Mass Effect Feels Like Work and Makes Me Tired

Submitted by George Walker on November 27, 2007 – 11:35 pm12 Comments

Having sequestered myself away from useful internet connections here in rural South Dakota, I’ve been playing a lot of single-player games. Not a lot of Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3, sadly. But I have been playing a lot of Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Kane and Lynch, and Super Mario Galaxy.

Surprisingly, Mass Effect has gotten the short end of my gaming time. I’ve spent about 20 hours playing the game, and despite Richard’s excellent review, unfortunately, my experience has not been as positive.

Granted, the story seems strong so far. I just wish there was more to do. Now, I’m the kind of player that played Morrowind for about 18 months and tens, perhaps hundreds of hours, without ever pursuing the main story line. I’ve played Oblivion the same way. 50+ hours on multiple characters and I still haven’t finished the main quest line.

Imagine my glee when they started showing off the exploration aspect of Mass Effect. I was overjoyed at the prospect of a “Space Oblivion”. I love the wealth of sometimes lengthy sidequests in Mass Effect’s RPG forefathers. Some reviewers would decry Morrowind’s stark, almost standoffish openness, stating that it was difficult to find any direction. Well, these are the kinds of games I’ve always loved, going all the way back to Wasteland on my Apple IIc.

If only Mass Effect truly delivered a deep exploratory experience. Exploration in this game consists of landing your rover on some uncharted planet collecting mineral surveys and trinkets of various categories. Navigating the multi-colored landscapes run the gamut from numbingly boring to aggravatingly frustrating. Nothing like trying to circumnavigate randomly placed fractal landscapes to find a mountain pass to the next beryllium deposit. Oh boy. So exciting.

Sometimes there’s a mine or base for you to extract the trinket from. Sometimes there’s a geth ambush, so you usually end up fighting a bunch of Cylons or Pirates that you’ve already fought thirty times before. Sometimes you get an urgent message to find a lost probe/ship/criminal… in the system that you just warped into.

And for such a vast universe, the population is pretty sparse. There are more people in any given podunk town in Cyrodiil than on some of the planets of Mass Effect, even those that host major plot points. The universe of Mass Effect feels… empty. There’s certainly nothing here that approaches the dynamism of Bethesda’s Radiant AI.

I should say here that what Mass Effect lacks in vastness of universe, it makes up for in spades with vastness of character customizations. There are a lot of classes, skills, and items so that almost any play style or character style can be created. Diplomats, Soldiers, Hackers. The options truly are amazing.

Too bad all these great options are surrounded by layer after layer of horribly designed user interfaces. Seriously… plenty of other games have managed to implement usable inventory and menu interfaces. Japanese RPG’s have been doing these things pretty well for decades, now. IT’S OKAY TO STEAL INTERFACE IDEAS FROM OTHER DEVELOPERS. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

And I want to know who thought the Simon button mashing as hacking “mini-game” was a good idea? Everyone that approved that garbage should be fired. I can’t believe they had the balls to call it a mini-game. There’s no game there. Just another ponderous interface I have to labor through to get items and trinkets that are impossible to find in the inventory list because you have no stacking or sorting abilities. EVEN FINAL FANTASY ON NES HAD THESE FEATURES.

So, in terms of interface, Mass Effect is a huge step backward in video game evolution. The “mudkips” of interfaces, if you will. I am pleased that there is a pretty darn good story unfolding here. Unfortunately, I find myself not wanting to work through the chores to experience that story. I keep going back to Assassin’s Creed. OMG PONIES!

Update: The Game I Wish Mass Effect Was.

Richard Windsor

I guess its all a matter of opinion, Assassins Creed felt far more like a chore to me then MASS EFFECT. You couldn’t pay me to play through AC again. Its a one time only game. I am 10 hours into my second play through of ME and I am still having a lot of fun with the game.

“Too bad all these great options are surrounded by layer after layer of horribly designed user interfaces” —- You are joking right, what was so bad about the user interfaces? They flowed fine for me.
http://www.aeropause.com George

LOL, I never said Assassin’s Creed was a *great* game… I’ll get to that later. It’s turn will come.

As far as the interface… it flows like a broken bottle of molasses. Allow me to quote Tycho from Penny Arcade.

