Andy Laub

As if it’s not abundantly clear, I’m apparently back in the proverbial video game saddle, as they now consume a good portion of my free time. My Fallout 3 mania has pretty much run its course and has given way to a couple of other distractions, in no particular order:

• Fallout: New Vegas
• Red Faction: Guerilla
• Rock Band 3

I’m not going to talk about Rock Band right now, except to say that when played as a game it’s on the unfun, grinding side of the spectrum, whereas when played as a diversion (that is: with people) it remains one of the best things ever. And while I’m sure I’ll eventually have a lot more to say about New Vegas, I’m only about an hour into it so that’s best left on the back burner for now.

So let’s talk about Red Faction. It’s one of those weird games that kind of clawed its way to the edge of my radar and just hung there, refusing to leave until I gave it the attention it felt was deserved (see also: Indigo Prophecy). My initial take after playing the demo was “Saints Row on Mars” given that the developer and scope of the game are the same, just with a different setting and protagonist. To be fair, I prefer the controls of Red Faction to those of its ghetto brother in that it uses the triggers for driving instead of one of the face buttons.

The premise of Red Faction is certainly intriguing: you’re a demolitions expert (I guess?) on Mars, helping a group of rebels overthrow the corrupt and abusive government. So far it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before on a million other planets, but this game’s novelty comes from its completely destructible scenery. Smashing some buildings around with your hammer is pretty neat. Also blowing them up.

But after that, the game becomes a chore. A minority of the missions are enjoyable, but for the most part I often found myself asking “why me?” I’m some random guy who just came to Mars to keep a low pro with my bro bro my head down and live with my brother. Then my brother gets killed up and suddenly I’m the savior for this entire guerrilla movement that I wasn’t even aware of until five minutes ago. I have no special qualities but the Red Faction is sending me, alone (generally), on missions that nobody in their right mind would expect one person to be able to accomplish.

I’ve had this feeling before and it’s usually found in sandbox games – even the mighty Grand Theft Auto series is guilty of it to some extent. But it stands to reason that you probably wouldn’t send some random new guy out on what you’re telling me are incredibly crucial missions for your cause without any backup whatsoever. That… makes no sense, and that’s what made the game such a drag to play through.

There are some side missions that involve you capturing or defending a checkpoint from/against the bad guys, with a little gauge on the top right that shows you how many people are left on either side. Those were fun, and felt truer to the spirit of the game than anything else, core missions included. Unfortunately, that little slice of enjoyment wasn’t able to compensate for other annoyances:

• Your max ammo count through the entire game is pathetically low. I can carry a rocket launcher around but a few extra clips for the assault rifle is too much to ask for?
• Buildings don’t always collapse when they should. That three-legged structure will surely fall after I destroy two of the legs, right? Right? Couple this with the fact that one of your main goals is to destroy certain buildings, often under heavy fire, and you have a recipe for disaster.
• The enemy solders are obscenely well-armored, further exacerbating the ammo issue.
• The guy giving you missions is the same guy from Crackdown, where he was equally annoying to listen to.

But even despite these nagging issues, I slogged through the game. I don’t know why I do that to myself; I’m sure my blood pressure goes through the roof in situations like this but I feel that because I have it I should finish it for my own sanity (see also: Dead Space). Now that I’m done, I just have two words.

The last time I talked about Mass Effect I ended up off on a tangent about how you need to play through the series from the beginning. Because it’s true. But what I meant to do was compile a list of things that I loved about the game.

As it turns out that, I was too lazy to actually record them as I played (aside from the infrequent Tweet), so instead here is a haphazard-but-not-as-comprehensive-as-I’d-like list of things that are great about the series:

Environment

I’ve spent plenty of time talking about how the environment is as much of a character as anyone else in the Grand Theft Auto series. The same is true for Mass Effect; to the point where it’s at the very least on the same level as GTA. As you explore in either game, you’ll overhear conversations between other characters and be exposed to various forms of media. And in both cases, that media is extremely well-written and enjoyable to listen to, and often deals directly with the plot that you are involved in.

