Great Games That Actually Suck: Mass Effect 2

The first Mass Effect was a game that was somehow enjoyable in spite of itself. Looking at its individual parts in isolation, it wasn't a very good game at all - the combat was generally dull, lifeless, and lacking in intensity, the weapons were bland and generic, differing only in some numerical statistic, planetary exploration was often tedious, and the game's dialogue system seemed intent on offering up paraphrases that bore no resemblance to what your character would actually say. Yet in spite of these flaws, Mass Effect created a compelling, believable universe that harkened back to the Golden Age of Science Fiction and seemed to offer huge array of possibilities for future installments. But alas, it wasn't to be. If the first game was a flawed attempt at making a Space Opera RPG, then its sequel is a half-hearted attempt at making a very generic sci-fi shooter.

I have to emphasise the word "generic" here, because it sums up Mass Effect 2 perfectly. Anything that deviated even slightly from the Yet Another Shooter formula that the industry loves so much has been purged, leaving what could charitably be described as Gears of War with dialogue options. Much like Skyrim (which is going to be the subject of my next entry), Mass Effect 2 looks polished and glitzy on the outside, but it quickly becomes apparent just how little there is to the game. This title is notable in that it is BioWare's first title wholly developed while they were under EA's ownership, and their influence is easy to spot. EA clearly believes that shooters and action/adventure titles are the only genres that will sell and that the majority of gamers are adolescent males, so it comes as no surprise that Mass Effect 2 stripped out nearly all RPG elements of favour of playing like some juvenile shooter, filled with big explosions, cringe-inducing one-liners, and scantily-clad women.

The game begins with Commander Shepard and Co. investigating some human colonies that have had all of the colonists just up and vanish for some reason. Out of nowhere, a mysterious ship appears and blasts Shepard's ship into oblivion, causing Shepard to be blown into space, presumably to his death.

"Careful, you idiots! I said across her nose, not up it!"

Two years after his/her supposed "death," Shepard awakes, having been resurrected by Cerberus, who have been retconned from being the rogue black ops group in the first game to being a sort of human supremacist paramilitary organisation. The attempt at bringing Shepard back is dubbed the "Lazarus Project," just in case the whole "Shepard is Jesus in Space" aspect of the game was lost on you. Don't worry, Mass Effect 2, as with so much else, is as subtle as a sledgehammer.

As an opening, it's profoundly stupid - are we really expected to believe that his body landed intact on the planet's surface, despite entering the atmosphere from orbit? Worse, the whole bit about Shepard dying and coming back to life is completely wasted - Shepard never faces an existential crisis about his death and resurrection, he never ponders the apparent lack of an afterlife, and the only thing that really seems to bother him is how everyone's moved on during the past two years and is hesitant to hang out with him again.

Following the introductory "this is how you play the game" mission, Shepard is introduced to the head of Cerberus, the shadowy Illusive Man, played by Martin Sheen. The Illusive Man is clearly based on The Smoking Man from X-Files, so you might as well hang a banner over his head that reads "THIS CHARACTER WILL TURN EVIL LATER ON." Strangely, there was no mention of this Illusive Man during the Cerberus-focused missions of the first game, which strikes me as a major missed opportunity on BioWare's part. How much better it would have been had the player encountered a few cryptic references to The Illusive Man in the first game, while in the second game you would actually get to meet this mysterious figure. The disconnect with the preceding title is just one of many ways in which Mass Effect 2 feels less like a sequel and more like a half-assed reboot of the franchise.

"I dunno guys, he looks legit."

It turns out that human colonies are being attacked by a mysterious race of aliens known only as the Collectors, who are working for the Reapers, the race of sentient machines who exterminate all life in the galaxy every 50,000 years. I won't spoil what, exactly, the Collectors are using the captured humans for, but I will say this: it's stupid. Really, really stupid.

