(Warning: This Contains Spoilers That Are Apparent In Any Trailer Released By EA or Bioware) Lets get this out of the way. I started Mass Effect 2 with a Mass Effect 1 character. Becca Shepard, Renegade Soldier, Saver of Wrex and Killer of Alenko (he was a bit shit). I had a fling with the blue alien and saved the council. I already had an attachment to my character, who may I remind you kicked the galaxy’s butt. It sounds weird to hear her voice coming from other female Shepards. But I digress… Bioware’s latest Sci-Fi epic starts basically at the end of the original. Despite having saved the galaxy from the Geth and Saren, Shepard is left for dead after an attack that rips the Normandy into little bits (as well as providing a Dead Space style vacuum sequence which was pretty good). Two years later, Shepard awakes on an operating table inside a facility which is having 10 shades of crap blown out of it by its own security while simultaneous someone over the radio is guiding you out. For an intro, this is one of the best. Between the whole “death in space” sequence and waking up, you have a chance to edit an existing characters (such as from Mass Effect or a previous Mass Effect 2 play through) or to create your new one. It makes sense, with you having been basically rebuilt from the ground up yet keeping the same memories. The face editor still makes it hard to create good faces, but you can now share you characters face layout by a little number string in the top corner. You also get a chance to remind yourself of what happened in the first game later. So after arming up, killing a few bots, shooting a couple of guys and meeting with two friends, you finally get to meet the Illusive Man, Mr Charlie Sheen himself. He must have the coolest office in the universe overlooking a Neutron Star (which changes colour depending on his mood) and seemingly empty apart from a chair where he sits doing nothing but acting snarky to people and chain smoking like there is no tomorrow. He informs you about the fact that human colonies are going and then the usual stuff (only you can save us! Go see for yourself!). The main meat of the game isn’t actually fighting the Collectors (who are the ones taking the humans on a little trip) but instead recruiting and earning the loyalty of a team of elite people to use against the Collectors. Each character (apart from Mirranda and Jacob who you pick up in the starting area) has two missions linked to them and these are nearly always brilliant. Be it fighting through a quarantine zone to rescue a Salarian scientist or pretending to be a merc in order to meet up with an old friend, all the recruitment missions are fun. There are one or two exceptions but these are made up by their loyalty missions which are some of the best I have ever seen in any RPG yet. Not only do them help you in a gameplay term but also illuminates the flaws or defects in a character. Thane, a Drell Assassin, is foremost among these with a second mission that was tugging at the heart strings by the end. The characters in Mass Effect 2 have seen a massive improvement. In the first game, many of them felt quite flat to say the least, but in the second this feels fixed. I gained an emotional link with most of them, apart from one or two such as Samara, an Asari justicar with some of the most annoying dialogue I’ve ever heard. Many other people who have reviewed Mass Effect 2 say the Salarian scientist Mordin to be their favourite character (and he is hilarious - especially a reference near the end of the game) but I still have a soft spot for Garrus, the Turian agent from the first game. Not only is he now a badass, but he also shows the change in the two games. In the first, he was the slightly naive agent, who normally represented the Paragon leaning in any circumstance. Now, he is a bit more rogue cop, down and dirty and more than happy to to shoot people in the face in order to get what he needs. He is just another part in showing the darker route Bioware has taken the game. In fact, the new Paragon/Renegade setup makes a lot more sense. Its now more of a focus, instead of the hodge podge it was in the the first game where only specific things very rarely counted towards either value. Now nearly every conversation will end with a smattering of points into either value. I admit sometimes it does end up with some bizarre things (“YOU DIDN’T SAY THANK YOU? RENEGADE POINTS!!”) but overall it makes sense. The main improvement to this system is the new interrupt which just make sense. The first game was filled with moments where you just wanted to interrupt a long speech with a punch to the face. In the second, most conversations (though still too few) include an interrupt which occasionally helps the gameplay. The ones most speak about are throwing people throw windows or punching someone, but the best one is early in the game. You notice an engineer fixing a gunship. After a long briefing talk, you get the opportunity to shock the guy with one of his tools, which halts his work. It show two of the good things about the new system – it helps you later on yet it also allows you to play the supreme space badass, like your very own Mal. Another improvement I love is the trimming down off the inventory system and RPG elements. The first game’s inventory was clunky as hell. To swap an upgrade out, you had to pause the game, go into a menu, find the weapon, swap out the upgrade system and then rejoin the fight. It totally threw off the rhythm of the combat as well as making it hard to deal with a large number of items of varying kinds. The second game cuts this down – upgrades are out totally instead replaced by research done on your ship. On top of that, all the weapons you carry are chosen at the very start of a mission or in weapon boxes along the way. This system feels more like a mission based shooter rather than a free roaming RPG and makes the game a lot more playable. Similarly the long complicated levelling up system is replaced by a more focused one. There are only 30 levels to rank up instead of sixty, but there are fewer skills to be unlocked. Each rank in a skill feels like its making a difference to combat, instead of the simply tiny stat bonus you sometimes see in RPGs. Instead of the eight skills each character had in the first, Shepard has six while everyone else only has four (three at the start with the