Marital harmony was a bit strained in our household this weekend, which probably has something to do with the fact that I spent, like, twenty hours playing Mass Effect 2.
Instead of writing a full-fledged review, I'll leave that to others (1, 2) and just list a few thoughts I've had while playing:
Story
- Mass Effect 2 is a better Star Wars movie than all three prequels put together. In fact, it's a lot like what you'd get if you combined all the best parts of Star Wars, Babylon 5, and Blade Runner. Their incredibly detailed and internally-consistent universe is a fun place to live (and blow things up).
- They kept the excellent "dialogue wheel" concept from the previous installment, and it continues to make all other games conversation scenes look primitive in comparison. The voice acting is really well done, and I was surprised by the number of famous or semi-famous voice actors they got (Doctor Evil's son! Charlie Sheen's dad! Trinity! Worf! That hot girl from that one show I don't watch!). The writing is pretty good for a video game, and these parts feel a lot like you're watching your own sci-fi movie, staring You as Heroic Space Guy.
- Like Fallout 3, you get a lot of chances to make "good" and "evil" choices - which they refer to as Paragon and Renegade - but I thought it was done a lot better here compared to Bethesda's offering, or even older Bioware games like KotOR. Instead of obvious differentiations like "save cute kitty / shoot cute kitty", they make it a lot more ambiguous, and if a "good" player takes the "evil" path now and again, it still fits well with the story. Hard to explain but if you play it you'll see what I mean.
- No more driving levels! This was one of the most tedious parts of the first game, so good riddance.
- The combat has been improved and the RPG elements have been toned down. Overall this makes the experience generally better, and I didn't really miss anything that they took away. It would be fair to describe ME2 as a shooter with strong RPG aspects, whereas ME1 was exactly the other way around.
- Each area is less spread out, and more densely packed with things to see, than corresponding areas in ME1. Again, this streamlines the experience and leads to less walking around.
- The texture popping issues from the first game are much less noticeable now.
- The new minigame that you do when hunting for minerals on uncharted planets is super annoying. This is easily the most tedious part of the whole game. Luckily you don't have to do it too often unless you're a completionist (o hai).
- The increased emphasis on use of cover during firefights suits the way I like to play RPGs... I've always been a "crouch and snipe" kind of guy. I do wish there was a way to stay undercover and go around the corner of an object you're hiding behind without standing up first, but that's a minor quibble.
- Allies are useful in combat, but they all seem to do pretty much the same thing - shoot or use their
forcebiotic powers. I haven't yet had to use the squad-command features, or even really had to care about which two NPC characters I pick for my squad. Let's just say that the ally characters don't compare to what Valve did with Alyx in the Half-Life games. - Sometimes Shepard gets stuck in the world geometry - usually on the corner of a piece of terrain, although during one battle I was blasted by a rocket and ended up with my head stuck in the ceiling like the Krazy Glue guy. To fix things that time, Ihad to reload from a save, losing ten minutes of progress.
- Does your guy even have a health meter? Occasionally I'm killed and am forced to reload, and other times I get the "omg u r about to die" screen effect and heartbeat-sound, but if I stand still for a little while my guy apparently heals back up and I'm on my way. Whatever, it's still fun and it keeps things from getting too frustrating.
- I was amused to find that hiding behind a glass wall gives you protection from rockets.
Are you still reading this? Go buy/rent Mass Effect 2, already. You can thank me later.
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