Mass Effect 2

I was pleasantly surprised by how awesome this game is. The beginning starts off with a bang, quite literally, as the Normandy-SR1 is blown to bits by an unidentified spacecraft. And like many captains before him, Shepard goes down with his ship.

This is where your journey starts, 2 years later in a research facility under siege, where you're fortunately resurrected, told to grab a gun and fight your way out.

Quite an action-packed start to what I fell is going to be a great game. I'm only about two hours in but I'll talk about the graphics and gameplay.

Quite honestly, it looks a ton better on PC than ME1 did. The environments especially seem to have a richness and detail about them that really give them life. As do the characters, although still slightly stiff around the face, it's the body language that really stands out. Bioware did a great job on the animation, no doubt they probably used motion capture and I applaud them on that decision (and applaud them even more so if they didn't!). They move with such subtly yet with so much emotion my dad, who walked into the room while I was playing, asked me if I was watching a movie. He really just stood there for about half a minute watching Shepard shout at the reporter lady (renegade style). Job well done Bioware, job well damn done.

Although, many have said it before, the writing in this game and the way the lines are delivered is quite excellent. One little niggle though, is that sometimes the syncing is off. This is most prevalent in humans, it sort of ruins the moment.

Now onto gameplay. They've overhauled quite a few things in Mass Effect 2. One major change is the weapon system. In the previous game, guns had an infinite amount of ammo, but would stop firing if they heat up too much, you'd then have to wait for it to cool down, akin to reloading it. This worked well, but thinking back now it kind of lessened the intensity in shootouts as you'd just have to wait for your gun to cool down. In Mass Effect 2, they've introduced what they call heat clips, which are ejected once you fire your gun to keep it cool. Which makes sense, and also adds more intensity in the firefights, which was missing from the first. It also encourages you to think more tactically, use the last grenade launcher ammo on the group of enemies flanking you, or the giant mech in front of you? Those kind of situations. I like the system and hope they stick with it for Mass Effect 3 (inevitable).

Alright, I'm ending it here. If you liked Mass Effect 1, and Sci-Fi Action RPG's, you will love this game. Complex story branches, great characters, good combat, overall awesome game with lot's of re-playability.