Since buying Mass Effect 2, it’s been the one game to solely consume my Xbox’ disc tray, which is why there’s been a distinct lack of chatter around here to do with anything other than Mass Effect 2. Hardly surprising, though, given it’s the much awaited sequel to one of my favourite 360 games to date. Even with its lengthy story (I’m currently 40 hours in and still have quite a few missions left/planets undiscovered), there’s rarely a moment my interest wavers and it doesn’t grasp 100% of my attention. Since it’s been available for a couple of months now, you’ve probably made your mind up as to whether you’re going to play it or not (and if you haven’t, the answer is yes, you do want to play it). Because of that, I’ll summarise my likes and dislikes as opposed to a full blown review.
Likes
Commander Shepard. Bioware did good by enabling those of us who had played the original to port our character over, but they stepped it up a notch by having all choices made in the original Mass Effect stored, thus certain aspects of Mass Effect 2 changing dependent on those. Not only that, but they reward those who have ported their character over with a little boost to stats. Bringing over a Level 54 Adept set me up at Level 3.
The original cast. It was nice to see familiar faces crop up in Mass Effect 2, even if recruiting most of them isn’t an option.
Romance plots. While the romance plots seem a little shallow, the option to forge relationships with members of your crew does appear to be there (although I’ve yet to have any raunchy sex scenes). I’ve been pursuing Miranda, and the attraction seems to be reciprocated. I also got drunk with the ship’s Doctor, but that didn’t seem to get me anywhere…
As always with a game that spans many hours, I like to geek out and share my initial stats and early progress status; details such as character class, level, hours spanned, and anything else worth mentioning.
With Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, there is only one character you can command as the story’s protagonist, and that character is Lieutenant Commander Shepard (with varying degrees of customisation available). Thanks to the efficient devs at Bioware, Mass Effect 2 easily enables you to import a previous character from Mass Effect, with all previous plot and dialogue choices having been cached. I ported my second character, Chris Shepard, which in return gave me a nice boost to my stats. Thanks, Bioware!
On to the intel…
Chris Shepard is a level 8 Adept, an apathetic bastard who, given the choice, will usually go for the Renegade option in both dialogue and action. He was level 53 in my original playthrough of Mass Effect, which rounded his stats at Level 3 when I ported him to Mass Effect 2. A nice boost for jumping in on Insanity difficulty (which, so far, hasn’t been too insane).
Please note that as this is a recording of the majority of Mass Effect 2’s opening sequence, you must watch at your own discretion. If you wish to play with minimal spoilers, then do not watch.
Okay, so I told y’all (I really can’t get away with saying that what with my Scottishness) that I’d be whoring Dragon Age: Origins up until Mass Effect 2’s release, which is now only a mere 8 days away. Well, work and life are doing what they do best and getting in the way of some serious gaming, so I haven’t played as much of it as I would have hoped. I’m about 30 hours in, however, which has given me a good enough feel of the game to share my initial impressions. 30 hours in and this is initial impressions? I hear you cry. Yep, it’s the crazy, nonsensical world of Role Playing Games.
The Devil Is In The Details
In my eyes, a significant portion of what accounts towards a successful RPG is the detail. The devil really is in the details, and the sheer scope of thought that goes into forming the foundations of the world you’ll be spending so much time in never ceases to amaze me. My Dragon Age: Origins adventure as a City Elf, Buddeigh (do you see what I did there? Huh? Female Buddy the Elf?), is currently sitting at the 30 hour mark, yet I still find myself often overwhelmed as I navigate through a deeply rich and scripted world.
2009 was to be the year my concentration for gaming dwindled to a considerable low. People say that gaming is a hobby you inevitably grow out off, but the fact I returned to it on my 19th birthday after a 4 year hiatus, and have since spent a lot of time doing, proved to be the opposite for myself. However, something odd has happened to me over the past 12 months, and I find myself notably less excited about gaming than I ever have been. Where did it go wrong, and why?
On January 25th, my birthday, I found myself having “the talk” with a guy I was seeing. You know the talk, the awkward one where you’re furtively investigating how serious you’ve become, whether you’ve made the leap to exclusivity or are still seeing other people. For whatever reason, having a boyfriend who didn’t game meant that I also paid less attention to my Xbox, especially as only a few months earlier I had finished with a guy who was as big a gamer as I. It was at this point I was playing Skate 2, the follow-up to one of my favourite games of 2007.
