by Greg Jeffer

Mass Effect 2 opens with the destruction of the Normandy under fire from a massive, mysterious ship and you take control of Shepard as he makes his way to the cockpit to rescue his faithful pilot Joker, with the Normandy burning and falling apart around him. Although able to get Joker safely off the ship, Shepard is blown into space with air leaking from his armor, quickly suffocating. The screen fades with Shepard drifting in space.

The story picks up as Shepard wakes up in a bed with a woman named Miranda directing him via loudspeakers to get up, get armed, and get into the fight – the station Shepard has awakened on is under attack.

Mass Effect 2 manages to capture the feeling of the first game while successfully moving the narrative forward. Throughout the game, you will likely find yourself becoming attached to the various characters, which in many cases were fleshed out even better than they were in the first game. You get to know not only your squad (which will have 11 members by the end of the game – almost twice as many as in Mass Effect 1), but various members of your crew more personally, making them all the more important to you as characters.

The story, meanwhile, is enthralling enough to make you want to keep playing to the end of the game. Even during side quests done to earn the loyalty of your squad members, there is no noticeable lull in the overall story – Bioware’s storytelling skills haven’t dulled in the three years since the last entry in the series.

In particular, the last mission in Mass Effect 2 is amazingly well done, hitting you with a series of tactical decisions to make in between deadly firefights and action sequences that will have you on the edge of my seat. The desperate feeling the mission is meant to have is captured very well in the camera angles and the top-notch voice acting.

One word that could describe Mass Effect 2’s management aspects with a single word it would be “streamlined.” Fans of the original game will find that Bioware managed to improve on the formula of the first game without taking anything away from the experience or changing any core mechanics or the “feel” of the game too much.

One of the best examples of this is the new armor/weapon system used by Mass Effect 2. In the original Mass Effect, item management could easily become quite a hassle by the end of the game. There were hundreds of items to keep track of, between varieties of the four different guns, suits of armor for various armor classes and races, biotic amps, tech omnitools, and mods for weapons, armor, ammo, and even your grenades. To make matters worse, there was no way to sort your vast inventory.

In Mass Effect 2, this messy system is done away with to be replaced by a new, much smoother, headache-free interface. Instead of ammo mods being items to equip and keep track of, they’re now treated as squad powers instead. For instance, playing as the infiltrator class will give you access to disruptor ammo and cryo ammo abilities, which can be toggled on or off of any weapon at any time. Armor, meanwhile, is now reduced to a single, customizable set. You can swap out parts such as your helmet (+5% max health) for a scope (+10% headshot damage), and even alter the color, texture, and detail pattern on the armor to your liking.

Weapon overheating no longer exists, as Mass Effect 2 now uses a more traditional ammo/clip system, with a single, universal ammunition type which fills all your weapons when picked up. Although this might seem like a negative change to some, the overall system works better than the overheat from the first game, since the universal ammo is anything but scarce – you’ll rarely find yourself out of ammo for more than a single firefight. More than anything, the new system encourages players to use class abilities and switch weapons more frequently during battle, rather than finding a single gun to rely on for the whole game.

The oft-touted heavy weapons, which were brought up frequently in promotional material prior to the game’s release, include weapons such as a grenade launcher and a particle beam and are the only type to use special ammunition. Unlike the universal ammo used for other guns, heavy weapon ammo is relatively scarce, which prevents players from relying on them to overpower your enemies too frequently. When they see action, they’re undeniably impressive and fun to use with discretion.

The point system used for leveling your special abilities has been streamlined as well. One squad point unlocks the first level of a skill, another two unlocks the second, and so forth. At rank four, you get to choose between two improved versions of the ability. The rank four overload ability can be changed into either area overload, which affects multiple targets, or heavy overload, which deals more damage to a single target and causes synthetic enemies to explode upon death. Skills such as the confusing first aid that existed in the first game are done away with, as both health and shields restore automatically after a brief period in cover (similarly to games such as Call of Duty 4).

Another major feature that received a lot of attention before Mass Effect 2’s commercial release was the ability to import completed save files from Mass Effect 1. This allows players to continue playing as the same customized character through the entire trilogy. More importantly, importing a save into Mass Effect 2 will also transfer the decisions that you made in the first game, such as whether you sacrificed Kaiden or Ashley on Virmire, whether you were able to defuse the situation with Wrex, and if you let the Rachni queen live or not on Noveria. All of these decisions have their own varying levels of impact in the sequel – you might find yourself surprised at some of the seemingly minor choices you made in the first game that have carried over.

In general, anyone who liked Mass Effect 1 will find the sequel to be a worthy purchase. It keeps the spirit of the series alive and well while telling a compelling story and making enough changes to the tried-and-true formula to remain innovative instead of just rehashing what we’ve already seen. Mass Effect 2 gets five stars for an overall solid, fun gameplaying experience.