Battlemouth

If you haven’t heard all the hype about this game leading up to its release, then you must have been living in a hyperbaric chamber of some sort for approximately the last 6 months. Of course, as we discussed in Mike’s post on the state of the gaming world, hype does not equal quality (nowhere near it, most of the time). I am happy to report that this first “Mega Title” of 2010 (I don’t count Bayonetta because I thought it was horrible) is not, at all, anything resembling a let down. Shepard and company return in this sequel to Mass Effect (ME) on the offensive and prepared to blow your mind!
While the experience of having played all the way through Mass Effect does have its perks when playing Mass Effect 2 (ME2), it is not at all necessary. Yes, it increases the “wow” factor of the game considerably as you meet old friends and hear and see how things have changed as consequences of your direct actions and involvement in your past life. Like most RPGs these days, you are able to customize your character to look however you want; alternatively, you can import your character from ME straight into the game! And before you get your panties in a bunch, importing your character does not give you any boosted stats. The game does a fine job of explaining the “reset” to your skills.

In Mass Effect (2007), you play the role of _____ Shepard (left blank because you can personalize the first name but not the last). Shepard is tasked with flying about the Galaxy in the SSV Normandy in they year 2183. Inside the game’s universe, “mass effect” is a newly discovered (for humans anyway) physics phenomenon that has properties similar to other physical forces such as gravity and electromagnetism. It’s what physicists in real life are currently calling “dark energy” as an explanation for the accelerating expansion of the universe — which has only recently been discovered and flies in the face of the previous notion that the universe’s expansion should be slowing down because of gravity.
Certain creatures are evolved to sense and manipulate mass effect much like some real-life creatures, such as sharks and electric eels, can sense and manipulate electromagnetism in peculiar ways. In the ME games, some humans are preternaturally capable of these abilities, which can be enhanced via implants, and the trained manipulation of mass effect is referred to as biotics. Enter your “force” powers — after uncovering a plot to invade and destroy, and after many hours of battling and blasting, Shepard emerges victoriously! Well, sort of . . . it’s a win if you didn’t mind a little . . . collateral damage.

Mass Effect 2 drops you in right after your defeat of the Geth and company (the alien race from ME), then bumps you forward by a couple of years to find that everything has already changed. Bad guys are now good guys, good guys are turning their backs on other good guys, the populations of countless solar systems are being told lies, and Shepard is stuck in the middle.
Forced to face some harsh truths and make some risky alliances, you set out to find a new team and try to salvage what you can of this mess you helped make (or didn’t, depending on your actions in ME!)
hanging with Shepard and friends

Dialogue and Character growth

The very first recommendation I am will make to anyone not importing a character from ME: use a stock face for your character.
I know that sounds silly, but if you are anything like me, it can really detract from the game if your character comes out looking half-mental . I tried to make my character look like me and now I am 28 hours into a game playing with a shaved gorilla . . . a minor inconvenience, however, considering I can just cover my face with my sweet helmet!
Like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or Knights of the Old Republic, you are repeatedly offered a choice between being good or evil. One subtle difference with this old RPG standard in ME2 is that rather than change your appearance, or the way someone treats you, your “evil/good” (called Paragon or Renegade) levels allow you to access new lines of conversations. This can be very important when completing some quests as you might need to be friendly to someone, but you CAN’T because the game knows that you are too much of a dick to change character and suddenly be nice. Obviously this will cause some people to react more harshly or friendly based on what you say, and your reputation does certainly far prececde you into the surrounding galaxies. Most people, however, only hear about the good things you have done. One thing I am really enjoying is the relationships you build within your team. As you assemble this squad of outcasts, soldiers, scientists, convicts, and Sara from CHUCK, you find that each has his or her own agenda. Eventually they will trust you enough that they will ask for your help in completing some personal task. These range from helping estranged family members to blowing up entire cities; it’s all up to you whether you help them or not. The benefit of aiding the party member is pretty nice: they become loyal to you, unlocking new powers depending on their classes.
Mass Effect 2 features six main classes spread across three skill types. Each class specializes in Combat, Tech, or Biotic. Some classes combine two of these skill types. Which class you should choose depends on the style of play you prefer; I say biotics have all the fun, since they can create small singularities to suck up multiple enemies or can just shoot an explosive bolt from their hands. Almost everyone has some sort of biotics at his or her disposal . . . and
they all rule.

