Good Effects! Mass Effect 2 Review

 

Sheppard, a hero in the human race, commander of the SSV Normandy, sent to destroy the Geth, attacked by an unknown enemy, and ultimately killed, brought back through the Lazarus Project by Cerburus, now fighting the collectors! From EA and BioWare comes Mass Effect 2.

The game starts off, with your ship being destroyed by an unknown enemy while on patrol for the Geth, as you attempt to save the pilot of the Normandy, you are yourself killed. Then rescued by Cerburus for greater causes, with the destruction of the council, and a new person-run council in play, you move onto recruiting people for your crew, and fighting the collectors. Explore new planets and complete side missions to find more and more secrets in the Mass Effect universe.

The game does include some personalization features, at the start of the game you are asked to change the name of your character (with Sheppard as the surname obviously) and can then change facial features, but once completed you cannot change these features again, later on when the Normandy is remade better than ever, you can change your look again, but not so many options are available.

 

The combat system in Mass Effect 2 is easy, but fun, its not just point and shoot like a lot of games, with the third person perspective it makes taking cover easier and more effective, and with the “powers” of yourself and team members, you can do anything from blast your enemies with pure energy to shoot them in the head! Also including ammunition power-ups from increasing the damage of your shots, to concussing the enemy.

Along with an immersive story line and good fun combat, there are also little puzzle types dotted around while on the surface of a world, when completed they grant you special credits, which are used to power up your abilities, and those of your team mates, and also to grant you to new areas of the zone your in, only problem I found with these are, that sometimes they’re unresponsive and you find the timer runs out before you can complete simply because one item you clicked on the puzzle either didn’t’t respond or a linkage in a “memory” type game unchecked itself before you could click the next to connect.

Saying that, I still find it highly fun to find, and complete the puzzles they are truly fun, a plus side to Mass Effect 2, unlike in Mass Effect you no longer to take a tech class with you to With all the game content included in Mass Effect 2, a nice little feature has been added for all the people who have played the first installment of  Mass Effect, the save carryover feature allows the player to bring their saved characters into Mass Effect 2 and carry on from where they left of, but instead of carrying over the characters level, they will gain certain perks based on the character level of the saved game, the higher the level the more perks you receive, this is intended for those players that “went the extra mile” as said on the ME2 F.A.Q. to have a boost into Mass Effect 2, such for those players going straight into Mass Effect 2 with no saved games, will start from scratch.

Mass Effect 2, from the creators of  Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic, Dragon Age : Origins, and Mass Effect, comes Mass Effect 2 an intriguing, fun, and immersive game, I give a personal rating of 8/10 purely for the puzzle features, but overall a must buy for lovers of shooters, futuristic weapons, abilities and enemies. Congratulations to everyone who has worked on this, looking forward to the next installment in the Mass Effect Trilogy.

Review by: Jamie Gillett