Mass Effect 2

Images Courtesy of BIOWARE / EA

Entire Human colonies on many worlds are vanishing. As Commander Shepard, You must assemble the galaxy’s deadliest team to save mankind against impossible odds.

They call it a suicide mission… PROVE THEM WRONG

In this episode of Mass Effect, you take on the role of Commander Shepard, again you’re facing off against a deadly enemy. If you played Mass Effect the original game, you would have had to have made several key decisions. These will, and do follow you into not only Mass Effect 2 but to the very end battle in Mass Effect 3.

For example, if you saved the Destiny’s Ascension in the battle of the Citadel, if you were able to talk down Wrex on Virmire, saved either Ashley Williams or Kaden Alenko, then you will see a big difference in the story unfolding before you, and they both have pros and cons to the story’s tree. But if you didn’t play the first game, don’t despair, you can download Genesis, a 15 min interactive Dark horse comics back story with all they key points without having to play the first game, but I would recommend that you do play it, as it will give you the knowledge that you will need to face the true threat.

 

You will meet several of your old companions from Mass Effect as-well as make some new pal’s along the way, including an adventure to find out why a single Geth unit is stalking Shepard. You may also meet a genetically altered Krogan and a Drell.

The least enjoyable part of this game is that for fans of the original Mass Effect, this seems to have dropped a lot of what made Mass Effect great in the RPG style for more of a 3rd person shooter, akin to Gears Of War style. This was a big shock to the hardcore fans like myself, I am not big on RPG games but this style really appealed to me. A space RPG/shooter in 3rd person. What made it  great was the fact you could find new amour pieces, for example “Combat exoskeleton X”, which is very powerful and after you find a few of them, selling them to get almost infinite amounts of credits. However, Mass Effect to makes up for this shortfall in bucket loads of “Ezzo”, with the addition of using biotic powers in unison with your squad mates on a single target.

You will also see the addition of new “heavy” weapons like the M-900 CAIN (mini nuke) to name just one, as they are too numerous to list them all. These weapons come at a cost, scanning of planets for resources and hidden secrets will be required. This new exiting feature where the scanning equipment, weapons and even the Normandy’s amour, can be upgraded with materials acquired by scanning planets and of course credits. Another new feature is being able to use the galaxy map to control where you ship is traveling at any point inside any star system on the relay network. This brings to mind, fuel, so there are conveniently placed fuel stations near the local mass relay.

The Citadel is where you take Shepard and his team for a bit of R & R and to sell any spare parts you may need, or have picked up along the way. On the flip side, you can delve deep inside the Terminus Systems (the wild west and lawlessness of the galaxy). Many different races that are not seen in Citadel Space can be found here, like the slave trading Batarians, the Vorcha and many more.

You will have more side quests than I care to remember, but they are all worth completing as they are action packed, it is optional of course.

What I liked most was that you were driven to grind against the grain of the Council’s wishes and the Alliance brass to do anything to save humanity, at a time when everyone but the few believed there was a legitimate threat.

As a stand alone from the series, despite the flaws, it is the most difficult in terms of AI and I personally feel it has the best story in the entire trilogy, Some choices WILL come back to haunt you from Mass Effect and the choices you make here and now will effect the end game and it will affect the future of all advanced beings in the entire galaxy.

The fate of the galaxy lies in your hands. Will you save it or destroy it?

I RATE THIS GAME 7.5 / 10