Mass Effect is one of the premier science fiction titles of this console generation. It broke tremendous ground in its conversation system, which still has not been bested. Its graphics were out of this world. It was not perfect; there were some criticisms over the clunky combat mechanics, vehicle side quests, and loot system but overall it was an outstanding game. This wasn’t particularly in doubt though considering the game came from Canadian developer Bioware whose pedigree extends to Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and recently Dragon Age to name a few. Now the sequel to Mass Effect is in our laps, will it be out of this world or will this adventure take a detour?

The game takes place shortly after the conclusion of the first game. Humans are disappearing in mass from distant colonies and you’re tasked with investigating. To say anymore would be a spoiler as the game starts immediately with a bang and draws you in completely. The story turns into you recruiting the top people from throughout the galaxy for an almost certain suicide mission. This leads you on a romp around the galaxy meeting interesting people and seeing some old faces alike. Knowing their probable fate, all the characters will come to you and ask for help to get their affairs straightened out before you depart and this will gain their loyalty and unlock a bonus power for them. Unfortunately it becomes quite formulaic since there are about a dozen recruits and most have a mission to recruit them and then a mission for their loyalty. Despite this, they are still fun to do and nice to delve into the characters past and learn more about them. In the end though, it ends up feeling like you did at the end of Matrix Reloaded where you see the pieces are starting to line up for an epic conclusion but if they don’t pick up from what was started here, it’ll feel like a pointless entry for the series since the main arc does not progress very much.

At the start of the game, you’ll have the option to import your Mass Effect 1 character and all the decisions that he or she made or start fresh with a new character with the choices chosen by Bioware. Throughout your journey, you’ll encounter people affected by your decisions in the first game. Disappointingly the major ones don’t have much of an impact but nearly everything from large to small is touched on in some form. Unless you recently played the game, quite a bit might even pass you by because they were so minor. The issue that’s starting to crop up though is that with these decisions, you inevitably start to develop your own rationale, which is great for role playing but when not compensated for it can be a little annoying. On my “good” play through of the first game, a decision I made was turned around to be something bad. Basically, I am so into the game that I wish I had a chance to explain myself, yet due to this limited format, I could not. But this just really shows how well this series has immersed the player into the story and given you choices that don’t always have a clear right or wrong. The same is continued into this game and I fully expect some negative repercussions about my choices in the next, yet they are invariably my own and my rationale.

The biggest achievement of the previous game was the amazing conversation system and here once again it’s back in full force. There are no longer paragon and renegade skills to upgrade, they are now dictated by your actions and now feels more natural.  Just like before, if you have enough points in the sides, you’ll be able to have a special speech options to have an even great impact. The biggest change is that now you can actually interrupt people in the middle of their speech when prompted for good or bad repercussions. It’s not an option all of the time but it appears fairly frequently.  The flow and choreography of the conversations is top notch and pretty present a great cinematic feel. You’re never forced to keep listening and can skip the conversation with no negative impact on how great it looks. Once again this is where Mass Effect shines the most.

Mass Effect 2 is still a third-person action role playing game but the emphasis is on action this time. The three main criticisms of the first games have been taken to heart and taken in a completely different direction instead of refinement. In the first combat was clunky and now that’s been completely reversed to the simplification of the role-playing elements. The Mako vehicle missions have been completely scrubbed and in place we have planet scanning. Thirdly, the loot system that was pretty annoying has now been completely removed. Most of these decisions have the effect of putting the focus on the action, and it’s great, but some may be a little disappointing if you’re looking at the title from the perspective of a role-playing game.

