What are you playing 4: HD Remaster Gold Collector's Edition Thread of the Year

[Anteros]

Picked up the parts of Planetfall i didn't have in a sale. Having a lot of fun, much more than Civ Beyond Earth. Trying to grok how to Xenoplague Amazons right now. Also how to endgame, because I'm getting beat up by the easy computer's deathstacks once i'm in a real war.

This post inspired me to boot up AoW III for the first time in a few years. So I start a random map, pick a custom hero, and set the enemy AI on emperor like I always used to...and I got annihilated. They've either increased the AI's competency, or (more likely) I am very out of practice. It doesn't help that I was playing a hero with a heavy focus on summoning units and the game absolutely refused to give me any sort of summoning spells to research. The AI was rolling out tier IV doomstacks by turn 40 and my best summon available was tier 3.

It's fun to actually lose for once though. It gives me a goal. I remember being bored with the game before since it felt too easy.

[Cespenar]

For some reason, I always get much more fun out of exploring around and clearing dungeons in AoW titles as if they're RPGs, instead of just beating it like a proper strategy game.

[Anteros]

For some reason, I always get much more fun out of exploring around and clearing dungeons in AoW titles as if they're RPGs, instead of just beating it like a proper strategy game.

Same actually. I definitely enjoy exploring the map and dungeon delving more than the economic and city warfare aspects of the game.

I've been playing a bit of The Last Spell. It's basically a tower defense game, except instead of towers you control heros on a tactical map. Very enjoyable so far. It's not super replayable, as once I managed to beat it once I haven't lost since, but it's still early access so hopefully they fix that issue.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Just played and beat a story-driven puzzle platformer by the name of Evan's Remains. The puzzles and story are both good; would recommend.

Also been banging my head against NG+5 of SNKRX, which is just brutally difficult.

And finally picked up FTL and Into the Breach. Beat the former on Easy and have yet to come even close on Normal, though I am rather liking the Zoltan ship (also, I think my policy of always accepting surrender may be untenable for getting enough scrap); haven't started the latter yet.

[zlefin]

Same actually. I definitely enjoy exploring the map and dungeon delving more than the economic and city warfare aspects of the game.

I've been playing a bit of The Last Spell. It's basically a tower defense game, except instead of towers you control heros on a tactical map. Very enjoyable so far. It's not super replayable, as once I managed to beat it once I haven't lost since, but it's still early access so hopefully they fix that issue.

Reminds me of ol' Burbenog TD, one of the many custom maps in warcraft 3. It was a tower defense, but it had hero units as well which opened up some options and were helpful. Ahh, good times.

For some reason, I always get much more fun out of exploring around and clearing dungeons in AoW titles as if they're RPGs, instead of just beating it like a proper strategy game.

Me too. In part because I find the optimal strategy in most AoW titles to be less fun to play. In AoW3, it's best to blitz very aggressively; use whatever cheese you can to powerlevel your hero and then just try to steamroll the ai as fast as you can. You don't beat the AI in a long war because the AIs bonuses let them tech to high end units far faster than you can. In particular that so many of the high end units for your faction require research means that you simply can't research them as fast; whereas at least in AoW2 you could build up a single town fairly readily to get access to the high end units, though the issue with the optimal strategy being blitz remained. Superior tactical moves can only do so much to compensate for facing stacks of higher tier units.

It's also in part because the game favors using one high end doomstack to crush everything you can, with the rest simply being there to slow down raiders. Also because the AI's bonuses let them get a lot more global buffs up fast and disjoin yours, as well as cancelling the big battlefield buffs/debuffs.

[Anteros]

Reminds me of ol' Burbenog TD, one of the many custom maps in warcraft 3. It was a tower defense, but it had hero units as well which opened up some options and were helpful. Ahh, good times.




Me too. In part because I find the optimal strategy in most AoW titles to be less fun to play. In AoW3, it's best to blitz very aggressively; use whatever cheese you can to powerlevel your hero and then just try to steamroll the ai as fast as you can. You don't beat the AI in a long war because the AIs bonuses let them tech to high end units far faster than you can. In particular that so many of the high end units for your faction require research means that you simply can't research them as fast; whereas at least in AoW2 you could build up a single town fairly readily to get access to the high end units, though the issue with the optimal strategy being blitz remained. Superior tactical moves can only do so much to compensate for facing stacks of higher tier units.

