Free Candy For Everyone

I’ve been playing a ton of different games recently, and I’m starting to question how much fun gaming actually is. I mentioned before that I’m playing Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Overall, that game is rather hard. By that I mean that the actual battle are tough. Overall, this is actually a pretty interesting thing. If you use the right attack, find the enemy’s weak spot, the fight is a cakewalk. For example, if the enemies are weak against fire and you throw some their way, they fall over, you pound them into the ground, and the fight ends in mere seconds. But if you don’t happen to have a fire spell handy and they get their attacks in, next thing you know 4 enemies have cast ice on every member of the party. That’s frequently enough to kill you.

Well, ok. I can live with that. You get careful, you always work to get into a situation where you attack first. You always use the proper attack and don’t just get careless like you can in a lot of other RPGs (Final Fantasy, for example). But I draw the line at instant death spells. There are enemies in the dungeons that cast a spell that’s effect is instant kill. It doesn’t always hit. But when you come across a group of several of these enemies and they all cast the party version of the spell that has a chance to kill everyone on your side, chances are good that they will kill you. And then the game is over. The other day I lost over an hour of dungeon crawling progress because of that stupid spell. If I were a controller-throwing kinda gal, that controller would have been out the window. Oh, and of course you can’t save in the dungeon at all. So it wasn’t a “you-should-have-saved” kinda thing. I was almost about to get to a point where I could save my progress when kaput, kabam, deadsie is me.

In response, I’ve decided to take a break from Persona 3. I really like the game and I want to go back to it excited, not resentful. So to fill my console RPG needs, I finally started playing Mass Effect. This is a game that has me constantly asking, “Does anyone really think this is fun?” I have a serious love-hate relationship going with it. On one hand, I’m intrigued by the story. I’ve played for about 12 hours and spent whatever time I could exploring every nook and cranny of the main first city you get to, the Citadel. I spoke to everyone in there, did every side quest I could find. Then, options exhausted, I boarded my spaceship and was given a huge map. The galaxy was my oyster. I could touch down on any planet. I could go anywhere! There were 3 possible main plot missions to take next. I decided to go pick up the last party member, and possibly stop for a sidequest along the way.

When you touch down on a planet that isn’t inhabited, you are in this land cruiser thing called the Mako. I hate that thing. It’s like some sort of dune buggy. It has impressive physics - it bounces over hills, it steers like I expect a buggy to steer. But I can’t maneuver the damn thing at all. It has a turret on it, and you turn the turret by turning your camera. But your movement is camera relative. So if I want to aim the turret to the right while moving forward, when I press right on the camera stick, I end up changing which direction I’m moving in too. I don’t know, it confuses the heck out of me. The first planet I landed on had some giant Dune-esque sand beast I had to fight IN THE MAKO. After about 10 tries, I gave up. I tried in the Mako. I tried on foot. I tried both. Forget it. And turns out I probably shouldn’t have been on that planet anyways because my skill was just not high enough to interact with the items there. In addition to the sand beast, there was a mine full of enemies that I tried and tried and tried to kill. Probably way more than I should have tried before giving up. It was maddening. I died many many times. But I did give up and went back to the ship.

So off I went to main plot land, finished some stuff, drove the Mako some more and got angry at it. Then back to the Citadel for more talkies and side questing fun. Yay. And now I’m off doing another main plot area. And every time I drive the Mako I just keep asking if the developers really thought this was fun? Unlike Persona 3, you can save anywhere in Mass Effect. Hallelujah. Because I die the first time I enter just about every single combat situation. Combat is real time. You’re shooting guns at enemies. You can pause and select special abilities, but you need to be seeking cover and checking for good lines. Your teammates can get in your line of fire, unfortunately, and sometimes you get into theirs and they won’t move. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m saving the game every time I clear a room of enemies so I won’t have too far to re-do when I die. I can’t remember the last time I died this much in a game. And it just makes me ask again, is this fun?

I’m still playing the game. I woke up this morning and just sat right down to play Mass Effect. I only put it down for a few hours to play my weekly Sunday night World of Warcraft. And after that I picked it right back up again. So they’re doing something right, but I think my level of anger is rising. I don’t know if this is a game that is actually making me happy, or that I just need to beat.

Anyways, I’m just wondering about these design decisions. Some of these choices seem totally punishing. Why does combat need to be so hard? I guess some people probably think it’s totally easy and are calling me a n00b right now. But I’m an RPG player. I shouldn’t need twitch reflexes and the ability to get my enemy into my crosshairs. Especially not when I’m playing an exceptionally talkie, story driven game.

Grrr, argh.