One of my all time favorite sci-fi shooter of all time!
The game starts off cool and it ends cool (depending on if you are paragon or renegade), everything was completely mindblowing and i had a really great time with this game: visuals were crisp, the cover shooting element was just right and the biggest thing of them all, is the story.
firstly, the visuals look great: everything was flowing naturally with the environment and characters looked really cool and there had been a really great attention to detail which can be solidified by the background of the levels you are playing in.
From abondoned ships and space stations, to city slums and great looking space stations, which give you the feel that you really are there, it's that great.
The shooting mechanic: it's basically a cover shooter which give you loads of options for strategy (if you have a hard time against your opponents) and guns to blow your enemies head off. I had a really fun time trying to work out strategies to flank enemies and put my squad mates in position so as to keep the enemy busy while i would sneak around and blow them to bits with a shotgun from close range or putting myself into a good, long range position where i could fire my sniper rifle and line up with a perfect head shot.
The enemy AI well...... let's just say they did a good job but not all of them because some of them would just rush at you, trying to fire their gun mindlessly rush at you at the same tim or some would just go for the banzai charge with a shotgun which sometimes, would take away from the strategy but it wasn't such a big problem.
The core of Mass Effect 2 is the story: a robot army of reapers who will come to the galaxy to wipe out all organic life. Of course, you can't just let that happen and you need to stop the Reapers anyway necessary. In that way, Mass Effect 2 starts good: you have just died while trying to save the normandy crew from an alien attack and you're just brought back to life to fight the reapers. Cool right? you bet your ass it is!
Where Mass Effect 1 was trying to fight out against another robotic army, known as the geth, This game will take you to the utter fringe of the galaxy and more, trying to find a way to stop the Reapers from returning and, what's most sweet about this, it's that you can have conversations with your crew mates and other important characters and say to them anything you want (from a dialogue wheel of course).
You have Paragon or Renegade options which means: Paragon is good and Renegade is bad, like something out of star wars the knights of the old republic with each dialogue option having a different outcome and consequence, really cool stuff. You interact with your growing squad and learn about their past and trying to win their loyalty by loyalty missions.
Now these missions are interesting enough on their own and they really stand out among the rest of the side quests (this is after all an RPG). I really tried to get information of my crewmates of their past and trying to help them which, in turn, can effect the squads outcome in the ending.
I have said enough and i advise you: if you are a fan of sci-fi games, you really need to buy this one and play it over and over again. it's a great title and it adds a huge boost for the Mass Effect series.