After having just having finished the ending for Mass Effect 2, it beats The Empire Strikes Back in the “Everything’s Screwed” category. It is the sequel to the highly acclaimed original about Commander Shepard embarking on a mission to stop the evil Reapers from annihilating all intelligent life in the far future. The game allows you to create your own Shepard, male or female.

The story starts off with the Normandy, your ship, being torn to bits and pieces, leaving you to die in space. Most of your original team members survived, but has since then moved on. Thanks to the Illusive Man and billions of dollars in funding, you’ve been revived by the Lazarus project two years later, with Miranda Lawson in charge of the project. She’s a perfect human specimen, engineered to be perfectly enhanced in every way, from looks to intelligence. Nice.

The game has you recruiting a rogue gallery of unique NPCs to help your cause in fighting the war against the Reapers. You have Samara, an asari justicar, kind of like an intergalactic cop. Thane is the drell assassin who remembers every detail in his life with random flashbacks. Mordin is the salarian who was involved in the genophage project that helped reduced the threat of krogan overpopulation. These are just a few that you’ll recruit on your team. Saying more will spoil the plot. You’ll get a chance to learn and interact with your squad members. Each member has a loyal mission that unlocks some powers and an alternate outfit for that member. The alternate outfits are pretty much just a change in color scheme, but Miranda’s black leather outfit is pure eye candy. The loyal missions themselves add more depth and story to your squad members, most of them involving a haunted family history.

The inventory system has been cleaned up and simplified a lot. You don’t have to worry about clutter any more from attaining different weapons and armors and now you can focus more on upgrading and combat. You can use different biotic powers like making enemies float or healing your team. You can add enhancements to your weapon’s ammo, like incendiary for burning or cryo for freezing and shattering your enemies.

The main appeal of Mass Effect has always been the option of deciding what to say, or choosing how you’ll do a certain mission, and this game has plenty of it. You can act like a nice guy, a jerk, or neutral guy. In the first game, you had a tough choice near the end of the game. In this one, you’ll be hit with a lot of harder choices.

One of the coolest features in the game is the ability to carry over your save from the first game to Mass Effect 2. Your character, his/her history, and the choices they made, is carried over. It’s fun to encounter people or aliens you’ve encounter in the past. In the first game, I had a romantic relationship with one of my teammates, Liara, and in my private quarter, her framed picture is on top of the desk. But once I started pursuing other relationships, the framed picture is seen faced down on the desk when I visit my quarter again.

The presentation is a lot better this time, with no textures popping in late during cut scenes and the details on the models are looking sexier, from Miranda’s outfit to my Shepard’s skin, wrinkles and stubbles. The locale is breathtaking, my favorite being the Asari dominated planet of Ilium with the flying ships traveling across the tall skyscrapers and Omega’s dance/strip club’s flashy lights and strippers dancing in front of a giant tube monitor with even more booty shaking.

BioWare hired top talents in the voice acting department from various TV shows and movies and it shows like Martin Sheen, Keith David, Seth Green, Carri- Anne Moss, and Tricia Helfer, to name a few. As for Yonne Strahovski, I’m in love. Call me a horn dog, but I can’t stop staring at her ass. It’s that good.

There were some glitches in the game, but for the most part, the game was pretty smooth. The one glitch that stood out was after my character was done shooting, he would go back into covering position, only he was covering against the air, instead of a wall or box. Also, my Xbox did lockup when I defeated an enemy ship. It seems that my 360 couldn’t handle the explosion, and it just crapped out on me. I just restarted it and it worked fine afterwards.

The one thing I miss from the first game is the real time loading while in the elevator. I got to move the camera around and listen to my teammates make silly comments while listening to cheesy elevator music.

Mass Effect 2 brings the middle story of the trilogy to a sad end, and like the first, it revealed another shocker that will have fans talking. I’ve been invested in all the characters that I have come into contact with, and I miss conversing with them now that this game has ended. The story is engaging, the action is solid, and each character brings their own unique story to the mix with tons of dialogue options. This is an interactive cinematic experience that truly immerses you in outer space and saving the galaxy, literally.

Grade: A

Total Playing Time: 29 Hours
Commander Shepard: Default male Shepard
Alignment: Paragon
Class: Soldier
History: Earthborn, Sole Survivor

Amazon has a great price on the game, so make sure to snag it before the price goes up:

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