Game News The Many Failures of Mass Effect 2

[VentilatorOfDoom]

well i challenge you to find me an example of rpg that requires a lot of strategy during fights, not a single one requires much brain use.

SSI games, RoA games, some IE games to a certain extent plus the examples already given. Or hybrids like JA2, Kings Bounty. Do you really want to tell me that in all these games you can win all fights by just applying a strategy as *elaborate* as hide behind chest & shoot?

But I'd wager when you said you played them all you had other *RPGs* in mind, huh?

 

[orao]

Until these stupid big name studios learn to make a game instead of a mildly interactive movie, I'm going to keep pirading, and keep seeting.
The only people I've been supporting recently are small name developers who for all their faults at least deliver an RPG when they label a game an RPG.
Mass Effect 2 has little roleplaying, and the gameplay is copypasted from halo of gears and not particularly well.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

The game was a 28 hour-long intermission for me.

That's what Bioware is doing! They're funneling our wasted time into Gaider's scalp so that his scalp becomes younger! His hair will soon threaten to devour us all! Stop the madness! Pirating the game doesn't remove the funnel! RESIST! HUMANITY DEMANDS IT! RESIST!

 

[BlitzKitchen]

Gaider is just an ugly dude. His hair or lack thereof is of no consequence.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Gaider is just an ugly dude. His hair or lack thereof is of no consequence.

You're part of the conspiracy.

RESIST!

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Read this:
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/ ... dbits.aspx

Corey Gaspur (combat designer) is the team’s reigning Street Fighter champion.


That explains a lot of things.

 

[Mortmal]

well i challenge you to find me an example of rpg that requires a lot of strategy during fights, not a single one requires much brain use.

SSI games, RoA games, some IE games to a certain extent plus the examples already given. Or hybrids like JA2, Kings Bounty. Do you really want to tell me that in all these games you can win all fights by just applying a strategy as *elaborate* as hide behind chest & shoot?

But I'd wager when you said you played them all you had other *RPGs* in mind, huh?

No, when i said i played them all i really means it. lets take your first example SSI games, i reinstalled champions of krynn, its not the best interface of them all and you had to manually repick spellswhen resting but a good gold box game nonetheless.
Plot is ultra linear, rules are faithful to ADD . its filler fights after filler fights. its very simple to win them and the same strategy applies to every fight, USe AOE spells like fireballs, block the way to cover your wizards and focus fire the enemy wizards, then prieststhen other, spam heal spells/potions when needed. Its not really challenging. I am sure it could be easy to script a simple bot doing it all.
Funny but for IE games its almost the same tactics, Buffup before the expected " surprise" fight ,AOE spell the enemy groups, focus wizard, heal, rince and repeat. Some even manage it just by rushing fighters in.
Its better than choose ammo, hide run, shoot, but not much more.

Kingsbounty i never considered it like a rpg, its a strategy game like heroes of might of magic or disciple, i havent finished the last HOMM as i was bored before the end.Its really always the same once you figured the basic mechanics.
jagged alliance 2 ? lots of hide cover shoot as well, but a little more choices ,certainly a very good game but i never remember havingproblems or have to rethink a strategy in any tactical rpg.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TwMVM9ajwk
look at gameplay videos,nothing hard to figure.

 

[Micmu]

King's Bounty is NOT a strategy game.

 

[Azarkon]

First comment says it all:

This is a stunt for traffic

But the fact that countrarian views like those of the author are so scandalous when they arise does speak to his point about gaming journalism.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

No, when i said i played them all i really means it. lets take your first example SSI games, i reinstalled champions of krynn, its not the best interface of them all and you had to manually repick spellswhen resting but a good gold box game nonetheless.

irrelevant

Plot is ultra linear, rules are faithful to ADD . its filler fights after filler fights.

irrelevant

ts very simple to win them and the same strategy applies to every fight, USe AOE spells like fireballs, block the way to cover your wizards and focus fire the enemy wizards, then prieststhen other, spam heal spells/potions when needed.

The simple strategy you just described with all the spells, equipment etc is already 10x as complicated as the necessary strategy to win ME2. And I ignore the fact that this will NEVER even REMOTELY suffice to win the more challenging fights in said games. Take a recent example KOTC and tell me how you win the difficult fights with a bit healing potion spamming and fireballs. Of course the strategies revolve around spell usage & proper equipment usage & well built characters. ME2 lacks all of that.

Its not really challenging. I am sure it could be easy to script a simple bot doing it all.
Funny but for IE games its almost the same tactics, Buffup before the expected " surprise" fight ,AOE spell the enemy groups, focus wizard, heal, rince and repeat. Some even manage it just by rushing fighters in. Its better than choose ammo, hide run, shoot, but not much more.

