Mass Effect Revisited

     So here we are a week out from the release of Mass Effect 2, one of the most highly anticipated games of 2010.  I've been replaying its predecessor lately in anticipation of this sequel.  I've always had a strange relationship with Mass Effect.  While I've always felt it was a good game, I felt it fell short in several areas.  I'm really hoping that Bioware has taken time to refine these areas during Mass Effect 2's development.

     Here I present my wish list of problems for Bioware to fix:
     1.  Texture pop-ins.  These things were SO annoying!  It was painful to watch cutscene after cutscene where the characters  and backgrounds were being rendered during the cutscene.  This gave the game a terribly unpolished look.
     2.  Inventory management.  Mass Effect had none.
     3.  The Mako.  Getting to drive a tank around unexplored planets and running over enemy combatants should have been fun.  Sadly it was not.
     4.  Secondary missions were copy and pasted.  To my recollection there were about 4 environments that secondary missions took place in: a cargo freighter, an underground cave, an underground bunker, and a large gray building.  These environments were repeated over and over again.  Each time the only changes were to the layouts of crates, machinery, and rocks inside the environment.  This just screamed laziness on the part of the developers.
     5.  Short main quest.  The primary missions of the game could be completed in a day.  A day.  The secondary missions extend that playtime, but come on!  A day?  Really?

     Still, even with these complaints I have been enjoying playing Mass Effect again and I'm really looking forward to its sequel.  From videos I have seen Bioware seems to have acknowledged some of its predecessor's problems (2 game discs FTW!!).  Videos of combat look much more intense and the biotic powers actually appear to be powerful, whereas in Mass Effect only the Throw and Lift abilities looked like they did any damage.  For example:



     I'll be sure to post my impressions next week after I've had some time to play and digest Bioware's latest game in the series.  If you want to see more visit www.masseffect.com for Bioware's official page for the game.