Mass Effect 2

[Samuel Tow]

I figure I've been away from these forums long enough, so it's high time I contributed something to them. I really don't want to redo work I've already done already, specifically since the things I write tend to be so gosh-dang long, so I'll do a repost of what I said about it in another place. I hope this is acceptable. Note that it might contain references to people you don't know. I honestly don't want to trawl through my own mess to fish them out :)

[Samuel Tow]

Funny... I just sunk what feels like a week of literally full-time days from dawn to dusk into a game, and it feels like the most fulfilling thing I've done in years. I don't know if that reflects poorly on my life in general for lack of having anything better than a video game, but it is what it is. Let me get this out of the way first and foremost - Mass Effect 2 is a great game. Better than the original, in fact. It has its faults, of course, and even if it didn't I'm sure I'd find something to complain about, but it's not about that. It's not about the details, the technicalities, the... Theories. If I were to sit down and pick this game apart, I could reduce it to a mediocre shooter with a predictable (read: not really) storyline, but I don't care about these things. At the end of the day, one thing and one thing alone matters - was playing this game worth it? Oh, yes it was!

I'll try to keep spoilers out of this... I want to call it a review, but it's not. It's more like a... Confession. Call it what you will, I'll try to keep spoilers out of it. I will try and I will fail, that much I know in advance, so I'll do the next best thing - read down until you see a large spoilers banner (read: bolded words saying "spoilers"), and you will not meet any before then. I enjoy writing these things, but I would not want to spoil anybody's fun, and I still want to have this read, even if just half-way.

Let me begin, uncharacteristically, with a word of praise - the actual gameplay of Mass Effect 2 is really, really good! It's crazy, I know! You can't have a game with good story AND good gameplay! That's just madness! But it's true. The original Mass Effect SUCKED for combat, and I wish I could write that in size 70 font (I know I probably can, don't correct me) because OI LORDY was combat bad. I died, reloaded, died, tore my hair out, died, screamed at my screen and died some more. It was just the most awkward thing, like trying to balance a cat on a pogo stick. Maybe I was just better at this one, but cover, combat, suppressing fire and so on and so forth felt a lot more natural than they did in the original. For the whole game, I died something like 5 times total. That's less than the hours I played divided by ten. You do the math.

For those curious, the combat system is a somewhat typical "cover shooter" where the world is populated by nature's gift to mankind - chest high walls. Aliens build their crates chest high, build their walls chest high and even in areas of absolutely no civilisation, nature herself intervenes and carves chest-high rocks out of the very ground itself, eagerly anticipating the day an adventurer will come by to take cover behind them. You hide behind them, you pop up to shoot and dash between cover. It's actually very well done and I never cursed my choice of cover more than once a day, which is a MAJOR plus. For some reason assault rifles can't shoot for crap, but that's why God invented the sniper rifle.

Weapon choice in this one is... Limited. That and inventory space - there isn't any! Not just no inventory space. I mean no inventory! And you would not believe how good that made me feel! Screw you, Mass Effect 1 for making spend hours looking at identical weapons with different stats, addons, pluguins, gauntlets, ammo types, chips and ARGH!!! All of that is gone. You now have a selection of weapons you pick at mission start and there is really one one weapon of each type. You have multiple assault rifles, for instance, but they're not just reskins of the same rifle, they're actually functionally different, in that one fires in semi-auto bursts but is more accurate, while the other fires in full-auto but sprays bullets like an aerosol can. Different ammunitions make a return from the original Mass Effect, but in a much less garment-rending way. They come as powers you can take and activate as needed. And they actually mean something now, as enemy defences come in four types - shield, barrier, armour and health, each appended over the next like a multi-health-bar boss. Some rounds do well against shields, some well against armour, some well against robots... You get the idea. I stuck to EMP rounds and fire rounds, but in my case I just specialised in an incredibly heavy machinegun that shot through anything anyway. Pity it scatters like you put a firecracker in a litterbox, but I managed. In retorspect, I'm glad I didn't pick the sniper rifle.

But I'm babbling.

