Mass Effect 2: Sensyden Shepard

Simply put, I loved every minute of Mass Effect 2. The game play was fun and engaging, the narrative was grandiose and exciting, and the characters were likable and complex.  As the player you take control of Commander Shepard the hero of the battle for the citadel (the climax of Mass Effect 1) first human Specter (think Jedi) and the primary reason humanity has any influence on the other species in the cosmos. 

The game play in ME2 is a vast improvement over the original game.  Enemies are dispatched through a variety of weapons and biotic powers (think "The Force") which make Shepard and his team the best wrecking crew in the galaxy.  It will take some getting used to but at some point early on, the combat just clicks.  But to focus on the battle system of Mass Effect is to ignore 60% of the action.

Every situation in ME2 offers the player choices.  In one mission Shepard comes across a sick non-human male.  The player can choose to ignore him, kill him, engage him in conversation, or attempt to heal him.  This experience has no real impact on the rest of the game but it does allow you to lead Shepard down the path of a paragon (hero) or renegade (evil, but gets the job done).  The characters are as brutal or as kind as you make them. 

Full discloser, Sensyden Shepard is a paragon, he can't stand to see the species of the universe suffer and he believes that all races will need to work together to save the galaxies from the evil Reapers.  The members of his crew that lean towards evil Shepard drags towards the side of good and the parts of his crew that are already paragons he keeps on the righteous path.  Sensyden does things the hard way and attempts to spill as little blood as possible.  

That all leads to the amazing narrative that Mass Effect weaved over the 30 or so hours during my first play through (there will be other play through's).  As a paragon Shepard found a broken and hurting universe that was in need of justice, kindness, and peace.  Shepard helped who he could when he could and felt good about himself while doing it.

The greatest strength of this trans-formative game is the amazing characters.  The early stages of the game have Shepard zipping through the galaxy in search of a team that can successfully complete a suicide mission.  Characters join Shepard because of past alliances, they are paid huge sums of money, they owe you a favor, or they are simply interested in what Shepard is going to do next.

Over the course of the game Shepard's crew asks favors of him, which he can choose to indulge or ignore.  Those favors will pay dividends as the game draws to a conclusion.  This is because the more the crew trusts him, the more likely they are to follow Shepard's orders, even if those orders could lead to their own demise. 

As you may have guessed, I played Shepard as a male character, you can choose to be female if you prefer, and the interactions Shepard had with the crew reflected his gender.  As the game progressed Shepard reached out to all members of his crew through conversation and favors.  The more talks he had with the females crew members led me down romantic paths with them.  Since my Shepard was a paragon he won't kiss and tell, but I will say, as the player I truly wanted to see all of his crew get through the final battle.

That final battle, by the way, is extremely stressful.  As you progress you are asked to put characters onto courses that seem to have no return trip.  These are all tough decisions and even though I felt confident that Shepard would make it through, I was not as certain about the rest of my crew.  That had me nervous, and it is a rare game that makes the player nervous about the choices his is making on the well being of his non-playable characters.

If I had to pinpoint one major flaw in the Mass Effect game play it would be the awful load times.  Booting the game takes a load screen, starting a mission prompts a load screen, going through a Mass Relay relays a load screen, traveling between floors on the Normandy (Shepard's ship) even forces this game to load.  Being the Mass Effect 2 fanboy that I am, I've decided to pin the blame for load times on the 360.  The Xbox is an older console (among the current generation) of which Mass Effect 2 may reflect the climax of its life cycle.

To those of you who've played the original Mass Effect... actually I'm not going to bother talking to that demographic because you're already playing Mass Effect 2.  If you have not played the original Mass Effect, you will miss out on some of the story connections to the previous game via emails and some brief character interactions.  That being said I highly recommend this game even if you haven't beaten the first. Anyway, I'd love to write more about this amazing game, but I'm going to go play it.