1. It isn’t a game, but is a “Choose your own adventure” book. Mass Effect 2 (henceforth ME2) would have you believe it is interactive fiction (a game) but it’s no more interactive than a “Choose your own adventure” novel from the 1990’s targeted at kids who were bored with straight-forward books. You see, in a normal, good game you play and interact and kill things but a vast majority of ME2 will be spent talking to the boilerplate, boring crew (more on that later). As you “play”, you have to make a few hundred different decisions to change the outcome of the game.
Get used to seeing that wheel, because it’s about the only thing you’ll see for the game’s scant five-hour length.
I suppose you could say that by making boring decisions -like if you should go to a planet that is calling for help or ignore it- is technically gameplay. This is technically gameplay in the same way that changing my resolution has me in the game, and has me interacting with it on a basic level. Using BioWare’s conversation oval, you navigate your way through and kill, at most, three dozen enemies.
2. None of the decisions you make matter, from ME or otherwise. To carry on the metaphor, the same way “Choose your own adventure” books only had one real ending with multiple fake or bad endings, every ending of ME2 is essentially the same. You make thousands of choices in ME2, and none of them have any short or long-term impact. I decided to not shoot someone, but now what? They didn’t shoot me, so what did it matter? Why would I even bother playing this? All you ever do is make meaningless choices that lead to more meaningless choices.
Remember this massive, far-reaching decision you made in ME? ME2 seems to have forgotten.
More importantly, BioWare has outright lied to fans, claiming that big decisions made in the first Mass Effect would carry over to the second. Despite importing my save into ME2, I didn’t see a single change to the game. No new encounters, no new quests, and no new cutscenes. Will any of my decisions in ME2 matter for Mass Effect 3? Probably not.
3. Planet scanning is the single worst method for accruing resources and is worse and more repetitive than the most grindy of Dragon Quest games. You see, one of the many choices you can make in ME2 is to scan planets for minerals. Minerals are used as your ship’s primary fuel source, so you need to be scanning constantly, and I mean constantly. This means that just when you’re about to go off and save the galaxy from boring aliens who look like clones from a bad Dr. Who episode, you need to spend ten minutes scouring planets for fuel.
It’s a simulation of virtual work in a virtual world for a virtual ship. It’s the worst thing, but it may have accidentally created virtual reality.
Not only does scanning completely break pacing, but you need these minerals to unlock new weapons to defeat the game’s many, many bosses. Essentially, each planet you go to burns fuel, so you need to scan, but you need to travel, so you need fuel. It’s an infinite loop of horrible design, and BioWare should be ashamed for having pulled out the stellar planet exploration of Mass Effect, wherein you actually visit each world you wanted to mine every world was radically different from the next.
4. You need to buy half the game in DLC. It’s not uncommon for a game to release DLC months after launch that augment the game, but ME2 takes it in a disgusting direction. For months, microscopic bits of ME2 that were removed were trickled out for a premium price. It makes me sick to think I paid $15 for an hour and a half of gameplay, hoping it would redeem the mess that is ME2. Key plot points that are supposed to tie into ME3 were left out of ME2’s retail disk, and were instead sold to consumers separately.
Want to roll with Liara who was in ME and will have a big part in ME3? That’ll be $15.
On top of this highway robbery for barely playable content, BioWare had the nerve to sell the real end of the game nearly a year after ME2 was released. On the principal that this is sinister on par with the X-Men villain Mr. Sinister, I refuse to buy this obviously awful content. Every reviewer who played this and supported this evil practice deserves to have their game consoles confiscated and replaced with a calculator, so they can figure out how much time and money they’ve wasted on garbage.
5. The story doesn’t make sense, isn’t original, and bored me to the point of suicide. Remember in Halo when you found out that an alien race had existed thousands of years before the current galaxy-spanning races? Remember in Metal Gear Solid 1-4 when you find out that the person you’ve been working for has been evil all along? Remember in X-Files when a man who smokes has ulterior motives? If you’ve played or seen any of these-or most games and movies and TV shows- the story of Mass Effect 2 will be as predictable as an episode of CSI: The Hackneyed Script.
Looks like when it comes to Mass Effect 2…I wasn’t effected.
On top of its predictability, ME2’s story is unbelievably boring. When I say “unbelievably”, I mean it. I could literally not believe how bored I was for every second from the first time I pressed start through the end of the game. It took weeks for me to finish the first mission because each time I tried to play it put me to sleep faster than horse tranquilizers. A more boring game there isn’t.
6. The most boring cast in the galaxy. People today aren’t happy with a cast of five characters who are all so similar they may as well be clones. Casts in modern entertainment feel more like Captain Planet or GI Joe than a diverse group of individuals connected by a shared goal or circumstance. Somehow, in today’s overly diverse and “trying too hard” world of casting, every crew member is the same.
