Simply Epic

User Rating: 8 | Mass Effect 2 PC
By Gammit10 | Review Date:
Going into Mass Effect 2, I reminisced fondly on my playthroughs with the first iteration. See, I initially bought the game within the first month, when only the Xbox 360 version was out. I played it, my wife watched, and we loved it. In fact, Mass Effect is still the game that my wife enjoyed watching me play the most. Fast forward to the release of Mass Effect 2, and I realize that I had stupidly deleted my save files from the first game. Sigh. Deciding that I wanted to carry over my character from the first game into the sequel, I began to eye the PC version on STEAM. See, I enjoyed the Xbox 360 version of the game, but heard that the PC version was superior, with its improved textures, better user interface, and included DLC. So when Mass Effect went on sale through STEAM, the pick up was a no-brainer. I played through the game again, making nearly all of the same decisions as I did the first time.

Here I am now playing Mass Effect 2. Wow. Wow. And yes... wow. I figured the developers at Bioware would discover new ways to polish the game and enhance features, but never did I think they would produce a game as refined as this. Don't get me wrong; the game is not perfect. But even though I thought the original was worthy of a B+, this game screams A. Gone are the tedious mako missions (replaced however, by planet scanning), improved are the shooting mechanics. Paragon and renegade moments are better intertwined in the cut-scenes, and those choices seem to have more of an effect on the world and your choices at interacting with said world... the graphics seem to have also been tightened on level four. There was also more DLC available for free, which I have heard may be an attempt to combat piracy and the used-game market. Last, the NPCs that make up your party have more depth. Granted, I felt a connection to Garrus and Wrex from the last game (and it was cool to not only see so many of my old crew while completing several side-missions, but also to have Garrus re-join my squad), but these new characters have had their back-stories fleshed-out more. Finally, although I like the weapon and armor upgrade system, I missed the various models and textures that came with getting new guns and armor. Maybe Bioware can find a balance between both features for the last iteration.

The only major complaint that I have are the bugs. Oh, the frequent bugs. Really, I should say BUG. It seems that once every three missions or so, my character will get stuck on some piece of geometry. Attempting to free my avatar, I will press random movement buttons, only to see my character begin to float higher and higher in the air. Somehow, the y axis gets confused with the z axis. This results in my character--and sometimes NPCs too--hovering in air helplessly until I resort to loading a previous save. This is a bit of a let-down, because of the frequency of the bug for me. You'd think Bioware would have put priority into fighting it. Then again, maybe I'm one of a small minority who experiences this issue. Goes to google. Nope.

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