Edward_R_Murrow
Arcane
Then it's obviously Dragon Age: Origins.
I dunno...if they held the player in any real esteem they might have followed best practices (of the popamole sub-genre) when designing the core mechanics of gameplay. Gonna drop some wordswordswords fropm rejectedpoasts.txt about ME2 combat (context was ME1 vs ME2, but it should still be mostly relevant).
I'd disagree. The Mass Effect series showed that Bioware have a lot of trouble outside of iterating on their RTwP fantasy combat, with Mass Effect 2 as the most prominent example of their failures.
While Mass Effect 1 had numerous mechanical wrinkles, there are a few legitimate factors to consider when judging Bioware's performance. First off, it was their first major foray into shooting games. Furthermore, the sub-genre of "third-person-cover-shooters" (hereafter: "popamole") had yet to really coalesce; Gears of War had only been out for about a month and Uncharted was a month away. Bioware was on the cutting edge, at least for this installation. Finally, Mass Effect 1 had a much deeper focus on typical role-playing mechanics (dialogue skills, distancing it more from it's pure popamole brethren.
Mass Effect 2 didn't have these excuses and was quite deficient compared to the baseline popamole.
It was a shooter with a limited set of weapons, most of which mapped to the cliche pistol/shotgun/AR/sniper model, in which the player was further restricted to a smaller subset of weapons based upon class choice. In many classes, the powers simply weren't interesting enough to make up for this. Bioware's idiotic design with regards to universal cooldowns and armor/shields negating many powers further "genericized" the combat. Here's some cool abilities that differentiate this from the typical popamole...oh hey, you can't really use them most of the time. Wanna Lift that Krogan Battlemaster and ring-out him instead of going through ludicrous amounts of HP bloat? Nope, gotta peel off shields and/or armor first. Psi-Ops had this type of gameplay down in '05...what's Bioware's excuse?
Shepard also played extremely stiff compared to somebody like Marcus Fenix or Nathan Drake. It took until ME3 for there to be a dodge roll, something Gears of War did in the first installment. Shepard's sprinting was stilted (transitioning from a run to a vault over cover could be problematic), melee wasn't as smooth nor interesting as other popamole offerings (until ME3 with SHEHPAHRD PAAAWWWNCH, which was more a lark than anything useful), and even snapping to cover didn't always work. It's hard to say that Mass Effect 2 did a good job on the basics, when compared to it's peer group.
Level design was poor even compared to the typical popamole as it was burdened by all of the linearity and convenient chest-high walls yet lacked the exciting set-pieces of a Gears of War or Uncharted...to say nothing of something like Vanquish (which would come out later in 2010). Even basic principles of shooter level design, like finding secrets, hidden ammo/weapon caches, multiple routes, and whatnot are absent from most every level.
Enemy design was mostly pedestrian, with the exception of the Harbinger's ability to "promote" a collector. More troubling than the blandness was the enemies tendency to break the fundamental law of popamole; that any foe should be as dependent on cover as the player is when facing them. Enemies in the entire series often violated this rule, having enough armor/shields/health such that, if the AI was playing "smart", could easily defeat the player in many encounters by employing bum-rush tactics. Compare this to Gears of War, where charges like that would be suicidal to the enemy forces; they'd be torn apart by all the free shots they'd be giving the player (and squadmates). Or Vanquish, in which the player character's mobility allows them to dodge/slide away from any danger. Funnily enough, the other most prominent example of this spoiled popamole was Alpha Protocol, in which bosses (especially Captain Murphy and Raidou Kuzunoha the XIX) had a strange habit of running full bore at the player character, seemingly oblivious to streams of gunfire, in order to beat them to death.
Boss battles don't typically translate well to shooters, especially those of the popamole persuasion, but ME2's were downright pathetic, tending towards enormous hitboxes whose attacks would be easily flaunted by ducking behind a chest-high wall (see: gunships, Thresher Maw, Human Reaper).
While Mass Effect 1 had numerous mechanical wrinkles, there are a few legitimate factors to consider when judging Bioware's performance. First off, it was their first major foray into shooting games. Furthermore, the sub-genre of "third-person-cover-shooters" (hereafter: "popamole") had yet to really coalesce; Gears of War had only been out for about a month and Uncharted was a month away. Bioware was on the cutting edge, at least for this installation. Finally, Mass Effect 1 had a much deeper focus on typical role-playing mechanics (dialogue skills, distancing it more from it's pure popamole brethren.
Mass Effect 2 didn't have these excuses and was quite deficient compared to the baseline popamole.
It was a shooter with a limited set of weapons, most of which mapped to the cliche pistol/shotgun/AR/sniper model, in which the player was further restricted to a smaller subset of weapons based upon class choice. In many classes, the powers simply weren't interesting enough to make up for this. Bioware's idiotic design with regards to universal cooldowns and armor/shields negating many powers further "genericized" the combat. Here's some cool abilities that differentiate this from the typical popamole...oh hey, you can't really use them most of the time. Wanna Lift that Krogan Battlemaster and ring-out him instead of going through ludicrous amounts of HP bloat? Nope, gotta peel off shields and/or armor first. Psi-Ops had this type of gameplay down in '05...what's Bioware's excuse?
Shepard also played extremely stiff compared to somebody like Marcus Fenix or Nathan Drake. It took until ME3 for there to be a dodge roll, something Gears of War did in the first installment. Shepard's sprinting was stilted (transitioning from a run to a vault over cover could be problematic), melee wasn't as smooth nor interesting as other popamole offerings (until ME3 with SHEHPAHRD PAAAWWWNCH, which was more a lark than anything useful), and even snapping to cover didn't always work. It's hard to say that Mass Effect 2 did a good job on the basics, when compared to it's peer group.
Level design was poor even compared to the typical popamole as it was burdened by all of the linearity and convenient chest-high walls yet lacked the exciting set-pieces of a Gears of War or Uncharted...to say nothing of something like Vanquish (which would come out later in 2010). Even basic principles of shooter level design, like finding secrets, hidden ammo/weapon caches, multiple routes, and whatnot are absent from most every level.
Enemy design was mostly pedestrian, with the exception of the Harbinger's ability to "promote" a collector. More troubling than the blandness was the enemies tendency to break the fundamental law of popamole; that any foe should be as dependent on cover as the player is when facing them. Enemies in the entire series often violated this rule, having enough armor/shields/health such that, if the AI was playing "smart", could easily defeat the player in many encounters by employing bum-rush tactics. Compare this to Gears of War, where charges like that would be suicidal to the enemy forces; they'd be torn apart by all the free shots they'd be giving the player (and squadmates). Or Vanquish, in which the player character's mobility allows them to dodge/slide away from any danger. Funnily enough, the other most prominent example of this spoiled popamole was Alpha Protocol, in which bosses (especially Captain Murphy and Raidou Kuzunoha the XIX) had a strange habit of running full bore at the player character, seemingly oblivious to streams of gunfire, in order to beat them to death.
Boss battles don't typically translate well to shooters, especially those of the popamole persuasion, but ME2's were downright pathetic, tending towards enormous hitboxes whose attacks would be easily flaunted by ducking behind a chest-high wall (see: gunships, Thresher Maw, Human Reaper).
I mean, in the end, ME2 was okay enough for a playthrough, carried mostly by the campy dialogue, space opera setting, and outstanding soundtrack (as well as hilariously broken Vanguard/Infiltrator gameplay), but it's hard to really see it as "good" or better than DA:O, much less the BG games.
Guy's voice sounds like Rakim