So it's better? Yes it is. Much more in fact. So it was not really challenging? I'm sure there are a lot of players who couldn't beat certain fights in these old games. How many players can't figure out how to duck behind a cover and press the left mouse button as in ME2?

Face it, covering behind a chest and shooting with either of 3 weapons is not the pinnacle of tactical combat. It's shooter combat. Repetitive, boring and simple.

 

[Mortmal]

So it's better? Yes it is. Much more in fact. So it was not really challenging? I'm sure there are a lot of players who couldn't beat certain fights in these old games. How many players can't figure out how to duck behind a cover and press the left mouse button as in ME2?

Face it, covering behind a chest and shooting with either of 3 weapons is not the pinnacle of tactical combat. It's shooter combat. Repetitive, boring and simple.

I think the number of people not being able to duck behind a cover might be embarassing , remmber in morrowind a LOT werent even able to find caius, remember half life 2 stats , lot of people were not even able to finish the campaign . Just have to read the other forums like IGN or 4chan, i am pretty sure mass effect 2 is already too complex for todays kids.
I never said that ME2 was the pinnacle of tactical combat, but i maintain most of rpgs arent either bare a few gems , completely swamped in the crowd.You think they were 10x more complex its just nostalgy blurring your sight.
Now i really need multiplayer, the single players games IA are just too simplistic.

 

[SerratedBiz]

remember half life 2 stats

wat.

i am pretty sure mass effect 2 is already too complex for todays kids.

Eat shit and die.

 

[Luzur]

This reviewer says the same thing someone said here about the combat. That whenever combat is near, you'll see boxes and walls everywhere with enemies emerging from the distance. So the combat sounds like it sucks. There's no surprises and according to this guy, there is no tactics besides shooting an enemy enough times. Since there's only one type of ammo there's apparently no room to have enemies resistant to certain damage, no? What the fuck is good about this game? Is it just the story that's suppose to be good? Please, someone explain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjXWAS8-0

 

[Phelot]

That looks like it's more fun than ME1. I didn't see anything RPG about it, it seemed more like a shooter. All the ammo laying around also seemed like stuff you'd see in a shooter. Like the article says about all the highlighted items, it's obvious that you're intended to just move forward down a path and not worry about searching for things. One of the companions looked like he died twice and yet kept getting back up. I suppose that's typical these days and probably makes sense for a shooter.

I also see that the video feed from the guy was influenced by Lovecraft. THe whole "dreaming God" routine. Nothing wrong with that IMO.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

remmber in morrowind a LOT werent even able to find caius

I refuse to believe this

worst case scenario, you can just pay to teleport via flying bug thing to Balmora, and check each door. Pure brute force, you don't even have to ask for directions

 

[relootz]

King's Bounty is NOT a strategy game.

:shock:

 

[random_encounter]

No, when i said i played them all i really means it. lets take your first example SSI games, i reinstalled champions of krynn, its not the best interface of them all and you had to manually repick spellswhen resting but a good gold box game nonetheless.
Plot is ultra linear, rules are faithful to ADD . its filler fights after filler fights. its very simple to win them and the same strategy applies to every fight, USe AOE spells like fireballs, block the way to cover your wizards and focus fire the enemy wizards, then prieststhen other, spam heal spells/potions when needed. Its not really challenging. I am sure it could be easy to script a simple bot doing it all.
Funny but for IE games its almost the same tactics, Buffup before the expected " surprise" fight ,AOE spell the enemy groups, focus wizard, heal, rince and repeat. Some even manage it just by rushing fighters in.
Its better than choose ammo, hide run, shoot, but not much more.

Hey, you know what? I played the same game, too, but you describe the combat in simplistic terms that basically tell me that you may have only focused on the random encounters as opposed to actually playing through the game in its entirety to face off against notables such as dragons, exploding auraks, bozaks, enemy magicians, escaping from a crashing citadel, etc..

Not to mention the peripheral concerns that contribute to the planning required by the player in whether they should risk camping out to replenish spells in dangerous territory, how efficiently they can kill the enemy so that they can avoid having to camp, and the fact that they can't spam potions as if they were in Diablo.

Either that, or you're simply taking the game out of context and have no clue as to how ME2's point/shoot/cover/eject heat sink/repeat gameplay fails to require as much thought as what you yourself have described above while ignoring the rest of the gameplay.

In comparison, ME2's combat does not require the player to take care of their party other than in buying them the occasional upgrade, resurrecting them via medi-gels, and staying behind cover to regenerate.

