Review: Mass Effect 2 331
- Title: Mass Effect 2
- Developer: BioWare
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- System: Windows, Xbox 360
- Reviewer: Soulskill
- Score: 9/10
The Story
Mass Effect 2 starts off with a bang, immediately putting Commander Shepherd in rather significant peril and setting him to work with Cerberus, an organization of questionable morality that made a brief appearance in ME1. Shepherd often has reason to doubt Cerberus's trustworthiness and stated goals, but has little choice since they're the only ones who seem to be fighting the latest threat to humanity. The conflict between Shepherd and Cerberus's leader, the Illusive Man, is a plot thread that runs through the entire game, and you're given quite a bit of control over how trusting or defiant you want to be. After settling in aboard your ship, you're given a kick in the pants to begin recruiting a new team.
The storytelling in Mass Effect 2 can be divided into three discrete groups of quests — primary plot missions, squadmate missions, and side missions. When you go to recruit a member of your team, you'll do a mission that frees them from whatever they're currently involved with. Later on, each team member will pester you once to solve another problem of theirs, at which point they'll become loyal to you. In fact, after helping a few of them, you'll start anticipating when the next crewmate will come nag you for help. Fortunately, their missions are varied and interesting, and provide good background for the supporting cast. These stories are often quite personal, and in typical BioWare style, aren't afraid of setting up some complex moral dilemmas, which you can choose to solve in several different ways. Shepherd and his team deal with a broad spectrum of emotions, from compassion and regret to contempt and vengeance.
The side missions are minor plot lines you run into while exploring or doing more important things. Some are trivial, like finding a lost item or slapping somebody around; others have more depth, tasking you with determining guilt or innocence, making an arrangement with local criminals, or stumbling across characters you met in the first game. The main story itself follows up on events in ME1, and the scale is just as epic. The Paragon/Renegade system is back, but different. If you respond to an NPC in a typical "good guy" way, you'll gain Paragon points. If you're a jerk to them, you'll gain Renegade points. As you accrue enough of these points, dialog options open up that can allow you to persuade NPCs more strongly, either by appealing to their better nature or intimidating them. You no longer have to spend talent points on it.
Another nice change is the inclusion of quick-time events during cinematic scenes. Normally, I deplore QTEs, but BioWare did it right. At a potential turning point in the story, you'll get a flashing icon on your screen which will allow you to do something particularly good or particularly evil. The decision you're making isn't spelled out for you, but it's often obvious from the situation; for example, if a character you don't trust is inching toward a weapon and the red Renegade icon pops up, clicking it will make Shepherd end the conversation with a bullet. Similarly, the Paragon icon might pop up to give you the chance to stop a friend from doing something they'll regret. There's plenty of time to react to these, and no button mashing involved; it's just a simple way to move the story in the direction you prefer.
Of course, the success of the story rests on the characters, and the strength of the characters comes from voice acting, animation, and dialogue. The writing is very consistent; all of the major characters have distinct personalities and histories, and the different ways in which Shepherd can react to situations all come across as authentic. Some of your lines sound corny, but those are usually the ones that are supposed to sound corny. Far more often, you or your squadmates will sound like action heroes. The voice acting in Mass Effect 2 is excellent. BioWare has proven throughout the years that they take their dialogue seriously and do it well. What struck me was that the actors all sounded more confident in their readings, either through their own familiarity with the games or because BioWare got enough experience with the first game to provide clearer direction. Or both. In addition to the big name talent doing the main characters, there are also a surprising number of familiar voices doing smaller roles (was.. was that Worf?!).
What surprised me most was the quality of the animations. First of all, scenes are framed like you'd expect in a movie, and as any film buff will tell you, good framing makes a huge difference in how a story is viewed. Second, the characters are always doing something, even the ones that aren't talking; leaning against a desk, folding their arms, wincing or shaking their head. They aren't just static props. Third, the body movement and facial animations are quite good. Several times during the game, a character will react to something with only a facial expression, and not necessarily a simple one like shock. I think it's cool that video game characters look more like people than textured stick figures.
Gameplay
Combat in Mass Effect 2 is as simple or as complicated as you'd like to make it. Several of the old game mechanics have been cleaned up. You run around with a shield and a health bar, both of which quickly regenerate if you stop firing and stop getting shot for several seconds. This makes for very little downtime during fights. As you level you get talent points to spend on special abilities. Shepherd and each of your shipmates has a different set of skills — knockbacks, ammo specialties, the ability to hack mech enemies (one character makes a Unix reference) — and you get to choose which ones to level up. You can hotkey special abilities for Shepherd and your squadmates, and you can revive your allies if they fall in battle using medi-gel. Mass Effect 2 uses a cover system, and it's one of the more responsive systems I've played. Hitting your cover button by a corner will make you turn your back to it, and you can peek around with your gun to fire. Similarly, you can crouch behind a low barrier and fire over it. It's an intuitive system, and it almost always does exactly what you expect.
