Mass Effect 2
Reviewed by Z

Now with clickable screenshots!

Well it finally happened. The Bioware fanboys absolutely blew a gasket over this one. I read a review, then I read a different one, but it wasn’t any different. Three, four, it doesn’t matter, they’re all the fucking same. Universal praise, Bioware raises the bar again, perfect game, 10/10, la ti da Bioware-Media-Fanboy circle jerk time. If you know me, or read my Dragon Age review, you may have noticed I have a particular grudge against Bioware, akin to Dr. Cox from Scrubs and Hugh Jackman. I didn’t give this game the time of day, until I read something that caught my eye. Just a quick couple sentences from a second opinions article on IGN. Here, let me quote it, hopefully they won’t sue me.

Apparently I’m not the only person that hated Mass Effect…

I tried to play Mass Effect on 2 different occasions, I really wanted to like the game, I just couldn’t. The role playing aspect of it was sort of interesting, although talking to people on the Citadel for like 5 hours straight got old… fast. I have no idea why people consider the chat wheel thing to be innovative, the whole relationship thing was just a gimmick (or so I, wrongly, hoped), and quite frankly the story was, like every other Bioware game, too broad, and not nearly interesting enough. I could live with all that though, the deal breaker for me was the combat. While infinite applause should be given for team members you don’t have to micromanage, and actual real time combat, it was terribly done.

Bioware fixed the combat.

I’m a man of action, baby.

Combat in Mass Effect 2 is fun. The powers are interesting, the cover system works well (ish), the enemies are smart, the ones that are supposed to be anyway, and your teammates are actually useful. You can still pause the game and micromanage a bit, commanding someone to use a power on a certain target, or telling your dudes to take cover in certain locations, but it’s done well. The health system has been replaced with the typical Gears of War / Uncharted / everything else style; your screen gets all bloody, you hide around a corner, it goes away. You also have your shield, which works similar, like Borderlands, and depending on your class you can also pick up a Barrier, that I didn’t pick up, so I have no experience with that one.

The main point is the combat is now wholly action, there is no RPG here anymore. They also decided to do away with pretty much all of the item customization, and the inventory system as a whole. You can pick up various pieces of armor throughout the game, but the effects they give you are minimal, +5% shield strength, +10% run speed, crap like that. There’s a helmet that gives +10% headshot damage, which sounds useful, but pretty much everything dies from 2 shots to the dome from my sniper rifle anyway, so meh. There are a few different weapon types, with proficiencies based on your class; Sniper Rifles, Assault Rifles, Shotguns, SMG / Machine Pistol, Heavy Pistol, and Heavy Weapons. With the exception of the Claymore Shotgun, some character specific weapons, and DLC, Heavy Weapons is the only category that has more than 2 guns. Which sucks. Hard.

Every gun in the game but 1, don’t smother us in options or anything.

There is an upgrade system, that’s interesting enough, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that most of the upgrades are barely useful at best. By far the most useful upgrades were the +50% ammo. And if you do a lot of upgrading, you’ll be doing a lot of scanning. The game took me around 30 hours to beat, I would say at least 4 of those hours were just holding down the right mouse button and running grid patterns on any planet I could find.

It’s an interesting system, in concept. You have a picture of the planet, hold down the right mouse and move the cursor around until you find an area that has a high concentration of whatever mineral you’re looking for. Once you find an area, you can hone in a little until you find the richest spot, launch a probe, and you collect the resources. But a few hours of that gets old, it’d probably be smarter to scan as I went, but I would just run 4 or 5 missions, go buy all the schematics I could afford, and then build everything that I had amassed up to that point. There are ship upgrades that you get from every party member you have to pick up, so test-tube man and the robot just have schematics for guns that only they can use. The ship upgrades are built using the same minerals that you have to scan for, and while they (for the most part) don’t offer any immediate benefits, it’s made pretty obvious that they’re important and you should get them.

Get used to this screen.

The citadel is back, as are some new locations, and there’s enough NPC’s and small talk going on around you to make them work well. A lot of the mindless chatter has been eliminated, thank god. You can be reasonably sure that almost everyone you are capable of talking to will at one point either start a quest, finish a quest, or try to sell you something.

The relationship system is also back, and it’s averager than ever. There are more partner options now, with only straight romance options, fine by me. The relationship talks are so stupid though, I don’t get how anyone can call them progressive. Male Sheppard: Do female’s loyalty quest, talk to female, female hits on you, say if you’re interested or not, if you’re interested you now have the option to start a relationship. That’s all there is to it. There’s a little spat between Jack/Miranda and Tali/Legion where you have to pick sides, and you can only be in a relationship with one person at a time, but that really is everything. Whoever you’re romantic with will jump your bones the night before you go off on a suicide mission and all the 13 year olds and Tali fanatics rejoice. Supposedly this shit will have an effect on your Mass Effect 3 game, but I’ll believe that when I see it. If you had a relationship with anyone in a Mass Effect 1 game and imported your dude you are promptly dumped and all the old romance-able characters are no longer party member options. Whatever.

Relationship or not relationship… man, this sure is deep.

This games biggest failing, by far, is its pacing. This could be called Side Quest: The Game, and it’d be a pretty fucking accurate description. You do the main story for the first 2 hours or so, and the last half an hour, and the rest of the game is all side quests. It almost reminds me of Chrono Trigger in that regard, and that is not a good memory to be associated with. They show you the Omega 4 Relay about half an hour into the game, and make it very clear that this is where you go to beat the game. You just can’t yet, you’ll get stomped, you have to go do some side quests first. So you fly around assembling a team of people who mostly just sit in your ship and do nothing, then you get them all loyal, then you do super sweet package delivery and fetch quests for people. After all your hard work you are rewarded with the continuing of the actual plot, which lasts all of half an hour. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all cinematical, and suspensified, it just isn’t very long. And the final boss is a joke.

So what can I say, I’m stunned. Bioware has managed to make an amazing game, I never thought I’d see the day. I love the new combat system, and the roleplaying elements, while relatively unchanged, are functional and usually entertaining enough. My main qualms are the complete lack of an inventory system, and the abruptness of the ending. Even if they just made it so instead of a +10% damage upgrade, you pick up a gun that does that much more, it would at least make picking up all the shit laying around the levels feel more worthwhile. And as for ending, I know you guys at Bioware are really digging this whole Choose Your Own Adventure thing, but a little more time on the main plot could have done this game wonders.

Side Quest: The Game!

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