Mass Effect 2 - Scrambled @ The Brainy Gamer

Maybe it is not redefining anything but it just mix things , mixing is good.

I read some threads in the Developer's site and most people agree that it is a good game , given than most of us have bought a big number of crap ( as someone earlier said judging by photos on the box ) even without the hype it would be considered as a "worth it's money" game.
i never expect commercial sites (specially those with exclusives) to give bad ratings to any new title but i guess all those +90% were earned by what the game is and not for what it is not ; of course i don't expect for all reviewers /gamers to have the same idea of what a RPG is .
 
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IMO:

Whether ME2 is a shooter or something else, it's still an extremely commercial product with little or no creative skill on display in terms of original thinking, or game design.

It's based on a seemingly rigid formula that Bioware has been developing as a design blueprint for ages, and them simplifying and removing what they consider superfluous mechanics won't really make the game have a creative soul.

Every single character in the game seems based on some kind of hollow one-sided template that Bioware think they can keep doing, and I guess they're right. It'll take 2-3 more games before the fans of the series start recognizing the patterns and get tired of them. Non-fans, like myself, see them because we don't really get "taken in" by the cinematic experience.

It's a fine formulaic movie that you either get caught up in, or not. But a rich compelling game-experience? Certainly not to me. I don't play games to watch a movie and interact a bit and exhaust dialogue trees during emergencies. Such is the way in which players differ.

Ya its very formulaic.

Thing is i can see most people having fun on their first playthrough as i did, but then it dawns on you very quickly that there is really no discovery or mystery to be had in this game. Even the plot is ultra formulaic in that its more or less a rinse-repeat from M1.

In ME1 the Reapers indoctrinate Saren and the Geth.
In ME2 the Reapers indoctrinate the Collectors.

There is no material difference to the two stories. All they've done differently in ME2 is that most of the main plot missions/quests revolve around hiring and satisfying your squad. Now that would be okay if there was some depth to configuring your squad.

I preferred the system in ME1 where you carefully had to choose who to take on missions because you needed a Tech/hacking expert and a Biotics expert to balance out your team.

In mE1 thats been done away with. Hacking/tech stuff is handled by Shepard and the minigames. So you can pretty well pick any 2 squad members to take on a mission and it will have little effect on the outcome.

In ME2 it gets to a point where i feel its a single player shooter game, and your squad is there for cosemtic purposes and frankly most levels and maps could be completed by Shepard playing solo.
 
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My one caveat is the interrupt system which i think is an innovation. Being able to stop an NPC in mid-flow coversation is something i have wanted to do in many games before.
Speaking of interactive conversations — did you play Fahrenheit aka. Indigo Prophecy? Dialogues in that game, including everything else, were completely built around timed choices — interjections, rebuttals, giving the right answer … if you hesitated too long, the game would make a default choice for you (not always the best option). This was truly an interactive movie in every sense of the word. Awesome experience.
 
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My experience on the highest difficulty is vastly different. I strongly suggest going with a balanced squad there.

Other than that, I agree that it has been streamlined too much (as I've pointed out several times already). Still, I managed to replay it with every class except Engineer and Adept (don't really see the point after playing Infiltrator, Vanguard and Sentinel - combined, they have almost all the skills of the Engineer/Adept, in addition to superior combat abilities), and I've even played quite a lot on Hardcore/Insanity, so I can't complain about the replayvalue.

Then again, I am truly sci-fi starved. I doubt I'd play a fantasy RPG of ME2s quality as thoroughly as I have played ME2.
 
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Also i know there is alot of Miranda butt-love out there right now, but frankly i felt Bioware handled the sexiness in a really juvenile manner meant to titilate adolescents.

The bit where she asks you to help her sis for the loyalty quest is just silly because she asks the favour and then you get a close-up of her geneically mutated ass :)

Sorry but i dont mind being manipulated but does it have to be so obvious?
 
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Speaking of interactive conversations — did you play Fahrenheit aka. Indigo Prophecy? Dialogues in that game, including everything else, were completely built around timed choices — interjections, rebuttals, giving the right answer … if you hesitated too long, the game would make a default choice for you (not always the best option). This was truly an interactive movie in every sense of the word. Awesome experience.

I'm going to look that game up - never play it - but it sounds very interesting. Cheers for the heads up.
 
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Yeah, I remember that in Indigo Prophecy. I liked the mechanic quite a bit. It was similar to a real conversation, where you need to make a response in a certain amount of time, or people begin to look at you funny.

I'm pretty sure they'll have the same (or similar) mechanic in Heavy Rain, which is due out any time now. That's another game emphasizing the cinematic experience — as much or perhaps more than ME2. I personally like this approach, when it is done well. I'm big on story and stories told well, so movement towards "cinematic" approaches seems to me to be a movement toward better storytelling.
 
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My experience on the highest difficulty is vastly different. I strongly suggest going with a balanced squad there.

Other than that, I agree that it has been streamlined too much (as I've pointed out several times already). Still, I managed to replay it with every class except Engineer and Adept (don't really see the point after playing Infiltrator, Vanguard and Sentinel - combined, they have almost all the skills of the Engineer/Adept, in addition to superior combat abilities), and I've even played quite a lot on Hardcore/Insanity, so I can't complain about the replayvalue.

Then again, I am truly sci-fi starved. I doubt I'd play a fantasy RPG of ME2s quality as thoroughly as I have played ME2.

Well maybe it because i played insnaity using the soldier, and the adrenaline skill maxed out more or less gives you double-time whenever you want it. Well 75% dialtion which is a huge advantage.