I think the number of people not being able to duck behind a cover might be embarassing , remmber in morrowind a LOT werent even able to find caius, remember half life 2 stats , lot of people were not even able to finish the campaign . Just have to read the other forums like IGN or 4chan, i am pretty sure mass effect 2 is already too complex for todays kids.
I never said that ME2 was the pinnacle of tactical combat, but i maintain most of rpgs arent either bare a few gems , completely swamped in the crowd.You think they were 10x more complex its just nostalgy blurring your sight.
Now i really need multiplayer, the single players games IA are just too simplistic.

I heard the same thing about Tic Tac Toe and Chess. Both require two players and involve squares. Only one is more fun for kindergarten.

 

[DraQ]

This reviewer says the same thing someone said here about the combat. That whenever combat is near, you'll see boxes and walls everywhere with enemies emerging from the distance. So the combat sounds like it sucks. There's no surprises and according to this guy, there is no tactics besides shooting an enemy enough times. Since there's only one type of ammo there's apparently no room to have enemies resistant to certain damage, no? What the fuck is good about this game? Is it just the story that's suppose to be good? Please, someone explain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjXWAS8-0

That's probably the 1275039th most exciting thing I've ever seen, almost as good as an old woman taking her pills.

By the way, when the Quake II came out with it's damage skins, I thought it was one of the the most awesome things ever and would eventually eliminate all interface-based enemy health indicators in FPP/TPP games (with possible exception of stat-driven ones - see Wiz8's mythology skill) - was I naïve?

That looks like it's more fun than ME1

Oh.

Like the article says about all the highlighted items, it's obvious that you're intended to just move forward down a path and not worry about searching for things.

Oh.

 

[BlitzKitchen]

This reviewer says the same thing someone said here about the combat. That whenever combat is near, you'll see boxes and walls everywhere with enemies emerging from the distance. So the combat sounds like it sucks. There's no surprises and according to this guy, there is no tactics besides shooting an enemy enough times. Since there's only one type of ammo there's apparently no room to have enemies resistant to certain damage, no? What the fuck is good about this game? Is it just the story that's suppose to be good? Please, someone explain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjXWAS8-0

That's probably the 1275039th most exciting thing I've ever seen, almost as good as an old woman taking her pills.

They're playing on an incredibly low difficulty it appears. I remember that part being way more intense. I guess a youtube play through wouldn't be very productive if you saw a lot of death screens/reloading and pausing for the command menu.

 

[DraQ]

They're playing on an incredibly low difficulty it appears. I remember that part being way more intense. I guess a youtube play through wouldn't be very productive if you saw a lot of death screens/reloading and pausing for the command menu.

So it may get almost as good as watching it rain on a particularly awful day?

 

[RK47]

The problem with high difficulty is that they scale up the HP more than anything else. It takes more bullets to kill things in Insane difficulty, making combat a very draggy affair. Once I realized which tech powers are more effective against certain types, the game wasn't that much interesting since ducking under cover and throwing magic missiles over and over worked too well.

The only time I died is when the AI actually TRIED to flank (10% of the time) or they mixed melee chargers with ranged support or the dude had so much HP that I got bored and didn't pay attention to dodging.

Not to mention the retarded squad AI taking cover behind a non-existent crate, forcing me to solo the boss with cover & magic missile spam.

 

[Monk]

It's a very entertaining game, but I couldn't disagree with many of the writer's points. I commented after the article that he's looking for ME2 that has features like Dragon Age (which he mentions at the end of the article), but I originally had a longer comment, that is, he might be looking for ME2 with more content like that of adventure games (more dialogue, more subplots, and varied ones, too, and more things to find and use in various places), a strategy/trading game (maps for particular planets, with colonies, trading outposts, and mineral sources, trading minerals, technology for using them, etc., and on the store level too, with more inventory and more devices to use, buy, and sell), a TPS or FPS with more destructible objects, combat scenarios, etc., more puzzles (besides the two types used in the game, and the return of omni-gel use if one no longer wants to hack manually), the return of the ME1 weapons and research options (and probably default, auto, or simple modes like that of ME2), etc. If so, that's certainly going to be a big game (something that combines three or four different types of games in one). Otherwise, as I wrote earlier, he probably just wants something like Dragon Age.

 

[Arcanoix]

"I think the writing, while not fantastic, is at least better than the original ME"

nO.

Example: In ME1, Ashley was a well rounded character who had different aspects of her character. Hell, they had the ballz to make her a racist yet make her the main love interest. She comes across as intelligent even if a little single minded.

In ME2, she comes across as a waste of space.

Technically shes not racist because shes allowed to hate. Although human, shes still black/mixed.

 

[Monk]

She'll probably come back in ME3. For ME2, they focused on Liara.