Before I started playing Mass Effect 2, I hadn’t really read much about it. I thought it was going to be similar to Mass Effect 1, but it turned out to be a lot different.
I got my copy of the game the morning of release date and was excited to get started. I soon found out that my Cerberus code didn’t work and gave me the collector’s edition DLC instead, which I already entered too. So I went on the forums and found out I wasn’t the only person with this problem. Everyone with retail copies of the collector’s edition had this problem. I didn’t want to start the game without the DLC stuff so I waited all day for Bioware to fix it. They eventually did that evening.
When I started playing, the first thing I noticed, besides the awesome graphics, was that the mouse sensitivity was very high. Lowering the setting did nothing. So I just went with it and eventually got use to it. Another thing I noticed was that weapons and armor weren’t as customizable as the first Mass Effect. I wasn’t able to add enhancements or modifications to my weapons and armor like Mass Effect 1. They also started using thermal clips instead of unlimited ammo with a heat meter. All this made it feel more like a regular shooter rather than an RPG, especially with the mission summary screen after every mission.
They also took out the landing on planets with a vehicle to explore (though the DLC for the Hammerhead should be interesting) and instead added this planet scanning minigame. It was fun at first, but was really repetitive and got boring after a while. The planets that you could land on to do missions on foot were really short. I wanted more action.
After beating the game, I realized that even though they took out a lot of the things I liked from the first Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 is still a really good game. They made things a lot more simple and more of a pick up and play type game rather than having to spend a lot of time customizing to get ready for a mission. One of the good things about the lack of customizing weapons and separate gear for your team is that you don’t have to worry about inventory space. I was constantly running out of space carrying all that armor and enhancements in the first Mass Effect. I went through Mass Effect 2 as a soldier on normal difficulty the first time. I’m going to replay it on insanity later when more DLC comes out. I usually play shooters on the hardest difficulty after I beat it the first time and it’s usually a lot more fun on hard.
I didn’t know Mass Effect was a planned trilogy from the beginning, so I didn’t get my Mass Effect 1 character to max level. I imported what I finished with anyway because I wanted the story to continue from where I left off. On my playthrough, I only ran into a few minor bugs, including my character sometimes floating in the air when I got too close to some objects. None of them rendered the game unplayable though. There was also one part where someone saluted me with their left hand instead of their right. Not sure if that was intentional or not.
Mass Effect 2 turned out to be a lot of fun, though there is always room for improvement. The graphics were great. The music, sound, story, character variety were all great too. I only played Mass Effect 1 once, but after playing Mass Effect 2, I actually feel like replaying it. When I do, I know I’ll have a lot more fun than the first time. I look forward to seeing what Bioware has in store for us in the future with DLC’s.
