Game: Mass Effect 2
Developer: BioWare
Release Date: 1/26/10
Multiplayer: None
Distribution Method: Disc (X2) (Retail)
Price: $60.00 USD
Mass Effect 2 had perhaps the perfect hype machine, giving us just enough details to keep us interested, but never blowing itself out of proportion. The game itself is a similarly orcestrated concentration of good, never overloading you on flashy graphics and cutscenes, but still leaving you begging for more.
Perhaps the weakest element in the original Mass Effect was the gunplay. While it was interesting for a while, it quickly became repetitious and somewhat stale. This is no longer the case, as combat feels powerful and threatening. Enemies constantly push forward, making cover both invaluble and easy to lose.
Biotic and tech powers come back into play, and are considerably more useful than in the original game. This comes with improved squad control, with often-used commands mapped to the D-pad. While the D-pad makes moving your squad to cover a simple point-and-click away, aiming and timing squad (and your own) powers is often better suited for the scene-pausing power wheel.
Gunplay feels very solid, with weapons sounding more impressive, and being more visually noisy, than their earlier versions. The main change to gunplay comes by the way of 'heat clips,' ejectible heatsinks that translate to ammo. In some ways, it's a welcome change; it challenges the player to be better with more weapon types, helps reinforce the importance of cover, and ejecting a used clip looks and sounds badass. In other ways, it's not such a welcome change; ammo is hard to come by mid-battle, weapon juggling is a new issue, and even though the clips are said to be universal, they 'lock' to a weapon once picked up, rather than adding to a shared stock.
Conversation is greatly impoved, in large part due to the greatly improved animations. While the conversation animations in Mass Effect 1 weren't bad, they seemed a little flat and sometimes ended strangely. In Mass Effect 2, characters walk around each other and animate more freely than before, and the animations don't end with the strange turn of old. This said, Miranda always seems to have a smirk on her face through the entire game, and is animated a bit more stiffly than every other character in the game. Because of this, I was expecting her to stab me in the back and never used her in my party.
Conversation itself is also improved, with some of the dilogue automatically chosen based on your last choice, and just more interesting options in general. Sadly, the "I should go" ending option is still more common than it should be.
The story is just as interesting as in the original game, and offers a good ramp up to a massive final game. There is plenty backstory and other new codex entries to explore, though the exclusion of the Mako is a little saddening. Driving about has been replaced with scaning planets for resources from orbit, essentially a game of pressing A when the controller vibrates.
Enemies lack variation, and the mindless and weak 'mechs' get boring fast, but come at you in droves. This doesn't detract from the core gunplay, but considering there are two discs, it would have been nice to see more enemy types.
The only real RPG aspect of Mass Effect 1, guns and gun mods, has been largely removed. Instead of a few hundred or so guns, there is now only a handful, though each one feels considerably more unique. Gun mods have been entirely removed, so assault rifles that never overheat, handcannons that can kill bosses in two hits, and shotguns that are more effective as multi-target sniper rifles are a thing of the past.
Overall, Mass Effect 2 is markedly better than the original, and sticks to what the original was close enough that it doesn't dissapoint. It's missing a few things that made the original game great many hours after the core game, but I've put maybe 50 hours into it and feel like there is a damn good amount I haven't seen yet.
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Bottom Line:
If you liked the first, you'll love it. It improves what was good about the original and adds more to it.
