30
Jan
Mass Effect 2
By now every gamer worth their salt has heard of the game Mass Effect 2. I loved the first game to pieces despite the flaws it had. There’s just something about epic space odysseys that I can’t pass up. So I’ve been eagerly awaiting it’s sequel which is now finally here. Well it was here. After almost 40 hours of playing, I finished pretty much every mission, side quest, and upgrade there was in the game. I’m sure there is some stuff I missed but I’d like to believe I at least got 95% of everything.
In interest of keeping things short and simple, overall I really, really, really liked it. Story was awesome, graphics were superb, and hell, killing aliens and synthetics was awesome. So why didn’t I love it? In an attempt to make the game more of an action RPG than the first, a lot of the awesome RPG elements were stripped out. The sequel only has four-six stats that you can level up while the original had around fifteen. Also you no longer get XP whenever you kill something. All the XP is is given to you at the end of the mission. This gets rid of the satisfaction of seeing “+15xp” pop up whenever you killed something in the first game.
Despite this, Mass Effect 2 is still an awe-inspiring game. Bioware hit it out of the park again after Dragon Age (which I may write about later). It just makes me sad that it’ll be another 2-3 years till we see the conclusion of this space trilogy. I suppose I’ll have to keep replaying the first two entries in the mean time. I still haven’t done the “Renegade” side in either game.
Oh and another thing that disappointed me about Mass Effect 2. In the original you could only romance your co-marine Ashley Williams (Kaidan if you were female) or the asari Liara T’soni. I was disappointed the other female alien party member Tali’Zorah wasn’t a choice as well. She’s the one on the right in the picture above. Not sure why I gravitated toward Tali but she was probably my favorite character out of the whole game. She was in my party pretty much 100% of the time after she joined my crew. Knowing me it has to be something cute. Probably was her cute voice since you never see what she really looks like. Anyway back on track, I was ecstatic when I read that she was going to be joining your party once again in ME2. And I was even more ecstatic when I hear that she had a romantic subplot! Naturally I went that route immediately and what transpired was probably one of the most innocent romantic subplots in a video game ever. Well maybe not Persona 4′s Chie (omg just realized, short hair) but you get the point. Once Tali discovers that you also share romantic feelings for her, she curses her life-protecting environmental suit and sets out to find a way to bolster her immune system so she can spend the night with you sans the suit. So I was all like, awesome! We’ll finally get to see her face. So before the final battle when the romantic subplot comes to fruition, Tali joins Shepard in this quarters and says she loaded up on antibotics. So things unfold and Tali begins to get flustered (cutest thing ever… jeez I need help) and Shepard slowly removes her mask. Tali then jumps on Shepard kissing him. Then.. fade to black. Ahhh bastards. What a tease. Guess we’ll have to wait till Mass Effect 3 if we want to see Tali’s face if at all. They’ll probably end up not showing her face just so they don’t let anyone down. Aaand now I’ve spend the majority of this entry writing something creepy again. Horray. But still Tali rocks.
