Mass Effect 2 - It was good, but not that great

[mikespoff]

Why do we love ME2? Same reason we love any Bioware title:

Great writing, good execution.

The narrative, pacing, characters and setting all display superb writing, and the execution is the best we've ever seen from Bioware. Yes, the planet-mining was tedious, but when that's the biggest nit to pick, you've gotta be talking about a truly outstanding game.

 

[D_987]

Despite all that typing, or quoting as the case may be, you did a pretty poor job of explaining WHY you felt it was a bad game. All of that text basically boils down to, "it was bad because it was bad." And to each his own, you have the right to your opinion, but next time it might just be easier to say that you preferred the first game, and because much was removed or changed from it, you didn't like the second.

Really now, if you can't read between the lines [the quote was taken from a discussion within a thread comparing the two games but I feel it makes the point regardless] that's not my issue.

How "the story has plot holes", and "the story changes things from existing lore" are boils down to "it was bad because it was bad" is beyond me. That's just bad story-telling period. Those alone are more than legitimate reasons for disliking the plot, and since the whole game is pretty much plot point after plot point strung together by bland action set-pieces that should be a pretty substantial point in of itself.

Gamers are impossible to please, and Mass Effect 2 is a great example of this. People en mass were complaining about the Mako and micro-managing gear, so they removed them. I'm not saying it was necessarily wise to listen to the majority, but it certainly allowed the game to sell in greater numbers.

As a player, and not in Bioware's marketing department, I can see why they made the decisions they did, but that doesn't mean I agree with them, and what resulted was a bad game from my standpoint. Just because there's a reason for what they did doesn't mean it was the correct choice.

 

[badgersprite]

Opinions vary. Unless you're talking about mechanical things like bugs or broken gameplay, there's nothing objective to judge games by. Games are subjective, and something you find good but not great may legitimately be the game someone enjoyed more than anything else they've ever played. They're not lying, and neither opinion is wrong; you're both conveying your honest reaction to it.

All people are doing it is ranking it by their experience with the game and how much they personally enjoyed it.

Me? I like Mass Effect and ME2 a lot, but they're not on my favorite games of all time list or anything. I'm not in the fandom for the games - I don't hang out on Bioware forums or anything like that. I never felt the need to. But I do like the universe, kind of like how I like the lore and backstory to The Elder Scrolls. I enjoy it the same way I enjoy Star Trek; from the comfort of my living room.

 

[The Night Shade]

Because is one of the best games that came out this year

 

[Mikeyfell]

Final Fantasy 13? No. I mean you couldn't have loved the 40 minute sewer crawl to GNR studios could you? That long corridor was more like final fantasy 13 than anything new vegas dished up.

i don't mean that the missions themselves are linear but the mission progression is linear
you always go south, east, north east, north, west then you get some freedom
but that's half the game right there
and this is a game where you can't see all the content in one playthrough and doing the first half the same every time I play feels like a let down after fallout 3

after you left the vault in Fallout 3 you could go anywhere
like I said I never (hardly ever) went to the same place twice and I played the game through 5 times


and the difficulty is broken Impossible not broken easy

the guns don't hit anything (probably a bug)
I dumped all my points into agility and perception so I could be an awesome sniper
but the only way I can guarantee a hit was to run right up to my targets and swing a baseball bat at them

I tried to compensate with perks but you only get 1 every other level instead of every level

FNV is not bad at all
I just went into it with hopes of equality to Fallout 3
but I got an okay game that was knee-capped by it's bugs

 

[Athinira]

Mass Effect 1>Mass Effect 2. By quite a margin.


Great game, either way - But the characters weren't half as good, the story wasn't as interesting, and the gameplay was less impressive (Biotics/Tech being almost entirely useless, strategy wise? Bad idea).

If you honestly believe that the gameplay of ME2 is weaker than in ME1, then I'm happy you aren't designing game.

Mass Effect is a part shooter. It's half the gameplay, and in that regard, Mass Effect 1 is just TERRIBLE. Thats right. Downright terrible. You can't say a game has great gameplay if half of the game isn't designed well.

In addition, saying that Biotics and Tech were almost entirely useless? Since when? It's true that when you play on the two hardest difficulty settings, you have to break down Shields, Armor or Biotic Barriers on pretty much every enemy in the game to use them, but thats just to increase the difficulty, but i found plenty of use in them, especially if you had a bit of brain and learned how to combine some abilities.

