Mass Effect 2 is one of those games where if you start to play it, you just can’t stop playing it. This game is in the genre of an Action Role-Playing game which is basically Action whether it’s with guns, swords, or hand-to-hand combat and it is a 3rd person game. This game also focuses mostly on futuristic guns like laser pistols or plasma rifles. Role-Playing is obviously when you play in someone’s shoes and in this case; you are playing as Commander Shepard who was Commander of the ship Normandy in Mass Effect (1).

The story starts like this: you and your crew are slowly cruising in space with the Normandy ship but suddenly are attacked by an unknown ship and as you try to get as many people to the escape pod, you are killed. Years later, you are recovered by an organization called Cerberus who repairs everything inside and outside your body. As the story progresses, you find out that an insect species called the Collectors killed most of your crew and destroyed the Normandy. Then the real story begins where you find different people with special abilities to join you crew. Besides the story being spectacular, the little details such as being able to select your own characters facial structure, hair, and gender is great. You can also import the character you had created on Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2. Upgrading is also crucial to playing like upgrading your armor, ship, weapons, and more.

The gameplay is also unique because it is something not many game creators have thought of. The gameplay is real-time which means it’s not like the old Final Fantasy games where you attack the enemy, and then the enemy attacks you, and so forth. It is actually like this, you can change weapons in front of the enemy and it’s not like the AI gives you a break where if your health is low, it stops attacking you. The gameplay also consists of abilities like being able to pull or push enemies or becoming invisible for a short amount of time. The game can also be used in a combination way and an example of it is that you can tell one of your teammates to levitate an enemy towards you and you (Shepard) can freeze the enemy in mid-air so when the enemy falls, he/she shatters into pieces. There is also a cool feature in this game which is affected by your actions like if you curse someone out in the game, you become slightly evil and your face starts to have red glowing veins and your eyes become an evil red. If you help someone, you become a good person and have no red veins or red eyes but instead, you have normal eyes and a normal face. Doing this, affects your gameplay when you import your character to the new Mass Effect 3 which is going to come out on March 6th, 2012. I don’t know how it affects it but I have heard it does.

Mass Effect 2 has very minimum bugs and if it does have bugs, it is not so major to affect your gameplay in any way. I believe I also forgot to mention one thing which is that the game includes two disks because of the amount of hours you can play which is about more than thirty hours of gameplay. The cinematic display is outstanding because of the detail that is not put out like the flow of hair or the wind moving your clothes and even blinking more than often because it is too sandy. The sound quality is not the greatest but for the amount of time and effort spent on making this game, it is okay.

Overall, this game is not the greatest in the world but is enough to enjoy it unlike other First Person Shooters like Call of Duty where it seems as if you need anger management and you change as you play it. This game is a never ending because after you have finished it, you can play again with your current guns, armor, money, and make different decisions for different things to happen. This game is really exciting to play and should not be left out. Even if some threads say that the game is boring and not addictive, it should at least be tried before judged.