A Solid Step Sideways

Every once in a while there is a game that comes along that is so close to greatness that all you can think about it is what it could have been. Mass Effect 2 is one of those games.

Mass Effect 2 picks up more or less right where the first game leaves off; you've saved the Citadel from the Reapers (for now) and, if you import your character from the first game, you find that the universe is right where you left it. Within the first few minutes of the game, the Normandy is destroyed and your Shepard is killed (then quickly resurrected by the aptly named Lazarus project) acting as an oh so convenient excuse for why your character loses all his/her skills. As an added bonus, you can use this opportunity to change your appearance or even your class. I chose to change from Infiltrator to Vanguard (although I wish I hadn't) just to try a class with more biotic powers.

Immediately after gaining control of Shepard, I noticed the streamlining that BioWare had done with the UI... and by streamlining I mean going at it with a butcher knife. Instead of fixing the clunky inventory in the first game they removed it. Hot swapping ammo and armor was a bit annoying and slow (I guess), so it was cut. It was also apparently a little too immersion breaking to see the life/shield bars of you and you party so that's now gone too. Essentially, they boiled the core interactions down to those of a 3rd person shooter. You can move, shoot, and interact. That's it. Furthermore, in an absolutely asinine decision, they made it so weapons now use a form of ammo (cooling clips) rather than the very unique cool down mechanic that the first game had. By BioWare's own admission, they were trying to appeal more to the shooter crowd, but they plain and simply went too far.

The other huge change in Mass Effect 2 relates to exploring the galaxy in general. Instead of merely clicking a planet and going directly to it, you are now forced to actually pilot the Normandy around the galaxy. I felt like this was a good change. It made it feel like you were actually exploring the universe. However, instead of going down and driving the Mako or similar vehicle around planets exploring, BioWare put in a "fun the first three times only" mini-game. In this mini-game, you probe a planet for minerals. To get the best ending, you are required to mine dozens of these planets. I was pretty tempted to stop after doing it twice. Additionally, with the exploration of the Mako gone, moving from area to area on foot felt VERY artificial. I would be in one place, talk to a person, tell them I was "ready," then one loading screen later I was in another area. Instead of feeling like I was moving around a huge world, it made everything feel small.

In addition to being "teleported" from place to place, the game introduced the concept of missions. Essentially, a mission is a delineated set of content. The first game had such an idea, but didn't go so far as to make them so obvious. Here, when you finish a mission (which can be by talking to somebody, interacting with an object, killing someone, etc), a mission completed summary screen instantly appears and you are "teleported" back to where you started the mission. I found it VERY immersion breaking. It was as if they didn't think that the first one felt enough like a "game" so they made it feel more that way. All in all, the universe of Mass Effect 2 felt small and limited, rather than expansive like it should have.

Combat is something that BioWare did manage to do a good job with. The shooting felt good and the cover system worked really well. I am sort of getting tired of games that make combat "arenas" so obvious (walking into a room that is full of waist high barriers), but it wasn't quite as annoying here as it was in other games. The abilities also felt more interesting and useful, and even epic in some cases, but I was a little put off by the fact that most of them shared a global cool down. The fact that I couldn't use my Charge skill then immediately use another ability was lame. It also made the game as a whole much less strategic. In the first game, I would carefully manage my companions to make sure that they used the correct abilities at the correct time, one after another. In this game, however, since all abilities are on the same cool down, it was almost impossible to ever tell them to use anything as they would do SOMETHING every time they could and would be on cool down most of the rest of the time. Essentially, the combat was more action oriented and less strategic. Whether that is good or bad is something you will have to decide.

Weapons and armor was another thing I didn't like. Instead of having an inventory system (albeit a clunky one), you would select weapons and ammo pre-mission. However, the number of weapons and armor pieces is quite small and none of the weapons had any sort of stats at all, merely stating that they were upgrades to some other weapon. Basically you just always use your most recently obtained weapon and call it good. It definitely felt like they had taken away most of the choices; I enjoyed deciding if it was worth trading damage for a cool down. There were VERY few choices in regards to weapons and armor in Mass Effect 2.

Finally, the story itself was a bit lacking. You start the game with a huge Reaper threat and you end the game with a huge Reaper threat. In the middle is 80%+ that is nothing more than recruiting your team and making sure they are not "distracted" by completing their loyalty missions. Don't get me wrong, the loyalty missions were nearly always fantastic, but it felt like a game made up completely of side quests. The writing and voice acting maintain the very high level of quality that BioWare puts into all their games, but the overall story left something to be desired.

