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Games Entertainment

Mass Effect 2 Announced For Early 2010 72

Posted by Soulskill from the allegedly-no-holds-barred dept.
Bioware has confirmed rumors that development for the sequel to Mass Effect is well under way, and they're planning on a release in early 2010. They mentioned PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, but no information was given about a possible PS3 version. CVG has a write-up of what we know about Mass Effect 2 so far. Quoting: "In the shooting department the developer's official announcement promises 'intensified combat' and 'expanded weapon options.' We're hoping some of the work goes on improving the game's shooting mechanics, which were solid enough but could certainly do with some polishing to meet 2010 standards — especially in the cover system department. As for 'expanded weapon options,' we can only assume this refers to the in-depth gun tweaking and customisation options available in Mass Effect 1."
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Mass Effect 2 Announced For Early 2010 More

Mass Effect 2 Announced For Early 2010

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  • How about more variety? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by g0del ( 28935 ) on Friday March 20, 2009 @12:27AM (#27264987)

    I guess a new cover system might be nice, but I'd much rather they spent time designing side-quests that didn't all take place on identical ships/outposts etc.

    • Re:How about more variety? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NeutronCowboy ( 896098 ) on Friday March 20, 2009 @12:41AM (#27265049)

      True. After a while, I knew where the mobs would be and where the target would be without ever having set foot in that particular facility. All it took was identifying what the first room looked like, and everything was identical after that.

      Other than that, the game was damn near perfect.

    • I'd like if they decide to use the Mako again, they'll patch the console version with the updated and less twitchy controls they put in the PC version of the first one. I'd also like there to be more sidequests than "outpost X is overrun" or "no one's heard from outpost Y" as well.

      But fix the bloody Mako controls. :) That was the only part of the game that frustrated the hell out of me. The rest was pretty good.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gulthek ( 12570 )

        The mako controls were awesome. I could make that thing turn on a dime and run circles around those giant serpents. I've never felt more connected to a game vehicle except for the warthogs from Halo. I explored so much of each planet it's just not even funny. I spent literally hours navigating mountain ridges just for the hell of it. It's like they took lunar lander and made it 3d and awesome.

        Thank goodness they didn't borrow control schemes from Half-Life 2 eh?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zemrec ( 158984 )

          The landing and Mako driving parts always reminded me of Star Control 2 and driving around searching for minerals and biological samples and such. God I loved that game! I wish they'd make something similiar with Mass Effect.

          How about instead of buying your gear and upgrades, you only got the blueprints, and you needed to gather the raw materials on the planets you land on? That'd give me incentive to explore, and there'd be more valuable or rare materials on the dangerous worlds.

    • They hired 30 more artists and designers back in February pretty much for this point I'm guessing. I agree with you though.

      http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22530 [gamasutra.com]

    • PREPARE TO DIE!

  • Weapon variety please! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elrond, Duke of URL ( 2657 ) <JetpackJohn@gmail.com> on Friday March 20, 2009 @02:23AM (#27265451) Homepage

    One of my biggest complaints with the first game were the entirely generic weapons and mods. There were differences between types of weapons, but that was it. The routine eventually comes down to:

    1. Kill and collect everything until inventory is full.
    2. Equip best X for each party member.
    3. Sell entire inventory except for best anti-personnel and anti-armor mods.
    4. Repeat.

    There was never any reason to break from this pattern and this essentially made the weapons generic "loot" to collect. If that was all they were intended to be, just automatically give the player credits instead.

    Named and unique weapons would go a long way towards fixing this. I think only few times during the whole game did I actually scavenge a useful weapon. All of the others were bought in stores. The situation is almost identical for mods, except that I did acquire more useful mods via scavenging.

    The weapon mods also had the addition problem of being almost entirely useless. All enemies fit into two categories: organic or mechanical. Simply equip the appropriate mod to boost your organic or mechanical damage bonus and fire away. I rarely had to stray from this model. When you get the ability to equip two weapon mods things open a little, but that happens rather late in the game.

    Armor mods fared slightly better, but only a little. In general, I found the best way to operate was to equip most part members with the best shield boosting mods available. Makes everybody much harder to kill.

    • the higher level guns (and higher quality) equip 2 weapon mods and an ammo mod. the lower level ones equip an ammo mod what you described and a weapon mod (no idea how you cant count more accuracy as not useful.

      example setups ive used

      shotgun
      heatsink to prevent overheat
      knockback rounds

      rifle
      heatsink to fire longer
      stability to stay more accurate
      poison rounds (they arent called that but its basically what they do. they lower enemies abilites.)

      sniper rifle
      accuracy mod
      explosive rounds

      • Yes, I'm aware of the mod amounts. When I said 2, I meant the ability to equip two weapon mods instead of just one. And more accuracy *is* useful, I simply meant that once you find a useful setup there is almost no need to change it ever.