Skate 2 was meant to have me as hooked as the original, especially as Black Box had done a great job of building on and improving the foundations of Skate. Somehow it failed to be the game that had me itching to finish work just so I could freeskate around San Vanelona, which was odd as it was undoubtedly an improvement over the original. It wasn’t logical… I loved the original, and now I was playing an improved version of that, so there really should have been no reason I was struggling to get excited about Skate 2. Yet I was. Even though I had put my inability of getting hooked on Skate 2 as a direct result of my new relationship, it was to set the unfortunate tone for the coming year.
I didn’t see this coming, but one of my favourite games (and a bit of an older title), Mass Effect, has just had 150 G’s added to the total, bringing it up to 1200. Considering how long Mass Effect has been out, it feels the news of impending DLC is completely out of the blue. Having said that, I figured it was always odd having the total ME Achievements sitting at 1050 G’s.
Funnily enough, I’ve been pestering myself to go back to Mass Effect; I think that’s one game I’ll never get bored of, considering every playthrough unfolds differently. Referring to my recent rant about DLC Achievements, this is one game I welcome any new missions on. It’s just so freakin’ awesome!
And on that note, if you’ve yet to hop aboard the Normandy, now seems the perfect time to do so. New missions coupled with Mass Effect hitting Games on Demand? No excuse not to.
I actually stole this from my friend, Mr Havros. I’m sure he won’t mind what with him being a generous chap and all. Anyway, sometimes people come across my site by searching for a specific answer via Google. I’m sure they rarely get the answer they’re looking for from my site, and being the helpful little lady I am, well I figured I’d respond in a much more targeted manner here.
The last game I completed was Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. Before that it was Mass Effect. Prior to that I finished Eternal Sonata for the second time, and previous to that, I put 110 hours into Lost Odyssey. Currently I’m nearing finishing Mass Effect for a second time (racing my best friend to 1000 points… and currently winning!), and next on my agenda is Fable II. Four out of those five games I’ve mentioned are RPGs!
I’ve so far spent 33 hours commandeering the Normandy and landing on uncharted galaxies, wracking up those Paragon points and reprising my role as the finest Soldier in the Alliance. I am, at the time of writing, a Level 50 Soldier, Colonist, a Sole Survivor, and have just embarked on my second play-through where I plan on being the bitch, otherwise known as Renegade (it makes far more sense; I’d be cold, heartless, and full of resentment too if my entire family was slaughtered on Mindoir).
From as far back as I can remember I’ve had a gross dislike towards anything space related. My ex was fixated on the genre, and often I’d have to sit through episodes of Battlestar Gallactica, completely depressed and cursing myself for not investing in a second TV for the bedroom. Then there’s movies. The only sc-fi movie I’ve ever been able to stomach - and actually rather enjoyed - was 2001: A Space Odyssey, but only because I had to write an essay on it for college, otherwise I would never have given it a look-in. Unfortunately, my dislike towards anything space related even extends to video games. When people talk about KOTOR and what an accomplishment it was, all I can think about is the hugely uninspiring environment I would find myself playing in. I couldn’t even bring myself to finish Lego Star Wars! (more…)
I don’t mean to jump the gun here, especially as I only booted Alan Wake up this evening, but I’m pretty certain it has been worth the wait. In case you didn’t know, Alan Wake has been milling around the Xboxsphere since the launch in 2005, victim to many delays and a significant lack of updates.
Games that are in development for a long time are, in my opinion, typically underwhelming. Prey, which was in development for 11 years, was rubbish (IMO). It certainly lacked the quality you’d expect from a game that had been at the centre of such TLC for a long time, and it failed to grab my attention enough to even finish the game. Too Human, while I never played it, was released to a mixed bag of reviews after a decade in development.
It seems that games that have been in development for lengthy periods of time are naturally met with high expectations, but rarely live up to these expectations. I think Alan Wake is different.
I don’t have anything derogatory to say about Alan Wake. My advice to you? Spend a night in Bright Falls and soak up the eerie atmosphere. Alan Wake excels at thrilling you psychologically. Which is why it’s called a psychological thriller, I guess…
I don’t have anything derogatory to say about Alan Wake. My advice to you? Spend a night in Bright Falls and soak up the eerie atmosphere. Alan Wake excels at thrilling you psychologically. Which is why it’s called a psychological thriller, I guess…
