Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

I waited a long time to play the original Mass Effect. It was the culmination of a long search for a space-oriented open-world combat/RPG in the tradition of Privateer. Now obviously Mass Effect isn't anything like Privateer, but the game absolutely captivated me. Hence, my hopes were high for ME2, especially after all the initial buzz heralding it as the game to end all games. While it was great to take up the cause of humanity against impossible odds once again, there are what I consider to be major steps backward in terms of what made the original so great.

Mixed reactions is a great way to describe my thoughts and feelings. The story of the Mass Effect universe is deep and compelling. You can literally sit for hours and read Codex entries on the most minute of details in the game. It's also great to reconnect with members of your old squad and swap memories of your own contribution to the fate of the universe. The writers have developed the unique species in the galaxy to an extreme degree and it's great to see how they interact when you put them all into a room together - my favorite example of this was the Human/Salarian/Turian/Asari bachelor party.

Sad to say, immediate storyline takes a hit in ME2. The Illusive Man functions as nothing more than a mission database. You never feel that he really has the slightest impact on anything you are doing and is thus totally irrelevant. When I say that gameplay is stuck on a rail, I mean that by the time you've played one or two character loyalty quests you know exactly how the rest of them will turn out. There's one with a minor plot twist near the end, but it will ultimately have no bearing on Shepard's mission.Plot-oriented missions are very sequential and you can know exactly what's going to happen before you start them. The game expects you to be shocked when certain situations turn out to be ambushes and traps, but you will only yawn because you've been waiting for the ambush to happen for the last 10 minutes.

I felt ME2 was shockingly short - you only have a handful of plot missions and then have nothing left to do but the final attack on the enemy base. Everything else is just establishing your crew, mining for upgrades, and doing inconsequential side missions for which you are poorly rewarded materially or psychologically. Gone is the feeling of being able to do what you want and wield your mighty power across the galaxy in search the answers to deep, dark secrets - now it's just moving from Point A to Point B when the Illusive Man tells you that Point B is available. I felt very boxed in and claustrophobic the entire time. The writers seem to have fallen asleep at the wheel in terms of writing an interesting plot to this game - instead, they took the easy way out and produced a very generic-feeling affair that does not impress.

But I'm not done yet! Another big hit to the immersion factor is the lack of variety in inventory items. You will use the same weapon for virtually the entire game and there will never be any situation to change your loadout or the loadouts of your teammates - so essentially weapons are irrelevant. Armor cannot be changed for your teammates whatsoever, so forget about getting that nice, crisp, professionally-uniformed squad. You can't even really change your own armor, but for the color and a few minor upgrades. Once again, it all serves to box you in and remove whatever enjoyment you might have gotten by managing inventories: a minor thing in terms of game effectiveness, but it has a major effect on immersion.

At this point I really should add that with all these defects, Mass Effect 2 is still very entertaining, and if you loved the first one you simply have to play this one. There's definitely a bit of let-down, but it's still Shepard and the crew, and they aren't done saving the galaxy yet. There's lots more work to be done. I can only hope that the writers for Mass Effect 3 will get back on the right track and think much, much bigger than they did for this game. Learn the lessons of Grand Theft Auto and Fallout - if you make an expansive, open game world first then drop your characters into them, it will feel much more authentic and immersive. Mass Effect 2 created a neat little tunnel and your character rolled through on a rail until the end of the line.