However i have heard some of the other classes at insanity are quite weak builds with not alot of stopping power. But on insanity i found my sqaud even more useless as they seem to get killed alot. I stopped counting the amount of times i revived them at end of battle.

I agree about being sci-fi starved. Me too. I would die for a sort of Morrowind in space with an open ended galaxy of explorable planets, with large amount of factions/guilds giving quests literrally spanning lightyears in distances.

My dream game is a sort of Frontier/FFE space sim/ME/Morrowind combination. So this game would have both a space sim engine based on newtonian physics with planets on which you can land and carry out missions using a TPS engine.

I think a major breakthrough in gaming would be creating an engine or double engine which allows a reasonably realistic transition from space sim to land based TPS missions as in ME/ME2 with a squad.

I think this could be done using cloud cover on planets (like a film grain effect) so that there is a sort of glistening haziness which doesnt show you great detail from say 50,000 km out in space, but gets more defined as you get closer, then it switches to a halfway engine then to the ground based engine as touching down or docking etc..

Also I'd make the squad component super RPG like as in XCOM where your squad members only increase their skills by using them on missions. Health, accuracy, reactions etc...

Is this too ambitious? Probably but theres no harm in dreaming :)
 
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just to add, if Braben was able to make landable planets in Frontier and FFE in the 90s, then surely this can be done today with far nicer looking graphics.

I'd even put up with a loading pause when you get really close to landing which switches to the TPS engine. Perhaps that loading screen indicates a shielding phase as you hit the upper atmosphere.

I know i am obsessed by this idea of a game.
 
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However, on the flip-side - I don't understand people who can't appreciate that my hobby has been halfway ruined and we enthusiasts - even as the minority we clearly are - have been severely neglected. I don't expect sympathy or anything like that - just a measure of understanding.

In many ways, we're the "pioneers" of gaming - and our passion has made it flourish and spread. I don't expect gratitude either - but our existence is what made it happen in the first place, along with those who went on to develop the games themselves and sell them to us.

Yeah, and I have to admit that I have been guilty of that at times. I have ridiculed PC gamers as elitist, hypercritical, never satisfied, contemptuous of "dumbed down" console games, always harkening back to the "good old days" like grampas in rocking chairs decrying rock and roll music. Not on this forum so much (where I am badly outnumbered, lol), but on others.

I'm in my 40s, so I'm an older guy, but I only came to the hobby recently, and I've only played on consoles. So I'm not aware of the roots of the genre or the history of it. I read articles about it, but of course that's not the same thing as living through it and playing the games.

Anyhow, I've been unfair in my ridicule of PC gamers, too. I think you're right: it represents just another side of the same silly coin. It's something I ought to stop doing. You guys deserve more respect than that.
 
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Yeah, and I have to admit that I have been guilty of that at times. I have ridiculed PC gamers as elitist, hypercritical, never satisfied, contemptuous of "dumbed down" console games, always harkening back to the "good old days" like grampas in rocking chairs decrying rock and roll music. Not on this forum so much (where I am badly outnumbered, lol), but on others.

I'm in my 40s, so I'm an older guy, but I only came to the hobby recently, and I've only played on consoles. So I'm not aware of the roots of the genre or the history of it. I read articles about it, but of course that's not the same thing as living through it and playing the games.

Anyhow, I've been unfair in my ridicule of PC gamers, too. I think you're right: it represents just another side of the same silly coin. It's something I ought to stop doing. You guys deserve more respect than that.

What a pleasant post, and I'm glad we can come to an understanding like this.

Truly, there's no good or bad guy in all of this, except perhaps for the motivation driving AAA development - but that's my own subjective point of view.

;)
 
Too bad the spacesim genre has all but disappeared.

I think its dissapeared because almost no space sim game offers you the variety of getting your feet dirty with TPS/FPS missions.

I'd make it less combat style space sim, and more sort of lifestyle based - if that makes any sense. While it needs an autopilot and time dilation feature so one can be instantaneously transported to a destination light years away (read console owners), the option should be there to interact with your own spaceship, whether its communications, reading detailed profiles on potential recruits for your commando sqaud, reading newspapers with different opinions on the same events in the game universe (which was really well done in FFE), checking trading prices at your destination, talking to your crew, relationships etc...
 
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I think its dissapeared because almost no space sim game offers you the variety of getting your feet dirty with TPS/FPS missions.

I'd make it less combat style space sim, and more sort of lifestyle based - if that makes any sense. While it needs an autopilot and time dilation feature so one can be instantaneously transported to a destination light years away (read console owners), the option should be there to interact with your own spaceship, whether its communications, reading detailed profiles on potential recruits for your commando sqaud, reading newspapers with different opinions on the same events in the game universe (which was really well done in FFE), checking trading prices at your destination, talking to your crew, relationships etc…

As much as I'd love more games like that, I'm afraid it's an enthusiast subgenre that only a small portion of gamers would truly appreciate.

The same thing has become true for adventure games.

I have ideas on how to create the ultimate "System Shock" which would represent a gigantic leap forward for the genre, but no one will ever make it - because it's way too risky an investment.

It's just the way it is.
 
As much as I'd love more games like that, I'm afraid it's an enthusiast subgenre that only a small portion of gamers would truly appreciate.

The same thing has become true for adventure games.

I have ideas on how to create the ultimate "System Shock" which would represent a gigantic leap forward for the genre, but no one will ever make it - because it's way too risky an investment.

It's just the way it is.

A new system shock would be wicked :) I'd buy it.
 
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