Unlike the first game, you don't have an inventory; just a selection of weapons and abilities. You can still upgrade your weapons and armor, but it's handled differently. As you move through various maps, you'll come across data pads, laptops, and dead foes that you can scan for upgrade information. Once you're back aboard your ship, you can spend resources to research any of these bits of information, and they'll do things like make your machine guns more powerful, or give you extra shielding against certain weapon types. It's much less of a pain to deal with than ME1's inventory. You can also easily control your squadmates, telling them where to go and which abilities to use on whom. The AI is reasonably smart; it can win a lot of fights by itself on the lower difficulties levels. Speaking of which — if you're fairly experienced with other shooters, you'll probably want to bump the difficulty up to the second highest setting in order to make fights interesting. On the other hand, if the fights are just part of the story for you, leaving it on Normal or Casual will let you go through the game with ease.
Ammo (sorry, heat sinks) is plentiful in this game. You'll never be in danger of running out, but you go through it quickly enough that you can't just rely on one weapon all the time. The loadout is pretty standard for a shooter; pistol, shotgun, machine gun and sniper rifle (with variations on each), and also a variety of "heavy weapons," which are fun, but you can only carry one at a time. I didn't find myself using the shotgun too often, but the other guns were fine. One complaint I have about the combat was the layout of the maps. It's always quite obvious when you're about to get ambushed; you'll round a corner and there will be a bunch of low obstacles on the ground, the perfect height for crouching behind. Any time it looks like you're ready to run the 100m hurdles, aliens are about to start shooting at you. The pacing of the combat, on the other hand, was good — another area that showed a director's touch. Individual missions are generally short — 15-30 minutes, perhaps — and the cinematics are interspersed with the combat such that you aren't doing either long enough to get bored.
The UI is well-refined; anything in the environment you need to interact with will be outlined, and extraneous information is kept to a minimum. Your abilities gray out when they're cooling down, and the icons fill in to show you how long is left on the timer. The relevant health bars are always apparent — yours, your team's, and your target's. Your aiming reticle shrinks if you stand still and fire from cover and expands if you continue firing or move around, but either way it's quite easy to see where your bullets are going. You can pause combat to switch weapons, activate abilities or order your squadmates around.
Throughout your missions you'll find bank vaults, doors, and computers that need to be "hacked" or "bypassed." Doing so brings up a short mini-game where you either connect circuits by matching the symbols on them (a la Memory) or match code segments from a scrolling list of lookalikes. These mini-games are cute the first couple times, but they never get harder or more complicated, so they get repetitious. Similarly, the mineral-gathering system is best in small doses. You gather mineral resources by flying your ship to different planets, scanning them, and launching probes. The trouble is that the scanning is done manually. You hold down a button and pass a relatively small scanning area over the entire planet. When you see readings, you press another button to fire a probe, which automatically gathers whatever it finds. Depending on how methodical you are, it can take a few minutes per planet. It's probably not annoying enough to stop the completionists, but anyone who dislikes "grindy" activities will probably get bored quickly.
This brings us to one of the major changes between ME1 and ME2: there's no Mako. BioWare apparently decided that the first game's ground vehicle was not worth keeping, so they excised it completely. Apparently some sort of vehicle will be added in future DLC, but details are sparse. If the Mako was one of your favorite parts of ME1, you may want to wait until that DLC comes out. If you didn't play ME1, you won't notice the lack. You can still find things on unexplored planets — you'll detect an "anomaly" when scanning for minerals, and a shuttle will drop you off, on foot, at the anomaly's location. The space ports and mission maps generally aren't big enough that you'd feel the need to drive around them. Or, if they are, they're sectioned off such that you don't need to traverse the entire area at one time.
Odds and Ends
The graphics are fantastic — exactly what you'd expect from a brand new BioWare game, and quite a step up from ME1. The humans look like real humans — fans of the TV show Chuck will immediately recognize one of your female squadmates — and the high level of detail makes the aliens look like something that could actually exist. While you'll pass through your fair share of typical shooter corridors and warehouses, you'll also see some extremely large and impressive environments. On one mission, you find an enormous crashed spaceship that's precariously balanced on the edge of a cliff. As you navigate the shattered vessel to recover some data, it wobbles and teeters, threatening to go over the edge as debris falls all around you. The audio is quite good as well. I find myself wishing I'd grabbed the version of the game that came with the OST. The sound effects are helpful and unobtrusive. You can glean a lot of information about what your squadmates are doing during a fight by just listening for them.
