Mass Effect 2

Game is great, shipped early, in great shape! wonderful.

Sequels are never as good as the original, but this is an exception. The only issue I had with Mass Effect 1 were some of the needlessly long and tedious mission on words. No more! Combat has been improved, great conversation features, and so much more. My favorite of the 3 Mass Effect games!

The Best Mass Effect

Yes, this is the best, most satisfying game of the three. So there. Mass Effect 2 is probably the best the Xbox has to offer when it comes to blending story into gameplay. Its not the best shooter youll ever play, its not the most robust RPG (not even close), but somehow all elements come together in what is one of the most compelling, most satisfying experiences you can get from a console game. Much like its predecessor, the biggest payoffs come in the third act, and the more time and effort youve put into team members and side missions up until then, the more compelling and satisfying an experience it is. Its also one of the few sequels Ive ever seen (and this is a hallmark of the series) thats BETTER if youve played the original. Thats something, isnt it? I mean, is Gears 2 better or worse if youve played Gears 1? Marginally, maybe. But Mass Effect 2 is an exponentially more satisfying game if youve taken the time to dig through the first one. In effect, the sequel adds replay value to the original, which feeds replay value back to the sequel again. If that isnt a masterful stroke of artistry and brilliant way to get the most out of an interactive medium, I dont know what is. But thats all high concept stuff. Lets strip some nuts and bolts. Visually, the games a treat. Colors are richer, but still in the same palette, so the world still feels like the Mass Effect world (which is nice). Locations are busier, with a great deal of added detail and the NPCs are more dynamic and mobile, which is a nice touch. The locations that are supposed to be crowded now feel it and your inundated with things like advertisements and news reels when youre on the Citadel or in any major population hub; its really smart design all the way across. Wealthy areas feel posh and poor areas feel shady and dangerous. The wilds are wild and ruins are ruined - I cant think of a location or character that doesnt employ some sort of successful design element. The world we knew has been bumped up, polished off, enhanced and yet is still the world we knew. Thats no small feat. Combat has been GREATLY improved. For better or worse, we now have a dedicated cover button, which works well enough (some will like it, some wont). Enemies are where we see the greatest improvements and they now employ a variety of strategies and youll have to adjust your survival tactics based on the type of character youre playing. The baddies have also been given a series of different skills and protections, like armor or biotic barriers, which forces you to readjust the types of weapons or ammo or skills you chuck at them. Its a much richer and more immersive experience overall. The redesign is most effective when it comes time to square off against a Krogan. A huge chunk of the games mythology is dedicated to just how powerful and dangerous the Krogan are. And yet, in the last game, fighting them was just like fighting anything else. But now, watching a Krogan charge down the aisle, shields up and shotgun out, will just about ruin your day! Its a nice touch and another layer of rich gameplay. So, the actions been bumped, is what Im saying. I do lament the loss of some RPG elements, I must say. Instead of the dozen or more skill sets you could balance in the last one, we now just level up about six or so different powers(even less for team members). An infiltrator is no longer different from a soldier because of how you choose to develop it, but simply by virtue of having completely different powers. Its a narrower approach thats going to bother a lot of people (myself included). Its not BAD, or BROKEN in any way, its just an unnecessary step to the side. I dont really understand it, myself, but there it is. Other things have changed, but its not all that important: the Makos gone, as is the barren planet exploration. Take that for what it is. The hacking mini-games have been replaced with some different ones. Whatever. Inventorys gone and replaced by a few armor upgrades and a few different weapons. Eh, it is what it is. And, wait, whats this thermal clips crap? One of my favorite little Sci-Fi touches to the previous game was the idea that guns had advance so much that they didnt even need bullets anymore. They literally ripped chunks of metal from a block you put in them, so they could essentially carry thousands of rounds at a time and all you had to do was keep it from overheating. Now Im back to bullet hunting and ammo hording? Boo, I say, boo. All that aside, what the game is really about is character and character development. Youve got a team of about 11 distinct individuals this time around, a big jump from the last game. And thats because building your team and gaining their loyalty is almost the ENTIRE focus. Yes, theres a main enemy - the Collectors, a group of creepy-ass bug-alien-things that are abducting humans by the tens of thousands from around the galaxy. Theyre a worthy addition to the series and their mythology just adds to the tapestry... but you only encounter them three or four times throughout. The rest of the time is wholly focused on building (or ruining) relationships with the people around you. You come to know them, come to care about them and, by extension, the piece of the galactic stage they represent. We have avatars of Turian stubborness and frustration, Quarian desperation, Salarian genius and guilt, Krogan ferocity and hopelessness - its all woven so well and we get a ton of information in really efficient ways. Add onto that some seriously effective voice acting and when the endgame comes, when the lives are in your hands for the first time... Well, the way the final mission plays out is VASTLY variable and immensely satisfying. It all depends on how much effort youve put into your crew and how successful you were at building them up. The many branches you can take and their spread of outcomes adds a great deal of tension to the final scenes and lends itself to multiple play-throughs. Again, as I said before, its a masterful blend of story and gameplay. To the point where any problems it may have are almost completely dismissible. Its a must play, as simple as that, awkward sex scenes and all...

