Mass Effect 2

I bought the thing on a Steam sale on the request of my friends because I gave the game shit for being a shallow RPG that only gave you binary choices that end up being functionally equivalent. There’s a chart out there that demonstrates how much Bioware recycles the same themes and their much touted karma system is just a contrivance of eliciting the same response through different means. I’m either good or evil; it doesn’t matter because they both work. There’s no consequence for being too much of one thing. But I have other problems as well. For one:

The game handles like ass.

I originally tried out the demo and was meh’d by how average it handled. Likewise, insanity was the only difficulty that could kick my ass, primarily by how often it would kill me cheaply. However, this is one of the few ways to demonstrate the game’s quality of design. I died about 60 times in the course of the game; roughly 30% of which were my fault and 70% of which were the game either not doing what it should, the lack of polish with the movement physics, hit detection and pathing or a bug like a movement lock that forced me to wait for a mass of naked zombies to finish off Shepard’s pie. Femshep ftw, btw. This is the kind of thing that ruins the gameplay part of the game. It stops being about skill and starts being about statistics and the random number generator. I raged hardcore at the times biotic charge failed to work, some random mook flanked me after I spent the last 20 minutes in cover or when biotic charge failed to work. Did I mention that biotic charge can refuse to work when you need it most? And no, it wasn't just that bullshit universal cooldown or the spell lock that comes up. I stared dead faced at an enemy once and biotic charge didn't work.

Now, ragging on the story time. I couldn’t help but draw parallels with Halo. There’s an ancient organic menace that consumes life to propagate, a slightly less than ancient alien race that sacrificed itself to give future species a chance, giant constructs in space that enable stuff to happen and give the titles to the franchises, a charismatic space marine whose footsteps are revered and a disappointing final boss fight with a mechanical enemy that loomed long since the start of the game. It's perfectly fine to give Halo shit about having a weak story, but it's Halo's simplicity of design that gives it such lasting appeal. Well, that and the multi. But I suppose the preface is only tangential to the importance of the story. The game’s about Commander Shepard and the choices s/he takes. It’s just that the choices are either skim or 2% of how much EA wants to milk the franchise.

Bioware has really only ever done good and evil for their karma systems. That sufficed when they did the yin/yang thing in Jade Empire, the Light/Dark sides of the Force in Knights of the Old Republic or the Dungeons and Dragons thing in Baldur’s Gate, I guess; I didn’t play it. Thematically, good and evil fit because those titles are set in times where good and evil are clearly defined and the psychology of people is relatively easy to understand. Mass Effect, being set in space with many different races and history, is subject to many, many different types of demeanors and dispositions that vary the flavor of morality. However, I tried to play the game neutral and ended up paying for it.

*Spoiler Alert*

I wanted the hot blue alien Morinth instead of the hot blue alien Samara and wasn’t given the choice. Why the hell couldn’t I pick the lithe, sexy murderess instead of her lithe, sexy mother that wouldn’t put out? Apparently, it was because I had neither the paragon nor the renegade and there was no neutral option. I’m Commander fucking Shepard. I should have been able to seduce them both and taken them to my cabin for a game of strip poker in our one piece futurey space suits. Or at the very least been able to force them to sit down and rectify their centuries old grievance. Again, I’m Commander fucking Shepard.
There is very deep psychology present in this circumstance and it all boils down to picking one or the other with the only difference being a single spell and Morinth being able to sex you to death. There could have been a heart wrenching emotional breakdown between a stigmatized child that felt abandoned by her mother and said mother being too afraid of her culture and herself to stand by her offspring. And I could have had an Asari party in Shepard’s pants.
Goddamn you Bioware.

What some would call masterful depth and longevity, I would call padding. As I understood it, you need ship upgrades in order to get everyone through the ending. To get resources, you need to either scavenge the battlefield or scan planets. In the former's case, you can spend anywhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes of a mission looking for resource caches or doing some little hacking minigame. It has neither the Deus Ex feel of methodical searching nor the complete assurance of walking two feet in Half Life 2 and finding a health pack. Now, in the latter's case, there's supposed to be some synergy with potentially discovering "an anomaly" on a planet you strip mine. That's code for go shoot some stupid mercs. The computer will even tell you if there is an anomaly. It's not so much as a surprise as it is going from planet to planet waiting for the goon-dar to go off.
Even on insanity, I still feel like the personnel upgrades were largely unnecessary. I believe you only need to loot the supply caches and you'll have enough for the ship upgrades. Still, having to do something that doesn't affect actual gameplay is dumb. Why couldn't I pilot the Normandy through the Omega 4 Relay? Why couldn't the upgrades have been buffers against failure instead of outright requirements? Why do I have to waste time in game on things that only affect the story which I already don't care for?

Yes, I went into this game expecting to dislike the story and the illusion of choice. I was biased against that. What I was not biased towards was the godawful gameplay. I should not be cheated by a bug or stunlocked into oblivion or surprised by a random spawn with a flamethrower just because I wanted a goddamn challenge. When I got killed in Just Cause 2, it was either my own fault or damned funny. When I got killed in ME2, I raged. When I hear characters ramble on about shit I don't care about, I want to hit the spacebar, but have to be cautious in case I need to pick a certain option. When Tali had a pissing match with Legion, I sided with the mobile platform because the girl is a tool Bioware used to emotionally invest people. This game is special by virtue of the fact that it has a lot of stuff; there is truly nothing outstanding about it. Other games have done what it does and done it better. It is a paragon of gaming's immaturity. Mass Effect is touted as a masterpiece of an RPG despite its curiously overlooked flaws and Alpha Protocol is treated with disdain despite the fact that it pushed the bounds of what it is to be a mainstream RPG. Alpha Protocol actually has consequence. Mass Effect corrals you into pussy or dickhead and I say it's ass because of that.