Another neat feature worth mentioning is that if you have a saved game from ME1, you can important your Shepherd into ME2, preserving a number of actions you took in the first game that will now affect how ME2 plays. It's a cool injection of continuity, and they'll be doing the same thing for ME3 in the future. You have a surprising amount of control over the how ME2 ends, so keep this in mind.
The game does have its annoyances. There was one bug I encountered frequently enough to alter my gameplay — walking near corners where textures meet on the ground will occasionally send Shepherd floating straight up in the air, unable to get down. It forces a reload, which sucks, but fortunately between the quick-save and the auto-save, I never lost more than a minute or two. I played the game on my PC, and while the controls were generally excellent, little effort was made to support things like Tab or the mousewheel, which can make menu navigation a small inconvenience.
Conclusion
Mass Effect 2 is not without its flaws, but those flaws are minor and vastly outweighed by its strengths. The story is top-notch, and meticulously plotted and paced to be fun and interesting from the intense introduction to the foreboding yet flexible ending. It's great to see that BioWare was willing to take feedback to heart and make significant changes regardless of ME1's success. While the sequel doesn't seem as novel and innovative as the first game, it instead demonstrates a great deal of refinement and polish. I'll be looking forward to Mass Effect 3.
I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:5, Interesting)
Will I be lost? (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't played the first, and don't really intend to based on the reviews I've read. I'm thinking of getting this game though.
Has anyone who hasn't played the first picked up this game? Will I be lost? Does it explain things well enough for people who don't have all that training in the way the game works?
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:5, Interesting)
The simplification in the combat is quite annoying, I especially missed more direct control of the teammates. In ME1 you could tell them to seek a defensive position or attack a specific enemy giving it a tactic shooter feel, in ME2 that is no longer the case. You are limited to telling them what power to use. You can also tell them where to go, but that never worked for me in ME2 as they always ended up running all over the place. They also removed the ability to duck to increase your accuracy, you are limited to auto-duck behind cover, grenades and health packs are also gone.
Add the lack of Mako and the much simplified level design on top of it and the combat ends up feeling quite monotone.
All that said, its still Mass Effect and still among the best games out there, but some of the changes feel a little bit like somebody just took the scissor to everything that got criticized in the first, instead of just improving it (elevators are gone, but now you have simplified flat levels and loading screens, not exactly an improvement).
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:5, Interesting)
I highly prefered the combat system in ME1 as well. Every shooter has had the ammo management system, and a few sparingly had the heat management system. I much prefer heat over ammo managing, it means you time your shots or bursts, and doesn't leave you stranded should you miss the ammo crate after a boss.
And actually, I think that was also an integral part of the story for me in ME1. The idea that we had engineered Mass Effect technology to the point where we don't need ammo, we were capable of taking a particle of Air and propelling it at such a high speed it could rip through people. Or at least, thats what I had the impression of how the guns operated. And that the various addons you had (Heat, cold, poison, etc) were just affecting the air you were shooting.
And now they've adopted an ammo management system, which they could easily work into the story, though it DOES feel like a step backwards. I've only played say 30 minutes into the game, and I haven't picked it up again. Mostly its a time issue, I've been busy, but something about it doesn't feel the same as the original, so I don't feel the same pull to it like the original did. In the original, the storyline had me rushing home just so I could find out what happens next. This new one intrigues me despite some of its rather cliche elements, but I'm sure given enough time it will come around.
Mass Effect less than perfect (Score:3, Interesting)
Every side quest in the game uses the exact same map. The story for many of the side-quests is the same. A soldier or family member is missing. Go to location X, kill enemies, and find the dead body of the missing person.
Some of the voice acting (Benezia scene) is embarrassingly bad.
Exploring in the Mako is fun at times, but on some worlds the Mako struggles with really steep climbs which is just frustrating.
You are handed most of the companions very early on. They don't have great introductions. I feel like I barely know any of them even by the end of the game. In many ways, the story falls short of Bioware standards.
They created a universe that I find interesting. The story isn't bad, it just isn't great. I love the overall concept. Mass Effect is *ALMOST* a great game. I hope Mass Effect 2 improves on the first, which was a near miss.