“For example, inventory management is… troubling. When you destroy enemies, they are looted automatically, which retains the ‘shooter’ pace – but when you go to your equipment page, everything that was picked up comes up in this huge list. Since you only went in there to equip something, you’ll just hit Take All and go about your day. But since you can only hold a hundred and fifty items, that loot screen will soon become your enemy when you have to start melting down the good, new stuff you’re getting for old bullshit you’ve been too busy saving the Goddamn galaxy to sell. Items of the same kind are not stacked, and going through this list can get onerous. Items you’ve customized look the same as other items in the list. And so on.”

That is one example. The hacking mini-game is a joke. Not being able to compare stats or character equipment without having them in your party or going to each individual locker. Not being able to seamlessly transfer between stats and equipment for a given character. Things that other RPG’s have been doing for years.

Then there’s the “boss battles,” don’t even get me started on those. I like my boss battles to consist of something slightly more interesting than “yet another wave of guys.”
Mac

“dynamism of Bethesda’s Radiant AI”.
haha. thanks for the good laugh.
yaddayeyadda

If a game feels like work, you’re playing it wrong. You don’t HAVE to find every single metal deposit. You don’t HAVE to stop every bounty hunter in the galaxy. If it sucks, don’t do it. It’s kina like complaining that the figurine collecting in Wind Waker was boring and annoying, and it ruined the game.

On top of that, take 20 billion people, and scatter them across the milky way. See how many people you encounter.

The wonderful thing about this console generation is that BioWare can issue an update to fix the inventory system, voila. I would be surprised if they didn’t eventually.

And complaing that boss battles is just more enemies is dumb. I’d rather take out 30 enemies than one large enemy I have to blast 100 times with my crappy pistol, thanks. Waves of enemies makes more sense in the Story rather than one really tough boss who is immune to everything. You must think that Wolfenstien-3d was an awesome, coherent storyline because the boss was hitler in a giant mechanical suit with rocket launchers and chainguns attached. And the gears of war boss was “amazing”, because I sat behind a barricade and blasted him for 15 minutes, boy, what fun. Did you want to find a magical item to help you in different boss battles? Go play zelda.

Not that I think the game is flawless, but man, you sound like a whiny little baby. I’d recommend the game for the combat, the dialogue, the ambiance, and the story. I’d reccomend improvements for Mass Effect 2, but the core of the game is wonderful. The icing needs some better ingredients, but the cake is not a lie.
http://www.aeropause.com George

Yeah, pretty much all boss battles suck. I’m not a fan of any boss battles, really. Except for the Metroid series.
Richard Windsor

I still don’t get why some people can’t take a game for what it is, It has to live up some bias standard certain players project on it.

You can’t blame the game for falling behind on managing your inventory, thats just lazy. I enjoyed refitting my entire troupe and having to figure out the best combos, thats what is fun about he system. If you prefer a different system that is fine, but the game is far from sloppy or broken.

This would be a good discussion for the podcast!
http://www.aeropause.com George

You can call it lazy. But that just reinforces my point: Don’t make me work. I come to play, not work.

And I’m not sure what you mean by “some bias standard”. If anything, I went into Mass Effect biased FOR it, not against it.

And it’s not like I’m saying this is the worst game ever. Far from it, the story seems strong.

But yes, the interface is just bad.
Sifer2400

“because the boss was hitler in a giant mechanical suit with rocket launchers and chain guns attached.” that was a good loli was all like wtf??? PS i actually liked the gears of war last boss i mowed his as down with sniper shots to the face
yaddayeyadda

Hehe, Yeah, play all the way through the old Wolfenstein, and the end of episode 6, you fight hitler, in a giant mechanical suit. You get to hide behind pillars and pop out and shoot him, no strafing in circles though, no strafe button, iirc. I was like 8 when i beat it, and I still remember laughing at the absurdity.
Joe (Aeropause)

Well, I am about a quarter of the way through the game (by estimation) and I am fairly happy with the game. While it does not hold up to KOTOR levels of greatness, it doesn’t necessarily have to.

I don’t think Bioware was out to make another KOTOR with new aliens. They were more interested in having action based combat, and the pause control system would not of worked. It would take you out of the action.

Boss battles can be good if designed correctly. And Bioware has had issues with Boss battles as both Darth Malek and the main bad guy from Jade Empire were both comical letdowns due to how easy they were to beat.

All said, the game is allowing me to go through it at a nice pace and I can see some channels of replayability with some of the dialog trees.

And call me crazy, but I like the film filter look of the game. Guess I am way in the minority.
Sifer2400

wtf lol darth malak was so hard i nvr killed him… lol he was the reason i nvr fin that game…and i had put into so many hrs b4 that
Richard Windsor

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. The interface may have not been the best ever, but I thought it worked just fine.