MASS EFFECT 2Formats: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
Publisher: EA
Developer: Bioware
Release Date: 29th January 2012
Score: 100%
Succession is a hard road to walk for the successful. I mean, for the try-hards in life it’s so much simpler: measure your failures, identify the necessary improvements, and apply a liberal amount of elbow grease to go that extra mile. But for life’s winners, that road gets longer and steeper with every step.
For example: Bioware. Pity the poor company whose work is of such a consistently high quality that only they can manage to better it. The original Mass Effect, released in 2007, was not without its flaws, admittedly, but like all of Bioware’s titles its few failings were almost completely obscured by the floods of awesome that poured from its every orifice. It was met with near-universal acclaim, and rightly so. The only real complaints were that the combat was a little loose and there was an alien’s bum in it. In Bioware’s defence, it was an Action RPG and not a 3rd Person Shooter so the combat was always intended to be slightly secondary to the exceptionally well-paced narrative, colourful, diverse characters and exhilarating space operatics. Also, it’s not every day you see an alien’s bum – and it’s not as if it was Mr. Warf’s bone-ridged arse bobbing up and down, is it?
Anyway, despite what the naysayers might have naysaid, Mass Effect was a brilliant game. A huge, sprawling adventure populated by a great cast of human and non-human desperados, thrust along by a deep, multi-branching, continuously exciting and repeatedly surprising story, it managed to illicit genuine emotion whilst inducing some serious chin-rubbing over some of its more moralistic dilemmas. Announced as the first part of a proposed trilogy right from the start, expectations for it were high – and when those expectations were met and, in many cases, surpassed, expectations for the trilogy as a whole went straight into orbit. With that achievement in mind, it speaks volumes about Bioware that they were still prepared to listen to the fans and tweak the game mechanics accordingly whilst developing the sequel. Especially considering that so many fans would have been happy with a simple forty-hour extension of ME 1. If nothing had changed but the story and characters, we’d have been fairly content. As it happens, however, Bioware have managed to kick the ass of a kick-ass game and deliver a sequel that is, quite frankly, incredi-funk-idiculous from the beautiful graphics to the A-list voice cast (including Martin Sheen and Seth Green). In case you were unclear, that word means good.
But before I get into why I had to invent a whole new word just to describe the win factor of Mass Effect 2, there are some niggles which, whilst not enough to trouble the game as a whole, are worthy of mention if only to go some way towards counteracting my schoolgirl gushing. First of all, it’s still impossible to make a good-looking Commander Shepard. This is because you are intended to carry your character over from the first game (if you completed it, that is; if you didn’t, it doesn’t matter as the default narrative will fill in the storyline blanks) and in the first game a good hour of tweaking chin width and brow depth only produced a kind of freakish amalgamation of Jason Statham, Danny DeVito and John Merrick. Also, I still take issue that the Normandy crew remain stationery for days on end regardless of where you’ve been or where you’re going, and there are occasional texture issues of the same ilk that so troubled its predecessor. Although, it’s only fair to say that these are far rarer now, and the pop-in and collision bugs have been addressed and, for the most part, fixed. One “fix” that may be a bone of contention for some, though, is that the six-wheeled Mako rover has been entirely removed and planet-side exploration is now done completely on foot. I hated the damned thing, personally, but I know there are some who loved it. Trust me, though, you won’t really miss it.
The story begins just after the end of part one, when on a fairly routine mission the Normandy is attacked by an unknown enemy and (spoiler alert!) blown into tiny pieces. Whilst dragging the lovably-precocious pilot, Joker, to an escape pod, dodging flailing cables, roaring flames and, at one awe-inspiring point, passing through a section of the ship with a breached hull, looking upwards to see chunks of debris floating off towards the distant stars as the silence of space seems to close in around him (or her, depending on your choice) Shepard makes the ultimate sacrifice to get his crew safely off the ship. Via the flippant tone of this review it’s hard to describe just how captivating the opening scene actually is – just seeing the Normandy torn apart is genuinely moving for any longstanding fan of the original – but the gooseflesh on your arms when you see Shepard floating away into space, prone, incumbent, helpless, will do it far more justice.
