Most of my gaming time in February has been taken up with Mass Effect 2. I was looking forward to this sequel but wasn't sure that it would live up to the first game. What with the supposed 'dumbing down' of the skills available to the characters and a few other changes to some of the other mechanics of the game there was a risk that they could spoil the overall effect. I'm happy to say that it hasn't!

The reduced skill set certainly seems to streamline the character advancement without really removing your ability to develop your character the way you want. I'm all for stats and abilities in RPGs but the way ME2 handles character progression simply works (for ME2... please don't try it with Dragon Age!). I certainly appreciate the change in armour and weapon choices... the first game did get a bit cluttered with stuff by the time you got to the end.

The removal of the Mako and the ability to drive round on some planets, however, was a mixed blessing. The Mako was a complete pain in the backside to control most of the time, bouncing around like some sort of kids toy, and searching for resources on planets was painful (so it was fortunate you didn't really need them). I do, however, miss the slightly more sandbox environment that it gave you. The new approach of giving you the ability to scan planets from space certainly makes more sense and collecting resources using probes is a lot easier, if a little time consuming. It does, however, mean that when you do land on a planet, the mission/story is more focused and provides a better experience over all.

The graphics, if you haven't seen any screenshots or videos, are certainly a lot better and I've not really noticed any pop up (which the original suffered from)... though I'm sure it's still there, I was just too busy playing.

I'll avoid talking too much about the actual story because I don't want to spoil it too much for anyone who has yet to play it (I completed it last night) but I was pleased to see that the 'moral' choices were dotted throughout and quite often quite often ambiguous in nature.

As for the continuation of decisions made in the first game, I was fairly underwhelmed by the impact my choices had made on the world of Mass Effect 2. Mostly just confined to a random encounter or message while visiting one of the main hubs and I think they missed a trick there. That said, there did seem to be a fair bit of scope for some of the decisions from ME1 to follow through to ME3 (along with your decisions from ME2) and make a huge difference to the overall story... I just hope they don't waste them.

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~ Naiboss