Mass Effect 2: Game of the year already?

Bioware has been a powerhouse in the PC Role Playing Game genre since its second game, Baldur’s Gate, in 1998. Since then it has released other RPG standards such as Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights and its subsequent expansions, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and most recently Dragon Age: Origins.  Bioware has been at the forefront of the RPG genre with their intuitive use of dialog trees and modifying the dungeons and dragons rule set to work in real-time on the pc. In 2007 Bioware released another evolutionary title, Mass Effect - the first in a Trilogy of Mass Effect games. ME1 was revolutionary because it combined RPG gear collection, stat management, class based play style, large scale exploration and chat trees with the third person shooter genre.

Mass Effect 2 starts right where ME1 left off. You play as Commander Sheppard, a human who saved the galaxy in ME1. As the game is squad based you start by completing missions to recruit the most powerful strike team in the galaxy.

Gameplay Fusion
For starters, we have a disclaimer to make. Unlike the standard movie trilogies, Bioware went in o create an interesting interactive experience that will change the game experience. For instance, gameplay for this article was done mostly on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. The reason for this decision was simple - I had played through the first Mass Effect on my Xbox and Mass Effect 2 allows players who have completed Mass Effect 1 to import their save games to make Mass Effect 2 reflect the important decisions they made in the first game. Naturally, you do not need to use this feature as it is completely optional. However, going for it does allow for a seamless gameplay experience that flows and continues to make the player feel like his decisions mattered in the first game. Just to reiterate, the game is very similar on both platforms and is well worth the purchase price for PC or Xbox 360 [$50 pc, $60 Xbox 360].


PC or a console: If you opt to go with a PC version, you pay $10 less and can enjoy higher fidelity

In order to compare the gameplay between the console and PC platform, we have played some of the game on PC and the gameplay was truly excellent on that platform as well. PC gamers have greater freedom at choosing level of detail and the resolution, leading to much greater fidelity when compared with a gaming console.

Comparison of changes from Mass Effect 1 addendum for ME1 players:
 Mass Effect 1 was lauded for its combination of traditionally mutually exclusive game types. ME1 combined all its RPG and shooter elements very well with a few minor missteps. Bioware heeded the criticisms it received about some of the quirky complaints ME1 received. For example, instead of extensive load screens ME1 used elevator rides between zones; the elevator rides were often broken up by [often hilarious] banter between party members who didn’t like each other. These Elevator rides also contributed to the sense that you were in enormous futuristic structures. But in ME2 these elevator rides have been replaced with loading screens that seem to last longer than any of the elevator rides and also are generic and boring to look at, all the text on the load screen is blurred and shows the same animations on a loop. In the end the load screens are very monotonous and break up the game play. while the elevators where almost a joke about the future in that you could be in the middle of an important mission that required immediate action but because of the enormous size of structures that you still had to stand in an elevator [with elevator music] waiting for the gates of hell to open back up.

There were also some complaints about the weapon / armor system. Comparing the system used in ME1 to ME2 would cause one to assume that most of the complaints were about complexity. The system in ME1 had different grades of weapons made by different manufacturers which had focus on different approaches to weapon design. For example, one manufacturer may favor heavy hitting weapon that fired slower than another company’s gun, or armor that favored more shields than armor or less shields and faster shield recharge. The entire gear system from ME1 was thrown out, the new system uses individual pieces of armor that modify individual stats making the game a little easier and choosing different guns that either hold more ammo, more accurate, fire faster, or hit harder. The failing of this system is that you don’t ever feel the need to have to change from the load out you start the game with. You can even complete the game without changing a single piece of armor or changing any of the weapons.