From here the narrative jumps forward two years. Shepard is rebuilt, patched up by Cerberus – the seedy underground crime syndicate that proved such a nuisance in the first game – and his team is gone, reassigned, resigned or presumed dead. The Reapers, a pesky race of hyper-advanced machines who have a nasty habit of wiping out all organic life in the galaxy every 50,000 years, are still a very real threat and Humanity, by dint of Shepard’s actions in Mass Effect, are now in charge of the Citadel Council and not doing a great job. Worse still, a race of insectoid aliens known as the Collectors has been kidnapping entire human settlements and taking their captors through the Omega 4 Relay, a Mass Relay unusable by any race except the Collectors themselves. For some reason the leader of Cerberus, the enigmatic, chain-smoking Illusive Man, believes that Shepard is humanity’s last best hope, and to this end outfits him with a brand new Normandy and a list of names from which to craft a new team. And the game, as they say, is afoot.
Once again there’s a wide range of classes from which to choose, from the combat-specific Soldier to the powerful biotic Adept (kind of Mass Effect’s version of the classic Mage). Previously there was no pure Tech class, but now we have the Engineer, a new class that you can even switch to if you’re continuing with your character from the first instalment. Whether you begin from scratch or import a character from a completed ME 1 save game (and you really should), your first port of call as the infamous Commander Shepard is a settlement called Freedom’s Progress where you’ll get your first taste of combat, and be immediately slapped in the face by the vast improvement.
Even if you’re in the minority who didn’t feel particularly short-changed by the combat in the original you won’t be able to argue that the combat doesn’t feel infinitely tighter. It’s been compared to Gears of War, and while that’s an understandable comparison it’s also a bit of silly one. Epic’s epic is a pure-blooded shooter and, in my humble opinion the finest example of a 3rd Person Actioner ever committed to disc. Mass Effect 2 is an RPG at heart, and though the combat is more fluid, more responsive and, well, just more, it’s still not entirely perfect. Similarly to Gears, you can now enter cover by tapping A and lean out with the left trigger to aim with precision. Also, any beardy number-crunching has been entirely removed and whilst some weapons have more kick than others for obvious reasons, a bullet is a bullet. Hit an enemy in the head and he’ll drop – providing you’ve removed all his barriers, shields and armour first. In addition to the improved gunslinging, enemies now have different types of protection that require you to use particular attacks to take them down quicker. For example, physical armour is ripped apart quicker by rapid fire or incendiary attacks, whilst biotic barriers are tough against ballistics but weak against biotic strikes. It becomes pretty vital pretty fast that you use the right attack for the right situation and adds a welcome element of tactics to the mix. Incidentally, there are no armour or weapon skills to determine what you can wear or wield. You can use any weapon your class allows and damage is determined by the device itself.
Once you’re on the hunt for your team of intergalactic reprobates the game opens up into the kind of huge, open-path behemoth that Bioware are famous for. The characters themselves are wonderfully well-realised, encompassing a few old friends and as varied a cast of misfits and hardcases as we’ve come to expect. But what’s exceptional here is the depth of each character. Every one of them is an individual with their own likes and dislikes, character traits and personality disorders. Whether it’s the terminally-ill Drell assassin, Thane, Miranda Lawson, the genetically-modified “perfect woman”, or Subject Zero, the heavily-tattooed, shaven-headed, psychopathic she-bitch (who somehow manages to make that description sexy) they each bring something of their own to the story. As ever with this developer, the characters feel as though they shape the narrative as opposed to the plot dictating the players and when combined with the many-splintered, choice-based gameplay you will feel that you’re playing through a unique story each time. To greater enhance this Bioware have worked on the conversation screens to make it feel all the more like the “interactive movie” it is often touted as. Camera angles will shift, the characters will move around, sit down and stand up, shrug, gesture and even touch one another during conversations. It makes the talky bits (of which there are a lot) that much more interesting to watch and does wonders for the immersion. At key moments you also get the option to interrupt the speaker with either a nice or nasty gesture, for which you’ll earn Paragon or Renegade points respectively.
