I speculated about this in a previous post, when I was still in the early stages of ME2. I had played ME1 4 full times before moving on to ME2, and my last post about it was probably a little early to make any real judgments.

Well, last night I did a number on the big human reaper thingy, told Cerberus to Fuck Off, and made it back safely with the entire crew intact. (I am a completionist, so I finished all the loyalty missions before moving on with the story.) With the entirety of ME2 in my rearview (excepting DLC anyway) I'm ready to make my final stand.

ME1 is a superior game to ME2. There, I said it. Now let's talk turkey about the WHY.

The actual game play in ME2 is far better, you can't argue that. ME1 had that odd, shooter-y but not a shooter dice-roll-driven FPS crap going. I wasn't even sure early on if aiming made any real difference in ME1. At least with ME2 Bioware decided whether to shit or get off the can, moving completely to a pure FPS experience with some RPG layers. It certainly led to a far more engaging game play experience. (But if one thing frustrated me again and again, it was the cover/jump over stuff system. I can't tell you how many deaths were due to "taking cover" in plain sight instead of vaulting over an object to take cover on the OTHER side.)

In the graphics department, ME2 once again wipes the floor with ME1. ME1 has this sort of bluish gray "tinge" to everything. It's washed out, dreary and boring. ME2 on the other hand is bright and beautiful. Where ME1 had an awful lot of empty spaces, the environments in ME2 are always full and detailed. Each place you visit feels more like a "world."

But here is one of the areas where ME1 shows itself as the better experience. The first game makes you feel like you're actually exploring a world. Sure, it's bland in many areas and awfully empty, but one of the hallmarks of Space Opera is the exploration. ME2 is a series of loading screens, each place split into vignettes. And your path through them is almost always the ONLY path. Not much room for wandering in ME2, where ME1 gave you the keys to the car (errr...Mako) and let you find your way.

I play games like Mass Effect for the story, not for the shooting. The shooting is just a nice way to get there. From a pure story perspective, ME1 spins a superior tale overall. ME2 wins on the character stories, but ME1 had the far more engaging overall narrative. The entirety of Mass Effect 2 felt like some kind of diversion. Almost like a huge chunk of DLC to tell us some side story about the Collectors. After what I saw as a great story in Mass Effect, I was not pleased. Mass Effect had a bit of mystery, a chase across the galaxy, and 2 great villains. Mass Effect 2 had some new race I've never heard of, no chase at all, we knew exactly where to find them, and an enemy you basically killed over and over and over again.

And the "Human Reaper?" That was ridiculous. That was lame. That was ridiculame. At the end of Mass Effect I was happy to see Sovereign go down. I killed that motherfucker Saren and I was happy about it. The whole "Human Reaper" fight was just something to get through to see the ending, which had none of the punch that Mass Effect's ending had.

I felt invested in Mass Effect, and the story actually moved me at a couple different points. (Like when the Council makes Shepard a Spectre, for instance.) Mass Effect 2 was shinier, played better, and had a better sex scene (Miranda for me), but in the end felt more empty than all of barren landscapes in Mass Effect 1.