Many people don't get on with my reviews because I don't tend to put pictures in them. So to keep those people happy>
OK moving on.
I waited a while before I wrote this review because I wanted to test out all aspect of the game including playing without importing an ME1 save, then with the import, and then using a New Game+ and the different difficulty settings.
So Mass effect 2 brings the return of Shepard. Set two years after you saved the Galaxy by Killing Saren and stopping the Reapers returning through the Citadel. In the opening scene, The Normandy gets attacked by an unknown enemy ship which tears her apart. The crew (apart from a few individuals) escape with their lives, but in the process of saving the pilot "Joker", Shepard gets sucked out into space and due to a leak in his space suit, dies.
After spending the two year gap being rebuilt by Cerberus, Shepard is asked by the head of Cerberus "The Illusive Man" to investigate the disappearance of Human colonists in the Terminus Systems.
Depending on whether you are playing an imported ME1 save game or not makes some minor dialogue changes and a few different NPC's being dotted about in various places. The three Major things that an ME1 import allows you to change are, whether or not the council is alive, whether or not Urdnot Wrex is alive, and whether Ashley Williams or Kaiden Alenko died on Virmire.
Anyone familiar with Bioware will know that most of the benefits of playing an ME1 import are crafty tricks to make you feel like you are playing a game with much more choice then there actually is. If you played a Paragon in ME1 and saved pretty much all of the people it was possible to save, you can almost guarantee that those same characters will turn up at some point in ME2 to say "Thanks Shepard" and basically waste your time with meaningless dialogue. In fairness, a couple of those NPC dialogues do allow you to earn a tiny amount of Paragon or Renegade points which for reasons I will come to shortly, are helpful.
The Combat system in ME2 is more or less the same as ME1, with the only real difference being that you no longer have an annoying Weapon overheat that leaves you helpless. Instead you now have a traditional ammunition system that in certain parts of the game, if you aren't careful will leave you even more helpless. But the ability to pause the action to have a breather, and assign actions to your team mates, is happily still there.
Another little funny that Bioware always pull is the insane gap between difficulty settings. Most people will skate through the game on easy mode and then Pump it up to Veteran on their second play through. This adds an interesting challenge at the same time as being a massive kick in the crotch as the difference between the two settings are huge. The reason this causes more problems is that its easy to be lead down the path of thinking that this is a fast paced Shooter/RPG only to realise that the same "Micro-Management" that was required in Dragon Age: Origins, is also required here. To be fair, the AI of your team mates, is significantly better and they can be quite helpful, but if you don't take control of them enough, on those occasions when you really need their help, they will either be dead, or on power cooldown.
Another big change to the game is the removal of the Mako. The annoying car/tank that was as irritating to drive as its possible to imagine. Instead of this, you now scan planets from the safe confines of the Normandy's Galaxy map. You scan the planets surface for minerals and launch probes to pick them up, and on planets with side missions, you locate the mission with the scanner and launch a probe to be able to land. I estimate that about four hours into the game the average player will be bored out of their mind with this aspect of the game, as even with the minor upgrades to the scanner, its a very boring and time consuming evolution.
The minerals you mine are used to research upgrades to your Equipment, which sadly are a must have if you are to complete the game with any survivors.
Like most RPG's there are moments that you are given the opportunity to do something that will prove beneficial to yourself or team. My advice in these situations is to do them as soon as you can. The storyline has several "Points of no return" which are either in the form of missions, or NPC Dialogues.
SPOILER ALERT****
During the game you are given a mission by each member of your team, which when completed successfully makes that team member loyal, and unlocks a new ability for them and a new costume. However two team members, Miranda and Jack, will have a huge argument upon completion of both of their loyalty missions. If you do not have enough Paragon or Renegade points when this argument occurs, you will lose the loyalty of one or the other, and will not be able to regain that loyalty until you have Maxed out either paragon or renegade, which is almost impossible to achieve unless you pick the correct class, or make sure you obtain every single available paragon or renegade point along the way.
Bioware have a habit of adding these Forced decisions because its almost impossible to come out on top the first time you play through, which means you are more likely to replay the game.
The story progresses similarly to ME1 in that you build up your team, carry out a few missions for the Storyline and then go on to a suicide mission.
This is appropriately named, as its tricky to complete the game with all the team alive. Not only do you need every player loyal in order to bring them back alive, but you also need to choose the correct people for the correct jobs during the final mission. If you don't have everyone as loyal on the team, you are better off getting the Disloyal people killed off early as they can get other team members killed too.
Romance:
like ME1 you can get Jiggy with other characters, although in true BW form its not as worthwhile or fun as advertised. You can choose to stay loyal to your former lover from ME1 (Assuming you didn't leave him/her to die on Virmire) or you can choose to chat up one of the new members. At a few places in the game it seems like just about everyone wants a piece of Shepard and you can even get a Homosexual joke out of the Salarian, Mordin Solus if you talk to him enough. This being the second game in a trilogy, you have to make yourself believe that the romance you continue or begin here will have some bearing on the final chapter, but as far as this title stands alone, it makes no difference who you romance. You still dont see any CGI Nipples.
In short, Mass Effect 2 is a good follow on from the first installation, and for those people who enjoy the Bioware way of doing things this is a thoroughly enjoyable title. However the balance between pointless conversation/mineral grinding, and action, still leaves a little to be desired.
Apologies for the lack of pictures but if you want to see them, there are hundreds available from typing Mass Effect 2 into google, or visiting the official website.
