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Mar 29th, 2011 at 13:15:08 - Mass Effect 2 (PC) |
Finally finished ME2. Took me over a month, uncharacteristically long for a game the last few months, but things have been busy. My time played was 37-38 hours, and I felt it should have taken me around 30, firstly because I wasted so much time sending probes to get ore, and secondly because I spent time doing every available mission, which was totally unnecessary. I complained about scanning in a previous entry, but after that play session where I scanned for like 2.5 hours, I looked up how much ore I actually needed to upgrade things, and I apparently already had more than enough. I made a rule: No scanning. The game improved 100-fold. Whoever thought sending probes to planets to scan for ore would be fun should be fired.
The second thing up there has to do with the flow of the game and the missions. The game feels very drawn out. I could have finished a week ago, but wanted to complete all my crew's missions and all the extra planet missions. All these missions were fun enough, but largely pointless. You're able to go through the Omega 4 relay basically after you recruit enough of your crew and after you complete the very small number of required story missions that lead to the relay and the Collector attack. The extra crew missions were cool just for fleshing out their personal stories, but they didn't contribute much to the game's main narrative, which I felt was rather thin. The story doesn't move forward much. I feel like it rode the wave from ME1 and is serving as a bridge to the conclusion in ME3 later this year. Oh, well I guess you do get some upgrades from doing extra missions, but it doesn't really matter since the game isn't hard at any point and a lot of the upgrades are hardly vital.
I did successfully pursue a romantic relationship with Tali, but didn't get to see her face. Well, Shepherd did, but I didn't. In pursuing with her, I rejected Miranda outright, and led on Jack for a while until I had to choose between her and Tali, and then from then on Jack yelled at me to "Fuck off!" every time I went into her crawlspace. I liked that there were twice as many crew members as the first game. My favorites were Tali and Jack, which has nothing to do with romantic relationships. Quarians are just really neat, and Jack is, well, Jack. The Asari Justicar was cool too, as was the Drell assassin. Garrus is awesome. Legion was a twist. As far as I remember, the rest were just okay, Grunt, Mordin (though cool ethical story), Miranda, Jacob.
The ending mission through the Omega 4 relay was pretty cool, except like I said, I don't feel like I accomplished too much except set up for ME3. There were no bosses in this game. There was sort of one at the end, but not really, and the boss I thought there would be, surprise, never encountered me directly and I guess I get to face off against him in ME3. Oh and then, at the end, you select crew members to do this and that, and apparently Mordin died for some reason. It looks like it was random from a selection, because I didn't give Mordin any specific instructions or send him to his death. He was with the rest of the crew and just was dead at the end and I don't know why.
So, ME2, by the end, felt like I was just chugging along for no good reason. It was a lot of fun chugging, but I would have liked more outcome, more consequence. Whereas in the first game, I know I had a humongous impact on the entire galaxy, in this one, I don't feel I did much. I saved some human colonies from being turned into Collector food and Human-Reaper hybrid matter. Cool. This is actually my fear with video games these days. There are more and more games coming out, and it seems like more and more of them are good, as in fun and polished final products. Fun and polish is getting easier to do I think. I've got to sift through more, sit and play plain old solid games instead of fantastic ones because there are more and more just plain old solid games. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's kind of, I don't know, tiring. I just started Dead Space after this, and I get the same feeling. While it seems really cool, it boils down to a polished horror sci-fi shooter, which I've done quite a few times already. Is dismembering monsters and a unique HUD enough to make me think it's incredible or enough to just make me play it because it's solid? Not sure.
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Mar 12th, 2011 at 11:14:36 - Mass Effect 2 (PC) |
Sat down today for a nice chunk of time to play ME2, but ended up being bored out of my mind and actually (gasp!) cut my session short. This was totally unexpected, especially after having already played a while and 100% enjoying it. I'll start with the bad first. Well, first a general note of unease. ME2 is either a streamlined (positive adjective) or dumbed down (negative adjective) successor to ME1. It's probably a mixture of both. But the fact that I can't decide to what degree it's streamlined or dumbed down worries me, mostly because I don't remember finding much anything in need of fixing from ME1. So what the hell did they do to my game?