last being unlocked via the loyalty missions). These skills range from old favourites (such as warp or pull) to new ammo powers to replace the upgrades. I really, really like the new systems. As with the conversations, it makes the game infinitely more playable and it just flows. The new combat is also a huge improvement. First up though – the guns in the first game were basically unlimited ammo but limited by an overheat. In this they have been replaced by more conventional magazine based firearms. Its a slight shame as the old system allowed you to be less worried about missing shots when fighting but it does mean you have the cool effect of magazines littering the ground after combat. However it is outweighed by the new heavy weapons which have been added in. Unlike other weapons, these are usable by all classes and help to equalise the numbers when your shooting up mercs or geth. They vary in usefulness from the destructive but ammo eating nuke gun to my personal favourite the flamethrower but each and everyone is fun to use even if it is just to see the effect. There are 5 heavy weapons in the main game as well as two DLC ones (compared the the two or three of the other weapons) and their are what you expect from a Sci Fi shooter. Actually the limitation on the number of weapons makes tooling up for a bit of shooty shooty a hell of a lot easier. Overall, the combat has been tuned up based on the lessons of the great cover based shooters. It feels as though Bioware is leaning more to the action side of action-RPG. Oh, and the bloody Mako is gone, replaced by a shuttle system. Thank god. Finally, the Normandy 2 should be mentioned. After your last ship was ripped into strips of metal, your employers thought it would be funny to give you a new ship with almost exactly the same layout. It did have a feeling of the background to it being simply “Because We Can” but it was pretty funny to walk round the new Normandy thinking, “Wow this place looked shit last time”. The Normandy has a variety of functions. The most used is getting you from place to place which is a little different. You don’t just jump into one system that has one planet – instead there is a mass effect relay in one system in every cluster and so you must fly between them. Its basically dragging a cursor, but you now have a fuel meter to look at. If it runs out it starts to drain into your mineral fund. These are used normally to research new upgrades for you guns and so loosing them is a bit of a pain, primarily because you have to play more of the stupid mining game. You basically scan the planet from orbit until you find a spike in a mineral’s concentration then fire a probe down. Its the most boring part of the game and so unbearable I ended up doing it while I watched episodes of How I Met Your Mother. It is less time consuming than travelling around to the planet but its just crap. However, it has to be done in order to get the upgrades need to get the best ending to the game. I prefer the idea of researching new stuff rather than having to go out and buy it, but the games mixes the two. You can buy the rights to research things from a shop, but if you find it in the field then it is automatically upgraded and usable. You can view these from a new private terminal that helps to flesh out the world along with your own private cabin. As well as various things such as an armour customizer (much more interesting than the preset armour suits of the first game) and a way of looking a your achievements, the cabin can be filled with stuff related to your ongoing mission. You can find your cracked helmet from your time in space, or buy model ships, fish or even a space hamster. The cabin also includes your own Personal Assistance who not only alerts you to new messages but also helps to cut down on time wasting by alerting you to when various members of your team wish to talk to you. Right, time talk to technical. You can rave all you want about a game but you still need to mention the flaws at some point. So, the game has a few gremlins in it. Occasional sounds problems (such as clips stopping abruptly, cutting off sentences) and odd graphical glitches do slightly mar an otherwise excellent visual and audio presentation. It is bandied around a lot but Mass Effect 2 really does decisive to be considered cinematic. All the way through it feels like your playing through a strange combination of Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner and Firefly all crushed together. Part of this has to be the amazing voice cast. As well as Martin Sheen, it also stars Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin (both from Chuck), Michel Dorn (Warf!), Tricia Helfer and Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galatica), Shohreh Aghdashloo (her of creepy voice from Flashforward) and Carrie-Anne Moss (if you don’t know who she is, get the hell out) are added to the cast. On top of this, Seth Green and Keith David return from the first game and Shepard is once again voiced by Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale. It isn’t really a major part of Mass Effect 2, but an important thing to include is EA’s new way of force feeding you the concept of DLC. In every new copy of Mass Effect 2 is a Cerberus Network Access Card. This is then attached to your EA account and it adds you to a stream of free content. Already (2 weeks after release) there are three sets of DLC on there. They are small pieces (with a whole new character being the largest) but they are however completely free. If you buy Mass Effect 2 second hand you can pay to join the network for around $15. Its a nice idea, but it can slow down the game starting as it has to login to a separate network. So Mass Effect 2 is a brilliant game. If you’ve played Mass Effect then this is essential -  its the continuation of the story and a brilliant second part. If you have never touched an RPG before this point, Mass Effect 2 is a perfect introduction. Finally, if you’ve never played games before, Mass Effect 2 (if played on easy) is a pretty good introduction, with a good story and a pretty good introduction into both third person shooters and RPGs. If own a Xbox 360 or a PC, this is a must play and a must buy as the game has some serious replay value. It has multiple classes, loads of achievements and a load of decisions to try and tweak with. Play it and enjoy.