As for the characters, thats a matter of taste. I don't see how the ME2 characters in ANY way are worse than in ME1. They were just as engaging to me (if not more because of the loyalty missions), and if i didn't like them, i could have them killed in the final mission, something i do with Jack every time (accomplished by skipping the armor upgrade on the ship) because i don't like the *****. You are certainly right that the story compared to ME1 is much worse off, but thats about the only major thing ME1 got going compared to it's successor. ME3 is almost guarenteed to take back on track since it's the final installment (at least with Shephard).

 

[IamGamer41]

To repeat my question: Yes, ME2 is good, but how can anyone justify calling it the Game of the Year?

Because it is.

 

[northeast rower]

I agree... with everything written there. I don't think it's the best game ever, but it is very very good.

 

[D_987]

See, you say the story has plot holes, but you don't give us any examples. I've asked other people who have said the same thing to give me one, and they never could. Most of them just say, "giant human robot, WTF?" And I agree, that was a bit odd and unexpected to be sure, but that doesn't mean that it didn't fit in a sense. Would it be better if the entire storyline was easy to predict?

If I'd known you wanted a long explanation I would've given it to you, unfortunately I've already repeated this same argument numerous times on the forum last year so I'm not going into massive detail:

Instead I'll simply link you to Shamus Young's blog who dissects the main story, there're elements he's missing that make the plot seem even worse [the fact people are frozen by The Collectors if they're stung, Kaiden / Ashly are stung, but later they're able to move freely] but it's a decent explanation if you don't wan to go to far into the lore.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7004

And as for the story changing from existing lore, I didn't experience any of that either. Then again, I never read deep into the Mass Effect codex on anything, either, so perhaps that's the piece I'm missing.

No it's actually quite clear as day. Sovereign states in the first game The Reapers beleive organic life to be below them, yet here they are using organic life not only to build a Reaper, but also as part of their main plan in the first place. The reveal of the Collectors further confuses the first games situation - why were they not used during the attack on the Citadel? Seems pretty stupid to simply allow Sovereign to go alone when you have species you consider below you, at your command, with advanced technology, to do such dirty work for you...

It makes the Reapers look stupid, ruins the fact they're meant to hold disdain for Organic life and is just generally a really, really massive flaw in the series...

 

[Mr Godfrey]

It wasn't really a combat reliant game. I'm somewhat of a supporter of Mass Effect 2; not because of the combat (though I found the combat entertaining), and certainly not for the mining (which I actually didn't mind as much as the rest of the gaming community, I found something meditative about it). No, the real reason I like Mass Effect 2 is something most game makers haven't really delved into yet: Meaning. Theme. The thing that turns media into art, sparks thoughtful conversation, and propels gaming from something we do for shits n giggles into something attune to reading a classic novel (except instead of the bland bits that come with reading a classic novel, you get explosions).
One of my favorite examples of this in ME2 is one you can find on the escapist. Extra Credits did an episode detailing a particular mission

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1974-Enriching-Lives

The mission basically comes down to exterminating a large portion of the Geth still hostile to commander Shephard, or converting them to friendly Geth. Outwardly the choice may seem pretty black and white. However; this mere, fictional decision actually made me change my opinion of religious extremism (more specifically, the Taliban and insurgent groups in the Middle East. Also I respect the opinions of Conservatives and Republicans more). This wasn't the only mission in the game that broke out the difficult questions. That asked what it meant to be the one making these decisions and thus imposing your will upon a huge spectrum of living, breathing, sentient organisms (well virtual ones anyways).
Aside from that, like I said before, the game isn't about combat. Combat's there, but this is a game about the power of words. The first of what I hope are many games that look (at least slightly) away from blood, guts, and guns, and look more at anaphora, parallelism (see what I did there?) and debate.
I'm not saying Mass Effect is perfect, or even that it deserved game of the year; Mass Effect's main problem is that the choices we (the players) do get to make have no real consequences. If you go the Paragon route things will end up happiness and rainbows no matter what. There's no negative recoil for trying to save everyone, and so why would you pick Renegade for any other reason than to be a slightly more evil good guy? Renegade should have some kind of player pay off. Paragon should be an emotionally turbulent route, you should have to pay for the happiness and rainbows. Like when you payed for Ashley's life with Kaiden's (and then regreted breaking bros before hos).
Anyways. I like the Mass Effect series, ME2 in particular. I think it's more than just your average shooter and most of the praise is deserved. Everyone's entitled to their opinion of course, these are just my reasons for mine.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

