I tried out the unexpected and unannounced demo of Mass Effect 2 yesterday. I liked the first one a lot and was expecting a really fantastic release here with all of the positive press... I was very disappointed with so many things. Where to start?
The health bar is gone entirely, replaced with the regenerating shield like in Halo, which is retarded because you already have another regenerating shield over it. This is okay for action games, but NOT FOR RPGS! Not just that, but when you take damage you are surrounded by literally the ugliest thing I have seen in a video game ever, and it surrounds you until you are healed.
You can reload now. Okay this is not a bad feature at all or anything, but I specifically remember in Mass Effect an explanation of why reloading guns does not happen anymore, as they are all based on liquids now or something like that. I can understand maybe reloading the big weapons, but how will they ever explain this?
I am really annoyed by the levels being basically just linked cutscenes (which are well animated, but not synced well at all...) from what I played, I know it is an RPG, but it felt like if I was not talking I was instantly shooting. Every section I played was in a small hallway so from what I saw there was no exploration at all. I assume the full game is not like this, but a demo should be a good indication of what you will expect from the full title.
Another thing I hated was how in a mission in the demo you have to rescue a tattooed girl who is basically a female Shadow the Hedgehog... Not looking forward to seeing more of this character at all...
Worst part is that from what I can see you can no longer change your ammunition and every character but you cannot change their outfits.
The graphics are better and a lot of the additions are clearly positive ones, but I do not understand the ones I mentioned. I am just so surprised because it seemed so much better in so many ways. I am still very interested in picking this up eventually because I absolutely loved the story, music, art and characters of the first one, so there is no way I am going to pass it up, but wow I am just really shocked how much I was disappointed by it.
As for what I am really playing other wise. Just Dark Cloud 2, which I still love but is a bit too complicated for my taste at times. I shelved Soul Calibur IV because I do not want to play it to death and I cannot pick up Gears of War 2 because me and Kogen are planning to play through the whole game in co-op and be surprised by the game instead of knowing what is coming up and he is very busy lately.
