Mass “oh its so good” Effect 2

The Illusive Man controls me now

I just finished Mass Effect 2. The first thing that comes to mind is “Why are there so many awesome games out there at the moment?”. The second thing is “Wow, Mass Effect 2 was a lot more awesome than i had imagined!”

Contrary to what most people did, i started an entirely new character when i began playing. I initially played Mass Effect 1 on Xbox, and didn’t want to play through the entire game again on PC just to transfer my character to the sequel. In all honesty, i feel that the first game had some good moments, but overall i felt that the story fell through, that the system sucked, and that the gameplay was a bit random in its quality. Its almost as if Bioware read my thoughts, because Mass Effect 2 has corrected everything i didn’t like about the first game.

The combat system is much better now. It feels less RPG’ish, and more Gears of War’ish. Some people have complained about this, but personally i think that it was an awesome choice. Having the action sequences work REALLY well is far better than having the option of tweaking your character endlessly. Its a battle between traditional RPG elements, and more gameplay friendly elements. This time gameplay won.

Mass Effect 2 corrects something that Bioware has had a tendency to do in a lot of their games. Usually the system for altering your companions attitudes towards you was easy to guess, and you could very quickly be friends with your entire team, unlock special missions etc. etc. In Mass Effect 2 there seems to be some randomness going on. There’s never a clear cut conversation choice that will get your team members to like you. It feels like several variables now affect it, including how you have interacted with other team members. This means that i, by choosing a side in an argument between two team members, alienated a third one who then wouldn’t talk to me anymore. This randomness really improved my experience. It made the companions feel more real, and i even felt a deep emotional response or two for them here and there.

Overall the game really surprised me, and i am very happy i spend some of my last savings on it. I will now start over and play it again – but i just wanted to blog about its awesomness, and tell you that YOU MUST PLAY THIS GAME!