By Sam Coles:
Mass Effect is one my favourite RPG franchises with deep and
interesting stories with fun third person shooting combat. Mass Effect 2 is my
favourite not just because it improved on everything from the first game but it
was what got me through a week of illness. I remember being really ill and it
was on sale back in 2010, my Mum bought it for me as it looked like something I
would like and she was right on the money.
Mass Effect 2 takes place after the first game where the council
have been completely destroyed by Sarren who was working with the Geth to resurrect
the Reapers who are ancient machines that come around every 50,000 years to
purge organic life. Shepard is on a routine patrol when they’re attack by an
unidentified object and the Normandy is destroyed along with Shepard dying.
Shepard is then brought back from the dead by the organisation known as
Cerberus who want human domination throughout the galaxy. Shepard is tasked to
take on a new threat called the Collectors who harvest human colonies, so
Shepard must assemble a crew to embark on a suicide mission. I like the story
in this game as it has real weight and one wrong move can cause the entire
mission to go wrong with most of the crew getting killed it really means it
when it says suicide mission.
The gameplay was vastly improved from the first game as the
original was great but was extremely clunky when it came to combat. They took a
more streamlined approach by borrowing mechanics from games such as Gears of
War and Resident Evil 4 and it gave a much needed shot in the arm with quick
and tightly responsive controls. However with that they did strip down the in
depth RPG mechanics from the first game which annoyed a lot of fans from the
original but it did not bother me that much as it felt less daunting than the
first. Gone are the planet exploration segments with the terribly controlling
mako and now all you do is scan planets from your ship to salvage materials to
upgrade the Normandy for the final mission yeah it is rather tedious to scan
and send in probes but anything is better than the mako driving sections from
the first.
It is crucial that you upgrade your ship before the final
mission if you want the entirety of your crew to survive as well as making sure
you do all the loyalty missions so they will stay on side with you and so they
won’t do anything stupid and die. I like this because it adds emotional
investment to all the characters where you end up really caring when they do
die in the current game or when you carry them over into the third game.
Visually the game looks 10 times better than the original
the character models got a real boost with better animations and better details
on faces whether they’re human or alien. Environments looks absolutely stunning
from the neon lit streets of the citadel to the moist looking hive of the
collectors. Considering the game came out 7 years ago Mass Effect 2’s
presentation is still awe inspiring and is something I can still boot up today
and stare at the beauty.
Mass Effect 2 is a game that still stands the test of time
and is a game that I can see people talking about 20 years down the line; it
has to be one of the best games of the 7th generation of gaming.
Mass Effect 2 is easy to find, cheap and playable on Xbox One if you are owner
of that system via backwards compatibility. If you haven’t played this game
where have you been and go out and buy this game.
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