Tiger Weekly - Serving Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Return to space in 'Mass Effect 2'

By Edward Calder

Chock full of aliens, spaceships, and beam cannons, "Mass Effect 2" stands on 3 pillars: story, action, and filler. Comander Shepard's odyssey continues where "Mass Effect 1" left off. As with "Mass Effect 1," the characters are the life and breath of the game. At least a third of your time spent with this game will be watching interactive cut scenes and determining how they play out.

Will you stand by and watch as your friend exacts vengeance on a hated enemy, or will you risk both your necks and stop them? "Mass Effect 2" asks players to make decisions in nearly every cutscene, a laudable effort that makes the story engaging.

The same can't be said of the shooter sequences, which never step out of mediocrity. Every gunfight plays out in almost exactly the same way, and it doesn't help that many of the participants share the same abilities, weapons, and animations. "Mass Effect 2" has mercifully done away with the bloated, tedious inventory management from the first game. Now, when Shepard picks up an assault rifle, it's actually different from the one you're carrying. The controls use the same button to slide into cover and leap over it, which occasionally causes problems.

If you want to get upgrades in "Mass Effect 2," you'll have to sit through a lame resource farming minigame where you launch probes at distant planets. This banal globe-poking would have been tolerable in moderation, but "Mass Effect 2" devotes dozens of planets to this nonsense. It's worse than the infamous elevator rides from the original game.

"Mass Effect 2" is still defined by its story rather than its gameplay. The game isn't different enough from its predecessor to set it apart, but those looking for another romp through space can find it here.

Originally Published: February 17, 2010

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