This week I am reviewing the new Playstation version of “Mass Effect 2,” and I must say, I now know why it was such a big success on XBox 360. It is simply awesome. Good news for my fellow Playstation people: our version is even better now that BioWare took their original “Mass Effect 2” game from the XBox 360 and made some upgrades to it before selling it to us.
For example, the Playstation version of “Mass Effect 2” is running on the new engine developed for “Mass Effect 3,” which will hit stores sometime in the fourth quarter of 2011; simply put, this means that the game will look and function better than it did working with the older engine.
Another reason for Playstationeers to rejoice is that our version comes packed with some of the downloadable content (DLCs) built for “Mass Effect 2,” although you will still probably want to invest in the other five DLCs available on the Playstation Network. They are well worth the extra $15 for the package deal.
This game is a sandbox style RPG at its very core with the shooting element tied in. It has you take on the role of Commander Shepard, who can either be male or female, and has you making choices that define not only yourself and your very diverse crew of heroes, but also how your story will play out in the game right from the beginning.
Yes, this game employs a moral system in which you can either be a good and kind person who is simply trying to save the galaxy for the good of the community, or you can choose to be a renegade and just look out for number one. The choices that you make in steering conversations with people in certain ways and how you react to the environment around you will determine if you are a paragon (a good commander) or a renegade (a selfish commander).
I won’t try to hide it: this moral can be rather complex, not in how to navigate it (blue colored responses to conversations or actions are considered good, while the red ones are considered to be bad) but more so in predicting how the rest of the game will respond to your choices, because it will surprise you from time to time with the AI’s and environment’s reactions.
This whole moral system really pays off for the gamer in the end, however, because it lets us choose how to sculpt our own story, thus generating a much more personal tale than it would be if we let the developers write the entire story for us.
The game opens (for us Playstation people, since we didn’t get the original “Mass Effect”) with a digital comic book that gives us the back-story and allows us to start shaping how our adventure will start.
You first wake up on an operating table as the newly regenerated Commander Shepard, brought back to life by salvaging your corpse and having invested hundreds of billions of dollars into technology that could recreate the original Shepard just the way he was from the first game, with some new cybernetic enhancements good for taking out the bad guys, of course (I know, I’m not a big fan of the stories that just so happen to be able to bring the dead back to life because the writer couldn’t come up with anything else either, but if you just let that one slide, it’ll pay off).
You wake up to somebody yelling over a PA system, and you are immediately thrown into battle because somebody has found out that Shepard is back to foil their dastardly plans and doesn’t like it. You meet up with your first ally, named Jacob, who quickly walks you through the basic controls of the game while you are being shot at. Nothing like learning on the job, right?
You make it off the space station with two allies, and you go and meet The Illusive Man, who is the eccentric billionaire who brought you back to life, knowing you were the only man for the job he has in store.
That is the basic setup for the story. After that, you pretty much get to start writing your tale from there. It is your mission to travel around the galaxy picking up strong allies and forming a crew that will assist you in defending the universe from The Collectors, who have been rounding up human colonists by the thousands and taking them off to who knows where and doing who knows what.
I must admit, this game really impressed me. The graphics were great. Although the story isn’t fantastic to start, when it is coupled with the moral system, it ends up getting pretty good, and the depth was actually decent.
The presentation of the game was fantastic. Navigating the game menus was seamless, while the music and sound effects were nicely done. However, I think the character voices could have been a little better.
The gameplay overall was just simply amazing: the third person shooter, RPG and story elements worked very well together to create a stellar package. The lasting appeal is pretty high, seeing as how you could play the game a dozen times in different ways, and you can keep building up on your characters if you so choose.
I am more than happy to give this game a 4.5 out of 5.