Two years after the events of the first Mass Effect, all kinds of crazy hits the fan and it’s time for Commander Shepard to save humanity. Again. Surprise! The plot has you traversing the galaxy, collecting the most skilled warriors available to respond to a threat. So what’s new?

A sizable number of gameplay elements are improved from the first Mass Effect, all to the player’s benefit. For instance, the overheating/ammo situation is rectified by the introduction of universal ammunition, explained as disposable heatsinks. There is also a lush upgrade system. Weapons, equipment and characters have upgrade trees. Upgrades can be researched through the investment of precious metals, which can be found during missions or mined from planets between missions. I really liked the mining mini-game: though it is pretty straightforward, the rewards gained by collecting enough material will keep you coming back. Unfortunately, you can’t mine for fish: to fill the aquarium on your ship you have to buy fish from traders. For those who like customizing everything, this is a nice touch.

For locked doors and chests and such ilk, there is a bypass minigame and a hacking minigame: one is Memory, and the other is a reinterpretation of Simon: like in the first Mass Effect. These minigames are a little more nuanced than the simple version of Simon from the first game: but not by much.

The planets you visit no longer require an annoying buggy: you land in a shuttle craft precisely where you need to be. As in the first game, missions are still divided into the familiar ‘run and gun’ and ‘wheel of conversation choice intrigue’ categories. Gamers who’ve played Resident Evil 4 will be familiar with the context-sensitive button pressing Bioware has introduced into ME2’s cutscenes: these moments keep you paying attention, and nudge Sheard along either the good guy path (Paragon) or the bad guy path (Renegade).

Because ME2 was co-developed for consoles and PC, the controls are implemented less than elegantly. While ME2 does support my 360 controller, I was not willing to sacrifice the accuracy of my mouse for the convenience of the couch. I did not feel like I needed to rebind my controls: the problem was that keyboard keys were context sensitive like they would have been on a 360 controller, and they didn’t have to be. The same button that sprints snaps to cover and vaults over low cover. I died on more than one occasion because I accidentally vaulted over a low obstacle instead of hiding behind it.

I only found a handful of graphical glitches, some of which were simply annoying, while others were truly hilarious. Once, a Klingo–Krogan NPC turned his head and left his specular highlights floating next to him. On another occasion, an important female NPC delivered a monologue with her eyes crossed, and not just a little bit: she went full retard. While running through my ship, I ended up stuck standing on a character’s head because the sprint button is the same as the vault-over-obstacles button.

Since I played this game on the PC, in the interest of full disclosure before I discuss the technical elements of my experience, here are the specs for my rig:

Hardware: Core 2 Duo E8400, 4GB DDR2, GeForce 9600 GT, 20″ monitor at 1680×1050px

Mass Effect 2 is among the best looking games on the market. The Unreal 3 Engine is used expertly and efficiently in this title. My system is certainly not top of the line today, but I experienced zero framerate problems and the game seemed to scale very well. Every now and then I caught a close-up of a wall with a low texture quality, but this only occurred a handful of times. It took me about 21 hours to play through ME2, and load times gradually increased from ten seconds to as long as three minutes. This may have been because I beat the game in two sittings (not counting bathroom breaks), and I suspect there is more at play than meets the eye, as memory usage never broke 1GB. Thankfully, there are unique load screens for practically every transition. Whether you’re moving from deck to deck on your ship or from a shuttle landing site to an alien outpost, you’ll be treated with technical-looking diagrams and figures describing your upcoming location, along with gameplay tips of varying usefulness. If you don’t think of these loading screens as treats, recall that they are infinitely better than the drawn out elevator rides from the first game.

As a sequel, ME2 holds onto the charm of the original and improves on a number of gameplay elements that needed polish. The title balances linear missions with open ended space exploration elements. Mixed in-engine and recorded video cutscenes are well written and acted with professional aplomb by a star-studded cast. Though ME2 lacks multiplayer or co-op modes, the game holds some replay value, if you decide you want to play bad cop. I can say with certainty that I enjoyed ME2 more than Dragon Age: Origins, and I believe it to be a better game. Go pick it up Jan 26, 2010 for PC or 360.