Okay, Okay, I know I missed a day. But this post totally counts for yesterday, becuase it’s mostly about why I didn’t manage to make a post in those 24 hours. Other reasons are that I only got off work at 11:10 and had to do some shopping immediately afterward. So I wouldn’t have made it in time anyway. Ha.
So it seems people just won’t shup up about Mass Effect. Before the game came out it was all hype, and now that it’s released it’s mostly nitpicking and disappointment. But me, I never cared about it at all. Until yesterday, when I stayed up playing until 7:00 AM. Yeah. The Tall One really wanted to rent it, despite “not having time for an RPG”. I think he just didn’t want to commit to Eternal Sonata. But anyhow, Mass Effect.
So he played it for a week and whatnot, and I picked it up for an hour on Tuesday, got frustrated with the shitty combat, and didn’t even finish the introductory mission. But damned if I’m going to have a game sitting there with zero achievements! So I picked it up late Thursday night and hunkered down, finally sort of getting the hang of ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive. And then the game became fun! Once the lame intro mission is over, you’re pretty much handed the world galaxy on a silver platter, and it’s yours to do with as you please. Sure, you’ve gotta tie up some stuff before the space travel starts, but the Citadel is so big and full of things to do that a sequence of events that should only take about half an hour lasted me well into six. It’s so wonderful!
And it only gets better once you can fly about the galaxy on a whim. It’s a little intimidating at first, seeing as you’ve got a ton of destinations to choose from, but once you realize that you can only land on about a third of the planets you’ll see, the overwhelming “where the fuck do I start!?” feeling starts to dissipate. The open-endedness of the game is really nice, and the fact that it’s really just a well-disguised collect-a-thon bodes well for my opinion.
As I stated before though, the combat is pretty terrible. The aiming is clunky, and the game doesn’t tell you half of what you can do. I didn’t even realize there was a melee attack until my brother pointed out that it’s one of the best ways to deal with close-quarters combat. And then there’s the ally characters. Basically all they do is stand in front of you, absorbing all your fire. Yes, they act as nice meat shields for a little while, but if they would just get out of my way, I could spare them the pains of death by actually dealing with our foes! Oh well. Most of the other combat-related issues get better as weapon skills increase, so I’ll just skip those minor inconveniences.
Other thoughts? Not much. Most of the achievements are nice and easy to earn, but require quite a bit of time. Sadly, I picked the game up only a day before it was due back, so we’ll have to rent it again, but I’m almost ready to consider buying it. I don’t know how gung-ho I would be about multiple playthroughs, but considering that I went from not liking it at all to playing it all night long two days in a row, I’d say it’s probably worth splitting with the brother unit. I still really want Eternal Sonata though. I seem to have an affinity for games with charcters named after musical terminology.