Mass Effect 2 picks up 2 months after the Battle of the Citadel. Commander Shepard, along with the rest of the Normandy crew, are patrolling Geth space, looking for signs of activity. Helmsman Jeff “Joker” Moreau mentions to another member of the crew his observations on the lack of any activity in several months. Having broken the first commandment of foreshadowing, the Normandy is immediately attacked by unknown assailants, who quickly render the ship dead in the proverbial water. Shepard, ever the hero, risks his life saving the last remaining crewman not in a lifeboat, and upon securing him, is ejected into space by another attack, sending him spiraling off into the atmosphere of a nearby planet, a breach in his suit leaking air as the crew watches him enter the atmosphere and incinerate.

Fast forward two years. Shepard awakes on a surgeons table to the sounds of gunfire and explosions, and is thrust into the events as terrible as those that lead to his temporary death. Entire Human colonies are being abducted from the Terminus Systems, without a trace as to the reason, or persons, behind the act. The aptly named Illusive Man, leader of Humanist origination Cerberus, has spent the previous two years rebuilding Shepard, atom by atom, in the hopes that he, and he alone, could figure out the abductions. He must investigate the occurrences, build a team, and fight back, if Humanity, if not the entire galaxy, is to survive, all the while with the knowledge that every moment, the Reapers move closer towards staging their final attack.

So how does Mass Effect 2 stack up, you ask? Well you’re in luck, because below is my extensive and exhaustive review.

The Good: Storytelling

Mass Effect 2, like Mass Effect before it, tells a very compelling story about the conquests of Shepard and the Normandy. The main story itself is simple enough, assemble team, find bad guys, kill bad guys. It’s the way, however, that the story is told, is what makes it something special. The opening scene is an immediate “shit just got real” moment, assuring you that it would be no cakewalk as you got your space legs back. Within the first ten minutes, you’re dead, and within a few minutes after that, you’re unarmed in the middle of an assault on your location, of which you have no knowledge of. The game does an excellent job of making you feel as though it is you against the galaxy, and before you know it, you’re caught up working for an organization you’ve previously fought against run by a man you know nothing about, because it’s all you’ve got.

Character’s individual stories and backgrounds are also incredibly deep, more so than they were in Mass Effect. They are all highly emotional, and progress in ways that feel natural. No longer will it seem as though a character’s development jumps across the board.

The most compelling part of the storytelling is how well the two games stories weave in and out. Your old squad, people you interacted with, people you assisted, and organizations you’ve had business and run-ins with all return, many in such a way as to provide you with a new perspective on them. Cerberus for instance, who’s operatives you fight against in Mass Effect, are suddenly the only group who supports you, for better or worse, in your fight against the greater evils of the galaxy.

The Bad: Story

This may seem like a blatant contradiction to what I just said, but hear me out. Mass Effect was an amazing story, and assuming that Mass Effect 3 doesn’t somehow completely fall apart, that story will be awesome too. Mass Effect 2′s story, as part of a trilogy, is great. However, it is clearly the second part of a trilogy, and as such, suffers heavily from Empire Strikes Back syndrome.

Imagine, assuming you aren’t old enough to just remember, that it’s 1977, and you’ve just seen Star Wars for the first time. You spend the next three years waiting for a sequel, seeing the movie over and over, acting it out via intense cardboard tube lightsaber battles. Finally the day arrives, you watch as Luke takes down at AT-AT singlehandedly, wait on baited breathe as he battles Vader, share his pain as he finds out that Vader is his father, and watch hopelessly as the infinitely badass Boba Fett carries the imprisoned Han Solo away, and then suddenly, it’s over. You’re left with a great movie, but no closure, and another four years to wait before you find out what’s going to happen to these people who you’ve become emotionally attached to. Mass Effect is arguably worse, as these aren’t just people you’re observing, but it’s  you, and your friends. You’re not just emotionally invested, you’re a part of this world.

The Hopeful?: Early ME3 Release

Bioware has already stated a desire to get Mass Effect 3 out to the public quicker than it took to get Mass Effect 2 out after the initial release. This is good news, because if all I had to do to get this game in my hands tomorrow was murder someone in cold blood, I’d be out knocking on my neighbors’ doors. Could this mean a possible release in 2011, less than a two years after Mass Effect 2? Not a bad wager, but regardless, we will have a new Mass Effect back in our hands before the world ends in 2012.

The Good: Combat

As we’ve all heard, the combat in Mass Effect 2 is visceral. Apparently visceral means something along the lines of an action being reactive rather than intellectual, instinctive, if you will. I both applaud their attempts at using an expanded form of the English language, and agree with their own assessment. The combat system is streamlined, and feels more like and FPS than an RTS. The ability to map two custom powers as well as an automatically assigned third button allows you to easily use whatever power the situation demands on the fly, rather than stopping play every few seconds. On top of that, putting the reticle on a target will actually give you a chance to hit the target, a much needed change from the crazy spread established in Mass Effect.

