As you may or may not know I worked on the first Mass Effect. It was I think one of the most taxing projects I’ve ever worked on but in the end the game is in my top 10 of all time. At work I played through the game end to end 15 times and then once at home after ship. I feel pretty confident that I can speak on the virtues of the game and its ups and downs. You know doubt know what those are at this point and if you don’t I suggest you pick up a copy of Mass 1 and then we can talk. Moving forward I’m going to just assume that you also know what those ups and downs were of the game and I will then move on to talking about Mass 2.

I’m not into Spoilers of any kind in anything. I’m of the mind that some how me telling you whatever the “cool part” is regardless of if it will “give anything away or not” doesn’t really help anyone. I mean sure it was “funny” or “cool” or whatever but you (or in this case me) telling me (or in this case you) about the event in said “thing” always leaves this empty space. As once the person in question (you or me…I’m not sure at this point) experiences said event they already know about it and ultimately it has the same impact (figuratively) as a piece of cold pizza. Sure it tastes good and all but its cold and is a shadow of its former hotter self that would have burnt the roof of your mouth. So that’s why I’m not going to tell you spoiler related things as I want the game to burn your mouth.

What I will say is that I was floored immediately by the production value. After working on the first one (see above) it felt almost like a different game. The environments looked way better, the little things they did in various places to make the environments come to life was striking. There was diffinately more life to the “world” in this game. When I was on Mass 1 there was talk that they were going to take your game from Mass 1 and give you the ability to port it over to 2. Well they delivered and everything sticks with your character. To the degree where there will be things that you’ll experience (maybe through a conversation or some kind of message in game) that will come right from Mass 1. Oddly enough sometimes its like getting an email from someone you’d not talked to in quite a while and then the memories of your time with them come rushing back. Its pretty cool.

The voice acting is super cool too. I was surprised how many voice actors were in Mass Effect 2. I’m used to going through a game and maybe having one or two voices I recognize. Like having Liam Neeson in Fallout 3. In this case however its like a who’s who of Sci-fi nerd voices.

I’ve started my second play through and I was the “renegade” last time (read: “asshole”) but this time I’m going through as the “paragon” (read: “Nice guy”) and I’m enjoying it. I pulled down the DLC Stolen Memory and started it last night but it was too late and so I opted to sleep and I’ll more than likely start it up this evening if Alan Wake dosn’t take that spot in this evening’s gaming.

In closing, If you’ve not played Mass 2 you should check it out. You can have a pretty good experience if you just start from Mass 2 but I’d really suggest you play through 1 and import over your characer into Mass 2. Porting your character will diffinately give you a better experience.