire that gun and had to hide behind cover or switch to a different gun. In reality I pretty much always let it vent and never switched guns. Or better yet, fire the gun carefully and never reach the point of overheating. What was the effect of this method? You always used the same gun, which ever is best. There is never a reason to change guns unless it's practical like going from sniper to a close range weapon. Boring. The bottom line is ammo is fun. Ammo adds a tension to your game. Not having infinite sniper or shotgun rounds can make you think differently about how to go about battles. In ME2 I often find myself out of sniper rounds and having to drastically change my plans. Ammo conservation also plays a role. Finishing wounded and fragile enemies with a worse weapon is something to consider and adds strategic depth. The addition of ammo in ME2 makes combat much more dynamic.
"Planet Scanning Sucks"
I didn't hate scanning as much as other people did. I never did it all that much, but I agree it is boring. It is much faster than ME1's Mako planet explorations. But it isn't something you need to do. It's extra, it's grinding. The only reason you need to scan planets is to get minerals to upgrade your armor and weapons. This isn't something that needs to be done. On my first playthrough I probably only scanned for a total of 2 hours to get every upgrade in the game. I did this blind without any guides as well. You can easily find a guide online and only scan the best planets for all your mineral needs and spend half the time doing it. But there are two factors that you should consider when complaining about this. The first is, in ME2 there is absolutely no need to grind. You never need to "level up" as you are never "underleveled" part of the brilliant enemy scaling system Boiware uses. The second thing is, on your second play-through you get a big bonus in starting resources and you likely hardly have to do any scanning at all. It's a minor inconvenience yes, but not everything in an RPG can be super mega fun or it won't ever feel like you earned anything.
"lvl 30 cap"
Honestly I didn't even know there was a cap, I never reached it in my first playthrough. But there are hardly enough skills to even use that many points? This isn't something I see as a problem but at the same time I am not sure why it's there. I don't see any problem with allowing you to gain infinite experience and just keep getting stronger and scale all enemies accordingly. I am assuming there is some reason for the cap, but I don't know what it is.
"Unappealing characters"
This one is simply false. The characters in this game are all interesting, well developed and wonderfully voice acted. Some of them even develop and change as the story goes on. If you just don't like the characters, thats fine. But this is hardly something to complain about. The game has 12 characters how can you find them all unappealing? They are all so different.
"Less choices for weapons and armor"
Another complaint that is totally wrong. ME1's weapon/armor system was HORRIBLE. It was my biggest complaint. ME1 has four weapons: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun and sniper. Then each other those had thirty iterations where each was better than the last. So lets just call them upgrades. Four weapons with 30 upgrades each. ME1 did have different attachments you could use which was cool and I am sorry to see that go, but that was replaced by ammo skills in ME2 and thats fine. Armor was the same: heavy armor, light armor and medium armor. You ran around with armor VIII and sniper rifle VIII hoping to find armor IX and sniper IX. When you finally found them they acted exactly the same as the previous ones but did slightly more damage. So did ME1 have 200 guns? No, it had 4. ME2 however has more guns, it has different types of assault rifles and sniper rifles and they actually act differently. You can actually make a choice on which is better rather than always just picking the best. There is also a large number of heavy weapons which all act totally differently. There could be more unique guns, but I am sure they will be DLCed in.
"No XP for Killing Enemies/Hacking"
This complaint is silly for two reasons. The first is, ME2 uses scaling enemy difficulty so you never need to grind. There is no need to just kill re-spawning enemies to gain XP. I am not sure if enemies even respawn anywhere in ME1 or ME2. The only enemy I remember respawning was the thresher maw on random planets. But when you complete a quest in ME1 you killed a finite number of bad guys, and got experience for them. They didn't respawn. In ME2 you killed a finite number of enemies but get the total XP at the end of the mission. It's really not a big deal.
"Lack of ME1 to ME2 Carryover"
This is a legitimate complaint however it's clear why they diminished this (although they did overhype it). If you need to have played ME1 in order to understand ME2 then you are asking consumers to invest 120$ and well over 60 hours into the series. This would be a big hurdle in getting people to buy this game. ME3 will face even more of a problem with many people feeling like they can't buy it if they didn't play 1 and 2.
"Loading Time"
These complaints are silly. No one enjoys loading times and everyone wants the minimized. It's not like Bioware "put" them in and made them extra long.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Out of Ammo
Found a cool article about the abundance of ammunition in video games. The comments are pretty interesting too.
Out of Ammo
Out of Ammo
Mass Effect 2, Impressions
I just finished Mass Effect 2 and I am ready to give my first impressions. I will just come out and say that this is probably the best RPG I have ever played. It's better than FF3, better than Chrono Trigger and better than Secret of Mana. There I said it. There are two main reasons this is so.
RPGs usually have two elements, fighting and plot/story development. Usually the plot/story development is the boring part. You need to read tons of boxes of static white text. Sometimes they try to spice it up and of course it helps if the story is compelling. Mass Effect's plot/story modes are the best part of the game. It is fun to have conversations and listen to the story. Mass Effect is fully voice acted, and when you are selecting which dialogue option you are going to choose it's only a 2-word summery. Basically you are choosing the attitude with which you will speak, and what Shepard actually says is a surprise to even you. So on your first play-through, you wont even have the opportunity to read what the other options are. This encourages a second play-through and still keeps it fresh.
The second reason, which is a genius BioWare invention (I think) is enemy scaling. Ever since I played Knights of the Old Republic I have loved this concept. It works like this, the enemies are scaled to your level to matter where you are. So you never have to grind to level up, and you never out-level the enemies to the point were the game is a cake walk. This allows the game to be really open-ended and allow you to complete the various story missions and side quests in any order you see fit and always have a healthy challenge. The is so good for reply value. Because enemies level up similar to you, higher level enemies have more skills and better weapons then low level enemies. So if you do quests in different order on your second play, you will encounter totally different situations. Parts of the game that you felt were easy will instead be hard because all of the sudden now the Krogans have incendiary ammo, or the Asari now have Shockwave.
RPGs usually have two elements, fighting and plot/story development. Usually the plot/story development is the boring part. You need to read tons of boxes of static white text. Sometimes they try to spice it up and of course it helps if the story is compelling. Mass Effect's plot/story modes are the best part of the game. It is fun to have conversations and listen to the story. Mass Effect is fully voice acted, and when you are selecting which dialogue option you are going to choose it's only a 2-word summery. Basically you are choosing the attitude with which you will speak, and what Shepard actually says is a surprise to even you. So on your first play-through, you wont even have the opportunity to read what the other options are. This encourages a second play-through and still keeps it fresh.
The second reason, which is a genius BioWare invention (I think) is enemy scaling. Ever since I played Knights of the Old Republic I have loved this concept. It works like this, the enemies are scaled to your level to matter where you are. So you never have to grind to level up, and you never out-level the enemies to the point were the game is a cake walk. This allows the game to be really open-ended and allow you to complete the various story missions and side quests in any order you see fit and always have a healthy challenge. The is so good for reply value. Because enemies level up similar to you, higher level enemies have more skills and better weapons then low level enemies. So if you do quests in different order on your second play, you will encounter totally different situations. Parts of the game that you felt were easy will instead be hard because all of the sudden now the Krogans have incendiary ammo, or the Asari now have Shockwave.
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