Mass Effect 2
Producer: Bioware/EA
Release Date: January 26, 2010
Platform: Xbox 360
Rating: Mature
Genre: Action/RPG
Consider Me Massively Effected
Written by William Nadel
Mass Effect is a beastly franchise. It takes cajones to tell the world that your game will be part of a trilogy before the first game hits the shelves. That’s exactly the confidence that has helped shape this series into what it is: A master class of storytelling, game design, and sci-fi adventure goodness.
The Mass Effect Trilogy will be inseparable when all is finished because Bioware plans on ingeniously interweaving save game data from all three games to fully flesh out the believability and persistence of the game universe. Many choices from the previous games will have a direct impact on your experience in the subsequent games. Mass Effect 2 starts off with a serious bang that really gets you hooked into the story and raises your adrenalin levels to white knuckle status. Even the first scene can play out differently if certain paths were taken in Mass Effect.
For those who have yet to play the original Mass Effect, for shame! Go out immediately and buy it. Play it twice and call me in a couple weeks. Mass Effect 2 will be fun if you haven’t played the first, but you will not get the benefit of seeing your old decisions come back to haunt you. The main story follows Commander Shepherd. Shepherd had become the universe’s savior after thwarting the efforts of a creature called a Reaper, who is a destroyer of worlds.
Since Mass Effect 2 allows you to upload your character from the first game, there’s a real sense of nostalgia when you see your character again. All the familiar scars are there, now with a much higher graphic fidelity. Bioware has completely fixed any of the gripes I had with the look, presentation, and feel of the original game. Mass Effect had some graphical and frame rate hiccups, a complex skill tree, a complicated armor and weapon system and plenty of physics bugs. All major concerns from Mass Effect have been blown out the air lock in Mass Effect 2. The graphics are amazing, the shooting mechanics are solidly improved, and they simplified the skill tree to make it more intuitive when leveling up without sacrificing depth.
A large part of Mass Effect 2 is exploring the universe and recruiting teammates to help you on your quests. There is a universal map with many star systems and planets to explore. Many of these planets cannot be visited. They can only be surveyed for their terrestrial spoils, such as the versatile element zero. I would have loved exploring all of these strange planets… Mass Effect 3 if you please? In Mass Effect, planets were surveyed for materials with a button press. That was boring and non-engaging. They corrected this with a cool minigame of sorts that allows you to rotate the planet and scan it with a quasi equalizer graph. As the scanner crosses valuable materials on the planet’s surface, the EQ graph will create peaks to show which particular element you’ve discovered. These materials are used to craft armor and weapons back at your ship. I’ll admit that I’ve spent far too much time mining for resources. This was by choice because the allure of digging for valuables cannot be denied.
Some characters you recruit will be familiar to those who played the original and some are new. All of these teammates are quite dynamic. They have their ups and their downs, but all of it is bloody interesting. The voice acting is impeccable, starring the talented Martin Sheen. Martin Sheen could turn a Simpson’s cameo into an Emmy winning performance, so it should be no surprise that he steals the show. Sheen plays the Illusive Man, a more than subtle character nod to the X-Files’ Smoking Man. The dialog system from the first game has made a slick comeback. When engaged in conversations, you must choose your responses. Be a Paragon, a Renegade, or choose a moderate path. This plays like the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books from childhood, but with immersive facial and emotional feedback from the characters. The writing and comedic timing had me laughing out loud multiple times during my playthroughs. They did a remarkable job of causing me to feel like every bit of conversational choice I made would have future importance in this or future games. Bioware is notorious for giving you only one shot to do something, be it hacking a terminal or choosing the right answer. I like this because if the “wrong” dialog is selected and you piss a character off, you might not ever get the benefit they were providing. Your consequence might be a fight to the death incited by your lack of social graces. So all of you with no tact might consider the path of the intimidator if you want conversational success.
There’s no multiplayer, but it’s deep enough to hold my attention for multiple playthroughs. There could always be more powers, weapons and planets to explore. The conversation system is awesome, but I would greedily like to be able to talk to all non-player characters in the game. I also had a slight issue with some social parallels in the game. There is a point where Shepherd returns to the central hub for intergalactic civilizations, The Citadel. When Shepherd gets to the security checkpoint, there were some amusing but borderline inappropriate parallels between the Turian race and Islamic extremists. I don’t remember the verbatim line of dialog, but they overtly portrayed the headscarf wearing Turians as something akin to our perception of a terrorist. My other gripe with the game is that it comes on two DVDs. I’m all for having plenty of content, but I absolutely don’t want to be required to unexpectedly change disc at 3:27 in the morning when I’m playing all comfy from my bed. I was simply exploring an uncharted planet when I had to go change the disc. This immediately brought me back, like a time machine, to 1995. Suddenly I was back on my PC playing Phantasmagoria, looking at the “Load CD 7 message”. This was the first time I felt like Microsoft screwed us by opting out of Blue Ray technology. It’s a minor gripe and just shows how lazy I am, but I’m not the only lazy man playing this game. We’re in America, after all. That said, I commend them on all the bitchin’ content they packed into these two discs of joy.
If you remember the buzz on your skin as you watched Empire Strikes Back, buy this game. If you enjoy the prospect of saving the universe with weapons and magic, buy this game. If you read Choose Your Own Adventure books into the wee hours of the morning, buy this game. If you truly respect yourself as a sci-fi or RPG fan, just buy the game. I cannot wait to see what effects my choices from the past two games have on how the third installment pans out. Prepare yourself for the journey of a lifetime and a gaming experience you will likely never forget.