It's also in part because the game favors using one high end doomstack to crush everything you can, with the rest simply being there to slow down raiders. Also because the AI's bonuses let them get a lot more global buffs up fast and disjoin yours, as well as cancelling the big battlefield buffs/debuffs.

That's the big problem with grand strategy titles in general. The best strategy is basically always to be aggressive as possible to get the resource snowball rolling, but it's just not fun. At least to me.

[warty goblin]

I've never really found AoW3 to require being hyper-aggressive; if anything I find I usually have a pretty peaceful midgame that I can spend running around capping treasure sites and so on. The AI is very reluctant to go for the Seal locations, and I find I can generally make peace with a lot of them on first contact, or else after a short, notational war wherein I stomp a couple of their stacks and pick up a city or two, although I also pretty much always play as a squeaky clean goodie two shoes, which probably helps. My occasional forays into playing evil leaders have been substantially harder, since generally the AI responds to you like the full blown psycho you are.

Now once I've started grabbing Seals, the gloves come off and it's World War Wizard, so I'd better have my doom stacks in position or my teeth are gonna get kicked in. But this is exactly as it should be; the trick is using that pause to arm up, get some max tier units from whatever dwellings I've acquired, hopefully get a couple cities reasonably near the Seals for fallback and resupply, and so on. Seals are the perfect strategy game victory condition, I really wish they'd put them in Planetfall.



Been playing the much maligned Biomutant lately. It isn't great by any means, but I really quite like it. The game is very exploration focused, you can easily go like 15 minutes between combats, which I suspect is gonna turn a lot of people off. I find I just settle into this very calm rhythm of moving through the gorgeous world, scraping up items and generally futzing about, with occasional pauses for adorable ultraviolence. Even the items are reasonably spread out, and are either in obvious places like ruins or else tucked away in spots that require a bit of observation to notice. The game didn't replace combat with tons of inventory management in other words. Pleasingly, most of the stuff you find is either hot trash that gets mulched for crafting materials, or is good but you aren't high enough level to actually equip it. So when you do level up, you spend like 45 seconds swapping in some new gear, and that's pretty close to it for the level. Less inventory time is better inventory time.

On the story side, it's generally an unfocused, borderline indecipherable nonsense pile. I don't actually dislike this, because the story bits are pretty minimal, but there's one aspect I like. All the humans are dead, and why is explained in like the first 20 minutes, it's short, boring, and stupid, and none of the raccoon people seem to care at all. There's not a lot of games in the post-human animal genre, but what there are tend to be fixated on why all the hairless monkeys are gone. Which has always struck me as exceedingly blatant pandering to the audience's anthrocentric bias, and a real failure to actually engage intelligently with the premise. Whatever post-dates us is going to be mostly concerned with their own survival, not the mostly academic question of what happened to us. Biomutant's answer to the question "what gets sapient mutant raccoons out of bed in the morning?" isn't very clear, interesting, or well developed, but it at least is pretty much entirely about sapient mutant raccoons.

[Zevox]

I'm midway into Mass Effect 2 now. I knew it was coming of course, but the difference between it and the first game is so noticeable and welcome. Once you get past the awkward introduction, everything is just so much better. Combat is snappier and more polished, new weapons actually work differently instead of just being the same thing with bigger numbers, powers make a lot more sense and all seem useful to some extent, and the characters are just so much more likable. Don't get me wrong, I like some of them in ME1, but so much of the dialogue in that game is explaining the setting, including from your allies - Wrex, Tali, and Liara all need to extensively explain what their species are like, and Garrus needs to explain C-Sec. Kaiden and Ashley mostly get to talk about their own personal histories, but they're kind of the most boring two. By comparison so much more of ME2 is getting to know the characters as people, and with a few exceptions (Jacob, Grunt...), they're all interesting and fun to talk to. And with the much smaller hub/shopping areas and the lack of the Mako sections, it feels like there's so much less wasted time - even with planet scanning.

I'm honestly contemplating a second run through ME2 after this one, before taking this file on to ME3, just because playing through as another class (probably Vanguard) and doing a Renegade run instead of my current Paragon one sounds fun. And hey, with legendary edition I should be able to set what my decisions from ME1 were without a file to carry over, so if that works well, honestly I don't know why I'd ever re-play 1 again.

