Revival and Review 0.1: Mass Effect 2

Reviving the blog. And as a first post I'll be reviewing Bioware's RPG Juggernaut Mass Effect 2 (which only recently came out on the PS3).

Intro.

Lately I've been more of a fan of JRPGs, rather than Western ones. It probably has something to do with the switch from PC to console and overall interest in Japan. And lately I've felt that the Western RPG fell into a bit of a decline in the past years...
They’ve all been trying to become more like shooters. Prime example is Fallout 3, which while being very offering in the content department, I stopped playing, came back to it later and stopped playing again.

So in this sense Mass Effect 2 brought me back to a earlier part of my childhood, when RPGs were big, the dialogues were funny an the gameworld seemed a lot more endless than the “sandboxes” of GTA ever can. I was so damn addictive.

Core Design.
Mass Effect 2 is no doubt an RPG, but also a shooter. And it thankfully kicks the D&D system in the balls. For those of you who don't know the D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) system when it comes to games means that when you aim a gun at someone at point-blank then the chance of your shot hitting is determined by whether your stats are high enough and a saving throw of a virtual die. That’s what happened in Bioware’s earlier games like KOTOR, where you could be in the middle of an awesome sword swinging animation at your opponents face, but scoring zero damage due to his virtual die determining that you miss.
Mass Effect 2 dealt away with that and has the shooter approach of “if it hits, you score” deciding the outcome of a fight with the player skills at aiming and memory skills at hacking. So a player with nice reflexes and a tricky mind could walk through the game without needing too many leveling or upgrades.
But this comes with no price to strategy, dialogues and weapon-stats. So in a sense it’s all the best things in an RPG and a TPS.
Also the alignment system. Oh boy they were really awesome on this. In most games it’s a “eat this kitten” or “Please hit me again for I shall bear your pain till your satisfied”. Here both the Paragon and Renegade options are extremely serviceable. And Biowares stroke of genius, the good isn’t a plus on your alignment scale and a the bad isn’t a minus. So if say you do a “good” and immediately a “bad” action, you don’t negate your alignment progress but progress both of them.
And actually the “good” Paragon isn’t as always as good and the “bad” Renegade isn’t a kitten-munch in the long run. So far it’s the only game to nail this topic right.

Controls and Running.
Again the pure fun and ease of a shooter, yet also a hint of “Pause-and-Play”. The PS3 port is nice and not buggy at all (it froze like only once) and I managed to avoid the much-spoken of save-game crippling glitch even when I abused the shit out of autosaves.

Visual Design.
The graphics are beautiful. I saw a few low-res textures in the Firewalker missions, but overall the game looks great. And the time and effort that went into this world is Massive. I daresay it has it’s own look.

Story.
Actually, no really big mind-boiling twists here, even though I was expecting something of a kind. But ME2’s story’s strength lies in it’s meticulously crafted and detailed world backstory (which is found around the world in a quite expansive booklet). And also the characters. Oh man how I have missed characters in games. Most western games usually just have the Marine, the Chick and etc. Japanese games have their own stock characters or maybe 1 or 2 memorable ones ouf of a cast of 10. But Mass Effect 2 is just full of characters with their own stories, funny moments, sad moments, WTF moments and on and on.

Overall: a very solid A, if not an S. An absolute must-buy an franchise to keep watch on. Cause owning only a PS3 I kind of missed out on it. But now anticipating the finale of Mass Effect 3.

Rundown:
Played it for: 55+ hours.
Alignment: Ultra-Paragon with medium Renegade tendencies
Style of Play: Direct assault and occasional sniping.
Fave character: I have rapidly growing appreciation for Tali’Zorah vas Normandy’s tsundereness and dem hips.