(Warning: This Contains Spoilers That Are Apparent In Any Trailer Released By EA or Bioware)

Lets get this out of the way. I started Mass Effect 2 with a Mass Effect 1 character. Becca Shepard, Renegade Soldier, Saver of Wrex and Killer of Alenko (he was a bit shit). I had a fling with the blue alien and saved the council. I already had an attachment to my character, who may I remind you kicked the galaxy’s butt. It sounds weird to hear her voice coming from other female Shepards. But I digress…

Bioware’s latest Sci-Fi epic starts basically at the end of the original. Despite having saved the galaxy from the Geth and Saren, Shepard is left for dead after an attack that rips the Normandy into little bits (as well as providing a Dead Space style vacuum sequence which was pretty good). Two years later, Shepard awakes on an operating table inside a facility which is having 10 shades of crap blown out of it by its own security while simultaneous someone over the radio is guiding you out. For an intro, this is one of the best. Between the whole “death in space” sequence and waking up, you have a chance to edit an existing characters (such as from Mass Effect or a previous Mass Effect 2 play through) or to create your new one. It makes sense, with you having been basically rebuilt from the ground up yet keeping the same memories. The face editor still makes it hard to create good faces, but you can now share you characters face layout by a little number string in the top corner. You also get a chance to remind yourself of what happened in the first game later.

So after arming up, killing a few bots, shooting a couple of guys and meeting with two friends, you finally get to meet the Illusive Man, Mr Charlie Sheen himself. He must have the coolest office in the universe overlooking a Neutron Star (which changes colour depending on his mood) and seemingly empty apart from a chair where he sits doing nothing but acting snarky to people and chain smoking like there is no tomorrow. He informs you about the fact that human colonies are going and then the usual stuff (only you can save us! Go see for yourself!).

