For anyone that’s actually following my Xfire Profile (and thus, my gaming hours and habits), you’ll notice that I’ve been spending a lot of time on Mass Effect. In fact, the amount of time I spend in it surprises even me. Normally I’d complete ONE playthrough of an RPG, and that’s it. It’s very rare that I play it again, and only a handful of titles have that honour – Morrowind, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2).
The common denominator among the titles listed above is just this – depth. They all have a nice storyline, they have rich and interesting background of the world. That will prompt me to make an “alt” (in MMO-speak, an “alt” is an alternate character) and play through it again. In the cases of Morrowind and Oblivion, I’d probably run into other sidequests that I’ve missed with the first run through on the “main”.
In Neverwinter Nights though, the draw was the multiplayer. It’s very close to being an MMO if you join a “persistent world“.
Mass Effect, however, doesn’t exactly fall into this catergory. While the story is nice, and depth is pretty average, I spend alot of time making “alts” in this game, and I have no idea why.
So much so, that this is my 7th run-through, and I’m starting to feel burned out. Same feeling I get in an MMO when I’ve already hit level 50/60/70 and making alts to play with fellow guildies who are lower level than me. This time, the game is not an MMO and not multiplayer, but just me re-runnning through it with yet another character.
Gamers talk about “replayability”. We want to be able to play a game again. I think Mass Effect has achieved this quite nicely. However, there’s always a limit to “replayability” if the game isn’t multiplayer, or at least, online-capable. Mass Effect should have included a multiplayer option, for people to have deathmatches or capture-the-flag games while waiting for the sequels to appear.
Right now though, I’m getting kinda burned out on Mass Effect. My current character is a Sentinel (finally!) and I’m playing him on Hardcore setting. So far it doesn’t feel any different from “Veteran” or “Normal”. Once I complete the story with this guy, I guess I’m putting Mass Effect aside till Mass Effect 2 comes out.
Yeah I’m starting to burn out on Mass Effect.
