Fittingly i guess, the last review for this game is my own...
An entertainment experience like no other.
Let me start by saying that my first playthrough last over 70 hours and was as complete as i could make it - i went to every planet, did all the side-missions, loyalty missions and main missions. upon finishig i reflected for about 20 minutes on the events that unfolded and immediately started a 2nd playthrough, i guess you can see where this is going...
Story.
The main story follows the now-familiar Bioware pattern - start, recruit a disparate group of individuals to accomplish an impossible task. it worked wonderfully in Mass effect and even better here. Mass Effect 2 is a huge game, and the main story runs, fairly simply, right through the middle, on a roller-coaster of the best science fiction adventure to be found this side of avatar (and better than that because you control it). Starting with the destruction of your original ship (a nice in-continuity way of introducing new people and letting exisiting players tinker with their carry-over character), and your death, in a breathtaking sequence of events, encompassing many worlds and stations right up to the ultimate confrontation with the enemy in their own, breathtaking, alien environment.
The main story is only half the attraction here: the squad recruitment and their loyalty missions are the other, even better, half: never before have such a diverse collection of individuals and stunning locations been present in any medium of entertainment, the sheer variety of characters, their depths and the places you will visit simply take your breath away in this game - easily double the number of locations in the first. most "hub" loactions are smaller than in the previous game, but branch off for specific missions that, unfortunately once completed, you cannot revisit, but make no mistake this game is huge, and jam-packed with variety, detail and depth - for that i'd take slightly smaller hub-worlds, anyday. from the dark, depraved, insipid and claustraphobic Omega, to the towering Spires of illium, to the ruins of Tuchunka and beyond this game is a showcase for graphics, almost unparalleled in quality, and untouched in variety, and all at a silky 30FPS - much improved on the first game's sometimes choppy framerates (and probably another reason for having smaller locations).
The squad-mates themselves are all wonderfully drawn, each a real character, with a history and personal motivations - making them loyal and, in some cases, romancing one is essential to your ultimate success (loyalty, not romance - that's just a glorious bonus!). Just talking to each is a joy, on your frequent returns to your ship, and some flesh out the gameworld with hints at massive depth and possible future plots/events. The Normandy II is also a star here, with it's own personality, the ship AI, EDI - a great character that comes into "her" own later on, whilst the ship itself is bigger and much better realised this time around, with 4 levels and plenty to see and do.
A clever mechanism is also that at certain points in the game, you cede control of your next mission to progress the story, at key moments - this propels you along and keeps the story front and centre of the experience, and keeps the narrative going (when you could lose yourself in planet-map grinding hell, which i will come to later), much to the benefit of the game.
The story even shapes itself to a lot of your choices - not just from the first game, but what you choose to do, and in what order during your current run-through - characters can die, side-quests can open up etc. the variety and technical wizardry to get this working coherently is to be applauded. the only disappointment in the story comes at the very end, with the final boss, and it's nature really doesn't make much sense, given what came before.
Gameplay.
Mass effect 2's gameplay has been substantially reworked from Mass Effect (though it's obviously still a 3rd-person shooter) - bringing a similar cover system to Gears of War along the way, in that when you are in combat zones, you can run and slide into cover (or most of the time walk up to it and enter cover, with a button press, and also introducing another ret-con in having an ammo mechanic. Bioware state that this was done for intensity purposes, but i just don't buy it - you can have intensity with clever ai, enemy numbers, good level design etc, you don't need to make enemies bullet sponges or arbitrarily limit the play in any way - this is disappointing compared to the first game, but the cover mechanic is generally much more successful than the very stilted version in Mass effect (except when you change weapon and just stand up for no reason, getting shot to death in the process).
The ammo system also means you will spend a lot of time scouring around for "thermal clips" after fights, often finding them in inappropriate locations (homes?) that don't make much sense, but i guess some concessions have to be made for gameplay reasons. positively, the weapon skills are much more effective (well the better ones anyway) and the ammo types do add a lot to the weapon effects, however there aren't as many types of weapons as before and the upgrades you can get don't seem to do a whole lot other than just make them better, i guess, because they don't ever really change throughout the game after you find them. oddly if you play classes other than a soldier, you (and your squad) are shown using weapons in cut-scenes that you don't actually get to use in-game, which is a little annoying, continuity-wise.
Generally missions are split up into the find-quest/exploration phase on worlds - you can't draw your weapon in these places and you just explore and converse with the fantastic array of character in the game; and the actual missions themselves, where combat is omniprescent and the locations are obviously tailored for them - plenty of crates and cover and warehouses, for example. This is particularly bad on Illium and the Citadel, but there is much more variety to the level design later, but doing these particular places together kinda drove home the arbitrary nature of some of the combat zones, to me.
Conversations however, have been refined from the first, and at certain key points, you can get an icon flashing on your screen to do a certain context-sensitive action - both paragon (good) and renegade (better) at times, they are always well-worth taking for the effect they will have. you will spend a lot of time in conversation in this game - it is an RPG as well, after all, and thankfully every single character in the game is interesting and mostly well-voiced (carrie anne-moss as aria was a little stiff, jennifer hale if you play a female shepard is again totally wrong for the role; but everyone else was brilliant).
