Mass Effect Trilogy

[Falksi]

Nice to see ME1 get the love it deserves. Personally I thrived on it. Even the combat, whilst technically"inferior", felt great (oh how I loved not fucking about with ammo & reloading again). The pauses in action really worked well, and added to the tension nicely.
ME2 was ok & a mixed bag, but is largely overrated and the watered down RPG elements REALLY hurt the game, as it just fails to keep you engaged as much as ME1 did.
ME3 was poor all round. Forget the ending, the whole game was laughable. The Illusive Man had gone from being a superb, morally grey character, to a Scooby Doo villain. And Shepherd, Sole Survivor/War Hero Commander who had killed thousands up until this point, went all cuck over a kid. The masses focusing on the ending actually saved the game itself from getting the criticism which it deserved.

 

[mbv123]

I tried replaying ME trilogy (never finished the 3rd) last year and I stopped during somewhere in the middle of ME2.
ME1 was great and totally lived up to the nostalgia when I played it back in 2010. While it was clunky, it had a certain charm and atmosphere.
ME2 on the other hand got boring when you're fixing everybody's daddy issues and grinding resources through the shitty scanning mini game just so everyone can survive the final mission. It got so formulaic that I couldn't bother to do it again and dropped it. ME3 was even worse in that regard if I remember correctly and the ending was the least of it's problems.

 

[TripJack]

mass effect 1 was so boring it literally gave me aids (cuz i stopped playing and had gay sex instead)

 

[SDeden]

Nice to see ME1 get the love it deserves. Personally I thrived on it. Even the combat, whilst technically"inferior", felt great...

It had some advantages that the later games lacked, in spite of its clunkiness and a lack of feedback. I really liked how each power had it sown cool down, it was very fun to lift and then throw an enemy, or lift them and nail them with a sniper shot or a carnage shot. Combat felt faster in ME1 because of that and because you weren't always bound to cover. I also liked the big open spaces which gave some of the fights a sense of a genuine battlefield on a large scale. Another nice aspect of combat in ME1 was that it was more seamlessly incorporated into the game world. In ME2 there are interactive areas where you talk to people and then segmented off are combat areas that have lots of cover and shooty enemies. In ME1 though these areas are combined together which lets combat genuinely surprise you. You can be talking to somebody in the market place on the Citadel and suddenly find yourself in a shootout, running to duck behind the another market stall. You can get ambushed even on the way to the Normandy in the landing bay. I do think ME2 combat is better over all namely because of the more distinctive weapons and feedback from enemies when you damage them, as well as the variety, but ME1 had its perks.

 

[donkeymong]

Variety in the combat in Mass Effect 2? Is this a joke? Enemy "Biotics" in this game only used Warp(Harbringer some kind of Singularity) while the "Engineers" only used the
Drone and Incinerate. It doesnt had enemy snipers. Now compare this all with the first game.

 

[Nirvash]

All i rememeber from me1 combat is the "pistol full auto" everything and the 131351513 tiers of equipment.

 

[SDeden]

Variety in the combat in Mass Effect 2?

The weapons all feel different from one another and you do have some decent variety in terms of enemy types. Biotics are shit in ME2 though except for some of Shepard's abilities.

 

[donkeymong]

Variety in the combat in Mass Effect 2?

The weapons all feel different from one another and you do have some decent variety in terms of enemy types. Biotics are shit in ME2 though except for some of Shepard's abilities.

The first game had weapon mods and ammo types for that. Explosive rounds were hilarious.

 

[Nutria]

Another nice aspect of combat in ME1 was that it was more seamlessly incorporated into the game world. In ME2 there are interactive areas where you talk to people and then segmented off are combat areas that have lots of cover and shooty enemies.

Yeah, that really seemed like a step backwards to me. In ME2 you have some story and then a 20 minute fight and then you get back to the story. If I want to shoot stuff for 20 minutes straight, I'll play Battlefield. ME1 was much better at integrating combat, story, and exploration.

