Quick note for complete honesty. Mass Effect 2 is a huge game as in there are a lot of things to do. The way I play my games is to get as much out of them as I can. With my weekly deadline I have not finished the game, but have played through a good chunk of it to get a good feel for it.
Also I played Sheppard as a man and as such will be referring to him as a man. You can play Sheppard as a female if you wish.
Lastly Mass Effect is a Mature title, not for the kids.
Story
OK I'm going to reveal a spoiler right off the bat, but then again most of you out there know it already.
Commander Sheppard dies, within the first 10 minutes of the game no less.
The story starts out shortly after the events of the first Mass Effect. Sheppard and his team are searching for any remaining Geth when they are attacked buy an unknown entity. The Normandy takes heavy damage and the crew has to abandon ship. Most everyone gets to the escape pods, except Joker. He is trying to fly the ship still believing he can "hold it together." Sheppard goes in to rescue him. As he gets Joker into a escape pod a blast from the attacker knocks Sheppard away from the escape pod as the door closes.
As the last of the Normandy breaks apart, Sheppard floats away in space. Debris slices through his suit and he dies in the vacuum of space.
Cerberus, an extremist pro-human organization, retrieves Sheppard's body and two years later manage to bring him back to life. The only problem is as he regains consciousness the space station he's on is under attack, by it's own mechs. With the aid of Miranda Lawson and Jacob Taylor they manage to get to a shuttle and fly to Cerberus headquarters where Sheppard meets the Illusive Man, who is in charge of Cerberus. He fills Sheppard in on why they brought him back to life.
A mysterious insect-like race called Collectors are attacking and abducting human colonies. Because they leave behind no evidence the Council have not been involved and that is why Cerberus is. The Illusive man wants Sheppard to assemble a team and take out the Collector threat.
That is all I will tell, I don't want to ruin any more of the story or surprises.
Controls
If you played the first Mass Effect they you will know the controls already. For the most part they are the same and work well. Nothing I noticed was different and were pretty easy to pick back up.
Gameplay
Mass Effect 2 is very much the same as Mass Effect. An action orientated, third-person, RPG. You'll be having shoot-outs with bad guys, searching areas for "treasure" and other items, taking missions, going on adventures, and leveling up your characters. Here is where BioWare really dug in. The pretty much took everything that everyone didn't like out and streamlined the game. Like the hacking mini-game system. Gone is the is the "don't blink or you loose" "Simon-like" game in is two different matching mini-games. One has you matching pairs of diodes on a circuit boards, the other looking of matching codes. Both have time limits and both still present a challenge, but are a bit easier than the first.
Another thing that was streamlined was health and healing. In the first you were having to find and use medi-gel to heal yourself and your teammates. Now they have a system where once you are out of combat (like behind cover) you heal on your own. You still have to find medi-gel, but now it's revive your teammates if they die.
The Mako vehicle was removed from the game thankfully. It was a bit of a pain in the butt to drive around as it really didn't handle well.
An interesting touch to reward people that buy the game brand new instead of used or renting is the "Cerberus Network." Via a one-time use code included with the game, players will be connected to the "Cerberus Network" through which EA and BioWare can provide DLC. At launch they already have provided various items of free DLC, such as a set of Cerberus armor and rifle, the crash site of the Normandy for players to explore and a recruitable character, a mercenary named Zaeed Massani. People that buy the game used or rent it will have to pay 1200 MSPoints ($15) to to get the "Cerberus Network."
They also have the game read your save game file from the first Mass Effect. If you completed the first you will get various in game bonuses, such as 150,000 credits and you start at level 5 instead of level 1. You also get the choice of keeping your appearance from the first game or not. Players that have not played the first game will get enough backstory to understand whats going on.
I'm very pleased with what they have done. It almost seems like there is more action too.
Graphics and Sound
Graphicly it is as good, if not better than the first. For example, in the first game they had 20 animations for Sheppard getting behind cover, in this one they have over 200. Too bad they didn't work on his dance moves, he still is a terrible dancer.
To give the game a more cinematic quality the static camera during conversations moves around getting different shots.
Sound-wise the music is great and helps clue the player in on what's happening. It's so good that they have even released the score on CD.
The voice talent is also top notch, bringing in 90 voice actors. Some big name actors took part too. Michael Dorn, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Tricia Helfer, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Adam Baldwin and Martin Sheen. Sheen voices the Illusive Man and I think they modeled the character a bit on him.
Overall
Mass Effect 2 is a huge game. I love that BioWare listened to the reviews and the fans of the first game. Taking out the junk that didn't work well and improving everything else. It shows how much they care about their games and fans. After how good Mass Effect 1 was they could have easily just phoned it in on 2. Especially since they were also developing Dragon Age: Origins at roughly the same time. Neither game suffered, both are quality. For me Mass Effect was a great game to explore in and Mass Effect 2 continues that. Tons of planets to explore. Lots of freedom on how you want to play the game. You can play it as a good person or a bad person (called Paragon and Renegade respectively in the game) and various conversation options will open up to you as a result, making the game kind of unique to each person playing it.
The great news is that BioWare has a good amount of downloadable content planned for further adventuring. So it may be a long time before anyone is really "done" with the game.
I can't wait to get back in it, and will find it hard to put down to work on the next game to review.
I give Mass Effect 2 a 5 out of 5 right now and reserve the right to change my score if somehow the game sucks by the end......but I kind of doubt that happening, this is BioWare we are talking about here.
Mass Effect is rated M for Mature by the ESRB for Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
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