After finishing my play through of Mass Effect 2 this morning, I don't know why I waited so long to pick this one up. I enjoyed the first one, but was worried about certain choices that I made in the first game (namely not being able to do anything about Wrex) and was thinking I could make up for it. Well, I finally decided to say screw it, and start it up.
Mass Effect 2 picks up shortly after the events of Mass Effect, and quickly destroys everything you know, hitting a giant reset button. Doesn't matter how you looked or what class you were in Mass Effect, you get the opportunity to change it all here. It doesn't take long to get your bearings, and does a good job of throwing you right in. The game explains things to you as you play, and even reminds you to do things like use special ammo from time to time.
One of the biggest complaints was the elevators in the first game game, which are now replaced with loading screens. There's several of them, and they're animated and pretty, but I miss the banter that would go on between party members while riding them. Actually, they took out almost all of the party member interaction. Sure, there were a couple cut scenes where people didn't get along, but nothing like the lines and lines of dialog that you could listen to from another Bioware game, Dragon's Age.
The story holds up pretty well, and lets you pick how things will play out. I never felt forced into any situations, or how I wanted to handle something. Combat was fast and interesting, and just as one group was becoming boring to fight, a new group of mercenaries would come crashing in to tear up the galaxy.
Part of me missed having to select certain people to get objectives done during the missions. In Mass Effect, if my hacking skills weren't up to snuff and I didn't have an engineer in my party, well, tough luck. In this one, I was able to hack or decode everything with little challenge. I would have liked to see later abilities that just took out the whole hacking interface because once you've done the two hacking mini games once, you've mastered them and the rest are just a waste of time.
If you try to break down Mass Effect into either a RPG or a FPS, it doesn't really do either side phenomenally well. It's the integrated nature of both genres that make this such a hit. Bioware learned some lessons from their first game, and hopefully they'll learn some more lessons from their second (scanning planets for hours is not fun). All in all, this one gets my recommendation, especially now that you can go out and find it for less than $40. Just try not to play while the wife is napping on the couch. The get cranky when woken up with explosions.
