RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

Say what you will about Bioware, but they take no task lightly. By any measure Mass Effect was an epic affair, and topping that in a believable fashion – while integrating the characters and choices that made the first game meaningful – must have posed nearly countless problems for the team. To say they pulled it off is a gross understatement; Mass Effect 2 is a vast improvement over its predecessor in nearly every respect and a superb middle chapter in the series.

Mass Effect 2 opens with one hell of a bang. In a harrowing playable intro, Commander Shepard ends up missing and presumed dead after an attack by an unknown alien ship. Fast forward two years, where the paramilitary organization Cerberus has invested untold resources in finding and restoring Shepard. Hardly a group with pure motives, they nonetheless have a very real threat on their hands: human colonies are being abducted wholesale, Cerberus believes the biomechanical race known as the reapers is involved, and Shepard is one of the only people in the galaxy who knows anything about them.

It’s clear from the start that Mass Effect 2 is a labor of love, and that Bioware was listening to fans every step of the way. From the explosive prologue to the character generation-slash-tutorial sequence, great pains have been taken to point out that your choices from the first game mattered. Familiar faces will appear all over the galaxy, and while the overall narrative doesn’t change much, they will remember and react to what you did before. There are default choices for new characters, but you’ll have the option to reconstruct Shepard at the start and answer basic questions about your personality. Imported characters can even alter certain key decisions during said reconstruction. There are benefits to bringing your Shepard over, but with the changes to gameplay and character building, said benefits won’t break the game before it begins. It’s a balancing act, and Bioware handles it skillfully.

Speaking of the gameplay, Mass Effect 2 is superficially similar to its predecessor, but it has a leaner, meaner feel to its combat and controls. The duck-and-cover action of the former has been refined to feel more like a proper third-person shooter, similar to Gears of War or kill.switch. Shepard and crew are more intelligent about seeking out and sticking to cover, and they can vault over or climb certain obstacles quickly. One can always pause the game to select powers and give specific orders. Enemies now have health visibly broken down by shields, armor, and biotic protection; varying ammo types, powers, and tactics work best against each. The change to a traditional ammo-based system via disposable heat sinks is questionable, especially given the low capacity of each sink, but spare clips are all over the place, so it’s usually not a problem.

All right, everybody look cool. Just… try not to look like we’re going to shoot up the place in a second.

Character building and inventory management have been streamlined with an eye towards keeping the player playing, and the changes largely work well. Rather than training up base skills to unlock abilities, players put points directly into abilities and class upgrades. Charm and Intimidate dialogue options are not skill based and now depend solely on your Paragon/Renegade meter; essentially, your overall reputation for settling things calmly or violently. Instead of sorting through a huge pile of guns and equipment, you now buy and research upgrades for individual weapons and overall damage types, with actual new weapons few and far between. The heavy weapons are all fun and fairly well balanced, but new pistols, sniper rifles, and such are all clear improvements over older ones, and there’s no reason to ever switch one out for an older weapon of the same type.

Other gameplay elements have been reworked, and again the changes are mostly for the better. Armor is broken up into individual pieces – legs, shoulders, body, and head, each with its own bonuses – which you can mix and match as you please. Scanning planets from orbit now involves players panning a sensor over the surface and watching a meter for mineral deposits. The resources are then used directly in researching upgrades, though the amount needed can cause the novelty of searching to wear thin. Hacking and decryption are now done directly by Shepard, no skill required, and the minigames for each are both easy to figure out and quick to do. The conversation wheel remains intact, but you can now occasionally interrupt someone with a Paragon or Renegade action, usually stopping them from doing something stupid or starting a fight early. The interrupts are almost always worth doing, if only for the pleasure of shutting someone up in the middle of their big speech.

Visually, the game has come a long way in two years. Some of the improvements are huge, such as the variety and color of the various worlds you visit. Gone are prefab dungeons and drab planet surfaces. From the asari-dominated corporate world of Illium to a criminal space station and nightclub built in a hollowed-out asteroid, each location is unique, colorful, and packed with detail. The more important improvements are the smaller touches, as real effort has gone into proper body and facial animation. It’s still not perfect, but Bioware has all but nailed the ability to render emotion through posture and gestures, even with aliens. Eyes twitch and brows arch believably, nervous characters wring their hands or shift their weight, and so on. It’s not new technology, per se, but the Mass Effect universe looks more alive than it ever has.

Shepard is one short click away from being Space Jack Bauer.

Neither gameplay nor graphics are free of flaws, but there is no denying the quality of Mass Effect 2‘s acting and music. Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale reprise their roles as male and female Shepard; backed by excellent writing for the various dialogue options, they sound better than ever, even if the voice doesn’t always fit the player-created face. Martin Sheen lends his unmistakable voice and likeness to the secretive Illusive Man, the head of Cerberus. Various celebrities and recurring actors join in as well – Steve Blum probably just shows up whenever somebody’s recording something – though your squad and a lot of incidental characters quite often steal the show. The soundtrack features familiar tracks alongside solid ambient music, with intense bass-heavy electronic orchestras when things get loud and busy.

