On a happy note I got AC2 for Christmas. On a not so happy note I wanted to finish AC before playing AC2, but I have not played it for a couple of months and now I don't remember the the keys so well and I always die or take hours to fight a couple of enemies and it's no fun and as far as I can tell there's no quick-tutorial and I hate when that happens.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
I am not judging every aspect of the entire series- merely its central theme (and like I said, it doesn't matter what the reason for it is; targeted murder is still wrong). The clue is in the title; I am not wrong here unless you can tell me there are no assassinations in the other games. I won't enjoy the other games for the same reason, no matter how technically good they are. That's just how it is. And I know a lot of other people enjoy violence/killing in games, and that's fine. I just don't.
I never knew that about you.
You old Paladin, you.
Yeah; I am hopeless at role-playing bad guys as well. Some of my friends love taking the evil role (one has the view that the whole point of RPing is to explore things that you would never be in real life, which is fair enough) but I can never do it. I spent the whole of a ten year Vampire game- the birthplace of the new wave modern, gritty, morally-confused angst gaming of the 90s- and spent the whole time refusing to kill anyone, which had others in hysterics.
I have a friend who is the same way.
In WoW he plays a Paladin and he gets upset when the game has him do anything that could be seen as evil - killing innocents and what not. Or simply helping those who might be evil bothers him.
And in tabletop RP games he's the same as you.
But your lawful goodness makes me wonder, in Mass Effect 2 did you do the little quick time thingies for the renegade roll that would pop up every now and again?
Nah, just the nice guy ones. Talking of those- nice idea, but they force you to keep your hand on the controller during cutscenes; I prefer to relax during those. I am wary of blurring the distinction between gameplay and exposition.
Also, in ME2 I was very put out on the Garrus recruitment mission where you have to turn against the mercs you join up with and shoot them in the back mid-mission (with the intention of doing so from the start). Unusually for ME, there is no other option presented.
I was always under the impression that Mass Effect was a much finer series then how it's being described by people in this thread. I've seen it being referred to as one of the best games of all time and something truly profound, and a genuinely great Sci-Fi epic. I had pretty high expectations for the series actually. Is the general concensus here that it's largely overrated?
I suppose literally I would have to say it is overrated, but I wouldn't want that to put you off playing; it's still a good game. But its flaws are there, and I do think its playing scope- these confined square areas that you can never explore beyond- are very dated now in these days of Elder Scrolls and Assassin's Creed etc. Not to mention the way the outside world works in MMOs. Where gameplay takes place in Mass Effect (and Dragon Age) is basically just a prettier version of what we had years ago in KOTOR, and that in turn was just a 3d version of Baldur's Gate. They have to broaden their vision there.
Originally posted by TOMALURH
I was always under the impression that Mass Effect was a much finer series then how it's being described by people in this thread. I've seen it being referred to as one of the best games of all time and something truly profound, and a genuinely great Sci-Fi epic. I had pretty high expectations for the series actually. Is the general concensus here that it's largely overrated?
I'm probably one of the people who hyped it up so much, and I do think that the game is one of the most enjoyable games I've played this generation. Doesn't mean you can't recognize flaws in it.
It's worth playing just for the characters alone, they are round and fleshed out really well and talking to them is great fun. The universe has a lot of lore to it as well and it's easy to get into the setting and lose yourself.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
I suppose literally I would have to say it is overrated, but I wouldn't want that to put you off playing; it's still a good game. But its flaws are there, and I do think its playing scope- these confined square areas that you can never explore beyond- are very dated now in these days of Elder Scrolls and Assassin's Creed etc. Not to mention the way the outside world works in MMOs. Where gameplay takes place in Mass Effect (and Dragon Age) is basically just a prettier version of what we had years ago in KOTOR, and that in turn was just a 3d version of Baldur's Gate. They have to broaden their vision there.
Hmm, what about its storyline? That was the primary reason I was planning to play the game for so if its storyline is legitimately great I'd be able to put up with any gameplay shortcomings it may possess.
Well I always thought people overrated Bioware storylines- I loved Baldur's Gate but KOTOR was definitely overrated there. As I mention in my review, we have an unoriginal setting and a very formulaic story (BF is right about the character quality though). Still, story enjoyment is so personal you may be 100% satisfied there.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Yeah; I am hopeless at role-playing bad guys as well. Some of my friends love taking the evil role (one has the view that the whole point of RPing is to explore things that you would never be in real life, which is fair enough) but I can never do it. I spent the whole of a ten year Vampire game- the birthplace of the new wave modern, gritty, morally-confused angst gaming of the 90s- and spent the whole time refusing to kill anyone, which had others in hysterics.
And yet you have no problems in throwing us into horrendously evil situations of the sort that make us want to kill you...😛
What with real life and what-not, not just my posting time but also my gaming time has been reduced over the last two years. However, in some kind of gaming frenzy I spent a certain amount of time during my holiday this summer rotating between five different MMOs (or MMO-style games) of various qualities until I forced myself virtually to stop as it was getting silly. I'm not much of an MMO player, generally speaking, so this was an interesting experience and I wanted to share my thoughts on the five.
Before I do that, though, I'll just post some mini-reviews on some of the games I played in the last two years that I thought were worthy of comment. As ever, this is all PC and Nintendo stuff as the general console market isn't my area.
THE OTHER ASSASSIN'S CREED GAMES (before AC3, anyway)
Only mentioned as I seemed to be arguing about them two years ago.
Yeah- they were pretty good. I don't feel I wasted my money on them... actually, maybe Revelations a bit as a. it was getting rather repetitive by then and b. I wanted Altair to get a better presence than he did; I was envisaging an entire Altair campaign in there set in an earlier version of Constantinople. Ah well. So, not really my sorts of games but the basic quality of the gameplay shines through. Oh, and this is no great revelation, but AC2 is very good example of what a decent sequel should do in building upon the original. I'm really not a fan of the modern day framing, though.
I'll give the series a 7/10 for good gameplay design. It's worth more than that if you can get 'into' the series in a way that I really can't.
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As an additional note- I never played Mass Effect 3. At first this is because I couldn't be bothered to install Origin, but more and more as time goes by I just have this general feel that I don't really care that much about it all, especially as it got further away from the Baldur's Gate mechanic style in 2 and more towards an arcade game. If it ends up on Steam and on sale one day, I'm sure I'll give it a shake but, especially with my time limited, I feel no great desire to pursue it.
DRAGON AGE
It seems I never got around to reviewing this at the time. In brief then:
Ok, fair enough, it's big and there's lots to do. A few problems for me, though. First of all, they've tried to create a dark atmosphere with some clear Game of Thrones inspiration, but Game of Thrones it ain't, and I was really bored by the midway point.
Secondly- the old level scaling problem hit. Everywhere you went was scaled to your level, and this was particularly annoying because it meant certain sorts of monsters just got levelled up as time went by, which removed my immersion in the world as my idea of 'x monster represents y danger' gets buggered up; when I am twice as powerful I expect to find monster x half as hard to kill but they just kept pace with me. I still think level scaling of this kind is the laziest way of making open world content work, and one of the advantages of MMOs is that their basic design completely forbids that type of scaling, removing the issue.
Thirdly, and I think this is a widel recognised issue, the game balance is completely off-kilter in favour of magic.
I'll give Dragon Age a 7 as well because it deserves credit for the attention to detail and what-not. However, when DA2 got a lukewarm response, my general weariness with the original killed any interest in trying that.