251. Mass Effect 2 (BioWare, Playstation 3, 2011)

After a bunch of recommendations from friends and watching my girlfriend play through much of Mass Effect 2, I decided to give the series a shot around 5 years ago. I played through a few hours of the first Mass Effect, but was pretty underwhelmed. The world was interesting enough, but the gameplay left a lot to be desired, so I wasn't really having any fun moving through the game, so I gave it up. With rumors of a trilogy remake and urging from friends, I decided to give the Mass Effect series another shot, but this time I would jump into the much better regarded sequel. 

Mass Effect 2 starts with your character getting killed, which would be a striking opening, if you didn't also get immediately revived and put in a machine that allows you to customize your appearance. It takes what could have been a cool story moment and invalidates it in the name of weaving a gameplay feature into the narrative. Unfortunately, this hamfisting of gameplay into story is par for the course throughout the game, with the main cover-based shooter gameplay taking a majority of the Mass Effect 2 experience.

My issue here isn't that the shooting is excessive, it's that the shooting in Mass Effect 2 just doesn't feel very good. I am no expert on what exactly goes into a satisfying video game gun, only that I have a lot of experience with video game guns (and other actions) that feel much better than any firearm I interacted with in Mass Effect 2. It really feels like they were just aping Gears of War, but didn't take the time to make anything feel good. You also have access to a host of powers, which are useful but often redundant, though these also feel like garbage to use. Your command of a two-ally squad is reduced to telling them where to go and when to use powers, but it never felt like I was really in control of them (though they managed to at least not get in the way).

The other side of Mass Effect 2's coin is the story. While the setup for the main plot of the game is intriguing, the majority of the actual dialogue is written extremely to the point and flat. Only a couple characters really get anything to work with, and even then, it's not some of the better dialogue writing I've seen in a game. Which is a shame because a lot of the world building is really intriguing. The best feature I found in the game is a fully voiced lore repository where you can just sit back and have the game explain its world to you. I really just want to play a Star Trek TNG style game where you're more of a diplomat, but that is not the Mass Effect experience.

3/5, a cool space world, I just wish the shooting and dialogue weren't so limp