Demigoddess with a Conscience

And here it is, at last! The much anticipate review of Mass Effect 2. What? Yes, yes I’m getting back to EVE soon again. I have lots to tell.

Mass Effect 2 is the second installment in what is to become a  trilogy, beginning with Mass Effect. I’ll try not to spoil too much about the story and instead focus initially on the differences between the first game and this, and finally giving a review of contents.

Mass Effect 2 is an improvement on all parts over the first game and virtually everything that bothered me with the first one has been refurbished or redone in ME2. The most obvious improvement is graphics. The visuals in ME2 are just stunning to look at. As far as I can tell ME2 uses the same engine as ME but the textures, lightning and particle effects are much, much better. It’s especially noticable when you are talking to people and you see their faces up close. No more blurry, smeary textures. There are some minor irritants though, mostly in shape of characters ending up in the wrong position initially during a conversation and “popping” into place. It’s very rare, but annoying when it happens.

The inventory system has been completely scrapped in favor of a new one. I have to admit, the old one was a bit much to deal with. Lots of selling, scrapping and deciding on what to use. In ME2 you have a basic setup of weapons when you begin, as well as one single N7 armor. Your squadmates will only wear their own armor and you cannot change it. This actually makes more sense when looked at from a realistic perspective. Why wouldn’t you already use the top of the line stuff?

Instead of constantly replacing weapons, armors and upgrades you buy research material and gadgets around the universe that your scientist can use in the lab of your ship. These upgrades can be anything from increasing the squad’s resistance to damage, new heavy weapons, more medi-gel capacity, stronger shields, new parts for your armor or a weapon-type’s damage, it’s shield/armor damage capabilities, accuracy or even ammunition capacity.

Oh yes, ammunition. In ME weapons built internal heat when being fired, and you had to install heatsinks in order to improve the heat dissipation. If you fired too much, the weapon would overheat and you had to wait for it to cool off before firing again. ME2 presents a role playing reason for adding an ammo system to the game. The developers felt that ME had too much wild spraying and people really didn’t care where the shots hit, and there were no urgency in making each shot count. The ammo system in ME2 is simply a rework of the heat system, where weapons still build up heat, but that heat is accumulated into heat chips that are ejected from the weapon, then replaced with a new one. Without heat chips, you cannot fire. Clever, elegant and works perfectly in my opinion, even though I’d liked to have seen the sniper rifles have a bit more ammo and not produce such hideous amounts of heat.

ME2 introduces two new weapon classes: Submachineguns and heavy weapons (and the machine pistol, but it really falls under SMGs). The pistol line was split into Heavy Pistols and Machine Pistols, Shotguns is still just one class, SMGs is a class everyone can use and is a “light” assault rifle. Assault rifles are still only usable by Soldiers up until mid-game where you can either improve one proficiency (use a specialized weapon) or add another (Assault Rifles to Adepts for instance), and Sniper Rifles are the domain of the Infiltrator, even though Soldier can also wield them.

A difference here is that you no longer have any weapon skill to improve in order to do damage, which is nice. You can either use a weapon, or you can’t. It simplifies things and makes the leveling system feel more like an achievement than a grind. It does however prevent you from using weapons you aren’t proficient with.

Heavy Weapons are a “Shepard only” deal, since only you will use them. They range from grenade launchers, heavy beam accelerators, mini nukes and flamethrowers. These weapons deal incredible damage, but have very limited ammo. They’re sort of a “get out of trouble” card when you are swamped by enemies or when you are facing a particularly evil mob. Use wisely.

Finally you can import your ME character into ME2 and enjoy a couple of bonuses such as starting at level 2-5, extra credits, bit of bonus Paragon/Renegade, bonus minerals and of course having all the desicions you made in ME carry over into ME2. If you opt out of this you are presented with a “canon” back story, but having played both I can say that nothing really compares to continue your old Shepard.

I could go on forever about the changes, but the rest of them I’ll just sum up here. Side missions are no longer so copy-paste and much more work has been put in to them. There is no more Mako, you shuttle to your location. (VERY convenient).  AI is much improved and it’s noticable. You can really tell beforehand how the combat will play depending on what enemies you face. Krogans will try to rush you, Vorchas are cowards, Mercs usually stay behind cover and try to outnumber you etc etc.