Also, I just did Tali's recruitment mission, and... yeah. I can't help thinking about what could have been, seeing that whole plot thread that I know gets no resolution, and knowing why. Oh well.

Still playing Guilty Gear Strive daily too - and I don't think that's going to stop anytime soon, with how damn good the game plays online, and how much fun it is. Still can't decide between Ramlethal and May for a main; so I think I may just have to consider them both my mains. Also dipped my toes into Giovanna a bit, and I like her, though definitely not as much as Ram or May. I'll have to try some other characters as well, see if I can get anywhere with anyone. I'm thinking Leo next - always thought he was cool, but like May, his charge moves scared me off him back in Xrd.

[factotum]

And with the much smaller hub/shopping areas and the lack of the Mako sections, it feels like there's so much less wasted time - even with planet scanning.

But what you sacrifice for that is a much needed sense of scale. ME1 felt like it was an actual vast universe where it took time to go places and do things, ME2 feels much smaller and more constricted. There's no question that the bang bang shooty bits are better than the first game, and as I've said before, the loyalty and recruitment missions are some of the best writing Bioware has ever done, but I find the game distinctly lacking in atmosphere compared to the first one--and that's before we even start on the trainwreck that is the main plot.

[Zevox]

But what you sacrifice for that is a much needed sense of scale. ME1 felt like it was an actual vast universe where it took time to go places and do things, ME2 feels much smaller and more constricted. There's no question that the bang bang shooty bits are better than the first game, and as I've said before, the loyalty and recruitment missions are some of the best writing Bioware has ever done, but I find the game distinctly lacking in atmosphere compared to the first one--and that's before we even start on the trainwreck that is the main plot.

I could not disagree more; to me, that "sense of scale" is completely unneeded and unwanted, and only served to bog things down. And while the circumstances to get Shepherd to work with Cerberus are quite contrived and you really needed to be able to challenge them on the horrid things you'd seen from them in ME1 more, other than that, I think the main plot is the best in the series as well. Probably because I never much cared for the Reapers as the main threat - I'll take the Collectors as a mysterious threat that are kidnapping an untold number of people for unknown reasons and whose home region is so unknown that attempting to assault it is considered a suicide mission that you need to assemble nothing less than the best of the best for over them any day, personally.

[tonberrian]

I'd just as soon take ME2 with a second protagonist, label it as a spinoff to the main series, and have another Mass Effect 2 to properly set up ME3. Then you could do a cool thing in ME 3 where you have your protagonists fight instead of

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stupid Kai Leng.

I don't have any problems with Mass Effect 2 as a game, but it's not a great hook into Mass Effect 3 and the series suffers for it.

[factotum]

Probably because I never much cared for the Reapers as the main threat

This is kind of like having a version of LOTR where "I really don't like this Ring being the McGuffin that's driving the plot, so in the second instalment we'll have Frodo and Sam go back to the Shire and do something unrelated to destroying the Ring, even if that means we have to suddenly rush around like blue-reared flies trying to figure out how to solve everything in the third instalment". The whole point of a trilogy is that the storyline of each is supposed to follow one to the other...in ME, it simply doesn't do that, ME2 spends the first part of its runtime basically stamping all over the remnants of the ME1 plot and then does absolutely nothing to progress the overarching plotline of the series.

Plus, are you seriously telling me you're OK with the main plotline mission where Shepard and *all* his companions (possibly 12 of them, if you have all the DLC) cram themselves into a tiny shuttle and head off to do something offscreen, just so we can have the bit where the Normandy is attacked and Joker has to save the day?

Now, I'll agree that the suicide mission is great fun (apart from the human reaper...ugh), but it didn't belong at the end of the second game, because it then means that they don't know for sure who's going to survive into the third one. It should have been at the end of the third trilogy.

[oxybe]

So for 2 weeks fortnite has a summer event thing.

Go into game mode, do these tasks, win free cosmetics. Available for both battlepass and free users. Great!

If only the mode wasn't full of... enthusiastic... players.

