It's a short game. ME1 took me about 40 hours to finish the first time. ME2 30-ish, and I remember being surprised that the game ended so abruptly when you went on the suicide mission. ME3 took me a slender 22 hours, including all N7 missions and a bunch of planet scanning. I launched my final assault thinking "That's it?! That's a big war to decide the fate of the galaxy?! Defeating Saren took more work!" Doesn't look like I missed any non-scanning missions either.
Out of all of my Shepards, the game only detected one. One. Out of four. Insanity Shep, the sentinal I used to complete ME2 on insanity difficulty. Her face was completely mangled, to the point where she looked nothing like my character! My CannonShep is amongst the MIA casualties so I can't complete my 'proper' story.
Adding rolls and cover swaps overloads the already stressed 'A' button, and makes for more of those "No! I didn't mean that!" moments where I get shot in the head. The increased freedom to move about on cover seems to mean my Shep detaches herself and stands up to get shot because I accidentally tapped too far left or right when trying to shuffle. I am so looking forward to playing insanity with this.
Grenades. Ugh. Not enjoyable IMO, either to use or face. The team won't dodge them, and half the time when I try to evade I get hung up on scenery or on a squad mate. They are a one-hit kill from full health and shields, which makes getting blown up by factors outside of my control very annoying.
Cerberus soldiers are not enjoyable to fight. Too attached to spamming the same couple of moves over and over whilst shouting in their nasty voices which for some reason the game always plays at top volume instead of factoring in distance and position.
Enemies who can kill you in a single hit are not much fun, particularly when they are melee types and run straight at you. I thought we'd learned that after ME1.
What's with all the bugs? I encountered invisible gun turrets (there was no model at all, bullets were spawning from thin air as I watched), and had multiple occasions where cutscenes lacked any character models. Garrus kept vanishing during conversations. My squad vanished out of battles entirely a few times, not dead, just simply not there. I got stuck in the ceiling whilst speaking to EDE, twice. I had active quests which I had completed, and could not speak to the relevant person to end them. Dialogue repeatedly cuts out or fails to play - I had to enable subtitles.
Speaking of side missions a) that journal is horrible! It doesn't update with mission status, it doesn't give much useful detail, and each time I open it the game opens to the codex section and then forces me to scroll through my entire completed quest list in order to reach the new stuff. b) the N7 missions are pretty darn poor. MP maps with lame wave attacks by Cerberus soldiers or husks. Also, all of those tedious scanning missions need to go. c)There are hardly any side quests. Aside from the N7 ones there's, what, 4? 5?
Collectable objects do not highlight from a distance now. That means I have to comb the map tediously, instead of being able to take a quick look about and be certain whether I was missing anything or not. Activating objects or conversations is very fussy, if I don't stare directly at the tag whilst still and stood at precisely the right distance, it won't activate.
Ugly graphics. Not ugly as in bad, ugly as in poor colour choices and nasty character designs. Lots of very dark areas too, where I had to pump contrast high in order to see anything. Certain squad mates are pretty indistinct from Cerberus forces; I lost count of the number of times I tried to shoot James and Ashley during heated fights.
Level design remains pretty boring, with obvious combat zones I can spot from a mile off. The combat areas often feel cluttered with too much cover, too many things to get hung up on when trying to move. ME1's long race areas are still MIA; I miss sniping people from halfway across the map.
Loading screens. The Normandy now has important areas like the armoury a load screen away from CIC, and research another load screen away from that. What I used to be able to do quickly in ME2 now takes 3 different loading sessions and a lot of running about. Also, it's nice that characters move about. It's not nice that the game doesn't tell you where they have gone.
That small delay as I pass through the security scanner from the comm room gets absurdly irritating for something so small.
"Hi. We built our big-bads up to be so big and bad that we need to introduce a lame plot-bob so you can defeat them." Ugh. Do not like the whole Crucible thing.
People keep complaining at Shepard about Cerberus. That's exactly the sort of thing I was saying myself during ME2 and why I resented being forced to ally with them. I found it immensely annoying to have to sit through all of this recrimination and complaining, for something I never wanted to do. Especially Ashley and her constant harping on. What does my Shepard do? Wail, "But I thought they were good people!" and "Oh I made such a terrible mistake!" whenever she's out of my direct control. Argh!
Certain plot situations made me roll my eyes and go "This again?".