You can (and will) spend hours doing the conversations and all the options in the dialogue-wheels, and they are all extremely well-done with excellent characterisation, especially amongst your recruited team-mates _ Mordin being a particular early favourite, and a certain AI later on, hinting at massive things underneath this deep, deep universe. renegade choices are also a lot more effective and maturely-handled than the first game, in which you could come off like an immature ass at times - this time you are a lot more "Vick Mackey/Jack Bauer" and it really shines.
Consequences from the first game and during your playthrough really have an effect - not only on the outcome of the story itself, but on your appearance and the actions of many side-characters and side-quests as well.
Often the choices are not clear-cut good/bad as in the first, and this leads to a lot of deep thinking about the right course of action, often for a longtime after, especially when it comes back to haunt you later-on! the level of maturity and ambiguity is again to be applauded here - it really does show mature storytelling at it's finest.
Travel has also been reworked in the galaxy map/worlds - you no longer use the mako to randomly explore planets - you actually fly a little representation of your ship around systems, and manually scan planets for resources you can use for the upgrades (ship and weapons) and the "N7 missions" which are little segues planetside to accomplish a particular goal. They are normally quite short and linear, but do add a nice variety to the game on top of the amazing main-missions.
They certainly make a nice break from the very tedious planet-scanning which takes an age and uses "probes" which you have to continually re-buy and fuel, which burns as you move from solar-system to solar-system, necessitating again-arbitrary "refuelling tankers" in some systems to replenish you, for a price. Given that your ship is equipped with an AI this time and sensors, why oh why couldn't they do it more effectively than you can, manually? A good 30+ hours of my life was wasted visiting every single planet, and although planet-scanning is enjoyable for a while, it really grates eventually. luckily you dont actually have to visit everywhere or mine every world to get enough resources to get all your upgrades, but obviously it helps tracking down the N7 missions.
Other RPG tropes - upgrades, armour customisation, inventory are a bit hit and miss: unlike the first game, you can't re-equip on the fly (and with reduced items it's not often you'd want to), i have already mentioned upgrades are a bit of a mess - you get them because you should but you have no idea what most of them are and they don't seem to make any difference, although i'm sure they must. Armour is better - unlike a lot of people i don't really want to manage 10 squaddies and constantly tinker with their stuff - auto upgrades and limited outfits work better in that respect (although some - i.e. Jack's are ridiculous for combat situations). Mini-games like hacking caches and safes are still in - better handled than in the first game, although hard to see at times.
Lastly there are the love-interests. Seemingly a lot of gamers have the notion that Bioware games are virtual love-simulators, demanding romance options for certain characters that really should have remained untouchable, however as usual they add an extra dimension to some characters - Miranda is a standout in that respect, although - again as usual - you only get one romance and one romance-sequence per game (with a bit of cuddling post-game).
Again it is the depth of the characterisation that really marks the game out, along with the settings and action. hopefully next time we'll get to carry on romances from either game and it can have more of an effect on gameplay - crewmates remarking on your romance with Miranda, for example, or questioning it's effect on the mission, others being jealous, plus actually carrying the relationship on as an on-going thing, with time together, more conversation, "pillow talk"/whatever to really flesh it out.
Graphics/Audio
The first thing to note is that the score for Mass Effect 2 is probably the best ever - better and more epic than avatar, and leagues above any other game score i have experienced, along with the voice-acting this game is a treat for the eyes and ears.
I have already gone into some of the eye-raping goodness, but it can't really be overstated - this is without a doubt one of the finest and certainly most diverse games ever made, and the Science-fiction locations are a fan's wet-dreams come to life in vivid reality - the scope and locations and details are absolutely top-drawer and overshadow anything from the previous games and 99% of, even, most movies. coupled with the amazing animations - conversations happen in doverse locations, even occasionally whilst moving location, and excellent use of motion-capture, technically this game is simply awesome.
The textures are very-detailed in all areas (except on a few characters' uniforms, oddly mostly Mass effect 1 characters, returning), and some of the locations are vast in scope but still packed with detail, all in HD, and the alien ones look suitably so (and decidely creepy in a few locations). Hair textures are also much-better this time around - particularly with longer styles, like Miranda's. Like the locations, the characters are stars in the looks department, each is intricately detailed and totally unique, from your totally wacky fast-talking scientist, Salarian Mordin Solus, to your eventual AI Geth recruit, Legion - both of these are standouts amongst the cast.
The frame-rate is rock-steady at 30FPs at all times, too, which keeps you involved, especially during the hectic action scenes with various weapons and powers being used and people flying round the screen and having their heads blown-off at times. really you have to experience what i am talking about yourself, but simply put: like Avatar makes 3d at the cinema actually worth it, Mass effect 2 redefines digital acting and science fiction in gaming.
Conclusions.
Much-like the first, the jewel of Mass Effect 2 is its ambitions - the settings, characters, story all tower over the slight imperfections in it's surface - sure the cover system isn't as smooth as gears, and there are frustrating moments when it doesn't work as it should, and the end-boss is a big retcon of what the "big bad" enemy of the series should actually be, but more than anything Mass effect 2 is about the journey and the characters and the loactions, and i can't wait to finish work and get back into that universe everyday.