        I suppose variety is good in that it gives different players different load outs, but it would be much more useful if any given player had reason to occasionally change mods. But, in the end, there are just too many mods of dubious value which most players will almost ne

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tuidjy ( 321055 )

        Mods were useless? Heh. I remember my sister taking a look at me
        playing, and wondering "Where did you get a rocket launcher, I never
        saw one!" It was just a sniper rifle with two damage mods and
        some explosive bullets that had splash damage. One shot would
        overheat it (three or four times over) but the damage was enough
        to take out everything but the big walking tanks in one shot.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Aladrin ( 926209 )

          Indeed. I spent a lot of time turning mediocre weapons into fearsome tools of destruction. There were definitely combinations that were a lot better than others.

    • For the first two thirds of the game, the best weapons were typically found in the field, after that, you usually had enough money to start buying Spectre class weapons and then that was pretty much over with.

      There were also a lot more mods then just organic/geth, but those are extremely helpful once you start getting them.

  • So, elevators again? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anenome ( 1250374 ) on Friday March 20, 2009 @03:14AM (#27265619)

    We can only pray that ME2 is blissfully elevator free (and therefore without 20 min. of load-time between scenes) ;P

  • Would love to be able to pilot the ship.

    Maybe some turret missions would be great, asteroid dodging too.

    And would like more choice when it comes to planetary drops, the mako got boring.
    would like planets you finished quests on to be revisited and maybe more quest done for that planet.

    • I agree. And if possible, the option to command space battles between spaceships too

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JSBiff ( 87824 )

      I would like to see a smaller 'aerial/space fighter' type ship which can be launched from the main ship, a la the Mako, and some missions/maps which bring an element of an old school 'shoot-em-up' to the game. The mako missions, to some extent, did that a little bit, but I have an immersion problem with a deep future, high-tech game where any time you are on a planet, you are moving in a slow tank - that makes no sense most of the time; I can see that certain missions could require a tank (like a mission wh

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flitty ( 981864 )
      Piloting the ship would also make sense for the exploration/barren planet garbage of the first game. If you give me a destination planet, it damn well better have more than a single outpost with 20 people in it. However, if I'm flying though space and find an uncharted planet in some backwater galaxy, having a few people there makes sense in the lore.

  • I enjoyed Mass Effect, I would give it a comfortable 7.5/10 and 3 of that is for the amazing, moody music.
    (Admitedly I was 'emo' at that time of my life myself)
    None the less, lovely music, incredible graphics, not a bad story and gameplay, well... I don't know, people seem to rave about Biowares stuff but Kotor and Mass Effect did not do it for me, they sit in the action RPG area but the action is a bit well lame for choice of a better word and the RPG elements just didn't feel fully fleshed out.

    Oblivion is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by timftbf ( 48204 )

      Oblivion is an FPS with RPG trappings. If success in combat depends more on *my* ability to manipulate twin thumb-sticks and buttons quickly than *my character's* supposed combat abilities (driven by my decision-making), the game is a shooter, not an RPG.

      I've just picked up Mass Effect cheaply, but haven't played yet. I'm hoping it's better in this regard; some previous forum trawling suggests that I'll be able to steer the gameplay in the direction of tactical combat decisions over twitch shooting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      You should play Fallout 3. IMHO, it's even more RPG-like than Oblivion (thanks the the V.A.T.S. system, which gives it more of a turn-based feel--though this is optional for the player). The only thing it's missing is a "magic" or "biotics" type equivalent.
    • I acquired Mass Effect and Coldplay's Viva la Vida within a few days of each other. I desperately wanted to play the game and listen to the album, but didn't want to give up one for the other... so I muted Mass Effect's music and put Viva la Vida on the stereo.

      Long after getting my fill of Viva la Vida, I was still playing Mass Effect. It took a few months to realize that I'd been playing the whole time with the in-game music still muted.

  • Mass Effect is definitely my favorite game of the current generation. Beat it three times in February alone.

    The only thing I think that really needs fixing is the Mako. It just drove so crappily. Or maybe it was the way they designed the worlds. 75% of them had gigantic mountains and crags every five feet.

    Anyways, can't wait for the game, but yet I will patiently wait. Bring it on.

  • they waited a good year and a half to release on PC.

    I bought it for PC. It kicked much ass. I played it in full 1080p. Ran like butter.

    The only thing I didn't like was the fact that to play "bring down the sky", you had to play through the whole game again. I had already finished it before BDTS came out for PC.

    anyway, it was a true masterpiece and I look forward to seeing what bioware comes up with.

  • And for God's sake, make that damn thing easier to drive! I played that game through three times (incl. on insanity) and after all those many hours, I still couldn't drive that thing worth a damn by the end.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fishbulb ( 32296 )

      That's "Mako" - it's a type of shark [wikipedia.org].
      (and a concept car [wikipedia.org] that influenced the Corvette)

      And I thought the Mako was fun to drive! It was like a little R/C dune buggy with jets. You just never flipped it. :)

    • depends on the platform the thing was pretty easy to drive on the PC...
      The entire game was way better on the PC than on the xbox, and cheaper as well

  • I already owned a PS3, but I bought an XBOX 360 pretty much just so I could play the original Mass Effect.

    I'm a die-hard RPG fan, and I'm actually looking forward to Mass Effect 2 more than Final Fantasy XIII. (Which is probably a good thing, since I'm pretty sure Duke Nukem Forever will come out before FF13 does.

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