There are three things that bother me about Mass Effect 2's story. The first is the blatant military fetish the game has, and while this was also present in the first game, it's particular pronounced in the sequel. The civilian government is always portrayed as inept, obstructive, corrupt, or hopelessly mired in bureaucracy, while the rough-and-tumble military types are the only ones who can actually things done. This is most clearly seen in the one scene featuring the Citadel Council, who suddenly decide that the Reapers are just a myth and that Shepard is clearly insane. "Politics. Bureaucracy. Same bullshit, different leaders," says Jacob, one of Shepard's team members. "Cerberus is different. When colonies go missing, we don’t commission a team to write a report to figure out what the hell to do about it. We just go and find out." Seriously, I was expecting a few snide remarks about how the Council was going to "send the Reapers a strongly-worded letter." I might have expected this from an American developer, given that Americans show their armed forces a level of deference that borders on worship, but it seems rather odd coming from a Canadian studio.

And this ties in with the second problem with Mass Effect 2; the way it constantly strokes the player's ego. We're constantly being told that Shepard is the galaxy's only hope, that he's a peerless leader and a matchless soldier, that the wheels of the galaxy would stop turning without him, and so on. This is most clearly seen when comparing the Reaper who acts as the antagonist of Mass Effect 2, Harbinger, with Sovereign in the first game. When Shepard first encountered Sovereign in that game, it went like this:

"YOU ARE NOT SAREN." That says it all, really. Shepard? Who's that? Just some pitiful organic creature that is of no consequence whatsoever. It truly captures the feeling of conversing with some alien creature that is utterly beyond comprehension, and thus makes it all the more satisfying when you actually take said alien creature down during the endgame.

Mass Effect 2's Harbinger, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast. He isn't contemptuous or dismissive of humanity or Commander Shepard, but is instead obsessed with them. He opts to fight Shepard on foot, effectively lowering himself to Shepard's level. His ineffectiveness as a villain is only heightened by his constant stream of verbal taunts that he hurls towards Shepard, many of which have a (probably unintended) homoerotic tone to them. PRESERVE SHEPARD'S BODY IF POSSIBLE.

The third issue I have with the game is its treatment of female characters. The first woman we're introduced to is Miranda, and her appearance should lay to rest any doubts as to what demographic this game is aimed at. Not only does Miranda boast a figure that would shame a Barbie doll, she struts about in high heels and a skin-tight outfit, and the camera obligingly takes every opportunity to focus on her posterior.

Get used to seeing her from this angle

The other major female character is Jack, the violent, foul-mouthed ex-con who has a ridiculously traumatic past, but oh, she's just a scared little girl inside who's waiting for the right man to come along and shag all her problems away. That her character is a big walking cliche is bad enough, but her initial outfit is so thoroughly ridiculous that I can't help but chortle every time I see her.

She's essentially naked from the waist up, with only a thin strap covering her breasts. Ostensibly this is to show off her tattoos, but she goes on dressed like even when the bullets are flying, and even while in a vacuum! And you can't change your party member's armour like you could in the first game because it has, like every other RPG mechanic, been gutted from the game. It's important to contrast Mass Effect 2's handling of female characters to the first game; there, every female character remained fully clothed at all times, except for a bit of skin shown during the sex scene.

The rest of the party members feel like BioWare reached into a box labelled "Cliches," grabbed whatever they could get a hold of, and threw them into the game. The deadly assassin who actually has a heart beneath his cold exterior. The stoic veteran warrior. The grizzled mercenary. A bloodthirsty member of a proud warrior race. The only truly interesting character who's new to this game is Mordin Solus, the motor-mouthed salarian doctor who provides a good chunk the game's comedy. The romances (which, if you talk to BioWare fans, are the only apparent reason people play their games) are stunningly banal - Tali'Zorah is the sweet girl-next-door, Miranda is the tough hardass, Jack is the angry bitch who falls you into your arms after being subjected to your charms...these are the exact same romance archetypes that BioWare has been writing since Baldur's Gate 2. But at least that game required you to have some understanding of your love interest's personality, and gave the impression that you had forged a lasting relationship with that person. Mass Effect 2's romance arcs, on the other hand, come down to "You can talk to me five times, say the right thing three times and I'll love you forever!"

But enough about the story, what about the actual gameplay? Well, there's little to say, because it's all so dreadfully shallow and, like most games today, serves little purpose but to act as filler between the all-important cutscenes. Mass Effect 2 is long of fluff and painfully short on crunch. To sum up how the game actually plays, it's essentially a Gears of War-ish cover shooter with a slight amount (emphasis on "slight") of RPG elements mixed in. Actually, "Gears of War-ish" doesn't quite convey just how shamelessly this game apes Epic's formula, and worse, it doesn't even manage to emulate what made that game great.

