ercles on 4/1/2010 at 17:23
You do realize that Dragon Age is a Bioware RPG as well? I loved it, but it does have a lot of the rather forced moral dilemmas that popped up in Mass Effect as well.
the_grip on 4/1/2010 at 17:39
Totally missed that Dragon Age is BioWare... lolz at me. Thanks for pointing that out.
mothra on 5/1/2010 at 10:52
dragon age has a better combat system (that actually works if you don't let your AI fight themselves) than MassEffect and offers much more diversity and changes through managing your party. On the other hand it has the most boring, generic and try-so-hard-it's-ridiculous storyline and stolen design coupled with the decision to give you rather 45 similar fights against the same 3 monster types over and over again instead of a few quality ones. They could have easily cut around 4hours per mission without anyone noticing. for me it got very, very boring and repetetive no matter how many different dialogue lines are built in. I played all origin stories which don't make much difference at all, you always land in the same place...and finished Ostagar, Loithering, Redcliffe, the stone prisoner and the Circle Of Magi. the environments are small, undetailed and basically every map is just a narrow corridor.
Mass Effects' design was better but the story ended up being generic as well. But in my opinion Bioware found their sweet spot with the more action-oriented ME and now ME2. They are just too bad and boring plotwriters (not dialogue) for DragonAge to work in such a generic setting and the combat is too repetetive and numerous it becomes tiresome. In ME I found the combat scale much better and have better features although the way you controlled your character was very bad and the AI was dumber than a paver. This seems to have been fixed with ME2 and now this is looking like what Bioware should have done a long time ago: TPS with light RPG elements. DragonAge showed me that they just don't cut it anymore for "oldschool" RPG, substituting story+depth for repetition, unimaginative design and substituting difficulty with just "fight X monsters at the same time for x times".
I'd save my money for ME2.
mol on 5/1/2010 at 23:15
Quote Posted by the_grip
Yeah I enjoyed Mass Effect up to the point to where I was off the initial planet and back to the space port. At that point, the amount of exploration and dialog just seemed to be labor and not enjoyment, so I reluctantly threw in the towel. I'm sure I'll go back to it as I don't have a complaint with the game... I just don't have the patience for it right now.
That's pretty much why most games are the standard 'blow shit up and shoot everything that moves'. People don't have the patience for proper narrative.
If you follow the main storyline of ME, there's just the right amount of dialogue, and very little exploring to do. You just go where the story takes you. If you choose to take on the numerous side quests, there's of course tons of more stuff to do, but those aren't necessary to do to complete the game.
Why not just explore the main plot, and since the game is quite replayable due to the different approaches you can take, explore the side quests when replaying?
Having said that, I agree that if someone's idea of a good time is shooting things to bits and not being bothering about the story too much, ME certainly isn't for that person.
the_grip on 6/1/2010 at 02:05
Quote Posted by mol
Having said that, I agree that if someone's idea of a good time is shooting things to bits and not being bothering about the story too much, ME certainly isn't for that person.
While I do enjoy just blowing shit up sometimes, I also do like an engaging game. I'm loving Dwarf Fortress right now for that very reason - telling my own story of my own stronghold and the rowdy dwarves that built and maintain it.
Games with more story than game are just fine with me, but the windows of opportunity for me to game these days come in short spurts of an hour or two at most, so I generally don't have the hours and hours to pour into them. However, there are games that do strike a good balance between length of storytelling and length of gameplay.
ercles on 6/1/2010 at 07:17
I actually found the lack of exploration a real disappointment in Mass Effect. I started playing it and was just thinking "awesome, space exploration, imagine the possibilities", but as it turns out that's a large amount of identical planets and very few side quests of note. The worlds visited, especially noveria, fascinated me, I was just shocked by how narrow the game was. Hoping for more from ME2, but avoiding any real coverage of the game like the plague because I find it's almost impossible for games to live up to preview hype.
gunsmoke on 7/1/2010 at 02:47
the_grip: Just get Risen already!!! It should be right up your alley. :thumb:
CCCToad on 8/1/2010 at 05:00
If you're willing to chip an extra 5, I recommend you get Mass Effect, Burnout Paradise, and Shadow Complex. Shadow Complex costs $15 dollars worth of MS points, the others are 20 each via Games on Demand or a bit less if you buy them off ebay/gamestop. That should give you a nice mix: an RPG, a racer, and an action game.
@ercecles: agreed, but the other half of me says that yes, exploring uncharted planets probably would be pretty much like that: they'd all be flat, boring, and lifeless.
mothra on 8/1/2010 at 10:23
Quote Posted by gunsmoke
the_grip: Just get Risen already!!! It should be right up your alley. :thumb:
never ever play Risen on the Xbox, it's horrible ! horrible ! horrible !!!!!!! look up comparisons and the many things they did cut from the gameplay and abilities to get it working on the xbox before buying it. It's still one of the best RPGs in recent times. And yes, it does hold up a candle to DragonAge since they are totally different RPGs. same with theWitcher.
