Your PE teacher takes you and your classmates to the school’s basketball court, gives you a basketball and says “Ok guys let play some football!”. Stupid?
Well, that is what Bioware is asking you to do with Mass Effect’s combat system. In an age of space travel and super biotic abilities it seems that the fundamental principle of the enemy’s AI is to charge head on. As soon as a battle begins at least 50% to 75% of your enemies (an arbitrary percentage which gives you an idea of the frequency and magnitude of the problem) will charge on you even if they are holding a pistol.
They should be holding spears or swords. It would then make sense. They should also give these weapons to the human player to arm his squad for that matter as when that same enemy charges you won’t need to keep backing off to get a clear shot with your assault rifle 10cms away.
The enemy AI just complements your squadmates’ AI who habitually get stuck behind doors or keep moving despite you having placed them behind a crate or a wall and thus dying all too frequently or just getting in your way if you are lucky. One time i had to go back a 3-4 rooms to locate one of my squadmates (i am not revealing names!) who got stuck behind a door which opens automatically!!!!
The game introduces some of the most unreliable weaponry I have ever seen. How can your weapon overheat in 2150 something because you fired it two times in a row in the space of 5 minutes…..
Mass Effect gives you all the elements of a shooting game while it is asking you to play it like an RPG game. In the end it does neither genre’s combat system any justice.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 08:11 and is filed under Impressions.
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