In short: it's super conpetitive and one of the goals, 10 headshot kills, is made much, much harder then expected due to how the mode is setup. even a headshot with some of the legendary sniper rifles can't full out kill in one hit due to the base hp bloat of full shields and the full health bar buffer due to being a multiplayer mode to give chance to revive. now try doing that with castles being built around you in instant speeds and you have 4 other 3-man teams in this freeforall and it's just heck.

thankfully you can setup a private custom game on the map with a friend and just shoot each other in the head with snipers to get it over quick. without that extra multiplayer hp buffer the snipers make a quick work with headshots.

still, it was a gross challenge to do.

[Rynjin]

This is kind of like having a version of LOTR where "I really don't like this Ring being the McGuffin that's driving the plot, so in the second instalment we'll have Frodo and Sam go back to the Shire and do something unrelated to destroying the Ring, even if that means we have to suddenly rush around like blue-reared flies trying to figure out how to solve everything in the third instalment". The whole point of a trilogy is that the storyline of each is supposed to follow one to the other...in ME, it simply doesn't do that, ME2 spends the first part of its runtime basically stamping all over the remnants of the ME1 plot and then does absolutely nothing to progress the overarching plotline of the series.

Plus, are you seriously telling me you're OK with the main plotline mission where Shepard and *all* his companions (possibly 12 of them, if you have all the DLC) cram themselves into a tiny shuttle and head off to do something offscreen, just so we can have the bit where the Normandy is attacked and Joker has to save the day?

Now, I'll agree that the suicide mission is great fun (apart from the human reaper...ugh), but it didn't belong at the end of the second game, because it then means that they don't know for sure who's going to survive into the third one. It should have been at the end of the third trilogy.

This sounds like less a problem with ME2 and more one with 3. The game had ample time in development for them to figure out a way to either turn the series into a coherent trilogy, or stay semi-episodic with a myth arc.

ME3 chose to do neither. Game's a complete mess from top to bottom, and that's not in the slightest the fault of its predecessor.

[GloatingSwine]

This sounds like less a problem with ME2 and more one with 3. The game had ample time in development for them to figure out a way to either turn the series into a coherent trilogy, or stay semi-episodic with a myth arc.

ME3 chose to do neither. Game's a complete mess from top to bottom, and that's not in the slightest the fault of its predecessor.

I think it is fair to say that the problems with the trilogy as a trilogy started with ME2. Since it chose to completely change the thematic style and not advance what had been started in ME1.

Mass Effect 1 ends on the statement "The reapers are out there, they're coming, and I'll find a way to stop them".

Mass Effect 2 has nothing to do with any of that.

Mass Effect 3 was a mess, but it's a mess that was inevitable when a supposed trilogy spent its middle act whizzing angrily in circles.

[Rodin]

I think it is fair to say that the problems with the trilogy as a trilogy started with ME2. Since it chose to completely change the thematic style and not advance what had been started in ME1.

Mass Effect 1 ends on the statement "The reapers are out there, they're coming, and I'll find a way to stop them".

Mass Effect 2 has nothing to do with any of that.

Mass Effect 3 was a mess, but it's a mess that was inevitable when a supposed trilogy spent its middle act whizzing angrily in circles.

And this is why I'd like to see a rebooted Mass Effect where the Reapers just...aren't an issue. There isn't a "galaxy ends in X days" clock that the developers have to stick to.

Just let us tool around in the galaxy and do big sweeping space opera things without this looming presence over the story that overshadows everything. A lot of the existing stories (and best writing) in Mass Effect works without it anyway. The Geth/Quarian war doesn't need a Reaper in the middle of it. Nor does the Krogan Genophage plot. Or the Collectors. Or most of the loyalty missions.

Don't set out to make a trilogy. Make a living galaxy that evolves in subtle ways based on your choices, in the same way that Dragon Age 2 would have unique scenes based on your choices in Origins. You can still set the scope of individual plots to last one game, two games, or more. Just don't have an over-arching plot that HAS to be finished within a set time period.

To make myself fully clear here - this isn't a complaint about the Reapers themselves. It's about the effect the "save the universe" plot had on the games. To use LOTR as an example, if you set it during the books you're locked into playing Sam and Frodo. Any side stories have to deal with the fact that there's an unstoppable army of darkness about to crush the world. Set it earlier and you can start to play around with different stories which have smaller stakes.

