Sequels can be tricky business. If a game is too similar or too different than its predecessor, no one will want anything to do with it. Keeping what needs to stay and changing what needs to go is a tough balancing act that, in my experience, tends to lay most developers sprawled helplessly out on the floor. Game sequels may be a dime a dozen, but good sequels—those are as precious as ivory.
For a sequel to be good, it needs to accomplish three things: first, it needs to correct the flaws of the original title without introducing many new flaws of its own; second, it needs to introduce new and/or innovative elements that feel both fresh and familiar; lastly, a good sequel needs to expand upon the quality of its predecessor, taking everything—writing, presentation, gameplay—to another level. Naturally, this is a standard to which most sequels invariably fall short.
Mass Effect 2 does not.
Savor that, for a moment. Mass Effect 2 does not disappoint, in any way. From every angle, Mass Effect 2 meets and exceeds the both the players expectations and the standards of the genre. Reading this, you must think that I am overfond of hyperbole. You may be right, to a point. A game is good as Mass Effect 2 is impossible to believe without playing it for yourself. I, certainly, never thought any game would ever reach this height, and my mind still insists on believing this—yet every time I load up a game of Mass Effect 2 I am forcibly reminded otherwise. Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest games—ever. Mass Effect 2 is a brilliant game, and if you consider yourself a gamer you cannot afford to miss it.
Mass Effect 2 is, of course, a roleplaying game utilizing a third-person shooter combat mechanic. Essentially, you spend your time looking over the shoulder of your player character, Shepherd, while he or she interacts with the world. Mass Effect 2 begins a little over two years after the finale of the first Mass Effect. You are a Spectre (essentially a cosmic detective) tasked with hunting down the illusive "Reapers" and their sinister agents, who are waging a secret war against humanity. Don't worry about those narrative details just yet—I'll delve deeper a little later on. For now, let's talk about how the game is played. There are essentially two sides to gameplay in Mass Effect 2. First, there's the interactive portion, which involves typical activities: exploration, dialog, story advancement, and so on. Then, there's combat.
Combat in Mass Effect 2 is brilliantly executed. Each class, or profession, in the game can equip different weapons (shotguns, pistols, assault rifles, etc.) and has access to different special abilities. You fire your weapon with the left mouse button, cycle weapons with the mouse wheel, and can zoom in for better accuracy with the right mouse button. Holding down the shift key pauses the game and opens up a very simple menu allowing you to activate your own special abilities, or order your allies to use their own abilities. Abilities that target enemies will always be linked to the enemy in your cross-hairs when you close the game, and ally-effect abilities (healing/reviving comrades) are targeted to the applicable character automatically. Essentially, this means that you'll be in and out of the ability menu in a fraction of a second, ensuring that the flow of combat is never interrupted.
Compared to the first Mass Effect, or any other game on the market for that matter, the controls are exceptionally streamlined. The cover system is especially well-implemented, as you can decide when to enter or exit cover simply by pressing the space bar—which is also used for a variety of other tasks depending on context. Taking cover helps shield you from damage and can grant a nice reprieve in some of the more hectic firefights. Your shields will recover damage, after a time, as will those of your allies and enemies. Some enemies can even regenerate their health, which can be quite a hassle if your running low on ammunition. Different weapons will deal different damage to different types of enemies. Some weapons work better than others against shields or armor, and so on. You'll want to be able to switch weapons on the fly depending on the type of foes your up against. The various abilities also add a nice layer to combat, and can quickly turn even the most disadvantageous of fights to your favor, if your smart. Say you're being rushed by an enormous mechanized robot, spewing lead and fire out of each arms. It towers at twice your height. It's thick armor soaks up your bullets easily, and it's stomping straight towards your position. What do you do? You can use your biotic powers to levitate the robot high into the air, and then, while it spins helplessly above your head, toss a grenade at it and the beast explodes. You can then watch it rain fiery chunks of burnt armor down all across the battlefield. Oh—and that poor Quarian caught near the blast (the one with the assault rifle)? Looks like he caught on fire and is burning to death. Honestly, I can't think of any way combat in Mass Effect 2 could be any better. The controls are simple and intuitive, the pacing if fast and frenetic, and it's addictive as hell. If there's one detrimental aspect to combat, it's that the larger battlefields are typically easy to spot—any wide area with lots of small walls or chunks or rubble scattered about is guaranteed to be the site of a firefight. It makes things a bit predictable, but never detracts from the fun.
The Dialog Wheel from the first Mass Effect is back, with a few very crucial improvements. The basic gist of the mechanic is that when you're speaking an NPC, you select your responses from those indicated along a wheel. Responses to the right side of the wheel tend to rush through conversations quickly, while responses on the left allow you to explore the conversations in a more in-depth manner. Response at the top are typically "Paragon" responses (meaning "good," or—just as frequently--"polite") while those at the bottom are "Renegade" (evil/rude) responses. This is all as it was in the first Mass Effect—a decent enough system, but nothing truly great.
The interrupt system is a godsend. It makes the dialog scenes far more engaging, and opens up an whole new cinematic layer to encounters that the typical, stand-still-and-talk-calmly conversations from the first game could never have. While watching a scene, you'll see an icon appear in either the left or right side of the screen, indicating an "interrupt" (either on the Paragon or Renegade side). Interrupting dialog means doing something. From slapping a talkative Turian to bashing some poor sod over the back of the head with a wrench. It's decisive, dramatic action, and it's ridiculously fun to watch. The ability to effect drastic shifts in the narrative with the interrupt system make dialog far, far more engaging. It immerses the player in the world and the actions in a way that nothing else can. You feel like your really there, really reacting to what the people around you are doing and saying. If someone says or does something that really gets on your nerves, you don't have to wait for a requisite dialog response to appear—you can let your actions speak for you, spontaneously. Interruption makes the world of Mass Effect 2 feel alive and is, in my opinion, the single greatest element to the game. To be quite honest, the dialog system makes the entire game stand out so far ahead of the competition. Mass Effect 2 isn't about shooting people, it's not even about making "decisions,"--rather, it's all about talking to people in the game, freely, as though you were a denizen of their world.
There are a few things in Mass Effect
