Free Candy For Everyone

I finished Mass Effect last weekend and felt like I had to close out the saga with a few parting thoughts. This second playthrough clocked in at under 20 hours. I only did side quests on the main quests planets - no landing on random worlds and driving the Mako around for hours. I had more than enough of that the first time around. I did add in the downloadable Bring Down the Sky mission since I was being very complete about everything. So here goes, in no particular order, my final thoughts (well, I think they’re final) on the game…

Achievement Design
We all know I love achievements. They’re one of the top reasons for me to pick Xbox 360 over PS3 when buying a game. Maybe even the top reason! And Mass Effect did one thing with Achievements that I thought was brilliant - actual in-game benefits for attaining an achievement! I don’t know if any other game had done that before, but it makes a lot of sense. Rather than a tacked on requirement of the platform, why not make it an actual reward inside the game itself? Benefits included extra experience earned, less damage taken, special items unlocked in a store, and on a more problematic note, unlocking a particular talent tree for use on all future characters on this profile.

As I mentioned before, you’d have to play through the game at least three times to get all the achievements. No question about that, one is for completing the game on hardcore difficulty, which is only unlocked after beating the game on normal mode, one is for completing the game on insanity which is unlocked after beating the game on hardcore. So yeah. But really, did Final Fantasy X-2. Any reward that you can miss by making one mistake at a point in time and that you can miss is just frustrating. In FFX-2 there was an optional side dungeon. To get to it you had to complete about 7 optional side conversations and story elements so it would be unlocked. I was cruising along with the help of a FAQ to make sure I didn’t miss any, when I realized at one point that I had missed one. It was ridiculous - there was a cut scene, then I was left to my own devices on my air ship. I went INTO THE WRONG ROOM and it triggered the next cutscene and I missed a window to talk to the character I needed. Completely unforgiving and it really bugged the heck out of me.

I feel like these achievements share the same unforgiving problem. One, they’re unclear. What does playing “most of the game” mean? Does that mean I can skip a few missions with them and still get it? Does that mean I need to do some number of Mako side quests? I’m thinking that’s what it was, but without any indication of the true meaning of it I wasn’t going to get it. And to be honest, it requires you to play the game in an unnatural way. Rather than getting to experiment with different party members you’re forced to stick with just two and darn well hope you picked ones that will work out!

Soldier class is blech, biotics for the win!
I played through the first time with the basic soldier class because I thought it would be a bit easier. Truth is, it wasn’t and it was kinda boring. My second time through I played as an Adept which is the pure biotic class (it’s sort of like a Jedi - you can push things, lift groups of enemies, create a “singularity” that whirls them all around in the air and more!). The Adept was so much more interesting. On top of being able to shoot things with my gun (eh), I could use all these cool powers that became totally devastating as I upgraded them. There were a few moments where I managed to use the singularity power on about 5 guys and they just went whirling in the air helplessly as my party peppered them with bullets. It was pretty darn awesome. The main thing I liked about my soldier playthrough was that getting the Shotgun kill achievement let me unlock the shotgun skill for my Adept so I was able to use a more deadly weapon than that class would normally be capable of. But overall it was just so much less interesting to only have options to shoot, shoot better, put up some shields, take less damage. Big whoop.

Really, the characters look great
The more I play other games on the Xbox 360, the more I appreciate how well done the characters are in Mass Effect. The facial animation is stellar, the characters look closer to human than anything else I’ve seen in a runtime environment (ie not in a pre-rendered cutscene), and I was actually able to get used to the uncanny valley glitches.

Maybe I have more thoughts on the game but I can’t recall anything much. I have to say I feel totally and completely done with the game. I have no desire to play it anymore at all. I came, I saw, I conquered. It’s done, I’ve moved on to Lost Odyssey. I’ll share my thoughts on that in the next week or so. But here’s a teaser… I’m totally liking it so far!

