Mass Effect 2 Review

When Bioware released the original Mass Effect, players lauded the combination of third person shooting and an intricate, personal role playing story while pointing out its technical flaws and cumbersome inventory system. In Mass Effect 2, the developer addressed these issues and attempted to streamline both genres once again to reach a synergy. However, has unity been reached to a create a fulfilling game for both demographics or does it compromise fundamental genre-specific aspects in order to craft a wholly new audience?

Mass Effect 2
Developer: Bioware
Price: $59.99
Platform: Xbox 360, PC (reviewed)

Bioware’s past November release, Dragon Age: Origins, was a historical lesson of the company’s lineage. Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, rids itself of many of the constraints of its Baldur’s Gate brothering. Many have considered ME2 to be less of an RPG due to its exclusion of what some have considered requirements in the role playing genre. I’d rather not get into the logistics of what constitutes of true bred RPG, but ME2 raises a lot of fundamental questions about where the genre is headed to.

The original Mass Effect, with all its technical problems, was still able to recreate the epic space opera feel that the developers were shooting for. Most importantly, it laid the foundation for a trilogy that would allow for the continuation of the players decisions from one game to the next. Though mainstream hype has indicated that Mass Effect 2 is a stepping stone for sequels due to the much touted ability to transfer your save from the first game into the second one, Bioware still has strides to make in order to fully deliver on their vision. The moral choices in the first game do not have the apparent affect that I expected as they are largely placed in the background until they are hopefully addressed in the final chapter. Most of the party members of the first game excluding a few specific characters are allowed to grow in complexity while others are seemingly forgotten. Though this might seem like a harsh criticism of the story, I do applaud Bioware for experimenting where few developers have by trying to directly connect the player’s decisions from one game to another.

Fortunately the major decisions in Mass Effect 2 have a gravity that was not present throughout the majority of the choices within the original. There were several moments where the arguments for both sides of a conflict were equally as ambiguous and negative that I sometimes wished I did not have to make the final judgment. The developers make you feel like a true commander, but not without the risk of losing the affection of your teammates or acting within dangerous levels of shades of gray for the good of the universe. The inclusion of dialogue interrupting sequences are a positive addition to the conversation system, sometimes causing utter disgust at the levels of violence that your renegade Shepard will commit to gain the information he/she needs. The overall story of Mass Effect 2 runs through the common problem of being the middle chapter in a trilogy, meaning that it can’t progress the story enough or answer the majority of the questions that the player desires as they are clearly being reserved for the third game. Regardless, the new stable of characters are unique enough that some players might feel a little emotional depending on the final outcome of their crewmates. Without spoiling too much, expect the last forty five minutes to be some of the most intense of this generation if you invest time speaking to your shipmates.

Mechanically speaking, the shooting has been raised to the standards of most elite third person shooters. The much criticized inventory system and Mako driving sections of the original have been discarded and instead replaced by an economic system based on mining, which I can recognize as being the worst part of the game.

The Final Word
The enjoyment that comes with mixing biotic powers and finishing geth with a machine gun meshes symbiotically with the revamped dialogue system and the overall story to create a complete, if yet, even more promising experience showing that the sky is the limit for the potential of the third installment.

– MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent