Okay Geek Farm
PC Review: Mass Effect 2
Alex Tretrop
The first big release of the year in my must play list is here and it is Mass Effect 2. The original Mass Effect was a great game; it had one of the most fleshed out universes Bioware has ever created, and with the innovative and cinematic feel of conversations it's secured its place as one of the Xbox 360 and PC’s best sellers. That isn’t to say it didn’t have some major flaws - the shooting and gameplay were awkward at best, the Mako was an annoying vehicle that didn’t always work as expected, and your AI companions were usually brain dead in combat, not to mention the major graphical issues when loading into an area. This is where I was wondering if Mass Effect 2 would succeed where the original fell short. I'm happy to say that just about everything has been fixed and now runs on all cylinders.
Story & Lore
It's made by Bioware - need I say more? The game starts off with a bang - I won't give away specifics but it definitely sets the stage for Bioware's dark second act. You'll encounter Cerberus very early on; they were a very hostile company that you may or may not remember from the first game's terrible sidequests, if you did them that is. Well, the twist is that you are now working for them and their leader, the Illusive Man. Cerberus is a pro human terrorist organization that places the needs of humanity above that of other aliens in the galaxy.
The story, in usual Bioware fashion, revolves around the decisions you make and the conversations you have. Unlike Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic where your character doesn't speak, making you choose from a list of very specific choices, Mass Effect plays out like a real life conversation. The ever innovation conversation wheel offers you a variety of options as the person is talking, keeping the flow of the conversation going and the realism intact. And since the options are shorter in length than other Bioware games you only get an idea of what you're going to say opposed to knowing exactly what your words will end up being.
There's also a newly added conversation mechanic called the interrupt feature, which can pop up anytime in the middle of a conversation in the form of a Paragon or Renegade interrupt. For example, you might stumble across an alien bleeding to death on the floor and as you're talking to him a Paragon interrupt flashes on the screen -- you need to make a split-second choice -- hit the button and attempt to save him or see what happens if you don't. There are also Renegade versions of this that are usually more violent and evil in nature. Interrupting events can be a reason to keep your attention to the screen at all times as even the most random conversations can affect the game's events.
One of the biggest story related issues I had with the original Mass Effect was that the sidequest storylines were some of the worst things ever created in an otherwise fantastic experience storywise. Well, Bioware listened to my sole complaints, and now every quest has some kind of reasoning behind them. While some of them are pretty terrible and repetitive, others are creative and fun to play with great dialogue and combat backing them up. While you are basically guaranteed to get an amazing experience with a squadmate side-mission, some others amount to nothing more than just scanning a planet (more on that later), shooting something, pressing a button, and leaving with it having absolutely no story significance whatsoever.
Some of the good things in the story is that the characters truly come alive and are a testament to how why Bioware is remembered for its amazing characterisations in many of its game. This just makes me think of some of the great dialog present during the story, because at times it can be surprisingly, and legitimately, funny. When I was playing Dragon Age, there was some parts that tickled my funny bone but Mass Effect takes a step further, going so far as to when you travel to certain areas and take time to interact with certain characters you may hear a joke or two thrown at the expense of Gamestop and World of Warcraft.
And finally, Mass Effect 2 is backward compatible with your first Mass Effect game save - getting access to all your past decisions and importing their consequences over into this new adventure. It's not the first game in history to do it but it does ensure to that this is your own personal trilogy, and not the same experience that, let's say, your friend is playing through.
Gameplay
Alright before I talk about the combat I'll just quickly run down the new way that you will be exploring space. Now instead of picking a planet and flying straight to it, Mass Effect 2 complicates things a lot more. You'll now fly the Normandy on the Galaxy Map to the place you want to go, with you losing fuel every step of the way. The only way to refuel is to head back to a fuel station in various places around the galaxy. What this does is force you to spend your hard earned credits on more fuel so you can travel further. Mass Relays, the things you used to travel with in the first game, also only appear in certain areas of the galaxy, usually in close proximity of the Fuel Depot.
Another addition to the space exploration is that instead of some planets serving virtually no purpose besides the developers making a brief encyclopaedia entry about said planet, like they did in the original, Mass Effect 2 allows you to scan planets for an anomaly, which usually results in you landing and taking part in one of those terrible side missions I described earlier. The other thing you can do is scan for the four valuable minerals on every planet, and once you find a sufficient amount via your ship's scanners you can launch a probe towards the planet to gather the resources. You can potentially go on for a while without doing any mining because it's optional, but since the only way to upgrade your equipment, powers, and weapons, is to use the minerals you've mined to research the improvements, it forces you to eventually take part in the boring, repetitive, and tedious parts of the game. This is undoubtedly the biggest blemish on what otherwise is a game that's extremely close to perfection. If you want to get lots of upgrades to anything in the game,you have to do a lot of boring mining. Hopefully Bioware can find a more interesting way to integrate planet exploration in the final act of the trilogy.
Now then, let's move on to the make or break for many people in the gameplay department, the big question: has the combat been improved? I can say, with absolute certainty, that Bioware sat down and took a look at what made all of the combat terrible and what made the combat great in Mass Effect and tuned everything up a notch.