I'm not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but since you learn of this within literally five minutes of starting the game, you play Commander Shpard, recently dead but walking it off. Don't fear the reaper indeed. The story in Mass Effect 2 picks up from where the original Mass Effect left off, which is to say you suffer a time lapse, all the scary things you brought up are hushed up, your team has scattered, everyone hates you and you're basically trying to save the universe all over again starting from scratch. So, basically, you start off from where the original Mass Effect BEGAN! But it's OK, because you'd be doing the same thing anyway, and vagaries in the original's ending mandate that certain things be dropped like a hot potato that was mailed to you from hell inside a toaster oven. Those are the seams, if you're looking for any, and while they aren't obvious, I'm also not an idiot, so... Yeah, they're kind of obvious. But it is what it is.

The game lasted me... Let's see, 12 hours a day, call it three days... Around 30-40 hours. Which would be really cool for a game, if I hadn't spent GOD DAMN HALF OF THAT floating around space, scanning planets, grabbing material resources and having flashbacks to Star Control. I frikkin' HATE resource mining! And it's my own damn fault! Let me explain. See, you have four resources you can mine for or fine on stations. There are bars that show you how much you have graphically when you scan planets. The metres go up to 25 000. At the end of the game, I had around 750 000 of everything AFTER I bought everything I could. Yeah, my own damn fault indeed. Pity I couldn't research everything. My... Benefactor was tight with the purse strings. Not like it would have made me any more sympathetic to him if he had, but more on that in the spoilers section.

So, basically, you run around following a grand objective while simultaneously getting smaller ones wherever you go. If I weren't staring at my guy's back the whole time, I'd swear someone stuck a "Will help!" sign on my back because I was dragging requests like a magnet kitty walking through iron nails. Not like I'm complaining, I enjoy helping people, and I was lucky that this game had... Well, let's just say that solving pretty much everything the nice way depended not on specific skills or abilities, but on how good of a guy you are. See, in the original Mass Effect, you needed a "Persuasion" skill to pull off paragon actions. Here, you pretty much just need to be a paragon to do that. Which sits just fine with me! Good actions reward me with the ability to take more good actions and also allow me to focus my actual skills on killing people all the more efficiently. Which, by the way, is made all the easier with the much simplified builds system. Gone are the two dozen stats. Each character who isn't Shepard gets three, plus a fourth one that unlocks when they become loyal. More on that in a bit. Shapard has, I believe, a dozen, including one taken from an ally. It makes things really simple, and I enjoy that. Yeah, it's not a min/maxer's paradise, but who cares? I like to help people and shoot ugly monsters.

See, I'm pretty much a grunt when it comes to these games. I like to fight, I like to do the right thing, I like to fight and I like to follow the game's linear progress. I like to fight, not manage logistics, and the more time I have to spend staring at "character screens," the more I get the urge to punch things. And mos of the things in my room are expensive, sentimental or pretty damn hard. So, Mass Effect 2 delivers, with a simplified combat system that is actually pretty complicated in execution yet simple in setup, a storyline that "good guy" myself through it and a satisfying feeling right at the end.

There's just one small problem with all of that... At least, there's a thing that looks like a problem but actually isn't. Let me pose this question: When was the last time a game made you feel like an idiot, yet without making you hate the game for doing it? Games tend to make me feel like an idiot by being cheap (like the original Mass Effect, damn Krogan Warlords!), by not letting me do things I want to do, or by letting me inexplicably do things I didn't mean to and shouldn't be allowed to do under any circumstances. Mass Effect lets me do a lot of things. A lot of things I really ought to do, which is GRRRATE! As well as a lot of things I really shouldn't do, but... Well, let me put it like this - every time I do something wrong, it's something I should have known better than to do. It makes me an idiot, but not because the game is railroading me into being an idiot. No, it makes me feel like an idiot because I treated it like a throwaway game and did not approach things with the responsibility they deserved. Mass Effect 2 let me do a lot of things. I'm not proud of all of them.