Finished it... Good game, but horrid planet scan (Score:4, Interesting)
I finished the game on Sunday. It is a very different game than ME as far as game mechanics, but they kept what made ME great, the sense of controlling a riveting story. The story in ME2 is just as good.
My one flaw with the game is the obvious planet scanning time sink. For those of you not playing the game, when you come to a new planet, you need to scan it for usable minerals, minerals needed to progress in the game. The scanning consists of holding down your right mouse button, then slowly waving the mouse back and forth over a picture of a planet from orbit. You slowly move back and forth until a graph on the right side spikes. Then you click the left mouse button to extract the mineral you 'found', and then you do it again.
Even explaining that, I'm almost falling asleep. It was so jarring to find this obvious time waster in a game that was so tightly scripted and enjoyable. All I can think is they completed the game, and said "Hey, we need to add another 5-10 hours onto the gameplay." "Ok, so instead of just pushing a button that says 'Extract all usable minerals from planet", why don't we make them mouse over every square inch of the planet? That's gotta add 5-10 hours! IN FACT, even if it only adds 5 hours, it'll make the game seem much longer because it's so boring!"
And that's why this game is good and not great.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:3, Interesting)
My only pet peeve? Scanning the damn planets. Even with the upgrade it is a PITA.
Other than that I like the no inventory management system and instead focus on upgrading what you have. The selection of weapons I like in that it isn't over whelming. The anti material sniper rifle with full upgrades + Solider focus = lots of 1 head shot kills.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:5, Interesting)
Grenades are gone in favor of heavy weapons. This comes in the form of Grenade launchers, Rocket launchers, and other Weapons that I don't want to spoil. As someone who never used grenades in ME1, ME2's response of Heavy weapons is much better deployed and much friendlier to use.
Getting rid of health packs is something I cheer. There was nothing worse than getting to a point where you had no health packs, low health, and were stuck in an area where you couldn't get any more health packs, stuck on a hard battle. Now, instead of such a situation being impossible to pass, is now just hard, but you can do it.
Sniper rifles are also better handled in this game. While being more powerful and faster, the limited ammo keeps you from solely relying on them.
My only complaint about the changes to the RPG elements is the lack of "create your own character with your own choice of powers", I understand they do this for balance reasons, but it still could have been done. None of the base classes were exactly what I was looking for, but it's definately a minor complaint, nothing big.
Re:Good story? (Score:3, Interesting)
It just goes to show that everyone has different taste -- I honestly can't think of a better story told in any video game than ME1. (Although there are a few that are on about the same level for me.)
Difficulty Level (Score:4, Interesting)
Being the kind of gamer that enjoys a good challenge I am pretty disappointed with ME2
The story is great! The game is a cake walk even on insanity difficulty. I think they made combat way too simplified and the AI is simply annoying. There could be a few simple changes to make combat a lot more enjoyable.
There could be "behavior" buttons to toggle for your AI partners. Defensive, somewhere inbetween, and full out attack.
Yeah I am playing on Insanity but it is annoying when my AI partner decides to not take cover when he/she has just been hit by 2 rockets in rapid succession and thinks its a good idea to keep firing his/her heavy pistol at 5 synthetics. I just end up killing all the enemies and then waiting for them to get back up, not worth the medi gels lol.
To counter this I pause the game and make an effort to set up my AI partners behind cover that is wide enough to support 2 people. This way you can alternate cover positions to keep the AI moving which keeps them from getting hit. It works well but a simple button to tell them to take some damn cover is not asking for too much.
However after getting to around level 14-15, after the collector ship, its a non issue since any enemies encountered are dead within seconds. (tip: cloak + incisor rifle = win)
BioWare get it together please. Dragon Age on insanity was not easy on my first play through, but it was not hard either. DA was much harder than ME2 though.
I wouldn't even dare put Baldur's Gate 2 on the highest difficulty. That game scares me with how hard it can be. I want to have some respect for the hardest difficulty level in a game on the first play through at the very least. It could just be that I was about 12 when I played BG2 for the first time though =)
Re:Good story? (Score:2, Interesting)
The story has much more depth, and more interesting, fleshed-out than Gears of War or Halo.
I kind of want to kill myself for that sentence.
For a BioWare game, it's weak. Really weak. I'm not done with it yet, but there's so much LESS choice than even ME1. Your choices from ME1 come through loud and clear with consequences and characters who remember you, but there are no NEW choices I have made, and I am 15 hours in. The dialog wheel doesn't control Shepards actions, it just controls how much a dick he is about them.
