Mass Effect 2 – Game critique

Description of the game

Mass effect 2, published by EA Games and created by BioWare, is a futuristic RPG that continues the story that mass effect started a few years ago. Following Commander Sheppard, the human spectre that “saved the galaxies” from the reapers just over 2 years before this game takes place, as he takes on the task of recruiting a team to defeat the reapers once again.

Core mechanic

The main task for the player is to search the universe presented to him/her and find people to join his “crew” as denoted from dossiers from the illusive man. Once the crew is created to the players wishes they can then choose to go after the main goal.

A look into a level of the game

In one of many missions that you are tasked with you are required to find two characters to recruit to your team. I will go over the retrieval of one of these team members. In this level you are on a spaceport, a very dirty one at that is run by someone who is somewhat of a dictator. The player is first tasked with finding the location of the team member, and the easiest way to do this is ask the person who runs the place. After going to the location given to you by the dictator you are set up with a few communications (talking to npc’s to resolve a block in your path) problems, and of course because this is a shooter based game there are at least 4 different battle scenario’s and a sort of boss battle where you join forces with the team member you are recruiting.

Information & rules

Most of the information presented in the game, is either stored in hidden data storage in computers you have to hack, or just plain verbal communication with npc’s. Money, in the game is counted as credits and is generally only used to purchase upgrades to armor and weapons.
The rules of this game are pretty vague, as they have to be in an rpg, they give the character enough choices to go through the game at their own pace. But there are limits of course, like health and fuel for the ship that can be depleted. If you run out of health, you die, and if you run out of fuel, you have to buy some more. Other than that the general rules of physics (slightly bent of course) and game flow, the player is free to do as they wish…as long as they don’t want to go backwards through the story.

User interface

Mass effect 2’s user interface is set up like the original for controller set up, easy to use and generally the same as all shooters (2 triggers as the trigger and zoom of the weapon, the A button to activate things, the B button to disengage menus etc.) But the main thing they changed was the GUI. The visual interface in the game has been reduced to a small box in the left corner for your stats, and a bar in the bottom middle for your partner’s traits.

Special & Sound Effects

The visuals in this game are top notch, and a big jump from the original game. Of course this is expected by a game that was quite literally released today. And yet the sound effects in the game have not risen above the bar that has been placed by the original, just a small change in the style of the music.

AI

The enemies and npcs of the game are very well done. The npcs being played by actors and actresses from throughout Hollywood add a lot of realism to the characters, allowing the player to believe they are talking to a person, not just a model with some text. The enemies on the other hand have been upgraded to react perfectly to their surroundings and even react and strategize to your movement and actions towards them.

What would I change?

With mass effect 2 there is little to be changed, but of course no game is perfect and there are things that could use some tweaking.

First is the journal, the menu driven quest log to tell you where you are and where you need to go. What should be changed with this is it needs to be set up so that when it is opened it has the most recently followed “level” of the game as the first thing to be shown, and what the next step is, instead of leaving the player in a menu of alphabetically sorted quests that you may or may not have started/ finished.

Second is the character creation not the character themselves, but the player is restricted to use only specific weapons with certain classes. Whereas it should be changed to the player being able to choose what weapons they wish to use, and which powers they wish to use, with a limit to the number in total.

Well that’s just my opinion on the game, and what I found out from about 4 hours of playing it. I’m definitely going to continue to do so, and hopefully play through it many times.

We out.