For instance, Mass Effect 2 introduces an ammo system in the form of "Thermal Clips." In the first game, your weapons had unlimited ammunition, but if you kept firing for too long your weapon would overheat and you'd be forced to wait for it to cool down before you could use it again. The second game ditches that for "Thermal Clips" which somehow store the heat generated by your weapon until they reach capacity, at which point they have to be replaced before you can start firing again. In other words, a thinly-veiled magazine-based ammo system. The problem is, the amount of bullets you can put on target is substantially less with this system than in the first game, and so we're apparently expected to believe that, in the two years since the first game, every weapons manufacturer in the galaxy has decided to switch to a weapon design that is markedly worse. There are other lore issues with the Thermal Clips, such as how they're carried by creatures who would have no use for them, or how they're found on planets that have been out of contact with the galaxy for years.

But the biggest failing of Thermal Clips is just how plentiful they are, to the point where you'll almost never be strapped for ammo. This eliminates the entire purpose of having an ammo system in the first place, which is to limit the use of certain weapons and force the player to manage his resources. It's a weird sort of Cargo Cult imitation of a shooter, emulating the features of genre without understanding what the underlying purpose of those features are.

The level design is painfully simplistic, consisting linear corridors with combat zones clearly marked out by the presence of convenient waist-high obstacles to use as cover. The enemy AI is thoroughly brain-dead; in nearly every encounter its sole tactic is to move to a pre-defined position of cover, hide for a set number of seconds, shoot for a set number of seconds, then repeat the cycle ad infinitum. It won't try to flank you, flush you out, or even advance on your position, instead it simply moves to pre-programmed places based on where the developers predicted the player would be. As an experiment, I let my two part members get KO'd, then just sat in cover while the enemy ran through their shoot/hide cycle. I then left to make a cup of tea, and when I returned a few minutes later, nothing had changed - Shepard was still alive, and the enemies were still going through the same shoot/hide cycle. Playing as an Infiltrator, I quickly learned to equip my sniper rifle, aim at a point a foot or so above where the enemy was taking cover, then wait for the predictable moment when he sticks his head out and score an easy head shot. Using this method I was able to get through the vast majority of the game with ease, even whilst playing on the highest difficulty. I've heard BioWare fans calling this game's combat "insanely intense" which makes me wonder if this the first shooter they've ever played.

Yet my biggest issue with Mass Effect 2 is how it throws out nearly every RPG mechanic that its predecessor possessed, to the point where calling the game an "RPG" is a bare-faced lie. Oh sure, there's an XP and Level system which gives you skill points as you level up, but the actual skills are mostly irrelevant, such as "This power does 25% more damage!" or "This power lasts 25% longer!" Some of the skills are downright nonsensical, such as how switching ammo types is a now a skill that requires you to put points into. Really, BioWare? "Put bullets into gun" is something Shepard has to work at? (And when he gets really good at it, he can put bullets into other peoples' guns!) Effectively, each Level Up merely lets you kill the same enemies faster, instead of taking on previously-unbeatable foes as it would in a proper RPG. As evidence, Shepard kills an YMIR mech at Level 2, and YMIR mechs are some of the toughest foes you face, often used as bosses. You could even beat the final boss at Level 2, if you could reach it. Worse, main story missions always give you a heap of XP, even if they're exceedingly easy, whereas sidequests give you a pittance, even when they're difficult. The end result is that the difference in levels between a Shepard who did everything and a Shepard who only did the main story quests is negligible, which only serves to rub in your face how utterly irrelevant the whole level system is. BioWare might as well have just given the player a skill point for every main mission and been done with it.

You can customise your armour, but it's largely pointless, as the shield and health bonuses are so small as to be entirely unnoticeable in combat.