The first title was amazing but the combat was ridiculously clunky and awkward. Bioware went back to the drawing table and has refined the experience to a near Gears of War quality. Running and jumping from cover to cover is fluid. Guns are no longer a skill that has to be leveled up meaning you won’t have the awkward beginning where you can’t hit the broadside of a barn at pointblank range. Ammo has replaced overheating so now you can run out but its plentiful enough you don’t have to worry much. Since there is no real loot system, instead of having millions of useless weapons, you’ll only have a handful overall which is kind of disappointing. Before each mission you’ll have the option to pick which weapons you want to bring along. All the weapon classes return with submachine guns and heavy weapons being new. The former are self-explanatory and are available to all classes. The latter are devastating weapons that have relatively low ammo so you won’t use them often, but when you need them, they pack a huge punch. Another casualty of the switch is the loss of grenades but heavy weapons and biotics easily replace their functionality. To enhance your weapons, you now have different ammo powers that are specific to each class which have different effects such as setting enemies on fire or freezing them. Biotics are as devastating as ever and now some powers can even arch behind cover to hit enemies which is really cool. Everything has been smoothed over and it really feels more like a competent action game than what we had before.

When you get out onto the battlefield, you’ll find it quite linear and short. The game still possesses a similar length to the first, but each mission tends to last a half hour at best. This gets things done quickly but sometimes you’ll like a particular area and wish it would’ve lasted longer. The majority of the game will have you doing two quests for almost all of your teammates, one to recruit them and one to gain their loyalty. It becomes quite formulaic and despite most not being required, you’d be missing out on the main part of the game. Throughout missions you’ll occasionally pick up upgrade schematics to bolster one thing or another onboard your ship and find terminals to hack. Unlike the first where hacking sometimes gave you access to new information it now mainly opens doors in your way and gives you money. Sometimes it’ll have other uses but it is a little disappointing that all classes now have access to them and that it’s no longer an upgradable skill. There are two mini-games associated with hacking which are fairly cool. One has you matching pieces of code and the other have you connecting similar nodes. They work well enough and are never frustrating.

The whole RPG system has been reworked and is much simpler in design. Instead of a multitude of attributes to assign points so, you now just have a handful with an increasingly higher cost to afford the next tier. Each class has a special ability that no one else can get and a class specific general skill to upgrade. The last one will present you with an option on where you want to take your skill which adds a little more variation. You don’t level up mid-mission anymore and have to wait until you’re back to the ship to allocate your points and since they have an increasing cost, most of the time you won’t be able to afford anything. It really has taken a step back in focus and the fun of leveling up and improving your skills is not as rewarding anymore. Once you get a certain crewmember, the science bay of the ship will be available for you to purchase general upgrades which help supplement the system. The last major change is that there is not much loot this time around, mostly manifesting as upgrade schematics and rarely a new weapon. At stores you can buy other upgrades and armor pieces. You’ll be able to equip armor for your legs, chest, and head which all have different benefits but they are not that plentiful. You can also buy model ships and even fish at them as well to popular your captain’s room on the Normandy. If you don’t feed the fish they will unfortunately die so pay attention when you get some. It is a little disappointing how much the RPG system has gotten simplified but the upgrades and other things help cushion the blow a little bit.

The Mako missions are completely removed from the game. In its place is planet scanning to find valuable resources for upgrades. Basically you slowly move a cursor around the planet and wait for it to ping that a resource is there and you send out a probe. The speed at which this cursor moves initially is painfully slow and the amount of probes you have is never enough. To get more you’ll have to find a system with a resupply ship which makes for many back and forth trips. Here is also where you get your fuel to explore some of the more distant systems. If you run out of fuel you lose some of your resources. After some upgrades to these systems, it gets a little easier but overall it’s a massive grind that is no fun at all. The bane of the first game is actually missed. It gave a great sense of exploration despite being a little bland and frustrating to get around. It’s now replaced by grinding where exploration is actually punished.  Coupled with the fact that the rest of the game is either hub cities or incredibly linear missions, it’s disappointing it took this turn. The upgrades aren’t required per se for completion of the game but it’d be like playing the game without leveling up.