That ending. There's nothing I can add to the masses which have gone before: even if you accept the Reaper's purpose it does not make sense because of the way the scenes and dialogue play out. In my 'eye' the game ends with Shepard and Anderson dying side by side watching the battle over earth, as the Crucible melts the Reaper AI cores or something.
And why does blowing up the Reaper's controlling plot-bob cause the Geth to die?!
So I'm talking to the first Reaper I kill. It says the usual line about "Our purpose is beyond your comprehension" and then tells me "We're killing all advanced organics so you don't create synthetics which kill all organics". What's incomprehensible about that? It's stunningly simplistic. If simplistic is the best you can offer, best to keep the secret.
Too easy to get everything right. Based on a good playthrough of ME1 and ME2, and with much spamming of the paragon options, I basically saved everyone, made rainbows appear, kissed kittens, and handed out chocolate. Two people died (Mordin, Thane), both of whom I believe were unavoidable. I even managed to talk the Illusive Man down at the end.
So I overloaded a big, powerful reactor right next to the human proto-reaper. Kaboom! Barely any station left. Yet the Illusive Man has managed to retrieve most of Skeletor? Shouldn't it be vaporised?!
Why is there a techno-ninja in my game? Make it go away. Yes, I know who the character is, No, I still don't want him there. Also, hated the boss battles he was part of. Especially the second one.
We've still got fuel on the galaxy map? Oh goodie, I was afraid that aspect wouldn't be tedious enough. I love returning to the citadel and sitting through lots of loading screens in order to refuel, just as I love risking life and limb scanning for stuff only to find I'm dodging Reapers because I located another fuel pocket.
Actually, that whole Reaper pursuit thing. It's dumb. So you fail to dodge them? You get returned right where you were prior to any system scanning. This means you can repeat your scans to pick up the material without inviting the Reapers to party. So what's the point of the whole thing? It's null and void gameplay - you'd get exactly the same result if the game never spawned Reapers.
Horrid slow-mo child dreams need to go away. Also, if I could cut that nauseating, manipulative scene with the brat at the start I would.Yes, I'm aware of the indoctrination theory and how it applies to these dreams. No, I don't find the theory fully convincing. Yes, I'd still dump the dreams even if the theory were true. They are not good gameplay - rework them to use a character my Shep might care about, and to involve more than running s-l-o-w-l-y through bland scenery.
Disc changing. Look, I'm a veteran of the days when PC games came on 6 CDs, or 4 floppies, or whatever. I'm no stranger to disc swapping, nor do I object to it in principle. ME3 seems to arrange its content randomly. I had to swap discs repeatedly, often on a mission by mission basis, because the designers didn't split the content up via plot progress like they did in ME2 and like most companies in the last 10 years who developed a multi-disc game. Bad design.
Please stop ruining my favourite class after each title! The soldier was my favourite in ME1, and ME2 destroyed most of what I enjoyed about it when it removed weapon mods, long range open combat, added ammo, and changed the abilities. Changes to class powers and combat styles means the sentinel now feels boring and lacking that fun something, whereas in ME2 it felt versatile and enjoyable.
Three games into the series and the squadmate AI remains pitiful. They stand out in the open, take cover on the wrong side of walls, and stand in spots where they can't attack before proceeding to blissfully stare into space whilst I do all the work. The game still fails to offer sufficient tools to manage them, e.g. a control list like the one in Dragon Age: Origins.
Melee attacks still stink. The quick attack is pathetic. Sometimes the heavy attack refused to work and I was left quick-punching the enemy repeatedly, and that usually lead to my death. When charging the heavy attack, I ended up punching to the side of my target far too frequently. Enemies easily interrupt the charging phase with unavoidable attacks of their own. Net result: I avoid melee wherever possible.
Why can't I move the camera whilst running? If I need to make a semi-sharp turn or navigate around obstructions, I have to slow down, twiddle with the controls, and start running again. That's caused me to eat rockets more than once.
Cerberus. :sigh: Could they be any more Generic Evil Villains of Nastiness if they tried? Maybe if they stapled devil horns onto their helmets. Why do we even need them as a leading adversary? Aren't the Reapers and their whole 'cyclic extinction of all advanced races' shtick enough of a threat to overcome? All of the interesting things Bioware could have done with Cerberus, passed over for lolevilz.
Re: Mass Effect 3
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Originally Posted by Monk
new mining mechanic, think about it arrive in system and send pluse looking for loot. 
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