Mass Effect 2 for the PS3 and Xox360 is a very good game. Here is my review for it, I hope you enjoy. Plot and Squad Characters: (minor spoilers) you are Commander Sheppard who is flying around in your ship called the Normandy. After searching for Geth (rouge robots created by the Quarrians another race in the ME universe) you get attacked by a giant dreadnaught ship that looks like a giant termite hill. After saving what and who you could from your ship, you get ejected out from the final attack of the attacker’s ship and sent into space plummeting to your death on the nearby planet. Fast forward 2 years later (this is where in the game you can choose what Shepard looks like, what class of fighter they are and their mini background story) where the base you wake up is under attack from mech’s aka security droids that were hacked. You are contacted by Maranda Lawson who helps you escape along with Jacob Taylor to a facility where everything can be explained. In this new facility, you meet the man in charge who is named The Illusive Man, He explains his company known as Cerberus. Cerberus is known in the ME world as a Human’s come first, human advancement in the universe comes 2nd and anything else other than humans comes dead last. The Illusive Man tells you entire colonies of human are being abducted without a trace of them every being there. The Illusive Man tells you to start gathering a team together so that you can find out who is kidnapping entire human colonies and to stop the Reapers from Invading. Characters: Commander Shepard, you can choose whether to be male or female and only human, sorry can’t choose which race you want to be. The classes you can choose to be in the game are The Soldier: who has the most health out of all the classes. The Infiltrator: who is a stealth based class who is better at fighting long range. The Vanguard who is best at close and person fights. The Sentinel who is a mid-range fighter with the best shields out of all the classes. The Adept who is the best at using biotic powers to fights. Last is The Engineer: who is best at fighting synthetics aka robot and other characters who use shields and barriers most of the time. During the game, you can choose whether to be Paragon (aka good/hero) or Renegade (aka evil/bad ass) by the decisions you make and threw the conversations you have with others. Maranda Lawson: she is the Illusive Man’s right-hand girl and pretty much the 2nd in command of Cerberus. She is a biotic who can use her powers during combat. She is a more by the book kind of person. You can have a romance relationship with Maranda, Male only. When asking for upgrades she could give she can help you upgrade planet mining scanner to move fast if you want. Jacob Taylor: he is a member of Cerberus and serves under Maranda Lawson. He is a good soldier with a minor in biotics. He is probably the easiest going and laid-back member of the team. He can help you upgrade the ships armor if you want him to. If you choose you can have a romantic relationship with Jacob. Only female Shepard Garrus: Returning from ME 1, He is found on Omega going under the name Archangel. He is a sniper at heart and is a very good shot. He loves working with weapons and can help you upgrade your ship’s main weapon when he comes aboard it and if you want him to. Garrus can have a romantic relationship with female Shepard only Jack: Jack aka Subject Zero is a biotic fighter. She is known as the biotic train who can use her biotic powers to cause a lot of damage to enemies. She is known for swearing more than anyone else on the team. Really great in combat with tons of enemies, she is great at crowd control. Her upgrades are making her biotic powers even stronger. Jack can have a romantic relationship with Shepard, male only. Grunt: Grunt is the perfect Krogan. By that meaning he is genetically perfect, he is genophage resistant. In your squad, he has more health than anyone and the best shields. He works best at close range because his upgrade choice is a shotgun called the M-900 claymore, which is the strongest shotgun in the entire game (DLC included). You cannot romance with Grunt. Mordin: aka Professor Mordin Solus aka Dr. Mordin aka Dr. Solus. He is salarian genius. The game calls him more hyper then a hamster on coffee. His strengths more or less help in the story line more than combat situations. His upgrade for the game is making his tech skills better. He is great in conversation and he is my personal favorite out of all team members. You cannot romance with Mordin. Tali Zorah vas Neema: Returning from ME 1, she is a Quiaren engineer and hacker. She is really good at fighting Geth opponents. She can summon up holographic combat droids to fight with. She can have a romantic relationship with male Shepard. Tali can upgrade the ships shields if you wish, Samara: She is a Justiscar. A Justiscar is an Asari version of a specter which pretty much means she’s a cop who can deal justice by any actions they deem necessary. She is a biotic fighter too so her powers are useful in combat. She can have a romantic relationship with either male or female Shepard. Her ship upgrade is increase fuel for the ship. Morinth: Morinth is choice character. (Minor spoiler) In Samara’s loyalty mission you can choose whether to help Samara kill Morinth or help Morinth kill Samara. If you choose Morinth, she is pretty much the same as Samara in every way except she has one new biotic power call dominate, which used can make organic enemies attack other enemies temporally. She can have a relationship with both male and female Shepard. Thane: Thane is a Drell assassin. Because he is a Drell, like all drell he has perfect memory and can remember everything he has ever done with perfect detail. He is best at long range fighting because he is a sniper in your party. He is also a minor biotic. He can have a romance with female Shepard. His upgrade is upgrade the number of planet searching probes from 30 to 60. Legion: Legion is a Geth fighter acquired late in the game. He is a hacker like Tali. He is good at mid rage and long-range fighting. Legion and Tali have a tough history because Quarrians created the Geth and the Geth rebelled driving the Quarrians from the homework and taking it over. His upgrade is a sniper riffle called the X-98 Widow which is the best sniper riffle in the game (DLC included) Katsumi Goto: (can only get if you have the DLC called Katsumi’s Stolen Memory) she is called the best thief in the galaxy. You can acquire her when you get to the citadel for the 1st time. Her combat is alright, not someone you put on the front lines. She has no upgrades to give and you cannot romance her. Without the DLC, Cerberus is unable to find her and cannot hire her for your big mission. Her DLC mission I’ll review that later in the main review. Zaeed Masani: (can only get if you have the DLC called Zaeed’s Price of Revenge) he is a mercenary/thug/bounty hunter for hire. He is best used in combat for crowd control. He has no upgrades to give and you cannot romance him. His DLC mission I’ll review later. Liara T’soni: (is temporary and only can be used in the DLC called Lair of the Shadow Broker) she returns from ME 1. She an Asari biotic user. After ME 1 she became an information broker trying to find the Shadow Broker. Her combat skills are good for the 1 and only mission you can use her in. Weapons: depending on what class you are you can have 4 weapons but there are 5 in total. 