Mass Effect....why all the hype?

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defiant007

2[H]4U
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So I just finished Mass Effect and I cannot for the life of me figure out why or how it garnered so much critical acclaim and adoration by fans.

I am seriously starting to believe that mass adoption of gaming, in particular by casual gamers, is quickly eroding perceptions of what a good game is. And make no mistake, Mass Effect has been designed to appeal to the Gen-Y of gamers, whose very identity is based upon instant self-gratification.

I am sure my thoughts will polarise both ends of the spectrum who inhabit [H], so for what it is worth here are my thoughts about Mass Effect:

(1) it cannot decide whether its an rpg or a third person shooter, and as a result does neither genre particularly well. The shooting encounters are fairly mundane and unexciting, whilst many of the rpg elements feel tacked on and underdeveloped;

(2) the plot is a mish mash of elements ripped straight out of starcontrol 2, descent freespace 2, halo and stargate. Its nothing new and not very thought provoking;

(3) the inventory system is completely horrible, you would have thought that in the selling menus they would have at least organised the various gear you have into proper categories. The loot pickup system has also not been given any thought, I was not particularly impressed that I automatically got lumped with a whole bunch of crap items which I could not be bothered sorting through.

The problem gets compounded because even if you ignore it, it eventually gets to the arbitrary point where you are unable to carry any more than 150 items. The frustrating thing about that is, rather than giving you the opportunity to dump whatever existing items you have in order to free up more space, you are forced to convert into omni gel the accumulated loot;

(4) party AI was not particularly effective, especially when it came to using cover properly;

(5) enemy AI was even dumber, at times enemies would just stand around in the open despite firing on them continuously;

(6) the voice acting of the protagonist was very wooden and expressionless;

(7) the dialog branches often had no impact on what you would say, and would elicit the same response. It felt very contrived;

(8) the driving sequences were incredibly shallow and pointless, and whilst in the mako you are practically invincible;

(9) the recycling of planet surfaces and enemy bases for the side quests was blatantly obvious, and are not very inspiring to look at (especially the planet surfaces which look like they had been ripped out of a game from 2000). This added to the tediousness of the missions which mostly consisted of "go here, kill everyone". Towards the end I could not be bothered any longer with them and moved on to finish the main quest; and

(10) on the hardest difficulty, and using the option to micromanage your squad mates, the game was incredibly easy, even towards the end where you are continuously pummeled with Geth destroyers. Money also becomes fairly pointless early on, by the end of the game I had amassed 3 million credits which I could not spend on anything.

The one thing Mass Effect has going for it is that it is, at times, a gorgeous looking game. I was blown away by how life like some of the character animations look, especially when running it at full details on 1920x1440.

All in all, I cannot say that the 35 hours I sunk into Mass Effect was worth the time or effort. Unfortunately I am one of these compulsive people who, having wasted money on a game, feel driven to finish it in order to get my money out of it. Mass Effect suffers from so many inconsistencies and weaknesses, its hard to believe that it was rated so well. In comparison to rich and engrossing RPG's like baldurs gate, planescape torment, icewind dale, etc Mass Effect is nothing but mediocre at best, and extremely tedious and boring at worst.

If anything, this reinforces in my mind that most of the time you cannot trust reviews from major publications, and that one must be very wary of popular opinion.

/me prepares self for torrent of enraged fanboy responses. :cool:
 
I thought that the plot was fairly well done, and certainly had an epic and satisfying conclusion. So many games end lamely (i'm looking at you Fallout 3) that ME's ending was a breath of fresh air. The universe is incredibly detailed, and you can tell they took the time to flesh out the races, histories, and other details of the world. It may not be the most super original thing in the world, but it was very well done, which counts for a lot.

Everyone agrees that the inventory sucked, so you're beating a dead horse there. Convert all your extra stuff to omnigel, and sell everything else so that you can get the Spectre gear. That's about all that can be said.