So, does it have a good story, compared to Jade Empire or KOTOR? Hell no. It's horrid. Compared to the average shooter fans that I think BioWare was trying to attract? It's a story of amazing depth and quality, with a combat system that they know and are comfortable with.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the review here is a press release. Although the author apparently added his own opinions in at the end, for the most part it is word-for-word what bioware wrote and other media have quoted in their "reviews". I've read several, and a surprisingly large number of them are almost identical.
Grenades have been replaced with Heavy Weapons, which do basically the same thing, but are more varied.
The author above was incorrect when he stated that you can't tell your squad where to go or who to attack. You can send either of your two NPCs to specific locations by targeting it and hitting either Q or E. If there's cover next to where you send them, they'll automatically move to it and use it.
And the same screen you use to tell them which power or ammo to use also tells them who to target.
And health packs aren't really gone. The mechanic is somewhat different is all. You still have medi-gel, which you can use at any time. Each use heals your entire squad instead of just you. You also regenerate faster during fights, so you don't always need to use it.
That seems to be the case so far.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. I like the new NPCs, and the variety of the missions.
The new conversation "interrupt" system is fun, too. Cutting a bad guys rant short by throwing him out a window was just too much fun to pass up.
I hate the new "scanning" system for finding planetary resources so far. You need the minerals you find on those planets, but scanning is 2-3 minutes of slowly passing the scanner over the planet and watching for a signal change showing where they are. Supposedly you can discover new missions on uncharted planets as well, but I've scanned a dozen or so without finding any. For planets with nothing but minerals, I like the old system of just clicking scan then being told what you found.
I also miss driving the mako around, bouncing around, fighting thresher maws, or just trying to climb up steep hills in it. It took longer to thoroughly loot a planet using it, but was a lot more fun.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:4, Interesting)
I can understand some or many reviews like that. But seriously, the game has very slow combat, annoying ammo problems, incredibly lacking skill/ability trees, horribly tedious resource gathering (that's basically forced on you to get upgrades for your stuff), and almost all missions are very brief compared to ME1 and other games. With it's dumbed down RPG system, lack of loot almost altogether, and subpar shooter mechanics, I can't imagine that in all those people that reviewed no one thought it less then a 90. Some, sure. All? No.
I like it. I think it's an 8. But the flaws I point out are echoed by a lot of players. So how in this case are all the reviewers in agreement with just nothing but glowing praise and incredible reviews when the player based isn't, especially since what they changed surly should have pissed off the hardcore RPG players that surly must do a lot of the reviews?
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:4, Interesting)
Its funny how harsh of a review you can give and still give it an 8. I think that's kind of the point though. All of those negatives, still add up to a good time. Admittedly, I liked the variety of options in ME1, choosing my rounds, who carried which guns etc. However, once I figured out what I liked, I was done, I hardly ever switched it up.
So overall, the simplification takes out something, but nothing that made a huge difference overall. The lack of inventory management is actually nice.
I started ME2 one notch down from the top, and its pretty challenging. I think I have to restart the first collectors mission now because I am at the praetorian battle with no medi gel, as an inflitrator with the salarian doctor and jack. Its been...rough.
So far though, it seems to be mostly improvements over ME1.
-Steve
Re:My Review (Score:2, Interesting)
What makes less sense is you use the same ammo for all of your guns, and yet when you pick it up, it gets automatically allocated to one, and you can't use it in any of the others.
I maybe mistaken (or picked up so many that I tricked myself into thinking something opposite), but I think when you pick up a 'heat-sink' clip it does apply to other weapons on a smaller scale. At the very least, I believe the game will top off your current weapon, and then start filling up your auxiliary weapons that have depleted ammunition. Also, all weapons will get some sort of recharge when you find a "Power Cell" box.
It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing.
I feel like this game actually provides a lot of main-plot forward motion. I consider it to be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the ME trilogy, and Bioware delivers in spades. (Can't go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil it for others).
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, it's like this:
I can point out what are, for me, a lot of flaws in the game... but in spite of them, it will probably end up being one of my favorite games of the year. The parts I like about it outweigh the parts I don't.
Or to look at it another way, there are a lot of games I can't point out any/many flaws in, because they couldn't keep my interest. That doesn't mean being able to point out many of a game's flaws mean it's good, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, either. For everything I could grumble about in ME1, I sure did want to start playing it again immediately after finishing it. As a working adult with not that much time to play games, that's a pretty strong endorsement and would be the kind of thing that would make me score a game highly even if there were a lot of things that pissed me off, too.