1. Federal offense level. Scanning planets is horrendous. Really, it's that bad. It's tedious, boring, time-consuming, etc., etc. Here's how it goes down. ME1 version: Select a planet, you automatically fly there, you click 'survey,' and you automatically survey it, mine it, whatever. ME2 version: Fly your ship (click-to-move) to the planet, which uses up your fuel resource (only replenishable at a fueling station, of which there is one (1) per star cluster). Click 'scanner.' Hold right click to go into scan mode. Move the scanner icon over 360 degrees of the planet, slowly and methodically, monitoring a graph of element traces for four useful ores. When the graph starts spiking along any of the four ores, delicately move the scanner to find the peak of the ore deposit, and left click (you're still holding right-click for scan mode) to deploy a probe, which collects your goodies. Each planet takes around 15 probes, and I can hold, as of now, 30 probes. This means that every two planets, I have to fly myself back to the fueling station to buy probes. I quit today when I entered a system with seven planets. That would be 4 trips back to another star system and probably 45 minutes to scan and collect all the minerals. My right wrist and mouse fingers are really tired from holding down that right button. Why can't I just click it once to enter 'scan mode' or something? Why do I have to keep it pressed the entire time? I played about four hours today, one story mission, a couple small missions, and the rest (2.5 hours or so) just scanning planets. I really feel like I wasted my time. Unfortunately, you need the various ores to upgrade anything in the game, so you have to go farm it, and the RPG fan in me likes to upgrade things. I was thinking that I don't want to go back and play it because I know the first thing I need to do is scan this 7-planet solar system.
2. Security breach. ME2 features the 'everyone can do everything' gameplay that makes me feel less unique than my parents and teachers always told me I was. Example 1: hacking. No longer do you need a hacking expert in your party. Now everyone's main character can hack. And instead of actually challenging players with a tiered difficulty mini-game a la ME1, the two minigames for hacking and opening doors are capable of being done with 100% success by a 6-year-old, and 6-year-olds shouldn't be playing this game. There's a simple game of Memory with 10 tiles transposed on a circuit board, and there's a simple game of matching. They are so boring. I finish them all at like 50% time. ME1 had different levels, and the hard ones would get hard! I'd fail and have to use Omni-gel to open them sometimes. There isn't any Omni-gel in ME2 though because there's no inventory and no loot! What have you done to my RPG?!
3. Petty theft. Yes, no loot and no inventory. Now, you select weaponry before the fight, and the only character you can equip is Shepherd. All weapons/armor/upgrades are found lying around levels, in shops, or from talking with crew members. Once you find or buy a pattern, you then have to pay whatever type of ore to research it, and then you can choose that weapon on load-out, or have Shepherd equip the armor (some of each of which give bonuses to the whole party, and some of which are character-specific). Guns also have ammo now, which is plentiful so far on the ground.
4. (Dis)orderly conduct. The tactical features of battles are different. Now you can essentially pause the game, assign individual orders, including cast targets, and then watch the action unfold. So far, this has made the game really easy. Granted, I don't have to use it, but I like it at the same time I dislike it. What this means is that it essentially doesn't matter what class Shepherd is since you give orders to all 3 characters. What I typically do is pause, Shepherd immobilizes enemies with biotics, other character immobilizes with biotics/tech, other character immobilizes with biotics/tech. All characters shoot immobilized enemies. Win. I've died like twice, compared to the many, many deaths in ME1. I could also bump up the difficulty, which I think I might do, because it's just too easy.
Then, I have some other random observations and quick things. Not all missions have maps anymore, which is weird. You just get a directional arrow on the radar, but no map.
The story missions so far are about recruiting a crew, which is neat. I found some Salarian scientist yesterday, then I found Garrus (!) today, which was badass. The story and characters are great again, and I'm very glad for it.
All the above negativity, while annoying (or downright depressing as in the scanning), doesn't mean I dislike the game. The missions are a lot of fun.
Oh, here's the equivalent of an international act of terrorism though. There's no Mako! No longer do you just deploy on planets in the Mako. Driving the Mako around, taking screenshots, and discovering places of interest on planetary surfaces was possibly my favorite thing about ME1, and it's gone here. I've only encountered one extra mission, and I must admit that, though there was no Mako, it was really unique. I detected a crashed ship, and went down to investigate. The ship was hanging precariously on the edge of a cliff. I made my way across it, with new paths opening up as pieces of it fell and crashed down around me, and finally got to the computer so I could download logs and find out what happened. Just then, the whole ship shifted and began sliding off the cliff. The Normandy came just in time to pick me up. Very cool mission, and tense because the ship shifted and groaned the whole time. I hope others will be as unique and make up for no Mako.
Biotics are more useful. Abilities now follow targets. No longer will my force chokes be avoided!
The graphics, lighting, interface, etc. etc. is all very much visually improved. Me like.
To backtrack, my very first impressions of the game upon loading were the EA store, cash exchange for DLC, and achievements. ME2 definitely is part of this new breed of DLC-happy single-player games. But of course there's a store, and of course you can't just buy the DLC. You have to buy EA points or something, and then there are also ME2 points or something, and then you cash in for extra missions and whatnot. The real $ equivalent is relatively high. Achievements also appear all the freaking time in-game. That would be fine, but it's the achievement progress that clutters things. It seems like everything I do, this big Headshot 1/20! and Technology upgrade 3/10! etc. etc. pop up. I don't care! Just let me know if I finish one. I'll look to see what they are if I'm going to worry about completing them.