Another major overhaul besides the speech and combat is that the inventory screen is no more. Instead you’ll be able to change your armour (and only your armour – the other characters remain in their own get-up at all times) in your cabin aboard the Normandy. And while the amount of different armour sets might at first seem to be a lot less than the first game, it soon becomes clear that you can now mix and match separate pieces as well as customise the colour and pattern of your suit. The omission of the classic inventory, while initially controversial and a little off-putting for purists, actually does wonders for ME 2’s realism and immersion. Instead of three identically dressed characters running around with sniper rifles they’re unable to use, you now have characters that retain their individuality at all times and only carry weapons they’re trained to use. There’s also no invisible wardrobe full of clothes to dip in and out of at any time. Weapons can be swapped out at specific stations found around many of the game areas or from the armoury aboard the Normandy, whilst on-the-fly selection is still enabled by holding LB and cycling through the conjured wheel. Whilst some weapons and armour can be bought at various vendors, you can also find blueprints for prototypes around the galaxy that you can assign a scientist to build once you unlock the Tech Lab (and the scientist…) on your ship.
Powers, too, have benefitted from some much-needed streamlining. It was slightly confusing in the first game that so many characters had hacking, decrypting and first aid skills when only Shepard could actually use them directly, meaning that those skills in others actually boiled down to nothing but skill-boosting stats that could have been used for so much more. Here you begin with a limited number of class-specific skills, each with 4 levels. Unlocking the 4th level by spending squad points earned with every experience level gained opens up a choice of two further specialisations to select from, and none of them seem superfluous or bolted on. It makes it far easier to build a specific squad to suit your play style. Also, the powers themselves are more impressive and simpler to use, since you can now map them to LB and RB, with your class-specific power mapped to Y. It’s just a lot less fiddly.
Which sums up Mass Effect 2 perfectly, really. It’s a lot, lot less fiddly. It’s all so much tighter, so much more polished and refined, so much more effective, efficient and impressive. The hype was well justified, the praise is well deserved and the anticipation has been well rewarded. The combat has been improved to the power of oo-rah, and the narrative and presentation has somehow managed to surpass the near-flawless original. If Mass Effect 3 improves on this game to the same degree, every other developer that year might as well hold their releases for a few extra months. The graphics are probably some of the best I’ve seen on this generation, far outstripping almost every other recent title and making Bioware’s own late ’09 release, Dragon Age: Origins, look pretty shabby in comparison. Quite how they managed to produce that game and this at more or less the same time is unimaginable, especially as they’re both such amazing examples of their respective genres. It should be said, though, that when viewed as individual titles, regardless of genre, development house, hype, marketing or platform, Mass Effect 2 is far, far superior even to DA:O.
Is it perfect? No, not quite. I’ve yet to see a perfect game and doubt I ever will. But Mass Effect 2 is such a staggering achievement it’s hard to consider any other game more deserving of a perfect score. It’s forty-plus hours of top-notch combat, incredible voice-acting, emotional provocation, stunning graphics and exhilarating gameplay of the kind of standard that simply hasn’t been achieved before as a complete package. Some games have great shooting mechanics, some have great RPG elements, others have a decent story, memorable protagonists or blinding good looks. Very few games have it all. Dammit if I sound like a fanboy, but Mass Effect 2 is made of pure awesome, filled to the brim with natural win and oozes excellence from every pore. Buy it, play it, love it, play it again, remember why you loved it. Simples.
Words by Mick Fraser
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