So, what do I really think of this game then? It’s a fantastic experience! While I felt the game was shorter than the first, my game time disagreed with my perception. It took me something around 30 hours to finish the game from beginning to end, not knowing what to expect and it probably would’ve taken longer, had I not been faced with a very difficult choice that pushed me on.

ME gave you many choices that were sometimes agonizing and had wide ramifications, and ME2 is no worse. The choices here really, really matter and many of them affect the outcome of the final mission. Did I mention you can die? Permanently? Instead of just Ashley or Kaidan dying in the first game, anyone on your team can die during the final mission, all depending on what you did up until then. If things go bad enough, Shepard can die as well, preventing you from importing that particular save into ME3.

I can hear you panicking already, but don’t worry! It’ll be pretty obvious to you whether you are ready or not for the final showdown, and you can usually tell beforehand if you’ll make it or just barely struggle through. There comes a point though where you might have to sacrifice something you care about in order to strengthen your team, or brave the dangers to save said loved ones in spite of not being quite ready…

I already spoke volumes about the graphics, so I’ll move on to audio from here. It’s a clear improvement over ME, no doubt. Voice acting is still miles ahead of anything else I’ve played. Bioware really spared no expense in the cast of the game, hiring known stars as Martin Sheen (Wall Street) and Carrie Ann Moss (The Matrix/Trinity). Combat audio is perfect and just blends in there. Nothing that rapes your ears and no repeated combat cries. Mix that all with an excellent soundtrack and you have the perfect experience.

Speaking of experience I can say that ME2 managed to touch me emotionally. While I liked my crew from the first game, ME2 really managed to attach them emotionally to me. I really cared about them. When they had trouble, I wanted to help them, not for gameplay reasons, but because I cared. When I lost some of them in the final mission, I felt an emotional sting. They’re just that well done. Fantastic characters with intriguing back stories, troubles of their own and a personal charm.

Well, I’ll try to wrap up here and just finish this off with a recommendation: Get this game! Seriously. Mass Effect 2 is the best RPG experience mixed with a first person shooter ever.

The Good Stuff

• A compelling and dramatic story that will suck you in and leave you craving for more
• Much improved and intense combat system with clever and difficult enemies
• The best sidekicks ever
• Gameplay that will keep you on your toes and convey the feeling of urgency
• Improved interface, item handling and leveling system
• Very distinct and unique classes, much more so than in ME

The Bad Stuff

• Occasional positional bugs
• Planet scanning can become slightly tedious
• One of the characters cannot be acquired until the end mission (who though this was a good idea?)
• The last mission might be over the top difficult if you’re looking for a perfect run (no deaths)

Final Verdict: 9,5

• Gameplay 10
• Graphics 9
• Audio 10
• Replayability 8
• Controls 8
• Entertainment 10

Was a long time I bothered to write anything here. It’s not because I didn’t want to, or didn’t care. I’ve just been far too busy to get anything down. There’s been a literal crapload of things going on lately with our corporation leaving our old alliance and joining a new one. There’s a really long story behind all that, so I’ll just give you a tl;dr up ahead.

The Confederate Navy was displeased with the current situation and lack of action and decided it was time to leave the alliance to stand on its own. A brilliant offer surfaced and CNF joined an alliance to move into Pure Blind.

There, with that out of the way I guess it’s time to take the not so short version. We joined Forever Unbound, which at the time really wasn’t much more than a shell for three corporations; CNF, Solaris and Golden Cross Enterprises, in order to start building a member base while maintaining some security from war declarations and corporation theft. CNF was supposed to be “main corporation” where the bulk of the members were to be housed, taught and tried. Solaris was to be the executor corp with a single member in it, just for security reasons. Golden Cross Enterprises were tasked with being the industrial backbone, providing ships and modules for CNF in it’s doings. In return, CNF would lend manpower for protecting GCEN assets and for occasional mining ops, alternatively giving minerals from own mining ops to GCEN. GCEN were also to start recruiting to build up the needed member base. What happened was that CNF restructured to better fit its PvP focus, and GCEN did pretty much nothing, or so it looked like from our end. As I understood it, GCEN got issues with logistics and recruiting, while not properly setting up their hangars and rights, which led to a bit of chaos, never really getting the industry off the ground.

