Set
several years after the events involving the first game, Mass Effect 2
continues the storyline with many new characters and surprises. It's an
interesting tale and most players should be able to pick right up where
they left off. Following the attack on the Citadel at the end of the first
game, Commander Shepard has apparently died in a sudden attack on his
legendary ship the Normandy. However, a nefarious organization named
Cerberus led by a mysterious figure named the Illusive Man has revived
Shephard and rebuilt the Normandy. The reasons for this are uncovered as
you play through the game, but the basic premise is that a group known as
the Collectors are kidnapping and killing human colonists throughout the
galaxy. It's up to Shepard and his crew to uncover the plot behind these
disappearances and stop the attacks. One of the more interesting aspects
of the game is the fact that you can create your own Commander Shepard,
including appearance, personality and even gender. There are many new
faces and locations in the new game, but also some returning characters
and familiar locations, which makes the game feel simultaneously familiar
and new.
You can change the main character's
appearance, which is a cool idea and helps to give you some customization
features. While these surface changes don't matter in the grand scheme of
things, the game follows the Bioware conventions in that your actions as
the main character make a huge difference in how the story unfolds. If you
choose to play as a good character, the others will react and treat you
differently than if you take a darker route. This makes the game very
interesting in that much of what happens depends on your motivations. It's
more complex than it sounds, since there are many situations where doing
the 'right' thing will make things harder for you while being aggressive
can lead to easier battles later on. It's definitely an interesting
balancing act that you have to perform throughout the game. To facilitate
these actions, your interactions with other characters are controlled by a
dialogue wheel, where you're given choices in how to respond to each
situation. You are usually given a choice between being aggressive or
merciful, and things usually play out how you'd expect them to. It's a
fairly complicated system, making Mass Effect 2's storyline less
predictable and linear than in many role-playing games.
The role-playing elements in the game
are solid, and these sequences move along at a faster clip this time
around. A large part of this is probably because the long elevator
animations have been removed, which makes things flow much smoother. There
are still lengthy load times between levels and when you warp to another
section of the game, but these are much more tolerable because they come
at natural breaks in the gameplay. One of the most enjoyable aspects of
Mass Effect 2 is exploring its vast world. You begin the game by going
through a small series of limited missions, where the objective is quite
clear. These don't give you a lot of room to explore, and act more as an
extended tutorial that introduces the basic game mechanics. It's a little
slow in the first hour or so, but once you meet the Illusive Man and take
control of the Normandy, Mass Effect 2's expansive game world opens up
dramatically. Once you're able to explore the many worlds and locations
inside the game, you begin to realize just how massive the world in the
game is. There are many, many hours of gameplay and dozens of missions
that you'll experience in a single playthrough, but with so many branching
paths and different outcomes, most players will only scratch the surface
of the universe Bioware has created.
The Normandy itself is huge and offers
many rooms to explore and characters to talk to. As you navigate the ship,
you'll be able to see what's going on and begin to explore the galaxy.
Using you on-board navigation system, you can select which world you want
to explore, which presents a lot of choices. You can choose to go on
exploration missions where your main objective is to gather items or go
straight into combat against the Collectors and their sympathizers through
some incredibly vast planets. The game is somewhat non-linear in that you
can choose where to go next, but on-board messages and missions are
structured to point you in the direction you'll need to be in order to
progress through the story. This gives you a great sense of freedom in how
the game unfolds, though it's not complete like a sandbox title.
Experimenting with different save points
and replaying certain sections of the game proves how important your
choices are in the game. There are many paths and variables that can be
selected, and which ones you choose not only affect how the storyline
unfolds, but the difficulty of the battles and combat you'll encounter.
Knowing who you need to be nice to and who will only listen to tough talk
makes a big difference. Some of the character motivations are obvious, but
there are some elements where things seem truly random. Mass Effect's NPC
characters are fairly interesting and the storyline is engrossing, but the
dialogue can become wordy at points. Once you're done talking, its time to
get down to the business. Throughout the game, you'll be able to recruit
additional characters by going on missions, and once you have them on your
team, you'll be able to use them in later missions.
One of the most important aspect of the
game is using the different team members effectively. The characters each
have their own individual abilities and moves, which makes assembling the
teams an important task. Some characters have biometric abilities that are
useful in combat, while others are better at collecting and analyzing
data. When you complete missions and gain experience you'll accumulate
credits that can upgrade your characters. These can be used to upgrade and
change these attributes before each mission, change the weapons they use
and assign tasks for them to complete while on the Normandy itself. Once
on the ground in the game's combat mode, commanding them is a fairly
simple task where you call up a command wheel. This can be done on the fly
during battle and allows you to select which weapons they'll use, assign
special attacks to the shift key and use items to revive any members of
your team who've fallen. Its an effective system that allows you to manage
your teams easily and intuitively without having to go through too many
menus.
In the biggest change from the first
game, Mass Effect 2's combat sequences much more closely resemble a
squad-based shooter like Gears of War. The most important strategy in
battle seems to be finding and holding cover, then peeking out to kill
enemies. It's a fairly simple task, and the context-sensitive button also
serves as your sprint button so the controls are fairly easy to remember.
