• First Impressions

Wow.

Yep, that’s my initial reaction to this game.  Wow.  Bioware really nailed it with this game.  The extra long opening sequence really set the tone for the whole game.  Seeing the Normandy get blown to bits and my Commander Shepard get hurled into space to die tells you right away that this game is serious.   The graphics in the game are amazing.  I actually had my wife come up to me and ask me to play the game some more so she could watch it  (that reminds me…I have a suggestion for Bioware, but I’ll leave that for the end).  The music though is what really sets the tone in this game.  The first game had decent music, but Bioware just raised the bar with this one.

Recently I just finished my second play through. Before the game came out, I had heard a lot about how this game was supposed to be so much longer than the first game.  There was so much more voice acting done for this sequel, so obviously the gameplay must be longer, right?  Well, Mass Effect 2 certainly is better, but just not sure it’s that much bigger. I managed to finish both play throughs in roughly thirty hours each, doing every single side quest I could find each time. The first game was comprised of four main quest areas to go through with a bazillion side quests that were as annoying to play as could be. Mass Effect 2 went the opposite direction and gives you almost two dozen main quests to do and just a few side quests. At least with Mass Effect 2 you don’t have every single area looking like just another cookie cutter cutout of the previous area. They really did improve in that area of the game.

• Got rid of the Mako

One of the most annoying parts of the first game that almost all gamers agree on is driving the stupid Mako vehicle. While the Mako seemed like a cool idea at first, the first game made you spend probably half your time playing just trying to drive the stupid thing up the side of a near vertical mountain side.

In a smart move, Bioware decided to drop the whole Mako from the sequel. In a not-so-smart move, they replaced it with something as annoying, if not more so. Planet scanning. Yep, now you don’t drive around a planet looking for minerals. You just sit in orbit and move your little cursor all over the planet scanning for minerals and launching probes when you find one. What makes this more annoying than the Mako driving to me is the fact that you actually have to do it in this game. The first game made all that mineral hunting an optional side quest. Mass Effect 2 makes it a requirement because you need those minerals in order to upgrade your weapons, armor and ship.

• Combat

Mass Effect 2 made some serious changes in how the combat plays out this time around. In the first game the combat seemed a bit nerfed with weapons able to have attachments that made the game a cake walk. In their efforts to improve the game, Bioware introduced the Mass Effect equivalent of ammunition – thermal clips. Technically, your weapons still have unlimited ammunition, but this time around you have to use thermal clips to keep them from overheating. Thermal clips aren’t unlimited, but at least they’re universal between weapons. It gets a bit annoying on the higher difficulties to have to manage your thermal clips, especially if you’re playing as a soldier that has no other special abilities like the biotics and tech specialists do.

There are also changes in specific abilities custom to each character class. Soldiers, for example, are the only class that has the ability to use assault rifles. Vanguards get biotic charge, Sentinels – tech armor, Adepts – singularity, etc. This time around you no longer feel you’re just playing a subset of two other classes, but instead you have your own special characteristics and advantages if you choose one of the 3 combination classes (Sentinel, Infiltrator, Vanguard).

Another change is the addition of heavy weapons.  This sounds really cool at first, but then you find out that Bioware decided to make finding ammunition for it just about the hardest thing to do in the game.  However, when you do manage to get ammunition for it, all I can say is damn, I love the Cain! I am, of course, referring to the above pictured M-920 Cain.  This gun packs a mean punch.  Hitting an enemy with this is like setting off a nuke in their face.  Just for fun, I used it on casual difficulty on the end game boss.  Killed it in one shot.

• Storyline

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• Gameplay

In order to survive the final mission, you need to have the loyalty of your squad.  For some reason, Bioware decided to equate loyalty with your team’s survivability.  When you actually play the game and put the same character in the same situation, whether or not the enemy shoots and kills them depends solely on their loyalty to you.  To me, that just seems weird.  Another thing about the loyalty factor is that it’s either a yes-they’re loyal or no-they’re not.  There isn’t a lot of middle ground.  Their loyalty is gained by doing the side quest they tell you about after being recruited.  Personally, I would rather have seen a loyalty system based off of what actions you take when that character is in your party.  That would at least require you to play with all the different characters at different points of the game and make personal decisions in alignment with that character in order to earn their loyalty.

Gone are the infamous and annoying elevators from the first game.  Bioware resorted to just showing us loading screens when they needed to load more of the game code.  As a gamer, that’s fine by me.  Mentally I tend to just block out loading screens whereas before, they actually had conversation going on during those elevator loading times. Show ▼

• Overall Impressions

Mass Effect 2 has to be the most polished, well made game I’ve seen.  Ever.  Unfortunately for Bioware, all they did is raise my expectations for the last installment of the Mass Effect trilogy.  Even with how good Mass Effect 2 is, there is still room for improvement.  The scanning for minerals part of the game is what really stands out as needing improvement.  Aside from that and a few release time glitches (finished missions not showing as finished, audio cutting out in certain key scenes, and walking through in game geometry) Mass Effect is as as close to a perfect game as I think it could be.  Assigning a score to the game, I would have to rate it 9.8 out of 10.0 with that little bit missing due to the aforementioned reasons.  The game leaves you wanting for more, eager for the next game which sadly won’t be available for a very long time.