Though I’ve heard the complaints, and even I was skeptical at first, I also really like the shift to clips rather than an overheating system. This, combined with the simplification of the weapon options, the addition of an SMG weapons category, and the replacing of grenades with heavy weapons all allow for the same, if not more, customization of weapons, without overwhelming you with choices. On top of that, the SMG category now allows the less combative classes to hold their own even without biotics and tech.

What it boils down to is, if you took away the biotics and tech powers, and just left Mass Effect 2 as a 3rd person shooter, it could rank highly on it’s own merits. That’s impressive, and makes the game one in which, though you may, like me, prefer to do the conversations more than the combat, you at least won’t end up dreading it, and may even find you enjoy it.

The Bad: Cover System

This was my biggest disappointment in Mass Effect, and unfortunately, it carried over to it’s successor, though not without improvements. Getting your avatar to actually get behind, and stay behind, cover is much simpler than in the previous iteration. There are several units equipped with heavy weapons whose damage causes a kickback affect, causing you to be removed from the safety of the cover, occasionally bullets will hit you in the small exposed part of your head, and even more rare is the enemy fire that plunges straight through the solid cover and into your less solid body, disregarding the level physics. Combine those issues with the fact that Bioware use a single button to run, get behind cover, leave cover, and vault cover, which creates potential problems.

I’ve had more than one situation where I was running away from enemies in an attempt to find cover and being hit with a heavy weapon that actually knocks me backwards, towards the explosion. Then, instead of running past a barrier, I’ll dive in front of it, leaving myself open to the incoming fire of my pursuers. I’ll quickly double-tap A, which causes me to stand up, and then crouch right back down, rather than vault the cover. By this time I’m dead. They’re minor gripes, and they don’t happen often, but it certainly happens too often to be pleased with.

The Innocent: My Controller

Because of the issues with the cover system, my controller, unfortunately, got in the way of my fist on more than one occasion, leave a small chip and minor crack on the underside of the shell. Who knows, maybe games have turned me into a violent person (that’s what the media will be reporting after I murder my neighbors for an early copy of ME3, anyway).

The Good: Characters

Characters, both playable and NPCs alike, have always been a primary factor in the success of Bioware games, and Mass Effect 2 is no different. Both the amount of customization of your character and the depth and development of the side characters are exceptionally well constructed. The ability to customize every aspect of Shepard’s armor and casual dress is a much welcomed counterpoint to Mass Effect’s system of obtaining new armors.

Another key point is the effort made by Bioware to create a much more believable crew and ship environment. Conversations occur independent of Shepard’s involvement. Crew members discuss family, missions, the food, and even comment on their opinion of Shepard. You can also obtain items for certain crew members in order to help the ship or improve morale.

My favorite example of this is Gabriella “Gabby” Daniels and Montgomery “Scotty” Scott Kenneth Donnelly, whose conversations range from the mundane (discussing haggis or commenting on alterations made to the ship) to the amusing (discussing the several female squadmate’s outfits), conversations with Shepard are amusing as well. Yeoman Kelly Chambers also ends up being not just an interesting conversationalist, but also a very helpful tool in alerting you to the goings on of the ship.

The Bad: Loyalty Missions

The squadmates themselves are even more interesting than those of the first game, but the loyalty missions left something to be desired. They’re very cookie cutter, following a fairly strict pattern: The character is recruited, and some time later the character approaches Shepard, asking for a favor. They travel to a different planet, kill tons of bad guys, kill one especially large or powerful creature/synthetic or converse with the one special bad guy and either “leave him to the authorities” or kill him, depending on your choices. Eight of the ten (nine of the eleven if you include Zaeed) follow this pattern. And it’s boring. I would have loved having more variety in the loyalty missions, at least some variations on the tried and true “kill everything that moves” approach.

The Asari and the Drell loyalty missions, however, have no combat directly associated with the completion of the mission, which was a welcome change. These missions are my favorite to do, and I enjoy every minute of doing them. Worth mentioning as well are the Turian and the Quarian missions, which, though still following the typical pattern, also had endings that put heavy emphasis on conversation and alignment, which I enjoyed greatly because of the many ways you can go about it. The Quarian mission is also the only one with any attempt at a “failure” scenario, though it still results in the Quarian’s loyalty.

