Review: Mass Effect 2

It's a late but thorough review of Mass Effect 2!

(There will be lots of spoilers.)


I'm not a very smart man, and there is little I excel at, but - Mass Effect 2 is something I'm extremely knowlegable on. And after playing it through twice, deliberately varying the games as much as possible, I have a lot to say.

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Now, I love this game. This blog is named after it, and it's almost all I talk about, even now. But I'm going to focus on the faults.

The professional reviews I've read rated the game extremely highly (awarding it 9's and near 10's) but I think everybody but me missed the following five big problems.

I think a lot of these are only 'problems' to people like me - big fans, who adored the original. And who are picky. But they spoiled the experience for me, so here they are.

1) Not enough inventory, too many guns.

This is the big one. Whereas Mass Effect was a 'shooter-RPG' which had difficulty drawing the line between the two genres, the sequel decides right from the start that it's more shooter. Way more shooter.

This time there is no inventory, levelling up is easy, quick and simplistic, and every single quest - EVERY single quest is solved by shooting a bunch of people with the new Gears of War-style combat. The quests are fascinating and well-written, but they always boil down to hiding behind boxes and shooting people. The worlds are small - quests are more like levels - albeit levels with a lot of interactive dialogue. And when the level is done, you get a 'level complete' screen and you return to the home base. No exploring, no looting, very few sidequests.

It's a genre change, not a fault. But I dislike it. What makes Bioware RPGs so fantastic is their seamless mix of dramatic, personalised story and fun gameplay. Here that divide is skewed much more than I like. I get the impression this is an attempt to sell more copies - everyone loves shooters, right? And that annoys me.

2) We Were On A Break... in space.

There is an issue with the 'romance quests' in the first game - in Mass Effect (as in most Bioware titles) you're able to fall in love and persue a relationship with certain members of your party. Mass Effect 2 - a direct sequel - begins with a huge explosion and then a '2 years later' tag. So naturally I was assuming my old squeezes would be dead and I could romance one of the many, many new characters with a thing for the protagonist. No worries.

The problem is that all three possible lovers survive, even going so far as not-quite-dumping-you when you are (finally) reunited. So if you played ME1 and you persue a romance quest in the sequel, you're pretty much cheating on your boy/girlfriend. It's just clumsy and confusing, and out of character for everyone involved. And it could have been fixed so damn easily!

It's possible that the writers have something planned for these characters and love affairs in the final part of the planned trilogy. We will see.

3) Probe away.

The 'scanning minerals' mini-game is abominable. Bioware have a history of bad mini-games, but this one really is awful.

4) Achievement unlocked: Kinda.

The plot, no matter how hard I try, didn't grip me. The first game introduced an incredible, rich new SF world, allowed you to become a secret agent, command a battleship, fall in love and save all life in the galaxy from complete destruction.

The sequel's plot consists of stopping the evil aliens who are kidnapping human colonists. There's little in the way of investigation: we know immediately who did it, and how to reach them. So you spend the next 40 hours building a team to stop them, then you take that team to their dungeon, and an hour or so later you're done. You didn't really rescue anyone, but you stalled the enemy a bit, and you've prevented further humans from being killed. As excellent as the writing is, this just doesn't feel suitably epic for Commander Shepard.

The plot is on a much smaller scale. Again, this isn't necessarily a flaw - it's not bad writing, it's just hard to care about 'slowly gathering a team and briefly avenging some dead people' when last time I was saving the world with my beloved at my side.

5) The character death issue.

Depending on seemingly-insignificant and unrelated decisions you make throughout (and especially in the endgame) - members of your party can be killed - permenantly - at the game's climax. This suceeds in making you pay attention to the characters and your governing of them - and certainly makes the endgame extremely tense - but for the wrong reasons. I lost my favourite character for the simple reason that I picked a soldier instead of a veteran soldier to lead his team. And I only figured out what I did wrong by scouring walkthroughs online for hours. It just ruined the ending for me - 'We won! But... this guy is dead because I made a tiny error in judgement... yay...'