The same thing afflicted Dragon Age: Inquisition. I could not have given two wet farts about Corypheus. I was interested in sorting out the Mage/Templar problem and dealing with Orlesian politics. None of which required an unstoppable demon army o'er all the land.

[Anteros]

This is kind of like having a version of LOTR where "I really don't like this Ring being the McGuffin that's driving the plot, so in the second instalment we'll have Frodo and Sam go back to the Shire and do something unrelated to destroying the Ring, even if that means we have to suddenly rush around like blue-reared flies trying to figure out how to solve everything in the third instalment". The whole point of a trilogy is that the storyline of each is supposed to follow one to the other...in ME, it simply doesn't do that, ME2 spends the first part of its runtime basically stamping all over the remnants of the ME1 plot and then does absolutely nothing to progress the overarching plotline of the series.

Plus, are you seriously telling me you're OK with the main plotline mission where Shepard and *all* his companions (possibly 12 of them, if you have all the DLC) cram themselves into a tiny shuttle and head off to do something offscreen, just so we can have the bit where the Normandy is attacked and Joker has to save the day?

Now, I'll agree that the suicide mission is great fun (apart from the human reaper...ugh), but it didn't belong at the end of the second game, because it then means that they don't know for sure who's going to survive into the third one. It should have been at the end of the third trilogy.

Considering that the best parts of LoTR are the Rohan and Gondor subplots rather than Frodo being emo and walking...I'm not sure your point holds up. At all.

[Taevyr]

Additionally, the entire atmosphere of the setting changed. ME1 is very exploratory with a large emphasis on the setting and finding various weird and disturbing things: stuff like the reapers, the Thorian, Cerberus and the Noveria facility experimenting with things they shouldn't experiment with even give it a slight Lovecraftian vibe. The focus is, mainly, on unraveling space mysteries and figuring out what's going on while clearly out of your depth, whether it's the Reapers, the planet-specific ones like the Thorian, or individual missions/planets. Whether that exploratory aspect was done well with all the empty planets and the Mako is certainly debatable, but at least you had a sense of scale and discovery.

Then ME2 comes around, and it's essentially a sci-fi heist movie: protagonist is a "retired" operative who gets "brought back" for one last job, gathers a motley crew of quirky specialists, then completes an "impossible mission" against all odds. The focus shifts from space opera lovecraft-lite to crew dynamics and interactions, action scenes, and character-defining moments.

And while ME2 executes the "space heist movie" excellently, especially concerning crew dynamics/character moments, it removes or guts the elements I loved about the original: Reapers as lovecraft-lite abominations, Shepard and his crew as capable specialists out of their depth rather than elite super-operatives, and said sense of scale and discovery.

I can get why some would see ME2 as an improvement over ME1 if they prefer its style and focus, and it's definitely a better shooter. But it's not a worthy sequel to ME1, as it doesn't follow up on it properly.

[GloatingSwine]

And this is why I'd like to see a rebooted Mass Effect where the Reapers just...aren't an issue. There isn't a "galaxy ends in X days" clock that the developers have to stick to.

Just let us tool around in the galaxy and do big sweeping space opera things without this looming presence over the story that overshadows everything. A lot of the existing stories (and best writing) in Mass Effect works without it anyway. The Geth/Quarian war doesn't need a Reaper in the middle of it. Nor does the Krogan Genophage plot. Or the Collectors. Or most of the loyalty missions..

I mean sure, you could do that, but it means there's no real focus. The Reapers aren't a problem with the narrative at all. They present the traditional "A really bad thing is coming, can everyone sort out their various bull**** in order to stand together against it" storyline.

The Reapers make all the other stuff really important, it has to be fixed now, it can't just simmer along any more. They are the reason why this is the most interesting time in the characters' lives.

The problem was that 1/3 of the narrative runtime of the series was spent pretending they didn't exist. (And I'm not talking about the council, I'm talking about the writers).

[MCerberus]

Then you could do a cool thing in ME 3 where you have your protagonists fight instead of

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stupid Kai Leng.

OH man, did anyone just have a flashback to all the memes?

