Mass Effect

Posted by Ruckus on Sunday, January 6, 2008

As a prelude to what you’re about to hear, you should know that I am swearing at the top of my lungs and waving my arms wildly.
Spoliers and intense swearing ahead. Be warned.

What the FUCK is wrong with Bioware? I’ve spent most of today playing Mass Effect and the game is totally fucked. Totally fucked. This is why:

I have been waltzing through this game with no troubles what so ever, and all of a sudden I’ve been thrown into a fucking death trap that they expect me to fight my way out of. As it stands my current survival record in this shit storm is 10 seconds survived, 0 of 5 enemies defeated. Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to make this encounter so hard should have his or her genitals nailed to a table and be hammered repeatedly. Do these people not play test? Does it totally pass their notice that 99% of the game is a cakewalk and then suddenly they throw this impossible Sysiphean task at you?

I have died literally dozens of times trying to beat this whore and I’m no where near it. Am I inept at this game? Am I not ready for this encounter? I could live with that except for the fact that getting here was a fucking walk in the park. A long and slow walk in the park, no less, with many encounters that could have been designed to say, “Hey, you’re not ready for this shit yet. Go back and get more powerful before you reach the end-boss.”

I have tried every strategy I can think of and every one ends in exactly the same way: the first volley that comes my way totally wipes me out. Even when I run for cover (in any of three different directions) they fuck me. I stand and fight from where they place me and they fuck me. I charge at them with my best guns and skills blazing and they fuck me. The best part was that the rape-fest is in two stages. Get past the first part after dying twenty times? Yeah, don’t get excited, there’s more molesting on the way and it’s even worse.

Let’s talk about the other shit they fucked:

1) Badly placed autosaves. Right before the shit storm hits you have a long conversation. You’d think that the best place to put an autosave would be right after the convo and right before combat. But then apparently you wouldn’t work for Bioware, who thought that the best place for an autosave would be before the conversation. Because everyone wants to have the same conversation a thousand times.

2) Totally unstable sniper rifles. Bioware apparently thinks that all snipers are drunks, because the target reticule swerves wildly about, making the thing extraordinarily difficult to use. Which in turn, by the way, makes the infiltrator class a joke. You’d have been better off creating a “crying little girl” class. Should I go back and choose another class because I chose a bad one? Apparently it takes twelve hours of play time before you learn that. Gosh, I hope I pick the right class next time before I burn another twelve hours of my life repeating shit I’ve already done.

3) unskippable cut scenes. Enough with this shit, people. Every game that does this is roundly ridiculed. Learn your fucking lesson already.

4) Allies whom you can arm, but who will change their weapon at their own, totally nonsensical scheme. Going into close combat? I gave you a pimped shotgun to use, but apparently the piece of shit pistol you’ve had since the start of the game is the gun you want to use. Glad I gave you that thing and told you to use it so you could ignore me and pick your shittiest piece of shit in the arsenal. Next time I’ll give you a lump of my shit to use in combat, at least you’ll manage to offend the enemy.

5 ) Repositioning after cut-scenes. Listen, when I’m in a room full of angry people with guns, I go find cover. Apparently though, cut-scenes are the time when Shepard walks out into the middle of the room and turns his back to the enemy. Why are you assholes disorienting me like that? I spent all my fucking time fighting my way into cover and the first thing you do is rip me out of it and turn me around.

6) Useless gun upgrades. Maybe I got lucky, but fifteen minutes into the game I got a gun that is far superior to everything else I have encountered. It’s a level 2 gun, and I’ve gotten shit up to level 5 that sucks in comparison. What the fuck is the point of five different levels of several different gun models if they all suck compared to one gun?

This game was so well written and so creative, and they went and fucked it in one single encounter. Fucked it right in the ass and then spit on it. I have no recourse or plan to beat this encounter and I have no desire to go back and run through all that shit again to try it later or with another class, so I guess that means I’m done with Mass Effect. That twelve hours of entertainment was totally worth sixty bucks.

8 Comments »

2269

Comment by Dodongo

1/6/2008 @ 3:59 pm

Did game critics have a convention this year and decide that they weren’t giving out enough 100% ratings? The Metacritic scores over the last 6 months have been full of them. Even PC Gamer who used to be extremely stingy with giving out anything higher than 90% has been hitting the Prozac lately.

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Comment by Brixtone

1/6/2008 @ 5:12 pm

Waaaaaaaaaa! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

That’s my reaction to a crying baby on a plane. I get right in it’s face and cry back at it louder and louder until it becomes pulp. But anyway, let’s address some of your issues:

Which encounter are you up against exactly? I came across some that took multiple attempts, but none took quite as many as you describe.

Talking Points

1. I agree that some of the autosaves are placed poorly. And given the information you’ve presented, I’m going to guess that you went after the matriarch first and if so, I’m not surprised that you got served. I’d go after some of the other objectives before tackling that one. I am also in agreement that Bioware should have given some hint that this would be the toughest battle.

