Deeply Delving Dungeons

You can find Part 1 here.

You can find Part 2 here.

You can find the review Supplement here.

Well, seeing as the STO servers can’t decide if they’re up or down I guess I may as well make the promised final part to my review of Mass Effect 2. I’m a little pissed as I write this, bear in mind, (I’m 28 skill points away from hitting Lieutenant Commander rank in STO and therefore about to find out whether or not I wasted money on Cryptic’s latest half-hearted effort) but that kind of works because this part is chiefly devoted to stuff I didn’t like in ME2. Okay, there will still be good things in here too, just thinking about Mass Effect 2’s loveliness instead of Star Trek Online is starting to cheer me up. Okay fine, this is gonna be mostly good things. Still, there may be further review supplements down the line in case I miss anything here (and I probably will).

Speaking of final frontiers I suppose I should start off with the galactic exploration aspect of Mass Effect 2.

So how is it? Well, a mixed bag ultimately. It has been given a major facelift since the first Mass Effect and for the most part the changes are very welcome yet there is one mechanic that is so pervasive and tedious that it threatens to undo every improvement made to the Galaxy Map. Probably the biggest change has been to the manner in which you navigate through the Galaxy Map. As opposed to simply clicking on points of interest and progressing through the various zoom levels or reading a snippet of information about the object you selected, in Mass Effect 2 you have a more active role to play in your exploration of strange new worlds. Now when you’re not on the Galaxy zoom level you actually get to control a little Normandy spaceship on a 2-dimensional plane and travel between celestial entities and solar systems. It’s not exactly what you would think of as a huge improvement and in fact it simply draws out the old process of exploring planets but it does a great deal to immerse you in the universe that Bioware has crafted.

With this change comes two more alterations. For one, you now have to keep track of Normandy’s fuel when you travel between solar systems on the Cluster zoom level. When you get low on fuel you have to travel to a Fuel Depot near a Mass Relay (which ends up being a very trivial moneysink) or else run out and be forced to the nearest refueling station at a cost of mineral resources (I don’t know what kind of penalty is incurred however as I never once ran out of fuel). This seems like a big headache but it is thankfully downplayed a great deal and so long as you don’t completely ignore your fuel levels it should never be of any concern. It does however add to the realism of the setting in a small way and because it is such an inoffensive hurdle I am ultimately glad for its inclusion.

The other addition comes in the form of planet scans where you sweep a cursor over the (nearly) full 360° of a planet’s surface while paying attention to spikes in activity on a resource graph to the right of the planet. There are four different resources that can be gathered: Palladium, Platinum, Iridium, and Element-Zero or Eezo. These resources are used in research (which I’ll get to next) and are only found in very limited quantities outside of scanning planets. Anyways, when you come across a large enough concentration of a resource (or more than one, often you’ll find clusters) you then send a probe down to the planet’s surface at which point you are given a number of resources based on the intensity of the scan. My first impression of this system was very favourable. Unlike the previous game where you would just find nodes of minerals and do a silly mini-game to gather them (at which point you would receive credits and XP and no resource) this new mechanic felt far more appropriate and once again helped me to immerse myself in the universe.

Unfortunately, after scanning a few solar systems it becomes the ultimate in tedium. It also doesn’t help that you constantly have to run back and forth from the planet (and likely, solar system) you are scanning to a fuel depot in order to replenish your probes either. I’m also a completionist so I was determined to mine every planet until it was completely Depleted no matter if it was Rich, Moderate, Poor, or even Depleted to begin with! The biggest problem isn’t even necessarily with the mechanism itself, it’s that almost every planet in the game can be scanned this way and there are a hell of a lot of planets in Mass Effect 2. Fortunately you don’t need nearly as much of a haul to fully upgrade your group than is available in the whole galaxy so you are safe to ignore most of it (which I eventually did, only stopping to mine Eezo, which is the rarest resource, when I found some). Still, I feel Bioware should have exercised restraint in this and hearkened back to the original Mass Effect where most planets were inert (can only read about them), landable (containing side missions), or central to the story (no scanning whatsoever). Not only would this have cut down on perceived tedium dramatically, it would also have avoided odd situations where you would read a planetary description stating that it is under the control of mining interests already or held by overwhelming enemy forces yet you can still freely scan the entire planet.

But let’s move on and talk about an improvement from the first game that actually worked almost perfectly, that being the complete abolishment of inventory micromanagement and the subsequent implementation of a squad-wide upgrade system. If you read my post last month where I talked about my preparatory playthrough of the original game you might recall my disdain for the economy in that title. There was far too much in the way of items being dropped and almost none of them were useful; ultimately, currency became essentially valueless in that game as I was able to max out my wallet with little to no effort. I’m happy to say that has all changed in ME2.