Haha cereal spoon.
I'm so glad they don't put vital plot information in dime nasty quality tie-in books any more *glares at Blizzard*

[Wookieetank]

I'm so glad they don't put vital plot information in dime nasty quality tie-in books any more *glares at Blizzard*

Naw, they just put plot important bits into completely unrelated media and IP (Looking at you Rise of Skywalker). Or they leave important plot bits as miss-able conversations that can be heard only if you're at the right time and place (looking at you FFXV).

I'm all for tie-in books for expanded world building and side stories, but things should be able to stand on their own.

On topic, been slowly poking at SMT 3: Nocturne on the switch and greatly enjoying it. Definitely missing QoL features present in later games (quest log, on screen map, and the demon compendium (maybe I get that later?)) but its still a solid game. Also been playing Dofromantik which is a chill puzzle/tile placement game. Still need to find out what counts as a perfect tile placement, but otherwise game is straightforward.

[GloatingSwine]

Putting half the story in the tie-in books was all the rage at the back end of the 7th console generation. Gears of War 3 did it as well, they brought on the writer of the tie-in books to write the third game and she used all her characters and ideas that hadn't been introduced at all in the games in plot significant roles.

(It was, all told, a grim time for games with 3 in the title. Dead Space 3 was yet another franchise ruiner)

[warty goblin]

Nowadays we just put the rest of the story in the Year 1 Season Pass Pack for $39.99. Pre-order now and receive this gawdawful exclusive skin and an exclusive weapon that's either total trash, or is better than anything you'll find for half the game, invalidating like 30% of the core gameplay! So. Much. Progress.

Though it does seem to have cut down on the number of tie-in novels clogging bookshelves, so we should be thankful for small mercies. I mean I read one of the ME novels, god help me, and no way did innocent trees deserve to be pulped for that. Or guilty trees for that matter. When the Ents show up and start smashing stuff, that one is gonna be difficult to explain....

[Man_Over_Game]

Been playing Pikmin 3 with my wife. Neither of us have played a Pikmin game before.

Besides the really clunky movement controls (seems to have a hard time telling the difference between 'aiming' and 'moving' without pressing in the Left Stick button), it's been a lot of fun assigning tasks and pikmin specialties between us and coordinating our time. Plays a lot like coordinating stuff in Overcooked, with a hint of RTS and persistent consequences.

We started with 3 day's worth of rations and are now up to 8 on our 4rd day, so it's going pretty well, I'd say.

The one thing that throws me off is the tens resource management gameplay vs. the childish theme. It's an adorable game that easily appeals to younger players, but it's actually quite stressful. The game tracks every Pikmin you've ever lost, has you spend 1 ration a day and are required to gather more to continue playing, the controls aren't intuitive, and using the incorrect Pikmin for a problem is almost guaranteed to get them killed or waste your time.

It'd be like playing Stardew Valley if you lost the farm if you didn't make 1,000,000 over 2 years or something. Regardless of how possible it is, it changes the whole possibility from it being a casual game.

I can't imagine the number of kids that were frustrated at picking up the first one, thinking it'd be like "My First Starcraft" or something.

[Zevox]

This is kind of like having a version of LOTR where "I really don't like this Ring being the McGuffin that's driving the plot, so in the second instalment we'll have Frodo and Sam go back to the Shire and do something unrelated to destroying the Ring, even if that means we have to suddenly rush around like blue-reared flies trying to figure out how to solve everything in the third instalment". The whole point of a trilogy is that the storyline of each is supposed to follow one to the other...in ME, it simply doesn't do that, ME2 spends the first part of its runtime basically stamping all over the remnants of the ME1 plot and then does absolutely nothing to progress the overarching plotline of the series.

If you're thinking of the series strictly as a trilogy about the Reapers, I suppose. Again, perhaps because I never felt they were a compelling part of the series, I'm more prone to thinking of each game individually. And when I look at ME2, I see a game that ditched everything I didn't like about the first game, emphasized what I did like about it, had much more compelling stories and characters, and vastly improved core gameplay. It was basically everything I could ever want in a sequel. Mass Effect 1 didn't make me a fan of the series, just interested enough in the universe that I was willing to see if they'd improve it with the sequel. Mass Effect 2 is what made me a fan.

And Mass Effect 3, well, is a game of very high highs and very low lows to me. Love Tuchanka and Rannoch; hate the ending; overall still like the game a lot, more than ME1 for sure.

