Review: Mass Effect 2 (PC)

Sound

The sound in this game, as with the original game, is still thankfully great.  Weapon sounds effects sound appropriate for the genre, as does the environmental sound effects in each environment you visit throughout the game.

The music in the game also continues to be a very solid body of work, with the same general electronic-orchestra feel that the series has embodied thus far.  I wish there had been a bit more emphasis on the music, in relation to how loud it is.  With all the audio settings at their default, the sound effects, voice, and music are all at the same levels, but the music always seems to be a bit too low, or too much in the background.  This was also an issue for me in Mass Effect, and I wish it had been improved upon in this game.  Not sure if it’s a technology issue of sorts, or something else, but it was much better with headphones.

By far the biggest ‘audio standout’ in this game has to be the voice acting.  Almost every single spoken line in this game, even by the trivial characters, is done so with a level of almost movie quality authenticity.  The main cast itself has some Hollywood heavy weights involved such as Martin Sheen, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Seth Green; along with gaming veterans such as Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, reprising their roles as the male and female Shepard characters, respectively.  That really only scratches the surface of the rest of the incredible cast involved in the game.  Part of what made Mass Effect successful was the incredible personality injected into it’s cast of characters by it’s voice cast, and that is certainly continued — and even surpassed — in Mass Effect 2.  You actually grow to give a damn about characters because of their digital performances, and the vocal performances have a major part in that success.

Gameplay

The core gameplay mechanics in ME2 have seen a pretty major overhaul from the first title.  Most — if not all — mechanics from the previous game have either been improved upon, or removed altogether.  For starters, the third person combat is still a solid element to the gameplay, but it has seen some great improvements from the first game.  Shepard moves around a bit better this time thanks in part to a slightly improved cover system.  While finding cover in the first game was incredibly important, it has even more of an emphasis in this game.  However, this time Shepard will get into cover only when prompted to do so via a button, versus getting into cover automatically each time they approach a wall, container, etc.  This leads to better character control during combat, and more importantly, less mistakes with inadvertently assuming cover at bad times (such as when trying to shoot an enemy, etc.).  Shepard can also still dash, but new is the ability when dashing while running for cover in which you will automatically slide into position under cover, giving you an easier time dealing with multiple enemies and incoming shots / biotic powers.

In addition, the ability to pause the action to control squad mates and their abilities / powers is still there, but commanding team mates this time is much more straight forward.  Positioning and recalling team members is simplified through the usage of specific keys to position them real-time, and as a result you will not only use your team mates more than you did in the first game, but you will pause the action to select commands much less.  In relation to the squad mates you can also key bind their powers to your hot keys, which results in even faster action, without pause (depending on your play style, of course).  Medi-gel now only serves to revive fallen team mates with the Unity ability from the first game, and no longer to heal yourself.  Similar to other shooters, you take cover and wait just a bit in order for your shields / health to regenerate.  Once you are accustomed to your squad, and get their abilities to work in concert with yours, it can really result in some great action sequences due to the changes made by BioWare.

Finally for action gameplay, weapons have been revamped.  There are now many more categories of weapons in the game, expanded from the original 4 types, but there are restrictions to each class as to who can use what weapon types.  No more weapons overheating and pausing during combat either.  All weapons now work on a sort of ammo system, which is really an amount of shots you have until you have to eject your heatsink for another one.  This results in more traditional (and welcome) combat shooter gameplay, with ejecting heatsinks (ammo cartridges basically) feeling much more natural than waiting for your gun to cool.  Of course, this does not come without a cost, as ammo is a premium in this game, and you cannot simply shoot wildly emptying clips just hoping to hit targets.  Speaking of hitting targets, body parts are now targetable separately, meaning a headshot will do massive damage, or you can blow off legs to wound enemies so that they crawl instead of run.  Ammo upgrade types make a return as well, but they are now ‘pseudo powers’ that you activate one time in combat — using a cooldown — that result in augmenting your bullets for the duration of the mission (or until another type is activated), not a weapon upgrade via the inventory screens.  They have a much more of a visceral impact in this game as well; for example, with the cryo ammo you can literally freeze your enemies after enough shots, allowing you to shatter them into pieces with a subsequent shot, or a well timed biotic power.

The role playing elements — at least some of the more traditional systems found in the original game — have been streamlined.  Some have been removed altogether, and while there might be many RPG purists that don’t agree with this the changes result in a more focused experience.  Gone from the first game is the whole inventory system (and random misc. item drops from containers).  There is still equipment to find such as guns or armor, but they are much less frequent, and most of the time direct upgrades (i.e. less crap).  This does take away from the diversity a bit in choosing weapons and armor layouts, since most drops you’ll be finding are simply better than what you got last, but it’s a system that works better for this game than the original inventory and drop system did for the first game.  There are also armor pieces to find or buy, and armor is modular to boot.  This means you’ll mix and match armor pieces while on the Normandy to get the boosts or statistics you want, and the armor is also further customizable with color schemes, textures, materials, patterns, and so forth.  In a way you can see this as the developers delivering what they did in the first game, albeit in a completely different manner, and arguably as a result more meaningful for the player.

