I got Mass Effect 2 for 15 dollars a few months ago. I was bored, and at the local pawn shop, so I thought, why not? I'd always heard such good things about the Mass Effect games. I decided against playing it for a few months... then I realized that Mass Effect wasn't on the PS3. So I just went forward with Mass Effect 2.... but not before learning the story of Mass Effect.

The premise is simple. You are Commander Shepard, Badass. You get to be a badass with other badasses in an effort to save the galaxy. So yeah, we'll get into that later...

Graphics - 8

The graphics itself are nothing overly special or taxing. On the PS3, it looks like most other BioWare games (Dragon Age comes to mind) when you are playing the game, aside from the fact this is third person behind the back as opposed to third person skewed above the player. The cutscenes are pretty nice, but they are too few and far inbetween. My personal favorite is the end... but I obviously won't talk about that in depth.

The Star Map looks pretty nice, if a little basic. There's a lot of background stuff, although a lot of it probably didn't need to be there. I get the universe is more than a flat sheet as presented, but if that's the case, there wasn't a lot of effort put into making the star map closer to a real representation of the galaxy. It's a minor qualm, but it's kind of breaking reality when the star map itself is 2D, whereas the background is 3D and adds depth. I don't know, kind of a slap in the face, you know?

The character design is pretty unique, with all manners of alien life. Your party reflects this the best, as you will recruit a krogan (big beasts... tanks), a quarian (better with tech stuff, wear pressurized suits), and even a drell (well... you'll see what they are). There are some humans as well of course.

Sound - 7

I wasn't blown away by the music. It was ok, but a little bit monotonous, especially when you are like me, and find yourself backtracking to worlds to get 100% completion. I can't tell you how many times I've gone back to Afterlife (a club on Omega) just to see if there was anything left to do there. The music is generally repetitive, although you do get to change your cabin's music at least, through a handy tool IN your cabin.

The reason the game scores so high as it does in the sound department is mainly for the voices of the characters. While they aren't anything special, and they could have used a few more voice actors, the voices fit the respective species and characters. The best voice talent in the game? The voice actor for either Miranda Lawson (who has kind of a british thing going on) or Mordin Solus (whose commentary, while serious in nature, cracks me up).

It could have been a lot better in this department... but it's BioWare. And I've been let down by them too much to expect too much in this area.

Addictiveness - 7

What makes a game addictive? Replay value. Fun. A great story with great characters. The desire to know more about the universe. Of all these things, I felt only one of them. A great story with great characters. But to see this great story with great characters, you HAVE to do the loyalty missions. If you do not, you will not only be hurting your team, but you will also miss out on the best parts of the game.

A lot of the fun again, comes from the characters in the game. Whether it is doing their loyalty missions (as stated above) or just chatting with them, there is no reason not to get involved with your shipmates.

I wouldn't say I plan to play this again, but that's mostly because space just isn't my thing. It was the best game I've played about space though

Story - 10

This is the part of the game I've been waiting to praise.

The story is beautiful by BioWare's standards, which are already pretty good. This is even more true if you played the original Mass Effect, and ported your save to Mass Effect 2 (not on PS3 though!) as the story is continuous.

Basically, you are Commander Shepard. He (or she) is a bad ass. One day you are just strollin' the galaxy like the bad ass you are. Then all of a sudden... ATTACK! Your ship was attacked by what you later find out are Collectors. They destroy your ship pretty quickly, and you have to get off the ship, or your ass is grass. Everybody is willing to leave on your orders... well except Joker (my favorite character) who claims he can save the ship (spoiler - he can't). You haul his lazy ass to the escape pods. And guess what, you, the badass, saved everyone. Except like 20 lower deck crew (that are never mentioned again unless you get the DLC), Navigator Pressly (who wasn't really missed), and wait for it... yourself.

That's right. You've been playing the game for like 20 minutes, and your character is already dead.

Fast forward 2 years.

You are being brought back to life by Project Lazarus. Congratulations, you, Commander Shepard, the badass, are alive again. There's only one minor problem.

The Collectors are coming. You are for all intents and purposes alone (not for long though!) in a splinter cell organization you don't trust. And the only people offering to help you are a soldier who is way too nice for all the ways he knows how to kill people, and the leader of Project Lazarus who was obsessed with bringing you back exactly as you were. It'd be a lot easier to trust her if you didn't just see a cutscene where she's talking to the Illusive Man (who you will soon meet and immedietly distrust).

It's not all bad though. Regardless of what you tell the Illusive Man in your chat, you will be given a little present.

The Normandy SR-2.

And look, Joker. Nice to see he's still alive.

From here on out, you are just recruiting people for your team, and doing their loyalty missions. Asari, Quarian, Turian, Krogan, Human, Salarian... and more. You will meet more than your share of unique ship mates, on a quest to TAKE BACK THE GALAXY and kick some serious collector butt.

Oh, and going through the suicidal Omega 4 relay to attack the collectors (suicidally) in a SUICIDICALY SUICIDE MISSION. They really hammer the suicide mission theme on you in this game. And if you don't know what you are doing, it is a suicide mission.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Play the game!

Depth - 7

I'm not counting loyalty missions here, as they should be part of your normal gameplay. Outside of doing missions for them, there's not a whole ton for you to do.

Here's a small list of things to save time and space.

- View all the fictional planets information (yes, you can even learn how long the planets days are, or how quickly it revolves around the sun of the system.)
- Get all the upgrades (finding the tech is harder than actually using your resources to be able to use them)
- Talk to all your crewmates (and in some cases form relationships that will culminate in little more than long dragged out taking off of shirts)
- Scan all the planets for extra missions
- DLC

A lot of the extra content in this game will only appeal to people who like reading and the like. Then again, if you don't like reading, why are you playing an RPG?

Difficulty - 5

I'm talking how hard the game is on hard mode. Normal and Easy... are pretty much the same thing. A two. The final boss takes literally no effort on the easier difficulties. I actually died a fair deal of the time on hard, and if you play insane, this jumps to 7 or 8. On higher difficulties, TECHS ARE A DEFINITE NEED, and so is STRATEGIC TEAM BUILDING. Seriously, you can screw yourself over pretty bad if you don't make your team balanced on higher difficulties.

Overall - 8.4

It's a good game. Not great. It's a tad overrated, but so is most everything BioWare does.

This game may not be for you if you don't like RPGs. Hell, if you don't like RPGs, you will probably hate this game if you expected a third person shooter.

If you want one of those, play Army of Two or whatever. A lot less words and a lot more action. This is more for the people who like long dragged out RPGs with a few shooting elements. It's not a bad mix, but if you aren't a fan of third person shooters, you can probably look elsewhere.

Highlight of the entire game? probing the planets and edi:
are you really going to make me say it? *sighs* probing uranus.
That or the modern day salarian song.
The cool thing bout 2 was it used the engine from 3, hence it was far better than its equivelants on other platforms.
I replayed it twice to get different endings.
Having played 3, i still say 2 is best. I played 1 on a friends xbox too, 2 is best.