Plus, are you seriously telling me you're OK with the main plotline mission where Shepard and *all* his companions (possibly 12 of them, if you have all the DLC) cram themselves into a tiny shuttle and head off to do something offscreen, just so we can have the bit where the Normandy is attacked and Joker has to save the day?

I don't recall having any issue with it. But I haven't gotten back to it in my current run yet, so we'll see if that's changed when I do I suppose.

And this is why I'd like to see a rebooted Mass Effect where the Reapers just...aren't an issue. There isn't a "galaxy ends in X days" clock that the developers have to stick to.

Just let us tool around in the galaxy and do big sweeping space opera things without this looming presence over the story that overshadows everything. A lot of the existing stories (and best writing) in Mass Effect works without it anyway. The Geth/Quarian war doesn't need a Reaper in the middle of it. Nor does the Krogan Genophage plot. Or the Collectors. Or most of the loyalty missions.

Agreed, that would be great. It won't happen, but it would be great.

Additionally, the entire atmosphere of the setting changed. ME1 is very exploratory with a large emphasis on the setting and finding various weird and disturbing things: stuff like the reapers, the Thorian, Cerberus and the Noveria facility experimenting with things they shouldn't experiment with even give it a slight Lovecraftian vibe. The focus is, mainly, on unraveling space mysteries and figuring out what's going on while clearly out of your depth, whether it's the Reapers, the planet-specific ones like the Thorian, or individual missions/planets. Whether that exploratory aspect was done well with all the empty planets and the Mako is certainly debatable, but at least you had a sense of scale and discovery.

Then ME2 comes around, and it's essentially a sci-fi heist movie: protagonist is a "retired" operative who gets "brought back" for one last job, gathers a motley crew of quirky specialists, then completes an "impossible mission" against all odds. The focus shifts from space opera lovecraft-lite to crew dynamics and interactions, action scenes, and character-defining moments.

And while ME2 executes the "space heist movie" excellently, especially concerning crew dynamics/character moments, it removes or guts the elements I loved about the original: Reapers as lovecraft-lite abominations, Shepard and his crew as capable specialists out of their depth rather than elite super-operatives, and said sense of scale and discovery.

I can get why some would see ME2 as an improvement over ME1 if they prefer its style and focus, and it's definitely a better shooter. But it's not a worthy sequel to ME1, as it doesn't follow up on it properly.

All seems accurate enough; we don't disagree on what happened, just on whether it was an overall good thing. For me, it very much so was.

I mean sure, you could do that, but it means there's no real focus. The Reapers aren't a problem with the narrative at all. They present the traditional "A really bad thing is coming, can everyone sort out their various bull**** in order to stand together against it" storyline.

The Reapers make all the other stuff really important, it has to be fixed now, it can't just simmer along any more. They are the reason why this is the most interesting time in the characters' lives.

But you don't need that. The rest of the series' conflicts are more than compelling enough to warrant being stories in their own right. You don't need some big outside threat that makes everyone go "oh ****, better achieve resolution on everything now, or we might never be able to," because those conflicts can drive themselves just fine. The Quarians wanting to retake their homeworld can drive that plot; the Krogan clans' infighting and Mordin's changing views on his work on the Genophage could've driven that plot; the Collectors could've been a thing in their own right without needing to be puppets of the Reapers. You don't need a galaxy-wide threat to drive smaller stories towards resolution, any decent story will do that on its own, as those involved want to resolve whatever the conflict is.

This is kind of a larger criticism of Bioware in general: they could really stand to stop relying so much on big monsters and world-ending threats. Smaller-scale stories can be just as compelling if not more so, and honestly seem to be where Bioware's strengths lie. Or lay; who knows if they still have those strengths at this point, with everything that's happened with them in the past half-decade or so.

[Silverraptor]

Just Got Papers Please with the summer sale. After watching Markiplier play it, it was something I knew I had to pick up. Its the kind of game that proves you don't need amazing graphics or game size to make a compelling and enjoyable game. Like FTL.

[LibraryOgre]

I think Mass Effect would have worked a bit better if the order were 2 1 3.

2: You are recruited by a shady, human-supremacist organization, Cerberus, to build a team investigating disappearances in human colonies. This leads to the Reaper station at the galactic core, and the revelation that the Collectors were harvesting humans to make a Reaper.