I’m still playing Mass Effect off and on between other things. I’m playing my second playthrough on a harder difficulty with a different character class and just trying to see different things. I’m not quite sure why I keep coming back to the game but I do. I’m afraid it might be because I want those darn achievements. But I’m also a completionist and I just really want to see everything there is to see.

I mentioned before that when I started this character I picked it as the opposite of my last one. Man instead of woman, biotic (think Jedi) instead of soldier class, and renegade (bad guy jerk) instead of paragon (good gal saint). This last part is the one I’m having the most difficulty with. There’s two reasons for this. The first is that I can’t always tell which dialogue choice is the actual “evil badass” one and which is the “I’m annoyed and want to end this conversation” choice. I tend to pick the rude conversation options because those seem evil/renegade-like to me but sometimes those just make a quest become unavailable and that’s not what I was trying to do!

But the more interesting reason I’m having issues playing a renegade is because I just feel awful about it. Sometimes it’s not a big deal, like when you use your intimidation skill to bully someone into doing what you want. It’s just a dialogue choice, and if you were playing as a paragon you’d use an equivalent charm statement to do the same thing. That’s not really all that big a deal. But on occasion there’s an actual story moment where you have to chose to do something and this can be rough!

Specifically (spoiler alert), in one of the levels you fight a bunch of crazed aliens called Rachni. They were a race thought extinguished, but some scientists found one queen egg floating adrift in space and decided to do some fun experiments with hatchery. You end up with a choice to kill the queen or let her live. If you kill her you are responsible for the end of an entire species. I knew the renegade option was to kill her, so I choose that and watched her die. I felt so bad I looked away. I didn’t save the game, I reloaded from my last save and did it the other way and let her go. I felt better about myself. But then the gamer-achievement-junkie voice chimed in and said “but you could have gotten so many renegade points for that!” So I reloaded again and killed her off and told myself “you know that the real storyline is the one where you let her go.” But I actually felt a twist inside to do something so horrific.

Now that’s powerful. Despite all the things that drive me nuts about Mass Effect, there’s something very right if the game can make me feel so strongly. Now if only it wasn’t so darn, tragically, frustratingly difficult (and I’m an idiot for playing it on hardcore difficulty, I know, but I want the achievement alright?)

I completed my playthrough of Mass Effect this weekend. Total logged time played, 35 hours and 19 minutes. I did almost every side quest in the game. Well, at least all the ones I found. When I was done I only had about 2 collection quests I hadn’t quite managed to complete.

I have to say I changed my opinion on what I loved and hated a bit as I put more time into the game. I definitely got better at combat. I still hate the Mako. And I realized that there’s a NORTH arrow on the minimap, so it’s really quite possible to use it for navigation if you keep your eye on that.

I was a bit annoyed because I didn’t get some achievements I was expecting to get. There are achievements for playing through the most of the game with each of the squad members, and I swear I played through almost exclusively with two members. But right at the start, I was trying different ones out. Apparently, it’s a mission count thing, not a time played thing, because I probably used the members I had for 30 hours, but I didn’t get the achievements. Oh well, what can you do?

I’m still not quite done with the game, I started it up with a new main character, since I played as a woman the first time I was curious to see how it played as a man. I know that it’s the same, but I wanted to hear the dialogue, pick the “dark side” and be a renegade instead of a paragon. At least for a little while. And I also wanted to try out a different character class. So I’ll come back and give some more thoughts (if anyone can bear more thoughts on this game I’ve already written several essays about) once I’m really truly done.

As promised, I’m following up on yesterday’s post about what I liked in Mass Effect with what drives me nuts about the game.

The Bad

Combat
Yes, combat. You know how chocolate and peanut butter are two great tastes that taste great together? Well first-person-shooter and talkie-talkie-role-playing-game are two great tastes that appeal to very different people. And they don’t taste great together. And to be honest, I’ve spoken to people at work who do like both those types of games and they still are not a fan of the combat.

