This is the review of the hotly anticipated sequel of the original Mass Effect game, seeing you take control of Commander Shepard as he searches the vast universe in an effort to prevent and defeat the Reapers, however fans of the first game might notice there is a distinct change in the universe.

 

 

The story has undergone a bit of a revamp and is a bit darker than the original, that wasn’t very bright to begin with. Shepard is forced into working for Cerberus, a shadowy pro-human organisation with questionable morals, which played a minor role in the first game and a bigger role in one of the books. Humans are being kidnapped on-mass with whole colonies going missing. It’s up to Shepard to build up a team, find who is responsible and track them down.

 

 

Those that played the previous game and kept your saved data will have an extra treat over newcomers; your actions will affect what happens in the current game. The way you behaved affects how people think of you, old friends will pop up (or not), e-mail and news stories will change and missions will be coloured with the knowledge of your past experiences. The amounts of things that change are quite numerable making it well worth transferring your character over. That said newcomers aren’t high and dry, the game just makes the decisions for you, it’s not as personal as somebody who has cultivated their character but you shouldn’t pick up on it too much.

 

 

Story-wise the game is fantastic, Bioware have yet again done themselves proud by recreating a massive universe, keeping everything in the last game yet expanding on it on taking it new places you’ll never see coming. Filled with colourful characters, interesting script and the ability to change the conversation through the use of simple dialogue-trees means that you’ll want to go out and explore every aspect of this game. While there may not be a massive reveal at any point in the story as in the first game it is a lot more action packed and much more compelling. Dialogue-trees amount to three basic choices, nice, bland and mean. Be nice and you’ll get paragon points, be mean and you’ll get renegade points and be bland, well I’m not sure if you get anything. Whether you choose to be paragon or renegade affects future dialogue trees, the way people in the universe view and of course the actions you take. There is also a new addition, Quick Time Events, you can now interrupt conversations in various ways, hug people that are feeling a little bit down or shoot them to shut them up.

 

 

As mentioned Shepard must find a new team to help him save the galaxy, these characters are wide and diverse, from a cloned Krogan to a biotic mass-murderer, from a genetically altered Cerberus operative to an assassin with a conscience. Each one has an interesting back-story (although some are more interesting than others) meaning aside from their skills you’ll want to get to know them and to cop-it-all each character has a side quest attached to them, allowing you to explore their motives and past in ways you just couldn’t do in the previous games. Collecting the team and performing their side quests is really the bulk of the game too.

 

 

Gameplay has been shaken up too, as with the story much more attention has been given to action. The third-person shooter aspect of the game has been refined, health and shields recharge now rather than using health items, you can take cover much more effectively than in the first game; meaning if you squint a Krogan could easily be a locust from Gears of War. The complicated ammo system of adding special abilities by going through three sets of menus has gone, instead you use the abilities wheel to which between available ammo types and your crew mates have better AI in combat, they’re still not great but with additional orders telling them where you want them you can at least make them useful. The abilities wheel returns allowing you to freeze the action and perform your special abilities and direct teammates to use them on certain enemies. Most importantly though is that the game now has ammo, while before you only had to worry about over-heating now you have to watch your ammo reserves and pick up “heat sinks” from downed enemies, making it feel much more like a standard shooter.

 

 

While the shooting aspect has been refined the RPG aspect has been cut back. Experience points are harder to get as you’ll only receive them at the end of a mission, the number of levels you can gain has been cut back to 30 and the amount of skills you have has also been diminished for both yourself and you crew. The inventory system has also been completely scrapped and replaced by something much more streamlined; hundreds of weapons, armour, shields and biotic amps providing different skills, abilities, defence and attack bonus are completely gone. There is probably only around 15 weapons in the whole game, once you find a new weapon everybody can use it that can use that type of weapon. Instead of having masses of weapons lying around on your ship you research upgrades; these increase the damage of weapons, the cool-time between special abilities and the strength of armour. You don’t change the armour of your teammates anymore and they’re stuck with what they have at the start of the game, you can however change Shepard’s armour slightly; giving him new shoulder pads for increased shields or gauntlets that provide additional ammo space. You can also change the colour scheme of Shepard and making him wear a helmet will actually have an effect in battles, so while there is still some armour options it’s something that many people might miss completely.

 

 

Money plays less of a factor in this game, you can still buy the occasional upgrade or armour piece but most of the time you’ll be finding research for upgrades and to actually upgrade something you need to collect the resources for the upgrade. Well this is done through the new travel system. In the last game you clicked on a section of the galaxy you wanted to visit, then you clicked on the cluster and then you clicked on a planet. Then you either scanned the whole planet and got a little something or landed on the planet and drove around in the Mako in search of rare, minerals, things to salvage or people to shoot. In this game however you fly around, controlling your ship through the various solar systems, you use the Mass Relays to travel mass distances but if you want to visit another cluster in the same area you have to stock up on fuel and travel to the location. Then you fly other to the planet, scan the planet and search for rare minerals and on rare occasions you’ll land right where the action is on various missions, to scan the planet you need probes and you can only carry a limited number of them at one time. Scanning for minerals is the only low-note in the whole game, it quickly becomes tedious and even with the upgrades it’s painfully slow. The additional missions you find on the planets however are varied and interesting, a stark constant to same old cargo hold you visited time and time again in the first game.

 

 

Mass Effect 2 is by far one of the best games currently released, it manages to keep old fans happy and yet isn’t off-putting to newcomers. The lack of RPG elements may annoy some but this makes it more appealing to the Halo fans and the gun play makes sure that the game remains fun from start to finish. The various ways to play the game means you can spend 40 hours in one play through and still miss masses of dialogue and consequences, coupled with the six classes of characters to play with means that this is a game you want to replay. The story is compelling and the characters interesting. This game despite some very minor issues is a must buy.