Poll: Mass Effect 2 Mini Games: Love or Hate?

[SeanthePsycho]

In most of the reviews I have seen for Mass Effect 2, reviewers praise every aspect of the game except for the tedious minigames. As well as a couple of webcomics, one specifically NerfNow, point out the redundancy of Mineral Scanning. http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/244

With the exception of the later to some extent, am I the only one who thought the lock picking and hacking mini games weren't all that bad? I felt the Simon Says little mini games for everything from hacking to lockpicking to obtaining minerals didn't help anyone out and made it boring and predictable. (Penny Arcade pointed out the idiotic nature of the Simon Says mini game http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/14/)

Lockpicking was a simple matching game as well as Hacking went the same way, so long as you don't mess up. To the games credit, you don't have to hack/lock pick anything important for the most part unless the objective lies behind a locked door or in a datapad. Mineral scanning, while important, is the only one I can criticize due to not knowing what planets have what and having to laboriously check each planet, scanning and probing. Even though Miranda's upgrade helps out, it might have been easier if they highlight portions of the planet at were like "Look in this area for the good stuff." As opposed to going in blind. Plus, mineral scanning isn't something the game forces us to do, but for those of you that have beaten the game know the importance of certain upgrades. Others aren't as important because using 50,000 units of Platinum for a Clearasil machine isn't necessary for the ship.

So, what are your opinions on the minigames? Like some, hate others, relate your opinions of this part of the game.

 

[Kollega]

Mineral scanning kinda sucks - not as much as i thought it would, but it still sucks. I can only imagine how downright unplayable it is with gamepad. Code hacking is alright, and lock bypass is oddly brilliant.

 

[Schmidtzkrieg]

Lockpicking and hacking were OK, the scanning was a little boring but I just did enough to get the upgrades I wanted and then just left the rest.

 

[Jandau]

Hacking and Bypassing were both fast, entertaining minigames and were much better than the Simon Says or Frogger from ME1. Scanning is crap, but the Mako was a far more tedious minigame

 

[RikSharp]

kill the scanning! i miss the mako...

 

[ShotgunSmoke]

Loved the bypassing and hacking. Scanning was fun at first, got a bit tedious later, but it's unquestionably better than the Mako. I wanted to burn that piece of crap, good thing Bioware did it for me.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

I rather enjoyed the hacking and the bypassing.

Spoiler: One minigame that hasn't been brought up.

While I wasn't a fan of the monkey-shooting on the Krogan homeworld, it wasn't that bad.

The scanning did suck a large one, though.

 

[SeanthePsycho]

I rather enjoyed the hacking and the bypassing.

Spoiler: One minigame that hasn't been brought up.

While I wasn't a fan of the monkey-shooting on the Krogan homeworld, it wasn't that bad.

The scanning did suck a large one, though.

Wait...that was on the Krogan homeworld? I had no idea about that one but my inquiry is more so realted to mini games that come up a couple of times in the game that appear on every level (ie the three I listed)

 

[SpireOfFire]

the only one i had a problem with was again, combing the damn planets for resources.

seriously, nothing has been so tedious since getting a job while playing fable 2. its just idiotic.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Considering how hard it is to lose the hacking and bypassing mini-games once you find their respective upgrades (and really, they were hard to lose before that too), I have no complaints about them whatsoever.

Scanning is a bit of a drag, which is why I started doing a slipshod job of it and only hitting major spikes with a probe. Except Uranus, I just had to launch a probe at that to heard EDI chide me for it.

 

[Amnestic]

Mako: Sucked ass. Nice idea, poor execution.
Mineral Scanning: Also sucks, not as much as the mako. Also far easier to cheat than the mako.
Simon Says: Annoying, not a big deal. What was most annoying was that it seemed to increase and decrese button presses seemingly randomly.
Bypassing: Not bad. Easy to understand, easy to execute and the timer isn't bad unless you go afk mid-bypass. With the Bypass upgrade, timer becomes trivial.
Hacking: I like this one, but in bits. Liara's quest in ME2 was an arse because you had three hacking targets swiftly followed by another five hacking targets. Needs to be more spread out than that. Other than that, okay. With the Hacking Tool upgrade it becomes trivial.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

They were better than ME1, but they're still completely pointless and only exist to extend the game an extra hour.