Combine all the above with us being in alliance of one 30 man corporation, and one 2 man corp, in addition to one 1 man corp…We ain’t looking good. We’re looking stupid. So CNF decides to bail on this since it’s not working out. We decide we intend to stand on our own for a while we rebuild our member base and find a new focus. Only days after the split, we received a very interesting offer from the Spacemonkey’s Alliance. An offer involving NBSI policy, potent low sec access and 0.0 sovereignty in Pure Blind. Long story short, we joined up and relocated to Pure Blind. We’ve yet to settle in completely, but we’ve already had a lot of action. Which is nice, since quite a few of our members were getting a tad bored.

Oh, and I got a kill today too.

After having been completely devoured by this particular series of games I couldn’t help but write a review of the games. I know that it has already been done several times, but I’d still like to share my feelings over the games with my friends, readers and corpmates.
I’ll begin today with a review of Mass Effect. The first game in a planned trilogy in the Mass Effect universe, released May 28, 2008. This review will not contain any major spoilers in case anyone of you haven’t already played the game and intend to do so. Revealing plot or deliver spoilers would literally spoil your experience. And boy, what an experience!

Mass Effect begins by asking you to log in as your character, Commander Shepard. Since Mass Effect is a role-playing game, you are given several options for you character. If you’re feeling lazy, you can always select the default male or female character and thus play as Soldier class.

However if you are more like me, wanting to fine-tune your experience, you are given several options. First off you choose gender and first name. The first name is mostly fluff for yourself since it’s never displayed in the actual game except on your character sheet. People will refer to you as “Shepard” or “Commander” regardless of your sex.

Next up is choosing your class, which is the most important choice. You can select any of six classes: Soldier, Engineer, Adept, Infiltrator, Sentinel, and Vanguard. They are arranged in one primary specialist group and one “jack of all trades” group, with Soldier being the Combat specialist, Engineer being the Tech specialist and Adept being the Biotic specialist. (Biotics are Mass Effects equivalent to fantasy games’ magic).

The other three classes are dual classes that combine two of the above into one class. Not as specialized, but more versatile. Infiltrator is the Combat/Tech combination, Vanguard being the Combat/Biotic and Sentinel the Tech/Biotic combination. In addition to the above classes, any class can choose to specialize further after reaching level 20 and doing a specific mission, thus further enhancing his or her power in a specific field.

After this you are asked to choose a background, which affects some side quests (called Assignments) and your Paragon/Renegade scores. I’ll get to these later. Once your background is chosen, you select your psychological profile, which again affects some assignments as well as Paragon/Renegade scores. Both the background and psychological profile will also affect dialogues here and there in the game, and serve as an identifier for who Shepard is. (Since I’ve played Mass Effect 2, I can let you know it carries over to dialogue here too.)

Once you’ve made your choices you are treated to an intro where you overhear a couple of voice discussing you (Shepard) for a special assignment, while watching yourself staring out a window on a spaceship or space station with a planet looming below. Then you are pretty much tossed right into the story where you have been chosen as the XO of the “Normandy”, a secret stealth vessel of combined alien and human technology that is now having it’s shakedown cruise. Things rapidly change, and you are told this is no shakedown cruise at all, but a covert pickup on a colony on the far fringes of space. Things quickly go bad from here on in.

I won’t go more into detail here, but Mass Effect treats you to a rather cliché-ish “Save the Universe” story, but with many unusual twists and refreshing details that makes it all feel new and creative. The Mass Effect universe is ripe with interesting races and cultures, and will inspire you to read codex entries, talking to aliens and whatnot only to find out more about this cast universe.

Something I particularly like is the way they solved the fact that you have the right to use any means necessary and have clearance to go through almost any logs, something that is generally overlooked in these kinds of games. In Mass Effect, Shepard is, after a while given a special rank that allows her to step outside the law in order to do her job in Citadel space. In most games, you simply do as you please in spite of it being illegal, but none seem to react. Small detail, but adds to the whole believability and immersion.

Immersion is something Mass Effect definitely doesn’t lack in any amount. The graphics are very good, even though some of the character textures looks slightly blurry up close,and runs fairly well on a modern gaming computer. It’s also available on the Xbox 360, but from what I’ve heard, the revised PC version is miles ahead of the Xbox version, unfortunately.

What really sets Mass Effect aside from “Generic RPG #2097″ is a combination of an engaging story, spectacular voice acting and a unique feeling of companionship. During the course of the game you will recruit others to help you in your venture and every character adds something unique to the group, not only through their skills but also through their personality. You’ll find that you are just as engrossed in their back-story by talking to them as you are exploring the universe. You might even develop an affection for them. In fact, the game even allows you to develop a relationship with some of them.