What was that? I couldn’t hear you over how cliché I am.
One crew member, Garrus, is a trained killer who will do anything to complete his objective and kill anyone in his way. Another, Grunt, is a trained killer who will do anything to complete his objective and kill anyone in his way. Guess who Thane is and what he does? Here’s a hint: he isn’t a pastry chef. The whole cast is copy-pasted more than my description of Grunt. How can a cast of creatures be so unique looking and sounding, yet be the exact same? BioWare found a way to turn cool, Star Wars-esque aliens into boring space marines.
7. It isn’t an RPG. In the tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons you roll a die, or dice, and multiply that by your skill with whatever you’re doing. As you play and level up you put points into stats which give you higher numbers, which help you perform better. It gives you a sense of progress and attachment to your character. I’ll give you so much money if you can guess what ME2 doesn’t have. Instead of sticking with the statistics and traditional leveling system of ME, ME2 has moved towards being a pure shooter. Instead of gaining points, the only things you unlock are new abilities (which are worthless anyways).
What is this missing? Oh, right, everything a character sheet should have.
How is this not classified as a third-person adventure game? With how little shooting there is, it shouldn’t be a shooter. With a total absence of RPG elements, this isn’t an RPG. BioWare again shows that it isn’t above lying to their loyal customers. Dragon Age 2 was excellent (read my Dragon Age 2 review at BeefJack.com!) and had stats, leveling, useful skills, and came out after Mass Effect 2. Did all the numbers from ME2 get pushed into DA2? I’m not sure where they went, but I want my numbers back. Hell, I can’t even see how much damage I’m doing to enemies. How am I supposed to min/max my stats when I don’t have stats? How am I supposed to calculate the best gear in my spreadsheet if I can’t see stats?
8. The combat doesn’t know what it wants to be. Mass Effect was undeniably an RPG. The combat was slow and methodical and the gunplay was rightfully floaty. If you could accurately shoot everything, why would you bother leveling up at all? Mass Effect 2 on the other hand, feels like it’s trying to be a shooter, but is still loose and floaty like an RPG. The very few enemy types (more on that next) there are rush towards the player as if you were given the ability to quickly acquire targets and swiftly murder them, but you can’t.
You wouldn’t know it, but it took the person playing three hours to kill that lone robot. With god mode.
Aiming feels so loose that a slight tap on the right stick sends your character spinning in a circle like a retarded dog chasing the tail he doesn’t have because he already bit it off. Keeping with the awfulness of the rest of the game, you’re unable to adjust your aiming sensitivity in any way. At the same time, cutscenes show you and your team being major badasses. Why can’t I be that cool in real combat? Why doesn’t BioWare want me to have fun? The only reason I can think of is because they’re simply bad, malicious people.
9. Boring enemies. Slowly, over the years, games have been homogenizing types of enemies. Instead of fighting more than ten different enemies in something like Serious Sam, all of which behaved differently and had varying amounts of health, it’s boiled down to “regular enemy, heavy enemy, and massive enemy”. Mass Effect 2 is a shining example of everything wrong with modern game design, refusing even to branch out into different sub-types of baddies. The first foe you fight is the exact same as the last enemy you kill before a boring, time-wasting boss.
One of the three or so enemies you encounter in the game. Guess which one he is! Hint: it’s pastry chef.
Honestly, it’s like they didn’t even try. You fight some robots, then some more robots, a bigger robot, and then smaller robots. Vanquish had exclusively robotic enemies and there were at least half a dozen different kinds, each totally different from the rest. Even Star Wars, the series famous for being recycled and abused, has dozens of different types of robots in their many games.
10. The game amounts to basically nothing. ME2 acts as little more than a setup for ME3. The whole story goes nowhere, and doesn’t add anything to the series besides another number in the title. In the same way that recent movie games try to act as prequels or interquels between movies, ME2 isn’t a real game. Instead it’s a cheap bridge between the fantastic third-person RPG/shooter hybrid ME was and whatever ME3 will be.
Will Mass Effect 3 suck? At the rate these games have gone downhill, ME3 will be banned for being offensively bad, and not just in Germany.
We’ve seen that BioWare isn’t afraid to lie to their customers about decisions carrying over, so if the decisions here truly won’t carry over, why bother? You’re better off starting ME3 from the start, and ignoring the pile of lies and shit that ME2 is. You’ll be spared the constant barrage of bad that characterizes ME2 and won’t be dissuaded from playing BioWare’s other, much better titles.
Between all of these things, how can ME2 be anything but the worst game ever made? Logically, it’s impossible for ME2 to be anything besides the most broken, most boring, worst made, and most horrible piece of interactivity ever wrought by man.
Note: This piece is satire.
