Fourteen Reasons to Hate Mass Effect 2

Hmm, lots of BioWare angst today. “Fourteen Reasons to Hate Mass Effect 2” is the title of a new four-page editorial on Explicit Gamer, during which the author criticizes the game’s loot system, biotic powers, fetch quests, and much more.

While I appreciate the emotional and logistical accuracy of having a single granted favor earn me the undying loyalty of a crew-mate, (pay no attention to the sarcasm behind the curtain) I am less enthusiastic about the role your Paragon/Renegade level plays in these scenarios.

By way of example, I elected to not give Zaeed the opportunity to kill his nemesis because I was playing Paragon. That should have ended any chance to gain his loyalty, but instead I received a good-guy dialogue option that secured his devotion anyway. Startlingly, the three hours Zaeed had known Shepard was enough for the schmaltzy testimonial to sway a hardened mercenary bent on bloody revenge.

Happens all the time, right?

…

Once again, the bulk of your potential squadmates are annoying and predictable. Jack is the worst of the bunch, with her appearance and behavior made all the more painful by the knowledge that some socially stunted design nerd believed she was clearly the ‘edgy’ character. Tattoos, leather and overt sexuality obviously being the fallback for shock value. We are all impressed. I like to pretend that Jack’s character design was really a joke. That the designers thought up the worst, most cliched female bad-ass attributes and threw it in the initial proposal just to be ‘wacky’. Then some suit with a pie chart and stock options greenlighted the project, on the condition they keep the ‘strong female support character’ to give the game some ‘color’.

Of course, let’s not forget that this is the same website that gave the game a score of 9.5/10 just four months ago. And there’s no mention of “cardboard teammates” in the review, either.