Hopefully they just get rid of planet scanning and these mini-games completely for ME3. It's not as if either is challenging in the slightest, or that either exists to improve the quality of the game. They're just there to artificially extend the length of the game.

 

[gigastrike]

I liked the hacking mini-game. The bypass one was pretty boring, and I would have liked the mineral scanning more if it didn't take so long.

 

[JaredXE]

All I have to say is: Who thought, designed and played through the planet scanning and thought, "Yeah, this is fun!"?


Also, there is a distinct lack of currency in the game. I just finished having played EVERY sidequest, explored EVERY planet...and there are still tech/biotic upgrades I couldn't get because I had no cash. I upgraded everything I could find, but still not enough cash. Shouldn't I get like an additional cash bonus for discovering minerals, like in the first game?

 

[teijakool]

Hopefully they just get rid of planet scanning and these mini-games completely for ME3. It's not as if either is challenging in the slightest, or that either exists to improve the quality of the game. They're just there to artificially extend the length of the game.

Seconded. In earlier games, there was simply a skill called lockpicking or hacking, and that would be it.
Also it kind of kills the atmosphere of the Normandy as cutting edge technology when there is neither crewmate assigned to this task nor there is a simple algorithm coded for this. Even I could hack it down in under 5 mins.
I also think there should be some way to trade these oh so rare resources for credits.

Quick rant about the sidequests (except those about the merc gangs), they are annoying and feel like something the designers built in their coffee break.

 

[selath]

I found them a very helpful tool in tracking my mental deteriation... two nights without sleep... It is amazing how the game lets you know "You've had enough" and you just keep stumbling back 'No, no I'm good, can't see red anymore but Sarrus was always really ugly!' "Shepard look what your doing to yourself, I never thopught you`d join cerberus" `Just slap some face paint on me, I`ll be fine...` Or something like that... It is hard to focus

 

[SeanthePsycho]

All I have to say is: Who thought, designed and played through the planet scanning and thought, "Yeah, this is fun!"?


Also, there is a distinct lack of currency in the game. I just finished having played EVERY sidequest, explored EVERY planet...and there are still tech/biotic upgrades I couldn't get because I had no cash. I upgraded everything I could find, but still not enough cash. Shouldn't I get like an additional cash bonus for discovering minerals, like in the first game?

I know exactly how you feel. I was near ready to go through the Omega 4 Relay and on Illium and was like "Gee, it'd be nice to get this Upgrade for 75,000 credits" But by that time all the side missions had been done and since I couldn;t use my get rich quick scheme from the first game (i.e. sell all the armor/weapons/weapon upgrade that I don't need) wasn't present, I had to scan planets to find anomilies so I could kick some ass and get some cash. Even then, it wasn't enough to buy the expensive stuff on Illium...next time, I should stick with weapons and not buy any damn fish.

But you are right...at least let us sell the minerals we don;t want or need to put some cash into our pockets. Although, mineral scanning was more to me like when I have to clean up my room and the reward is when I find my TV remote or money...it pretty much worked like that.

 

[squid5580]

I know I should hate the scanning. I know it is wrong and just not fun. And yet everytime I play I waste hours scanning planet after planet while interesting missions cry out to me.

The rest are alright though. Better than the first.

 

[WaywardHaymaker]

I liked the Mako, and I'm okay with the Scanning. I'm also okay with the new Hacking/Bypass games.

Seriously, though, the rest of the game is SO AWESOME, I don't see how scanning or anything in the game can make it bad enough to constantly see these threads about. Beat it once, and you have essentially unlimited eezo and enough of the others to last you into Disc Two.