Board 8 > Contest convinced me to play Mass Effect 2. Wow...

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just did Kasumi's loyalty mission and have most of my crew (Miranda Jacob Kasumi Garrus Mordin Jack)

tl;dr Great game that runs like a fucking abominable nightmare

Some initial thoughts:

- Writing is rock solid. It's supposed to be this game's strong suit and I'm glad to see that's correct. Every interaction, from talking to your squad mates to some random guy on the street, has some meat on its bones and doesn't sound cliched or hackneyed.

- Shepard sounds like a dork and always seems nonplussed about everything. I hear Jennifer Hale does a better job as femShepard and I'm starting to wish I'd played as a woman

- I like that at least at the beginning, the game gives you a long leash. A space game with an entire galaxy to explore having a linear critical path wouldn't make sense and I'm glad they got the memo.

- I heard a lot of grumbling about the planet scanning back in the day, but I kinda like it. It's vaguely meditative and helps me wind down from a stressful mission.

- There's some cool locales in the game so far, like the strip club on Omega or the high status party you attend on Kasumi's mission.

- I hate binary moral choice systems because not only do they put games at the moral intelligence level of Shadow the Hedgehog, but they always incentivize you to go all-in on one option to get the best perks; being wishy-washy doesn't help much even if it makes sense on an encounter to encounter basis. That's on top of the fact that I hate that pragmatism is often coded as the 'bad' choice, especially in this game where the renegade options are often not even that dickish (although a lot of them ARE and playing this way makes me wonder how Shepard commands any loyalty at all; I'd have kicked him out of the nearest airlock). Still, in the annals of games with this moral choice bullshit I consider ME to be one of the least offensive examples; unlike something like inFamous, there isn't a ridiculous gulf between being a dick and being a civilized human being, and there's enough leeway here to cheat on alignment every so often.

So far, so positive, right? But here's the two big gut punches against this game:

- the actual gunplay is... okay. Just okay. It's VERY much a product of its time, and no amount of wacky scifi powers can distract from the fact that at its core, this is a stiff ass cover based shooter. Emphasis on stiff. Shepard runs around with a broom up his ass and sometimes pops out of cover for literally no reason, on top of sometimes refusing to believe he can actually use a perfectly good bit of wall as cover. Uncharted 2 came out around the same time as this game and was infinitely more fluid than this.

- THE PERFORMANCE. What in the FUCK? I'm playing the PS3 version, and this is almost a deal breaker, no exaggeration. It's not JUST the fact that this game runs at like 10 fps. That by itself would be obnoxious. But this shit stutters all the time, there's massive freezes all over the place, audio randomly desynchs or just drops in cutscenes, scene transitions make the game puke on itself, there's pop-in all over the place, and not to mention the looooaaaadiiiiiing, somehow needing 30 seconds to load a single floor on Shepard's barely decorated ship. Every time I walk into a new section of the game I'm worried it's gonna crash or internally melt my PS3. After some research it seems like the PS3 version isn't even considered 'that bad of a port'. What?! If I wasn't dedicated to playing this 'legendary' game I would have dropped it seven hours ago, no joke. I'm starting to see why there's no current gen port, Idk how you salvage this dumpster fire.

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I don't remember it running that bad on the PS3 back in the day. Granted it was before I started PC gaming too, and that mutli-platform games almost always ran worse on the PS3. Long load screens yes.

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MechanicalWall posted...

I'd have kicked him out of the nearest airlock

There's a particular ME3 squadmate who would appreciate you

MechanicalWall posted...

- the actual gunplay is... okay. Just okay. It's VERY much a product of its time, and no amount of wacky scifi powers can distract from the fact that at its core, this is a stiff ass cover based shooter. Emphasis on stiff. Shepard runs around with a broom up his ass and sometimes pops out of cover for literally no reason, on top of sometimes refusing to believe he can actually use a perfectly good bit of wall as cover. Uncharted 2 came out around the same time as this game and was infinitely more fluid than this.

Which class are you playing?

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And yeah I remember some of the performance issues you're describing but not all of them and not with such regularity. Shrug. ME1 was pretty egregious with that.

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XIII_rocks posted...

There's a particular ME3 squadmate who would appreciate you

Which class are you playing?

Infiltrator

And I watched some old videos of ME2 PS3 footage and saw a lot of the same problems I'm having. Idk if ppl were more forgiving of shitty performance back in the unenlightened early 2010s era, but ME2 runs worse than the worst performing games I've played on PS4 like Control or pre-patch Witcher.

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It makes me wonder what Andromeda must have done to offend ppl so much on the technical side of things, because it's not like these games had Naughty Dog levels of polish... or any amount for that matter.

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I never played the games on PS, but on PC and XBox, I very rarely encountered any issues in the way you're describing them.

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MechanicalWall posted...

unlike something like inFamous,

what you don't think having the choice to save your girlfriend or six doctors is a compelling a moral dilemma??

Nevermind the game clearly labels one of those as evil

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The PS3 version of the Mass Effect games are all the worst versions, and IIRC 2 was the worst of the lot. This was near-universal for multiplatform games but was especially bad here. Off the top of my head I can think of only Far Cry 3, Shadow of Mordor, and infamously Skyrim as worse ports.

Edit: Oh, Bayonetta was a terrible PS3 port.

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The game felt extremely polished on 360, so it sounds like a porting issue.

I only prefer Hale over Meer in ME1. He completely nailed it in the sequels.

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Oh as a dedicated Sony man (mostly out of necessity bc no one in the Middle East gave a shit about Xbox), I am well aware the PS3 ate shit regularly, and it's part of why I have very little fondness for that era of gaming. Still these ME2 problems are kinda ridiculous.

I should stress though that it hasn't killed the game for me. In fact I am otherwise enjoying myself quite a bit, I see where a lot of the love comes from.

