I just finished my first play-through of Mass Effect 2 yesterday, and my head is still buzzing with a lot of thoughts about the experience. That’s a sign of a good game, right? So, in no particular order, and with full knowledge that HERE THAR BE SPOILERS, here are some of them:
- During the opening scene when you run through the burning Normandy and come to the main room that’s been opened to space is just a brilliant moment.
- As a *game*, it was more enjoyable than the first — the combat, the pace, the UI seemed a lot more fluid and fast. As an *experience*, I’d have to rate it below the first game. It was good, solid, interesting — but I wasn’t really moved at any point. I found myself laughing a couple times, and warming up to some of the characters, but it didn’t grip me the way I expected.
- Speaking of expectations, where was the big BioWare Twist(tm) that usually comes with these RPGs? I spent the whole game waiting for some big bombshell revelation, a huge betrayal, an unexpected development… and it failed to appear. Cerberus, the Illusive Man and EDI were three aspects I really thought would turn dangerous or show a hidden agenda, but… nah. How can you have an AI on a ship and NOT have it go crazy? Bah.
- The journey was enjoyable, but the ending was so incredibly meh. I breezed through the final battle, I didn’t care who lived or died, and the game ended without answering any of the big questions it set up. I know they’re prepping for the final entry in the series, but that’s just poor form regardless.
- Joker and EDI’s relationship was one of the absolute gems of the game. Seth Green gives Joker a great personality, and he’s become my favorite character in the series.
- In general, I liked the companions in ME2 more than ME1. They did a good job with handing you a diverse and (mostly) alien crew.
- Favorite companions: Mordin/Jack. Least favorite: Jacob/Samara.
- Miranda’s face was really photorealistic, more than any other character (of course, that’s because it’s closely modeled on Yvonne Strahovski)
- As usual, BioWare did an excellent job coming up with tricky moral conundrums that actually challenged me to figure out what was the right and wrong choice — the genophage, Samara’s daughter.
- I got a little tired of “nice guy Shepherd” about halfway through… he really got all camp counselor-ish, but I didn’t want to abruptly switch to renegade.
- Joker’s small moment of glory was a pleasant surprise.
- The sheer depth of alien races in Mass Effect still amazes — they may look a bit alike, but they have a multitude of personalities, religions, habits, and secrets, just like us. BioWare puts a lot of thought into their background and diversity, and it pays off well.
- Tali’s “expression” when she learns that the ship has an AI was priceless.
- It was neat to see how many of your decisions impacted the final mission — I only ended up losing two characters, because I chose the wrong specialists.
- You’d think the Council and the Spectres would want to at least talk to Shepherd, but oh well.
All in all, I had a great time, and I’ll probably go back through it (although not too soon). It continues to give me hope in The Old Republic, especially since I wanted to keep playing Mass Effect 2 when I was done. Things like story, choices, character and emotions really mean something to BioWare, and I hope they don’t let up in TOR.
I would also add that it felt to short, not hour wise but story wise. When it was time to head to the final battle i had the ‘is that it’ feeling. It felt like most of the time had been spent on rounding up the members of the crew and doing their loyalty mission, which was good fun for sure, but yeah. I guess it’s like they say, the middle part of a story will always suffer a bit.
The joker and EDI part was brilliant, coming from ME1 joker had always felt neglected, both personality and story wise, but they made up for it in ME2.
All in all it was a brilliant game, one which left me wanting for more so much that i actually bought the first DLC, Kasumi Goto. Altho the DLC wasn’t bad, it was no were near worth the 560 points that it cost. To short is a good reason, this time both story wise and time wise.
That Joker is such a tool. I’m stuck computing Pi because he plugged in the overlord.
Favorite line from the game.
My friends all played through ME2 as paragons, so I thought I’d try renegade, and its the polar opposite of paragon. Every renegade action involves Shepard resolving the situation by being an enormous douche bag, and its kind of funny at first and occasionally you’ll do something really bad-ass, but later on you start to wonder how anyone could tolerate to be around you. The renegade actions paint Shepard as less of a cop who doesn’t play by the rules and more of a person who could be the villain under different circumstances.
The twist was that there was no twist.
I agree with most of your points, as a game it was more fun than the original, stream lined and faster paced. the very end of ME1, without spoiling anything, was actually kind of terrible. I enjoyed virtually everything up until the last fight. “I have to fight what?”
Honestly, it was a total letdown for me and I didn’t even finish it, which is rare for me. Maybe because I was expecting a story and romances at least as good as the first one. I think I even expected more because of how good Dragon Age was.
Totally agree about expecting some kind of twist or reveal or something. The story was just so… meh.
Oh Thane, you’re a very sexy lizard-man, but your weepy self and your dead wife totally turned me off. How many times must BioWare shove that trope down the throats of we female gamers? And Jacob had about as much charisma as a glass of water. And sorry, Garrus, but my Shepard is looking for more than a one night stand. Kaiden… Kaiden…? *sigh* Can’t comment on the lesbian romance as that’s not my cup of tea.
I felt that it was much more of a shooter than the first one, and I weep for the RPG genre now.