 

[SDeden]

Variety in the combat in Mass Effect 2?

The weapons all feel different from one another and you do have some decent variety in terms of enemy types. Biotics are shit in ME2 though except for some of Shepard's abilities.

The first game had weapon mods and ammo types for that. Explosive rounds were hilarious.

The weapon mods didn't change how weapons functioned to any noticeable extent. Nothing like say, the difference between the Viper and the Widow in ME2. Both are sniper rifles, but each are very different in how they play in combat and require different tactics. Ammo mods were nice, but ME2 has those anyway.

In ME1 every type of gun feels and sounds exactly the same and is ultimately used in the same way. There might be a little noticable difference early on in the game if only because a random gun that drops that is a higher level might be able to fire a few more times before it overheats or it might do more damage.

In ME2 however the Predator, Carnifex, and Phalanx each feel different and are useful in different situations. Adding ammunition was also a good idea for this reason since different weapons have different ammo caps also added another tactical consideration to your weapon choice.

The Phalanx has a slow fire rate, high damage, and a moderate ammo count. It's a potent magnum and quite suitable for single enemies or slow moving enemies. The Carnifex does high damage and has a fast fire rate, it's great for eliminating a close enemy in very quickly in an emergency, but it has low ammo count so it isn't suitable for protracted use. The Predator falls mostly right in between with a fast fire rate, high accuracy, and comfortable ammo cap.

You've got shotguns that really need you to be in point blank range, a shot-gun that functions best when you slowly charge it and unleash a precise attack, and a more moderately balanced model that has decent damage and longer range. Ect..

 

[Falksi]

It had some advantages that the later games lacked, in spite of its clunkiness and a lack of feedback. I really liked how each power had it sown cool down, it was very fun to lift and then throw an enemy, or lift them and nail them with a sniper shot or a carnage shot. Combat felt faster in ME1 because of that and because you weren't always bound to cover. I also liked the big open spaces which gave some of the fights a sense of a genuine battlefield on a large scale. Another nice aspect of combat in ME1 was that it was more seamlessly incorporated into the game world. In ME2 there are interactive areas where you talk to people and then segmented off are combat areas that have lots of cover and shooty enemies. In ME1 though these areas are combined together which lets combat genuinely surprise you. You can be talking to somebody in the market place on the Citadel and suddenly find yourself in a shootout, running to duck behind the another market stall. You can get ambushed even on the way to the Normandy in the landing bay. I do think ME2 combat is better over all namely because of the more distinctive weapons and feedback from enemies when you damage them, as well as the variety, but ME1 had its perks.

Top a analogy, and a lot of the reasons why I prefer ME1 all round.

 

[Ahumata]

Necroing this thread because I'm surprised there isn't more on the main feature that made Mass Effect work at all: Shepard. The first and second game scored pretty well in terms of giving the players a pre-written character to play yet that for a large number of people felt like it was their character. In that sense, the "role-playing" aspect of Mass Effect wasn't half bad at all, especially in a genre where "RPG" only means "customisable stats and equipment". We all know how the third betrayed that mechanic so I shan't say any more.

Gameplay-wise, all three games were pretty bad for different reasons, having to do with the fact that Bioware was never any good with gameplay anyway, and each felt like a proof-of-concept for a greater game that would unfortunately never exist. But since Bioware was also always about telling very corny (and often terrible) stories in somewhat emotionally engaging ways with an appearance of interactivity, I'm not sure why there's still a debate over which was the better entry. To me they just were all bad and ridiculous, but due to the refreshing Shepard thing and some nice work in terms of set design and music, and a passable if sometimes pleasant setting, the series gave me some really good memories.

Something Dragon Age, for instance (what kind of name is that for a series...), never remotely achieved, with its Fantasy Plot Generator stories, ludicrous characters, cookie-cutter corruption-zombie bad guys and Americans Everywhere. And cheese. Cheese everywhere.

 

[Ahumata]

What's wrong with the title Dragon Age?

