Not quite what I expected...
Oct. 6th, 2010 01:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carlfoxmartenI finished Mass Effect 2 a couple nights ago, and wanted to go play something else, something more light-hearted, afterwards.
Everything you do before you meet your first Collector mission is pretty standard, mostly human or human-like aliens, and fairly understandable security robots.
Most missions are fairly easy to understand, and if you forget anything, you just hit Escape and check your journal for mission objectives.
In between missions is something I never would have expected from a game like this, but it works so well.
You get to direct your ship to wherever you want, essentially, and explore the galaxy, choosing your own missions.
You also have to recruit your team, save for two or three main characters you get to start out with, and make them loyal to you with their own "loyalty missions."
It may sound odd, but because the mission you're on has no guarantee of success, everybody has some little loose end they'd like you to help them with.
Usually it's a family member that needs to get rescued, but some characters have slightly more unique things they want to do.
The Collectors, your primary enemy, along with another race whose name I've forgotten for the moment, are much more insect-like and therefore are more nightmare worthy.
(not that I had any from this, but I did have several instances where I dreamt I was still playing when I was clearly in bed, so it obviously had some effect on me)
While the majority of the action is just that, action, there are still some cut-scene-like sections, sometimes with dialogue that you must work through to either diffuse the issue or reach some other helpful end.
For instance, sometimes you run into regular joes caught in the middle of the action, hiding out in some corner out of the way, and you must either talk them into staying where they are, or leaving the area quickly.
On the whole, I'm pretty impressed (and that's not very easy to do either), but there were certain things I didn't quite like.
(fortunately, there wasn't much that I didn't like, and they didn't last very long)
I probably won't be looking for Mass Effect 3 when it comes out, though I might try nabbing it if I can wrangle it for a playtesting session at the "local" game development company...
Everything you do before you meet your first Collector mission is pretty standard, mostly human or human-like aliens, and fairly understandable security robots.
Most missions are fairly easy to understand, and if you forget anything, you just hit Escape and check your journal for mission objectives.
In between missions is something I never would have expected from a game like this, but it works so well.
You get to direct your ship to wherever you want, essentially, and explore the galaxy, choosing your own missions.
You also have to recruit your team, save for two or three main characters you get to start out with, and make them loyal to you with their own "loyalty missions."
It may sound odd, but because the mission you're on has no guarantee of success, everybody has some little loose end they'd like you to help them with.
Usually it's a family member that needs to get rescued, but some characters have slightly more unique things they want to do.
The Collectors, your primary enemy, along with another race whose name I've forgotten for the moment, are much more insect-like and therefore are more nightmare worthy.
(not that I had any from this, but I did have several instances where I dreamt I was still playing when I was clearly in bed, so it obviously had some effect on me)
While the majority of the action is just that, action, there are still some cut-scene-like sections, sometimes with dialogue that you must work through to either diffuse the issue or reach some other helpful end.
For instance, sometimes you run into regular joes caught in the middle of the action, hiding out in some corner out of the way, and you must either talk them into staying where they are, or leaving the area quickly.
On the whole, I'm pretty impressed (and that's not very easy to do either), but there were certain things I didn't quite like.
(fortunately, there wasn't much that I didn't like, and they didn't last very long)
I probably won't be looking for Mass Effect 3 when it comes out, though I might try nabbing it if I can wrangle it for a playtesting session at the "local" game development company...