But on the plus side, it gives you even MORE options than before. Instead of waiting for your turn to speak, sometimes you can perform Paragon or Renegade actions as other people are speaking or acting in cutscenes. And unlike the "press X to not die" mechanic of QTE, these don't kill you, or indeed mandate you to do them. Let me explain. Suppose one of your team-mates has flipped, pulled a gun in anger and is about to shoot someone who doesn't deserve it. You got your dialogue line saying "Don't do it!" but it's going to happen anyway. You can sit on your hands and watch it happen, or you can perform a Paragon action, grab the gun and pull your team-mate back. Little changes, but you did the right thing. Or say someone's mouthing off on you. You can punch him in the mouth mid-sentence and probably threaten him afterwards. I didn't do any of that, of course, but I saw the prompts.

I really can't say anything more without delving into spoilers , so let's move on into Spoilers territory. In fact, I think I'll make a whole separate post of that. If you have not played through Mass Effect 2, DO NOT READ ON. I'm warning you - if you ruin your game by reading my crap, I'm going to come over to your house and slap you! ...If I can ever afford a ticket to the States...

[Samuel Tow]

SPOILERS!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED MASS EFFECT 2!!!

Spoilers section, and where to begin... There's just so much. I guess I should start with the consequences of your old actions. You can import your Mass Effect 1 character into the game... In fact, I highly suggest you do, because otherwise the game picks a really crappy selection for you. Anyway, you did a few things, but the problem is... Some people could have died. Wrex could have died in the storm on the clone factory if you chose to ventilate him (I didn't), the Council could have died if you chose to let 'em burn (I didn't, but the game assumes I did if I don't import) and either Gunnery Chief Williams or that Kaiden guy HAVE to die shortly after Wrex, so one of them has to be dead. Now, there's a bit of a complication - I think they were both love interested. I played a man, so I was obviously not looking for (or allowed to have) a romantic relationship with another man, e.i. Kadan, so that left Williams, whom I honestly didn't like very much. I don't remember what it was, exactly, that made me not connect with her, but of all the crew, I still liked her the best. Of course, it was either that or that Asari archeologist whose name I still can't remember, but I REALLY don't like the Asari. Call it uncanny valley, but they look and act just human enough to remind me of horribly scheming, dishonest, sinister women. Which is by design, by the way, since most actually are.

Anyway, tangent over. Point is, either Williams or Kadan has to die, and Mass Effect 2 couldn't involve someone who may be dead in any big way, which pretty much gives your old love interest little more than a cameo. In my case, she showed up, yelled at me for working with Cerberus and, you know, not calling her while I was dead, and drops out of the story. She does apologise in an e-mail later, which I actually really appreciated since it made me feel good about not being a dick about it and trying to make as nice as I could. Ashley! I remember her name, right! I didn't LIKE like Ashley, that much is true, but I liked all of my old crew, and it was nice to at least not have hurt her. But that kills a possible romance. And HO BOY is there room for that in here! Oh, boy! Mass Effect 1's scandalous affair? That's kid's stuff. Here, you can hit on LITERALLY half your crew if you're a guy, and on the other half if you're a girl. I imported my own Mass Effect save file, so I was a man and so couldn't hit on Garris the Turan guy or that Assassin guy who was put into the story just for the sake of pleasing the girls, I'm sure.

Again, I'm going off on a tangent. Here's how it goes. The council may or may not have died, so even though they were alive, they only really gave me one cutscene, shunted me off to get out of their hair and never showed up again. Ashley/Kadan may or may not be alive, so she/he only shows up to talk and then disappears. Wrex does play a SLIGHTLY more major role, in that you can talk to him, but even he mostly just sits on a throne and talks in a voice several octaves lower than any voice person should be allowed to live with without being showered in gold and diamonds (Pax, I'm looking at you here!). Joker does show up, though, which is pretty cool, because he's practically the only one who brings any real wit to the game. "Yeah, the old Normandy did just fine without some AI reminding me the airlock is ajar!" Yeah, about that...