Not only are credits comparatively scarce, they are also exceptionally valuable as they are essential to one of only two ways in which you can improve your fighting capability during the course of the game, that being the purchase of incremental (permanent) upgrades. The other method is the process of researching upgrades which simply uses gathered resources instead of money. The two methods are intertwined with one another however in that many of the best upgrades you can research do not unlock until you have researched up until a certain tier of another upgrade (and often the only way you can reach that tier is to purchase it with credits if you don’t feel like relying on coming across it in your regular travels). Using shotguns as an example: there are 7 shotgun upgrades with 5 of them being incremental improvements to the shotgun’s damage output (each one providing a 10% boost), obtaining 2 of 5 damage upgrades unlocks another researchable upgrade that improves damage against shields and barriers by 50% and obtaining the third of the 5 damage upgrades unlocks an upgrade that doubles the rounds your shotguns Thermal Sinks can make. These upgrades are persistent across every model of shotgun and across every squad member and each weapon class follows a similar upgrade path.

The upgrades don’t stop there however, apart from upgrades that affect tech, biotic, and defensive abilities there are also special upgrades that affect only Shepard or other individual NPCs (which are unlocked through conversation, a little too easily in my opinion). On top of that there are also upgrades you can make to the Normandy itself, from improvements to fuel and probe capacity to special improvements that impact the final mission and even a medical station that can fix Shepard’s scarring (which I never installed because scars are the mark of a true badass (or an Emo Git)).

Speaking of the Normandy, it too received a major facelift for this mission, though not every surgery was undertaken with care (that will make sense once you get past the intro). It just feels more like a spaceship this time around, and in many ways this is the closest anyone has gotten to emulating the feeling that so many players of this style of game have clamored for, that being the sense of ownership over your own Millenium Falcon. It’s much larger this time around and the basic crew is far more interesting should you decide to drop in on some of their conversations but what really sends things over the top is the personalization of Shepard’s quarters. You get to choose some mood music for your room, you get a fish tank for which fish are available for purchase (just make sure you feed them!), you have a display case that you can fill with toy spaceships (which always makes me think of the scene in Spaceballs where Dark Helmet plays with his dolls), and you can even buy a miniature giant space hamster in case you have some eyes that need going for!

If that weren’t enough your personal quarters are also where you get to customize Shepard’s armour and casual dress. You get four options for the attire you wear about the ship (one of which is a very Solo affair) but you get a great deal more flexibility with your combat armour. You can choose between full sets of armour (that you will only have access to through DLC and which don’t allow you to remove the helmets which kind of sucks) and the modular N7 armour you start out with. You can mix and match many pieces that you acquire throughout your journey, such as the helmet, chest-piece, shoulders, leggings, and gloves, each of which have unique properties that enhance your combat (or conversational) performance. It doesn’t end there though as you are able to choose from an assortment of patterns, colours, and materials to further customize your look, a welcome improvement over the first Mass Effect’s armour system.

A few more things to note before I close out this review…

The visuals are absolutely stunning and are miles ahead of what was on display in the first game. Not only are major locales awe-inspiring in their beauty (and ugliness) but the side or N7 missions also feature unique spectacles to behold unlike the stock indoor (and to a lesser degree, outdoor) environments in the first game’s uncharted worlds. You will never tire of the scenery, whether you are exploring the Blade Runner-esque alleys on Omega or the Coruscant-like towers on Illium, there is always some gorgeous vista to admire; even the Citadel received an upgrade, when you look out of a window in the Wards you get a far better impression of the scale of the Citadel arms. I would be remiss if I didn’t also praise the character models and animation, which I would personally take over Crysis’ slick presentation any day of the week.

Despite my problems with the planet scanning mini-game it is actually used to great effect when it comes to finding the N7 missions. Your ship-board computer will let you know whether or not there is an N7 mission as soon as you select a planet, no need to scan first, which makes it much easier to completely all the side missions without having to waste time scanning. When you do come across an N7 planet you then have to scan it and follow a radar signal that is accompanied by a distorted audio signal that becomes clearer the closer you get. Once you find it you launch a probe and start the mission. This, again, feels a great deal more authentic than ME1’s system.

Oh, and the hacking/bypassing mini-games are a lot more fun this time around and do a really good job of feeling appropriate to the task at hand rather than feeling tacked on.

I know I must be forgetting a lot but I’m going to end it here with one final complaint, which is probably my biggest of all. The load times in this game are fucking excruciating! Now, this could very well just be my hard drive or some other computer inadequacy on my part as this wouldn’t be the first game that took a long time to load, but these load times are agonizing. If you thought the load times were long in the first Mass Effect, well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Anytime I sensed a load approaching I immediately filled with dread and despite the great writing I knew awaited me knowing I would have to load up multiple levels on the Normandy to talk to every member of my team caused it to quickly become a chore. It got so bad that in the end I just let all of my fish die because I could not be bothered to suffer through the load times in order to feed them.

That being said, Mass Effect 2 is an absolutely phenomenal accomplishment on Bioware’s part and does more to bring cinematic quality to gaming (whether or not you think that’s a good thing is up to you) than any other title before it. More than that, combat is great fun, and I can say now that Mass Effect 2 manages to capture the Trek feel far better than Star Trek Online could ever hope to (after all, you get to have sex with aliens and isn’t that what Trekkin’ is all about?) and should be at the top of your list should you be in the mood for an epic space opera.

2010 is gonna have a tough time outdoing itself now I can tell you that much!