I HOPE they improved upon ME. I LOVED Mass Effect. Probably my favorite game on the 360. It was incredibly immersive, made you feel like you were in this sci fi universe controlling destiny. It was astounding. The last hour or so of the game was truly grippy. At that last point in the game you couldn't shut the game off until you finished.

If they improved upon the shortcomings of the first game, it should be a wonderful game. I HOPE!

I only finished the first one for the story, because the gameplay was rather crappy...

I mean, aside from the LOOOOOOONG elevator scenes (that Mirror Edge has too... what was that with the elevators?), the game had serious balancing issues, I played as engineer, and felt that first, my character was useless, I ended the game with a huge array of useless equipment because noone on the team could wield/wear it, also my character powers were not much exciting, and to me the game was easy but a annoying part that I saw a ambush cut-scene then instantly died to a one hit KO enemy... I saw that cut-scene like 50 times before figuring where to hide from that enemy (in fact I still don't know what enemy was...)

So, if they fixed all that... I would love the game ^^

What set Mass Effect apart from the many other RPGs was the quality of the dialog- interjections felt like interjections, insults like insults, and tense moments with the appropriate emotional qualities. The gameplay, while perhaps being clunky at times, was secondary to telling a story that you could interact and connect with (which is what RPGs emphasize).

You played as an engineer and felt useless? I played as that my first go around and I felt powerful because the enemies were machines that I could kill in one hit or had tech I could disrupt.

Playing as a solider felt useless. It made me miss my powers.

The first ME was a masterpiece in terms of art and cinematic experiences. What really annoyed me was the fact that the DLC was almost non-existent, and the secondary planets were extremely boring after playing a couple of them. If they expand the universe in a more interesting way, I'm in!!!

@jorge
Have to agree with this sentiment, the game was fun, and the gameplay had a fun tactical shooter esque edge to it. Dialog was often interesting (which is a nice change of pace), plus hey character customisation on an xbox game, don't see that overly often. But while there was a large number of worlds to visit, most of them had nothing that would ever make you want to spend any time on them. Unless ur a raving fan of the Mako, or a completionist looking for more stuff, the worlds were often bland. Bland worlds aren't such a bad thing, but there were an awful lot of em, and visiting them was boring.

The barren planets were mostly fine, except for the supposed 'life supporting' planets that were no different from the other planets, just with a greenish texture. ;P

I mean obviously it'd be better if every planet you could visit had something of interest to do aside from drive around a largely featureless landscape looking for a crashed satellite or something. An abandoned mining station with a sidequest inside, a crashed ship that you could enter and so on, that sort of thing would have been neat.

Anyway, looking forward to the sequel. Bioware is usually a pretty safe bet.

@John.

Well... Like I said, the game still felt easy (in fact I rarely used powers because I could pretty much kill anything with the pistol...), but the engineer powers only feel overpowered, but against machines... While the other choice was overpowered, against non-machines... And the soldier is... Boring (well, you have lots of big weapons to kill stuff that is possible to kill with a pistol), but the soldier I think that felt "less useless" than the other classes, because you don't got a inventory full of junk when using soldier (only 90% full of junk instead).


Btw: The best fight still was the final boss fight (that I killed... with the pistol... without much powers...)

The pistol on marksman really did make the game quite easy, as did the sniper rifle. I think that the biggest issues with ME's difficulty, is that the game had been balanced for a much slower input than a mouse. Also, as my characters improved, the Geth and other foes just kind of plateaued off in their levels, so towards the end even the big guys were easy to take down.

I was really happy with the changes the made in the "Bringing down the sky" addition, where as the enemy would run back inside if I returned to my tank and only came out if I exited it. I also liked the turrets that would shield themselves after firing. I hope that this sort of thing is implemented all around in ME2.

One area that actually bothered me in ME, was the achievements, as some were rewards that only made this already easy game easier -- that's the last thing I wanted.

The baron planets were a let down, because I was hoping for a level of exploration on the level of StarFlight 1/2, or Star Control 2, which from my recollection seemed like much bigger games. Which brings me to another point, I was really hoping for ship battles, but that was no where to be found.

I just hope that in ME2 I'll be able to upgrade the Mako and main ship in a RPG fashion. I'd also like less weapons to choose from, items of a greater rarity, but worth the extra work it takes to locate them.

Anyways, minor gripes aside, I really enjoyed this game on the PC. It's one of my favorites in recent years and was a great buy at $19.

A sub-par science fiction story plus sub-par third person action mechanics do not a great game make. Proper action games do the action bit better, while a plethora of scifi classics do story right. The story part wouldn't matter except for the fact that Bioware claims they are great storytellers and emphasize the quality of their writing so much.

So who gave the feedback saying "you know what mass effect didn't have but needed? F-bombs..." I just saw the "Subject Zero" character reveal trailer and I'll I can say is I'm getting disappointed with Bioware's efforts. Instead of making a deep and rewarding experience via interesting characters and witty dialog (KOTOR) they are replacing it with cheap 'R' rated movie industry gimmicks via language and shallow stereotype characters...

This is the second game of Bioware's I was interested in (Dragon Age was first) that I'm just losing steam with. All they can reveal is how they slutted up their franchises and made them into corny 'mature' wanna-be titles instead... Did EA do this to you or are you really losing sight of great and accessible game design and environments?

Of the two things that surprised me in a negative way about ME, one (as others have noted) was the lack of gameplay variation on explorable worlds.

On the one hand, it struck me as an odd waste of a feature -- why implement explorable worlds if they weren't going to be used for varied (and thus surprising, and therefore interesting) exploration content? Having only a "gotta-catch-'em-all" collectibles game on non-story worlds felt uninspired.

On the other hand, expanding this part of ME into significant gameplay could have shifted the focus of the game too much away from the main storyline. Their simplicity could have been a conscious design decision.

(As to the visual look of the worlds themselves, I would suggest that they often are different from each other. Some have slightly flatter terrain, and the skies of most of them are very different, including the occasional enormous moon or sun overhead. The planets also, if you notice, accurately render atmosphere -- a living world has an atmosphere that refracts light, while the sky of a dead world or moon with no atmosphere is black and reveals stars. It's a small thing, but someone at BioWare was paying attention to the details and I respect that.)

The other thing that surprised me negatively about ME was the reuse of non-story location layouts. There was a ship layout, a warehouse layout, a habitation layout, and a cave layout... and every instance of each layout type was exactly the same. Some of the interior objects were in different places, but the architecture was identical -- why/how would every cave on any world be identical? This felt absolutely bizarre, and knocked me out of the otherwise very high level of immersion in the gameworld.

I suspect that both of these items -- worlds and layouts -- are among the things that BioWare have addressed in ME2. Assuming they release this game for the PC at the same time that they release it for consoles, I look forward to seeing what BioWare thought needed improving from the original ME.