Mass Effect 2

The Good
Most of the good things about the first Mass Effect still apply, so I'll just focus on the changes made from the predecessor. The first noticeable thing is that the shooting is much better, and the biotic/tech powers also feel more precise. Even though I absolutely loathe Gears of War and most of its imitators, Mass Effect's combat is improved by the fact that you at least keep moving, weapons feel powerful enough and your teammates are much more useful than in most games.

Also, the loyalty missions are great. I disliked the idea at first, but dedicating the bulk of the game to them actually works, because it makes us love these characters even more.

Of course, some of the glitches from the first game and the awkward pauses in conversations have been eliminated.

And hey, just about everything said by Garrus, Mordin, Legion or Kasumi apply. The dialogue is still great and there's much more humor in ME2, most of it funny.

Like the first time, the graphics are great, the music is memorable and the game has a lot of replay value: two playthroughs can be completely different from each other, thanks to the multitude of dialogue options and morality choices.

The Bad
After being bought by EA, it seems that BioWare has been forced to pander to the shooter crowd that plays mostly Gears of War (yuck!) or Call of Duty (eugh!). Though the inventory in the first ME was bad, BioWare's idea of fixing it is apparently to remove it completely. Now you can't customize weapons anymore, but what's even worse is that you can't customize armor, either. So I will be forced to look at the horrible uniforms given to Jack, Miranda and Samara. At least I can make Jack wear a shirt.

And what's with the barrage of fanservice, anyway? There's nothing wrong with sex appeal, but Mass Effect 2 goes through the tasteless, "pander to the teenage boys" route instead of the mature route. Just look at Miranda's uniform.

The advertising campaign talked about how much "darker" and "more mature" this game is, but that was just marketing-talk. If anything, the game feels more immature, with characters like Jack, Miranda and Grunt being shoved to our faces.

And what's with the RPG elements being whittled down? I know it sounds like I'm making a big deal out of this, but now the characters besides Shepard only have three active powers each, which feels like an artificial limitation.

Eliminating the Mako seems like a mistake in hindsight. Now there's very little variety in the game: most of it is just shooting and dialogue, especially shooting. Even on Casual, you're blasting your way through hundreds of nameless enemies, which gets boring after a while. I would have preferred seeing more missions like Thane's and Samara's loyalty missions. Though the side quests have better environments this time around, they mostly consist of shooting your way through a hundred mercenaries. That's what they call evolution?

Finally, the main story: Cerberus and the Collectors. Well, I don't want to spoil anything, but the ending and the final "boss" seem awkward and rushed, despite the epic music and action. The main story just doesn't seem as good as the first time around, and the Collectors are boring enemies. The game could have benefited from a clear-cut antagonist like Saren.

But, while I complain, the game is definitely one of the best ever, just not as good as the first one.

The Bottom Line
An amazing action-RPG. Some of the depth and the atmosphere of the first one has been replaced by fanservice, explosions and brown-ness. But it's still incredibly enjoyable, with some of the more glaring flaws of the first one removed. Just make sure you play the first one before this.

The Good
I thought the first game was OK, but this was the one that pushed me over. The level design is a billion times better (both graphically and when it comes to flow).

The inventory system was greatly improved, and there's less useless loot to pick up. Loot fever might be a good mechanic for games that don't have much else going for it, but ME2 proves that a good RPG doesn't need it.

The Bad
My biggest gripe with the game is the glitchy cover system. This is the first cover-based shooter that I play (not counting the Mafia 2 demo), and while I don't oppose to the system, I think they didn't implement it very well. It seems to be completely random which items you can't or can take cover behind. Sometimes there are two identical objects right next to each other, but you can't get cover behind one of the two. The same thing with the ability to jump over objects, I feel I'm at the level artists whim. If (s)he thought I might have liked to jump over a certain object, I can. But if (s)he didn't I can't. There's lot's of low ledges you can't jump over that are the same size or lower than ledges you can jump over. Also (particularly in the DLC missions) Sheppard tends to go flying when walking up or down ramps which has to do with sloppy bounding boxes and walkpaths I assume.

Actually, my biggest gripe with the game is the stun-lock that you get when hit by a missile or flamethrower. You get blown away from cover, massive damage, and are stunned for 2 seconds. There's absolutely no way you can survive that, so it all comes down to an insta-kill from the AI you can do nothing about. It should've been possible to quickly dash back to cover or something as a sort of quick-time event or whatever.

And what's with the gun that kills entire armies in a single shot? It feels more like a cheat. "Darn I got defeated twice in this battle. Oh well..." click *BOOM "GG!" I'm not sure that balances out, even if you can only use it once every two missions or so.

The free DLC missions are pretty mediocre.

The Bottom Line
Like with Star Wars, the best entry is the second in the series.

The Good
Remember Mass Effect? I barely do, which is alarming since I’m pretty sure I played it less than a year ago. I mean, I have a general idea of what happened in the first game, but it’s only bits and pieces. I do remember what I thought about Mass Effect; I loved it. It’s one of those rare games that I felt fully immersed in, like I was actually part of its universe. Corny, I know, but I mean it. It sucked me in, and by the time it finally let go, I didn’t want to leave. Many of my friends replayed the original Mass Effect before moving on to the sequel, but I sure as hell wasn’t doing that. Playing it twice and knowing what was going to happen just wouldn’t be the same.

