Mass Effect 2 was easily my pick for Game of the Year 2010. The game took everything that was done wrong in the first entry and made it right and took everything that was done right and made it better. The game set the bar for what an action RPG should be at that point in time, but one year later, how does the beloved BioWare title hold up on the second playthrough? We’ll tackle this and more as we go ahead and play it again.

This time around, I decided to play in a very different style to what I used the first time. Not only did I go down the path of the Renegade commander, rather than the Paragon of my first playthrough, but I also did a lot less dilly-dallying this time around. My first time through, I spent 54 hours making my way through the story with no downloadable content. This second time, it only took me 42 hours, including all DLC.

The first thing you notice about a game like Mass Effect 2, which is over a year old at this point, is that the graphics still look great for the most part. Sure, various advances have been made in the visual department of the video game collective, but Mass Effect 2 has held up very well, particularly during CGI scenes. The character models can look a little awkward during conversation sequences, especially when trying to emphasize through hand movements, but all in all, the game still looks great.

Playing through as a Renegade gave me a vastly different experience. Instead of always agreeing with the Illusive Man or letting my crew walk all over me, I would argue, disagree, and make others fear me as much as they respect me. It felt much more… real. It really felt like the way things should be handled by a strong commander such as Shepard.

One thing that caught me off-guard when I first starting playing was how great the gun play was. The quantum leap that occurred from the first installment in the series to Mass Effect 2 is just unbelievable. The teamwork is also great. The Artificial Intelligence leaves a bit to be desired at times, but it is still beyond other games that have been released much more recently.

The character import functionality still blows me away. The way that BioWare implemented the decisions and relationships you made in your playthrough of the original Mass Effect was just genius. I cannot even begin to fathom how BioWare is going to work Mass Effect 3, as the choices in Mass Effect 2 are so much more consequential and encompassing than they were in the first title. If BioWare can pull this off, it might be some of the most clever game design we’ve ever seen.

Unfortunately, some of the polish has been diminished from my rose-colored glasses-filtered-memories. I had to restart several missions due to Shepard getting stuck, or because all enemies had been defeated, but the next event was no automatically triggered. A very strange glitch occurred one time where Zaeed and Miranda (my squad mates) would finish each other’s sentences during gameplay for the entire mission. While this would serve as an excellent spark to a relationship in a Rom-Com, in Mass Effect 2, it was highly annoying. Luckily it only occurred during one mission and never again.

As mentioned before, this time around I had all of the downloadable content, so I went ahead and tackled those additions to the storyline. Unsurprisingly, the “Lair of the Shadow Broker” was by far the most exciting and enjoyable piece. The creativity put into and amount of information on the Mass Effect mythology gained from this mission was immense and worth the purchase price for any Mass Effect fan, such as myself.

“Kasumi’s Stolen Memory” was, in my mind, vastly underrated. The different pacing of going into a party and schmoozing with the enemy rather than kicking down the door, guns drawn, was a welcome change. The whole mission felt like it was taken out of a futuristic James Bond film and is certainly recommended for purchase right after the “Lair of the Shadow Broker” mission.

Not all of the downloadable content is recommendable, however. The most recent DLC, “Arrival” was fairly disappointing on all fronts. Perhaps the release being so far removed from the time that most people completed the game led the story and design of this mission to attract that same sense of detachment. The design felt uninspired and really led to a mediocre experience. The only rewarding part of the “Arrival” DLC was the final stretch where you must blast through some seriously strong enemy waves and complete the mission with an ominous conversation foreshadowing the events of Mass Effect 3.

If you’re a member of the “Cerberus Network,” you have access to a bunch of free DLC. Surprisingly, most of this DLC is well worth your time downloading the pack and playing through. “Zaeed: The Price of Revenge” worked well within the story, and the “Normandy Crash Site,” while inconsequential, was an emotional tribute to the ship used in the first Mass Effect. Unfortunately, the free piece of content that showed the most promise, the “Firewalker Pack,” which re-introduces vehicles into the Mass Effect series after the Mako travesty of the first game, falls flat and instills no sense of needing to play the missions aside from a variance in the gameplay. The vehicle is much more controllable this time around, however, and since it’s free, there’s no reason to not download and try it out for yourself.

Everything about Mass Effect 2 shows that it could be a new release that came out this week. I’ve yet to play the Playstation 3 version, but I understand it’s a bit more polished, which is something I’d really like to see. Mass Effect is an obviously ambitious franchise. Its depth of mythology rivals fellow sci-fi franchise, Star Wars, and it’s control scheme is able to stand toe-to-toe with any game in the business. Replaying the game more than a year after release only served to further the idea that Mass Effect 2 might be the greatest game of this console generation.

Play-It-Again Reviews are written once a favorite game is replayed after some time has passed after release. The object is to see if it still holds the same meaning now that the industry has progressed and if the fond memories still hold up.

Written by Brian Shea  (410 Posts)

Obsessed with music and video games, associate editor Brian Shea has worked for several different rock music and gaming sites over the course his writing career. He contributes such regular features to VGW as “Shea’s Say” and “Essential Gaming." He also co-hosts VGW's "Unlimited Ammo" podcast. Follow him on Twitter for opinions, rants, and an occasional awful joke.