For me the best part of the game was jacking up my conversation skill as high as it could go and going through conversations seeing how it would play out. Noveria's quests in particular could play out in many different ways depending on your alignment and who you talked to, and when. The female voice actress, Jennifer Hale, did a particularly good job for most of the dialog.

I've played the game about 5 times now, so I've enjoyed it in spite of its flaws. I'm looking forward to the sequels, and am hoping that BioWare learns from its mistakes.
 
It was my favorite game last year, hands down. ENjoyed the story, the gameplay. I can see not liking it, but I thought it was a great game, and I've played through 4 times now. Can't wait for the sequel.
 
i have to somewhat agree with the OP.. However, i do have to say that dialog driven games are great. It gives a great sense of freedom and non-linear gameplay. I just finished fallout 3 and dialog driven gameplay is for the win
 
Thank you for this post.

With that out of the way, I think there exists a silent and sizable group of people who feel the same way. I played it and was racking my brain trying to figure out why this game was met with so much acclaim.

Graphics were third world and the environments were so bland, devoid of personality and repetitive that it was hard to notice anything else about the game. I enjoyed the female protagonists voice and character customization was great, along with character models, but that's where my generosity ends.

Gameplay was okay, but I realized at some point that any class besides the soldier was a novelty class with some neat effects. I played as a Vanguard and quickly realized that I could easily live without most all of my skills. This diminishes the game for me, as it makes me feel like my efforts are not rewarded and makes the game extremely easy, way too easy.

The storyline was fun, if not a tad bit recycled, but it felt very linear despite having options in the dialogue, which again, diminishes the experience for me. Does it really matter what I say or what class I choose? Doesn't seem likely, so what's the point?

I gave this game a solid 7.5, but nothing anyone says about the game warrants anything above an 8 at best. In some respects I am an the anti-gamer, having fallen in love with the likes of STALKER and Titan Quest (although a lot of people loved those), but I think review sites have a criteria agenda, a formula by which games are judged. These formula's do not always equal a good game however and alot of people disagree with reviews, like Far Cry 2. I think other people just experience the "yeah, I guess it's good" mentality when their views of a particular game differ from that of a major review sites.

I also think there are pockets of fans in every genre of gaming that I just don't get, and that's okay, but I think they are very vocal and actively post on the internet, making a game seem more appealing than perhaps it actually is. In the case of Mass Effect, this select group of people are rather large, vocal and happen to be in sync with the media review sites. Occasionally the stars align and you end up with a lot of hype for a game like Mass Effect, that may very well be a decent title, but doesn't deserve the attention it receives.
 
I really liked the game as a whole.
The only downside was the planet missions in the buggy where you more or less did the same thing each time and it didnt look much different.
The rest of it was great though, it had a good feel to it.
 
I played it 3 times already. And almost successively. i know I'll go back to it again. I agree though, that its not the best game in the world, but I thought it lived up pretty well to the hype, just not perfect to it, since nothing ever really does.
 
Katotonic said:
I also think there are pockets of fans in every genre of gaming that I just don't get, and that's okay, but I think they are very vocal and actively post on the internet, making a game seem more appealing than perhaps it actually is. In the case of Mass Effect, this select group of people are rather large, vocal and happen to be in sync with the media review sites. Occasionally the stars align and you end up with a lot of hype for a game like Mass Effect, that may very well be a decent title, but doesn't deserve the attention it receives.
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The most baffling thing to me about Mass Effect is how it consistently scored over 90% in most professional reviews. Even giving it the most benevolent critique, I would only score it 7.5/10 at most. I honestly think that these so called professional reviewers lack all perspective, because if one had played games like baldurs gate or planescape torment, there is no way you would dare say Mass Effect was anywhere close to the same pedigree.
 