I can understand why the mass effect series might not be everybody's cup of tea and why people might be dissatisfied with the way it has been lauded by publications across the board, but the thing that really baffles me on this post is why people so ardently attest that ME1 is a far superior game to the sequel. Really, the only thing that they omitted was the micro management and the poorly controlled driving sequences. Were they really so sorely missed. Don't get me wrong, ME1 was a good game but there were a number of nagging issues that I felt the sequl wholly remedied. The cover mechanic was awfully implemented, both friendly and enemy AI were retarded, frame rate issues hampered the flow of the game and most importantly the issue that prevented me playing that game more than twice were the shamelessly cookie cutter environments and side quests. It was a good game but it felt lacking, I suppose if there's anything I do miss from the original its gaining exp. through more conventional means rather than 'Mission complete: Have a level up on us'. Also, a more interesting villain like Saren would have been nice but they've kind of gone in a different direction with the anti-hero of the illusive man and the inherent tension with his relationship with Shephard, a new approach and I can appreciate that but 'ASSUMING CONTROL' kinbd of gets old after a while.

 

[Mimssy]

I really like the Mass Effect world and really want to like the games, but I just couldn't get into them when I played them. I might have to try them again.

 

[D_987]

Sure, he stated that to try and intimidate Shepard, but it was the other reapers that decided to make one based on humans, not Sovereign.

So non-organic life now has the capacity to disagree amongst itself, despite the fact they're basically robots with a single goal in mind, repeating the same process over and over for reasons that the player has only been explained in this sense? I doubt Sovereign was lying, or had its own agenda - there's no other given explanation for The Reapers behavior, that was the writers attempts to explain it all, so by claiming otherwise you're merely proving how poor the story is. All this point does is make the original games villain seem less threatening, without introducing a greater threat.

Based on the fact that Shepard had killed Sovereign, of course. The roles had been flipped in that Shepard was now somewhat intimidating to them. There's no evidence that it was part of their overall strategy to build a human reaper, just that they had started afterward. After all, the Collectors didn't start gathering DNA for that purpose until Sovereign was dead.

That is an interesting concept, but I find it a stretch to beleive a race that believes itself to superior, as the Reapers do, would immediately begin constructing something as flawed as they did simply because The Alliance managed, luckily, to beat a single Reaper.

Which also explains the Collectors lack of appearance in ME1. Their name is fitting because they're used to collect species samples in order to model new reapers, not generally as front-line soldiers. Sovereign already had the geth at his disposal for use in activating the next organic genocide, and never once stop to think that he might fail. Why would he call on the Collectors, who were clearly not infinite, to help on the front lines as well? He already believed his power and forces to be far too overwhelming.

But the whole point of The Reapers keeping The Collectors is flawed in the first place, unless The Reapers require the services of organic life to sustain themselves, which could well be the case, it just hasn't been stated yet, there's no reason for The Reapers to lie, and to keep The Protehons alive. Didn't Saren attempt to get Shepard to join his cause by promising effectively what The Collectors now have? Yet it's clear, from the distress single alone, that they refused - why would The Reapers lie about the fact they kept the race alive?

Again these are pretty important answers if your theory [which is interesting] were to be the case, and it's something two games in probably would have been stated were it the case.

This still doesn't answer the more ridiculous and larger flaws in the ME2 storyline though such as the aforementioned bugs.

 

[Snotnarok]

There's no other game like it. In what other shooting game has the depth of story and number of choices, well acted characters, great visuals and length of gameplay?

Is the combat a little lacking sometimes? Sure but there's no competition to Mass Effect. No Sci-fi game does what it does, hell most fantasy RPGs don't cover some of the things it does.

Does it deserve the hype it gets? Yes I think so. I've yet to play a game like it that's come out in recent years.

I would say that Origins had more choices and it was a lot longer than ME 2. Visuals are completely subjective, and I liked RDR's more and I thought it's characters were better, too.

Yes while Origins had more choices your character had no voice and no feeling of personality, which though I love DA, I think that really takes away from the feeling of this otherwise epic game.