Yes, the galaxy is once again in general peril and the only person who can save it is Commander Adzuken Shepard (in my case, of course), the unfortunately named, super-competent galactic saviour-for-hire. I’m not going to say too much about the storyline, because I feel it’s important to not know anything when going into a story-driven RPG. I will say that you must travel the galaxy and recruit a team to battle a force that threatens all life in the galaxy. Also, don’t play Mass Effect 2 before playing the original Mass Effect, because you’ll miss a lot of important back story. A neat feature for people who have played the original Mass Effect is the ability to transfer their completed save data over to the sequel.

Another reason it’s important to play the original Mass Effect first is because of how strongly linked the two games are. A lot of the characters from the first game reappear in the second, even many of the minor ones. I kept getting mail from people I helped in the first game, but I barely remembered most of them. The decisions you make in the first game greatly affect what happens in the second. Well, I shouldn’t say greatly, because I only did play the game once, but I can see a lot of places where things would have been shaken up, had I done things differently. It really helps the two games feel well connected and whole.

Strangely enough, despite being a direct continuation of the original Mass Effect, there have been huge changes made that greatly alter the way the game is played. The game has a more streamlined structure. Missions are more plainly divided from the hub worlds and the inventory has been swapped out for stricter pre-mission loadouts. Very few of your former crew members return in Mass Effect 2, leaving you with a huge cast of new party members to interact with. However, despite all these changes, the game still remains familiar, and anyone who played the first game should feel comfortable with the sequel.

Many of the new characters are very intriguing, and I found myself swapping party members more often than I did in the first game. Much like the original Mass Effect, each of the characters is very different and multi-dimensional. Each character has their own sub-plot and side mission that must be done to gain their loyalty and some of them are very personal and compelling. It’s easy to grow attached to them, which is a must in an RPG such as this. Plus, in combat, it’s easier to ignore they exist, if you’re not the micromanaging type. The AI can usually hold its own, and you won’t be punished for letting them wander off into certain death. Of course, the ability to sex up one of your crew members has returned, or you always have the choice to stay loyal to your mate from the first game.

The Bad
There’s one issue I’m absolutely conflicted on; Mass Effect 2 is extremely stripped down. You remember all that looting, upgrading, equipping, selling, and leveling up you did in Mass Effect classic? I barely do, but I vaguely remember it being a pain in the butt. However, that doesn’t mean I wanted it to go away, it was part of the experience. Bioware took the pruning shears to a number of Mass Effect’s features for the sequel. Most jarringly is the utter lack of looting and extreme cut backs made to equipable items. Even the number of skills you can level up has been cut back considerably. I wasn’t a big fan of all the micromanagement, in fact, I hated having to dress up my crew every time we went out, but aren’t these the sort of things that make an RPG? I feel like the game thinks I’m too stupid for these sorts of features.

What you wind up with is a game that isn’t much deeper than Gears of War, when you look closely. It’s stop-and-pop with a few RPG elements and a more open structure. In fact, the structure seems a lot more rigid than what I remember the original Mass Effect was. Everything was broken up between gathering information and doing missions, and there’s an extremely obvious divide between the two. Missions take place in entirely different areas exclusive to those missions, so you can’t backtrack to them if you missed something, nor can you leave after they’ve started. Don’t get me wrong, it works fine, but when I can see a game’s structure, getting immersed can take some work.

Character interaction is a bit reduced as well. Again, I’m not sure I enjoyed having to listen to everyone’s goddamn life story, but I feel like the game is insulting me by dumbing it down. The characters are still deep enough, and there’s a lot of interaction still to be had, but it just feels lacking compared to the first game. It’s not nearly as bad as the simplification of the storyline, which I can sum up in two points: recruit team, save galaxy. While the first game had an underlying mystery to what was going on, and not everything was clear or straightforward, Mass Effect 2 is as clear-cut as it gets. In fact, the whole thing seems somewhat trivial when compared to the first game. The threat isn’t anywhere near as imminent or oppressive, and things never seem hopeless at all. Also, the ending of the game is completely off-the-wall ludicrous.

I wouldn’t exactly call Commander Shepard a compelling character. The guy (or gal) is an absolutely flawless human being, and that can be quite difficult to relate to. The character is absolutely capable of anything. Some of the sidequests that you wind up receiving are ridiculous. During the course of my play through, I negotiated a contract between a slaver and a corporation, I convinced a shop-keeper to get back together with her boyfriend, and I prevented a young delinquent from joining a mercenary gang. There’s absolutely nothing Shepard can’t do, and that’s stupid. I suppose I’m partially to blame, since this is the way I chose to play my character, but it does break the immersion somewhat when Shepard is capable of pulling the solution to everyone’s problem out of his ass.