It's literally the Dragon Age. Thats the name. I mean the elder scrolls series mostly just name their games after some magic scrolls and locations. Mass Effect is akin to writing a sci-fi novel in the 1500s called "internal combustion engine"

Yeah, and you don't see a problem with that? DA sounds more appropriate as the name some bad browser mmo to me, is what I meant.

I mean, Elder Scrolls in that particular other franchise, are kind of a big deal. So the name makes sense and you might get like "What are those elder scrolls?". Each subsequent titles reprises that world-defining feature and focuses on a location, in effect reinforcing and strengthening the whole identity. Dragon Age is just "It's an age that has dragons in it". Generic.

Hell, funny enough that the core concept of the "Dragon Age" (dragons reappearing) is basically the plot of Skyrim.

 

[ortucis]

Dragon Age is a generic name but it isn't really a bad name.

If you want awful names for RPG's, check the JRPG's being released on Steam these days. Most retarded names ever. Maybe it's the translation from Japanese to English, but then again, it probably isn't.

That said, I enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins more than Obsidian's attempt at isometric dumb-fest these days.

 

[Ahumata]

Dragon Age is a generic name but it isn't really a bad name.

If you want awful names for RPG's, check the JRPG's being released on Steam these days. Most retarded names ever. Maybe it's the translation from Japanese to English, but then again, it probably isn't.

That said, I enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins more than Obsidian's attempt at isometric dumb-fest these days.

JRPGS and bad names is an old old marriage so yeah, translation is innocent for once. Agreed with you also on Origins vs that other game. Everything Bioware feels like it could have been good but instead is bad, and as with bad pizza, it's often the added cheese that saves it.

 

[Ahumata]

Dragons in Dragon Age are basically animals with the exception of various elven dieties that seem to have a dragon form and they mean something different entirely in Skyrim. The only dragons you fight in Origins are god-dragons iirc.

I totally get that there is lore and everything, but where it stops working for me is when it comes to contradicting practice: however special or meaningful they may be beyond sheer gameplay, the dragons you commonly encounter in Skyrim are nothing but landscape mobs. They could count basically count as animals if something somewhere didn't say that they're in fact vastly intelligent powerful ancient beings from a bygone age.

Which brings me back to the problem of RPGs often just not making sense because lore is just information and codex entries to try and inject added value to your monkeying around, and gameplay situations are another story entirely. But that in and of itself is probably another story too.

 

[Ahumata]

okay man whatever dont shit your mouth out

First time I read that formulation, what does it mean?

 

[c2007]

If I had to guess, it means that's a lot of bullshit coming out of your "mouth" (read: keyboard), and he is concerned for your well-being.

Somehow you two are talking about dragons in a ME thread, so I'm not sure exactly what is going on and too bored to take score.

Hope this helps!

 

[Ahumata]

Somehow you two are talking about dragons in a ME thread, so I'm not sure exactly what is going on

Not just in a ME thread. in a necro'ed ME thread. That's even more retarded.

 

[Nutria]

I watched Lifeforce last night and hoooooooooooooly shit ME3 completely ripped off the ending of that. An alien spaceship (it even looks the same) parks over London and starts sucking up the souls of all the humans through a blue pillar of light.

So when Bioware is looking for inspiration on how to end their epic trilogy that they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars making, they turn to a trashy '80s horror movie that's most notable for its extended full-frontal nude scenes.

 

[Vorark]

most notable for its extended full-frontal nude scenes.

Makes sense, if you consider their audience.

 

[oldmanpaco]

1980's paco loved him some Lifeforce.

 

[Nutria]

most notable for its extended full-frontal nude scenes.

Makes sense, if you consider their audience.

Nah, their audience isn't into attractive human women.

 

[Sykar]

most notable for its extended full-frontal nude scenes.

Makes sense, if you consider their audience.

Nah, their audience isn't into attractive human women.

You just do not know how to appreciate elven ladies which are special:

Spoiler

 

[moon knight]