Even more video game stuff

[cyrano]

Half Life 2 Chapter One is grinding, one brick wall at a time, to a close. Which means that City of Heroes will need a new friend. Steam has a few suggestions as to who it should be.
You, my lucky friends, have just hit Early Friday on an already short week! IFIAYAQD!

[Poll #1808450]

Comments

[roisnoir.livejournal.com]

DA2 has some wonderful characters that are well worth your time to get to know. (Varric is my current fictional boyfriend.)
Mass Effect 2 (I own 1, but haven't played it yet) is incredibly well done. I don't even like shooty games, and I adore it despite the lack of auto-aim. Also very worth your time.

[tersa.livejournal.com]

Doooooo it. See, it's not just me telling you to. All the cool kids are doing it. You want to be cool, right?

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

ME1 makes so many things in ME2 have context. :) You don't *have* to have it, but man, it makes a big difference :D

[spideyj.livejournal.com]

And as far as story goes, I think ME1 has by far the better/more cohesive story. ME2 is a good game, don't get me wrong, and I think they improved on a lot of the mechanics (though if you don't like the shootiness in ME2, ME1's combat might suit you better) but ME1 wins on story, hands down.

[merlinofchaos]

ME1 and DA:O and ME2 and DA2 have a lot of parallels.

Both in the story AND in the games:

DA:O has better story than DA2.
ME1 has better story than ME2.

DA:O has a story with a big beginning setting up a potentially world-destroying confrontation, with a fairly open middle with roughly 4 major plot sections you have to get through in whatever order you prefer, plus a bunch of side things.

ME1: Same

DA2 has much better graphics than ME1 and generally better game play, but some of the things they dumbed down left me messing DA:O. The story itself is less engaging, but they do a good job of engaging the companions into the story more. The story is broken up into consecutive acts and is pretty linear. In both cases I find this format inferior.

ME2: Same, particularly in the better graphics and generally better gameplay. But the story is simply less engaging. It's made up for by having a deeper connection to the companions; this is actually one place ME2 really excels over DA2, just because DA:O had excellent companion interactions. ME2 was dumbed down more than DA2 and I think they went too far with that. And in both cases, the story being on rails is a little annoying sometimes.

Finally, DA2 and ME2 succeed in vignettes. There are lots of little stories that are all really excellent in both and those help gloss over the weaker overall stories.

[spideyj.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get into either of the DA games - I bought DA:O CE and have booted it up several times, played for an hour or two and then got annoyed and set it aside. Mostly because I feel railroaded by the choices. I played DA2 a bit more and I enjoyed it, mostly because it's more straight forward hack and slash and I didn't feel the need to be invested in my character/the story.

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I really enjoyed ME2, but even as damned annoying as the Mako is, I <3 ME1.