Lastly, I may stand alone on this issue, but I miss the Mako. Yes, I guess Shepard’s license got pulled sometime between the two games, and gone with it are the vehicle sections. Sure, the planets were pretty barren and the side missions all resembled each other, but I was able to go there if I wanted to. I guess it appealed to the part of my brain that wanted to further explore planets in games like Elite and Star Fox. Plus, the system they used to replace it is boring as hell. Essentially, you find a mineral rich planet, scan around for deposits, and then pepper it with probes so you can buy upgrades. Ugh, it’s so tedious and boring. I want to explore, dammit!

The Bottom Line
I’m conflicted. There are a lot of things that should upset me in Mass Effect 2, the biggest being the heavy shift into action. I feel like the game ripped a lot of control out of my hands while assuring me that I didn’t actually want it. Well, it may have a point, but I feel almost betrayed, like it’s trying to please someone else, not caring what I think. Then I have to ask myself this: did I enjoy it anyway? Well, yes, I did enjoy it, quite a lot. Like the first Mass Effect, it presented me with a big, open galaxy to explore and made me feel like a part of it. It sucked me in, and when it finally let go, I felt sad to leave. To me, that means the game hit its mark with deadly accuracy. So while I can whine and complain all I want, I can’t deny that Mass Effect 2 is an OUTSTANDING game.

The Good
First off I have to confess I haven't played the first Mass Effect, and after I finished this awesome game, I feel guilty of it, but I am going to fix it. But about this game I would say it is a modern classic. When I first inserted and installed this game in to my PC I got so hooked that I played this game through in five days, so it really took almost all free time I had. This game is the best one I have ever played in my life, and you might want to know which made me think like that. First off there is the story. When some one mentions the term "interactive movie", you probably start thinking those shitty FMV games (like Sewer Shark e.t.c.), but you should forget those and take this an example of good interactive movie. The game focuses more on the Shepard's personal relationships with his crew mates, and everyone have some sort of problems with their past, which you must to sort out to get their trust and, eventually, survive from the suicide mission. These side guests make the characters more deeper, and they feel far more humane than the common characters in the video games, so in fact that I felt sorry in my first play through because three of them died on a suicide mission. The combat is your common third person shooter, but it is very well done, all though the duck and cover style game play is so common these days it's actually became a modern cliché, but you forgive it when you watch your enemies falling to death from the cliff by your usage of biotics. And due the games many classes and choices you can play the game over and over again.

The Bad
But there is nothing so good it doesn't something bad with it. First of the game has an particularly nasty and annoying bug: your character gets stuck to different places you shouldn't be even able to reach, usually something above the surrounding area. This wouldn't be a such a problem if your character could fall but due the coding you just stick in some car's roof and you only change to get down there is run on the borders of the area and hope that the bug just reverse it self or reload the game and lose all that you have done so far. And the another thing that bugs me is the quality of the Cerberus network DLCs, or should I say lag of it. Sure it is always nice when you game is supported after the release, but I would have expected something more. The new armour and weapon are pretty pointless, the Hammerhead is pretty neat, but it serves pretty much no purpose, but the biggest disappointment is Zaeed Messani. He is a new addition to the crew and has his own side story like any other crew member in the game. The mission it self is the pretty basic, but that just about it. You can't have any discussions with Zaeed, and only thing he does is just tells the stories about himself, but without any ability to comment these he is more distant than the rest of the crew. And what I have read the DLCs you have to pay for are not any better. Overall Zaeed (and probably Kasumi) leaves me with the feeling he's originally was going to be in the main game, but the team didn't had the time to finish him up so they rushed him and released him as an crappy DLC. The mining mini game is boring as hell, but if you want to survive the suicide mission and play every single side guest and get every upgrade there is you have to do it, and it takes god damn long (although there is an upgrade that fastens it up).

The Bottom Line
If this game won't be at least the role playing game of the year, the awarded game got to be made by the God himself. The issues there is are just nick picking. This is the game I can proudly call an art. Why do you still read this review when you could save the galaxy!

The Good
First of all the fine presentation from part 1 has been improved even more. The cinematic presentation knows how to impress throughout the entire game. While the presentation was already impressive in Mass Effect 1, BioWare kind of struggled to master the powerful Unreal 3 engine when starting this epic trilogy in 2007. I was happy to see that BioWare finally knows how to deal with the engine, the graphics are impressive throughout, especially the character design and animation. Mass Effect is not the type of game you just play for a couple of minutes. That is why it took me some time to actually start my 360 and load the game: it is really time consuming as you don't want to stop playing once you take control of Commander Shepard's journey to save humanity.

Overall it is a great and epic game with a fantastic presentation and very good graphics. It will keep you busy for at least 30 hours and the moral systems makes it worth to return to the game and try different approaches.

The Bad
- The import function of ME1 save games didn't work for me
- RPG elements have been reduced, it feels more like a shooter than a pure RPG

The Bottom Line
- An epic tale in space
- basic RPG elements with a lot of FPS action in between
- stunning cutscenes and overall presentation
- keeps you busy for at least 30 hours
- further download content may keep it interesting even after several playthroughs