Mass Effect 2 - Xbox 360

I am a little behind the curve since ME3 has been out for quite some time. I am a late comer to the franchise in general, and I went and got a copy of ME2 right after finishing the first installment. I continue to be blown away by the depth of the story, the impact of the choices, and how easy it is to relate to the characters. I am on my third playthrough, and I have even gone back to ME1 to change some things about my character in order to open up new options and dialogues in ME2.

My son loves it! It's a thinking game / choices determine direction of game.

I had this game and bought this one as a gift for a friend.

Before I played Mass Effect, I absolutely had no idea what it was all about. I played Mass Effect 1 and contrary to some glitches and tedious gameplay elements, IT LITERALLY BLEW MY MIND. So to me Mass Effect 2 was a MUST. I have played it twice now and here is what I think. PROS. WELL DESIGNED CHOICE/KARMA GAMEPLAY: Just like Mass Effect 1, this game has wonderful cause-effect gameplay. Throughout the games you will have to make many choices and this choices will have major effect on your character development and on the story. Depending on your choices your character can be renegade, paragon or someone in between. Unlike Mass Effect 1, these choices will many times be imposed upon you. In other words, you will just be exploring the open world and all of the sudden, the main story interrupts you and will make you make difficult decisions. To me, this was amazing. This on the spot make choice plot makes the story so much more real, relevant and impactive. Furthermore, other than dialogue, even during the cutscenes you can perform paragon/renegade type of action. This experience was simply mind-blowing to me. BETTER RUNNING GAMEPLAY AND SMOOTH CRISPY CLEAR GRAPHICS: To me Mass Effect 1 was great, but it had a bit choppy graphics and glitch gameplay. They have fixed it up big times in Mass Effect 2. (Don't get me wrong there are still glitches see CONS section). When I first saw the Mass Effect 2 footage in HD on my 360, my eyes simply couldn't believe it. Trust me, you will have no complain here in this department. AWESOME COMBAT MECHANICS: Compared to 1, they greatly improved combat system in this game. It feels smoother, you can perform different moves easier and most importantly, combination you can use with your team/allies is just unbelievable. You have more classes to choose from compared to first and I just LOVED VANGUARD AND SENTINEL CLASSES. You will love the powers you will get to use. Oh did I mention, you can also choose from your allies special powers. PLENTY OF ALLIES AND LOYALTY MISSIONS: There are so many different allies you can acquire and choose from in this game. Acquiring each ally is a mission. Plus, if you want your ally to become loyal to you, there will be a separate mission. Once they become loyal, you can unlock their special power and it will also have a huge impact on the story. Now the question is can you make everyone loyal to you? I will just let you find out. While it is possible, unless you make the right choices, it will be difficult. NEW WEAPONS AND POWERS: Loved the VANGUARD and SENTINEL class provided biotic and tech powers. Also, some of the heavy weapons were pretty cool. Also liked how you could upgrade your weapons and powers by research and alloy discoveries. PRETTY GOOD STORY: Not as good as the first one, but this game still does have a pretty good story. While the creators have done a wonderful job with stories for each ally character, the central story is somewhat straightforward. However, they are also setting this game for a sequel (not a spoiler, it has been known for ages now), so that might be the reason the story is the way it is (really don't want to spoil it for you). OPEN WORLD GAMEPLAY: Just like first one you are free to explore galaxy and go where ever you want to go, do what ever you want to do first. Story will impose upon you as stated before, but again it will only make the experience more real. I love the way they have hidden the missions in open world exploration. BETTER ACHIEVEMENTS: Mass Effect 1 achievement kinda force you to do things you may not want to do (for example keep the same ally through out the game, become a perfect paragon or renegade, etc.). In this game, the way achievement system is set up, it will make you explore more and experiment more. VARIETY IN BOSSES AND ENEMIES: Loved how most of the missions include a boss. While few of them are pushovers, most of them will provide you with decent challenge. Furthermore, compared to Mass Effect 1, there is greater variety of enemies and eliminating them will require you to different strategies and powers. This will prevent the gameplay from being redundant. FREE DLCs: There are some awesome free downloadable content for this game. Some of them should have been released with the game (see cons.) CONS. LESS EXPLORATION: There are a lot of story based mission and ally based loyalty missions; however, there are amazingly few side missions. (Don't get me wrong, the game will still take a while finish. My first finish was 45 hrs when I decided to explore everything). And these side missions are ridiculously short and straight forward. NO VEHICLE: What the hell? After you download a DLC, there are four or five vehicle based missions; however, the game doesn't have vehicle based exploration. I agree climbing rocks and hills with space vehicle was torturous at times in Mass Effect 1, but still there were many planets where it was fun. Why remove that? DIMINISHED RPG ELEMENT: Mass Effect 1 kinda had convoluted level up system(if you do manually) and tedious weapon upgrade/achieve system. They improved that in Mass Effect 2 by making it extremely simple. Now you no longer have much choices when it comes to guns. Your choice of power can be maxed in no time (you will still have hard time maxing multiple powers/traits). And experience is mainly give at the end of the mission vs experience you gained by doing each and every single action/ killing each and every enemy in Mass Effect 1. The system did feel a bit more organized and easy to use, but I kinda miss Mass Effect 1 RPG element. So contrary to minor issues I mentioned in CONS., they have GREATLY IMPROVED THE GAME. If you liked Mass Effect 1, if you like RPG, if you like space/sci fy genre, YOU MUST NOT MISS OUT ON THIS ONE. You will love it.