Mass Effect 2 continues the tradition of acquiring side missions by observing your environment, whether that be by hacking a computer terminal, talking to a bystander, or simply by picking up an item that you have to find a use for. A few times the latter resulted in me finishing a side mission that I didn’t even realize was happening, and that kind of simple entertainment can be a welcome diversion from the core story.

Experimentation

I mentioned previously that the game keeps a running tally of the decisions you’ve made throughout the series, which results in some really surprising and well-executed events in ME2 that you’d likely miss completely if you skipped the first game, and it enforces their assertion that the decisions you make may come back to help or hinder you later.

And while it’s great to see those decisions persist throughout the series, it’s likely you’ll want to approach the story in a few different ways, especially given the breadth of things you didn’t experience if you only played through once. Thankfully, the games welcome multiple playthroughs, whether you choose to replay the story with your now-leveled-up character or start fresh. They even go as far as to separate your save files for each character (so no accidentally overwriting Character 1’s file with your progress in Character 2).

Exploration

In a universe as deep as Mass Effect‘s, it only makes sense that the player be provided with some sort of guide to it all, hence the codex. Accessible from the pause menu of both games, the codex functions as a portable, built-in encyclopedia. The depth of knowledge and the work that went into creating and compiling this information is simply astounding as it references nearly every race and creature you’ll come across in your travels, providing you with information on biology, demeanor, culture, and other pertinent details. But it doesn’t end there; the codex serves as a reference for everything from space combat to galactic history. In short, the codex is the embodiment of everything there is to love about the series.

I bought Mass Effect a month or so after it was released in late 2007. Even after playing through the roughly 20-hour campaign (estimated), I didn’t give it more than a sentence of attention:

Mass Effect was pretty darn good once I figured out how to play it

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it; it just didn’t register as much more than a tiny blip on my “totally hawesome games” radar. There was some neat stuff that happened, and that’s all I could really say about that.

Suffice it to say, I was wrong.

I decided to embark on another playthrough of the game when I was going through my annual pre-Christmas gaming drought, in anticipation of the soon-to-be-released sequel. I spent significantly more time exploring and talking the second time around. In some games all this would do is add time to your play clock, but in Mass Effect every conversation, every scan, every hacked computer terminal held the potential for a new discovery; a little more insight into the universe Bioware labored to create.

As the first in the series, it wasn’t surprising for a game of ME‘s scope to have some teething problems. Many of the side missions were a little too generic; the environments just a little bit sterile. The inventory system was frustrating to deal with. The loading screens were frequent and generic. The elevator rides were… long. But in spite of all this, you could see what the game wanted to be, and you could appreciate it for that.

Now let’s take all of those complaints and throw them away, because they’ve all been remedied in Mass Effect 2. Bioware could’ve continued down the same path. They could’ve used the first game’s mechanicals in their entirety, pasted a new story over the top, and called it good.

But they didn’t do that, and the sequel is better for it. Yes, it’s a little different than the first game. Especially if you just (re)played the first game. But it’s for your own good. You may find it off-putting at first – get over it. If you use that as an excuse not to play it, then you’re just stupid and your face is stupid.

Here’s the thing, though: some sequels are way better than their predecessors. The Uncharted series is a great example of this. Drake’s Fortune was good, but Among Thieves was GOOD. As such, it’s easy to take that knowledge and skip the first game completely. You are doing yourself a massive disservice if you do this with Mass Effect.

Unlike Uncharted, ME‘s central focus is your relationships and interactions with other characters. And I mean all characters, not just your squad. I can’t imagine how uninteresting or confusing some of those conversations would be if you didn’t have the context and experiences of the first game. There’s a reason that the first option when starting a game is to import your character from the original: the decisions you made there do affect the ME2 universe, albeit in generally minor ways.

Bioware is trying to tell a cohesive story here, and each game is an important chapter. These add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and anyone who doesn’t experience all of those parts as they were meant to be played is missing out.

In retrospect, I’m not sure this is what I meant to write when I sat down, which means there will probably be another Mass Effect post in the near future. Still though. Seriously.