Mass Effect 3

[kitten]

Aug 17, 2011 21:50:24 GMT -5 TheGunheart said:

Which is strange because you don't have any achievements or trophies for the Assassin's Creed series, Just Cause

I've played copious amounts of GTA3 with a friend, finished Vice City on my own, watched a friend play San Andreas for too long, played through GTA4, did the majority of what there was to do in Crackdown and beat Prototype (and also tried a pretty wide variety of demos). In addition to that, I didn't specifically criticize either of those games, I merely expressed my lack of interest with the genre. When I played Prototype, I did not make it an agenda to hate on it as often as possible like you have with Mass Effect 2, as I went in already fairly confident I was going to dislike it (and holy hell did I hate it).

and you admit that you never played past partway through Ocarina of Time.

But I have played through all of Zelda, Zelda II, Link's Awakening, A Link to the Past, bought Ocarina and tried to play it and got more than halfway through Twilight Princess and through a few dungeons in my copy of Phantom Hourglass. And that's just experience with the particular series, there are probably at least a dozen other games /like/ Zelda I've played.

But either way, it amounts to the same thing: complaining about a genre that you don't like in terms of it being objectively horrible. Frankly, I don't care.

There is an extremely keen difference between what we've been doing. You've been criticizing a genre you don't like that you've barely experienced. When I criticize genres or games, I try to make sure I know, from personal experience, what I'm talking about. It's why my criticisms can be so scathing. Despite my relatively equal disinterest in WRPGs, jRPGs and SRPGs, you'll see me criticize jRPGs most frequently and with the most depth because I have spent the most time learning about them. The key issue is not that I don't think you're devoid of a right to criticize, it's that I think your criticisms are ridiculous and very inappropriate given your minimal experience and admitted dislike of "realistic gunplay."You can find the game boring, dull, bland, mediocre or even awful, that's fine, but if you start getting in-depth with criticism like you have, please have some sort of reference.

It is weird how people immediately assume people being critical are trying to be objective, but people being positive are given the benefit of the doubt and considered subjective much more often. If I say that a game has excellent gameplay, I have a higher chance of someone assuming I'm being subjective. If I say a game has atrocious gameplay, I have a higher chance of someone assuming I'm attempting to be objective. I am being no more objective in here than I am in my recent list of my personal favorite games. More often than not, someone regarding something as "good" is considered the more reasonable person than someone who considers it "bad."

Anyway, criticism does not equal objectivity. Juxtaposing and debating tastes is an integral part of identity and culture, blah blah blah. I mostly use the forum as a platform for debate and gathering information.

[TheGunheart]

I honestly can't even tell what you're arguing anymore.

[kyouki]

Kitten's got a good point, but is being wickedly overzealous about it.

You said ME2 is a poor cover shooter, and then Kitten went and checked your achievements online and saw that you haven't played many cover shooters much. So her argument is that without experience playing cover shooters you wouldn't know whether a given game is a good cover shooter or not.

I think you would have been better off just saying, "ME2 sucks" or "cover shooters suck and so ME2 also sucks." I mean, I'm not going to let my non-experience with dating sims stop me from saying "dating sims suck" but I would never take a specific dating sim and say, "this is a poor example of a dating sim."

[kitten]

There we go.

[TheGunheart]

It doesn't help that it feels poor compared to other shooters I've played. The weapons don't give off much feedback, especially against armored or shielded foes. The level design is generally poor, and I'm not the only one who's stated such.

I loved it when I was using Charge to zoom around the battlefield and generally not playing it like a cover shooter, but playing as a Soldier just felt like a chore. Hell, the Vanguard trailer was the only reason I bothered with the sequel in the first place, as my second run of the first only decreased my opinion of it further.

[Sketcz-1000]

Aug 17, 2011 14:17:13 GMT -5 @megatronbison said:

So Mass Effect is getting the Dragon Age 2 treatment?

I never followed Dragon Age 2. What happened there?

[derboo]

Actually, Dragon Age 2 got the Mass Effect treatment. Only as an hack&slay instead of shooter.

[Sketcz-1000]

So all the cool RPG stuff was removed to appeal to stupid people?

[derboo]

Not all, but quite a bit. From the top of my head, you have no longer control over the equipment of companions, and there's lots, lots of hack&slay combat.

[Deleted]

They also changed the design of the elves and the qunari. They look much, much worse and without any explanation.

[Deleted]

Aug 18, 2011 5:54:08 GMT -5 derboo said:

Not all, but quite a bit. From the top of my head, you have no longer control over the equipment of companions, and there's lots, lots of hack&slay combat.

I will say though, one of the benefits of ME2's dumbing down was the inventory. The inventory in the original SUUUUUCKED (suuuucked is a trademark of neorasa llc). Especially when playing through again on higher difficulties. To paraphrase a passage from Leviticus, the game gives you items. The game gives you items morning, noon and night until they come out of your nostrils and become loathsome to you. And changing dupes into omnijizz gets tiresome after you have to do it like 20 times in a row.

[megatronbison]

Yeah you did have to liquify your inventory most of the time in the original...but still- I think the sequel maybe went too far in going "hey stupid! Your too dumb to play an RPG".
Dragon Age 2 felt more like a badly executed hack and slack most of the time to me. As for the multi-page arguement... I don't mind TPS/Cover Shooter games but I have to admit there are way, way too many coming out now. When I look at the big hitters coming out these days it seems to be either "Like Gears of War but!/Like God of War but!/Like Call of Duty but!

[Warchief Onyx]

I know I'll take ME2's barebones way of handling inventory (and the inventory in general) over the cumbersome mess that was ME1's. Even on PC it was really clumsy. Just not nearly as much as on the 360. I also like that each of the weapons and armor pieces actually had a point in ME2 instead of cluttering up my inventory with a ton of useless crap. If those are the superficial "RPG elements" these purists whine about dumbing the game down for the goddamned Philistines, then let me be the first to say "Uh, aduh derp durrrrrr."

[Deleted]

Aug 18, 2011 15:07:23 GMT -5 Warchief Onyx said:

I know I'll take ME2's barebones way of handling inventory (and the inventory in general) over the cumbersome mess that was ME1's. Even on PC it was really clumsy. Just not nearly as much as on the 360. I also like that each of the weapons and armor pieces actually had a point in ME2 instead of cluttering up my inventory with a ton of useless crap. If those are the superficial "RPG elements" these purists whine about dumbing the game down for the goddamned Philistines, then let me be the first to say "Uh, aduh derp durrrrrr."

If I had a complaint about the simplification, it's that the streamlined leveling system was just a bit too simple (and in the surface almost arbitrary). On the other hand, the dialog "role playing" portion was much much better in 2. Kitten said once that you could switch between the paragon and rogue choices and not come off as some kind of schizo.

Btw, someone say something controversial about cover systems, we need to start the
pissing match up again. ;p

[Deleted]

Whatever happens, I'm glad that they're using the "personality type" system from DAII in ME3. When you make a bunch of responses with a given tone, all of your dialogue will take on that tone, regardless of the response you give. So you can play a goody-goody and make an aggressive response without it seeming completely out of place.