When you start ME2, you can import an ME1 save file and keep the decisions you made in that game. I started off without the save to see what the default choices were, and it turns out I made two different ones. I reloaded with my save game for continuity (and because my choices are better, duh). It's awesome how the choices I made in ME1 actually carry over. For instance, the fact that I saved the council has been referenced at least 10 times. I'm not sure what happened to my alien Asari lover yet though. I did find Garrus, and Joker is my pilot, and Dr. Chakwas is still there taking care of everyone in the medical bay.
Yep, so I'm just bummed out by how lame my session was tonight with all that planetary scanning. I really hope I just did way too much of it at once and that now there's not much left to do. We'll see, but I doubt I'll feel like playing again soon. I know there's a lot of fun to be had, so I'll get back to it eventually.
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Feb 25th, 2011 at 09:25:50 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (PC) |
Okok. I decided to fire up Call of Pripyat, which is the sequel (2nd expansion, after the prequel) to Shadow of Chernobyl, since only hours ago I was so let down by what was shaping up to be pretty awesome.
Call of Pripyat suuuuuucks. Minus 1 million points. Let me rattle off some of my experiences in the 2 hours I played.
Intro: Nice intro that gives a summary of Chernobyl and the events of the first game. Intro is plagued by the narrator saying one thing and the subtitles saying a different thing. Also, the narrator and the subtitle disagree on dates, as the narrator said, on different slides, June 11th, 2009, 2011, and 2012, where the subtitles said, respectively, June 10th, 2008, 2010, and 2011. Not a good sign at the beginning of a game. Oh right, and the story summary? In the first game, I'm from the beginning supposed to find and kill a man named Strelok. That's who I saw get rained on by gold coins and then a deadly pile of debris at the end. Apparently that was...me. Yeah, I know. I don't follow either. Anyway, this one clearly states who I am, and that would be someone sent on a mission to find 5 downed helicopters.
I started outside an old barge, which stalkers here inside the zone use as bases. I picked up some quests. I went after the first quest, which was to go with a group and clear out some mercenaries from another barge. I went. We cleared. I failed the mission before it was over. How? I dunno. No one important was dead or anything. It said I canceled the mission. I didn't. I reloaded. It did the same thing. Okay.
Right after that, the game's graphics engine crashed. The game had been stuttering, especially while running through the outdoor environment. I restarted the game and turned all the graphics down from ultra to high, even though I know this computer runs everything on ultra. It still stuttered. Annoying. I turned some stuff down to medium. It still stuttered.
A couple quests later. I followed another NPC to search this warehouse for bloodsuckers because some of the stalkers think the bloodsuckers got some of their men, but this one guy doesn't think so. He knows there's something else going on. We kill a bloodsucker and go downstairs. I see another one standing still just looking at us. He doesn't activate until I shoot him. We kill him. My NPC companion opens an elevator shaft and tells me to follow him down. He jumps on top of the elevator. I jump down on top of the elevator. And die. From a 5-foot jump that my NPC friend just made. At least it didn't kill me into the next level like Shadow of Chernobyl was doing. I didn't write about that I don't think, but if I died near a zone change, it would prompt me (when dead) "Would you like to move to the next zone?" If I click yes, I die and fall into the geometry behind the level and just fly through space. Quite strange, it was.
I discovered I can't loot animals and normal mutants like the last game. No biggie. There are some new and improved things. Well, new at least. Instead of artifacts just lying around to be picked up, I've got this scanner that I have to have out to find them, and then they're in the ground so then I've got to search the ground for them. The scanner beeped once, but it was for a quest item, a piece of rope, that certainly wasn't an artifact. All equipment now has durability, and it apparently affects everything instead of just armor, including sell prices. You can repair and upgrade at certain NPCs now though, which is neat, instead of just finding random upgraded weapons. There are now helmets to equip. I found many more guns and ammo than in the previous game, and I could be wrong, but the weights of things seem to have been decreased, because I had like 4 guns and a ton of ammo at one point and was still sprinting.
The map was much improved over last time. No longer would it jump to seemingly random locations when opened, and it properly tracked objectives. However, the stash icons still suck! I got a quest with a reward to go get a stash. I went to get the stash, followed the map marker. There was no stash. Awesome.
