Last year I completed the original Mass Effect’s PS4 remaster and really enjoyed the experience, remarking how I skipped on them originally because a friend had played them in front of me a lot back then. Well, Mass Effect 2 he only played the first half or so and then stopped so this not only had the actual fun of finally playing it but I got to see where the story is actually going (or I guess where it goes given the original Trilogy’s storyline has been complete for sometime now…) Happy to report improvements in both gameplay and story made this a very fun experience, so let’s take a look!
Background:
If you don’t like creepy insectoid aliens I’d give this game a pass…
Much like the first game Mass Effect 2 was originally a Microsoft exclusive, being released on the XBOX 360 and PC on January 26th 2010 in the US and 29th in PAL territories, but was released on the PS3 a year later, on January 18 2011 for the US and 21st for Europe.
Once again the Legendary Edition of the Trilogy was released across the XBOX One, PS4 and PC on May 14th 2021.
Gameplay:
Mass Effect 2 is, unsurprisingly, also an Action RPG like its predecessor and sees you control your own Commander Shepard via 3rd Person controls. You can pick between several different classes that can give you access to special perks ranging from stronger shields, better damage with long range weaponry, all the way up to the returning Biotics (alias Force Powers) like levitate, push and a mini black hole thing (okay that one isn’t from BioWare’s Star Wars days…) As I was importing my Commander Shepard from ME1 I kept him a sniper, even though I later read online that it wasn’t a good choice (but you know, as a casual player I’m not looking to max out my potential or anything, I happily played through the whole game regardless!)
Throwing back to something I played a year ago can’t be called nostalgic, but it was still fun to fight the Geth again!
So in combat you can run around, take cover behind crates, walls and other such handy objects, pop out for shots, throw grenades and generally have fun in a tight and comfortable third person shooter, plus you can order around your other party members (or squad members, I guess) though I often just let the AI do what it wanted, unless I really needed another class’s skill. Added to the game is, and this is weird to say, limited ammunition, though in the default difficulty I played on I never ran out of it beyond maybe once or twice for powerful weapons; and your health regenerates now as well as your shield, if you can stay out of combat long enough. Afterwards you gain XP that can be put into you and your squads stats which will give you access to even more class-specific bonuses and abilities. Simple but still extremely effective gameplay loop.
Speaking of classic RPG features Mass Effect 2 also continues to feature a main quest, several side quests and a bunch of locations to visit for both combat and just chatting with NPCs, buying equipment or having a bit of a dance. The trademark BioWare dialogue choice wheel has also returned, as has the Paragon and Renegade system where if you make selfless choices and act politely you gain the former, and if you act like a dick and assault some people you get the latter. It once again doesn’t make a massive difference and even though I tried to act like a cocky bastard so many obvious storyline choices netted me Paragon points instead so I ended up balanced somewhere in between. How you choose to act in certain missions and whether you agree to even do certain character-specific side quests impact the final mission of the game, allowing squad mates to potentially die during it, or not even follow Shepard to the finale at all. Happily my whole playable crew not only followed “me” to the end but all survived, so I guess I have a good knack for picking good options and will always do side quests before main missions! Actually, that is one nit-pick I have about this game and that’s a few key story missions just happen all of the sudden and even if you’re in the middle of a planetary system with several side quests you want to do you have to drop everything, do the story mission and then fly back to where you were to continue. In a game like this I don’t like suddenly having to do anything, so that was annoying.
*Sigh*… Yaaaay.
Thankfully boring mini-games to unlock literally everything has been removed but sadly the fun planetary exploration has also been removed and replaced with a static screen where you send probes down into planets using a meter to find where the most resource is. There are a few side missions where you control a hover ship thingy but these are often linear. The resources you gather are used to upgrade the Normandy, which you still travel on in between missions, and once again upgrading the ship can have an effect on the final mission apparently, and I say apparently because once again I upgraded everything long before I left on the final mission, so I had no idea until I looked into it after I’d finished the game. Also I’ll mention that once again you can romance a crew member and sleep with them before the finale, and that’s about it. Plenty to get on with though, to say the least!
Graphics and Sound:
A nice alien landscape… that looks a lot like Earth, but not quite! (a.k.a. most Sci-Fi TV show planets!)
Once again it’s odd covering a remaster where I haven’t played the original and therefore can’t compare, but I will say that once again the graphics here are good, the lighting and textures very good in fact. The models and the way they move do look dated now (which is amazing to say as they were standout ten years ago!) but overall I can’t say this running on my modern TV looked bad in any way.
