PixlBit

Okay, that looks way better than I was expecting. The inclusion of RE 4 and 5 people worries me. Not because I didn't like those games (well, 4), but because I don't want another game in that same format. This looks different enough, even if I'd rather have new characters, or maybe Barry and Jill. And hey...zombies are back! No more ethnic cleansing!

No thanks to Mr. I-punch-zombies-in-the-face. When Capcom goes melee, it always goes way over the top, and that's not Resident Evil.

I love ME, don't want to play the demo, but I will for the unlocks. 

Well, I won't lie-I love the cross over of EA properties. Can't wait to use my Amalur unlocks in ME 3, and I might buy the game for more unlocks. I need help.

I'm right there with you, Angelo. I played it twice and wanted more. I talk about my dilemma with that game on this week's PixlTalk.

I'm curious, which guns did you use? Since you were a soldier, you had access to all of them. I always felt that the sniper rifles and shotguns sounded really powerful, especially the echo effect on the snipers. Pistols and assault rifles sounded less impactful, but that made sense to me, since they weren't firing actual bullets.

I roll with the Collector Particle Beam exclusively. It burns through barriers, shields, and armor in no time. The only downside is the aesthetic, which doesn't mesh well with the Mass Effect armor (which is another big complaint I have about ME 2, but I'll save it for the podcast).

Ha ha! You sound like Revolver Ocelot. "I love reloading! Putting each bullet in the chamber gives me such a thrill!"

I can see your point, coming from a shooting background. I keep going back to the fact that Mass Effect was trying to do something different with guns. This goes back to another of those arguments I always make about gamers not liking change, because you're in the majority on that point. People across the board applauded the switch in ME 2, with very few people disliking the heat sink addition. Again, I think it works fine, but as someone who's not a good shot, it was nice using guns where I didn't have to be super accurate to succeed.

I will say that, if you set your team mate AI to use powers aggressively on ME 2, they do a pretty good job using the right powers at the right time. I just like having them target specific enemies for the most damage.

And you were right with the way the level ups worked in the first game. You'd get +3% damage with your first rank, and the next rank would be +5% or something. They didn't add up to 8%, but if you maxed out a gun on the tree, you might be doing 225% damage. My fem Shep can one shot most unshielded enemies in ME 1, and I love that.

I'm happy to see Juri included, as she was one of my favorite additions to Street Fighter IV.

I wonder at the point of producing so many (surely costly) cinematic videos, though.

Hmm. Clearly, I didn't explain myself well.

The fact that you played Mass Effect that way is a flaw in the game. It did a piss poor job of explaining the powers wheel, the fact that you could target multiple enemies, and more. I remember a reviewer hated the game because he never put any points into his weapon proficiency, and as such his character couldn't shoot for crap. Mass Effect (the first one, anyway) is meant to be played using your abilities in tandem with the shooting. The shooting isn't good enough to stand on its own, nor was it meant to be.

I agree that Gears of War is a better shooter than both Mass Effect 1 and 2. My point is that the first Gears had very obvious cover points where you knew what was going to happen before you even got there. Mass Effect 2 has this same design flaw, and it's not nearly as good a shooter as Gears. But because the game removes so much of the mechanics from the first game, you're left with just that: subpar Gears of War 1 style combat. It's fine for what it is, but the point of the first Mass Effect was that it was offering something different and did a pretty good job of doing it, poor tutorials aside.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the heat sinks. I think they suck. My fem Shep is totally ruined in ME 2 because the shotguns are so poor in the game. Since I know how the guns in the Mass Effect universe work, it doesn't make any sense why I can't fire my shotgun more than 12 times. A better way to handle this would have been to utilize both systems: the heat sinks allow you to fire faster, but when they run out, you can still fire, but need to manage your weapon better, lest it overheat in the middle of a firefight.

And for the record, I don't think that shooters are for "dumb people" and RPGs are for "smart people". I think that developers don't think that a mass audience will "get" deep RPG mechanics, and that's just wrong. Borderlands was kind of a big deal, and it didn't turn gamers off that "X" machine gun does 274 damage per hit while "Y" machine gun does 320 damage.