1: After that, you get recruited at the first human Spectre, and are back under the nominative aegis of the Alliance. You get an upgraded ship, based on your improvements in the first game, and a lot of your crew is back, along with some new folks. You learn a lot more about Cerberus, who seem to have gone completely round the bend. End of the game, Sovereign appears. The first Reaper.

3: Alerted by Sovereign, the galaxy starts to prepare for war, as the Reapers invade.

[MCerberus]

I think Mass Effect would have worked a bit better if the order were 2 1 3.

2: You are recruited by a shady, human-supremacist organization, Cerberus, to build a team investigating disappearances in human colonies. This leads to the Reaper station at the galactic core, and the revelation that the Collectors were harvesting humans to make a Reaper.

1: After that, you get recruited at the first human Spectre, and are back under the nominative aegis of the Alliance. You get an upgraded ship, based on your improvements in the first game, and a lot of your crew is back, along with some new folks. You learn a lot more about Cerberus, who seem to have gone completely round the bend. End of the game, Sovereign appears. The first Reaper.

3: Alerted by Sovereign, the galaxy starts to prepare for war, as the Reapers invade.

This would also work better with the rumored dark-energy plot line, where you the scale of what you would sacrifice increases from your crew, to the council/the human military, to everything in order to stop the threat as befits your viewpoint

[Rodin]

If you're thinking of the series strictly as a trilogy about the Reapers, I suppose. Again, perhaps because I never felt they were a compelling part of the series, I'm more prone to thinking of each game individually. And when I look at ME2, I see a game that ditched everything I didn't like about the first game, emphasized what I did like about it, had much more compelling stories and characters, and vastly improved core gameplay. It was basically everything I could ever want in a sequel. Mass Effect 1 didn't make me a fan of the series, just interested enough in the universe that I was willing to see if they'd improve it with the sequel. Mass Effect 2 is what made me a fan.

And Mass Effect 3, well, is a game of very high highs and very low lows to me. Love Tuchanka and Rannoch; hate the ending; overall still like the game a lot, more than ME1 for sure.


I don't recall having any issue with it. But I haven't gotten back to it in my current run yet, so we'll see if that's changed when I do I suppose.


Agreed, that would be great. It won't happen, but it would be great.


All seems accurate enough; we don't disagree on what happened, just on whether it was an overall good thing. For me, it very much so was.


But you don't need that. The rest of the series' conflicts are more than compelling enough to warrant being stories in their own right. You don't need some big outside threat that makes everyone go "oh ****, better achieve resolution on everything now, or we might never be able to," because those conflicts can drive themselves just fine. The Quarians wanting to retake their homeworld can drive that plot; the Krogan clans' infighting and Mordin's changing views on his work on the Genophage could've driven that plot; the Collectors could've been a thing in their own right without needing to be puppets of the Reapers. You don't need a galaxy-wide threat to drive smaller stories towards resolution, any decent story will do that on its own, as those involved want to resolve whatever the conflict is.

This is kind of a larger criticism of Bioware in general: they could really stand to stop relying so much on big monsters and world-ending threats. Smaller-scale stories can be just as compelling if not more so, and honestly seem to be where Bioware's strengths lie. Or lay; who knows if they still have those strengths at this point, with everything that's happened with them in the past half-decade or so.

Agreed with everything here. What's really ironic is that Bioware's best move away from "big world-ending threat" was in one of their least loved games - Dragon Age II. That game's other flaws overshadow one of the best stories Bioware has had. There's no army of demons at the gates, no Macguffin that's going to destroy the world. It's following the fall of one city out of many, and the stakes don't feel any less great for being smaller in scale.


More on-topic, I've been revisiting Defense Grid: Awakening. Still my favorite tower defense game despite the devs obviously working on a shoestring budget. What makes the game is the AI advisor - he's impossible not to like with his chipper enthusiasm covering deep grief. The power core mechanic is also really fun, since the game ceases to be about killing everything on a one way path. Manipulating where the power cores are becomes just as important as murdering all the aliens since you can use them to break up enemy groups and separate out particularly troublesome enemies.

[Triaxx]

I've been playing some Outriders. It's not the worst game I've ever played. It also doesn't crack my top 25 of good games. But it's fun enough.