The Illogical: Sex

Mass Effect made headlines worldwide for it’s arguably immodest portrayal of sex in-game. However, you can’t argue the fact that, given the circumstances of the relationship formed and the situation surrounding the characters. Showing it openly and honestly was a welcome change for an industry hellbent on using sex as a selling point but never doing so with any tact or class. Mass Effect is one of few games to have portrayed sex as a romantic encounter, rather than simply being masturbatory fodder for those less fortunate gamers.

Mass Effect 2 does a complete about face, and it makes no sense. The relationships in this game are deeper than those in the first. Every single one is a more complex, and subsequently more realistic, entity, and combined with a near suicidal final mission, it’s not surprising that Shepard and the crew would explore romantic options in their final hours of peace. What doesn’t make sense is that they would either settle for dry humping in spandex or mild foreplay. It doesn’t make sense. The logical closure point would be coitus, plain and simple. Yet Bioware seems to have shied away from the sex idea, possibly to avoid the scandal that could have followed, but considering the M Rating and the enormous amount of sales from the first game, that this was a silly issue to concern themselves with.

Though I will give bonus points to Bioware for having another potential lesbian romance option (and she’ll even feed your fish!).

The Good: Morality

Mass Effect, like Knights of the Old Republic, had a morality system that was pretty simple to figure out. If a squadmate wore red and black, they were a bad guy. In any situation, they would encourage you to kill, rape, pillage, or murder, whichever best fit the situation. Otherwise, the character was a good guy, and would get momentarily angry with you if you killed Tiny Tim and took his five credits to pay for a lap dance. But the moment you said sorry, they forgot all about it.

Mass Effect 2, thankfully, realized that there is no light or dark, just many shades of gray. Your squadmates no longer simply choose one side or the other. A character who has spent the whole game making “good decisions” may snap on his loyalty mission, shooting an innocent victim. And on top of that, conversations can be had about the change, leading to deeper character development.

On the flip side, your choices are much less clear. Gone are the situations which you either pet the puppy or curb stomp it. Instead, you may find a seriously injured puppy, which you can either attempt to heal, which may cause many other puppies to die, or leave it for dead, saving other puppies. Which is the good route, and which is the bad? It’s not always clear. Conversational choices also make a difference now, allowing you to gain equal amounts of paragon and renegade points off of one action.

The most obvious new feature in the morality system are the interruptions. In certain scenes, you may interrupt the action with a new variations on the current cut scene. Pulling the left trigger allows you to do a paragon interrupt, shoving an innocent out of the line of fire or consoling a grieving NPC, while pulling the right trigger initiates a renegade interrupt, allowing you to punch someone during an interrogation or end a conversation with a round to the forehead. These are not only fun, but can affect, in small ways, the way the game unfolds, and they result in an extra boost of morality points. Only problem here is that they seem very cookie-cutter, paragon choices rarely show up in combat, renegade choices rarely show up outside of confrontations. It makes sense, but I’d like to see something like a paragon interrupt to holster your weapon as a sign of good faith or to fire a warning shot, rather than just a pat on the back.

The Bad: Chemistry, or lack thereof.

Your squadmates all have unique dialog in unique situations, but there are almost no situations where they interact with each other. The only times they do, it’s a pre-scripted event on board the Normandy. What I would love to see in Mass Effect 3 is team chemistry.

For instance, we have Grunt, a Krogan warrior, and Mordin, a Solarian scientist. As we know from the first game, the Solarians are responsible for the Genophage, a designed reduction in successful pregnancies in Krogans. Though Krogans often mention a dislike of Solarians, they will fight side by side, brothers in arms, without even so much as a heartfelt conversation beforehand. It’s ridiculous. I would love to see combinations that fail miserably, leading you to either think more carefully about who you take, and not just from a combative standpoint, or force you to problem-solve, and adapt, to stop potential relationship problems.

The Amazing: Voice Acting

I don’t feel I need to say this, but I’m doing it anyway. The voice acting is as good as it could possibly be without me having cast it myself, and even then, who knows, maybe this is better. I’m in the minority here, but I think Mark Meer does a fairly good job of the Male Shepard voice. I don’t, however, hear much of it, because my favorite voice actor Jennifer Hale voices the Female Shepard, and truly embodies the spirit of the Commander. While Meer’s performance is very middle-of-the-road, Hale makes Renegade Shepard sound angry and like a force to be reckoned with, while Paragon Shepard sounds compassionate and kind. Hale’s performance is truly the best in the game.

Martin Sheen and Seth Green come in as a close tie for second, for their roles as the Illusive Man and Joker, respectively. Although Martin Sheen is brilliant in the role, the edge would go, at least in my opinion, to Seth Green, though probably simply because Green’s personality is very similar to that of the sarcastic pilot, allowing him to embody the role easily. Keith David also reprises his role as Captain Anderson, and again has that almost regal sound to it. His part in ME2 was small however, and his dialog reduced to only a few lines. Adam Baldwin also surprises with a cameo that was both unexpected and perfect. Perhaps he’s not as worfress as his fellow namesake, Arec Barwin.