I keep hinting at it, so here it goes. The game starts off with you dying as a heather to unknown ship blasts the Normandy in half. You have a choice to save Joker or not save Joker, but since there's an AI on board, I guess it doesn't matter. Basically, everyone survives, the ship is totaled and you burn up on reentry into the planet below. Except Cerberus find your body and spend the next two years rebuilding you. Yeah, Cerberus! Remember them? Neither do I. OK, yeah, I've heard the name and I'm sure they did something bad in the original game, but everyone's talking about them like they danced a poka with the devil or something. You're introduced to the Illusive Man, a guy who has cybernetic-looking eyes, is always standing against the backdrop of what looks like a star and makes it a point of being a dick in a sort of passive-aggressive way that tries to convince you you're doing the right thing for working with him. You end up doing his work anyway, because, again, the galaxy is full of incompetent idiots and only Cerberus will give you the money. And you can pretty much avoid doing anything illicit, too. That, and verbally assassinating the Illusive Man every time he opens his mouth just feels so good! The game does do a good job of presenting him like soft-spoken bad guy, even though he's helping you. Cerberus are human extremist criminals, basically, and they want the galaxy for humans. Because I'm a good, tolerant guy who likes to oogle... To share the universe with aliens, I had to shut him up pretty much all the time. And snatching his toy from him right at the end was the best. More on that in a bit.

So what's the point of this, you may ask? Why retell all this within a spoilers tag? As I see it, I have two choices - write this all down or keep cycling it through my head. And since I'd like to sleep tonight (for a change), I've chosen to write it down and place it here. Feel free to disregard. But I'm not done yet.

See, this whole thing revolves around me being an idiot. Here's the context - the game gives you very clear indications of what each line of dialogue actually means, since the text attached to them is so vague. You have the old "wheel of decision" split in six. Top right is usually the good guy answer that progresses the conversation, right middle is neutral and bottom right is what I like to refer to as the "dick choice," as that allows you to be an unrepentent dick very much every time the option exists. I used this option only twice, both times out of necessity, both times in the worst possible moment and both times I regretted it. The left side tends to be extra information options to ask questions and expand on plot points, but... Not always. Sometimes picking an option from there takes the conversation in a new direction. And that good guy answer? Not always so good. Sometimes, in fact, it can get you in real trouble. Specifically because it replaces "good" with "flirt" when the opportunity arises. And it's not like I didn't see these opportunities when they arose. I just ignored them and followed what I thought the game saw as the best choice. You'd think I'd have learned from the first game, but no... And, yeah, that kind of bummed me out. In fact, it makes me want to replay the game from scratch, but NO WAY am I rescanning all those damn planets. If I start over, I'm doing so with a resource and money cheat. The game is fun. The micromanagement... Not so much.

See, here's the thing here - the crew of the old Normandy has scattered. In my case, Kadan is dead because he was poorly written and I didn't really bond with him, Ashley is alive but put on a bus, T'Soni! That's what her name was, that Asari archeologist! T'Soni is alive, but suddenly evil or misguided and stuck doing something else (I managed to help her out without incurring too many renegade points) so she can't join you. Undor Wrex has had his butt glued to a throne and is incapable of getting up and Tali'Zora Nar Raya and Garris are in "on them in a bit" territory. Basically, half the people are missing, and you have to pick up a zillion new recruits that Cerberus has picked for you. Among them are such charming people as a convicted murderer, an assassin, a hit man (redundant, but oh, well), a cloned lizard-man and the replacement for Ashley and Kaidan - Black Man and White Woman. I honestly don't remember their names, the "standard" crew never stood out to me because they try to make them so deep they end up hollow. The woman may or may not have been called Miranda and she's a Cerberus operative who has a little sister and REALLY buck teeth for some odd reason while the man is called Tyler, I think, and is basically an honest, simple soldier whom I could depend on. Depend on to distrust aliens, at least, but oh well.