My first impression of the environment that was so damn incredible in Shadow of Chernobyl is that it's just lame here. There's less going on. I didn't see any bandit/stalker shootouts going on. I did find a couple packs of wild mutant animals, but I just ran by them instead of wasting ammo and time since they can't be looted anymore anyway. I found enemy PDAs, but now they are lootable, although I don't know what to do with them. They don't locate stashes like they did in the first game. I didn't see a single random anomaly or radiation spot. They were more scattered in SoC, but in this game they have only so far been clustered around predictable locations (cough cough) like main quest objectives. Going to do a main quest? Cool. Be ready for a bajillion anomalies and high radiation. But you know what I did? Just sprint in, inspect the choppers, sprint out. Anomalies and radiation don't matter. Run in, click F, run out.
This game *appears* to be very short. I found three choppers (went through the story in one of three regions). Looking at this walkthrough, the entry point to the second region is quest 13/24. Did I really do 1/3 - 1/2 of this game in under 2 hours? I died a lot too, and did some side quests. I bet if you go straight though this is like a 5 hour game, tops. At least the optional side missions are more interesting than in SoC. Several of them involved pairing up with some NPCs and going on little missions together. I also enjoyed the insta-travel options that these missions come with, as well as the NPC who will insta-travel with you from region to region for 1000...monies. And although the quests don't tell you all the time, apparently they can have secret time limits, like secret 5-minute time limits where you fail them before you leave the place you got it from. Awesome. That happened once.
Here was an annoying thing. Remember the last game where some of the translations or just English language usage was funny? Like when the NPCs talked about their 'homies.' In this game, everyone calls me 'bro.' "Hey bro." It's really stupid. I hate people calling me bro in real life. I don't want to be called bro by a bunch of Russian NPCs. Constantly. It's like their default greeting, voiced over and everything. If they called me like...Broshelovski, I might be okay with that. But at least I haven't had to read their emails with emoticons yet like in the first game! It was really funny, but obviously ridiculous, to read these emails between the evil geneticist scientists. Slightly exaggerated, but approximate example: "Krishnov! The evil scientist team today has perfected the radiation-o-tron :)) can't wait to see you at our next meeting. i heard boss Dragnivich got a bad haircut :-0" Totally believable.
Another stupid thing: In SoC, enemies could shoot through grates and fences, while I couldn't. I hate when games do that. This one continues the tradition, as well as somehow allowing enemy fire through walls and pillars to hit me. Further, when I load a game, it's like the enemy positions reset or randomize or something. They did this in SoC too. One time I loaded a save game and it loaded with two enemies literally right next to me. They blew my head off about 20 times before I was finally able to get away from them without dying. The same crap was happening in this game. I would load a save from the middle of a firefight, and voila, enemies magically have me in their sights, are right in front of me, have moved from upstairs to downstairs, etc. Totally unfair.
And sadly, I cannot take this game anymore. I'd been contemplating to keep playing or quit, and I finally quit when I got to a research facility that's the exact same model building -- exact same -- as in the previous game. And all the NPCs look the same. The trader scientist looks like the twin of the barkeep. And then, the final straw, as I was leaving the research center, I heard mutant dogs barking, so I know they're running around viciously outside. Door opens. All the friendly mercenaries are just sitting and standing around a camp fire paying no attention to the 5 dogs running around, and the dogs promptly come attack me, and the mercenaries don't seem to know they exist. Stupid as hell.
It's too bad Call of Pripyat has so many things wrong that I don't want to play it. It's also too bad Shadow of Chernobyl got so damn good after the beginning and a little warm-up period, and then inexplicably botched the end, because there is serious potential for this series to be awesome. It certainly had its moments in SoC, but there are no such moments so far in CoP, and I won't find out if there are because I've got other stuff to play to waste more time on this.
I hesitantly recommend SoC if the good parts sound good, but do not touch Call of Pripyat. I heard the first expansion, the prequel, Clear Skies, is no good at all too.
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Feb 25th, 2011 at 04:08:18 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (PC) |
I...am speechless. The end of this game is crap. Here's how the last week went down:
I played Stalker for the first time. Mixed feelings. Read the entry.
I played Stalker for a second time. Totally engrossed. Figured a lot out. Tons of creepy mutant-shooting fun. Raved about environment. Read the entry.
Played a third time. Same as #2. No entry. Finished session in the middle of a story mission to find the Wish Granter.
Sat down tonight to settle in for a good long time of trekking through the Zone. Beat the game after 5 minutes. What a stupid stupid nonsensical ending. A)It didn't feel like I was at the end of anything. 2)It doesn't make any sense. I find the Wish Granter, this big monolith, and there is a cut-scene about this guy I'm supposed to kill finding the Wish Granter. He wishes to be rich. Coins rain from the sky, and then he is buried in a pile of falling debris. Game over. Roll credits.
Stupidest ending ever. What the hell. Did they run out of time to make the game? What just happened?
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