While it may sound like I didn't like this game at all, that's really only true in comparison to the first game. They tried to "fix" a few too many things from there. Some of them weren't broken and other they "fixed" by removing them wholesale. If I had played this game on it's own, I think I would have felt very different about it. Something that seems to be increasingly common. Mass Effect 2 is NOT a step forward in the series, but it isn't really a step backward... it's a solid step to the side. Hopefully BioWare will be able to to take all the best things from the first two games and put it into the third (Hammerhead hover tank please). In the meantime, I whole heartedly recommend you play this if you've played the first and enjoyed it. It's a fun game and a decent trip back into BioWare's most compelling universe.

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Weight Repercussion

Proving that I'm once again perpetually late to the party, I only just barely finished playing through the first Mass Effect. The timing seems meaningful as the second game came out today, yet I probably won't be playing the second for a while due to the fact I'm currently slogging through Dragon Age.

Mass Effect is a classic style Bioware RPG similar to games like Knights of the Old Republic or even Neverwinter Nights. Like those previous games, you control a single character through an adventure filled with skill trees, dialog, adventure and combat. You pick up compatriots along the way that you schmooze or piss off to your heart's content. While I was basically expecting it to be nothing more that KotOR in a slightly different universe, I'm quite pleased to say that it isn't.

I think it's very accurate to say that at the time of it's launch, it was easily the best Bioware RPG. Here's what I thought:

Loved

• Vocal Protagonist. This is without a doubt my favorite feature in the entire game. It's also the thing I'm most missing while playing through Dragon Age. Mass Effect has what I consider to be the best dialog system in an RPG. Instead of a choosing from a list of predefined lines to say, you select a general idea, such as "Personal question." Your character, Shepherd, then proceeds to ask the NPC a personal question of some kind. It works really well because it makes for conversations that are actually two sided. Instead of feeling like people are talking at you, you actually talk to them. It's also constantly entertaining to see just exactly how Shepherd will interpret the conversation direction you give him. This was a huge step forward as far as Bioware RPGs (or RPGs in general) go, and it was disappointing to see the feature non-existent in Dragon Age.
  
  
• Streamlined Combat. My least favorite feature in other, similar games is the overly tactical combat. While there are probably plenty of people who disagree with me, I'm the kind of person who likes to roleplay a single character and give my companions nothing more than basic directions. Mass Effect excels here. The combat is fun and fast paced, often resembling a shooter more than a traditional RPG. Giving your friends orders is as simple as holding the spacebar and making a few clicks to tell them what to do next. It never interrupts the combat and it works very well.
  
  
• Universe. The Mass Effect universe is amazing. It somehow manages to feel completely original, rather than derivative. While it would be impossible to argue that it wasn't influenced by Star Wars/Trek, Bioware did an amazing job of making a plausible, not too distant space travelling future. The alien races are unique, easily recognizable, and full of history and back story. It's all too common to play a large RPG and get lost in the history of the individual peoples (or just not care), but that wasn't the case for me here. Each group has their own unique struggles, personalities, and even racial quirks. I'm happy to hear that there is plenty planned for the Mass Effect universe in the future.
  
  

Hated

• Haven't I Been Here Before? In typical RPG fashion, Mass Effect contains a decent length amount of "main story" content and a similarly decent amount of "side quest" content. While nearly everything you see and experience in the main story line is unique and interesting, the side quests get repetitive really, really fast. If you ever need proof that there is a God, merely look at the planets in the Mass Effect universe. Apparently, when he was creating the universe, he took some spheres, punched them a couple of times each to make some bumps, then painted them a color representing their climate: green for temperate, white/blue for cold, black/red for hot, etc. Additionally, there are apparently a couple of very wealthy building companies out there, as they have prefabricated 3 different under and above ground installations and then managed to put them everywhere. In all seriousness, the sameness of the side quest worlds, locations, and even the quests was VERY disappointing and a large blemish on this otherwise amazing game.

I could spent a lot more time discussing other various aspects of the game that were great (weapon variety, companion interactions, the dual renegade/paragon "alignment" bars, etc), but suffice it to say that I personally believe that Bioware did nearly everything right here. Even one of the biggest complaints people had with the first game, driving the the MAKO vehicle, I didn't think was all that bad.

Mass Effect is just an amazing game. I'll probably compare it to Dragon Age more when I review it, but so far, I believe Mass Effect to be the superior game. If you haven't played it yet, what are you waiting for? You can probably find it for almost nothing (I've seen it on sale for $5 from at least 3 different vendors).