While I know they took out some of the choices in stat character building I still felt the combat was better in 2 than 1 by far.
The visuals I thought was pretty much a given it looked damn nice, I can understand the game itself being subjective to if you like it or not but ME2 was very nice to look at.

 

[OniaPL]

Jesus Christ, I cannot stand the douchebaggery that this site seems to show every now and then. Game X is too popular, so it's got to get some hate.

If people like X, and you don't like X - there's really no need to make a goddamn thread for it. You didn't like it, simple enough. Did you want people to agree with you on that so that it'll make you seem normal?

Also, FFS, can people stop stating opinions as facts? "It was completely shallow and didn't deserve any of the praise it received". A lot of people loved it - so stop assuming that we somehow don't know what we like.

I am sorry if I have beein any way a douchebag. The reason I created this thread is because I wished everyone could tell me what they liked about in ME 2, and why it deserves GotY. Obviously the game was popular, and it was good. But I can't think of it as a GotY, since it wasn't really special. It did stuff that has been done before, and it did them well. And this year had a lot of decent titles, but not neceessarily great. But still, I don't think it is that good. It was good, just like Singularity was decent. This thread isn't an attack against ME 2, I just hoped we could discuss why it is so great. But this thread too has had its fair share of people angry for someone not liking their favorite game, and people hating people who liked it.

Yes, it is my opinion that ME 2 was decent. But can't we still exchange our opinions and talk about it?

 

[OniaPL]

It wasn't really a combat reliant game. I'm somewhat of a supporter of Mass Effect 2; not because of the combat (though I found the combat entertaining), and certainly not for the mining (which I actually didn't mind as much as the rest of the gaming community, I found something meditative about it). No, the real reason I like Mass Effect 2 is something most game makers haven't really delved into yet: Meaning. Theme. The thing that turns media into art, sparks thoughtful conversation, and propels gaming from something we do for shits n giggles into something attune to reading a classic novel (except instead of the bland bits that come with reading a classic novel, you get explosions).
One of my favorite examples of this in ME2 is one you can find on the escapist. Extra Credits did an episode detailing a particular mission

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1974-Enriching-Lives

The mission basically comes down to exterminating a large portion of the Geth still hostile to commander Shephard, or converting them to friendly Geth. Outwardly the choice may seem pretty black and white. However; this mere, fictional decision actually made me change my opinion of religious extremism (more specifically, the Taliban and insurgent groups in the Middle East. Also I respect the opinions of Conservatives and Republicans more). This wasn't the only mission in the game that broke out the difficult questions. That asked what it meant to be the one making these decisions and thus imposing your will upon a huge spectrum of living, breathing, sentient organisms (well virtual ones anyways).
Aside from that, like I said before, the game isn't about combat. Combat's there, but this is a game about the power of words. The first of what I hope are many games that look (at least slightly) away from blood, guts, and guns, and look more at anaphora, parallelism (see what I did there?) and debate.
I'm not saying Mass Effect is perfect, or even that it deserved game of the year; Mass Effect's main problem is that the choices we (the players) do get to make have no real consequences. If you go the Paragon route things will end up happiness and rainbows no matter what. There's no negative recoil for trying to save everyone, and so why would you pick Renegade for any other reason than to be a slightly more evil good guy? Renegade should have some kind of player pay off. Paragon should be an emotionally turbulent route, you should have to pay for the happiness and rainbows. Like when you payed for Ashley's life with Kaiden's (and then regreted breaking bros before hos).
Anyways. I like the Mass Effect series, ME2 in particular. I think it's more than just your average shooter and most of the praise is deserved. Everyone's entitled to their opinion of course, these are just my reasons for mine.

Yes, ME 2 had a couple of good missions, to name the Suicide Mission and the Geth mission. But what ruined most of these missions which held a major choice, was that there were clearly stated what is a paragon and what is a renegade thing to do, and you had to keep racking up alignment points to be able to persuade others. I felt that this black and white took a lot out of the game, when it could have been very meaningful.

Also, I agree that ME 2 isn't a game about combat, and I actually quite enjoy games which isnt about Gears OF war- kind musclemen who kick ass and crush skulls. But for me the issue with combat was that it felt like a chore. It was nothing more to me than an obstacle on the way from story point A to story point B.

One of my points being, I would have enjoyed ME 2 more if it would have required more than choosing the top right dialogue option to bring lollipops and rainbows to everyone. It sort of ate away the choice system, in my opinion.