defiant007 said:
The most baffling thing to me about Mass Effect is how it consistently scored over 90% in most professional reviews. Even giving it the most benevolent critique, I would only score it 7.5/10 at most. I honestly think that these so called professional reviewers lack all perspective, because if one had played games like baldurs gate or planescape torment, there is no way you would dare say Mass Effect was anywhere close to the same pedigree.
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It's not in the same class as those games, so I'm not sure why you're comparing them in this case.
 
defiant007 said:
(2) the plot is a mish mash of elements ripped straight out of starcontrol 2, descent freespace 2, halo and stargate. Its nothing new and not very thought provoking;
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pretty much agree with everything you said except this. really if you pick apart any game you can find multiple things (book, movie, game, etc) that have a similar story.
 
no other game that i have ever played has told a story as well as mass effect has. the presentation and the way they told the story are the reason why i really really enjoyed the game.
 
i liked mass effect but i definately can see how not everyone did. for me, it's the same way people talk about oblivion. everyone else seems to like it except a select group.

mass effect, for me, really hit the nail on the head as far as balancing out a game with a rich story (which they purposely used as many references to other sci-fi as possible) with character customization.

is the game perfect? hardly. did i play through it back to back to back to back with different characters? yes i did.
 
defiant007 said:
I am seriously starting to believe that mass adoption of gaming, in particular by casual gamers, is quickly eroding perceptions of what a good game is. And make no mistake, Mass Effect has been designed to appeal to the Gen-Y of gamers, whose very identity is based upon instant self-gratification.
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Here's what's going on.

- You didn't like Mass Effect as much as others. That's OK. However, what you should also understand is that the majority disagrees with you on this, and many people thought it was a great game.

- The majority is made up of people. Because reviewers are also people, most reviews are also going to disagree with your assessment.

Now, you might say that our perceptions are being "eroded" away, but what we have to do is look at the facts here: we're playing a game that most people considered great and you disagree with them. That is fine. However, it doesn't mean those other people are wrong.

Now, you might be able to point to other examples of big budget games where your personal opinion doesn't match with the reviews or majority opinion. However, there are a couple things to consider here:

These are massively distributed games that we're playing, and as such, the volume of opinion on said game is high. Also, take into account a game which had generally worse reviews, like Spore. With Spore, the majority opinion on that game was that it generally was not a great game. This doesn't mean that one side was right and one side was wrong. It means that people generally didn't like Spore as much as other games.

Because the game is also being put out by a large company, it is more likely to be a good game than, say, some Wii crap you buy off the shelf for $20. Even if there are many cases of bad games being massively distributed, massively distributed games are more likely to be good than those which are not. Now, what's the point of this? Well, we're going to generally see better reviews for massively distributed games than for others. This means that it is more likely that we will have more circumstances where one might say to himself, "They gave this game awesome reviews, but I thought it sucked." Add the fact that people like us play the massively distributed games more than $20 crap, and you might notice a few games a year follow this trend. What it means is that you didn't like the game, and that's all it means.
 
PWMK2 said:
Here's what's going on.

- You didn't like Mass Effect as much as others. That's OK. However, what you should also understand is that the majority disagrees with you on this, and many people thought it was a great game.

- The majority is made up of people. Because reviewers are also people, most reviews are also going to disagree with your assessment.

Now, you might say that our perceptions are being "eroded" away, but what we have to do is look at the facts here: we're playing a game that most people considered great and you disagree with them. That is fine. However, it doesn't mean those other people are wrong.

Now, you might be able to point to other examples of big budget games where your personal opinion doesn't match with the reviews or majority opinion. However, there are a couple things to consider here:

These are massively distributed games that we're playing, and as such, the volume of opinion on said game is high. Also, take into account a game which had generally worse reviews, like Spore. With Spore, the majority opinion on that game was that it generally was not a great game. This doesn't mean that one side was right and one side was wrong. It means that people generally didn't like Spore as much as other games.