6 but the 6th is a technicality, you can have the pistol, shotgun, sniper riffle, sub machine gun and assault rifles and last is the heavy weapon. Heavy weapons require special ammo and once it’s all used up you need to find more, it’s not common but not rare. Heavy weapons are the strongest out of all the weapons. DLC aka Down Loadable Content, I’m going to focus on the mission DLC’s and not the guns and outfits DLC. Cerberus Network: is a free DLC which you can download to get some other DLC. Zaeed’s Price of Revenge: this is where you can get the character Zaeed Masani (mentioned above) and his loyalty missions. This is an interesting mission where you hunt down someone who wronged Zaeed and he wants his revenge on him. This is about a 15 to 30-minute DLC depending on fast you play threw it. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? No, it won’t impact it in any way possible How much does this cost? Free, it’s a 100% free DLC because of the Cerberus network Is it worth it? well because it’s a free DLC I would say yes only because it cost you nothing and it gives you extra time to play and some experience to collect in the ME2 universe also its nice to have a new character in your squad to bring along for the main missions but it won’t take away from the overall story line Normandy Crash Site: this is a single mission with NO enemies shooting you or nothing bad happening. You visit a planet where the 1st Normandy ship crashed and you only objective is to collect dog tags from fallen people from the ship and anything else you want to collect off the planet. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? None what so ever, it’s just a nice yet sad memory of seeing the old Normandy destroyed and all people who died during the collector attack at the very beginning of the game. How much does this cost? Free, it’s a 100% free DLC because of the Cerberus network Is it worth it? well because it’s a free DLC I would say yes only because it cost you nothing and it gives you extra time to play and some experience to collect in the ME2 universe Firewalker pack DLC: This is where you get 5 missions in a floating tank like vehicle. You can do these missions for experience and extra game play If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? No, honestly, I find this the most pointless DLC in the whole game, sure you can collect elements for upgrades and other stuff for experience, this DLC is totally skippable and no one would care if you played this or not. How much does this cost? Free, it’s a 100% free DLC because of the Cerberus network Is it worth it? well because it’s a free DLC I would say yes but it’s a dumb DLC, I’m just happy its free Mass Effect: Genesis DLC: this is a comic book story, it enables when you don’t have the first ME game saved, this gives you a small recap of what happened in the first game and you can make some choice in Genesis comic book that could impact the story in ME2 a bit, not much over all but a bit. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? Only a little bit for story purposes but you don’t need it over all How much does this cost? Free on PS3 but for Xbox 360 you need 320 BioWare Points or $3.99 USD Is it worth it? For the PS3, unless you get the ME trilogy where you can play all 3 games yes, but for Xbox360 NO because you can buy each game separately and get the stuff downloaded/uploaded to ME2 without needing this Kasumi - Stolen Memory DLC: this is where you go on a mission with Kasumi the thief companion in your squad and steal back a valuable object she once had that was stolen from her. Its an alright story line, very short DLC, some people say only it’s only an hour-long game play, my personal best is 25 minutes without speed skipping. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? Nope, it’s nice to have a new character in your squad to bring along for the main missions but it won’t take away from the overall story line How much does this cost? Free on PS3 but for Xbox 360 you need 560 BioWare Points or $6.99 USD Is it worth it? For the PS3 since it comes free why not, but for Xbox 360 I would say no only because you are not getting much story for about 7 dollars. Project Overlord DLC: you get a message from Cerberus saying they have a problem with a rouge VI taking over a compound and they need you to fix it. When you go down onto the planet you find out that there is one scientist left alive trying to survive and he wants to help you shut down project overlord. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? Not in ME2, only a very small part in ME3 will it affect the game play but not the overall story. How much does this cost? Free on PS3 but for Xbox 360 you need 560 BioWare Points or $6.99 USD Is it worth it? For the PS3 since it comes free why not, but for Xbox 360 I would say yes because it’s a good DLC with a lot of combat and a good side story line to follow. I like it to be honest. Arrival DLC: this DLC is the side story of Admiral Hackett calling Shepard (aka you) to save Dr. Amanda Kensen from Batarian space, when you save the doctor you go back to an asteroid where she tells you that the reapers are coming in 2 days, when you go with her you find out that the entire asteroid except you are reaper indoctrinated and want the reapers to kill the entire galaxy. So, it’s up to you to stop the reapers from invading the universe. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? No, if you don’t play this it will very minorly change a tiny part of the story in ME3, otherwise you will never notice the difference in the 3rd game if you don’t play this DLC How much does this cost? Both for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 it cost 560 BioWare Points or $6.99 USD. This is the first and only mission DLC for the PS3 you need to pay for. Is it worth it? It’s a very good story line which I like, good action to fight threw, gain experience, I like this DLC. I feel like for the PS3 this should be free and the next DLC I’m going to talk about for the PS3 should be paid for. Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC: When you meet Liara on planet Illium, she is an information broker where she is searching for the illustrious and mysterious Shadow Broker. The Shadow Broker is a person who has ALL the information in the galaxy and is very power. He will buy, sell and use information as they want to how they want the galaxy shaped. Liara wants to find her friend who is held captive by the Shadow Broker. So, you, Liara and someone else in your group go after the Shadow Broker and stop their reign of terror. If I don’t get this will it impact they story line? No, but in ME3 it explains a few minor things when you meet Liara in the 3rd game, depending on if you play this or not is how it will affect the 3rd ME game How much does this cost? For the PS3 free, but for Xbox 360 it will cost you 800 BioWare Points or $9.99 USD. Is it worth it? Yes, defiantly yes. To me (only) this is my favorite DLC in the entire game, it is the longest, most action and has the most story out of all the DLC missions you can download and play. I believe that for the PS3 it should cost $9.99 aka 10 dollars because of how good this DLC is, it is the longest DLC out of all the ME2 DLC out there. Plus, once you’re done with the DLC you can go back to Liara and get other upgrades and planets to visit and search. Overall: this is very great game. I have this both for the PS3 and Xbox 360. It is the best out of all 3 ME game. I would say BUY THIS GAME!!!!!

