Post by Farulosonoth on Sept 27, 2010 10:13:31 GMT -5
Mass Effect 2 is an open ended RPG set in the not too distant, but distant enough to have interstellar travel and all that good SCI-FI stuff future. If you’ve played the first Mass Effect, your in for more of the same solid game play that you found in the first one. If you haven’t, your still in for some solid game play.
I actually consider (as well should you) the Mass Effect’s more of a combination of genre’s. It’s really a Shooter/RPG. Not too long ago, simply saying something was an RPG automatically inferred some things about it. For example, it has turn based combat, probably levels are involved, improving your gear is quite possibly in there, and the combat is more tactical than twitchy. There was also the “Adventure” which was more about the story than character advancement, you might get better weapons or armor but it wasn’t a key part of the game.
All that being said, Mass Effect combines many of those elements : Character Advancement (Through Levels and Equipment), Story, etc... The combat however is “over the shoulder” 3rd person. This is basically just like 1st person but you can see your guys head, shoulder, and weapon. It is actually quite satisfying as you get the precision of 1st person with the fun factor of being able to see how cool your character looks while he runs around and kills things at the same time.
Even if you are not a big fan of shooters, I would still recommend this game as the story is very good as well as the production values. The voice acting is better than your likely to see in most Video Games. Also unlike most shooters you can control 2 other members in your group or squad and most of them have special abilities almost like spells (or you can too depending on your class) that you can pause the game and target manually. This adds to the strategy of the fights even with them being shoot outs.
I am certainly the last person you will hear saying to try a game because of its graphics, I am fully in the camp of “screw the graphics and focus on gameplay”. However, Mass Effect 2’s graphics are pretty damn good, even for a current generation console, and I don’t really think the gameplay suffered much, if at all. You can tell graphics were not their only concern.
Sound effects were again very good. The music was excellent and audible cues during missions could actually effect your gameplay (i.e. hearing sounds of enemies and knowing that you can’t relax your guard just yet.) When a game takes the time to do things like that, I take notice.
Whether or not your familiar with the franchise, the Mass Effect franchise borrows heavily from Star Control II. The main differences being : Smaller universe to explore, more focus on combat missions as opposed to exploration and discovery, shorter game completion time, no ship combat (player controlled at least) and others. For sure, the Mass Effect's are more shooter oriented than RPG oriented as opposed to Star Control II. So far spanning the first 2 games of the series, you can see various things that they tried to incorporate and I can guarantee that people who had a major hand in creating ME1 and ME2, have played Star Controll 2. The tracked planetary vehicle from ME1 and the Solar System navigation in ME2 are as clear as day direct present time versions of their SC2 counterparts.
Ok, now that I got that out of my system, let me just conclude by saying Mass Effect 2 is a very good RPG/Shooter/Adventure game with a great story and plenty of background “fluff” to read and flesh out the universe with via the in-game "codex". The gameplay is easy to learn but takes time to master. The story, graphics and sound are all good, and the series itself is heavily influenced by Star Control II. I would recommend this game to anyone who asks about it.
Farulosonoth’s score : 5 pieces of the rod of 7 parts. Maybe 5 and a clue to where the 6th is.
I actually consider (as well should you) the Mass Effect’s more of a combination of genre’s. It’s really a Shooter/RPG. Not too long ago, simply saying something was an RPG automatically inferred some things about it. For example, it has turn based combat, probably levels are involved, improving your gear is quite possibly in there, and the combat is more tactical than twitchy. There was also the “Adventure” which was more about the story than character advancement, you might get better weapons or armor but it wasn’t a key part of the game.
All that being said, Mass Effect combines many of those elements : Character Advancement (Through Levels and Equipment), Story, etc... The combat however is “over the shoulder” 3rd person. This is basically just like 1st person but you can see your guys head, shoulder, and weapon. It is actually quite satisfying as you get the precision of 1st person with the fun factor of being able to see how cool your character looks while he runs around and kills things at the same time.
Even if you are not a big fan of shooters, I would still recommend this game as the story is very good as well as the production values. The voice acting is better than your likely to see in most Video Games. Also unlike most shooters you can control 2 other members in your group or squad and most of them have special abilities almost like spells (or you can too depending on your class) that you can pause the game and target manually. This adds to the strategy of the fights even with them being shoot outs.
I am certainly the last person you will hear saying to try a game because of its graphics, I am fully in the camp of “screw the graphics and focus on gameplay”. However, Mass Effect 2’s graphics are pretty damn good, even for a current generation console, and I don’t really think the gameplay suffered much, if at all. You can tell graphics were not their only concern.
Sound effects were again very good. The music was excellent and audible cues during missions could actually effect your gameplay (i.e. hearing sounds of enemies and knowing that you can’t relax your guard just yet.) When a game takes the time to do things like that, I take notice.
Whether or not your familiar with the franchise, the Mass Effect franchise borrows heavily from Star Control II. The main differences being : Smaller universe to explore, more focus on combat missions as opposed to exploration and discovery, shorter game completion time, no ship combat (player controlled at least) and others. For sure, the Mass Effect's are more shooter oriented than RPG oriented as opposed to Star Control II. So far spanning the first 2 games of the series, you can see various things that they tried to incorporate and I can guarantee that people who had a major hand in creating ME1 and ME2, have played Star Controll 2. The tracked planetary vehicle from ME1 and the Solar System navigation in ME2 are as clear as day direct present time versions of their SC2 counterparts.
Ok, now that I got that out of my system, let me just conclude by saying Mass Effect 2 is a very good RPG/Shooter/Adventure game with a great story and plenty of background “fluff” to read and flesh out the universe with via the in-game "codex". The gameplay is easy to learn but takes time to master. The story, graphics and sound are all good, and the series itself is heavily influenced by Star Control II. I would recommend this game to anyone who asks about it.
Farulosonoth’s score : 5 pieces of the rod of 7 parts. Maybe 5 and a clue to where the 6th is.