OK moving on.
I waited a while before I wrote this review because I wanted to test out all aspect of the game including playing without importing an ME1 save, then with the import, and then using a New Game+ and the different difficulty settings.
So Mass effect 2 brings the return of Shepard. Set two years after you saved the Galaxy by Killing Saren and stopping the Reapers returning through the Citadel. In the opening scene, The Normandy gets attacked by an unknown enemy ship which tears her apart. The crew (apart from a few individuals) escape with their lives, but in the process of saving the pilot "Joker", Shepard gets sucked out into space and due to a leak in his space suit, dies.
After spending the two year gap being rebuilt by Cerberus, Shepard is asked by the head of Cerberus "The Illusive Man" to investigate the disappearance of Human colonists in the Terminus Systems.
Depending on whether you are playing an imported ME1 save game or not makes some minor dialogue changes and a few different NPC's being dotted about in various places. The three Major things that an ME1 import allows you to change are, whether or not the council is alive, whether or not Urdnot Wrex is alive, and whether Ashley Williams or Kaiden Alenko died on Virmire.
Anyone familiar with Bioware will know that most of the benefits of playing an ME1 import are crafty tricks to make you feel like you are playing a game with much more choice then there actually is. If you played a Paragon in ME1 and saved pretty much all of the people it was possible to save, you can almost guarantee that those same characters will turn up at some point in ME2 to say "Thanks Shepard" and basically waste your time with meaningless dialogue. In fairness, a couple of those NPC dialogues do allow you to earn a tiny amount of Paragon or Renegade points which for reasons I will come to shortly, are helpful.
The Combat system in ME2 is more or less the same as ME1, with the only real difference being that you no longer have an annoying Weapon overheat that leaves you helpless. Instead you now have a traditional ammunition system that in certain parts of the game, if you aren't careful will leave you even more helpless. But the ability to pause the action to have a breather, and assign actions to your team mates, is happily still there.
Another little funny that Bioware always pull is the insane gap between difficulty settings. Most people will skate through the game on easy mode and then Pump it up to Veteran on their second play through. This adds an interesting challenge at the same time as being a massive kick in the crotch as the difference between the two settings are huge. The reason this causes more problems is that its easy to be lead down the path of thinking that this is a fast paced Shooter/RPG only to realise that the same "Micro-Management" that was required in Dragon Age: Origins, is also required here. To be fair, the AI of your team mates, is significantly better and they can be quite helpful, but if you don't take control of them enough, on those occasions when you really need their help, they will either be dead, or on power cooldown.
Another big change to the game is the removal of the Mako. The annoying car/tank that was as irritating to drive as its possible to imagine. Instead of this, you now scan planets from the safe confines of the Normandy's Galaxy map. You scan the planets surface for minerals and launch probes to pick them up, and on planets with side missions, you locate the mission with the scanner and launch a probe to be able to land. I estimate that about four hours into the game the average player will be bored out of their mind with this aspect of the game, as even with the minor upgrades to the scanner, its a very boring and time consuming evolution.
The minerals you mine are used to research upgrades to your Equipment, which sadly are a must have if you are to complete the game with any survivors.
Like most RPG's there are moments that you are given the opportunity to do something that will prove beneficial to yourself or team. My advice in these situations is to do them as soon as you can. The storyline has several "Points of no return" which are either in the form of missions, or NPC Dialogues.
SPOILER ALERT****
During the game you are given a mission by each member of your team, which when completed successfully makes that team member loyal, and unlocks a new ability for them and a new costume. However two team members, Miranda and Jack, will have a huge argument upon completion of both of their loyalty missions. If you do not have enough Paragon or Renegade points when this argument occurs, you will lose the loyalty of one or the other, and will not be able to regain that loyalty until you have Maxed out either paragon or renegade, which is almost impossible to achieve unless you pick the correct class, or make sure you obtain every single available paragon or renegade point along the way.
Bioware have a habit of adding these Forced decisions because its almost impossible to come out on top the first time you play through, which means you are more likely to replay the game.
The story progresses similarly to ME1 in that you build up your team, carry out a few missions for the Storyline and then go on to a suicide mission.
This is appropriately named, as its tricky to complete the game with all the team alive. Not only do you need every player loyal in order to bring them back alive, but you also need to choose the correct people for the correct jobs during the final mission. If you don't have everyone as loyal on the team, you are better off getting the Disloyal people killed off early as they can get other team members killed too.
Romance:
like ME1 you can get Jiggy with other characters, although in true BW form its not as worthwhile or fun as advertised. You can choose to stay loyal to your former lover from ME1 (Assuming you didn't leave him/her to die on Virmire) or you can choose to chat up one of the new members. At a few places in the game it seems like just about everyone wants a piece of Shepard and you can even get a Homosexual joke out of the Salarian, Mordin Solus if you talk to him enough. This being the second game in a trilogy, you have to make yourself believe that the romance you continue or begin here will have some bearing on the final chapter, but as far as this title stands alone, it makes no difference who you romance. You still dont see any CGI Nipples.
In short, Mass Effect 2 is a good follow on from the first installation, and for those people who enjoy the Bioware way of doing things this is a thoroughly enjoyable title. However the balance between pointless conversation/mineral grinding, and action, still leaves a little to be desired.
Apologies for the lack of pictures but if you want to see them, there are hundreds available from typing Mass Effect 2 into google, or visiting the official website.