After you complete the game, you’ll be able to play a New Game+ where you can replay the game with a bonus skill and extra money or just continue playing. Every other character you start will also gain a bonus skill. It’s kind of unfortunate that other than a couple lines from your crew members, no one will acknowledge what you have accomplished but it at least lets you finish any quests you do not get done prior to the final mission. Before you even start the game, you’ll have the option to insert a Cerberus code that is included with new games or be able to purchase it if you got the game used. It’s only a month after release and content has been slowly trickling down which all have been free. They have included a new character, weapons, and armor. Small things but you’d expect they would try to nickel and dime you but things have apparently changed at Electronic Arts and Bioware. The bigger shocker is that coming soon they are going to give out 5 new missions that’ll feature a vehicle, for free. With more clearly coming down the pipe, Bioware is starting to fulfill the promise it didn’t keep on the first title to fill the gap between the two games. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

You can make your own character once again and a curious thing happened. My customized female Shepard in my mind isn’t just some random character, it is Shepard. I looked at the default model and it was a total stranger because in the first game I connected so well with my vision of the character. Some of the armor you come across in the game can only be equipped as one, complete piece. This is fine but it’s annoying having conversations in noncombat zones with my headpiece on due to the virtue of it being the best for my statistics. I wish there was an option to remove the helmet when not in combat so this doesn’t happen. You can customize the colors of your armor to suit the style that you desire. There are even some helmets that completely cover your face which look completely awesome. There are some drawbacks though. The levels are pretty blocky and basic. Sometimes you’ll even have Gears of War 2 style cover that pops up from the ground which makes sense gameplay wise, but not in the context of the level. During some of the awesomely choreographed conversations pieces, the camera will fly through a characters head which distracts from the movie-esque quality somewhat. Shepard also occasionally makes some weird looking faces, particularly when he tries to smile that’ll throw you a bit. Some of the scenes are prerendered which is fine but during a particularly epic sequence at the end, cutting back and forth between the game and the video can get choppy if you don’t have it installed which is very distracting. Despite all of these, the game looks great. As I said all the conversations have a distinct movie quality to them just like the first. The graphics do look like they’ve aged a bit but its more to the case that everyone else is catching up and not the game slipping behind.

Conversations were one of the resounding successes of the first game and that is built upon here. It is amazing the sense of flow that most of them have and now with the interrupts, it makes them even more dynamic and variable. Interrupts are basically prompts during conversations where you can take a good or bad action which is really cool. All of the lines are delivered very well from the main characters all the way down to the random ones. All of the weapons and enemies sound particularly meaty and well done. Chaotic battles sound great in surround sound. The central theme flows through all of the music and they adequately convey the emotion desired in each sequence well but they are not as good as the previous game.

Mass Effect 2 is a great second entry to the series. Some things got better and others got worse depending on your expectations but it’s undeniable that everyone will enjoy the game. The story is much more character focused this time and is more akin to a television series than the blockbuster movie style of the first. It’s similar to Matrix Reloaded as you can see the pieces lining up but if it pays off or not largely depends on the next game. Also like that movie, some people will be a little disappointed with the progression of the main story arc but at least the action does not disappoint. The combat system has been completely redone and it feels nearly as good as Gears of War but the RPG elements have been neutered as a consequence.  The skills have been simplified from over a dozen to about half that. Each skill takes an increasing amount of points and you don’t get to level up until the end of a mission so it doesn’t feel as rewarding as before. There is a more in-depth upgrade system on the ship that uses resources to research them which is kind of nice but some don’t have any impact until the end. Planet scanning makes you wish the Mako vehicle was back because the lack of it kills any sense of exploration the game use to have and is a major grind, which is rare for a western RPG. The graphics look great Conversations flow elegantly in every sequence and is truly the hammer that nails in the cinematic movie feeling of the title. If you’re looking for an action game, you’ll love this but if you desire the deeper RPG system of the first, you might want to try Dragon Age: Origins to get your fix. The game is still phenomenal; it’s just there is quite a gameplay shift from the first. All in all though, Mass Effect 2 delivers the bacon, even if it may be cooked a little different than what you were expecting.

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