Reviewed by Jooles Clements
Mass Effect 2 is one of the most eagerly anticipated games of recent times. The second of a promised trilogy from developers Bioware, ME2 follows on from the flawed genius of the first game in the series.
Genius because the art direction, graphics and immersive (though clichéd) narrative were stunning; flawed because of some serious graphics loading issues, repetitive side quests, sometimes-clunky combat and disappointing downloadable content.
The developers promised to not only fix the technical problems but make some of the changes that customers wanted in the follow-up game, and boy have they delivered. The graphics are exceptional, both in general game play and the interactive cut scenes and, as far as I can tell most of the annoying bugs that riddled the first game are absent. There is already some useful downloadable content – including an extra recruit for your team of specialists – and the combat has been greatly improved.
Perhaps the worst memories for Mass Effect fans were the dreaded elevators designed to replace boring loading screens. Their counterparts in ME2 are much quicker and have been replaced by some nifty wireframe graphic loading pages but they are still unacceptably slow and get pretty annoying after a few hours of play.
But what really made both Mass Effect and ME2 so special was the immersive storyline: both share a pretty generic ‘hero-saves-the-universe’ type tale – I won’t go into details as to do so would spoil the best part of the game – but think The Empire Strikes Back to get an idea of the turn your story takes in the sequel. And it is ‘your story’: your interactions and decisions have consequences that make it personal as you begin to care about what happens to you and your team. The game allows you to get as involved as much or as little as you want with a huge amount of character detail if you care to explore it, so it’s great for the RPG-heads out there.
The action sequences are challenging enough and the combat is exciting enough that it should keep FPS fans happy too. Perhaps the game best fits the RPS (Role-Playing Shooter) tag coined by the recent Gearbox release Borderlands since much of the traditional RPG material – such as leveling up and equipment management – has been greatly simplified.
If you’re not too worried about the story you can skip through it pretty quickly but to do so is to miss out on ME2’s most exceptional quality. The story itself is fairly generic and unlikely to win any awards (though I said that of Avatar’s hackneyed story and one-dimensional script and James Cameron now has a Golden Globe for ‘Best Drama’ in his office) but your choices in the game make it incredibly immersive.
There are also some great touches besides the spectacular visuals of the Mass Effect universe including some great voice acting, lead by the unmistakable voice of Martin Sheen as the Elusive Man. For example, choices you made in the original game can affect your game play in ME2 if you import a completed save which serves to further engage you in the story. The Vangelis-esque soundtrack is pretty cool too but the assumption that techno and hard house will be the club music of the future is a little depressing.
All in all this is one of the best games around that improves on almost all of the original’s faults and continues an epic science-fiction saga in a beautifully rendered universe. But for those who don’t see the point of a game where 50 percent of your time is spent talking there is little to make you suddenly fall in love.
Mass Effect 2
:: Publisher: Electronic Arts
:: Developer: Bioware
:: Format: Xbox 360
:: Rating: R13