Mass Effect 2 takes what was great about the first game and makes it better. Not only is it better, IT IS A DIFFERENT GAME (NOT A POLISHED REHASH) FROM THE FIRST ME. The story is still top-notch, the combat is refined to an amazing level, the decisions you make in the first ME are clearly evident in the world of ME2 (if you choose to run off a ME1 profile) and the horrendous inventory juggling of the first game are gone. The graphics are gorgeous, the new areas are fun to explore and poke around in and the soundtrack is epic. The only complaint I have about this game is that a lot of the RPG elements got nerfed (ie no inventory, fewer tech trees) but it was definitely sacrificed for the good of the franchise. I have completed 6 playthroughs of this game and loved every one of them. This truly is the masterpiece of the ME franchise.

This game improves on the first Mass Effect in everyway! Awesome game! Mass Effect is the best RPG series out there! Grapics and story are awesome and your choices from the first game heavly affect the 2nd game, so grab the first game and enjoy ME2! Fun 5/5 Graphics 5/5 Story 5/5

a sad sad game. i know theres alot of people out there who love it.. but im a realist and bioware hasnt made a really good game since KOTOR, due in large part to them farming out all their sequels to obsidian. THIS game was developed by bioware though, so no using obsidian as a scapegoat (even though on every game they had FULL support from bioware as far as making the most of the engines AND creative direction)4 and it sucks. i dont know why but they thought it would be wise to remove the 1 redeeming feature mass effect 1 had, the MAKO. it was the only reason i played through the first one, and now its there.. so now the game is just a spaceopera with intermittent shooter sequences. BOO~! again i know alot of people think this game is the bees knees, im just not that naive.

Improves on Mass Effect 1 combat wise, but loses most of the customization/side missions, and has a pretty short story, but overall a great game,

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

Love This game... Bioware never sieses to amaze me. game play as well as story are great, all the extras that you can do compared to ME1 are great and the extras that come with the DDV make the game alot more interesting.

Only downsides are the reloading compaired to the unlimited ammo in ME1, which i have grown to work with, and the mellee is still alittle wonky.

Greatly looking forward to ME3.

A great game that every RPG/strategy fan would love and enough action to keep all those MW3 people happy. Warning Game will make you emotionally involved in story.

The epic story continues in Mass Effect 2. The stakes are higher as Shepherd and his crew battle a new group of threats from beyond the stars. With a return of characters from the first game, and a whole new offering of crew members, the story centers around Shepherd's efforts to build an expert team to battle the big bads.

Controls from the first game have been tightened here, and the shooting feels much more visceral, however some of the RPG elements have been toned down. The goal was clearly to focus on the story, and the side missions have been lessened, making this game roughly half the length of the first. Whether this is good or bad depends entirely on your expectations. The game itself is a much better product in terms of polish, but the massive inventory from the first game is gone, replaced by a small selection of guns and bombs. This allows the player to focus on the story and the NPC friendships, but for loot oriented players this can be a turn off. That being said, the game is still terrific and deserves a play. Buy it and decide for yourself, it could be one of your best uses for twenty dollars!

This game...I'm not sure how to put it in words, but I will try. It's not too often a game makes an impact on my life, but this game has made a HUGE impact. The graphics are very well done, the voice acting is amazing, gameplay is flawless. I've been a huge fan since the original came out, and I've gotten many of my friends to play it. I love RPG/Character development/and story games, and this just made me love those genres even more. I'd definitely give this game a try, but I'd play the ME1 if you have not already, just to follow the story.

All in all, this is an outstanding game. Definitely a must buy, and I know I've said that many times already (lol) but, it's the truth. Anyway, to end my ranting, buy this awesome game!

Mass Effect 2 is the excellent sequel to Mass Effect with good and well implemented enhancements like the planetary exploration and the characterhandling. The evolving and unfolding story goes even deeper into the world of ME and fascinates all the time and also makes appetite for ME3 which would be released in 2011. Nevertheless the new planetary search for ressources could be boring sometimes but this is luckily not the main aspect of the game itself. The character development is very simple and easy to understand even for gamers which are usually not playing RPG's. Bioware gave the players slightly more freedom regarding storychanging decisions. All in all its as mentioned before an excellent sequel for an already very good game.

The graphics are very good and fluid. There are no mentionable bugs or problems. The sound and music are incredible and fit into the game all the time.

Conclusion: There are only a few offline-RPG that are so massive and deep like the ME-Series. ME2 is a must as ME1 was and probably ME3 will be.

An outstanding game to my taste - liked it as much as Dragon Age. Those who like RPG, character developing, equipment, weapons, etc. will surely enjoy it! Those who like an interesting (and I DO mean interesting) storyline will enjoy it even more! Oh, and those who like the storyline to be flexible and change according to your own decision will just spend few days non-stop over this game... ehhm, I did!

Such a lovely game! Bioware is always top of the line imo. Quit thinking about buying this awesome game and just buy it already! It will keep you busy if you like rpg type games. The universe is huge in this one! I was addicted for about a month, still play it on a regular basis.

first things first, if you bought dragonage origins the DLC for ME2 doesnt not work the same way, its a standard download and install rather than the ingame technique that they used in DA:O -------------- dont expect the ammount of items you got in ME1, its all gone now. 3 or 4 assault rifles, 2 pistols, etc and a few sets of armour------- as for the armour be aware that there is no in mission toggle to remove your helmet, and ALL the dlc armour is one piece, no mix and matching and that includes full helmets...great story, gone are the pointless circle minigames from the first ME, gone is the open planet exploration too. i liked it, but i think its a case of removing some of the rpg elements to more cater to the 3rd person shooter crowd

Mass Effect 2 is an achievement in gaming of the greatest order. It has exciting visceral combat, akin to the one found in such blockbusters as Gears of War 2. The RPG elements are the best we've seen in the past few years, every character is extremely well-developed, has a background story, and the game genuinely makes us care for the characters. Exploration is also superb, with addictive mini-games and side quests that truly affect the outcome of your game. No two mass effect 2 playthroughs will be the same and that is what makes this game great.

I don't have to say that "If you liked Mass Effect, then Mass Effect 2 is a must-buy" ... because you either know that, our you didn't like Mass Effect.

The story continues. No surprise. Bigger and better than the first. I didn't like the state of the universe without my imported character --- so I'm not sure how well people who don't have a Mass Effect character to import are going to like this.

I'm a little disappointed in the extras. I bought the digital deluxe version and I preordered. A number of the items conflict --- you end up with several armor choices, but you can only wear one on any particular mission. The item buffs are nice, but a little more thought could have gone into the fact that someone may own Dragon's age (blood armor), have preordered (more armor) and bought the deluxe edition (yet more armor).

There also appears to be a little less illusion of choice on missions. You immediately return to the ship on completing a mission. If you're out in the middle of a space station, you end up back on your ship and you have to re-dock at the space station if you want to do something else there. Similarly, the citidel isn't so much walking. The "Precidium" stop pops you into Anderson's office. No wandering around.

These are small quibbles in the scheme of things. The story is grand. Cry, laugh, shout ooh-rah... it's all in there. The action is direct and in-your-face. The voice acting is first rate. Even the camera work and facial animations of the dialogue scenes is enhanced. I somewhat pity the fools that play this on an xbox. It's so pretty on a PC --- and it runs full spec on my i7/920 and nVidia 275 at 1920x1200.

If anything bioware has caught your eye in the last 3 years, you're going to buy this eventually... might as well be now :).