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i need to play 2 and 2

1 was fun enough and people say the sequels are literal lightyears improved

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MaleShep forever

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The VAs are pretty funny because I think Meer sells Paragon a little better than Hale does, but there is literally no contest when it comes to Renegade where Hale completely and utterly dominates.

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MechanicalWall posted...

Uncharted 2 came out around the same time as this game and was infinitely more fluid than this.

I dunno, I think Uncharted 2 more fluid to the point of floaty. Id take stiff controls over floaty ones any day, because once you figure them out you can at least feel in control.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I dunno, I think Uncharted 2 more fluid to the point of floaty. Id take stiff controls over floaty ones any day, because once you figure them out you can at least feel in control.

I feel like I'm able to actually get in and out of cover efficiently in Uncharted

Here I feel like I have to direct Shepherd's lumbering ass like I'm driving a car

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I never got past 1 because I hated the stupid car/tank/whatever

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I forgot people ever pick maleShep lol

PerfectChaosZ posted...

I forgot people ever pick maleShep lol

according to the ME3 player statistics it's close to like 75-80% who pick MaleShep

FemShep reps are just a very vocal minority
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StealThisSheen posted...

I never got past 1 because I hated the stupid car/tank/whatever

thankfully the Mako does not exist after ME1
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ME2-RE2 is reaffirming my belief that Fire Emblem is the Turd of the Contest

Turns out that half of the Division was never threatening ME2

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RyoCaliente posted...

The VAs are pretty funny because I think Meer sells Paragon a little better than Hale does, but there is literally no contest when it comes to Renegade where Hale completely and utterly dominates.

Male Renegade Shepard's voice is bad but there's a certain campy charm to it. He sounds like an utter doofus trying to act cool and edgy.

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Be sure to fully upgrade your ship before the final mission. It helps.

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Everyone knows theres one reason and one reason alone that those stats are skewed towards maleShep and thats because Tali isnt into ladies.

I started as MaleShep because I wanted the default look.

Character creation stuff is very meh to me. And he is great as a true paragon.

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pjbasis posted...

I started as MaleShep because I wanted the default look.

Character creation stuff is very meh to me. And he is great as a true paragon.

This tbh. The default MaleShep looks way better than any CAC could ever look

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My custom character looks pretty decent Ngl. I was surprised how close I could get to how i actually look.

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X to doubt, I've never seen a custom MaleShep that looked even half decent.

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LeonhartFour posted...

according to the ME3 player statistics it's close to like 75-80% who pick MaleShep

FemShep reps are just a very vocal minority

I played as FemShep because I, personally, thought the voice acting was much better in Mass Effect 1 than the male version. So, just continued on with my female Shepard with 2 and 3.

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LeonhartFour posted...

thankfully the Mako does not exist after ME1

I actually loved that aspect of ME1. It reminded me of Star Control II finding minerals for that game...and it was something that really immersed me in those games.

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So I beat it yesterday

Gotta say... I get it. This game gets a lot of love, and I'm right there with you guys now. At least as far as plot and setting goes this game was ahead of its time. I thought it was pretty bold of them to eschew a meaty critical plot and instead hone in on the characters' personal stories. I guess it's why I've read that ME2 feels like the 'least important one', as the game hugely deemphasizes the huge galactic conflict part of proceedings, but a story is nothing without its characters. And this game has some great ones. There's been a soulcrushing amount of effort put into the setting of this game, I probably could add another 5 hours to my save file listening to more of the flavor text. The game just has a real good sense of 'place'.

I should say though that the inevitable fetch quests feel particularly inane in this game, and are almost immersion shattering. I'm the Captain of a ship that flies across the galaxy desperately trying to cobble together a team and prevent humanity from going extinct, I am NOT the person to be running around fetching wallets!

I still feel like the Paragon and Renegade stuff was ham fisted. I guess I just really don't like the game quantifying your supposed morality and using it as a skill check; not only do I find that silly on principle, but it means you don't have much room to react to situations naturally, because in the back of your mind you're like, "I WANT to deck this guy, but I need the Paragon points to convince Miranda to stop throwing a fit." I ran a 50/50 kind of character hoping it wouldn't matter too much, and there were some checks I simply couldn't pass.

The technical problems were still ridiculous, and I even discovered a new one since I wrote the OP, which is Shepard repeatedly walking on air. I thought it would be a one off thing, but oh no.

God, I'm such a forum dweller. It's so much easier for me to be negative than to be positive. Despite my gripes this game really does have a claim to being the Game of the Decade; in my mind I already slot it alongside games like The Witcher 3 as one of the greatest RPGs ever. Idk if I'll make a second thread for ME3 or if I'll just stick to this one, but I might crack that game open today.

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MechanicalWall posted...

- the actual gunplay is... okay. Just okay.

No shit

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MechanicalWall posted...

God, I'm such a forum dweller. It's so much easier for me to be negative than to be positive.

This is (unfortunately) just an internet thing, rather than a forum thing.

Also ME3 fixes the Paragon/Renegade stuff. It's still there, but it's part of a general reputation bar iirc so you can mix and match however you like.

And yeah, BioWare sidequests suffer from problems of rank all the time. In Dragon Age: Inquisition you're basically Jesus as a religious AND political figure, but it's you who's tasked to go put flowers on a grave and you send out lackeys to do big political quests on a map.

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In a lot of RPGs, W and J, you're usually some fated hero who has the weight of the world on their shoulders, so flower picking quests will always feel a little incongruous.

In Mass Effect though, you flit from planet to planet, star system to star system, in a matter of seconds. When the scale of your game world is that insanely huge, being asked to find someone's wallet or whatever feels so incredibly beneath me that I don't know why even Paragon Shepard would entertain the notion.

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