Mass Effect 2 may just be the best single-player experience I have ever had the pleasure of playing. The cinemaic feel of the game is spectacular. There are high-end cinematic cutscenes, full-on voice acting for an in-depth exprience, and the level of detail is mind-blowing. If you have'nt played the first game in the trilogy then please do play it just to make this game all the more better. The gameplay is much smoother this time around of course not the perfect 3rd-person shooter, but its pretty far up on the totem pole. The story is rides shotgun this time around the let the characters take hold of the wheel. Some of these characters are so deep and compelling they just feel much more believable. The art style is a much darker tone to fit in with the dark and desolate story that pushes it, you are commander shepard the one man that has the drive to save the entire galaxy from extinction and the story makes it feel that way especially near the impressive end which I will not spoil here. I have played through this game thoroughly 3 times and by playing a different style every time there is always something new to see. unlike the first game the side quests here are not the same environment repeated many times in a row each one is varied and unique. After playing almost all side-quests the main story and listening to the extensive voice acting the game took me about 28 hours on average. Bioware went to great lengths to assure that each player has his or her own personal game and they succeeded. If you want to get lost in a rich and detailed sci-fi world pick this game up.

This game provides exactly what it advertised ... a mostly non-linear, revolutionary gaming experience. The storyline is very fluid, and reacts greatly to your decisions and actions. The voice acting is rich, as is the design and implementation of the individual worlds and relationships. The only drawback I can find is that there seemed to be a lot of references to the original game. That being said, I played Mass Effect 1, so I tended to notice those things; I can see how someone who has not played the first game would simply gloss over those references. They are not crucial to the game, and I don't expect that someone who hasn't played the first game would feel at a loss. They do a good job of providing data to bring you up to speed. There were a few times in the game where I experienced minor problems, including being stuck in the environment in one form or another. It did not happen often enough to be even a minor issue, and was resolved by simply re-loading a saved game. I saved often by habit, but the timing of the auto-saving would more than take care of this error without having to repeat more than a minute or two of game play. This game will get even the novice player interested in how the trilogy will end!

Mass Effect 2 continues the epic space saga began in Mass Effect. Players new to the series can begin with part 2 if they like, and there's even a short downloadable story that lets you optionally make all of the key decisions in the first game for import. But returning commanders who've beaten the first game will find the graphics, game play and writing style very familiar - and that's a good thing in this case. The ability to import your ME1 character along with all of the decisions you made in the first game - assuming you still have the saves on your storage device - is almost entirely unique to platform gaming. (The only other game series I know of that lets you do this is also from BioWare - Dragon Age). It is astonishing to see how many familiar faces you'll meet - they will find you in most cases - as well as to see firsthand how your choices have shaped the galaxy. The developers messed around with the weapon upgrade system to some extent, which wasn't really necessary and overall was a detraction. And they've completely removed planetary exploration in the Mako armored vehicle - now you just launch probes from orbit to gather resources, and for any encounters on a planet you take a shuttle down automatically. The orbital mining made me doze off a few times - it's not poorly implemented, just not very compelling gameplay. However, it's optional - you only need to do it to gather resources for R&D on new weapons and upgrades for your ship and crew. There are plenty of optional things you can do or skip, as before, but each core mission takes you to a very differently-styled world to experience a wide variety of compelling science fiction storylines, like little mini-plots each centering around a different member of your crew. This design approach allows for some really terrific story telling, and that's not by accident - the writers have knocked it out of the park once again. The voice acting is excellent, as in the first game, with a surprisingly recognizable cast. What really caught me off guard was that I actually recognized the *face* of Yvonne Strahovski's character - she's new to the series and will return in ME3 - before I even knew she was in the game. (That's Sara Walker from the TV show Chuck - I'm not used to hearing her speak with her native Australian accent.) Overall, ME2 is an outstanding game, and fans of the first will be delighted. And if you like the first two, just wait until you get your hands on Mass Effect 3. :D

Mass Effect 2 picks up 2 years after Mass Effect 1 left off, which reflects time in real life between games which added to the immersion of the game. Good things about it are less micromanaging of weapons and upgrades, More background story on each and every one of your squad mates. The choices you make in Mass Effect 1, if you imported the character, are evident here, and the choices you make during the game will make your endgame different. A possible downside would be for those with non HD TV's the txt may be a bit small because from what I've experianced the game is designed for HD TV's. This being said, this game's graphics are impressive. The music is very effective at making the mood known, and draws you into it better. For parents looking to buy it for their childeren: There is quite a bit of cussing in it, and possible romantic scene with a squadmate... Just FYI. about 20 hours roughly for main plotline, about another 10 hours for side quests... Then a high replay value, where you can go again as a different gender, or make different choices. Impossible to get all achievements on xbox 360 on first playthrough, so you're looking at 60 hours of gameplay for a real hardcore minimum... I borrowed it from a friend, and I STILL bought it after I completed it its that good.