I love shooters, and I love the idea of RPG mechanics bleeding into them. I think RPG mechanics can make almost any genre better. But what I don't want is to see those mechanics so watered down that they no longer have any use. It's not enough for me to play a game that tells me "Your leveled up! You're stronger now!". I want to know how I'm stronger. Am I doing more damage? Did I learn a new move? Can I choose how my character grows?

Oh, and if you ever decide to play a Final Fantasy game, I suggest X. The Third Age took the battle system from X wholecloth, but the execution in X is quite a bit better, dated voice acting aside.

Maybe. I believe this feature is still slated for the U.S. release. But it could very well do away with gold farming. If players are busy trying to make real money in the game, the market for buying gold from farming sites would be reduced. At least that's the way I see it.

I don't really see why people have trouble wrapping their heads over what an RPG is. The traditional RPG is a game that has a core set of rules based on a number of player stats that have a direct impact on the way the player succeeds or fails. Yes, it stems from Dungeons & Dragons, and the term "role playing game" is probably a misnomer to begin with. Because it's not assuming a "role" that makes an RPG an RPG. It's the rules underneath that govern it. There's usually a heavy story component to the game, but that's not a prerequisite: many of those 8-bit RPGs have little to no story worth talking about. But it is a genre. A poorly-defined one, but a genre, nonetheless.

Mike, you say you get tired of people complaining about RPGs fading away, and you also claim that Mass Effect is not an RPG. I can address both of these at the same time. It doesn't matter what you call a game--all video game genres at this point are damn near meaningless. What I don't want to see fade away is deep gameplay based on stats that improve as I progress through the game. To that end, I would argue that Mass Effect is one of the purest examples of an RPG in recent years.

In Mass Effect, my ability to succeed in battle is based on my character's stats and equipment, not my ability to aim and shoot. When I target an enemy, I just need to be close. When I pull the trigger, the game is utilizing the information about my weapon proficiency, equipment modifications, and checking that against the armor and shield stats of the enemy. I'm given a large selection of abilities to choose from. I can focus on a few core ones, or try and balance between all of them. You claim that the abilities in Mass Effect were more plentiful, but not as useful. As someone who just completed my third playthrough of ME 1(on Insanity) and went straight into ME 2 for a third time, I can tell you that the lack of options in 2 was jarring for me.

That's because I use everything at my disposal in Mass Effect. I spend half of every battle paused. I bring up the ability screen, and I'll target enemy "A" with Tali and have her use Overload to take out his shields. At the same time, I have Liara use Stasis on enemy "B" (the toughest enemy on screen) to take him out of the fight until I'm ready. At the same time, my Shepard (a Vanguard) is using Lift on enemies "C", "D", and "E", because a maxed out Lift in ME is ridiculously powerful. After all that goes off, I again pause to have Liara use Warp while Tali uses Sabotage and I fire my shotgun for big holes in the helpless enemies in the Lift field. By the time all that is done, the Stasis has worn off, and I concentrate everything we have on the toughest enemy.

That's deep combat. That's thinking tactically. In ME 2, I'm playing a shooter where I still use powers, but my options are cut in half, and anytime I use an ability, I'm locked out of all the other powers that character has, thanks to the universal cooldown. So I'm stuck playing a shooter with battles about as exciting as the first Gears of War: see the obvious cover points where an ambush is obviously going to occur, take cover, shoot, reload, shoot, move on. Yawn.

I don't want games to shy away from deep, stat-driven mechanics that give me the freedom to choose how I want to play. I think the idea that "the masses" won't understand how to play games like that is outdated thinking. 11 million people play WoW currently, and that doesn't count the others who used to play and quit. These aren't all hardcore gamers, these are grandmothers and 10 year olds and frat boys. These people, who may have never played an RPG before, excel at a game with far deeper mechanics than Mass Effect. Developers don't give their audience enough credit, and it's to the detriment of the gaming landscape.

So, I don't care what you want to call these games, or if you think it's a genre, or not. That's pointless. But if these very sound, immensely enjoyable mechanics continue to get diluted and simplified then we're left with every game becoming a competant third-person cover-based shooter.