Some design decisions fall under a “your mileage may vary” clause. Unlike Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 clearly divides its gameplay into towns and dungeons. Combat zones are rigidly linear, demarcated by after-action reports that break down mission results and rewards. To their credit, the areas are far more interesting than Mass Effect‘s copy-pasted ships, mines, and such, but there’s no mistaking this for anything but gamespace. Planetary exploration has been excised almost completely, with surface landings limited to direct drops into the above linear mission areas. And however the thermal clip system is justified in-game, instead of presenting an alternative means of cooling the gun it simply replaces guns that don’t need reloading with guns that do.

Design choices aside, the game does have a few problems. On the technical side, spoken lines occasionally play after a few seconds of delay, and it is not rare to see Shepard clip through a barrier and get stuck on a railing or box. A couple imported character choices from ME1 didn’t carry over properly, most notably the results of “The Fan” quest on Citadel; this reviewer chose a Paragon solution, and ME2 assumed the Renegade option instead. Party AI, though improved, still has issues. Targets out of your party’s line of sight but otherwise nearby may be ignored, and your team still has trouble grasping the big picture, i.e. noticing when they’ve been surrounded and moving to a better position.

On the story side, the bulk of the game is recruiting and gaining the loyalty of various specialists. Plot missions apart from this are sometimes hampered by the linear design of action levels or contrived circumstances. One particularly egregious example has players board a vessel in search of a certain item, only for that objective to fall by the wayside shortly after boarding. Coincidentally, players stumble across the item they needed while making a hasty exit without actually looking for it. A later scene has Shepard and the entire playable party, instead of the two you are normally limited to, board a shuttle for some unspecified mission, giving a confusing pretext to the event that follows.

In this screenshot: a rookie Zerg player doesn’t understand how rushing is supposed to work.

Thankfully, the game’s few flaws are negligible compared to the strength of its characters. Players will have their own favorites of course, but none of the cast is ignored or underdeveloped. Mordin, a salarian scientist, at first seems just a genius-level eccentric, but he has brilliantly written and acted moments of silliness, wit, and honest doubt. Jacob plays the group’s straight man but brings a lot of warmth and personality to the role. Tali, everyone’s favorite quarian from the first game, shows a lot of emotion despite being hidden behind a mask. Even seemingly simple characters are rather well developed, like the krogan, Grunt, or the asari warrior-monk, Samara; pun not intentional as regards to Samara’s outfit. Some of the bridge crew from the Normandy are back – most notably Joker, who’s a lot more talkative and genuinely funny – and the new additions fast become welcome ones.

It’s the strength of the crew that gives weight to the missions, even the suicide mission you spend the entire game getting ready for. Some dig at each other, some at Shepard, and some just roll with the punches, but all have something interesting to say at some point. Their loyalty quests vary in quality and scope; some are straight-up slugfests, while others are dialogue-heavy encounters with old friends and family. However you choose to handle them, these go a long way in establishing each member of the team as an individual, instead of just another name on the roster. Romance options will carry over, and both genders have a few new possibilities to boot, some surprisingly endearing. Shepard also carries a good deal of emotional investment, as the decisions you made back in ME1 have affected both the world and the Commander.

Beyond the crew, the game is littered with memorable, likable, and well written characters. Your surviving party is all over the place, and some of them have grown a lot depending on how you treated them; expect to be surprised by what Liara’s been up to. Important NPCs are often more than just one-note quest givers: a hardened C-Sec officer proves surprisingly helpful and understanding; an asari bartender shows keen, if cynical, insight into her people’s culture; and so on. Even advertisements and overheard dialogue are frequently amusing, like movie previews for a Shaft-a-like hanar Spectre, or a turian putting fairly obvious moves on a female quarian only to get friend-zoned. Subtle shout-outs are all over the place, from a game salesman slyly referencing various MMOs, to krogans going on about quads, to Tali ordering her combat drone, Chikktika, to “go for the optics.”

Make no mistake, Mass Effect 2 is an ideal sequel, and it gets within shouting distance of perfection at times. Bioware was listening, and they went well out of their way to improve the game. Not all the changes may sit right with some players, but short of people who flat-out don’t like action games or space epics, there are very few people this won’t appeal to in some way. It’s clever, it’s deep, it has charm to spare, and it’s one of the most fun action-RPGs to date. Don’t miss this one.

This review was played to completion and reviewed via a copy purchased through Steam, with only the “Zaeed” and “Normandy Crash Site” DLC added after installation.