Because the game is also being put out by a large company, it is more likely to be a good game than, say, some Wii crap you buy off the shelf for $20. Even if there are many cases of bad games being massively distributed, massively distributed games are more likely to be good than those which are not. Now, what's the point of this? Well, we're going to generally see better reviews for massively distributed games than for others. This means that it is more likely that we will have more circumstances where one might say to himself, "They gave this game awesome reviews, but I thought it sucked." Add the fact that people like us play the massively distributed games more than $20 crap, and you might notice a few games a year follow this trend. What it means is that you didn't like the game, and that's all it means.
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Good post, I agree with you.
 
PWMK2 said:
The majority is made up of people. Because reviewers are also people, most reviews are also going to disagree with your assessment.
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Except reviewers, especially reviewers of publications who tend to receive massive amounts of advertising revenue from publishers whose games they are reviewing, have a vested interest in convincing people that a game is worth buying.
 
defiant007 said:
Except reviewers, especially reviewers of publications who tend to receive massive amounts of advertising revenue from publishers whose games they are reviewing, have a vested interest in convincing people that a game is worth buying.
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oh god, that is such a worn out trope and so demonstrably untrue. Does that include review websites that are run independently and depend on page hits too? Do the game companies have enough money to pay off the dozens and dozens of review sites, and even if they do, what evidence do you have that they actually do so?

Juvenile thinking.
 
Only played through once... I don't know how people can play these games more than even... twice. One time on any game is enough for me, I have too many games to play :p

Agree with some of your thinking, there were definitely low points of the game. I did NOT like the Mako missions, and I tried to do as few side missions as possible. I did a few, but they were mostly "go to this far out planet, kill some people, get something, come back". I did do some, but it wasn't what made the game fun. Inventory did suck as well. I did not like the management system... because there was none.

What I did like was the story, and the character interaction. I did notice that although you had a few different choices, sometimes it didn't really matter what you clicked, it would end up saying the same thing. I might also hold that as a point against, but for the most part, character interaction was great. *POSSIBLE SPOILER* Not too many games force you to choose between two members of your team or to blast one of them for acting against you.

I thought the story was excellent, even if it was a regular Sci-Fi story. It was done well, and in the end, even if it was a little shallow, I want to be entertained in my game, and Mass Effect entertained me from beginning to end. Not every game holds my interest all the way through. Fallout 3 is doing pretty well of that though.
 
I find it to be very good but not great game.
Story is nice but sidequests are boring and the freedom of choice and dialogues is rather illusion.

I tried to do 100% run with as many sidequests done as possible but they bored the hell out of me and i finished it earlier after 20 hours of gameplay on my first run.

Imho 8/10 game definitly overhyped in media.


(1) it cannot decide whether its an rpg or a third person shooter, and as a result does neither genre particularly well. The shooting encounters are fairly mundane and unexciting, whilst many of the rpg elements feel tacked on and underdeveloped;

It is shooter make no mistake - rpg elements are rather minimal.
 
defiant007 said:
Except reviewers, especially reviewers of publications who tend to receive massive amounts of advertising revenue from publishers whose games they are reviewing, have a vested interest in convincing people that a game is worth buying.
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Did you even see what I posted? Here, I'll quote it again for you.

PWMK2 said:
These are massively distributed games that we're playing, and as such, the volume of opinion on said game is high. Also, take into account a game which had generally worse reviews, like Spore. With Spore, the majority opinion on that game was that it generally was not a great game. This doesn't mean that one side was right and one side was wrong. It means that people generally didn't like Spore as much as other games.

Because the game is also being put out by a large company, it is more likely to be a good game than, say, some Wii crap you buy off the shelf for $20. Even if there are many cases of bad games being massively distributed, massively distributed games are more likely to be good than those which are not. Now, what's the point of this? Well, we're going to generally see better reviews for massively distributed games than for others. This means that it is more likely that we will have more circumstances where one might say to himself, "They gave this game awesome reviews, but I thought it sucked." Add the fact that people like us play the massively distributed games more than $20 crap, and you might notice a few games a year follow this trend. What it means is that you didn't like the game, and that's all it means.
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I'll word this differently for you:

1. Games with large budgets are more likely to be good games. This is pretty much a steadfast rule, and while there are plenty of low budget games that are good and plenty of high budget games that are comparatively bad, you are more likely to pick up a good game made by, say, Ubi Soft than you are by Majesco.

