Zero Punctuation: Mass Effect 2

[Jonci]

You can tell he likes a game when all he can do is piss and moan about how the company did a good job. 70%: Not enough tits and resource mining, 10%: sniping rocks, and 20%: fine...you write a good story so fuck you for giving me so little to rant about.

 

[Andante]

I was never a fan of the "create your own adventure" games. I'm playing video games because I don't want to have to think about it.

now to find that ME2 seems to have lost the "game" part and has become a movie version of those "choose your own adventure" books.

and lets face it, those books were never well written.

c'mon video games, when will you become games again?

And more chest high walls? Real Heroes don't need chest high walls, and sometimes they will tear those walls down to kill their enemy. Samus, Link, Mario, Kratos, Wander, the marine from Doom; all of them and more have said NO to chest high walls.

Sigh, this only comes from people that have no experience in bioware games.

The thing is, yes the game sorta (very loosely) is like a choose your own adventure games.

THE THING IS... bioware has so much talent that even though you expect the story to be less compelling due to not having a "canon" path, they outdo everyone else in the market even when other developers focus on a single path/branch for their story.

Thats how damn talented/good bioware is, they are able to make something harder to do and do it better than another company that has a easier format to work with but does it worse.

For instance I've played tons of JRPGS (last remnant/lost odyssey/FF/tales) and I would have to say that Mass Effect/ME2 both delivered a story that is not only better but more engaging than those JRPGS which are "suppose" to do better since their main purpose is to deliver a set story.

 

[Meggiepants]

I second the Jet Pack and Laser Wolf idea. A game can never too many wolves that shoot lasers. Fun review, as usual. Though I must admit, I felt the DA:O review was funnier, but fantasy RPGs are a little too easy to take potshots at I suppose.

 

[A1]

So, his only serious complaints were about the scanning and the fact that it's easy? (Although there's a simple solution for the latter, which goes by the name of "difficulty change".) The other stuff was plain nitpicking, he even confessed in that.

Wow. Looks like he really loved it.

Also, Yahtzee romanced Miranda instead of that annoying quarian = win.

Umm, I don't know if it's such a good idea to puts words in Yahtzee's mouth like that. Let's just wait for his next Extra Punctuation column.

 

[littlerudi08107]

I knew it, overblown bland piece of shit just like the first one.

 

[Crazycat690]

Sorry, good writing can't save a game, good gameplay can save a game but since that's not the case with ME2 I won't get it, there I said it!

 

[A1]

But at the same time the Mass Effect franchise is still somewhat lacking when it comes to gameplay, although most RPG fans probably won't care all that much.

I must point out that ME 2 is not an RPG. It's a 3rd Person Shooter fest with the lightest of possible RPG elements stacked on top of a good storyline.

Umm, do you mean that in a good way or a bad way?

 

[The Sorrow]

DAMN YOU, YAHTZEE.
I'd just accepted that Mr. Gobulcoque was never coming back! You bastard!

 

[Eponet]

Jetpacks would be an issue when exploring planets without an oxygen atmosphere. Because the fuel wouldn't be able to combust unless it used oxygen inside the pack intself, but then it would need to be huge.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

lol "Birds fly, Fish swim, and Micheal Atkinson Molests Dogs" I almost peed a little.....

I LOL'd quite merrily at that little jape.

 

[noobyplasm]

Could've used more work.About everything you said about the mining/mako bouncing can be found in *insert ME2 forum name here*.Everything else was spot on.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

Bioware games have good writing now?

Well they sure hid that in all the games I've played by them.

That's a nice business card you have there. I'm surprised you've kept it dry whilst living under that bridge.

What?

Professional troll.

 

[CyricZ]

Heyo, Quest for Glory shout out! One of my favorite series.... through nostalgia of course. Looking back at it AFTER I've written my exhaustive guides for it the flaws are a bit obvious, ie. the grinding stat system that never reached a proper balance, but at least some of the skills were as easy to upgrade as holding down the mouse button for five minutes. The writing was nothing to cheer about too loudly about either, as far as the base story is concerned anyway. The incidental humor that was prevalent was actually always pretty good, even up to the rarely-spoken-of-favorably finale to the series. At least they didn't COMPLETELY poo the bed as King's Quest did, but the jump to 3D was so jarring I needed neck surgery.

 

[blalien]

I want to know who Yahtzee sexed! I hope it's Tali.

 

[TheSYLOH]

"Space Quantity Surveyor" here.
ME2 mining is far more boring then EVE's because unlike in EVE the Normandy is in no risk of getting jumped by 28-year-old autistic pirates.
Also causes more armstrain due to holding down that damm scan button the entire time.

Still great game, and yes the Infiltrator is waaay too powerful for it's own good.

 

[CopperBoom]

Now that was the video I was expecting!

He dedicated way too much of the review to the mining issue, but I can't say he is wrong. Mining in the game got boring for me after three hours, to the point where I put on my MP3 so I wouldn't fall asleep doing it.

Yeah it was better (slightly) than combing a big open space on the Mako, but still I feel like they held back on too awesome so three has [artificial?] room for growth.

I loved combat, but more importantly I should say it did not get in the way of me getting to story bits. This critique was tops, as always with Yahtzee.

 

[CopperBoom]

By the way Yahtzee you in-crowd puff, now that you have an iPhone can you get some one to make you an iPhone app?

I really wish I had access to these on the go, you know what I mean?
Do what I want, *****!

 

[Doug]

You know, I thought he'd hate it - I mean, he wasn't a fan of the original, judging from his review, but this one seemed almost...positive!?

Well, I love it myself, and its one of the best games in awhile - only DA:O matches it for quality and time played heh.

 

[Jared]

Brilliant. The mineral mining bit made me giggle. Can't say I disagree XD

 

[Jaranja]

I never really get why Yahtzee complains about games being too easy when there are multiple difficulty settings.

He should try not issuing commands to the AI on Insanity and see how far he gets...

That's exactly what I was thinking. His "this is easy" point is invalid, as far as I'm concerned.