Posted May 20, 2018
So, a couple of days ago I finally finished Mass Effect 2 on PS3. I did a Paragon run on normal difficulty as default soldier Shepard. It was of course very good but frankly I very much preferred the first game.
While I guess that ME2 is generally the more polished game there were tons of little and some major things that kinda annoyed me about it. I guess my biggest gripe was the highly streamlined structure. I really didn't like that the whole game is just preparation for the final mission and you follow a very specific pattern which is, in my opinion, further made worse by the strict separation into combat-free hubs and missions. It made the whole thing feel very artificial. And while I understand their decision to scrap the exploration of uncharted planets with the Mako, which really was mediocre filler content in the first game, they pretty much sacrificed that feeling of grandeur that defined the first game. In ME2 I didn't feel like I'm exploring that vast universe anymore, I didn't quite feel the scale of the story. Things really felt pretty small and personal this time which has its upsides but wasn't that great for me personally, especially because that put more weight on the writing and characters and frankly they aren't entirely my taste in Mass Effect.
Oh yeah, and I really wasn't a fan of the progression system. The research system was unnecessarily convoluted and unrewarding at the same time. Especially the loot system is kinda absurd. Admittedly the first game had you spend too much time managing the equipment of your whole squad but in ME2 I didn't really feel like there was any kind of progress weapon-wise, especially because weapon parameters were conveyed very vaguely through lengthy text descriptions. It seems like getting better armour can only be done by buying DLC and then you have it all along, dafuck. And then there's the, in my opinion, much worse and super generic zimmerish soundtrack and finally the lack of a good villain. Sigh.
And yet, I still liked it. Combat was a lot better than in the first game, the writing was decent, graphics have improved (although the PS3 version looks really shitty now and runs crappily at that). I hope that ME3 will be more up my alley, though.
And half an hour ago I finished GoldenEye 007: Reloaded, also on PS3. Being the dumbass I am I played on Agent difficulty which means that the game was ridiculously easy most of the time (screw the developers, though, for not making it clear which difficulty level is the "normal" one for frigg's sake). I was very positively surprised at first. Pretty good graphics and really smooth performance for a PS3 game, the gunplay also seemed pretty good at first and it has really great original soundtrack by David Arnold. It actually almost appeared to compete with Call of Duty's singleplayer campaigns. Over time the game really begins to show its ugly face, though. The stealth mechanics are very simplistic, of course, as is the combat and the game soon begins to feel very repetitive - even the soundtrack doesn't seem to change at all over the course of the game. The only thing mixing things up are the secondary objectives of which, like in the original N64 game, there's more on higher difficulty levels. So on agent I didn't have many of those and they were actually all optional so they really don't affect the game all that much and in the end they are frankly just an annoyance that keeps you from going ahead as you look for the objects to take pictures of or to hack. What really really sucks, though, is that cover is pretty messed up in the game. Especially towards the end there's tons of objects which seem to hide you entirely if crouched but enemies are still able to hit you. That's some seriously amateur bullshit. And the aiming is seriously off. There's some smoothing that makes manual aiming very shitty. There's target assistance like in the CoD games that automatically puts your crosshair on enemies when you raise your aim sight but it's almost impossible to hit moving enemies this way. Also the blood effect that reflects your health is one of the worst ones I've ever seen as it's rather subtle and it's really hard to tell when you're about to die. Oh, and it has some really shitty QTE sequences. And finally the "reimaginings" of the characters from the movie are pretty lame. These versions of Alec and Xenia are just pathetic and Boris Grishenko was removed entirely. Man, that sucks.
Still, it wasn't really that bad. I had some fun, occasionally the stealthy approach felt really satisfying and generally mowing down bad guys to Arnold's music was fun. I might have enjoyed it more on a higher difficulty level with more of a challenge and more objectives, alas, the game really isn't worth another playthrough.
While I guess that ME2 is generally the more polished game there were tons of little and some major things that kinda annoyed me about it. I guess my biggest gripe was the highly streamlined structure. I really didn't like that the whole game is just preparation for the final mission and you follow a very specific pattern which is, in my opinion, further made worse by the strict separation into combat-free hubs and missions. It made the whole thing feel very artificial. And while I understand their decision to scrap the exploration of uncharted planets with the Mako, which really was mediocre filler content in the first game, they pretty much sacrificed that feeling of grandeur that defined the first game. In ME2 I didn't feel like I'm exploring that vast universe anymore, I didn't quite feel the scale of the story. Things really felt pretty small and personal this time which has its upsides but wasn't that great for me personally, especially because that put more weight on the writing and characters and frankly they aren't entirely my taste in Mass Effect.
Oh yeah, and I really wasn't a fan of the progression system. The research system was unnecessarily convoluted and unrewarding at the same time. Especially the loot system is kinda absurd. Admittedly the first game had you spend too much time managing the equipment of your whole squad but in ME2 I didn't really feel like there was any kind of progress weapon-wise, especially because weapon parameters were conveyed very vaguely through lengthy text descriptions. It seems like getting better armour can only be done by buying DLC and then you have it all along, dafuck. And then there's the, in my opinion, much worse and super generic zimmerish soundtrack and finally the lack of a good villain. Sigh.
And yet, I still liked it. Combat was a lot better than in the first game, the writing was decent, graphics have improved (although the PS3 version looks really shitty now and runs crappily at that). I hope that ME3 will be more up my alley, though.
And half an hour ago I finished GoldenEye 007: Reloaded, also on PS3. Being the dumbass I am I played on Agent difficulty which means that the game was ridiculously easy most of the time (screw the developers, though, for not making it clear which difficulty level is the "normal" one for frigg's sake). I was very positively surprised at first. Pretty good graphics and really smooth performance for a PS3 game, the gunplay also seemed pretty good at first and it has really great original soundtrack by David Arnold. It actually almost appeared to compete with Call of Duty's singleplayer campaigns. Over time the game really begins to show its ugly face, though. The stealth mechanics are very simplistic, of course, as is the combat and the game soon begins to feel very repetitive - even the soundtrack doesn't seem to change at all over the course of the game. The only thing mixing things up are the secondary objectives of which, like in the original N64 game, there's more on higher difficulty levels. So on agent I didn't have many of those and they were actually all optional so they really don't affect the game all that much and in the end they are frankly just an annoyance that keeps you from going ahead as you look for the objects to take pictures of or to hack. What really really sucks, though, is that cover is pretty messed up in the game. Especially towards the end there's tons of objects which seem to hide you entirely if crouched but enemies are still able to hit you. That's some seriously amateur bullshit. And the aiming is seriously off. There's some smoothing that makes manual aiming very shitty. There's target assistance like in the CoD games that automatically puts your crosshair on enemies when you raise your aim sight but it's almost impossible to hit moving enemies this way. Also the blood effect that reflects your health is one of the worst ones I've ever seen as it's rather subtle and it's really hard to tell when you're about to die. Oh, and it has some really shitty QTE sequences. And finally the "reimaginings" of the characters from the movie are pretty lame. These versions of Alec and Xenia are just pathetic and Boris Grishenko was removed entirely. Man, that sucks.
Still, it wasn't really that bad. I had some fun, occasionally the stealthy approach felt really satisfying and generally mowing down bad guys to Arnold's music was fun. I might have enjoyed it more on a higher difficulty level with more of a challenge and more objectives, alas, the game really isn't worth another playthrough.
