It's a semantic issue, I believe. When someone says a game is a first-person shooter, I, not unreasonably, immediately assume that the game in question is a shooter that is portayed from the first perspective, that is, the screen shows what the character you are controlling is seeing. If the character can see itself, we're talking about third persperctive.

Sorry if I'm coming across as OCD-ish, but I bump into this all the time and it's bugging the living arse out of me. Also, I don't think ME2 was a particularly good shooter if not an appallingly bad one, but that's beside my point.

A fair point, I'll concede to that. Explicitly marking them (like renegade and paragon options) would not be a bad idea at all.

Only two things besides maybe graphics were better in ME2 compared to the first one. No mako in Mass Effect 2 and much better side planets. (rather have small linear areas than huge empty outside places with the same recycled indoor areas over and over)

Story, gameplay everything else was better in ME one to me.

Oups you are right. ! It is a TPS. Third Person Shooter.
I forget the TPS / FPS difference, because ME and ME2 were the first TPS I ever played. I did not like any of the other.

Reminds me on the debate on whether M&B was a First Person Shooter or not. I think I read it was a FPS : First Person Slasher.

Genre labels are quickly becoming pointless, really. Is ME a shooter? RPG? Adventure game? Who knows? Who cares?

I think it might be cool if they added some ship to ship combat parts into ME, could ruin it if they cock it up though I suppose!
Also the female Shepard in ME2 had odd eyes didn't you think?

The ending in ME1 was epic in all regards. It elevated what was a mundane, boring, occasionally pretty, endevour into a memorable experience. I chuckled to myself in delight walking up that 'thing' ;)



I massively preferred ME2, simply because there was this urgency to it that was often missing in ME1. I think the slow exploratory nature of planet exploring put the brakes on the entire overarching storyline. This was in part the makio's falut. As a racing fan, the dire handling and terminally bad floaty feel killed all happiness when driving that bastard thing. Of ocurse, ME2 planet exploring can be slow, but only on a console. A 1000 dpi mouse can make short work of mining a planet completely, scanning upgraded is quicker. Bioware patched the scanning too, making the process less tedious.

In my thinking, being a former (dead) galactic hero shunned by the galaxy then responsible for saving that same galaxy was much more fulfilling.

I also appreciated the much improved GFX in ME2. The UE3 engine in ME1 was implemented haphazardly, the texture streaming delay coupled with weirdly casted shadows off putted me.