2. This fact is reflected in the reviews.

3. Since there are many more big budget games that get good reviews than lower budget games, and also simply because we are more likely to play big buget games than low budget games, then we are likely to run into a scenario in which we disagree with a good review for a high budget game simply because of our personal taste. You didn't like Mass Effect, and that's fine. But I did, and so did many others. Many of the reviewers also did, but some did not (as you can see here: http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/masseffect).

I mean, you're also ignoring here plenty of big budget games that got less than stellar reviews (Army of Two and Spore instantly come to mind). It's not like every single last one of the video game reviewers are in cahoots with the game companies. It just means you're going to sometimes disagree with a reviewer out of taste for the reasons I detailed above.
 
This just in.... some people don't like vanilla ice cream. Absurd, but true. Follow up on the 11 o'clock news!
 
Rurik said:
This just in.... some people don't like vanilla ice cream. Absurd, but true. Follow up on the 11 o'clock news!
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That's not true! Anyone who says they don't like vanilla is just being paid off by the big chocolate companies!!!
 
Technoob said:
That's not true! Anyone who says they don't like vanilla is just being paid off by the big chocolate companies!!!
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And there are those out there that will eat Vanilla Ice Cream more than once, and enjoy it as much as the first. :D
 
spydermonkey said:
Three words:

Alien Lesbian Sex.
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Explicit orgasmic rape, according to Fox News. :rolleyes:

I wish BioWare would make a game with only 2 or 3 companions, instead of 6. That way they could focus on making the companions more interesting. Ashley Williams and Wrex were the only companions in Mass Effect with any depth to them, I thought.
 
I couldn't get into this game either. Uninstalled it after playing for three hours.
 
defiant007 said:
(1) it cannot decide whether its an rpg or a third person shooter, and as a result does neither genre particularly well. The shooting encounters are fairly mundane and unexciting, whilst many of the rpg elements feel tacked on and underdeveloped;...
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You bring up a lot of good points. However, I thought it was my favorite game of 2008. I loved the plot, I loved the quality of the voice acting. The environments on the main plot were gorgeous.

Katotonic said:
Thank you for this post.

With that out of the way, I think there exists a silent and sizable group of people who feel the same way. I played it and was racking my brain trying to figure out why this game was met with so much acclaim.

I gave this game a solid 7.5, but nothing anyone says about the game warrants anything above an 8 at best. In some respects I am an the anti-gamer, having fallen in love with the likes of STALKER and Titan Quest ...

I also think there are pockets of fans in every genre of gaming that I just don't get, and that's okay, but I think they are very vocal and actively post on the internet, making a game seem more appealing than perhaps it actually is.
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We could substitute Mass Effect with STALKER and have this entire thread still make sense. I guess I am one of those people who just doesn't get the appeal of STALKER.
 
Chombo said:
We could substitute Mass Effect with STALKER and have this entire thread still make sense. I guess I am one of those people who just doesn't get the appeal of STALKER.
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Good point. I loved ME and played through it 3 times (and got all 360 achievements). I hated STALKER - stopped playing after 3-4 hours, and didn't like FEAR. Both games that people hold on a podium.
 