Mass Effect offers a blend between an RPG game and a first person shooter. All combat takes place in real time in a FPS fashion. You can, however, pause the action in order to relay directives and tell your squad members (who can only be two active at a time, chosen prior to the mission) to use their powers and abilities at specific targets. If you find this micromanagement to detract from the action, you can simply set your squad mates to “Full power use” and let them decide when and where to apply their powers, while assigning your own abilities to quickslots and blast away without ever having to pause.

It’s fairly well balanced and I found that playing on “Veteran” was “just about right”, with “Hardcore” (available after finishing the game once) was offering me a challenge and “Insanity” (available after finishing the game on Hardcore) was really tough, but doable. I am by no means a FPS god so this should be true for the casual player.

Mass Effect also treats you to a gigantic universe with races, cultures and plots peeking at you from every nook and cranny. Once you are given your own ship you may travel the universe, land on pretty much any planet that isn’t a molten rock or a gas giant, and explore to your heart’s content. You do this by landing on the planets in the “M35 Mako”, which is something of a combination of a tank and a terrain vehicle. While on planets you can discover usable gear, weapons or more lore. You also gain experience, which will make the game a little bit easier to finish. The Mako does have the unusual ability to scale almost vertical mountains, which makes for some rather hilarious moments sometimes.

You are free to advance the story at any time by flying to any of the Mission Planets and progress, but you’ll be missing much of what Mass Effect has to offer if you do. There are lots of assignements to do, planets to explore, people to meet. I think I spent some 50 hours on the game the first time I played it. Of course, I’d finished it once by then but there was so much I’d missed, so much to do different and still other classes to test. To this date, I’ve still not played neither Engineer, Soldier or Sentinel.

What really makes Mass Effect feel so real is that your choices matter, and I mean really matter. The choices you make throughout the game will follow you, not only through this game, but through the other two games in the trilogy. Yep, you heard me, you can import your ME1 character into ME2 and have all your history brought with you (in addition to some bonuses, depending on how well you did) and your ME1/ME2 character into ME3.

Now, this wouldn’t seem half as awesome if I didn’t tell you what overwhelming choices you can make. You choices can mean the difference between life and death for a teammember, wether the universe will radically change politically, the life and death of an entire species (!) and much more. Mass Effect really does a good job making you agonize over choices since they will come back and bite you in the hind end. As always, there are no “right” choices. There are simply bad and less bad choices, which makes the whole thing much more interesting.

Bioware (that made the game) also thankfully let go of the tired old “good/bad” mechanic where everything you did was on a sliding scale of good or bad, which usually ended up with me being somewhere in the middle. In Mass Effect, most choices give you “Paragon” (diplomatic and helpful, “no one gets left behind”) and “Renegade” (selfish, callous and efficient) points. Being a renegade doesn’t mean you are a bad person. It’s kinda “get the job done, no matter the cost”, while paragon is more trying to find the best for everyone involved, and let the mission suffer.

With giving you the ability to amass both kinds of points, Mass Effect really lets you tailor your experience and choose differently in situations without suffering for it (ie losing “light” or “dark”). You simply amass whatever points resulted from your choice. More points in either will grant some bonuses, such as Ability Cooldown reduction (Paragon) or Increased Weapon damage (Renegade).

So, in closing, I can’t really say anything but “PLAY THIS GAME!”

Seriously.

 The Good Stuff

• Exceptionally well thought out and presented story that really pulls you in
• Fantastic voice acting allows incredible immersion
• Smooth and mostly problem free combat system
• Vast universe that actually seems to work together with its history and cultures
• Unique and creative aliens
• Sounds and music flows well with the action and doesn’t get in your way
• You get the feeling that you really do, in fact, matter in the scale of things
   

The Bad Stuff

• Might be tough on old computers
• Has some annoying texture popping when loading new scenes
• Long elevator rides (loading times)
• Assignments tend to feel a bit copy&paste at times (main missions are however excellent)
• Enemy combat taunts can get really repetetive when you fight mercs.
   

Final Verdict: 8

• Gameplay 9
• Graphics 8
• Audio 8
• Replayability 7
• Controls 7
• Entertainment 9