WhatBoysWant

BIOWARE DELIVERED WHAT THEY PROMISED. The game really does adapt around what you did in the first game. All of the choices you made are present in this game.  You will run into old characters, voiced by the original cast, who have returned from small roles to large roles. You will meet people you freed in the first game or at least the consequences of your actions. I can honestly say this is the first time that I can remember in recent history that a game has done that.

GREAT ATMOSPHERE AND PACING. If the first game had any real story flaw was the fact that the pacing could be erratic depending on the player. Overall story arc missions were never clearly labelled and lead to more than one reload. *cough* Virmire. *cough* It appears they have the rectified this by including mission/assignment plot points on the actual galaxy map, making it easier to stay clear of one-way trips and lets you level up more and beef up your armaments. Also the main story is omnipresent without pushing you towards it.

MISSIONS ARE WELL HANDLED. Every mission has its own uniqueness, and is well structured in both gameplay and writing. They fit well with the overall story of the game and don’t stray too far off. Each mission has its own side benefits such as upgrades and things like that, that will keep you searching around fo


r items after every battle.  Characters will make relevant chit-chat after battle in the same fashion as the Developer's earlier release Dragon Age Origins.

PLAYER AND CHARACTER INTERACTION. Shepard and company offer well written dialog with plenty of branching options for dialog that make it seem more realistic than other games.  However there is an omission that NPCs will not seem to notice that you have asked the same question once and will repeat their response and animations.  Speaking of which, the majority of the time the characters seem genuine and almost real.  However every once and a while they will move in a strange enough way that seems almost robotic or ghoulish. Eyes will occasionally move in the wrong direction with the facial animation and make them look possessed. It offers a little bit of humor to me as I watch Miranda go into possession mode.

VASTLY IMPROVED GAME PLAY.  Firefights are far more responsive now, each step on the battlefield offers more freedom than its predecessor. You are no longer confined as much to a row of low cover as you were.  You can move around at lot easier if you can dodge the gun fire. Aiming, and movement have also been improved and the control style has taken a more Gears of War approach and it benefits.

IMPROVED VISUALS AND AUDIO.  While the first game’s visuals and audio were stunning, they have since then kind of lost their brilliance. Thankfully this time around they have beefed up the style and presentation while increasing the average framerate.  The game now rarely chugs during firefights, and you can see that the framerate has smoothed out.  The levels are far more detailed and life-like than the last game. Each planet has a convincing atmosphere to it. Audio as well is better, the voices and soundtrack are better leveled and there is only an occasional bug such as voice pitches dropping. Voice acting is top notch and all the major characters have easily distinguishable voices.

VASTLY IMPROVED ENEMY AND TEAMMATE AI.  For the most part, many of the quirky AI actions that occurred in the first game are gone. There will still be occasional moments where a teammate will step in front of your shot and complain to you about it.  But outside of that, the characters all play smarter and act much more humanly.  Enemies will use cover better, will try to flank you, they will use their powers more effectively instead of randomly like they do in the first game, like say when Liara would use Pull on an enemy that was already almost dead.  Now, instead they will fire it at the biggest and closest threat first then finish off with regular gunplay.

CONTROLS ARE REFINED. From the first game there was always this wonky-ness on how certain interactions were done, turn speeds were awkward, the aiming reticle was skittish and the such.  These small issues have been resolved and have taken a much more Gears of War like approach. There is still a jerkiness, but not as bad as it once was.

STREAM-LINED GAMEPLAY, LESS RPG, MORE SHOOTER. I have grown to accept how the game was streamlined, but I am still not entirely thrilled how it turned out. Before hand, it was a matter of customizing each squad mate, each weapon, and armor. On top of that you would pick out various squads for each mission that would bring a lot of advantages or disadvantaged in certain battles.  For the most part it seems that this was eschewed for a more leveled out squad.  You really can’t customize how weapons act, each character while bring their personality, shows very small difference in battle. For example the Samara and Jack both handle similarly with very similar sets of powers. Also I am not too keen on the fact that you have to spend a considerable portion of the game mining planets for resources to upgrade everyone’s armaments at once.

THE SAMUS EFFECT.  Okay, some people may or may not understand this effect. It basically defines that up until the point of actual player control the character is loaded out with almost maxed out powers, can easily destroy an entire enemy platoon with little effort and is hyped up. Then once given control they are quickly gimped, and no longer are the badasses they were just displayed as. This happens to practically every character that joins your squad outside of the first two and Grunt.

THE SWITCH UP IN WEAPON GAMEPLAY. I’ll be honest, at first I really didn’t care for the switch up on weapons. I preferred the original games head-dispersing method instead. The so called in-game reasoning seems a bit pathetic in justifying it. I really wanted the old style of gun-heat because in the first game you could get away with loading up your gun with two cooling devices and a stabilizer and arming incendiary rounds. Easily turning Shepard into a death-dealing god setting the battlefield into an Inferno.  The ‘heat clips’ put that idea down immediately.

MENUS AND INVENTORY HAVE VERY LITTLE IN IMPROVEMENT. If you played through the first game on Xbox 360, you already knew how awkward the menus were and how strangely structured they were.  While ME2 has done a little more improvement it is still just as confusing and awkward as BioWare’s Dragon Age.  You will often struggle to find the best combinations.

THE ILLUSIVE MAN. Seriously, what kind of fucking code name is that? It is only one step better than ‘the Mysterious Dude.’

MORGAN WEB IS SECRETLY MIRANDA’S LONG-LOST ANCESTOR. Look at that chin. Holy crap.

MASS EFFECT 1 IMPORTING TROUBLES. I was like many of the players that did not get the Mass Effect 1 Character Importer to work correctly without troubles. I had to restart my latest save of the old Mass Effect, defeat Saren twice again, wait for the auto-save after the end of the credits. After that it worked like a charm, however I really didn’t notice any significant bonuses.

THIS WHOLE DLC DEBACLE. Alright, it is bad enough that each major retailer gets their own specialized DownLoadable Content. Forcing fans to pick a retailer which will often lead to a lot of internal debate. I went with Amazon because they offered me a $10 credit towards the next game and free release day shipping. I would of gone with Gamestop for the Terminus Armor,  but it would of cost me about $73 total at the end just to get it the same week of release and not have to step into a humid, smelly, evil Gamestop store. I have been burned by GS a few times, and well I will not bother with them any more.

THIS WHOLE DLC DEBACLE PART II. Seriously who in the right mind thought that forcing the players to sign-up for a special network that links to an EA account that forces you to link your gamertag/pc account to their site was a good idea? Why hasn’t this person been tied to a stake and burned as a warning to others. I shouldn’t have to wait a few days to get an email with the code, open another account I’ll never look at, fill out two pages of forms, enter a code, wait for it to activate, restart my Xbox360, and wait a good five minutes for it to start the download. Then start up the game to find out it thinks I did not download the Armor or any of the DLC. FUCKING RAGE.

[ALMOST] FINAL WORD: If you played the first one and enjoyed it, definitely go out and buy it. Even if you didn’t I would still highly recommend it, and place it in my pool of top five games of 2010 already. If you really don’t find it your style, try renting it for a bit, but be prepared to drop about a week and a half into it. If you do buy it, and don’t care about the bonus DLC, you’re free to PM the codes for the Terminus Armor to me. :D