More Mass Effect posting -
Girlfriend was out all weekend with family and working, so I did something across Saturday and Sunday that I doubt I've done in 15 years - sat there in front of the Xbox and just played pretty much none-stop, logging 17 hours on Mass Effect 2 across the two days.
Some thoughts -
Massive improvement on combat from a playability perspective from the first game, the movement and shooting is so much more fluid. They did however bodge the biotic powers somewhat, rendering them pretty useless after they'd been so fun in 1. Luckily I think this is rectified in 3.
As gaming goes, it's close a masterpiece. The combat is satisfying, the character development is terrific and if you do all of the loyalty missions and DLC and vary your squad choice, you see how much unique dialogue they all have and the absolute labour of love this game was for Bioware. The game gets criticism for it's pacing - all build up then the major missions crammed into the last act with no choice on when to complete them. I'd say this is valid in some ways. The pacing is what you make of it, you can stagger the squad's loyalty missions and do them in such a way that really creates a cohesive narrative that fits with the story well. However, if you intend on everyone surviving the suicide mission, you do have to damage the pacing of the narrative int he final act somewhat.
The story is good if you do explore the relationships with characters, but if you just bomb through the main quest it would be underwhelming, with no real set up for the sequel. Mass Effect is rich but only if you spend the time to appreciate it. Either way, I massively enjoyed it. I just got really immersed for the first time in a long time in an RPG and wanted to do everything rather than feeling obligated to.
There's some functional changes that weren't well pitched - the stripping away of certain skills and categories within your character's skill menu made the RPG elements feel far lesser and also made it feel like you had less strings to your bow and options within your squad. Similarly, as much as I liked getting upgrades for weapons and the ship, the stripping back of loot collection made the new system look less unwieldy but also just less fun. Skyrim, Fallout, Borderlands etc etc - loot is a huge part of the enjoyment so why Bioware stripped it out completely I'll never know. I can't remember if it switched back in 3.
Gone is the frustrating Mako and Bioware did something good - they focused on less uncharted worlds you could land on, but gave more variety and thought to the ones that you could - flying round in the new ship on the surface of the planet, escaping a collapsing freighter overhanging a cliff, destroying a load of aliens in a cloud of fog whilst trying to disable the element that's causing the weather. It's varied and it's not ME1's 'land on planet, scan rock, scan crashed probe, kill 8 enemies in underground base, repeat.'
The game looks amazing. It's been touched up obviously but for a 12 year old game, the character models in particular look absolutely fantastic and the lighting and mood is great. An AAA game in it's entirety.
Looking forward to starting 3 but it will probably be later in the week before I get the chance. On game lengths - I've now logged 47 hours on Legendary Edition so far, 20 on 1 and 27 on 2, so a reasonable boost in content.
