One Move to Rule Them All

I’ve found while playing games, I fairly quickly latch onto a handful of moves that I like and use them constantly while all the others fall victim to neglect. The greater variety of moves the less I tend to use. For instance, I am currently playing through Tales of Vesperia. I’m quite close to the end and my character currently has at least fifteen “artes” at his disposal. The game enables me to hotkey eight of them, but I only use four with any real frequency. Of those four, two would be more than enough to keep the combat entertaining for the duration. The same is true of just about any hack and slash style game I pick up. I find it interesting that despite all the effort developers put into diversifying their games, I always tend to latch onto my favorite and most effective moves and then proceed to spam them for the next ten to forty hours.

This has never been more apparent to me then when playing Mass Effect 2. I chose the Vanguard class, same as in the first game. Each class has several abilities, but once again I only care about one. I use a second on rare occasion and the third is a passive upgrade on my shotgun so it’s pretty much always on. I think I’ve used my fourth ability twice now. Yet that one main ability is so awesome that I’d be content just doing it over and over again with little regard for the rest of the game. It’s all fluff on top of that ability. In fact, I sometimes feel like all the story and character development gets in the way of the combat. I once read an article where a developer said if your gameplay mechanic isn’t fun enough to create a survival mode with, it probably shouldn’t be in your game. This obviously doesn’t apply for every game type out there, but I think it’s a very strong argument considering the combat in most games is little more than storming room after room eradicating the forces of evil or whatever.

Since I made such a fuss over this ability, I suppose I should explain what it does. The Vanguard class in Mass Effect is essentially a shotgun wielding mage. They aren’t called mages because this is a science fiction universe, but for all intents and purposes that’s what the class is. Since my specialty is shotguns I generally want to get up close and personal as quickly as I can. From a distance my character is essentially worthless. That’s where Charge comes in. It teleports my character in a straight line directly to the enemy I’m targeting and slams me into him with a huge impact. They go flying backwards while I simultaneously get a second shield for four seconds. At later levels it even slows down time for a second giving me a tiny bit more time to mow down whatever poor group of saps I just went careening into. The coolest part is I go through any obstacles between me and them, including solid objects, gaps in the floor, and even the rocket that was just fired at my face. It’s a brilliant move and right when I discovered it I knew Mass Effect 2 would not be a disappointment.

Without this move I would have probably called Mass Effect 2 a pretty standard upgrade to ME1 with improved Gears of War style combat and more of the same dialogue trees. Instead it’s rocketed itself into one of my favorite games in quite some time. The move has even made me further appreciate everything else the game has to offer. I’ve found myself doing more side quests in order to partake in more combat and because of that I’ve subsequently been becoming more engrossed in the story, characters and universe Bioware has created. I find this all very amusing considering I could have picked one of the other five classes and never even known about Charge. It makes you think, maybe there is even something cooler I’m missing....