Mass Effect 2
Alright, so I finally finish this.My second game review post is about one of the greatest game ever made------Mass Effect 2.
Mass Effect 2, BioWare’s outstanding production published by EA from January 26, 2010. It is a role play third person shooting game, Sci-Fi style.
Unfortunately, I have never played Mass Effect 1, so I will just focus on this game. The game begins in 2183, when there are intercourses among different species and systems. In short, there is the biggest threat to the mankind and Commander Shepard has to recruit the best specialists and earn their loyalty to find out the truth and stop the threat.
Why I love this game?
First of all, I think the armor is so cool, you can customize the color, pattern and outlook. (I even made it looks like Iran man)
This game world concept is amazing. The aliens are well designed and the background story is well written. In this game, you can see many fancy advanced technologies, like the guns, the space ships, and the virtual controller. BioWare has created a fantastic world and the technologies are attractive.
Like many other players, I love games with a good story. I feel that I am literately in the game. When I play the game, it’s like watching a movie, like Star Trek. You are captain of your ship, travel among systems in the galaxy with the best crew in the universe. You can decide what to say when talking to a NPC, and it will make you either more a paragon or more a renegade. There are tons and tons of talking in the game, but that is what makes it like a movie. You are allowed to skip those dialogs, but you don’t want to do that or you will lose much information about the game story especially you haven’t played the previous Mass Effect.
There are a lot of details in the game especially in the environment and the dialogs among NPCs. You can find drinking machine, TV with news and projector with commercials and so on. There is an alien selling video games and he can peddle for a minute or two without repeating words. Different characters have different personalities and abilities. It will take a while for you to talk to them and get to know them, guide them the right path.
The combat is easy, basically fire, take cover, reload and fire again. Seriously, you just take cover, shoot, reload, and shoot again, easy and may be boring. But I am still having fun shooting at people, or robots, or aliens (I am not sick!~). Plus, you can select two crews fighting with you for every mission. You can command them during combat, and if you use them well enough, it is really easy to fight against any enemy. You can use 5 kinds of weapons and different powers that will help you complete the mission, and you can search for resources and technologies to upgrade your weapon, armor and ship. I have to say it here, the final boss is huge~ and I nuked him (You will know what I mean when you play the game). He or it is easy to fight and kind of stupid. Just remember to take cover.
When it gets to the end, the final mission, it is a perfect combination of game and movie. Great animated scene plus smooth game play. You decide the death and alive of most of your crew, and the intense environment is what makes it like a movie. I wonder what happen if I haven’t left anyone behind to defense. There are just too many possibilities that you can try out through the game, you will never know the consequences of your decisions.
So, things I don’t like about it:
As I mention before, you have to search for resources (4 elements) to develop you equipment. The ways to do that is either you acquire small amount of them through missions or search them on planet surface. To search resources on a planet, you will have to scan the planet surface piece by piece using a small crosshair and it will take a while to finish the search. Once the scanner has strong reaction on a certain element, you can launch a probe to acquire the resources. At first, it is interesting, but then it becomes boring but unavoidable. It takes you time to search as well as resupplying the probes. You can carry 30 probes at a time but each planet needs at least 35 probes or more, so you have to go to a fuel station to buy fuel and probes. (Fuel is only needed for normal transport between small systems, no needed for hyper jump or travel inside a system) However, the fuel station only exists in some main systems, so you have to travel back and forth to resupply probes. Or you can choose not to upgrade which won’t make much different. (Even there is a upgrade of the probes numbers and the fuel efficiency when you recruit some of the members, I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!)
Credit is the currency used in the universe. You need it for purchasing new technologies to upgrade and equipment. But a lot of them are extremely expensive. If Cerberus (the company) and the Illusive Man (previous enemy who take action stopping the threat of mankind) give them support and run the operation, why don’t they give financial support? I hate fighting for money. Furthermore, even though you have completed all the missions, you still don’t have enough money to buy all the upgrade technologies, so choose which one to buy carefully, or you can play DLC to earn more credit.
The main character Shepard, as you can choose the gender, will have relationship with his crew. As he/she can flirt at his/her crews, he/she will finally choose one of them and then we have this half porn scene. It is good to involve love into game, but the animated “porn” scene is really unnecessary. That must be why it is rated M for mature.
(Breaking code for extra credits or unlock a door)
Conversation system decides how you responses to the situation will affect the story latter on. However, I found myself tired of selecting decisions. Green is good, red is bad, top is kind, middle neutral and down is mean. I decided to be good guy and therefore I choose top and green every time. I am just tired of clicking the same button every time, and that makes the conversation and decision system meaningless. I guess I would rather watch a Mass Effect movie. (This is what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_KU3lUx3u0&feature=search)One more thing: It is always good to let players decide if they want to skip the cut scene or not. I have played the final mission multiple times just for fun, but I have to finish that long cut scene first and it is just a waste of time.
(The Illusive Man)
Conclusion:
It is now my favorite game and its system requirement level is not that high if you play on PC (I am). I highly recommend readers to play this game, you will not regret, I promise.