I’m in my up-teenth play through of this game. I’ve found it incredibly enjoyable. I get the most fun importing my characters from ME1 – as you see a lot more consequences from your ME1 actions and side quests, and better dialogue options.
Regarding TWIST I think that’s saved mainly for ME3, since this is a bridge for the trilogy, and there was a pretty big twist in ME1. Though knowing what happened to the Protheans was pretty sweet.
I really enjoyed this game, but two major issues:
Resource mining sucks! I hate these kind of grinds, prefer ME1′s method of earning cash to get your upgrades.
And I felt there we too many characters in ME2. I prefer the more, in depth way you got to know your ME1 characters to the few choice pieces of dialogue and an average (most were forgettable) loyalty quest. In ME1 I felt as if I got to know Garrus, Wrex, Ash, Liara, and others better than in ME2. Exception really being Jack in ME2.
Great game, can’t wait for ME3!
ME2 is still Game of the Year for me all these months later. Steam says I’ve spent over 80 hours on it. I’m on my 4th playthrough (this one on insanity) right now actually.
So yeah, it’s a great game.
ME2 is the transitionary game, Shepard gaining more allies in the final climatic battle with the reapers in game 3. It’s the Two Towers of this trilogy.
The game is much much better if you play with a save from the first game. Lots of nice story touches.
I don’t think either of the ME’s are very good games, I think what makes them fun and enjoyable is the that they are great ways to tell a story. So it’s the story that carries the game, ME1′s was fantastic, ME2′s was lacking.
It’s interesting that you mention the space scene on the Normandy. That was my absolutely favorite part of the game. in fact, I was so blown away by it I made my wife (who’s not a gamer) play through the first 15 minutes just so she could experience it. But it was all down hill from there, at least for me.
But Syp summed up my own feelings well. More money and effort spent on the shiny, less focus on the story, and the end was, well, actually the ending was pretty bad.
I liked the fact that so many of the cumbersome elements were streamlined in the second game. I’m contemplating a second playthrough which I never would have done with ME1. The first game’s inventory system alone makes me sad just thinking about it.
I liked that all the characters in ME2 were actually fleshed out by missions specifically tailored to them. It was a nice touch.
I really liked the game and I’m glad to see that you did too!
Great game, loved it. Nice, epic ending. I had to replay it to make sure everyone survived because it has a different ending.
Bad things: The mining the freaking planets for ore to upgrade your ship and guns. Just take that out and let me get ore from running more ground missions.
I think the main problem with ME2s story is the plotting of the early game personally. Parts of some early missions, like the one with the plague on Omega, seem like they’re trying to set up the first Collector encounter as the ‘big reveal’ of the game. Of course anybody who saw any of the marketing for ME2 already knew what the Collectors were and that they were the main baddies for this game, which rather dilutes the experience.
Some of the characters in the mid to late game also feel very disjointed and even superfluous, Liara and Legion being the poster children since their roles in the early game were cut. Legion is also a victim of the games marketing; which built him up as some kind of weird stalker/assassin and completely at odds with his actual characterization as you already know.
All the comments about the lack of a ‘twist’ annoy me, but it does allow me to quote one of my favorite bits of writing on the net, Scortchy’s KOTOR2 LP, which rather nicely encapsulates my feelings on the subject:
“[...]those big twists in stories can be a schtick, and only really work when you don’t expect it. [...] Take a look at M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”. After those movies, he became the ‘plot twist’ guy; people came to see his movies just for the surprise. That’s a shitty way to watch a movie, and it’s a shitty way to write a movie; his films got progressively more and more unwatchable from trying to duck under audience expectations.”
I’m kinda glad that Bioware has shown that they’re willing to modify their own story formula, even if it’s just a little.
Still, ME2 is a very good game. I would liken the actual gameplay improvement to the similar leap shown by Assassin’s Creed 2 over its predecessor. I don’t know if I could ever put up with the original MEs clunky systems again. IMO, probably the worst bit about ME2 is that a good chunk of the cast is still as boring and usless as the ME1 characters were.
I really should learn brevity sometime.
As a shooter, its a vast improvement over the first game. So much of the game is built entirely to cater to the shooter aspect. Almost all the areas in the game you visit are repetative shooting galleries.
As an RPG and an epic story, the game is a dismal failure compared to the first.
Some of the characters were okay, but their implementation in the game sucked. So much seemed to rely on the aforementioned shooting gallery missions they had, yet didnt seem to come back into the game at any point. It was “do their mission thats more about combat than character, and their chances in the final mission will improve damatically”. It felt cheap.
Ultimately I think with all that time and effort they spent on the shooter part of the game, so much that it dwarfs the rest of the game, they forget or neglected the areas that Bioware do best.
I felt the smaller, better fleshed out crew of ME1 were far superior. Of course the majority got cameod off in ME2, with the two returning characters now nothing more than brief romances, or “busy” lines if you dont romance them.
You could tell from the devs attitude and the games marketing, this was an attempt to grab “shooter gamers who like Gears of War and Modern Warfare 2″. From what I hear of the sales, it hasnt quite worked.
I hope for the sake of ME3, the story and characters take precedence, not the shooter combat. ME2 is one of the most disappointing sequels Ive ever had the misfortune of playing.