Brandon Keener (Garrus Vakarian) and Liz Sroka (Tali’Zorah vas Neema nar Rayya) reprise their roles, and both give great performances, especially Sroka, who enjoys the benefit of an expanded and improved role. Other squadmate performances include voiceover veteran and always impressive Steve Blum (Grunt), an especially memorable performance by perennial background voice actor Michael Beattie (Mordin Solus), an intensely powerful performance by Courtenay Taylor (Jack), and the sexy vocals of Aussie Yvonne Strahovski (Miranda Lawson), though to be honest, there isn’t a bad performance in the game. The best part of all, though, is that, unlike Bioware games in the past,you never hear a repeated voice. Nothing kills immersion in a game quicker than hearing a guy you’ve already killed off on one planet chatting you up at the bar on the next.

The Good: Character Import

A brilliant idea by Bioware. Keep the choices you made from game one and watch them come back up in game two. We kind of got a taste of this when Obsidian made Kotor II, but in reality, the choices weren’t carried over so much as you chose them again in an early conversation. Seeing characters you helped show up and thank you again, maybe seeking more help or maybe just to give you an update, either way, it’s brilliant.

The Bad: Starting a New Shepard

Starting a new Shepard, frankly, sucks. When you choose this option, the game automatically assumes the answers to the choices you would have made in the first game, namely that you left the council to die, chose Udina to represent humanity, and killed off both the squad member of the same sex as your Shepard and Wrex. You also have no romance option.

The Brilliant: Cerberus Network

EA set out to figure out a way to stop people from buying and selling used copies of their games, of which they get no money for. Their solution: the Cerberus Network. All copies of the game come with a one-time code for the Cerberus Network download. Having this allows you to download both free and paid content, including some free content already available, including the Zaeed character, the Normandy Crash Site, and new weapons and armor. The Cerberus Network is also available to be purchased separately, for $15. This is a brilliant move. It gives you a very clear reward for purchasing the game new, rather than second hand, without unreasonably punishing those who buy used. You still can, you just might miss out on some things. For once, EA makes a move that I actually can get behind.

The Good: Lack of the Mako

If you’ve played Mass Effect, you know exactly why the Mako doesn’t make a return. The control scheme is awkward and difficult to master, it doesn’t react well with the planet texture, bouncing off of things that don’t exist and plowing through things that do. This overly glitchy add-on was simply a way of making the universe seem bigger, and it worked. However, it’s removal, while making the universe feel somewhat smaller, doesn’t take away from the game at all.

The Bad: Mineral Scanning

I don’t dislike the idea, I just have a problem with having to hold the trigger the entire time you scan. A toggle feature would completely solve this issue for me, simple enough.

The Compromise: Long Service Medal

Upon completely a New Game+ or ME1 import game, you receive this achievement. Not only does it net you 75G and give you an extra power when you start a new game, any new game, but it also starts you off with 50k of all resources, more than enough to get all of the most necessary upgrades.

Now, for the best, worst, and strangest things to stand out from my several playthroughs of Mass Effect 2.

The Best: Force Powers Biotics

Biotics, and to a smaller extent tech powers as well, really feel powerful. Gone are the debuff and moderately damaging powers, replaced by new versions that wouldn’t feel out of place in The Force Unleashed. For the first time, you truly feel like you are an unstoppable force.

The Worst: Can’t See Shit, Captain

Mass Effect 2 text is almost completely illegible on standard definition TVs. 46% of American households that own TVs have HDTVs. From that, we can easily extrapolate that 54% of American households are still using standard definition TVs. This means nothing to Bioware, who feels that there aren’t enough players affected by this issue to warrant patching.

The Weirdest: Shepard’s Facial Expressions

No matter how hard Bioware tries, whenever Shepard attempts to emote, he looks strange as hell. And it’s strange, because all other characters are capable of not only looking realistic, but convincingly so. Shepard however, seems to have three set facial expressions: Creepy smile, angry scowl, and 404, expression not found.

So, what’s the final word on Mass Effect 2? Is it good, bad, or something else entirely?

GOOD

Without a doubt, Mass Effect 2 is one of the top games of the year. Bioware listened to fans’ concerns, and has done an impressive job of taking a great game and making an even greater sequel, something that doesn’t happen often in any form of media. If you haven’t already bought and played this game, I suggest you do so, unless you haven’t played Mass Effect yet, in which why the hell aren’t you playing it right now?