There’s one major quality that most games released today seem to lack: Immersion. Perhaps in my old age I’m becoming less imaginative, and getting “sucked in” to every long time ago or galaxy far far away takes a little more than some brown/grey backdrops and a few NPCs. The Mass Effect universe grabs you by the grey matter from the first scene. The story is so well-constructed that you would be hard-pressed to find a better example of immersion in video games. Despite its gameplay flaws, Mass Effect was one of the best and most captivating video game experiences I’ve had in many years. Mass Effect 2 takes that established universe and crams even more depth and backstory, along with notable improvements in gameplay mechanics and graphics.
The amount of effort the developers went into the galactic history is outstanding. There are at least two dozen races, each with its own history and politics carefully woven into the backstory. There are no throwaway races or strange creatures just there for random shots in a cantina scene. Each race has its part to play and a role to fill, from the all-female blue tentacled Asari to the hilariously deadpan Elcor. Each NPC you come across has interesting and unique dialogue that expands on the characteristics of each race. As you go through the game you see how the different races act and treat each other, which adds so much to the immersion level. Being able to pick your own dialogue options personalizes your game, sucking your even further in. The “Good” and “Evil” options are back, and let you shape your character to match your personality, though most of the “Evil” choices are still mostly just you being a dick.
If you finished Mass Effect 1, you can actually import your character and pick up right where you left off, even taking into account which of the several endings you achieved. Watching ‘Victoria Shepard’ walk onto the screen for the first time in over a year brought back all kinds of warm fuzzy memories of late nights playing the first game. Then they blow up your ship and hurl you into the icy black vacuum of space. From there it only gets better as you catch up on the past two years of galactic turmoil. The story in this game is the best feature of this series, and so far ME2 does not disappoint.
That isn’t to say that Mass Effect was a game without flaws. On the contrary, the wonderful story was marred by clunky third-person action, the awful inventory management system, and some absolutely painful load “scenes” involving you just standing around listening to musak, unable to move. Those elevator rides actually made me change the order I did quests, because I didn’t want to have to endure another long loading scene. Luckily, most of these issues have been addressed. The action seems more fluid, and the ‘cover’ system actually works pretty well, resulting in only a few battle injuries from not being able to “stick” to cover.
Inventory management? What inventory management? The first game had too much going on. Thousands of unique items, guns, and upgrades, all completely customizable for each of your characters. I would get lost in the pages upon pages of add-ons and crap it was barely usable. For this instalment, however, you actually don’t do much of anything. Guns are quite rare, like I’m 5 hours into the game and I have received one new gun, and it’s a pistol. You then simply assign that model to each character and off you go. No need to purchase one for each person, and upgrades apply universally to all teammates automatically. I don’t even think you manage armour any more, you just purchase tech upgrades for it.
The first game had a unique take on the whole ‘ammo’ thing; you had unlimited ammo, but your gun would overheat after so many shots. ME2 has implemented the concept of ‘thermal clips’. So you still have unlimited ammo, but in order to fire at all you need to have thermal clips. The clips are supposed to be universal, but you can’t transfer clips between guns once picked up, and you can only carry so many clips per gun. So my amazing sniper rifle has a grand total of TEN FUCKING SHOTS, resulting a lot of battles where the first wave of enemies are killed no problem, and then I run in with a fucking pistol trying to recover some more sniper ammo. This. Is. Bullshit! I see what they’re trying to do, but it’s a little TOO simplistic.
Oh, and they’ve changed the way you navigate through space. Instead of looking at the map, picking a destination, and then flying there, you now need to FLY YOURSELF. Like using the joystick. Like the same was as in the game Asteroids. I’m the god-dammed Captain, why the fuck am I flying around manually? You can’t even zoom out your view to see a whole system or stellar cluster, costing you time and fuel just trying to figure out where the fuck you are. This is one of only two instances where the first game is actually better. I keep flying past my destination (thanks inertia!…asshole…) and using all my fuel. Which reminds me, how come the first ship had no need for refuelling? I’m sure it’s explained in the backstory (everything else is), but I see it for what it is: stupid.
There seems to be a bit of “Goldilocks Syndrome” going on here. The first game was ambitious and groundbreaking, but a little too bloated in certain areas. The second instalment has a little too much stripped away, but replaced in certain places by just more mindless bullshit (Manually scanning planet surfaces? Go eat a dick!). I’m hoping Mass Effect 3 balances them to make at least one ‘perfect’ game. Then I hope they go back and re-release all three games as a trilogy with the upgraded graphics and perfected game mechanics. Then I can spend the next 40 years of my life playing through repeatedly, trying to get every ending using both good and bad characters.
