Mass Effect 2

Well Mass Effect 2 is coming out halfway through next month, so I thought I’d give you as thorough a review as possible so you’ll consider preordering it in time. Now I’m a Mass Effect fan, played it extensively on XBox 360, and PC. Yes, there were issues with the first game, but personally I believed those issues to be worth putting up with for a new type of RPG. It was really the first decent Sci-Fi third person RPG/FPS game ever made, and with games that revolutionise both the nature of those two genre’s, usually you’ll either find a very awesome game. Or you’ll find a game that could have been awesome but is let down by some issues with execution. ME was sadly in the second category. But Mass Effect 2 looks to be of the first category, and I’ll go into some detail why.

First of all, Mass Effect 2 is gritier, darker (in both theme and lighting) and ultimately larger then ME, with the promise of sprawling worlds and lots of content actually being delivered. I picked up the SE boxset down at EB Games, and the product description lists the Hard Drive usage at between 12-25 GB. That’s around the size of World of Warcraft and Aion (put together if it tops out at 25 gb). So it looks like they’ve delivered on the promise of a sprawling universe.

The second thing that makes my day is ME2 actually gives you the opportunity to carry on your ME character into the gleaming new world that is ME2. Now on my PC, I’ve played ME over and over again, every class in both male and female I’ve leveled to 60. So, if I can take my lvl 60′s and own up in ME2 I’m champing at the bit.

But where is the real revolutionary aspect of this game you ask. Well simply put the story line revolves around how you talk and treat your party members, they will mutiny if your an ass to them, and not only that but you can KILL off characters that piss you off. But remember in at least one of the story lines, Shepard dies, in fact most of the story lines end don’t have happy endings. ME2 has pitched your adventure as a suicide mission, and only along one gleaming possibility do you survive, intact and not a head case. ME2 has literally thrown down the gauntlet, the combat might or might not be easy, but it brings back the thrill that I used to get playing The Witcher, in which even the tiniest decision had a larger consequence. ME2 looks like it’s going to provide me alot of replayability. Which is something very few non-mmo games  have these days.

Onto actual combat and mechanics. ME2 has an improved physics engine, with one of your party (of course it’s the Krogan) being a charge-aholic. Biotic powers have been redone with at least 1 new power added, your team mates AI has been improved, with a psychotic Biotic and a Krogan who head butts everything in site at range.

Ok, now you’ve got the general idea, why should you pre-order. Well if you do, you get access to special ingame equipment. A Desolator type weapon that fires mini-black holes, and the Terminus armour, a very very sweet looking peice of combat gear. in fact I’m going to give you a little taste of it right now.

Once you’ve finished looking at that, you’ll have access to some of the myriad of trailers out there. I recommend looking at the Garrus Gameplay trailer.