Aiming your shots operates as in most shooters, though depending on
weapon, you'll switch to a first person mode for more accurate shots. You
can use a much larger variety of weapons in the new game, including sniper
rifles, machine guns and grenades which gives you more flexibility. In
addition to standard weapons, you can call up special abilities of your
team-mates and command them to target specific enemies with these attacks.
Players can also use their special abilities, including bionic attacks,
levitating moves and more to quickly dispatch foes. This is all fairly
standard issue for squad-based combat shooters, but Mass Effect 2
implements these features almost perfectly, making the shooting sequences
intense and exciting.
In
addition to standard weapons, you and your team have an array of
biological enhancements that allow you to perform supernatural abilities.
One of the coolest new abilities is Shepard's new adrenaline mode that
slows down the action and allows you to shoot with incredible accuracy. It
only lasts a few seconds, but its definitely cool. Another character can
levitate opponents and knock them out of commission, while another fires
shots that destroy opponents instantly by ripping them apart. These
abilities are interesting but mostly limited to a few times per battle,
since they take a lot of energy to use. The enemies are very aggressive
and attack in teams, strafe your position and fire relentlessly. This
means that you're going to get hit eventually. When you take damage and
drain your health, the screen will fill with red splotches, indicating
you're in danger. You can automatically regenerate health by getting to
cover and waiting for a few seconds which is short-cut many games have
been using over the past few years. It's not a completely realistic
approach but has the advantage of minimizing respawns that hurt momentum.
The layout of most battles is fairly
straightforward with you and your team on one side of a gap and your
opponents on the other. Using cover and targeting foes makes most battles
fairly easy, though some aggressive enemies will charge your positions
which means you have to run fast or take them out quickly. Some of the
enemies will also fire projectile missiles at your team which can damage
you even if you're under cover. If you're anticipating an attack, the
game's interface allows you to set things up to minimize your risk. You
can use your team-mates to your advantage, and command them to move to
certain positions, target enemies and come to a better position with the
press of the d-pad, which gives the gameplay plenty of fluidity. This new
combat system is a big improvement over the one from the first game, it's
simpler, more effective and faster, making the squad-based combat even
more intense. Commanding your squad and issuing orders takes place in
real-time which makes the battles feel much more visceral and fast, though
still offering some of the challenging strategic play of a traditional
turn-based RPG.
In this respect, Mass Effect 2 strikes
an excellent balance between these two divergent styles of play. However,
not everything about the game works quite as well. One of the most nagging
problems we encountered during the adventure were its mini-games. Usually
occurring when faced with a blocked door, these require you to play
simplistic tile matching things, or something also out of synch with the
rest of the gameplay. This was annoying and didn't work as well as it has
in other games such as Bioshock. Another element of the game that didn't
seem as well put together were the inventory and team status menus, which
seemed a little bit opaque and honesty hard to read from afar. Another
problem was the save system which was a bit confusing in practice and had
us frequently return all the way to the beginning of a level when we had
autosaved a much more recent location. This happened because ME2 defaults
to the main save file when you restart, not the most recent save. It was a
minor annoyance, but really a small flaw that hurt our progress and
momentum. Aside from these problems, the game delivers an exciting, and
interesting gameplay experience.
A huge portion of the game's appeal lies
in its stellar production values. Those who played the first game recently
will notice a substantial upgrade in its visuals. Mass Effect 2's
character models are much more detailed and lifelike than those in the
first game. Its character designs and animations are virtually
photo-realistic, creating a brilliant looking game that brings a cinematic
feel to the proceedings. The game's richly detailed worlds are vivid and
engrossing and range from sleek starships, dark underworlds and the
adventure takes you place on many distinctive planets. Each one seems to
be alive with great attention to detail, lighting effects and spectacular
visuals abound. Some of the elements of its visual design are very obvious
nods to science fiction film classics, and the alien species especially
might feel a bit familiar, but Bioware has put a lot more of its own
personality into the new game, making it feel less derivative. Mass Effect
2's extensive cut-scenes and in-game visuals meld together throughout
making for seamless transitions between the two elements. This helps to
give it an effective cinematic feel at points, but you never feel like
you're being pulled on rails, instead you find yourself pulled into this
impressive universe.
This is a vast and expansive world but,
unlike many adventure titles it isn't an empty one. There are loads of
characters to interact with. Each level and area seems to be populated
with dozens of characters you can talk to, and this is true throughout the
game. Fortunately, there are a lot of interesting things to learn from
them. Bioware has made a smart decision to use mostly professional voice
actors which helps to bring each character you encounter to life. Some of
the famous names include Martin Sheen and Seth Green, along with many
others. There's a lot of dialogue in the game and while the plot gets
bogged down a little, it's a mostly-engaging experience with a great story
that will keep you playing throughout. Bioware has done an excellent job
in crafting this ambitious tile, and its one that creates a memorable
experience. All of these The mostly excellent gameplay and design elements
make for an exciting, immersive title. It gets a lot more right than it
does wrong, and marks a significant improvement from the already excellent
first game. These elements successfully combine to make Mass Effect 2 a
consistently entertaining title that delivers a solid experience
throughout.
- Michael Palisano