The main meat of the game isn’t actually fighting the Collectors (who are the ones taking the humans on a little trip) but instead recruiting and earning the loyalty of a team of elite people to use against the Collectors. Each character (apart from Mirranda and Jacob who you pick up in the starting area) has two missions linked to them and these are nearly always brilliant. Be it fighting through a quarantine zone to rescue a Salarian scientist or pretending to be a merc in order to meet up with an old friend, all the recruitment missions are fun. There are one or two exceptions but these are made up by their loyalty missions which are some of the best I have ever seen in any RPG yet. Not only do them help you in a gameplay term but also illuminates the flaws or defects in a character. Thane, a Drell Assassin, is foremost among these with a second mission that was tugging at the heart strings by the end.

The characters in Mass Effect 2 have seen a massive improvement. In the first game, many of them felt quite flat to say the least, but in the second this feels fixed. I gained an emotional link with most of them, apart from one or two such as Samara, an Asari justicar with some of the most annoying dialogue I’ve ever heard. Many other people who have reviewed Mass Effect 2 say the Salarian scientist Mordin to be their favourite character (and he is hilarious – especially a reference near the end of the game) but I still have a soft spot for Garrus, the Turian agent from the first game. Not only is he now a badass, but he also shows the change in the two games. In the first, he was the slightly naive agent, who normally represented the Paragon leaning in any circumstance. Now, he is a bit more rogue cop, down and dirty and more than happy to to shoot people in the face in order to get what he needs. He is just another part in showing the darker route Bioware has taken the game.

In fact, the new Paragon/Renegade setup makes a lot more sense. Its now more of a focus, instead of the hodge podge it was in the the first game where only specific things very rarely counted towards either value. Now nearly every conversation will end with a smattering of points into either value. I admit sometimes it does end up with some bizarre things (“YOU DIDN’T SAY THANK YOU? RENEGADE POINTS!!”) but overall it makes sense. The main improvement to this system is the new interrupt which just make sense. The first game was filled with moments where you just wanted to interrupt a long speech with a punch to the face. In the second, most conversations (though still too few) include an interrupt which occasionally helps the gameplay. The ones most speak about are throwing people throw windows or punching someone, but the best one is early in the game. You notice an engineer fixing a gunship. After a long briefing talk, you get the opportunity to shock the guy with one of his tools, which halts his work. It show two of the good things about the new system – it helps you later on yet it also allows you to play the supreme space badass, like your very own Mal.

Another improvement I love is the trimming down off the inventory system and RPG elements. The first game’s inventory was clunky as hell. To swap an upgrade out, you had to pause the game, go into a menu, find the weapon, swap out the upgrade system and then rejoin the fight. It totally threw off the rhythm of the combat as well as making it hard to deal with a large number of items of varying kinds. The second game cuts this down – upgrades are out totally instead replaced by research done on your ship. On top of that, all the weapons you carry are chosen at the very start of a mission or in weapon boxes along the way. This system feels more like a mission based shooter rather than a free roaming RPG and makes the game a lot more playable. Similarly the long complicated levelling up system is replaced by a more focused one. There are only 30 levels to rank up instead of sixty, but there are fewer skills to be unlocked. Each rank in a skill feels like its making a difference to combat, instead of the simply tiny stat bonus you sometimes see in RPGs. Instead of the eight skills each character had in the first, Shepard has six while everyone else only has four (three at the start with the last being unlocked via the loyalty missions). These skills range from old favourites (such as warp or pull) to new ammo powers to replace the upgrades. I really, really like the new systems. As with the conversations, it makes the game infinitely more playable and it just flows.

The new combat is also a huge improvement. First up though – the guns in the first game were basically unlimited ammo but limited by an overheat. In this they have been replaced by more conventional magazine based firearms. Its a slight shame as the old system allowed you to be less worried about missing shots when fighting but it does mean you have the cool effect of magazines littering the ground after combat. However it is outweighed by the new heavy weapons which have been added in. Unlike other weapons, these are usable by all classes and help to equalise the numbers when your shooting up mercs or geth. They vary in usefulness from the destructive but ammo eating nuke gun to my personal favourite the flamethrower but each and everyone is fun to use even if it is just to see the effect. There are 5 heavy weapons in the main game as well as two DLC ones (compared the the two or three of the other weapons) and their are what you expect from a Sci Fi shooter. Actually the limitation on the number of weapons makes tooling up for a bit of shooty shooty a hell of a lot easier. Overall, the combat has been tuned up based on the lessons of the great cover based shooters. It feels as though Bioware is leaning more to the action side of action-RPG. Oh, and the bloody Mako is gone, replaced by a shuttle system. Thank god.