The 6 playable classes from the original game make their return here, but now each class has a unique power or ability that makes the differentiation in-between classes much more defined than the original Mass Effect.  For example, the Vanguard class will have a biotic charge ability that will allow them to pick a target and charge to them with incredible force even through solid objects, either knocking the enemy back or disorienting them for some up close shots.  The Infiltrator class has a tactical cloak power, which renders them invisible to any enemy on the battlefield, and increasing damage for weapons / powers until the come out of cloak.  As mentioned above, each class also has access to certain guns as well (with the Solider having access to them all), further increasing class diversity in the game.

The level cap is reduced from 60 to 30, and XP from kills is gone.  You only get XP from completing main and side quests in the game.  This in particular may not sit well with many players, but is completely subjective.  I for one don’t feel that it hurts the game all that much.  Once a quest / mission is completed you are presented with a ‘mission completed’ page, that is basically a summary of the main happenings in the mission, and any materials or upgrades collected.  After enough missions Shepard will level up, and as in the first game, grant points — 2 per level — that can be spent to upgrade powers.

This time there are also technically less ways to spend points, with less abilities or skill areas being listed to augment with points.  But, as with many of the changes, this is for the best as the original system was a bit scatter brained with too many areas to toss points into, watering down the tangible impact of the upgrades  on the gameplay.  The abilities themselves have many less points, or ‘tiers’, than the original game’s skills, but each new tier is much more significant than the last as you progress.  Unlike the first game though, as you put points in a skill each subsequent tier costs more points respectively as you level them up (i.e. first tier costs 1 point, second tier costs 2 points, so on).

Gone is the ability to specialize into a secondary class as in the original game, but replaced with something much more interesting.  Related to the skill system above, once you get to the final 4th tier of any skill you are presented with an option to evolve that skill into one of two paths.  For example, as a Vanguard you can evolve Shepard’s biotic charge skill into either something that does massive direct damage to your target, making you into a juggernaut of sorts, or you can evolve it into an ability that does area of effect damage to blow back groups of enemies instead at the cost of outright power.  This option is presented to you for each ability you have, including even weapon ammo.  Not only that, but Shepard can be trained to obtain the special ability of any of his team members in the game, once you’ve done the loyalty side quest for that character.  This all results in a much more satisfying experience in allocating points compared to the first game, and customizing your character’s abilities to your liking.

In relation to the conversation and Paragon / Renegade system from the first game it returns here as well, equally as effective, and with some refinements.  The main change to the system is that there are some triggered actions that interject themselves during certain conversations or events, that will grant you either Paragon or Renegade points, respectively.  For example, you come up to an injured NPC, and in the middle of the conversation you see the Paragon symbol light up on the right side of the screen.  If you hit the respective button to activate that action you’ll use a medi-gel to heal that NPC during your conversation with them, resulting in additional Paragon points.  The same works the other way with Renegade actions, as both types are peppered throughout the game in various conversations and scenes you experience.  In addition, gone are the static camera and ‘talking heads’ from Mass Effect.  The camera moves around now during conversations for a really great cinematic experience, especially given the fact that the character models are stunning.

And now we come to the exploration and planets, which has also been massively changed.  As previously stated, in the last game you went around and ‘scanned’ planets, which was hitting one button to scan the entire planet, which usually resulted in some random mineral (that didn’t have much impact), or tokens for some side quests.  You could also land on planets, but as also previously stated, it was roughly the same barren boring experience, done only for XP.  In this game planet scanning is completely different.  You are now semi-limited with your ship’s travel and exploration, with having a fuel repository for traveling in-between systems within the galaxy, and probes to scan specific locations on a planet’s surface you move over with a circular indicator.  As you visit each planet you scan it’s surface for materials, using an indicator device that spikes when you mouse over minerals you can mine.  Once you find a hot spot you launch a probe to mine it’s surface, which results in getting raw materials that you use on the Normandy to research ship, and squad equipment upgrades.  In addition, some planets have locations of interest that you can stumble upon, which are your new side / mini quests.  Once you find one on a planet you land immediately on foot and proceed to explore, and / or fight, depending on the mission, or what you’re trying to accomplish.

This all sounds very good on paper, and for the most part, it is an improvement over the last game.  But, one big disadvantage with this system is the actual planet scanning itself.  If you come up to a planet marked as ‘rich’, with many resources to harvest, you can sit there with the mouse cursor scanning the planet for a good 5 – 10 minutes until all it’s resources are harvested.  Not only do you need these resources to upgrade your team, but in order for the final mission to be successful you need to be completely prepared; meaning a lot of ship / team upgrades, and a lot of planet scanning.  It can definitely get very tedious after a while, and I found that breaking up the monotony by going on a mission, then going harvesting, then going on another mission, and so forth really helped, because after scanning your dozenth planet it is not fun.

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