Out of all the games I've ever played this game tops my list or must play again and again and again. There are very few games in this world that I would completely play in a marathon session. There was Warcraft 2, Return of Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer, and now Mass Effect 2. This is a rare event for me, even with other games that I totally enjoyed I couldn't do marathon sessions, to me when I find a game like this I know its a keeper. Now on with the review.

The story is the best thing about this game and in fact the Mass Effect series so far. This is the main part of the game that drew me in. From the start all the way to the end the story was well done. There wasn't even a part of it I felt was dry. BioWare didn't cut any slack on story even if it was just for a quick mission. The story was so good in fact I cheered at the end when I finished the game. Granted most of the Mass Effect 2 story was character building and I felt BioWare could of done more with the main story. Maybe cause this is the second game in a trilogy and it's story was to just build the characters for a massive final story at a later date. Not sure as I can't travel to the future to play Mass Effect 3.

I do like how BioWare changed the game play for Mass Effect 2. Not that I didn't like how it was done in Mass Effect as it worked well but in Mass Effect 2 you are a lot more involved in the action. It’s a true shooter and if you need to assigned commands to you squad mates you can do what I'm calling a quick pause to select options. As soon as you release the quick pause everything happens. Fights happen quickly and require that you pay attention to the battle. You can quickly tell your squad mates to cover certain areas and to attack targets. The only thing I can complain about was I knew when I would be fighting as you would see cover points all over the place. If there wasn't a fight coming the areas would be clear of these points. Hopefully Mass Effect 3 would work better on making the cover points more in line with the scene.

Some minor graphic glitches happened with the in game cut scenes. There were are few times I was looking through someone's face. Some weird clipping issues with arms moving through legs and arms. Also some of the animations were kind of stiff. I also found myself floating in the air in a few spots and I got stuck. This was a pain cause I would have to restart from either my last save or where the auto-save was. Thankfully this only happened rarely. Overall bugs were rare but I began to respect BioWare a long time ago for releasing a finished game instead of patching them later.

I loved how they combined both the in game cut scenes with the pre rendered scenes. They flowed together very well and besides some color shade changes you would be hard pressed to know when it happens. Otherwise the game is very tight on the visuals and graphics. All the worlds and missions have a unique look and feel without reusing resources over and over again. Okay yes you will see the same crates over and over again but in general each world has its unique style I just wish I would get to see more of it as the places you could explore were limited. I know Mass Effect 2 isn't about exploring the world but rather its residents but still having these outstanding vistas and not being able to fully see them got to me.

I was disappointed in the lack of items in the game. Besides heavy weapons you basically get 2 choices between each type of weapons. With no real way of telling what weapon would be better. I basically just assumed anything I found was an upgrade but some of the weapon would lead me to believe differently. Now you could do research on upgrading all sort of abilities of the weapons. Example you would upgrade damage of all sniper rifles. You would find these research upgrades throughout the game. I rather find new guns with stats and get the ability to research making them yourself. Also regarding research be prepared to play what is probably the most boring part of the game. Mining planets, you go around scanning planets and launching probes to mine. This is basically you hold the right mouse button and move the mouse around a image of the planet while watching a line graph dance when it find something. For a while it was okay but the amount of resources you need this gets really tedious really fast. Though its probably much better than trying to drive the Mako with the strange physics that Mass Effect had.

This is a must buy game don't rent it, don't wait until its on sale, go out and buy it right now. I know its way to early to give this game of the year, but it certainly sits at the top of my list right now and I think it will be very hard to pry it away from its top spot.

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