I had waited for this day for a long time. I played the ever-loving shit out of Mass Effect. I probably had six or seven different characters, and beat the game like 4 times at least. A few of those I actually went around and did an ass-load of the side missions and such. When I heard about Mass Effect 2 (ME2), I nearly shat my pants right there.

Where to begin? Well, how about major changes to the game. None of which I would say are negative.

The first thing I noticed was that now, instead of just having unlimited ammo on all guns, only having to worry about overheating, they have added an ammo system. I know, I can hear you groaning at your computer screen from here. Don’t worry, kids. It’s all alright. You’ve dealt with it on every other game, I think you’ll survive. Besides, if you knew what I know, you wouldn’t be bitching already about a game you haven’t even played yet. Let me finish, will ya? Jeez. Anyways. Ammo. You have these things called “Heat Clips” that apparently are ejected from your guns with every shot to keep them from overheating. Without these things, you guns wont fire. Good news is that the heat clips are interchangeable and you can find them just about anywhere and off any enemy that uses a gun. So it turns out alright. Makes more sense to me anyways. It definitely doesn’t detract from the game at all, and forces you to actually strategize a little instead of just firing around the enemy until you hit them.

Next I saw the squad screen. They have drastically reduced the number of things to put points into. Thank God. Instead of like 15 different categories to assign points, you have six or so. This makes strengthening your characters more simple and less confusing. I got so damned tired of trying to figure out what the best point spread for my team was, that I just started to auto level them all. Never should be something you end up doing out of frustration.

One of the things I love so much about this game is the customization of your character. You can even import your old characters from ME1. The little tweaks to the game this makes, really personalize the experience. It doesn’t drastically change the story, but it does make you go “oh yeah, I remember when I did that.” as your team talks about the past. Your gear is a lot more customizable too. You get to select different parts with different perks to each one instead of just a suit of armor. Pretty cool.

One of my favorite changes they made was they made hacking more fun. Instead of playing Simon, you get to actually do something resembling hacking. The puzzles aren’t particularly challenging at first, but it sure beats hitting “A”, “A”, “A”, “B” to open a locked door.

The game has been streamlined quite a bit. All of the side missions are actually important and have a story with them, instead of being repetitive and annoying like in ME1. You feel like you did something that mattered at the end of those little missions. I was pretty happy with that. Also, there aren’t a bunch of useless systems and planets floating around for no reason.

The whole two-disk thing isn’t as bad as everyone thinks. They did a smart thing by making you have to switch for a certain part of the game that is a little more linear. That way, later on you’re not switching back and forth for individual missions or anything dumb like that.

The cover system has been revamped, and doesn’t require you to crouch to take low cover any more, which is nice as hell. You can also now vault over low cover, which is great, yet annoying at times. Some times there are multiple barricades to get over, and it’s just like vault, vault, vault, vault. I got over it though.

One small note, they’ve done away with the long elevator rides. Apparently those things were a substitute for a loading screen. Pretty smart if you ask me. They went ahead and just put loading screens in. Pretty standard stuff, but each different loading screen is relevant to the situation, which is nice.

Over all, this game is a lot of fun to play, just like the first, and just like the first, playing is like watching a movie while playing a game. The whole thing is very much about telling the story of Commander Shepard, and it does it well. Pay attention to the story, otherwise you’re only hurting your own experience.

This one scores high in all categories for me. Definitely a must play for any avid gamer.

Let me say this clearly, because this is very important. PLAY. THIS. GAME.

Score: 9.9

Pros: Whole game improved across the board, cleaner graphics, great cast, way ahead of the curve in overall game quality. If only other games were like this one.

Cons: Multi disk, quite a few loading screens, heavy dependence on you having played the first game to really know what’s going on.