The original Mass Effect was released just over two years ago. At the time it was praised for it’s excellent story, cohesive universe and impressive visuals though many felt the combat, the one-dimensional side missions and some technical problems stopped the game from reaching legendary status. Now in 2010 Bioware is back with Mass Effect 2 and has rectified almost all these issues.

Let’s start off with the combat. The first Mass Effect at times felt like the developers forced the third person shooter aspect into an RPG which left it feeling cumbersome, In this sequel Bioware have made many small changes that propel Mass Effect 2 into a truly great third person shooter, even without all the RPG elements.

There are several big changes to the combat but at the core of the refinement is the improved weapons handling. Each gun has it’s own distinct characteristics and bullets now actually feel like they are hitting their targets. Gone is the overheating system of the weapons from the original to be replaced by thermal clips which is essentially a glorified term for ammo, which you will have to find.

The way you control your squadmates is also massively improved. Press up on the d-pad and you can command both your squadmates to move to or attack the same location. Press either left or right on the d-pad and you can move each member individually and can also assign a power to this hotkey which can then be used instantly in a fight.

The enemies themselves have also been improved. They regularly find cover and there are much fewer instances of enemies running out in the open or getting stuck.

The mention of this is significant as the lack of bugs and technical problems is one of the best improvements Bioware has made. The problems with texture pop-in from the original have all but gone and the whole of the Mass Effect Universe feels much more polished.

The final criticism of the original Mass Effect was it’s poor side missions. Most consisted of simply driving the Mako to a base on an unexplored planet killing everyone inside and retrieving something. Mass Effect removes the Mako completely and instead focuses on some fully fleshed out stories with each taking between 10-30 minutes. Each feels very unique and there is virtually no ‘copy and paste’ design like the original.

Lets move on the the main story now. Mass Effect had a great story with some great characters and Mass Effect 2 builds upon the foundation laid by the first. You continue the story a couple of years after the first ended. If you import your character from the first game the choices you made in it will have consequences in Mass Effect 2.

Like before you must travel around the galaxy visiting various planets and completing missions. At almost every point in the game you’ll be given the choice of which missions to complete and it what order.

And choice is a very big part of Mass Effect 2. Like the first, Mass Effect 2 features hundreds of dialog scenes and you get to choose how they play out. You an be the big hero and choose the ‘paragon’ options, the anti-hero (which usually invloves threatening someone or violence) or somewhere in the middle. Your choices once again have profound consequences both in this game and in the final game in the trilogy, Mass Effect 3, which should be finished in 2012.

There are a few small problems with Mass Effect 2. The first in the mini games. There are essentially three types. The bypass mini game, usually used for opening doors and completed by matching symbols. The hacking mini game, used for hacking into terminals and data pads and complted by matching code segments and the probing mini game. This allows you to send probes onto unexplored planets to search for resources.

Now the problem with these isn’t that they are poorly designed (they do look nice and have some resemblance to the activities they are supposed to represent). The problem is that you will be spending an awful lot of time doing them. The probing in particular is bad. If you want to research all the upgrades you’ll need to spend at least a few hours just on the one minigame which is extremely repetitive and dull.

The mention of research brings us nicely to the final topic and another slight problem. The RPG elements. Bioware seems to have really toned down the amount of custimation of your character. There are very few armor upgrades and even less weapon upgrades. Even the amount powers you can upgrade when you level up have been scaled back. Whilst some would argue the new streamlined approach to this side of the game is good for people who do not traditionally like RPG’s, as a fan of most of Bioware’s previous games it left me a little disappointed.

Ultimately though these are small problems, especially in a game as huge and as polished as Mass Effect 2. There is so much to do in the game that even after the 25 hours of my first play through I felt there was much more I still have to see. Mass Effect 2 is ultimately one of Bioware’s best ever games and considering what has come before that is quite an accomplishment.

Score: 9.5/10

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