Mass Effect 2
My Shepard looked like Frank Castle. But this one is still bad ass.
I have a problem. And that problem is I rarely finish a video game. I’ve played a lot (pretty much my whole life I’ve been a gamer) but the problem is that I get bored easily. Final Fantasy keeps my attention with stories and then loses me with the constant grinding. Games like the GTA series give me too many choices and I end up going on random sprees of malice rather than following the plot. Very rarely to games grab my attention and not let go. Bioshock was one. I played and beat it in two days, the story was so intense and the setting so interesting I couldn’t let it go. The Halo and Call of Duty series are others (although Halo has been losing its luster; although I am excited for Halo: Reach), but this is because my genre of choice is definitely FPS. Half-life, GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, and Timesplitters are some of my favorite games. Maybe because they are so short and linear, but mostly because the great multiplayer they offer. As much as I love RPGs I just can’t seem to finish them, unless the story is so good I can’t stop playing.
This is what happened with Mass Effect 2. (Full Warning some spoilers ahead but not things you probably don’t know.)
BioWare’s Mass Effect series is quickly shaping up to be one of the most satisfying video game experiences I’ve ever had. I’ll be honest first: the first game was good but not great. I enjoyed the shooter style gameplay, but I only really liked some of the characters. I never really felt part of a real crew, and I always ended up using Wrex, Tali and Garrus. The romance options were limited (if you’re going to be able to mack on some alien chicks at least let the player choose whoever they want right?) and the graphics felt rushed. Not to mention the horrendous planet exploration sections with the Mako which felt like you were driving on balloons greased in Crisco. I knew that the entire plan was to make every decision you made in all the games carry over to the next one, but the decisions in the first game were always rather black or white. It wasn’t until the final two missions where things got difficult and I felt like I was actually weighing options that could change the course of galactic history. In other words this game came out 2007. I just beat it in order to upload my choices into Mass Effect 2 (yes I play sequels where I’ve never finished the first game). It turned out that I was literally a mission away from finishing the entire time.
Mass Effect 2 blew all of that out of the water. From the minute I put the disc in and loaded it up I was hooked. The opening scene is hair raising and intense, and even shows some of the early ramifications of your decisions. Liara (who I romanced in the first game because she annoyed me less out of the choices available) didn’t want to leave me behind as the Normandy was destroyed around me. I actually felt a little sad seeing the ship become space junk around me. Then I died.
That’s right. The character I had spent an entire game with got shot out into space and crashed into a planet. A pretty bad ass way to go out (not as bad ass as Chewie who had a moon dropped on him) but something to write home about nonetheless. Flash forward to two years later. I am resurrected by the shady Cerberus and the Illusive Man, who for the entire first game had been running illegal experiments and was also probably responsible for the event that initially triggered my claim to fame.
We swear we are trustworthy.
What followed was me playing a game like I hadn’t played one in a long time. All of the complaints I had about the first game were either taken out or fixed. Horrible inventory system? Gone, replaced with a simple equipment screen. The one thing I had a complaint about is that armor customization should have been put into your private terminal so you didn’t have to go to your cabin to change. Mako? The way of the dodo, although the upcoming mission will have this bad boy as a vehicle:
The Hammerhead: A flying tank FTW.
The other thing is that almost every single character on my new crew was interesting. I actually felt invested in them (I was playing the Paragon path as usual) and their stories were always interesting. I especially liked Thane and Mordin. The opportunity to Romance almost anyone was also welcomed, and although technically it meant cheating on my ‘love’ from the first game (which will undoubtedly make them angry in the third game) I chose Tali as she was my favorite character from the first game and continues to have an interesting background and story. I can’t wait to see what happens with the Quarians in the third game. The controls are much better and the AI wont shoot randomly at walls and everywhere but the bad guy anymore. They combine powers fairly well on their own and the addition of hotkeys allows you to control their most useful ones. Battles were crazy but never too frustrating, and once I learned that Unity was the equivalent of First Aid kits in the first game (and not just a resurrection skill) I didn’t have many problems.
Things like this never got old.
I won’t give away too much of the story, but needless to say it hooked me. The decisions I made in the first game come back in this game in big and small ways. Even the smallest of reminders (such as emails from people I had saved in the first game) invested me into the character and made me feel as if I had actually accomplished something other than filling my Paragon meter. The dialogue interrupts (new to Mass Effect 2) and far more cinematic camera angles kept me glued to the conversations (although I read so much faster than they speak in the game that I sometimes skipped through some interactions). Knowing how my choices affected this game, I was far more conscious of how decisions made during Mass Effect 2 would carry over into the final game of the series. I knew going in that characters could die permanently, even Shepard. If you die during the final (insanely tense and cool) showdown you have to start all over for the final game. The new enemies are scary and the galaxy actually feels like it could be screwed (unlike the first one where I always felt that I was unstoppable).
The game wasn’t perfect though. The new mineral scanning mini-game (crucial for upgrading your ship and weapons) was boring. Even the addition of one more upgrade to the scanner would have worked to curb this somewhat. As it stands its better than rolling around in the Mako, but still I felt that it stalled the flow of the story and the action too much. The cover system, while much improved, was also wonky at parts and I found my self popping out of cover all of a sudden to get a face full of laser sandwich. This gets especially frustrating near the end, and any battles with the new alien species. I’m glad Bioware took out the horrible (I mean really how did it make the final cut) inventory system and kicked it to the curb, but they replaced it with a cool armor customization feature that only works on Shepard. I also didn’t really notice all that much of a difference in gameplay with the boosts that various armor pieces give you, it was more aesthetic than anything else. This also carries over to the weapons, the variety of weapons was very slim. Most of my crew used guns that we started with simply because I really didn’t see a difference in killing things faster. I simply chose what looked cool. I loved the new elemental ammo, and liked that everything but the heavy gun used the same ammo, but there were times that ammo was too scarce and I was screwed. This is especially noticeable after you beat the game and unlock Insanity. You will die. A lot. Also it takes way more bullets to kill things, and given the lack of ammo you may find yourself wishing you had chosen a class with more powers. However, these are minor quibbles. Bioware has constructed a masterpiece from beginning to end.
In all I think this game is worth buying. I’m invested in a fictional character and universe like I have hardly ever been before and the final shot from the game will leave you shaking in an alley waiting for the third one to drop.
After all if I finished it, it must be good.
If you don't buy this game. I'll send Thane after you.
