i agree with the mining part, it seemed OK in the first run, but it was such a pain in the second run.

But its better than ME3 which has no minigames, no mining, where everything is way too..restricting. No more point in visiting other systems except the one with the mission(one or two at a time). The planets where you need to send probes are simple, bugged, consume fuel, and the whole reaper detect your presence if you scan thing really makes it not worth it.

I don’t understand why everyone is hating on the mini-games. I like having control of things so I like the mini-games. They’re easy to do and seem far superior to me than an unsatisfying skill roll where my character’s skill level only marginally improves my chances of beating the mini-game.

@ MrPete:

Actually, Oblivion at least had a button that allowed you to “force” the lock which reduced the game to a pure skill roll. Unfortunately failed test meant your lockpick was broken – and you couldn’t easily buy lockpicks in general stores – you had to find the right people, and even then they tended to be expensive.

However finding the unbreakable lockpick made lock-picking a joke. You would just mash the “force lock” button until you succeeded.

The lockpick idea as in Morrowind was good. A covert skill roll and either success or failure.
In Oblivion they screwed even that up by replacing the one-click-pick with a minigame where you had to pick the lock yourself.
OK so far since your skill in lockpicking and the quality of your picks determined how long you could make the lock’s bolts stay up before you had to retry them.
But they screwed even that. You couldn’t (at least not up to the patch I used before I resigned) abort lockpicking as long as you had a single lockpick left.
That could lead to a very annoying situation if you followed a side quest and got the unbreakable lockpick… I think you know where I point…

I love games like Fallout 1&2, Arkanum or such where it really is the skill roll against difficulty in the background.
So, where do I get rake and shovel?

@ Zel:

Morrowind used lockpicks that had a limited number of uses. So if your skill was poor and you attempted to pick difficult lock you would quickly use up your picks. I liked that system. In fact, I have never even considered re-loading to pick a lock because it would be so counter productive. Picking a lock was essentially a one click operation.

In fact, I have re-loaded Mass Effect 2 once or twice when I accidentally failed what I thought was an important bypass/hacking sequence.

Oh, and the bananas are basically regular commenter badges. I initially wanted to use a star, but I had this banana icon sitting on the server already… :P

I forgot to add (*hint* need comment editing functionality */hint*): when do we start the banana plantation ?

Don’t forget than while ME1’s frogger takes less than 5 seconds to complete without much effort, ME2’s hacking and security bypass games require at least 20, and you have to hurry. As far as useless mini-games go, I’ll take the faster one any time, even if its presentation makes less sense.

About skill rolls for lockpicking/stealing/etc, they don’t fit in a game where you can save and load at will. I think this is one of the reasons PnP systems fail when transposed in video games. In PnP the GM usually won’t let a player retry a failed attempt more than once, if at all. In video games, a player can just save before an attempt, try his luck and reload if he failed, repeating the process as long as it takes to succeed. Being such a cheater, I’m in favor of fixed thresholds that represent your character’s ability to succeed or not, not unlike Fallout3 Lockpicking/Hacking but without the associated mini games.