Mass Effect (Part 2)

Mass Effect 2 is shockingly the second installment in the Mass Effect Series. I know I'm suppose to not show any sort of bias in my reviews, so I'm going to get this out of the way. This is my favorite out of the series and Thane is my favorite, actually useful, team member in ME2.

Mass Effect 2(From now on called ME2), takes place almost immediately after the events of ME1, Shepard is on his ship, cruising around endless space searching for Geth to kill then BAM!, you get exploded and die. The end. No seriously, you die in the first 5 minutes. Everyone gets off, the Normandy and Shepard goes down with the ship. 

Don't fret though, Cerberus spends two years rebuilding you. You'd think tech like that would be a bit more used even if it takes a few years to get right. Anyway, now you either "work with Cerberus"  or are "doing them a favor" to pay them back for bringing your back from the dead.

So now that you've stopped the initial reaper threat in ME1, apparently a race not previously mentioned is now a huge threat and occasionally have been before, who knew, and now you need to stop them.

This game is a bit more intensive then ME1 is, I think the story line is self is about 10 to 15 hours, almost double that of ME1. However you don't need to attain all of you team mates and several of them are optional. Side missions are a bit more ... for lack of a better word ... dumb. You scan a planet, send a probe and land where you sent the probe so you can fulfill what ever excuse the game gives you to shoot things over a chest high wall. While they did in fact fix the gun fighting system, they drastically cut down on the RPG elements of the game.

I played as the sniper/stealth class, in the first game you got a laundry list of abilities to sink your points into. In ME2 you get like 5, which was about half of where it was before. The powers seem to be much more effective however, so I guess that makes up for it. And just for the record, head shots get more and more effective as the series carries on.

If you thought that the game has enough characters to help and play with then this game will make you jump for joy, there are 12 other characters you can play with, each one has a unique set of techs and biotics. Each spec that you can make Shepard play as has a group of at least 2 partners that will play to  your strengths. 

The way you upgrade your weapons and armor have also changed in this installment. Instead of figuring out which suit fits better and acts as better laser repellent, you keep your standard clothing and put different parts on it that you find in shops and you can find new weapons and buy or find the upgrades of. You also cannot change your partners clothing, unless you make them loyal to you, even then its just one new costume. 

One other thing worth mentioning is they changed guns in an interesting way. Guns no longer work on a cool down, it works on ammo. They give flavor to it and a good reason, but the change seems a bit odd. They also took out the old way of doing bypasses and hacking and changed it with a new system where you cant just use omni-gel.

So all in all, ME2 is almost completely different from ME1. They pretty much completely changed the fighting, changed or removed some classes abilities, lowered the level cap, got rid of the several armors, changed the way you upgrade your weapons (for the better), gave you more strategy for biotics and tech for the bad change they did and in some odd way made the game more immersive. I would have liked for them to keep the world exploration in stead of just planet scanning. Some changes were for the better, some for the worse, but as I stated previously this ME is my favorite.

Mass Effect (Part 1)

I apologize for not posting anything the past few weeks; however, two weeks ago was mid-terms and last week was break and I was pretty much just sleeping. So, anyway, I spent most of my break playing through the Mass Effect series and the Metal Gear series (the canon ones anyway). I'm going to try to look at this game without comparing it to the future ones in the series, but I may slip a few times.

So this is a Future Fantasy Third Person Shooter RPG, sounds like a full plate right? Well this game does a pretty good job at merging everything together and making a decent narrative. The game takes the best parts of RPG games like a good story and a decent level up mechanic and then a third person shooter that does a very good job at incorporating the two together.

You play as "Insert First Name" Shepard, the commander of the Normandy, a space ship (I mentioned future fantasy right?). Now Commander Shepard is the first Human "spectre" (A select group or soldiers that do the dirty work of the Council (The "rulers" of the known universe). All of this seems like a lot of information, so the game has a codex that goes into farther explanations of the aliens, planets and lore.

That's all I'm going to say about the specifics as I don't want to ruin anything and I could go forever to try to explain the story of this game. Now, what I saw as the biggest downfall of this game was that the main story line only lasts about 5 - 8 hours. However there is about 20+ more hours of exploration and side missions. The exploration deal with a ATV tank styled vehicle that is one of the biggest pains in the ass to drive, as it bounces everywhere and sometimes doesn't go up certain terrain. The exploration can be a bit of a pain to drive around but each planet is different and brings you into the worlds just a bit more. (Not to mention each planet you can see gives you the story of it and certain statistics.)

As most RPG games you get to obtain new outfits and figure out which one fits better and protects you the best. Each race gets its own armor and cannot where other races armor. However once you've picked which two squad mates you want to use, you don't need to worry about equipping the others. Once your played the game through once however, you can unlock the best weapons and armor the game has to offer, however it is not cheap. In the same breath though, I had earned enough money to buy the weapons, armor, get infinite lap dances and probably still have enough money to own my own solar system.

The game bugging out occasionally caused a few issues for me, certain quests either didn't finish right or wouldn't even appear and sometimes dialog would just stop. Nothing major but when it happens it really takes your away form the immersion of the game.

Now besides these small ... oversights ... the game all in all is very well done. The game tries to rely on cover based shooting but its very difficult to attempt, its just easy to run in guns blazing. With different techs and biotic powers its easy to not die and controlling your team mates is a bit of a cock slap, but I didn't have too much of a problem.

The first of the Mass Effect series does very well at establishing the trilogy of Shepard's story and leaves the story at a good part. The fighting, level up system and powers all go well together and the game easily keeps you immersed in it. This game also does something that I have never seen in another game, when you earn a trophy it more than likely will effect your game in a positive way, like a permanent exp boost or extra tech damage.

If you haven't played this game before and want to, remember to try to do everything before you move onto the next game, Almost side story and major story choice effects the next game and even the one after that in some way. This game sets up the massive trilogy, however this is the only one where almost everything effects the next. This game is well worth the play, someone I know once called it "An RPG cleverly hidden in a Future Fantasy setting" and honestly this one does this the best out of the series.

(To bad the Mass Effect style of handling conversations and battle affected the rest of Biowares games  *cough* Dragon Age 2 *cough*)

-EDIT- I beat Mass Effect 2 so expect its review to be out soon.