I personally like this game, although I've known people who hated it. I guess it just depend on taste. You can't expect everyone to like the same game:rolleyes:
 
*Shrug* I liked it. Once you get into the meat of the story it was pretty fun. Not a perfect game, but worth playing.
 
beanman101283 said:
Explicit orgasmic rape, according to Fox News. :rolleyes:

I wish BioWare would make a game with only 2 or 3 companions, instead of 6. That way they could focus on making the companions more interesting. Ashley Williams and Wrex were the only companions in Mass Effect with any depth to them, I thought.
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After playing KotoR I would disagree with you but after playing Mass Effect I'm totally inclined to agree with you. I also thought only Wrex was really compelling and while KotoR was worth playing through for me just so I could learn more about the other characters and such I never felt like I wanted to play Mass Effect again to learn more about the characters.

I think the lesson here is that they should just stick to star wars ( AND NOT MAKE MMOS )
 
Hmm, I loved the game, especially from BioWare which rocked KOTOR. Then again, I hate the Call of Duty series while everyone else has orgasms about it :rolleyes:
 
The thing that's really odd is that I completely see where you are coming from wrt all the gripes.

To me at least the characters and storytelling were so compelling that all the interface and gameplay bugs and shortcomings amounted to a lack of polish in my eyes. In spite of all it's flaws the world of Mass Effect is incredibly believable for all it's flaws.

I think the races, characters, culture, history, and conflict they crafted are far more believable than most of the games I encounter. I had a real sense of the underlying motivations of some of the characters, and got the impression to some extent of actually being involved in Shepard's capacity in the power plays and struggles going on in the universe. Even the secondary characters were generally very interesting and unique unlike Oblivion or something. The Salarian special forces commander towards the end struck me as particularly awesome for some reason. :cool:

Did you read all the stuff in the codex? Much of that played a huge role in making the world sort of "come alive" but was equivalent to reading history books about another world if that sort of thing bores you.

....for some reason I got really obsessed with whoring high end loot at the end of the game, and I'm not certain why.

That said, you are correct about the inventory system in particular being absolutely abysmal. The side worlds were really lame and cookie cutter for the most part. Driving in the mountains sucked.

There's just something about ME that makes those who like it overlook its shortcomings.
 
defiant007 said:
(7) the dialog branches often had no impact on what you would say, and would elicit the same response. It felt very contrived;
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When I read this I thought, "OP, welcome to Baldur's Gate!" Then:

In comparison to rich and engrossing RPG's like baldurs gate, planescape torment, icewind dale, etc Mass Effect is nothing but mediocre at best, and extremely tedious and boring at worst.
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lol

I thought the dialogue in BG/NWN was the same, contrived to drive you towards one of two choices, one of which you damned sure didn't want to pick unless you relished an evil reputation and hugely increased costs buying equipment (and eventual attacks in the BG series at least.)
 
my experience with mass effect:

first 10 minutes, talk to some guys.

next 5 minutes, shoot some guys and run up a hill.

next hour, talk to some guys in some big ass building, get myself nowhere, eventually talk to some guy who says some stuff for about 20 minutes, then shoot some dudes for 2 minutes.

then i quit playing forever.

felt like someone took fallout 2, turned it into over the shoulder, sent everyone to space, made the combat system and the weapons suck, and took all the dialogue to the script person for the movie starship troopers, and then released some horrible piece of crap that the world fell in love with.

hated mass effect. make more fallout's, far cry 1's, counter strikes, bf2's, diablo2's, starcrats', total war's, empire earth's, civilization's, and final fantasy games that dont suck. (anything prior to ff10 is preferred).
 
Haha that is the EXACT same experience I had.

I'm definitely not saying its a horrible game, I just wasn't feeling it. I'm glad so many people enjoyed the story and got something out of it.
 
Happy for those that enjoyed it. I just just don't get the whole Bioware vibe. Their games appear rushed in many places. The combat is meh. The star trek aesthetic is not my taste. Music was cheesy. Upgrades were mediocre and provided no sense of accomplishment, save the suit. I could go on, but what's the point?

I'm still waiting for a sci-fi action rpg game to combine twitch shooting, meaningful upgrades and skills, an M rating, incredible visuals and challenging AI.
 
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