The Combat specialization allows characters to wear better armor, use more weapons and have increased health. Combat skills work well against both bosses and groups.
Specializing in Tech allows characters to work with any of the technologies they encounter. In addition to hacking security systems and repairing equipment, tech is also used for healing. In combat, techs disable their enemies’ equipment and heal their team. Tech skills work especially well against groups of enemies. They usually let other team members do the shooting.
Biotic implants allow the user to manipulate mass effect fields in surprising and unusual ways. Biotic specialists can launch enemies into the air or immobilize them. Biotic skills are very effective against single targets, making them ideal for use against bosses. Biotics can also use shields to protect themselves from taking damage.

Spacewalk—In game combat and movement

The aiming system for weapons is fairly standard. If you recall, I was playing Army of Two 40th Day prior to the release of ME2, and the controls and targeting work quite similarly. If you have not played any ME games at all, one thing to note is how easy it is to slow down the fast paced combat sequences to change yours or your teammates’ weapons or powers and target new baddies. I mention this because you will NEED to do it. The fights, while not the biggest in the world, are difficult. The AI is rather intelligent; they move in and out of cover, aggressively advancing on you to get better shots in and keep you off guard. Utilizing biotics and selecting the right team to aid Shepard is essential (especially since the load times after you die are a tad long and annoying). The controls for your teammates are not very extensive but as I said above, quality AI helps greatly with their ability to act on their own. You can hot-map one power from each of your partners while on a planet so that you can quick target enemies and tell them to use their powers. It is a little frustrating that the keys to which you hot-map your friends abilities are the same keys (left and right on the d-pad) that tell set waypoints for them. It gets annoying when you meant to have someone target a nice effect on a group of 3 or 4 Asari warriors and instead they go running straight into the horde only to get killed. Now that I am talking about things that bothered me, another glitch that both Mike and I noticed in the game involves several levels where you will be walking along and suddenly your character will just float up to the ceiling and be stuck. I have searched through the forums at BioWare and it seems we are not alone. They aren’t sure why or where specifically it is happening, but they are working on it and hopefully a patch will be out to take care of it soon. Naturally, the game has been out for a week and already it is getting patched . . . .

When not running about on any number of incredible planets inhabited by aliens big and small, you are spending your time on the Normandy. It is on this incredible ship flying about space that this game really started to wow me. As opposed to Dragon Age, where you would just pop up the map, select a new city, and poof, you arrived, when you choose to travel in ME2 you are zoomed out to a large view of the current solar system in which you’re traveling. In full HD beauty, space in this game is rendered more fantastically than most junk scifi movies you see out now. Piloting your tiny ship around Space Invaders-style you are free to check out any new unexplored planets, where you then open your scanner and take 15 to 20 minutes scanning the planet for mineral deposits (used for all sorts of upgrades depending on your hired crew and purchases) or enemy bases that unlock missions. Now there are eventually upgrades that allow you to scan planets faster, but personally it didn’t matter to me; I had a lot of fun immersing myself in the game and searching out deposits into which I could fire probes to collect their sweet mineral-y goodness. As a result, I now have upgraded the crap out of my ship, my armor, my guns, and my whole team—minerals are useful! The backdrops for your assorted missions are truly breathtaking as well. From the Asari, a Coruscant-esque planet, to the Mos-Isley-like bars of the trade planets, there is always somewhere new to explore, complete with new people and new problems. You can even visit our Local Cluster as Earth and the surrounding planets are STILL inhabited!

Another fantastic and fun extra facet to this game that occurs frequently is hacking machines. Depending on what kind of computer you are hacking, there are essentially two ways to hack and/or bypass different computers with varying results.  The first method has you spot lines of code as they scroll past the screen, avoiding the blocked or “secured” sections. It is quite neat, and also gets quite difficult. The other method, used more commonly for doors and safes, is essentially a matching game. It is easy, but also a unique break from the monotony inherent in some games that require just hitting the “open” button until you succeed.

All of this and we are only finished with the core mechanics of the game—to even begin to scratch the surface of the story would take another 5,000 words (and there is no way I could avoid spoilers). This game is two discs long and every minute is spent doing something significant or going somewhere new. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I am playing a TRUE sequel. The way Mass Effect 2 gives you the option to carry on from your save game or start fresh and have just as much fun is truly something other game creators should learn and adopt. With Bioshock 2 just a few days away, one can only hope that we will be treated to a similar experience. Somehow, I doubt it. Between the Dark Horse comic book filling in gaps between the games and the countless hours upon hours of quests and odds and ends to do in the game, I can’t see Mass Effect 2 deserving any less than a perfect 5 out of 5 or 10 out of 10 or whatever your rating system may be. I’m not sure I have found anything in this game that can detract from its quality. And if you know me . . . that is really saying something.

Mass Effect 2 is not a science fiction game; it is a science fiction OPERA.