Finally, the Normandy 2 should be mentioned. After your last ship was ripped into strips of metal, your employers thought it would be funny to give you a new ship with almost exactly the same layout. It did have a feeling of the background to it being simply “Because We Can” but it was pretty funny to walk round the new Normandy thinking, “Wow this place looked shit last time”. The Normandy has a variety of functions. The most used is getting you from place to place which is a little different. You don’t just jump into one system that has one planet – instead there is a mass effect relay in one system in every cluster and so you must fly between them. Its basically dragging a cursor, but you now have a fuel meter to look at. If it runs out it starts to drain into your mineral fund. These are used normally to research new upgrades for you guns and so loosing them is a bit of a pain, primarily because you have to play more of the stupid mining game. You basically scan the planet from orbit until you find a spike in a mineral’s concentration then fire a probe down. Its the most boring part of the game and so unbearable I ended up doing it while I watched episodes of How I Met Your Mother. It is less time consuming than travelling around to the planet but its just crap. However, it has to be done in order to get the upgrades need to get the best ending to the game. I prefer the idea of researching new stuff rather than having to go out and buy it, but the games mixes the two. You can buy the rights to research things from a shop, but if you find it in the field then it is automatically upgraded and usable. You can view these from a new private terminal that helps to flesh out the world along with your own private cabin. As well as various things such as an armour customizer (much more interesting than the preset armour suits of the first game) and a way of looking a your achievements, the cabin can be filled with stuff related to your ongoing mission. You can find your cracked helmet from your time in space, or buy model ships, fish or even a space hamster. The cabin also includes your own Personal Assistance who not only alerts you to new messages but also helps to cut down on time wasting by alerting you to when various members of your team wish to talk to you.

Right, time talk to technical. You can rave all you want about a game but you still need to mention the flaws at some point. So, the game has a few gremlins in it. Occasional sounds problems (such as clips stopping abruptly, cutting off sentences) and odd graphical glitches do slightly mar an otherwise excellent visual and audio presentation. It is bandied around a lot but Mass Effect 2 really does decisive to be considered cinematic. All the way through it feels like your playing through a strange combination of Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner and Firefly all crushed together. Part of this has to be the amazing voice cast. As well as Martin Sheen, it also stars Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin (both from Chuck), Michel Dorn (Warf!), Tricia Helfer and Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galatica), Shohreh Aghdashloo (her of creepy voice from Flashforward) and Carrie-Anne Moss (if you don’t know who she is, get the hell out) are added to the cast. On top of this, Seth Green and Keith David return from the first game and Shepard is once again voiced by Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale.

It isn’t really a major part of Mass Effect 2, but an important thing to include is EA’s new way of force feeding you the concept of DLC. In every new copy of Mass Effect 2 is a Cerberus Network Access Card. This is then attached to your EA account and it adds you to a stream of free content. Already (2 weeks after release) there are three sets of DLC on there. They are small pieces (with a whole new character being the largest) but they are however completely free. If you buy Mass Effect 2 second hand you can pay to join the network for around $15. Its a nice idea, but it can slow down the game starting as it has to login to a separate network.

So Mass Effect 2 is a brilliant game. If you’ve played Mass Effect then this is essential -  its the continuation of the story and a brilliant second part. If you have never touched an RPG before this point, Mass Effect 2 is a perfect introduction. Finally, if you’ve never played games before, Mass Effect 2 (if played on easy) is a pretty good introduction, with a good story and a pretty good introduction into both third person shooters and RPGs. If own a Xbox 360 or a PC, this is a must play and a must buy as the game has some serious replay value. It has multiple classes, loads of achievements and a load of decisions to try and tweak with. Play it and enjoy.