Kireatic

Just a picdump from London Expo today – an anime convention in London, England. Funtimes.

The final two photos are thanks to the lovely Katie of KittyGraph, as my photos of the same girls messed up somewhat.

Part of The One Hundred Plus Game Review

I was assigned Mass Effect 2 to review about 4 months ago. As it stood, I hadn’t completed Mass Effect 1 either, so I figured I should just do both of the games and review them at the same time – to give me some perspective on the changes between the two. It took me up until last week to actually get into Mass Effect 1, and from there I pushed myself through both the games from start to finish. I’ve totalled almost 40 hours between the two games in the past 6 days, and needless to say, I’m pretty exhausted. But it was worth it.

I’ll begin by saying that Mass Effect is indeed an RPG, and while guns play a major part, I don’t consider it a shooter in any way. If I had to describe the series, I’d call it a movie where you tell the main character what to do rather than a game as such. If storytelling in a game doesn’t appeal to you, steer clear of the series, a 40 hour movie may drive you insane. For the rest of you, keep reading.

It’s extremely hard to keep spoilers from any sort of description of the game, but doing my best, I’ll say that the games have excellent stories. A major feature of the series is that you choose what your character does in the game, be they a Paragon, a shining example in the galaxy, or a Renegade, ready to do whatever it takes to get the job done. My Shepard (the set character – Commander Shepard) was a Paragon through and through, so my story was centred around her exemplary acts. In one scene, I had the option to horribly beat up someone tied to a chair to get the information I wanted – the game actually prompted me to do so 4 times through the scene. I resisted the urge. The ability to choose almost every reaction your avatar has to each situation is something I’ve only ever seen in Mass Effect, at least on such a large scale.
This ‘guidance’ of the story really immerses you, causing you to really think about your actions and to care for your squad and crew more than you would otherwise – unless you are playing the casual renegade, blowing up everything in your path. You probably don’t care about anything in that case.

The voice acting is incredible in almost all counts, as are the characters. The first game has everything down to a T, all the characters seem well fleshed out, even the little snippets of generated conversation you hear as you move around the world. In the second, there are two counts of miserable failure. Firstly, the DLC characters in Mass Effect 2 are…lifeless. Once their story mission is done, they retreat to two separate rooms on the ship, and cannot be properly interacted with as with the other potential members of your squad. Secondly, Male Shepard. I hadn’t heard his voice until I checked out some of the cutscenes on YouTube to compare – either I’m too used to my Shepard talking after 40 hours, or he just doesn’t have the same level of emotion as the female actor.
The second game does kill the level of immersion a bit by making every separate area actually separate. Mass Effect 1 had you travelling everywhere you went, with optional quick travel in the larger Citadel, and let you drive all over planets you could land on. You walked around your ship, taking the elevator between decks, and you boarded stations via the airlock. Mass Effect 2 does it all with loading screens. Changing ship decks? Elevator cutscene. Docking at a station? Docking cutscene. Travelling around the citadel? Actually no, because the citadel appears to have shrunken into three levels with one room up in the Presidium. With a cutscene to get there. I never thought I’d say this, but I want to be able to take 20 minutes walking to my next destination. It just feels cheap to cut out all the elevators and corridors – I even heard Garrus mention as such while I was at the Citadel in ME2.

I won’t mention much of the already heavily covered romancing in both games, but I went for Liara in ME1 (who doesn’t?), and Garrus in ME2 after I saw Liara again (my Shepard was put off). Although she really wanted Tali, BioWare didn’t see fit to allow this eventuality.

The role playing elements are far more apparent in the first game than the second. In ME1, you build up your character by allocating points per level to a choice of about 8 or 9 skills, and choose their weaponry by buying, finding and swapping out guns, armor and technology, comparing their stats, selling what you don’t need or reducing it to omni-gel. Typical RPG fare, but well tested, and well implemented. In ME2, you have a choice of 4 skills to start, upping it in my case to 6 by the end, all with only 4 levels in each skill unlike the 20 odd per skill in ME1. The weapons no longer have stats, but – with the exception of the heavy weapons – are primarily an aesthetic choice, which you choose before each mission. Weapons are batch upgraded via the Upgrades menu, requiring resources to do so.

Sorting out Tali's equipment in ME1

Ah yes, resource mining. In Mass Effect 2, to upgrade your weapons and armour, you have to get resources – you can’t just buy new kit, you have what you have (on the whole). The process of getting said resources in any large quantities is by going to a planet, waving your mouse over it for about 5 minutes, and shooting probes at it. It’s not a badly implemented system, but it is pretty tedious after a while. I’d rather be able to buy my upgrades again, like in the first game.

That’s not all the second game got wrong. I play my games on the PC, in case you readers didn’t grasp this. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are both console ports. However, Mass Effect 1 was ported by a third-party, and they did it very well, adding keyboard shortcuts to functions like the journal, extra graphical options, and making the game generally mouse friendly. Mass Effect 2 was ported by BioWare themselves. And they did it terribly. It’s like they saw the first games UI, and rather than building on it, decided to scrap it to make it more console friendly, and promptly ignored the PC gamers. There are no shortcuts to the journal, codex or such, quick save is gone, and bring back my goddamn radar. I don’t want to have to pause the game to see where the enemies are.

Edit 30/08/2010: Turns out the quick save still exists, but they moved it from F5 to F6 with no rebind option. Why? Probably because they can.

Mass Effect 2 also added an ammunition system to the guns – previously the guns just overheated and you had to wait for a cooldown, or change weapon. For Mass Effect 3, I’d suggest we go back to that. I rarely ran out of ammo for long enough for me to notice, which suggests that the ammo system is just a gimmick they inserted because they could. If I don’t notice the ammo system, why is it there? I didn’t notice the overheats much either, but at least I wasn’t forced to run around after ammo dumps!

In general, the UI of the first game, as well as how you interact with it as a player, is far superior than the second. And I hope they’ll review it in time for Mass Effect 3.

When you get down to it, however, the series is all about the story, and that is exemplary in both games. I’d strongly recommend Mass Effect 1 and 2 for anyone who likes a good yarn. To BioWare – remove ammo, bring back the elevators, more per world and not more worlds, and give the PC a bit more loving.

And steer away from the DLC’s.

Mass Effect 1:

Gameplay: 8/10

Immersion: 8/10

Storyline: 10/10

Re-playability: 10/10

Overall Score: 9/10

Mass Effect 2:

Gameplay: 7/10

Immersion: 7:10

Storyline: 10/10

Re-playability: 10/10

Overall Score:  8.5/10