Mass Effect 2 Reviews

Mass Effect 2 Reviews

Mass Effect 2 is the sequel to BioWare's hit space-based role-playing game (RPG), Mass Effect. A single player adventure, Mass Effect 2 allows players to continue the adventures of the fully customizable series hero, Commander Shepard, as you take on a whole new adventure and cast of supporting characters. Features new to this latest release in the franchise include the ability to import game save files from the original Mass Effect game to continue the adventure in an unbroken fashion, a new damage system, a more flexible dialogue game mechanic and more.

First off, I made the monumental mistake of erasing my MS1 data to clear up hard drive space about 9 months ago. My heart sunk when I installed the game thinking I could import my old character only to realize I had erased my old game. :( In these days of DLC milking, I have quickly learned to keep old games.

That being said, I was pleasantly surprised there was no DRM other than a disc check. That is perfectly fair. The instalation was a breeze and the game is fairly stable. Two crashes in the befinning but none since a full week of playing. What makes the glitches worth it, is the beauty of PC graphics. Top notch on my now five year old rig and two year old graphics card. I'll include specs at the end of this review.
As the title of this review suggests... ME2 is beginning to walk an ever so thinning line between RPG to full on action FPS. While I love both, I love them when they focus on one or the other. Many of the RPG aspects of ME1 have been left out such as the inventory system, to a certain degree character building and most importantly exploration, while the FPS aspects were streamlined and greatly improved. However, it seems they had to sacrifice some elements of RPG to do this. For example, when playing ME2, It seems exploration is not as open ended as ME1 where you could freely go to different buildings areas and so forth. In ME2 areas open up related to the mission only, then they close. For example, in Illium, I could only go to certain levels and rooms, then when a story thread opens up a taxi or character will automatically take me to the location. Once the mission is over, you are automatically taken back and that location is gone. This didnt happen often in ME1.

Another example of this is the omission of the Mako and exploration of planets. I know ill get flack for this since it was supposedly a criticism but I LOVED the Mako. With the Mako you felt like you were in control of exploring worlds as opposed to ME2 where tha shuttle drops you off, you explore a small linear map and go. The mako took you through all kinds of terrain into several maps and along the way you mined and found goodies. Thats all nearly gone. Now you have some crappy world map with a boring scanner. This perhaps is my biggest criticism.

This being said, the game did not strip enough RPG aspects to make it any less fun. It has been a joy to play this cinematic space opera. The FPS aspect was greatly improved but as stated before at the expense of some RPG elements. As indicated in title of this review, Bioware is walking a fine line. I just hope they dont cross it into FPS format. That being said, this game is highly recommended for ME1, Sci Fi, RPG and FPS fans.

MY RIG:

• 2.8 Pentium D Dual Core
• 800 gb hard drive space
• Creative Audigy Sound Blaster audio card
• Nvidia 8800 GTS 500mb graphics card
• 2 Gig memory
• Windows Vista