As for the ones I left out... Garris makes a reappearance when I try to recruit a hit man whom I didn't know was him. Except I knew it was him because the game lays on the suggestion pretty thick, and you had to know him from Mass Effect to put it all together. I did, of course, and I'm proud to say that while Garris has back-slid into his darker vigilante side, he still remains an honourable Turian and is actually written with a bit more wisdom and experience behind his back. He is also, and I'm POSITIVE on this one, a possible love interest for a female player. The last bit of conversation he gave me before he got stuck permanently unable to talk because he was recalibrating the plot device was quite suggesting of what was to follow up. Luckily, Male Shepard just shook his head a Garris' strangely erotic past tale and that was that. As well as him, Tali makes a reappearance, this time as Tali'Zora Vas Neemas, apparently having passed her rite and become an honourable member of a ship, the Neemas. She shows up once but can't join Shepard, though she is glad to see him, and shows up again when Shepard has to drag her ass out of a SERIOUS war zone. To be fair, I, as a player, found it to be a particularly heart-warming mission for a few reasons. Let me explain.

First of all, Tali was practically the only character I liked from the original Mass Effect. I can't really fault the rest for their writing, as they did come off like real individuals, just... Not individuals I could really connect with. OK, Garris was a decent guy, and I can see why they brought him back, but the others were all written with far too much... "Punch" in their character. Tali was the only one written as genuine and affectionate, whereas pretty much everybody else was grunts obsessed with their own problems. So imagine my shock when, upon bringing Tali on board, the ship pshychologist (don't ask) told me she might like Shepard. "Hmm..." I thought. "This could be interesting." See, Quarians live in their suits because of their terribly weakened immune systems, so no-one has seen one outside of a suit in probably 400 years. Yeah, in retrospect, I should have caught the hint when I overheard a conversation about "mating problems" a Quarian was having as the game beating me over the head with a big sign. To be honest, passing through that bar for the two-dozenth time, it did dawn on me, but only after the psychologist suggested it.

And here's where the problems began. I was playing the game like a zombie, picking "the best" option for every conversation and overriding my saves, when I realised I'd somehow had Shepard develop relationships with three women. Yeah... I'm not really proud of myself there. But this was my own big mistake, as I suddenly fell into the old mindset I'd developed back when I still played Bishujo games, in that each character's storyline is separate and they never meet or interact with anyone but the protagonist. That's not how it worked out in Mass Effect 2, and I blame myself for being an idiot and not seeing it coming. I have excuses, but really - I screwed up. I ended up feeling stupid before one woman and getting told "Fuck off!" consistently by the other as I lost ability to speak with her. That... Didn't feel good. In fact, I think that sucked in a specifically nasty way that haunted me for a full day. I didn't even like this one, I just went with the game's suggestions until it was too late, and it seems like the developers thought of everything.

In the end, though, I have to give the game credit - IT IS NOT RACIST! Sure, I was human, but the Mass Effect game never stopped me from hitting on aliens. In fact, it damn well encouraged me to do, with a ship psychiatrist that basically had one purpose only - to deliver exposition on ship mates as they come in. As I said, the only one I really liked in the old Mass Effect was Tali, and the new game didn't change. And again, she was the only one written with any real affection that I didn't have to have Shepard talk around in circles. Tali has the tendency to confide in Shepard, and unlike every other crewmember's mission which is basically "Take me there, solve my problem, thank you, now fuck off!" Tali did sound grateful in a much more genuine way. With the others, I was "fixing" them, getting their loyalty so they could develop a new "loyalty power." With Tali, it was more like saving her.

And you know what pisses me off the most? She did end up taking her mask off for Shepard, and he got a good look at her face (and I assume the rest of her body), BUT I DIDN'T! Forget the "clothed sex" scene from the original Mass Effect! I wanted to know what Quarians look under their suits! And while I'd be the first to cheer at a love scene (this one was practically nothing), that's not what I wanted here. The whole time, all I could see through that helmet were glowing eyes and a bit of a nose. I'm curious, damn it!

But enough about Tali before I creep someone out. The rest of the crew isn't as interesting, but they are worth a look. Miranda, the white woman, is a Cerberus operative sent to observe and assist Shepard, but she's running away from her father that genetically engineered her to be the perfect biotic and perfect temptress. Why he chose to give her buck teeth and a square jaw if that were the case I do not know, but I guess her father was a boobs kind of guy. And who knows, maybe I'm an idiot. There's no shortage of evidence to support that. Her "thing" is that she wants to protect her cloned sister from her father experimenting on her, and there's a friend who betrayed her in the way. Tlyer, the black guy, is basically a chiselled macho man in a skintight suit who doesn't say or do much of anything. His "thing" is that he actually has something interesting going on about him - his father was dead only he isn't and his ship is broadcasting a distress beacon after ten years. Turns out they crashed on a planet where the plants make you stupid so his father turned the survivors into his own tribe to worship him like a god. Oops! Have to stop the guy from ventilating his father, but he takes it in his stride. Not like he really needed it.

