That’s right…a dwarf that not only doesn’t have a long, bushy beard that’s braided in intricate patterns, but he also doesn’t have a Scottish accent! Aaahhhhh! Up is down, black is white, cats and dogs living together (all together now!) MASS HYSTERIA!
What do you think the odds are that, at some point, Smank’s monocle will fall into a glass of wine and break, possibly in reaction to some shocking event? That’s like the entire purpose of monocles in fiction.

Okay, let’s talk Mass Effect 2.

First off, I didn’t actually complete the game yet, due to my horribly completionist nature. I’m still tooling around the galaxy, looking for upgrades, money to buy upgrades, planets with missions and planets to strip mine. But I think I’ve seen enough of the game play to and story to give that at least a decent once over. I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as I can, but if you’re interested in the game at all there’s some basic plot points that you’re probably aware of already and so I’m not going to shy away from talking about them.

First, I love how ME1 and ME2 are bridged. I spent the weekend before ME2 came out re-playing ME1 to recreate my save (my original playthrough was on the Xbox, but since I have a decent PC now I decided to transfer to there), and I’m glad I did. There’s a number of little things sprinkled throughout the game that reflect your actions in the first, such as hearing a news article about Ashley Williams being posthumously awarded Turian and Salarian medals of honor for her role on Virmine, or the Destiny’s Ascension (no relation) doing a victory tour of the galaxy. While I do appreciate the touches, they are mostly that…touches. For the most part you just hear about the things that you did, as part of background flavor (in the medium of galactic news broadcasts). While it’s understandable that there are limits to file sizes, developer resources, etc, it still would have been nice to have more substantial links to the first game. Hopefully we’ll see something to that effect in ME3.

One minor quibble that I had with character creation, though: I wanted to change my character’s hairstyle. Pretty simple, yes? Unfortunately, the game only supports three options: Import your old face (though updated, higher res, etc), use the default face, or customize a new face. Unfortunately, the customize option randomized the features the first time I clicked on it, so rather than being a quick process I essentially had to completely remake my characters face, and then give her the ponytail. This was aided by the fact that the custom face option only randomized once, so I could flip back and forth between the imported face and the custom one to compare as I worked, but it was still annoying to have to go through so much to do such a minor change. Suggestion for improvement: Either allow minor changes to imported faces (hair, makeup, scars, etc) or set the custom face default to the imported and let the player change from there.

Gameplay wise, I have to admit that I’m a fan of most of the changes they made. In combat, I like the way the ammo system makes you prioritize your shots and even switch out weapons. In ME1, I almost never had to think about what I was doing. I just put the reticule over the enemy and held down the fire button until they fell over. The ammo system forces you to make your shots count and even switch out weapons fairly frequently…in ME1, I almost never used anything except my pistol, rarely switching to the sniper rifle if I was having accuracy problems on a long-range target. The only real problem I have with the ammo system is a fridge logic one (why does Shepherd only take enough heat sinks with her to last about 30 shots of her heavy pistol when she goes on mission?), but I can understand it from a gameplay perspective. And it does kinda hand wave the lore from the first game, but if I didn’t complain about the Draenei I don’t think I can complain about this.

I also rather like the simplified inventory system. Let’s be honest: ME1’s inventory was, in no way, shape or form, anywhere even close to fun. Unless accountancy became fun when I wasn’t looking, since that’s what it largely felt like. I rather like being able to select my squad’s armament with a few clicks and jump right into the action, without having to spend a long time agonizing over min/maxing the absolute best weapons, armor and mods, and then spending 12 minutes disposing of the rest, either by selling it or pressing the “Melt it into Omni-Gel” button a zillion times. I do more than enough of that in WoW, thankyouverymuch. In a similar vein, I love the simplified levels…yeah, there are less skills, but all the stupid and/or redundant skills are gone, leaving the meat behind. And each level you buy is significant now, instead of “You gain .00000000001% increase to shields” of ME1.

I also love the interrupts. Which is weird, because I hate quick-time events, but I suppose these feel different since they’re optional. It seems like they open up more nuanced roleplay, particularly since they aren’t linked to the Paragon/Renegade meters like most of the special conversation options. So I can play my mostly Paragon Shepherd who nevertheless has just enough Renegade to keep people guessing without having to be a douche for no reason in some situations just to open up the options I’ll need later. My Shepherd can be mostly a decent person (admittingly as much for the goodwill and favors it nets her as for “it’s the right thing to do,” slowly accruing a network of people who are grateful to her and owe her…) and yet still push someone out an 80th story window if they piss her off too much. I respect that.

What don’t I like? So far…planet scanning. It’s certainty more tolerable than tooling around in the Mako (one of the best parts of ME1 was seeing it get trashed during endgame), but as mentioned I’m a horrible completionist, so I’m going around basically strip mining the galaxy of usable resources because I don’t want to miss anything. It probably couldn’t hurt to be sped up some.

Damn, I haven’t even talked about the story yet. And this is a pretty big wall of text. Tell ya what, I’ll talk about the story next week. That’ll give me time to finish (hopefully…lot more planets out there that need a mess of probes shot up into them) and so I’ll be able to give a more complete view then.

One last thing: I know I ragged on ME1 a bit, but it’s by no means a bad game. Some things wear on you, yes, but I’d say it’s worth a playthrough regardless, and that goes double if you’re planning on playing ME2 at all. Sure, you could go for the default options that give shoved down your throat, but I think it’s far more rewarding to import your Shepherd and your story. I’m sure that as time goes on and I play ME2 more, I’ll probably find more things I dislike…hell, I might’ve forgotten to include some here. I had a blast playing ME1, and I’m having a blast playing ME2…in the end, that’s all that matters, innit?