Mass Effect 3

[Iceglow]

Exploration in ME was , but that had nothing to do with the Mako and everything to do with the fact that nowhere was very interesting.

The Mako itself was fine. No idea why people hate it. ME was a better game overall and ME2 certainly lost something in their streamlining efforts.

I don't know if I would rate ME1 as better than ME2 but it is certainly different, the planetary scanner for some people gave a sense of a bigger universe, to me it merely got tiresome especially since resources couldn't be sold off and even if you did sell them off what would you buy? There was a grand total (excluding medigel upgrades) of around 20 - 30 decent items to buy whereas in ME1 I would often spend time selling off redundant equipment to purchase newer, better gear such as SPECTRE gear (through multiple playthroughs it's possible to equip 3 party members with this elite equipment, more if you kept importing the same character over and over) It seemed to me that ME1 certainly offered a better more evolved trade system than ME2 but I'm going to agree the UI was terrible.

The weapon "customization" in Mass Effect wasn't particularly anything special, and the cluttered inventory and poor UI to manage it made it hardly worth the effort of going through. So Mass Effect 2 went in the opposite direction towards minimizing the options. I'm with Shiny in so far as I don't necessarily think that more is better.

You're right more items doesn't generally mean more diversity, lets face it if you have a weapon class, for example a handgun/pistol. For arguments sake I'm going to use Imperial technology weapons from the Warhammer 40k universe:

You begin with an Automag pistol (basically a current tech level pistol), you move up to the Laspistol (though you can argue these are the same tech level as automags), you then go to the Bolt Pistol (automag firing highly explosive rounds, big, bulky, awesome, most powerful conventional handgun out there) after that you get the speciality pistols such as the Seraphim's hand flamers (flamers which have limited range but can be twin carried, effective on light infantry or unarmoured targets or for clearing a bunker I'd imagine) or a Melta pistol (limited range, superheated air is used to melt anything in the way, cutting your way through something like a tank with these puppies is easy) or Plasma pistols (unreliable as hell but when they work dear god, best of both worlds, plasma will cut through heavy armour and smoke the flesh inside in one shot just be sure to pack something as a backup to go with) Now disregarding the fact that in the literature of 40k there is millions of variants of automag/laspistol/hand flamer/melta pistol/plasma pistol/bolt pistol you have 6 weapons. Except where the enemy is going to be entirely mechanical (melta pistols here we come) for example Necrons or entirely exposed to the effects of a flamer (hello chaos cultists) who if they have either the armour piercing bolt pistol or boil away anything plasma pistol is going to use a laspistol or automag ever again?

A better solution to the huge amounts of guns found in ME1 was kinda there too but because of poor UI and thinking through became a bit pointless, the slots for weapons, ok so top tier weapons got 3 slots and bottom tier get 1 slot makes the number of weapons become a bit more justifiable but mix in the ME2 upgrade system for the guns to gain slots and power and then the ME1 buying your upgrades and fitting them in to slots is better. Far better to offer many different addons what can combine in interesting ways (worst thing was they'd allow you to double up an add on for stacked effects or use two addons like "stabilizer IV" and "stabilizer V" if only one stabilizer could be used but an enhanced stock could be fitted to eat more stability it'd be awesome) than to offer too many weapons which barely make any sense (though really they did, the guns when you look at them came in about 6 or 7 different series, the series would have a similar look and some guns would fire less frequently but more powerfully, thus overheating more and others would have high rates of fire and low damage per shot last type was the balanced gun where damage, ammo and shots before overheat would be averaged out)

Still theres a lot of things that could happen, frankly I expect we'll see more of the ME2 combat in 3 than anything else.

Both ME & ME2 had their ups and downs.

ME was terrible for the equipment/inventory system. Basically the UI was utter crap. Everything else was pretty good if not great, although the Mako exploring could have been improved. It just needed a bit more thought to the presentation of the planets, I felt.

ME2 was terrible for the scanning system. Basically the way you made money (or 'resources') was utter crap. Everything else was pretty good if not great, although the battle areas could have been more varied. It just needed a bit more thought to the variation of the battlefields, I felt.

For the ME battle areas, I think it was a bit better in that it had more opportunity to do different things, such as that one area where you drove the Mako around a sort of obstacle course planet, shooting bots and turrets and whatnot, and then nearer the end you have to hop out and start sniping over a vast distance before you would charge in. There wasn't anything remotely like that in ME2. Overall I really enjoyed both games, though, despite the parts that could have been done better.

I'm going to agree with BoB on most of this, which is a shock, I didn't believe we would agree on this. I personally, wasn't impressed with the use of the Mako on Noveria because once you take the game of the more casual settings the only real way of dealing with the mission was to drive 20ft and then get out and snipe at ridiculous ranges using the Mako in that mission to fight became sheer suicide because the enemies AI became too good at predicting how you'd move in an enclosed space so evading the damage you took became all but insurmountable.

as usually you seem to be rather unable to make distinctions between things

sure combat was similar in ME1 and 2, but the areas were much less repetitive in the first one, they were more open and there were much less cover boxes and we got a smurfload more equipment customization. While there was too much equipment lying around in the first one, in the second they screwed it up by oversimplifying everything to cater to the XBox audience. I thought the system with the weapon overheating was better than having to pick up the "heat" (ie ammo) clips lying around the battlefield.

They were supposed to improve upon the combat system of the first one, not cater to the lowest common denominator and turn it into another cheap TPS. But then again I guess all the Xbox kiddies loved it.

also I never understood why people were bitching about the Mako. I thought those parts of the game were pretty cool.

I sure can make a hell of a lot of distinction here, the thing is you're plain wrong. ME1 combat zones aside from the main missions (Noveria, Virmire, Feros ect) were very repetitive even the Citadel combat zones were the same textures as every other coridor you fight in. ME2 was more of the same very much literally so. There were not more cover provided, maybe you just wasn't using the cover right in the first game or maybe you had invested in shield armour generating addons meaning you weren't at risk of having them taken down so often but, there was an equal amount if not greater amount of convienient cover on the first game as the second game.

Pandering to the Xbox community, wow...ok way to go off on your high horse there pc gamer. Frankly I gave up on pc gaming because pc gaming constantly requires me to rebuild my computer with the latest upgrades and components. I don't happen to have 3 - 400 quid laying around to build my computer anew every year to get new parts to keep on playing games. Even though you claim in later posts that you're not having this argument your argument here is either a really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking. where you could not adequately refute my point about ME1 and ME2 both being exactly the same when it comes to how combat works and so decided to use the fact that I play and advocate playing games on the xbox over other formats to create a diversion or well, well Raistlin in a bikini is not one of the scariest most mentally scarring images you could ever be forced to masturbate to, though seriously? Oh catering for the xbox gamers huh huh is a weak argument because frankly the fact is compared to the latest 3rd person shooters I played on PC...oh wait sorry they don't really produce games purely for PC except for MMO's and RTS' anymore so the game would've been about 10 - 15 years old and more dumbed down than the average halo, killzone or call of duty game of today. (not speaking from experience here kids but the thought of raistlin in a bikini is eww, the thought of being made to wank madly to it would make me comit suicide)