So, I recently finished Mass Effect 2, and what a game it was.
The story was passable, and so were the characters. Unfortunately that was about all their is to enjoy.
Why the hell did they take out roaming the planets on the Mako? I know people bitched about it (I certainly wasn't one of them), but scanning was not a good alternative, it was boring and tedious and just lazy in my opinion. You scan a planet, find a mission and then can NEVER go back to it when you've completed it.
They took out the inventory system and micromanaging of mods and upgrades completely, gave you 3 shotguns (one of which only Grunt can use, 2 sniper rifles, 2 smg's, 2 pistols and 2 assault rifles ( 3 IF you bought the Collector's edition).
There were so many glitches I had during cutscenes and when I'd just be walking along and suddenly "oh look, I'm walking along the rooftop of the derelict reaper, wait shit... I can't get down" Oh, look I have to reload. Just poor work Bioware, just poor.
The gameplay was fairly enjoyable, apart from the bullshit they introduced with each power being tied to the exact same cooldown. Even the medpacks were tied to a cooldown, seriously... wtf!? I don't have to use psychic power to apply a medkit. How hard was it to keep the old biotic system where each power had it's own cooldown time? It worked, and for me was more realistic.
The spelling errors... oh my god... I remember once when I was talking to a slave on Illium they spelt slave as slake (yes slake) not once, not twice, but 3 times. The grammar and spelling in those little burst transmissions (and indeed the whole game including cutscenes) you'd get from the Illusive Man weren't much better either.
Sometimes in the subtitles they'd have these black blocks behind the words to cancel out the chance of characters behind them making the writing hard to see. Did we really need those Bioware? It's noticeable, it's lazy and you never needed them in the first game.
As for all the previous characters in the game, they were lazy with that too. You completed one crappy little mission for them all, and to top it all off the love interest from the first game i chose (Liara T'soni) barely said hi to me and is now a crazy cold hearted *****.
The biggest problem (that really pissed me off because I spent 2 playthroughs of the first game getting to level 60) was the fact that realistically apart from certain semi important story elements and characters there was no reason to play Mass Effect 2 with a previous savefile from the first. They still bumped me back to level 3, and completely altered all my powers. I had virually no biotic powers in the first and relied solely on my party for those options. I was the heavy hitter. In mass Effect 2 I find Shepherd's been "upgraded" and I can no longer use any of the skills I had besides charge.
And now the actual game...
The sidequests were shoddy as was exploration. I actually had to strain my brain in the first to complete some of the sidequests, but in ME2 they practically hold your hand and tell you where to go. The entire game literally consists of gaining party members and doing really crappy little sidequests (for money mostly). The scanning is pointless and the amount of experience you get for missions on other planets (125 exp) is bullshit. Why couldn't they keep it like the first game where you gained experience based on who you killed? No, instead they made the levelling story-based which really pissed me off.
It seems to me that the entire game was scrapped in favour of purely focusing on the last mission.
The whole game is just gaining crew members and building them up, until the "Suicide Mission" (which everybody came back alive from, so that was a lie) and then after all that screwing around, they stick you with possibly the most lame final boss ever. They build on this absolutely amazing, imaginative story throughout the game and then you get to the end and it's quite anticlimactic really.
Realistically the Boss (not saying what) is just pointless. How would making the Boss look completely different to a normal reaper change how it would be perceived? That boss technically would just have the same powers as a normal reaper.
Okay, so I've finished my rant and despite all the godawful flaws, I'm not disappointed I bought this game, just disappointed with alot of the decisions that Bioware made for it especially considering all the hype it got. It did better than the first game which really ticks me off as it was far superiour to 2 in nearly every way.
What say you, Escapists? Are Bioware getting lazy as of late (provide examples) or am I just nitpicking on little things?
The story was passable, and so were the characters. Unfortunately that was about all their is to enjoy.
Why the hell did they take out roaming the planets on the Mako? I know people bitched about it (I certainly wasn't one of them), but scanning was not a good alternative, it was boring and tedious and just lazy in my opinion. You scan a planet, find a mission and then can NEVER go back to it when you've completed it.
They took out the inventory system and micromanaging of mods and upgrades completely, gave you 3 shotguns (one of which only Grunt can use, 2 sniper rifles, 2 smg's, 2 pistols and 2 assault rifles ( 3 IF you bought the Collector's edition).
There were so many glitches I had during cutscenes and when I'd just be walking along and suddenly "oh look, I'm walking along the rooftop of the derelict reaper, wait shit... I can't get down" Oh, look I have to reload. Just poor work Bioware, just poor.
The gameplay was fairly enjoyable, apart from the bullshit they introduced with each power being tied to the exact same cooldown. Even the medpacks were tied to a cooldown, seriously... wtf!? I don't have to use psychic power to apply a medkit. How hard was it to keep the old biotic system where each power had it's own cooldown time? It worked, and for me was more realistic.
The spelling errors... oh my god... I remember once when I was talking to a slave on Illium they spelt slave as slake (yes slake) not once, not twice, but 3 times. The grammar and spelling in those little burst transmissions (and indeed the whole game including cutscenes) you'd get from the Illusive Man weren't much better either.
Sometimes in the subtitles they'd have these black blocks behind the words to cancel out the chance of characters behind them making the writing hard to see. Did we really need those Bioware? It's noticeable, it's lazy and you never needed them in the first game.
As for all the previous characters in the game, they were lazy with that too. You completed one crappy little mission for them all, and to top it all off the love interest from the first game i chose (Liara T'soni) barely said hi to me and is now a crazy cold hearted *****.
The biggest problem (that really pissed me off because I spent 2 playthroughs of the first game getting to level 60) was the fact that realistically apart from certain semi important story elements and characters there was no reason to play Mass Effect 2 with a previous savefile from the first. They still bumped me back to level 3, and completely altered all my powers. I had virually no biotic powers in the first and relied solely on my party for those options. I was the heavy hitter. In mass Effect 2 I find Shepherd's been "upgraded" and I can no longer use any of the skills I had besides charge.
And now the actual game...
The sidequests were shoddy as was exploration. I actually had to strain my brain in the first to complete some of the sidequests, but in ME2 they practically hold your hand and tell you where to go. The entire game literally consists of gaining party members and doing really crappy little sidequests (for money mostly). The scanning is pointless and the amount of experience you get for missions on other planets (125 exp) is bullshit. Why couldn't they keep it like the first game where you gained experience based on who you killed? No, instead they made the levelling story-based which really pissed me off.
It seems to me that the entire game was scrapped in favour of purely focusing on the last mission.
The whole game is just gaining crew members and building them up, until the "Suicide Mission" (which everybody came back alive from, so that was a lie) and then after all that screwing around, they stick you with possibly the most lame final boss ever. They build on this absolutely amazing, imaginative story throughout the game and then you get to the end and it's quite anticlimactic really.
Realistically the Boss (not saying what) is just pointless. How would making the Boss look completely different to a normal reaper change how it would be perceived? That boss technically would just have the same powers as a normal reaper.
Okay, so I've finished my rant and despite all the godawful flaws, I'm not disappointed I bought this game, just disappointed with alot of the decisions that Bioware made for it especially considering all the hype it got. It did better than the first game which really ticks me off as it was far superiour to 2 in nearly every way.
What say you, Escapists? Are Bioware getting lazy as of late (provide examples) or am I just nitpicking on little things?
