Mass Effect 2

I beat Mass Effect 2 the other day. I ranted about this game last week before it was released, and my expectations were entirely met. I can probably say that this was the best game I've ever played. There are some fans here and there who don't like the changes that were made, specifically to combat (no more infinite ammo? outrageous!), but those people are actually just retards who can't accept any sort of changes, whether they're good or not.

The point of the game is to travel across the galaxy gathering an elite strike team, consisting only of the best of the best that the universe has to offer. You and your team will then make a jump to the enemy "home base" -- the threat to all life in the galaxy -- in order to destroy it. Possibly the most important aspect of all is this game's emotional impact on you. You get to know these people through your conversations with them, the favors you do for each other, and possibly the romances you have with each other. It gets very personal. Every one of these people have their own unique stories, and you get really attached to them.


You and your team have accepted that this is a suicide mission. It's possible for teammates to die on it. All of them can die. Or, none of them. It's completely open ended, any single one of them can bite the dust. It all depends on your actions and what you did to prepare for it. The final mission is really intense and gutwrenching, because I was forced to decide which teammates should be assigned to specific roles, knowing full well that the ones I chose could die. The team members who I knew could get the job done were also the ones I felt most attached to, and it tore me up making decisions that could send the people I trusted the most to their deaths.

If any person died, I would consider the mission a failure, so I was really super careful with all my preparations leading up to it. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that my main man Garrus had been shot in the stomach, but he just shrugged it off and kept on fighting. He survived a missile blast straight to the face earlier in the game, so he's a tough sonuva bitch. For my second playthrough, my renegade character, I was planning on having every single person die on the final mission, because that backstory for the third game would be just so fucking epic -- me, alone, the sole survivor of the suicide mission that saved the galaxy. But I can't do it. I can't kill Garrus. He is one of two characters who's been with you since the first game. We just have too much history, I can't end a hardcore motherfucker like him.



I did end up losing someone though, and I felt absolutely terrible about it. And the story continues beyond whichever ending you get; when my saved game is imported into Mass Effect 3, I'll never be able to see what happens to that person who died. I'll never be able to fight alongside her again. I felt like shit. I realize I could just do it over to make sure I don't lose anyone, but I feel like that would be cheating. I want to live with my mistakes godammit, this is my story. And an epic opera where no one dies is just boring.



Should you choose to cheat on your significant other from the first game, there are six romance choices for you. Three if you're male, three if you're female. You want the cold hearted hot-as-fuck ice queen? Go for Miranda. This is the person who died at the end of my game.



You want the fucked up psychopath who was abused, tortured, and experimented on as a child? Congratulations, you demented fuck, you're going to bang Subject Zero.



Me? I went for Tali. She's a returning squad mate from the first game. You weren't able to romance her then, but Bioware is really good with fan feedback, and they took notice of how many nerds developed crushes on her. So they made her an option this time around. She's strong-willed, extremely intelligent, you have no idea what she looks like, and having any sort of physical contact could kill her, as her species has lost its immune system. But I don't care, because love knows no bounds. Oh, Tali <3



It angers me that video games are rarely taken seriously as an art medium. I don't think any other game series has had this much impact on me. I feel like that's a little sad, but then I remember how attached people can get to books or TV shows. This isn't any different from Battlestar Galactica or Star Wars (in more ways than one, elements and plots in ME2 seem to be borrowed from each). Just watch this, you may get an idea of why I find this series so god damn amazing.