Zero Punctuation: Mass Effect 2

[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.

 

[Wodan]

Mass Effect 2

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Mass Effect 2.

Watch Video

Great review once again Yahtzee! However me thinks you liked this game a bit more than you let on, and not genuinely hating the game shows in the amount ripping you did in the video. All in all great review, I laughed, I cried, and I laughed again.

Yahtzee how does it feel to have as many people suckling your teet as if you were a small heartless company? I think its time for some Yahtzee on Yahtzee ripping!

 

[veloper]

Very mild ZP review this time. He must really like it then.

 

[Tram]

Ah, it's been a while since I laughed this much from a ZP review.

For a while I though he lost it.

 

[orangeapples]

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.

I suppose what you say is somewhat true, I have played through kotor. Great game, but the story got kinda blah after a while.

I think I got this stigma about choose your own path games because of Fable. After I was super evil and my friend told be about that one temple glitch to become super good, I got this feeling that choosing my own adventure in games amounts to nothing, like it goes nowhere. Actually the game just ran out of stuff to do and being evil did amount to nothing.

(Same with Overlord, oddly enough that game seemed to reward me more for being good than being evil.)

I ended up felling the same about kotor, and now about all choose your own adventure games. I always ended up with a feeling of "the game world doesn't care, why should I?"

DARN YOU PETER MOLYNEUX! YOU RUINED AN ENTIRE GENRE FOR ME!

 

[yourbeliefs]

My favorite line,

"Off-roading around random planets is now replaced by scanning the surface from orbit, launching probes to extract resources, which is as interesting as it sounds, and it sounds like this: bbbwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh..."

 

[Toar]

Honestly, this is a game about the FUTURE! Where are the jetpacks and giant flying robots? I want robots IN my jetpack! I want my robots to double as jetpacks! I want my kid's lunchbox to change into a giant jetpack robot that kicks alien ass! But that is wishful thinking...

Also, isn't Yatzee British born? Why did he say square MILES? Why didn't he say cubic meters? Isn't that what every other country outside of the US is using?

 

[TsunamiWombat]

That Jetpack idea is actually pretty damn good. Minus the wolves I mean.

 

[The Uber n00b3r]

After playing Mass2 I'd agree to most of this. Mixing Vehicle exploration and scanning at the same time would be waaaaaaaay better. The ending was rather bad though, because when you eliminate the threat and go say "Hey council i took care of the problem for you." That option mysteriously isn't there.

It's like they fucked it up on purpose...

Solid game, good fun, DLC is probably coming out in droves so hang onto it. The end.

 

[Fappy]

Very mild ZP review this time. He must really like it then.

He doesn't hate every game he reviews. Every game has its flaws and as much as I love ME2 he made a few good points.

Oh and yeah we need laser wolves in ME3.

 

[Ricotez]

I play EVE Online, and yet I don't feel offended. You know why? Because he's right - mining asteroids is boring, that's why I read a book or watch the tele when doing it.

Aside from that, brilliant review as always.