Mass Effect 2 In Review

[Nidous]

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the true work of Bioware.

Incredible story, incredible writing, excellent voiced characters through and through, highly interactive cutscenes, many scenarios and outcomes, intense fast-paced action, useful RPG development, and no fillers rolled into one spectacular package, Mass Effect 2.

I don't know what was going through their heads when they designed DA:O, but ME2 is everything I hoped it would be and more. They took a battle axe to just about every problem I could pick out of the first chapter of the ME trilogy and made them right. No more clunky, useless inventory and item sorting. No more, "Eh, I could do without these.." weapon upgrades. Normandy upgrades! *SPOILER* "Eat that! Collector sons-of-bitches! Turian battery guns at work! But, wait a second, if I didnt upgrade my ship's shields and guns then some of my party members would have died to those collectors, and there's telling who it would've been either." No more pointless spending of 30 upgrade points to improve your assault rifle accuracy by 25%, just a simple 5 skill upgrading system with each skill being able to be evolved into its most supreme form, of course with variations to keep you thinking. New biotic, tech, and gun powers kept the interest alive and kicking and the action going. Ah, freezing an enemy with Cryo Ammo and then using Slam to, well, slam him into the ground at a force of 900 Newtons, just great, just.. great..

By the time I got most of my crew at loyalty status and their skills upgraded it was a hard decision to choose 2 people to join me on missions everytime. "Well, Tali can summon her drones to keep the Hulks busy, but Thane can use his sniper rifle and biotics to pick them off at a distance, and then Grunt who can go in there guns-a-blazin' and whipe em out. Hmm.." 'Course, that's just 3 of the 9 possible choices, all great choices.

The story, writing, voice acting was amazing. I was never dulled in conversations and the story had no low points for me, I wanted to just keep going and keep delving further into the ME story. I won't reveal any specific details, but damn, they revealed some pretty cool shit about a bunch of the races and the Geth if you dug deep enough with your party members. While some of the character expressions were sometimes ,"Meh.." I can ignore that in light of all the great this game has to offer. The fact that story end, your party's fate, well, just about anything you can think of can be ended in a different way with true consequences, it's hard to explain unless you experience it first hand, mind blowing really. For example without really details, it is absolutely possible that Shepard and the entire Normandy crew dies and, well, that's it. It's possible some members die or all of them live, or Shepard dies and the crew lives. These are just ending scenarios, that doesn't shed light on the thousands you run across throughout the game.

By the time I got to my 11th hour of the game the ball just kept on rolling with one of the greatest science-fiction climaxes I've seen in a long time. There was no holding back and they leave me in the best possible position as a Mass Effect fan. They left me wanting more and pondering what will happen with *SPOILER* all those thousands of Reapers headed for the galaxy and waiting to import my ME2 character into ME3. They say your actions in ME2 will have a much greater consequence than they did with Me1 to ME2, oh man I'm looking forward to that, and I believe Bioware on that.

One of the community's most talked about issue with the first chapter, there was no after. Now there is and even without main missions there's plenty to do. Planets to explore, new missions to find, excellent DLC so far, more character delving and relationship forming, *SPOILER* help some of your old crew, the works that I'm glad they added.

They leave me and every Mass Effect fan wanting more, and trust me when I say we'll all be waiting, there's no chance they'll disappoint us, not with the excellence they poured into both titles so far, the trilogy will end, unfortunately, but I doubt they'll leave us hanging.

[Ricochet]

Nice write up , lotsa of people really likin it , i will probaly wait and maybe try it at another time, the setting really dont appeal to me.

[Betaomega341]

yeah ill play this game....after i get past 60 in Lotro....