Soundwise is good, voice work is excellent, sound effects top notch and the score is a mix of atmospheric sci-fi synth and dramatic trailer music and therefore works very well. Unsurprisingly a game that won many Game of the Year awards is a good all-round package, who would’ve thought?
Story:
The Illusive Man, being all… well, in your face, but he’s normally very illusive!
The prologue to the main story sees Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy trying to route out the last of the Geth before suddenly being attacked by an unknown ship, leading to our customizable lead protagonist (whose face is never revealed) to sacrifice him/herself to save his/her crew. Shepard dies but the shadowy underworld Earth organisation known as Cerberus restores him to life two years later, though the burns and such means he/she can look completely different. This actually annoyed me, especially not being able to see Shepard during the whole opening cutscene, I would’ve thought importing a character from ME1 would mean you get to see the continuation and starting fresh with ME2 would mean you don’t see them until the customising bit. The whole opening act felt like a way to justify being able to change Shepard’s appearance rather than be necessary, though admittedly it’s the only way for our lead to actually want to work for what is essentially a shady racist criminal syndicate with a massive bank balance…
Shepard and two Cerberus agents in Miranda Lawson and Jacob Taylor are sent by the organisation’s head, “The Illusive Man” (that’s not likely to lead to trust issues at all!) to a colony where the people have vanished and find an insectoid species known as the “Collectors” are the ones responsible for the vanishing rather than the Galaxy-ending Reaper threat Shepard was assuming it was. The Illusive Man tasks Shepard with stopping them, despite the fact their base lies “beyond the Omega-4 Relay”, a location no other ship has ever returned from, and to do it he gives him a new Normandy and his old pilot in Joker. You then spend the majority of the game recruiting new soldiers and doing “loyalty missions” for them that makes them… well, loyal to you. This includes the returning Garrus Vakarian and Tali’Zorah, a scientist called Mordin Solus, mentally unstable but powerful Biotic Jack, a freshly cloned Krogan named Grunt, an assassin called Thane Krios, an experienced Asari justicar called Samara and even a Geth called Legion (plus more via DLC).
*Spoilers from here until otherwise stated!*
As they continue to research into the Collectors they find out that they were actually the Protheans, the old race who left all the Mass Relay tech behind talked about in the previous game, just twisted by the Reapers who they now serve. After a classic “the hero’s home base is attacked” story with Joker Shepard and the playable crew head into unknown space and face off against the Collectors head-on, including a ship-to-ship battle where crew members can die if you haven’t upgraded the Normandy enough.
Normandy Crew: Assemble!
Everyone soon disembarks on the Collector’s HQ and eventually find a massive human-Reaper hybrid and destroy it and then the player is faced with a decision: keep the Collector equipment used to torture and kill countless people because it might be handy against the Reapers, or destroy it so nobody can have that power. Afterwards everyone escapes (unless you messed up and one of your crew dies…) and we end with a cliffhanger of all the Reapers awakening in deep space and heading towards the Galaxy…
*Spoilers from here until otherwise stated!*
It’s a fun story, it feels like a classic Sci-Fi TV show where you get the recruiting / loyalty missions which feel like standalone episodes and then you get the “arc episodes” ending with the big finale.
Downloadable Content:
I have a hard time believing THAT could be a shadowy anything…
Along with some skins and extra items etc. there are (or were I guess) several mission packs, including “Zaeed: The Price of Revenge” and “Kasumi: Stolen Memory”, which add brand new recruitable soldiers to the story as well as their loyalty missions, “Lair of the Shadow Broker”, which saw the return of Liara and shows how she eventually usurps a dangerous criminal underworld leader, and “Arrival”, which deals with the soon-arriving Reaper threat and gives you a major choice that no doubt impacts Mass Effect 3 quite a bit (well, I hope so… not many choices in ME1 had much of an effect here, sadly…)
Of course all these DLCs are just in the Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition, to the point where I had no idea Shadow Broker or Arrival were DLC! Zaeed and Kasumi were obvious because once their loyalty missions were done they rarely did anything, and their rooms just had objects you could get them to talk about, they never had any more dialogue after their initial ones. Still, plenty to buy if you were around and a fan a decade ago!
Thoughts Now:
Closing out with the classic dialogue wheel. Why not?
Mass Effect 2 is one of those “perfect sequels” in that it took everything Mass Effect did right, kept it and improved on it, and then fixed what it did wrong before throwing in a great plot to boot. I know Mass Effect 3 has… mixed receptions, to put it mildly, but I’m still looking forward to seeing how it all comes together next year…
Hogan Reviews 