Going to try my hand of writing a full review of this bad boy. Had a lot of fun playing it over the past couple of weeks, as hopefully the review will show. Bioshock 2 comes out on Thursday, so I’ll try and get the first one done before that. Plan on writing up a review that focuses on comparing the two games as I will have played them so close together. Anyway.
Mass Effect 2
The first Mass Effect blindsided me. I never really heard all the hype about it, and as it was released late on PC, I kind of brushed it away. I eventually picked it up on PC when it came out as the Bioware name carried enough weight for me even back then. I still didn’t manage to play it then as I had problems with it on my old computer. When I got my new one I decided to have a go, and well it pretty much became my favourite game of all time.
So, the second one had a lot to live up to in my eyes. I wasn’t sceptical in the slightest, I had complete faith in Bioware to pull it off. I will admit some of the trailers made me cringe a little, and a few mechanical changes, such as ammo, made me a little weary. But then I saw a gameplay video or two showing the combat, and I was instantly back on board.
Importing your Mass Effect 1 saves was something that really excited me. It works well too, it transfers all of your major decisions (and a few minor ones that will make you smile) and your character’s look, as well as a bonus to things such as a boost to credits and your Paragon / Renegade score in accordance with the first. You do get the opportunity to change your character’s look and class, but personally I opted to keep everything the same.
The game starts off strong, with the Normandy been destroyed by an unknown force. A great cinematic, followed by you walking around your ship whilst it is being destroyed. This allows for some great effects and serves to instantly get you back into the world. So Shepard dies within the first 5 minutes in a fairly spectacular way and the Normandy is destroyed. The mysterious Cerberus organisation lead by The Illusive Man, voiced by Martin Sheen, brings you back from the dead, gives you a new Normandy, and sends you on your way to investigate the kidnapping of thousands of human colonies.

The part between been brought back to life and being sent on your way was a little shaky. The sequence in which the place where you are being treated is under attack and you have to fight your way out. It throws some new characters at you, and just feels a little thrown together. It does have to serve as a bridge between the two games and a tutorial at the same time though, so I can forgive that.
Once that’s done and your back on the new Normandy it is business as usual, and my god at how good that business was. First off, most the of the game is not based around the main plot. You will spend most of your time finding your new squad mates. Again, at first I was a little sceptical about this, but it works great. I forgot just how good Bioware are at making a world, hell, a galaxy. The places you have to go in order to find these characters are amazing, all the environments are spot on.
Some of the best missions I did though were the loyalty missions for all of your squad mates. At first I thought it might be a bit of a chore to do 10 or so loyalty missions before I could finish the game, but every single one of them was interesting. Again, exploring new worlds and environments, making tough decisions and often your team mates will want you do to something that you may not want.
The best improvement to Mass Effect 2 compared to the first one is definitely the combat. The original didn’t have localised damage, so it felt you were just shooting planks of wood most of the time. They fixed that in this one, and it shows. For me, the original’s combat was something I just had to push through before the next plot point. In this it is thoroughly enjoyable. All of the guns feel great to use, the sniper rifle was especially good in my opinion. The abilities and different bullet types were all useful and unique. Nothing more satisfying than shooting something with a high powered bolt action rifle with inferno ammo setting him and his nearby friend on fire… in slow motion.

Also gone are the Mako missions. Now, I didn’t hate these as much as most people. Sure they could be a little long at times, but they weren’t completely terrible. I don’t miss them either though. Instead you’ll probe the planet if you don’t know where to land, and then land directly there. There is something similar to the Mako on the ship, though you never get to use it. Instinct is telling me DLC, but I doubt they’d do that for the most hated part of the original.
The chat system is lifted from the first game with little change that I noticed. A small sentence is used to describe the gist of what your character will say, and you choose which one. A majority of the time you choose between paragon, neutral and renegade, with less-frequent “super” renegade or paragon if you have enough points either way. It works great, mainly because the writing is so well done, along with the voice acting. It is a great mix between controlling your character’s speech, but also waiting to hear what she is going to say.
The writing is even sharper than the first game, as is virtually all of the voice acting. Naturally the celebrities and Shepard herself, were as good as you would expect. Everyone you come across also seems to be acted at the same sort of calibre as well. The writing did not disappoint. The overall story had me on edge, and each unique squad loyalty mission had me gripped too. I also found myself laughing on more than one occasion, with the scientist Mordin been a large reason for it. Whether he was singing, or awkwardly giving me sex advice with Garrus, he always had me smiling. Yes, the romance is also back. Past relationships can be imported with your character, but I skipped it in the original. I was ready for some freaky love with Garrus, but it didn’t go there, and just implied it.
The main new addition to the conversations are the interrupts. This allows you at specific points to sometimes interrupt someone with either a paragon or renegade action. Often this just boils down to either saving someone or hurting them, but a few of them do stand out. One sequence had a sergeant guy threatening me up close with his men behind him. You could see he had shields and was going to be quite tough to take down. A renegade interrupt popped up, and I watched my character break his neck, and shoot down an explosive crate onto the rest of the guys.

They did boil away a lot of the RPG aspects from the first game. There is no loot system as such, and no inventory, you just get ammo off of the floor, the odd weapon upgrade and a few other resources. There are only a few weapons for each type and even less armour variations. I used the DLC Blood Dragon armour through the entire game without any problems. One side note; I do wish you could chose to have your helmet not shown in conversations. They also boiled down skills and abilities a lot as well. There are no longer different trees for all of the weapons, or a coercion skill or anything of the kind. The only things you upgrade are actual skills. It works out great, because it means none of the weapons you carry end up being next-to-useless because you haven’t upgraded them enough.
I do miss the coercion ability though. I ended up playing my Shepard as fairly middle of the road. I was nice to most of my crew and most innocent people, but a hardass when it came to criminals and the type. This meant I had points in both Renegade and Paragon, but neither full. I ended up not being able to do a lot of the chat options that I would have liked, and it did change some the outcome of some of the missions.
One other thing, there are three mini games within the game. 2 of them open doors and safes and such. One of them is a simpler take on two of a kind, while the other has you match up different sections of code. Both of them are somewhat painfully simple but are so easy they don’t take long. It didn’t particularly annoy me as they did some people, and I just breezed past them for the most part. The third has you probing planets for resources that upgrade weapons, armour and your ship. It’s a little bit more involved than the other two, but you won’t find yourself doing it more than you have to unless you want to find all of the side quests. Oh, and I’m going to spoil a joke here but it made me laugh and really caught me off-guard. I was going through all the planets in our solar system and got to Uranus. I didn’t realise until the ship pointed it out. “Probing Uranus, Commander”.
The end of the game is amazing, and I am going to try and not spoil anything for anyone. I’m not going to mention plot points, but if you want to be safe, feel free to skip the paragraph. Everything you do throughout the game in regards to your crew effects the finale in some way. Anyone of your crew members, and indeed Shepard, can die. I worked to get every one of my squad members loyal to me, but I still lost one of them.
Mass Effect 2 is everything you would want as a successor to the first game. It improves on a lot of the things that slightly hampered the first game to make it an astounding game. It took me 23 and a half hours to complete this game, and not a second of it was I bored. If you haven’t played the first game, make sure you do, so then you can come and enjoy this undeniable masterpiece.
Spen.