More on the Subject of Mass Effect 2

Let's not beat around the bush.



The Bennett Cross
"... most conspicuous gameplay, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to entertainment in the presence of the enemy"

Mass Effect 2

I will be shocked if a better game is released this year, so I'm quite confident in awarding ME2 the top gong for 2010 even though it's only February.

Essentially it's like a big-budget Hollywood remake of Mass Effect, but without straying into Chris Roberts "I'm a proper director, me" pretension. Everything that was good about Mass Effect is cranked up to 11, mostly the characterisation, dialogue and storyline. The combat is more involved, and more fun, and "bigger". You're still stuck with only a couple of squad mates at any given time, and you can always see a firefight coming when you enter a region populated with convenient crates to take cover behind. But the action seems somehow better integrated with the cutscenes, maybe because the game has had an impressive visual makeover which can look quite stunning. Talking of cutscenes, there are lots and lots of them. Even the side-missions will feature a handful, even if the mission itself is no more involved than they were in the first game. It's all the more incentive to go exploring, because there are a lot of systems to visit which aren't touched by the primary storyline.
The paragon/renegade tracks are back, and have the amusing side-effect of being reflected in the state of Shepard's facial scars. Which just made me want to see how fucked-up she would look if I pushed her as far into renegade as possible. Unfortunately it seems to be difficult to minimise the paragon points because sometimes you get loads just for completing a mission, and as the paragon points increase they (visually) cancel out the renegade ones. Still, with glowing red terminator eyes which even seem to get reflected in the eyes of other cutscene characters, she ended up looking like a satisfyingly nasty piece of work. Plus the renegade dialogue tracks involve a lot of dark humour, not just Shepard being a bitch/bastard.

What's not to like? Well, some of the guis are more console-friendly than they ought to be in the PC version. No double-clicking to select options? Drilling down page after page just to change a quad member's weapons? Having to drop out to the main menu in order to get to the mission journal? Over-simplified RPG elements? Well, that last one is debatable. Yes, it is a shame to have to rely on drip-fed research to unlock new weapons and upgrades, and the armour selection is very limited compared with the first game. Is it a problem? Probably not. It's ultimately less micro-management, something which was somewhat painful in Dragon Age. The lack of variety and the reduced potential to customise your Shepard, both in terms of appearance and abilities, does grate occasionally. And as I already suspected in the preview, the Illusive Man is a pretty lazy, cliched addition which you could imagine the Half-Life "writers" coming up with.
I'm also not convinced that the repetitive and mindless planet scanning is an improvement over the repetitive and mindless Mako driving from the previous game. Scanning planets feels like something one of the Normandy's junior minions ought to be doing, not galactic savior and double-hard bastard Shepard.

Most importantly the game's too short, but only in the sense that it doesn't continue forever. Still, maybe they'll knock out a few DLC expansions to tide us over until ME3. Some Shepard back-story adventures would be nice. (S)he is "The Butcher of Torfan" after all, something you only learn about through some minor dialogue (and less so in ME2).

Anyway, enough talking about it, back to playing it. Meanwhile, pretty pictures ("Take pictures!"), including a disproportionate number featuring Miranda's impressive rack.