Basically, combat is a shooter. You have 4 types of guns to choose from: pistol, assault rifle (machine gun), shotgun, and sniper rifle. When in combat mode you have a targeting reticule and you can hold down the left trigger to zoom in for more accuracy, right trigger to fire. There are elements of Gears of War. You take cover by getting close to obstacles, and you can duck to take ducking cover. When in cover, holding down the trigger will cause you to lean out so you can shoot. What’s all this tactical shooting doing in my RPG???

I have never had to save so frequently in my life. I save before and after every single military encounter. I clear a room of enemies, I save. I come upon a door with enemies behind it, I save. I die in almost every battle several times before I figure out how it works and get through it. Maybe other people find combat easy, those FPS playing people. But I don’t play those games for a reason.

Today I was playing and thought I was maybe finally getting the hang of combat. I cleared two bunkers for a quest with minimal difficulty. I was figuring things out! And I was even using the shotgun which is a little harder to handle than the assault rifle. But then I got to the third bunker and I think it must have taken me 10 or 15 tries to get through. It was just ridiculous. I actually exclaimed “I hate this game!” at one point. But I eventually got through.

The Mako
The Mako is the all-terrain vehicle you drive around whenever you’re on a planet surface. This dislike point encompasses two issues, actually. The first is the mechanics of driving the Mako. I mentioned it earlier, but realistic physics does not equal fun. Driving around trying to shoot things and move at the same time is maddening. I’ve definitely gotten better at it, but it’s still not fun. It’s just frustrating.

The other problem is the whole idea of the Mako. There are many planets you can land on and they all basically look the same. Different colors of bumpy, rocky terrain. A small map you drive around and pick up a few items scattered in the corner. Just give me the items and drop me into the combat, why do I have to drive through vast tracts of nothing?

The User Interface
Argh! Ok, let’s start with the inventory. Let’s see, what kinds of inventory items do we have? 4 weapons, weapon upgrade, bullet upgrade, armor, armor upgrade, biotic implant, tech implant, grenades = 11 types of items. Well, there’s only one place you can scroll through every single item you are carrying and that’s at a store when you go to sell them back. And there’s no way to sort them in this view at all. You can turn any item into omni-gel, a useful item that is used to repair the Mako and blast into safes and such. You cannot turn items into omni-gel from the store screen. A normal inventory usage pattern would be to try to find the cheapest, most useless things I’m carrying so I can sell them. To do this *not* at a store involves going to the equip screen, selecting a particular slot (pistol, shotgun, armor, etc) and then I can see only the items of that type. This is where I can turn it into omni-gel. I’m getting frustrated just trying to explain how it works. Let’s just leave it at the fact that I wish I could see all inventory items, sort by cost, sort by type, sort by rank.

Next UI issue is the minimap. This thing is entirely useless to me for navigation. It’s a circle where up is always the way you are facing. There is no indication of global directionality. You can see enemies on it, and that’s about the only thing it’s useful for. But there’s a fullscreen map in the pause menu where I can see a target location. But once I unpause and take two steps I have no idea if I’m going the right way anymore. If they just made up north, always, I’d be able to make sure I was going in the right direction. Sigh. When driving the Mako I have to pause and check the main map every 5 seconds to make sure I didn’t veer off course, which is easy to do in that bouncy-trouncy-un-fun-fun-fun vehicle.

Another map that could be improved is that galaxy map. This is the map on your ship that you use to navigate to other planets. Well, ok, this issue is really more about your quests than that map. Basically you have a quest log called the journal full of all you main and optional quests. Each entry tells you where to go, but there’s no easy way to figure out which quests are in the same area. I’d love for the quests to be called out on the galaxy map so that when I go to a system I see what I have to do there. One of my co-workers was telling me he was actually writing them all down on a piece of paper so he could plot where to go. Come on, are we really back to the time when they included a pad of paper with your RPG (yay, Might and Magic old-school!).