Similarly, a large number of my crew died because of another random, unrelated error - which my crewmen strongly encouraged me to make!
This concept of your people's lives being in genuine danger could have been a wonderful device - but all it did was irritate me and break my immersion in the story.

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Those are the noteworthy flaws, right there. Just five, but each one was such a blow to me, considering how good every other aspect of this game is.

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Small-scale and episodic as it may be, the plot is magnificent. This has to be the best-written videogame I've ever played, and the voice-acting is even better. I haven't found ANY bad acting in this - not one line - and this is two discs' worth of acting. Even Mark Meer (who plays the male lead in both games, and whose earlier performance seemed flat and unimpressive) does beautifully here - he has really made the character his own, and this improves the experience a great deal.

The new plot doesn't just give us 'more of the same' but takes daring leaps, bringing big plot twists, entirely new sapient species (only one of which is Baraka), new enemies and very different allies. Shepard's standing in the galaxy has drastically changed, and you're visiting very different places this time.
Some of the short quests were incredibly engaging, one or two were powerfully emotional, and absolutel every one was memorable and unique.

A lot of games claim to have 'Hollywood-movie-quality writing and acting' - this exceeds most movies on both counts.

The voice cast, incidentally, includes some proper, profesional actors (including Martin Sheen of all people, and Seth Green performing miiiiiles better than he does in the movies.) This trend seems to be growing, but you know Bioware were always doing it! They even had Nathan gorram Fillion once.
Now they're allowed to get the likes of Sheen - and it seems to have made every other actor involved up his or her game.


The biggest complaint I had about the original Mass Effect was the fact that the 'paragon and renegade' (i.e. good and evil) choices were poorly balanced: whilst the paragon Shepard came off as a brave political idealist (I loved this version of the character) the renegade seemed like a foolish, near-sighted schoolyard bully. Saving the day by making silly threats and commiting petty crimes.
In the sequel, this has been addressed perfectly - and I actually enjoyed the renegade Shepard a little more! Now s/he genuinely is a 'renegade' - a tough, hard-hearted bastard, selfish and maybe even kinda racist, but one who gets superior results by sacrificing heroism. It works like they clearly intended it to in the original.

For all my complaints about the Gears of War-style combat taking centre stage - that combat is very good fun. A lot better than the first game, where fighting got old fast. Now there are more weapons, ammo, all sorts that keep the endless third-person gunplay very fresh and exciting.

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Mass Effect 2 is a brillaint game, and a milestone for story and writing in the medium. It's just a shame it's not the masterpiece it could have been with a few better decisions.

Before it came out, I was very doubtful. I heard about the changes / flaws I detailed above, and saw the new characters, and decided I would hate them all. (There's a tank character named 'Grunt'? Evil characters have red eyes? Garrus is a love interest? Garus Vakarian? And what the hell is a space hamster?!)

But like Garrus and the hamster, the game forced me to love it through sheer cuteness and effort. Mass Effect 2 defied my curmudgeonly determination not to have a good time, beating back every criticism mightily, if not quite destroying them all.

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There's more combat than role playing, but both of those elements are hugely improved.

There's a couple of issues with continuity that make the story and the world fiddly and inaccessible - but when you try to figure them out you accidentally unlock the details of a brilliant sci-fi saga.

The mineral-scanning is awful, but it's worthwhile.

The plot is more like a series of episodes than the epic adventure of the original - but every one of those episodes is a work of art.

And the ending... is kinda disappointing. But everything that comes before it surpasses expectations.

Plus - this is the second act in a trilogy. I suspect the third one will end better!

Bioware, and lead writer Drew 'The Karp' Karpyshyn, will have a very tough job: making the plot more satisfying than that of Mass Effect, and making the game more fun than Mass Effect 2.

8/10