Metro said:
Just because you don't have to use cover doesn't mean the game isn't basically designed as a cover shooter.
I think it does make a huge difference. I wouldn't call a game a cover shooter just because it
has a cover system, I'd call it a cover shooter if the entire design of the gameplay revolves around using cover. My definition allows to distinguish between ME1 and ME2 gameplays, which are two completely different beasts; yours doesn't, which would give the incorrect impression that they play the same way.
It's just the mechanics of shooters like this -- I despise them. They're clunky. FPS style is a thousand times better.
TBH I thought ME1 was really an "over the shoulder FPS". Mechanics are pretty much identical to an FPS if you don't use cover (and why would you?), the only difference is that you see your character but that's purely cosmetic. Though I do agree that just giving up on the pretense and making the game first-person would've been better, not to mention it would've made it a much better CRPG by allowing to more literally play the role of Commander Shepard.
:trollface:
I'm only about a fourth of the way into the game but I've never really had to do any weighing of pros and cons on 90% of the upgrades I find.
These kinds of things aren't all over the place, but they are there, mostly in the mid-game (the beginning game is pretty linear, and the endgame is all Spectre weapons; a big flaw, as I said earlier). It's really obvious with the weapon mods like +X damage to organics vs +Y damage to synthetics. Though once again this is flawed by the game being generally pretty easy, so there's no real point in switching between them other than making an encounter fractionally shorter (and by a very tiny fraction at that)
I'm playing on Veteran or whatever which, while isn't the hardest difficulty, seemed to be the hardest one I could use on a first playthrough.
Yeah that's the one I played on; you can't play on Hardcore until you finish a game on Veteran (and Insanity until you finish Hardcore). Still felt too easy most of the time, TBH.
Aside from that just the sheer volume of the items you receive makes it tedious to turn them into gel or vendor them.
True, that was very annoying. What they really should've done is decrease the sheer amount of loot, make the differences between the manufacturers really drastic, and rebalanced the game so that it would actually make a difference. Instead they threw the inventory out completely, eliminated almost all variation by making the best weapons all DLC-only, then "balanced" the game by making it 100% popamole cover shooter.
The game is 'good' without the the quests? Other than the dialog/quests/storyline you have a tepid console shooter. Borderlands is arguably better. How in the world can you consider the combat alone to be 'good?'
Oh fuck no. I meant that had the quest/dialog been better
then the game would've been good. Sorry, my initial wording wasn't very clear.