So I discovered the games and beat them, and already read both books. I'm officially a ME fiend. Rather than make some long winded thoughts, I just wanted to point out some things of what I liked vs didn't like between ME1 vs ME2 (Because as far as I'm concerned, they have some really serious changed in them).
This is in PC gaming because I played the PC versions.
ME1: Fucking awesome. Great doesn't explain it. Characters have really nice textures.....downside? Sloppy textures elsewhere in the game...understandable though. And landing on planets, although fun, does get annoying at times. Oh, and the inventory management system is fucking stupid. To click on each item to sell it is ridiculous....I just want to select as much as I prefer and then sell it without any problems. I spent too much time selling, and converting junk to omnigel.
ME2: Way more different than what I expected it to be. I missed actually building my characters - just getting 4 different categories to improve a character isn't satisfying. I enjoyed the old way more. I also didn't like how I got no variety in weapons. I can understand that it takes more time to build them in, but I didn't really 'think' about guns - whatever I had and was autoselected is what I went with. I also didn't appreciate the change in keystrokes, although I adapted quickly. The main story was much much much longer, although I felt disappointed by the lack of side quests. I really missed that part because I literally spent 2x the time on side quests as I did on the main story.
Oh...and the textures were an overall DOWNGRADE from before. Even the suits look worse! The only realllllllly high res textures were the faces. The enviornments look like they had more polygon detail, and the backgrounds were a little nicer, but the textures just were not fully up to par. But really the most noticeable effect of the downgrade was the fact that my own uniforms were noticably not as sharp as my head, and that several NPCs were just not impressive.
And actually flying the ship was kinda pointless. I thought just selecting with a mouse was more efficient, and far less gimicky. You'd think so many years onward and the graphics would be better....I wouldn't say better ~ they are of a different style. But they were honestly good enough anyways (except the annoying fact that their body armor was nowhere near as sharp as they heads) so I can't complain. It felt much more like a console port than the first did; the least they could have done was put on the higher res textures in the game.
But lastly...the STORY IS SO GOOOOOOOD...which is why I also got both books. They definitely filled in the holes in the stories I'm curious about, and the second creates some more interesting questions. I don't know if it will be answered in ME3, but if not, I'm sure it will arise in the 3rd book. My only gripe with the books is that they are really easy reading....TOOOO easy reading. Perhaps I'm just so used to reading content that is much thicker, but I easily blasted through these 8th grade level reading books.
My hope for the third: make the character leveling system more like the first, give me variety in weapons once more, and ship higher res textures on the PC version (isn't all of the texture art done in high res and then just downsamples for the final set of textures that ship on the disc?)
This is in PC gaming because I played the PC versions.
ME1: Fucking awesome. Great doesn't explain it. Characters have really nice textures.....downside? Sloppy textures elsewhere in the game...understandable though. And landing on planets, although fun, does get annoying at times. Oh, and the inventory management system is fucking stupid. To click on each item to sell it is ridiculous....I just want to select as much as I prefer and then sell it without any problems. I spent too much time selling, and converting junk to omnigel.
ME2: Way more different than what I expected it to be. I missed actually building my characters - just getting 4 different categories to improve a character isn't satisfying. I enjoyed the old way more. I also didn't like how I got no variety in weapons. I can understand that it takes more time to build them in, but I didn't really 'think' about guns - whatever I had and was autoselected is what I went with. I also didn't appreciate the change in keystrokes, although I adapted quickly. The main story was much much much longer, although I felt disappointed by the lack of side quests. I really missed that part because I literally spent 2x the time on side quests as I did on the main story.
Oh...and the textures were an overall DOWNGRADE from before. Even the suits look worse! The only realllllllly high res textures were the faces. The enviornments look like they had more polygon detail, and the backgrounds were a little nicer, but the textures just were not fully up to par. But really the most noticeable effect of the downgrade was the fact that my own uniforms were noticably not as sharp as my head, and that several NPCs were just not impressive.
And actually flying the ship was kinda pointless. I thought just selecting with a mouse was more efficient, and far less gimicky. You'd think so many years onward and the graphics would be better....I wouldn't say better ~ they are of a different style. But they were honestly good enough anyways (except the annoying fact that their body armor was nowhere near as sharp as they heads) so I can't complain. It felt much more like a console port than the first did; the least they could have done was put on the higher res textures in the game.
But lastly...the STORY IS SO GOOOOOOOD...which is why I also got both books. They definitely filled in the holes in the stories I'm curious about, and the second creates some more interesting questions. I don't know if it will be answered in ME3, but if not, I'm sure it will arise in the 3rd book. My only gripe with the books is that they are really easy reading....TOOOO easy reading. Perhaps I'm just so used to reading content that is much thicker, but I easily blasted through these 8th grade level reading books.
My hope for the third: make the character leveling system more like the first, give me variety in weapons once more, and ship higher res textures on the PC version (isn't all of the texture art done in high res and then just downsamples for the final set of textures that ship on the disc?)