The "murderer," Jack, is actually a woman (you know, like in Pitch Black? As if unmodified Shepard didn't look like Vin Diesel enough!) covered in tattoos from head to toe who wears pants that I swear have a belt line that's below her crotch and a strap harness for a top. Yeah. She's a pretty cut-n-paste "bad seed" or "damaged goods" or however you want to work that angle, and "fixing" her involves travelling to the place where they experimented on her and blowing it up. Whatever helps, right? I made the SERIOUS mistake of not handling the situation well when she finally opened up, and if there's one thing I regret in the whole game, that's it. Such a waste... There is a pretty amusing Salarian doctor whose name I forgot who talks fast, hates prepositions and is aparently responsible for the Genophage - the engineered genetic disease that's slowly killing the Krogans. His story is best described as "accepting responsibility for it" and has him try to save, then try to kill an old colleague, but ultimately settles down. There is the requisite Krogan, but not the old man scientist Shepard is sent to bring in, but a tank-bred clone super soldier Krogan who calls himself Grunt. Charming. His "thing" is learning that being perpetually grumpy is not a disease. That's how all Krogan are. Krogan aren't that deep. What's left... There's an assassin of a species I don't remember the name of who's dying (which I helped - it was an accident!), is somewhat spiritual, and has a son he's trying to take care of. His story really isn't very interesting. Like I said - he's just there because the game needed a mysterious hottie alien.

That leaves Garris and Tali. Garris has this "thing" where his team of vigilantes was wiped out, and I had to have Shepard stop him from killing for vengeance. AGAIN! He never learns. Tali, as I mentioned, is in trouble not over insecurities, but because she's accused of treason. It's a long story, but what saving her does isn't so much to "fix" her as it is just makes her get closer to Shepard. I'm happy to see at least ONE member of the Normandy survived without backsliding in character development.

Oh, and there's also a Geth robot who joins us, calling itself Legion because the Geth don't have individuality. Understandably, not everyone agrees with it. See, this is where things get complicated. To explain his story, I need to lay down the plot.

Sovereign is dead, but the Galaxy tries to believe that the Reaper threat doesn't exist and that Sovereign was a Geth creation. He wasn't. What's more, the Geth that fought alongside Saren Arterius and Sovereign were a very small section of the full Geth population, something like 10% (scary!), who branched off and are now called Heretics. The original, apparently much more civil Geth, want nothing to do with the Reapers and don't want others defining their existence, which is a noble cause. And so, Legion helps take out a Geth outpost and convert or destroy the Geth heretics ("right choice" option was to convert them, so I went with that). I found Legion inside the husk of an old, dead Reaper that wasn't actually dead and was causing all sorts of trouble. But it fell into a star, so who cares? Anyway, I might have had more to do with the Geth, but I got him too late and ran out of "game" to speak with him. Pity.

Oh, and there's also one more that I ran out of steam to talk about.

The game is interesting, in that it gives you options and consequences for taking or not taking them. In fact, it gives you so many options and all of them seem to have some consequence, along with a loading tip saying "Your actions in Mass Effect 2 could have dire consequences in Mass Effect 3!" that it can be overwhelming. For the most part, however, the result of these options is just a pat on the back e-mail from someone thanking you and nothing more. The decisions affecting the final battle, however... Let me put it like this - people will die only if you screw up, and the game lets you know it.

For instance, the final fight against the Collectors (I'll explain) clearly makes it obvious what's working and what isn't. I'm getting shot at when someone says "Let's hope the new armour plating holds up." and I'm thinking "Oh, right! I installed better armour! Clever me!" Then the computer says the ship's shields are not designed to take direct impacts from large debris, and Joker responds "Good thing we upgraded them, then!" The Normandy made it out of that scrape with minimal damage. Without the shields, engines, armour and guns, I'm sure I would have lost people. A LOT of people.