The removal of RPG mechanics doesn't end there, however. The first Mass Effect was roundly criticised for its horrendously clunky inventory system and its planetary exploration segments, which involved driving the finicky Mako through ridiculously-mountainous terrain. Fans of the sequel assert that it "solved all the problems" of the first game, but it did nothing of the sort. Mass Effect 2 doesn't fix features, it removes them. Didn't like the first game's inventory? Now there's no inventory! Didn't like exploring planets in the Mako? Now there's no exploration whatsoever! Oh, but there is the dreaded planet scanning, where you however a cursor over a 3D globe and scan it for minerals, which is every bit as exciting as it sounds. Minerals can be used to create upgrades for weapons, armour, biotics, and that sort of things, but unlike the upgrades in the first game, these ones are totally linear in progression and require no thought put into them whatsoever.

The dumbing down doesn't end there. The first Mass Effect had a number of interesting side-quests, such as tracking down a rogue AI on the Citadel, trying to defuse a hostage situation with terrorists, or finding out what went happened to some derelict spacecraft. The side-quests of Mass Effect 2 are largely shallow and forgettable, such as finding a fish for a krogan on the Citadel, or dealing with an asari who's bothered by her boyfriend reciting bad poetry.

Now I'm aware by this point that some irate BioWare fan is going, "Mass Effect 2 isn't your grandfather's RPG with dice rolls and skills checks and all that stupid old crap! It's an RPG because I'M CHOOSING DIALOGUE AND MAKING CHOICES AND ROLEPLAYING!!!" (Believe me, these ignorant yobs infest the official BioWare forums like a plague). The problem with this argument is that RPGs are all about the separation of the player's qualities from those of his character, because your character isn't merely an avatar for your own skill and abilities (as it is in most games), but an entirely separate entity, with his or her own qualities, and whose role your assume during the course of the game. And those "stupid old crap" RPG mechanics did a pretty good job of separating the character's skills from the player's. Commander Shepard, on the other hand, is little more than an avatar for the player. He cannot succeed or fail independently of the player. He has no intrinsic qualities that game recognises in any form.

Shepard's gender? Doesn't determine anything except your love interest. His class? All it does is determine how you kill enemies; there are no class-specific quests or dialogue options. His background? It gets brought up in one conversation with Miranda and Jacob and is never mentioned again. His skills, as a mentioned earlier, are largely irrelevant, and affect nothing outside of combat. His choices and dialogue options, and his resulting Paragon/Renegade score, don't matter in the slightest; as an experiment, I played one Shepard that was 100% Paragon, and the other was 100% Renegade. Both got the same quests, had the same outcomes, had the same equipment, and had the exact same endings. No doors opened or closed, no paths were made available or locked off, and nothing substantial changed. The only measurable difference was that one Shepard had Samara as a party member, while the other had Morinth, and even then the whole crew of my ship thought that Morinth was Samara, just to ensure that my decision had no real consequence at all.

Nothing about my Shepard mattered at all, and Mass Effect 2 plays largely the same regardless of what qualities you want to imagine the player character to have. This is not an Role-playing Game, because the character of Shepard is never defined, no role is ever assumed, and the world doesn't ever react to his characteristics in any meaningful way. At most you might pretend that your Shepard has certain qualities, but if all you're doing is pretending, then you're into computer LARPing land, not CPRGs. What Mass Effect 2 is, to put it bluntly, Gears of War with a dialogue wheel.

But more broadly, Mass Effect 2 is a disappointment. I purchased the game thinking it would be a sci-fi RPG like the first game, and what a I got was a mediocre shooter that took everything unique about its predecessor and flushed it away. What we were left with just another sci-fi action game in the vein of Halo or Gears of War, albeit with BioWare's "brilliant" writing atop it. Yet in spite of its mediocrity, the game isn't nearly as godawful as Mass Effect 3, a game so thoroughly wretched it inspired people to vote EA as the worst company in America...and that's saying something!

With this game, BioWare moved firmly away from the RPG camp and joined Bethesda as purveyors of what I call "Pseudo-RPGs" - titles that might have some superficial RPG mechanics on the surface, but underneath are simply shooters or action/adventure games. They're RPGs for people who hate RPGs, yet insist on playing them for whatever reason. But given how crowded (and thoroughly tired) the shooter genre is, this is a path to utter irrelevancy. If you want to examine the history of BioWare and determine where the rot set in, then look no further than Mass Effect 2.