Where to even start on all the improvements? Well, let's begin with how it handles and controls. Imagine Mass Effect 2 being much more like Gears of Wars, in that you run to cover, pop out and shoot, then move to a better position so that you can use one of your various powers (depending on your class). What I thought was a real improvement was that this game feels distinctly different from other third person shooters in the way you play because instead of just shooting from the safety of cover, the Mass Effect powers can come into play; You can use Biotics which are like Force Powers, with abilities like Slam, which picks an enemy up and then tosses them to the ground suddenly and very painfully. Or maybe you chose to play an Infiltrator, who uses sniper rifles and cloaking technology to take down their enemies. There are so many great classes that you'll want to play the game again and again just to try them all. From these changes it almost feels that Mass Effect has turned from being an RPG with shooter elements to a great third person cover shooter with Bioware's great RPG elements wrapped around the whole package. There is now a ton of combat and with the super great story it's so fun to play that I wanted to play through every pointless side-mission just so that I could shoot something.
Speaking of side-missions, Mass Effect 2 has a plethora of them if you only take into account the gameplay. It's honestly just pretty fun to head to a Merc base and shoot some dudes because of the improvised combat. Most of the mission don't differ too much but it seems like some of the choices you make will have an effect in Mass Effect 3. The personal side-missions for your teammates are all superb examples of what makes this game so much fun, with very creative and varied combat scenarios that will keep you thinking, especially on the higher difficulty settings.
Another element that they took out from the first game was the clunky inventory and replaced it with..... well, nothing really! Now enemies don't drop anything at all. You can only buy and find weapons scattered around the universe, and when you're on the ship you can mix and match which weapons you've equipped. Just the fact that the sub-par inventory system is gone from the first game is a big plus for me, but the
weapon loadouts generally work very well and allow you to create the character you want, without spending 4 hours in menus like in the original.
For all the great things about the gameplay there is definitely some faults; the aforementioned mining for one thing will most likely make the player fall asleep in boredom. This would be fine if you could skip this but the only way to upgrade anything in the game is through the minerals you collect. While you can collect them on the ground when you’re doing story or side missions, when you get into the later stages of upgrades the amount of minerals you have to play is so astronomically high that you'll probably be tearing your hair out in annoyance. To make things worse, the impending suicide mission makes you want to make sure that your team, ship, and equipment are fully upgraded so that everyone will, hopefully, survive. Since you really, REALLY, don't want any of these characters to die, you'll be spending a lot of time mining and after the umpteenth planet, it gets old really fast.
Visuals/ Audio
With everything being improved upon from the first game it's only logical to assume that this sequel would get a make over, and boy does it shine. From the great character models themselves to the attention put on even the smallest detail, Bioware really went out of their way to make sure the characters felt real. Shoulder shrugs, smiles, and body language as a whole truly convey the emotion each character was meant to give off.
Overall, Bioware seems to be hitting their stride with darker themed games; many of the vibrant and more colorful areas from the first game have been replaced with areas that have a much darker and dirtier color palette. An example of this can be seen in the contrast between the first game's Citadel area and Mass Efffect 2's poverty stricken areas where crime runs rampant in the streets. Mass Effect 2 really does feel like the dark second chapter in a trilogy with many people drawing comparisons to the Empire Strikes Back. Bioware also completely fixed the annoying texture pop in of the first game, and it's pretty hard to fault the graphics for anything except for a few small pop ins when you load areas quickly, although I only noticed this twice in 30 hours.
The voice acting is top notch in every aspect. The emotion in every character, from the Illusive Man to Shepard himself is done so well that you'll be living in the world. It's hard to pick a standout character because every single person you interact with, right down to the engineers on your ship, have some kind of memorable line of dialog. And no wonder the voices sound great when you have big name actors like Keith David, Seth Green reprising their roles from the first game, as well as Martin Sheen, Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan, Adam Boldwin, Claudia Black, and many others taking the roles of new engaging characters.
The music in this game is, you guessed it, excellent. From the second "The Attack" starts playing you know you’re in for a treat. I really can't think of anything to fault with the audio - it's simply superb.
Final Thoughts
Considering this game fixes and improves upon everything from the original in every way, third person shooter fans will enjoy the combat and gameplay while engrossing themselves in an extremely well made science fiction story. If you were a fan of the original Mass Effect, you will undoubtedly need to run out and buy this game now - and with polished look and audio it just abouts makes this a near perfect experience.
The biggest problem to this game is whether you have played the original, much like watching the Empire Strikes Back without seeing A New Hope first, many of the story elements may be a little confusing. That being said you could always watch some videos or ask a friend to help you catch up on the back story. If you go into the game without having any info on the first, some of the bigger revelations might not seem as important but you will definitely still understand the story. It’s almost worth it to play the first game if you want to make it a truly personal experience.
Delivering one of the best shooter experiences out there, along with another phenomenal story and some of the best characters Bioware has ever created. The only downfall is the repetitive and boring mining, making this game so close to perfection that you really have to own it. There are also many incentives to play multiple times, with tons of different dialogue choices, characters to meet, and different ways to approach the combat. Even if you haven’t played Mass Effect to completion, Mass Effect 2 still does a pretty good job of helping you to understand the universe. The year has started with a very good contender for game of the year and I’m very happy to have this game in my collection.