2. The initial sniper loadout is pretty unstable, but as you increase your skills and add stabilization upgrades, you can get it to damn near still shooting every time. This is not a mechanic specific to Mass Effect.

3. Unskippable cutscenes. Amen, and this issue has honestly come up time and time and time again in industry discussions and polls of biggest mistakes in game development.

4. Soldiers swapping their loadout automatically is a setting which you would have seen in the initial game setup. This actually works very much to your benefit for the most part, but if you want to micromanage them, you can still do so.

5. I’m in agreement with you on this one as well.

6. The gun upgrades are definitely not useless, but you may have gotten very lucky with a good roll from the slot machine early on. You’ll remember that in games like Diablo, a good enough early-level item can outweight higher-level items for a long while.

Give Mass Effect another chance, and don’t start with the Matriarch. I completely agree that Bioware dropped the ball here by allowing enough freedom of choice to effectively hang yourself. You should be able to keep your existing crew (I also created an Infiltrator and he’s a pimp) and work your way through the other 2 large objectives before moving in on the big score. I find the combat in Mass Effect rather frustrating (no mouse + shooter = screaming rage), but I did manage to get a better hold on things once I learned to use my team properly.

I went through what is likely the same experience that you did, exploring and becoming lost in the story and missions on The Citadel and then heading out to get my ass served by the Matriarch. There are several stumbles along the way in this game but the overall experience has been my best since Oblivion.

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Comment by Dodongo

1/6/2008 @ 7:15 pm

“the overall experience has been my best since Oblivion.” may not be the most convincing thing you could say to Ruckus…

http://www.eatmybomb.com/archives/985

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Comment by Brixtone

1/6/2008 @ 7:59 pm

I still contend that Ruckus would enjoy Oblivion if he gave it a fair shake. It’s just like that song:

“Shake,shake,shake
Shake,shake,shake
Shake your large scale epic RPG with some flaws that can be overlooked unless you harbor malice for the game development industry”

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Comment by Scrimpnut

1/6/2008 @ 9:44 pm

My dad, age 60, finished this game on the middle level in less than a day.

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Comment by Ruckus

1/7/2008 @ 12:34 am

I will admit that my list of gripes was primarily due to the game balance issue enraging me to the point of disgust. I wrote that last night with full understanding that it would come out sounding irrational.

HOWEVER…

How is it allowable that a game could let you get that deep into a mission (and it’s a long one) with almost no hitches before suddenly slamming you with death? I’m totally okay with admitting that I’m not ready to tackle a level, but some warning would have been nice. Maybe instead of putting those cupcakes right at the front door of Peak 15 they could have put some dudes more level appropriate. I had no problems at all with that level right up until the matriarch; the puzzles, the combat, nothing posed a problem until that one encounter totally destroyed me. Basically this means I’m going to have to burn three or four hours of game time just to have found out that this mission was too tough for me. That’s just bullshit. It’s just poor design. What makes it even worse is that when I come back to this mission after having gained some levels it’s going to be even more trivial. I worked over everyone in there as I stand, when I come back more pimped, combat is going to be even more pointless. At no point in a video game should the difficulty curve go “trivial-trivial-easy-easy-impossible.”

As for having gone after the matriarch first, pull up your galactic map and highlight the three missions given to you when you leave the Citadel. Guess which one is closest to the citadel. That’s right, “Find the Matriarch.” I’m okay with them giving me free reign to choose my missions, but the least they can do is put the high-level one a little further from where you start. I don’t need my missions spoon-fed to me, but use some goddamn sense. “Well, our best lead to Saren is the Matriarch - she’s the woman standing over there in the corner - but you’d better go to the edge of the galaxy first before you talk to her.”

One other point I wanted to address regarding my squad choosing their own weapons.  I spent their development points on assault rifle, I modded the best rifle I had for them to use, and for some reason they pull out a pistol in the climactic battle.  Maybe they know something I don’t.  Maybe ugly sluts are vulnerable to pistol fire, but get this: I micromanage my squad because they’re dumb.  Garrus keeps stepping in front of my lines of fire and I’ve killed him on several occasions because he steps in front of me as I’m pulling the trigger.  Williams will use her shotgun to fire down a hallway at an enemy when there’s a Rakni warrior attacking her from the side at point-blank range.  This gives me no encouragement to think they know what they’re doing.  No one has ever developed a squad AI that I found useful.
As for “harbor[ing] malice for the game development industry,” are you kidding me? Seriously. That insults me. Stop trying to tell me I’ll like Oblivion. That worked the last five times I tried to play that game and guess what? I thought it was lame five times in a row. Once I even suffered through it for ten hours of game time just to see if it would get better. The answer is still no. Stop shoving that shit down my throat. I’m not playing that game again and the more you bring it up the less I want to.

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Comment by Dodongo

1/7/2008 @ 5:17 pm

Someone send Scrimpnut a copy so we can shoot this bitch over 30 comments!

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