And it keeps going like that. We split up into two teams, with one specialist crawling through the pipes on a "suicide" mission. Miranda warns that we need to send a tech-savvy person, but I sent the assassin who... Well, wasn't. He opened the door, but when it failed to close, he tried to close it by hand and got a rocket in the head. The person I chose to lead the other team, however, carried them through. I didn't have a save recent enough or I'd have retried, and I'm sure a tech-savvy character would have closed the door in time. Later on I need a biotic, so I pick the Justicar - an ancient Asari super-soldier whose had 1000 years of experience. She keeps a bubble around us for a long time, but starts running out of juice towards the end. I'm worried she'll drop dead and we'll lose her, but she's too tough for that, blasts the enemies and survives. Garris, whom I set to guard the other side, carries the other team through, makes it inside and takes a shot to the gut. I'm worried he's dead, but Shepard just pats him on the shoulder and they move on. Tough bastard, that Garris. At the same time. Grunt, the Krogan, escorts the surviving civilians back to the Normandy and doesn't get killed. He's good at that.

So, yeah! My decisions mattered. My allies died not as shock deaths in scripted sequences. They died because of my mistakes. It always sucks when you lose an important character in an end-game cutscene, but I'm used to that. It bugs me, but I get over it. But when I lose a character because I let him down? That sucks.

Finally, to end this endless tirade, the Collectors. The collectors are strange aliens who live in the centre of the universe, have advanced technology and abduct humans. Turns out they're what's left of the Proteans after the Reapers got through with them. They're trying to rebuild a Reaper in Shepard's image and are kidnapping people to liquefy and build the thing with. That's what gives us a final boss - the "human-like Reaper." It's a crappy boss, but it's still better than Saren's altered state.

I really liked the story of Mass Effect 2, but it lacked the punch of the old one. The universe never knew, because we just blew up a base no-one knew was there where no-one saw it. The Reaper threat in the first game was real, pressing and really scary, but the Collector threat in this one lacked weight. It's like one of those sequels where, because the bad guy is dead, some other, lesser villain takes over and you have to deal with him. And you end up fighting not a true bad guy, but some kind of odd construct that isn't even finished. The scope of the story could have been a lot greater. But again - the story is what it is. The game is good enough to where the factology of the story is only a distant secondary imporatance to the beauty of a presentation which only ever so slightly falters right at the very end.

So, ten points!

And, wow... That was a lot to type up. I know this won't get read, but that's OK. It felt good to write it :)

[T5]

""When was the last time a game made you feel like an idiot, yet without making you hate the game for doing it?""
Guild Wars: Prophesies.
At first I just did the missions in a haphazard way, ignoring the story, just focusing on mission objectives.
But suddenly I noticed that all the missions in the game were actually parts of a huge great story and what I did was that I created a new character so I could go back and read it all over again, and wow - it was well worth it.

I', sorry for your "clothed sex" scene trauma. It's like watching a movie and you know the actor is viewing the full glory of a pretty actress while we only see the back. I agree, it's unfair and should be a good basis for suing the film company.
Have you tried Halo?
If you have are the games similar?

[Samuel Tow]

At first I just did the missions in a haphazard way, ignoring the story, just focusing on mission objectives.
But suddenly I noticed that all the missions in the game were actually parts of a huge great story and what I did was that I created a new character so I could go back and read it all over again, and wow - it was well worth it.

That's not exactly what I meant, though it's related. I treated the game and its lore in a "devil may care" way, in that I just trusted the game to make all the decisions. Since decisions and consequences ultimately rest on me, it was irresponsible of me to do what I did. And I paid for it.

I', sorry for your "clothed sex" scene trauma. It's like watching a movie and you know the actor is viewing the full glory of a pretty actress while we only see the back. I agree, it's unfair and should be a good basis for suing the film company.