Great game

Mass Effect 2 delivers a remarkable game that is arguably the best in the trilogy. This game, along with ME1 and ME3, has an intriguing and complex narrative. I admire Bioware’s approach to the storyline. Set in a galaxy facing threats from the Collectors (an unknown entity threatening space colonies), players play as Commander Shepard aboard the Normandy. Players are hooked from the opening scene and are forced to question their allegiance and throughout the game. Without spoilers, I can say that the relationships you build with the other characters in the game matter. The game does an incredible job of creating relatable characters that are seemingly brought to life through the screen. Dossier and loyalty missions for each team member can create an emotional bond, adding personal depth to the complex decisions you make in the game. Not only is the main storyline superb, but the side-stories for each character further expand and complicate the Mass Effect Universe. The gameplay is a significant improvement from ME1. One downside is that the Kinect feature from ME3 isn’t backwards compatible to ME2. The Mass Effect Trilogy is a must for players looking for sci-fi RPGs. Out of the series, I must say that while ME3 had great gameplay, the ending(s) turns me back to ME2. This game is superb all-around. High-replay value. High-quality game. I highly recommend the trilogy; yet, out of the trilogy I recommend ME2.

As Expected

one of my most favorite games. I play this over and over. worn out at least 3 discs.

First let me say that, having played a friends copy of this game, that it is awesome and possibly the best installment in the Mass Effect series. Unfortunately the copy I received from the seller C&W Direct was too scratched for my XBox to read, depriving me of playing this fantastic game.