Mass Effect Retrospective Part 3

And now we get to the fun stuff. The nuts and bolts of how we and our squad mates shoot stuff (or zap it with various powers). When comparing 'Mass Effect' to 'Mass Effect 2' this area of the game (arguably) saw an even more dramatic overhaul than the environment design did. However unlike the environment changes I think it's fair to say that the changes to how one approaches combat where almost all for the better*. So what's changed?

Well the biggest change is probably the way in which one approaches combat in the first place. In the first game (all of this is based on the 'Normal' difficulty setting) it was very possible to wipe out smaller groups of enemies without having to seek cover often and in general it was possible, within reason and with most character classes, do some amount of damage tanking (i.e. marching towards the enemy while ignoring their gunfire). That sort of plan no longer comes even close to working in 'Mass Effect 2'. The game has gone from taking cover is recommend to taking cover is required. It doesn't matter if you're fighting the crappiest most Stormtrooperiest enemies in the game if there are more of them than you and you try to fight them all with your head poking out you're probably going to bite it. This change overall makes 'ME2' fall a little more in line with other recently released third person shooters. The good news here is that there's a few other changes that still help separate it from the pack**.

That separation comes in the forms of improving how you and your squadmates powers where used. This mostly comes down to power level and frequency of use. In 'Mass Effect' most of the useful abilities fell into the “useful” category by virtue of the fact that they tended to cripple a single enemy while possibly messing up all his adjacent buddies. The tradeoff was that these powers recharged at an incredibly slow rate (recharge times can be upwards of 60 real time seconds). What this frequently meant was that against a tough enemy that was reluctant to advance (usually a large robotic enemy) the strategy became one where you poked your head out, zapped them, then quickly ducked back behind something before they could return fire, repeat until dead. Well I hope you can see that if the power you're using against your victim takes a while to recharge is that combat is going to take a while and have lots of lulls. 'Mass Effect 2' solves this problem by making abilities (generally) less game breaking and able to be used more often. In 'ME1' you could use a power and then use all your other powers while the first on recharged while in 'ME2' you use one power and it puts all of your abilities into a cooldown state for a few seconds (usually less the 5). The latter option leads to more frenetic combat with more options and more stuff going on. Definitely a change for the better.

Now if there's one thing that hasn't really changed, in my opinion, for the better or the worse from one game to the next is the actual usefulness of your squad members. In both games it generally made sense to pick squad mates based on need; i.e. you're playing a flimsier more skill based class then you're better off bringing your more durable characters into battle with you. Or maybe you know (or suspect) that a certain mission is going to contain a lot of a specific type of enemy that is vulnerable to a secondary power that more than one squad member has access to so you'll bring both of them. Or whatever. What doesn't change is that your allies aim is crap. Seriously most of the time it seems like they're shooting at something entirely different than what I'm seeing. Kind of like how cats will sometimes appear to stare at phantoms that aren't actually there your squad mates will be shooting at stuff that just isn't there. Regardless of which game we're talking about they have and make decent use of their powers but as far as shooting stuff goes they might as well be armed with pop guns for all the kills they (fail) to rack up.

The last real change that comes to mind from 'ME1' to 'ME2' was the weapon load outs. In the first game every character (non-player) and every character class (player) had access to every weapon type. Not that every character or character class was anything resembling effective with even weapons that they could specialize in. Sniper rifles in particular where a nightmare to use as unless you had a max or near maximum score in the 'Sniper Rifle' skill, a gun with a near max 'Accuracy' stat, and where standing completely still while crouched your odds of hitting anything where remote. And god forbid any one of those criteria where absent as now you're trying to shoot a moving target with a shaky cam. So already that represents a major change in 'ME2'. Sniper rifles being actually good in that game (probably too good). Also the actual weapon specialization skills are gone. Now each character is restricted to specific weapon classes. This applies to both the player character and the non-player characters though as mentioned in the previous paragraph this would probably matter more for the latter if they could actually hit the enemy. Despite being more restrictive I actually appreciate this change as it helps better differentiate the various classes that the player can run with.

Well that's it. That's all that comes to mind for the evolving flavor of 'Mass Effect' combat. Probably the one aspect of the games that can be said to have been universally improved from the first game to the second. It would have been nice if your squad was a little more helpful but at least that aspect of the game didn't regress. See you all next week.

*In the 'Mass Effect Retrospective Part 2' I opined that while the environments might have been samey and linear but that there was at least enough of them coupled with enough (clumsily implemented) exploration to make space feel really big and that this feeling was generally absent from the second game.

** “separate from the pack” in terms of making the gameplay more distinctive not necessarily better. I think that the 'Gears of War' series is pretty boring and juvenile but I will concede that it was an innovator (I guess that's a good thing) with regards to third person cover based combat and that 'Mass Effect 2' isn't quite perfect in this regard.