Striving to be un-gamey
Ultimately, a lot of the UI issues stem from this one, I think. This is something we talk about at work a lot. “That’s too gamey,” someone will say. Meaning it’s a mechanic that is purely something people do in games that, when you think about it, doesn’t make sense at all. It has no basis in reality, it’s just something you do in games because… well, people have been doing it in games. This is a good goal. But to give an example of where this is a problem, when you are on your spaceship you can choose to outfit your teammates with items. But they’re not in your party at the time, so you can’t cycle to their equipment in the normal squad UI. Instead, you outfit them by going down a (very very slow) elevator and getting to the crew lockers. These are all lined up, and you have to open each one individually to get to that person’s equipment page. This may be a cool way to do things in an un-gamey way, but it’s just added time for me, really. I want to be able to equip and deal with that stuff quickly, especially because that’s not really a fun part of the game. It should be easy and done with so I don’t dwell on mechanics too much anyways.

There were other things I was going to say about being un-gamey, but I’ve been rambling on for a while now and I’m losing steam. I’ll come back to the topic if I recall what I was going to say.

Anyways, I’m still playing, still intending to keep playing. So despite this lengthy diatribe, the love in this love-hate relationship seems to be stronger.

I am still playing Mass Effect. I’ve been talking to people at work about the game and been getting some interesting reactions. The first person I told that I’m playing it asked “Do you love it or hate it?” Apparently, those are the choices. I answered “both”. But most people have a pretty extreme reaction to the game. And I completely understand that. My reaction is extreme, but I think I’m kinda more entranced than anything else.

The Good
Here’s what I like about the game.
The visuals
It sure looks pretty. Well, the environments are rather bland. Spaceship, space station. Ice planet, rock planet. But the people look great. All the cinematics are done in game, which is really remarkable. What’s that mean, joe average reader asks? A lot of games pre-render the cinematics. They are essentially just movies, being played back, like something you’d watch on a dvd player. There’s nothing calculated, everything is static and cannot change. But cinematics done in engine mean that they can customize the movie for you. I got to decide what my main character looks like. Hey, I even got to choose to be a man or woman. Whatever armor or weapons I put on are visible on my character in game all the time, even in the movies. I can choose which 2 party members are in my squad, and whichever ones I choose will be in the movie with me. It’s an impressive technical achievement.

At first I didn’t like the cinematics that much. The faces move, but not enough. There are problems with the lips not always syncing up to the words. But the more I play, the more I don’t notice that it’s not perfect and just get immersed in it. The camera angles, the lighting, and the general cinematic flair they have to all their cut scenes is impressive.

The story
I’m not saying that the story is revolutionary or anything. But for a video game, it’s a great story. It’s interesting, and the attention to detail is astounding. Everywhere you turn there are optional items to interact with that give you more information about the universe you are living in. Every time you speak to someone you hear their voice, you don’t read their words. EVERY line is recorded. And considering you can play as a man or a woman, and there are some other options to choose about your backstory, some lines must have many different variants. It’s astounding, really. I can see how you could power through the game in 15 hours or so, but I’m 15 hours in and feel like I’ve just scratched the surface. I could just bolt on through the main story to the end, but that would be cheating myself.

The achievements
Let’s not forget about the compulsive, brilliant system of Xbox 360 achievements. One of the first things I do when I end my first play session with a game is to go to the Xbox dashboard and check out what all the achievements are for the game I’m playing. Mass Effect has some more devious achievements. I don’t even think it’s possible to unlock them all without playing through the game three times. That’s a lot of playing. I suppose you could sprint through on your second and third playthrough. But I don’t think I really need to play more than once. In any event, I’m constantly motivated to play just a little more to get to the next achievement. Or to try something I wouldn’t normally do (using a shotgun, I want my assault rifle!) so I can earn an achievement. Of course, achievements are a Xbox thing, so all X360 games have them. But still, it’s definitely contributing to my desire to play the game.

Tomorrow, I’ll deliver the bad news: what I don’t like about the game.