It's not about the sex. I wanted to see what a Quarian actually looked like without her visor and gas mask. No such luck, the game just didn't let me. I will admit, a large part of that IS attraction, but a large part as well is just pure unbridled curiosity. It's something that has been tantalisingly left out as an open question and asked several times, and it's billed as a big reveal... Only it isn't. It's kind of someone removing his mask to reveal... Another mask underneath. I wanted to see what design they had in mind for Tali, and I guess I'll have to wait for Mass Effect 3 for that. I do have some hope they'll invent a "cure" for the Quarian problem.

Have you tried Halo?
If you have are the games similar?

I have played Halo and, no, Mass Effect is nothing even remotely like Halo in any way, shape or form. Halo is a FPS game, and very much the next best thing to a rail shooter in terms of linear game progression. Mass Effect, but comparison, while it IS an action game, is a mix between an old-style "speak with everyone" adventure and a more traditional Gears of War style over-the-shoulder third person shooter. While the game DOES have action, it's designed and intended to be a largely story-driven game, with TONS of full-voice dialogue, lots of options to be either a good guy or a bad guy and serious consequences for the things you pick. If you've ever played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, it's a lot like that in many ways. If you've ever played Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age: Origins, it's kind of like that, but with much better action and a space opera setting, rather than boring run-of-the-mill high fantasy.

In a sentence: Comparing Mass Effect to Halo is like comparing Neverwinter Nights to Duke Nukem 3D.

[T5]

Thanks Sam, I must confess I feel the urge to try it some day after this review. Good writing as always Sam.

[Samuel Tow]

If you haven't played the original Mass Effect, I would STRONGLY suggest you do that first. It's a really good game (and more of a traditional RPG than the sequel), and it's actually an integral part of the same story. You don't strictly need to have played the original, as you inherit the entirety of the old Codex entries of lore, background info and plot, so the game is self-contained enough. But Shepard in Mass Effect 2 has a LOT of history that the game doesn't in the slightest let you choose. If you import a Mass Effect 1 save file, then all the decisions you made in the original game carry over and should have more meaning to you, but if you start a brand new Mass Effect 2 character, the game basically decides for you and gives you... I don't actually know what. I imported my old save anyway.

Again, you can play through the game just fine without having played the original, but you'll be constantly meeting people who go "Oh, hey, Shepard! Remember me?" and you'll be getting e-mails to the effect of "I just wanted to thank you for helping me get my wife's body back." You also have an entire full crew from the original Normandy that you'll meet pretty much in full, and some even recruit, which REALLY benefits from you having met (and possibly romanced) them before. If you're looking, start with the original Mass Effect. It has pretty good gameplay, amazing graphics and a really, REALLY good story. Mass Effect 2 is better, of course, but it's part of a whole. While you CAN just play the sequel, I wouldn't.

[snooz]

I'll wait for the movie in regards to what Samuel Tow said .. too much to read!

[Samuel Tow]

Given that video game movies always suck, I'd rather they didn't make one, personally.

Besides, so much in Mass Effect is left up to the player to decide, it's just not possible to make it into a movie and replicate the way everyone played through the game, because everyone played in a different way. And if they decide to pick an actor for Shepard, that's just asking for trouble, given how familiar the player gets with his own selection of face and... Well, gender. I have no reason to believe such a movie would do anything other than piss me off.

[T5]

I must confess that I liked the Doom movie.
Sure its not Oscar material, but you have to take the film for what it is, and it was a fun scifi/horror/action film.
They managed to capture the essence of the game, and still create a story for people who had never played it.

[Samuel Tow]

Movies base on anything in particular are going to suffer from the backlash that they weren't like the source material. That much is a given. That's kind of why I believe a Mass Effect movie, at least one following the Shepard storyline, would be a capital mistake. The games are famous enough to where such backlash would be astronomical, pun not intended.

I don't actually mind mind a movie set in the Mass Effect universe during the events with the Reapers, as the writing for the different races, politics, histories and so forth is incredibly well-crafted. I just wish such a movie would stray FAR away from redefining anything player-defined in the actual games.

[snooz]

Nono I meant based on what you wrote Samuel Tow, video game based movies usually suck yeah :) The only one I've seen that was reasonably ok was the Resident Evil ones ..