Hm, maybe video games kinda suck sometimes. This shit is so much duller than I remember it being. So, I like to think that when I discuss my feelings on a game, I'm less just listing out thoughts on what makes a game holistically good or bad or whatever and more what I feel a game is trying to accomplish, how it accomplishes that, and how it either does or does not rise above its own missteps and failures. Mass Effect 2 is a much more competent game than its predecessor; it has a consistent and fun flow to its core gameplay and its script and scenarios show an increased level of polish and a clear dedication to their individual crafts when compared to the first game. Femshep's voice actress, Jennifer Hale, is giving the performance of her life, and the same could be said for much of the rest of cast. Mass Effect 2's got so much going for it, but I hate to say it: it's actually not that incredibly different from BioWare's more modern output. There's way more shades of Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda being expressed here than most people are willing to admit.

And like those games, Mass Effect 2 goes down pretty fuckin' smooth! Cuz it's designed to do so! And I ain't gonna bury the lede any further: Mass Effect 2 is basically just a serial cop drama with a sci-fi backdrop. Like sure, the overarching narrative is a cross between Ocean's 11 and Armageddon with Final Fantasy VI level ambitions in terms of its cast and general scope, but the vast majority of the individual pieces of the story aren't that functionally different from something you'd see on CSI or any of those other types of cheap ass police shows. I actually don't know the names of any of them, but I've had family members who fucking loved that kinda garbage so I'm familiar with the tropes and inner workings and how obsessed they are with glorifying violence when it's performed by The Good Guys against Caricatures of Evil. But uh, I guess it's not a wholly bad thing in the context of Mass Effect 2?

It does give it something to aim for, it gives it a structure and a sort of shitty comfort food vibe cuz everything that's happening is giving you the same stupid fuzzy feelings that Cop Show That's On One Of Those Pointless Basic Cable Channels gives you, and I guess the new kinds of racism it's inventing thanks to the sci-fi backdrop (the stereotyping is at least less monotone compared to the first game, I don't know whether to count that as praise or its own form of greater condemnation) aren't actually that significantly based on real life groups or anything. But it does cheapen a lot of the drama since so much of what's going on has nonsensical stakes or requires you to be EXTREMELY narc-brained to give a shit about what's going on. Like, did I really need to kill 250 drug dealers in a construction site just to get the name of a single ship? The game tries to find ways to make it all seem justified by characterizing every end of level boss as comically evil or dangerously stupid, but it's running on the same exact kind of warped internal logic as so many other films and TV shows that dedicate themselves to the fetishization of police violence and/or vigilante justice. I suppose there's maybe a way to make that format work (maybe something closer to Cowboy Bebop), but Mass Effect 2 in particular plays it particularly close to its copaganda roots, and I'm not sure it's an aspect that's easy to overlook when it infects what could otherwise be interesting sci-fi concepts or compelling character moments.

I wanna clarify that this isn't a value judgment against anybody who has fun with this game, I actually enjoy the gameplay an embarrassing amount (I LOVE SMASHING INTO THE BAD GUYS WITH THE SPACE MAGIC TACKLE AND PUNCHING THEM), but with a cast like this there was so much more potential here. You have Shepard basically being taken hostage by a human-essentialist, extremist corporation, and it just doesn't do a whole lot to criticize the systems that make the galaxy work the way it does. It's just like, "Yep, this is [INSERT ALIEN PLANET HERE], it's just like [WORSE ALIEN PLANET] even if it SEEMS nicer," and there's just no follow up to those thoughts. Why is the galaxy like this? How do the world-based power structures co-exist with the galaxy-based ones? Give me some like morally dubious space corporations and ideological perspectives to lend this story some oomph; it wants to suggest there's more going on here without putting in the work (probably illustrated the best by the childishly conceptualized machinations of the Shadow Broker in the Shadow Broker DLC).

Why is slavery so fucking prevalent in an age with such prominent technological advances? How do governments fail to manage so many other acts of criminality in an age of such plentiful resources, yet they have such a tight clamp on other illegal activities, such as the creation and proliferation of AI? Again, not really smart enough or articulate enough myself to express my true frustrations at the core of this here (and some of it is just nitpicking). And it'd be one thing if Mass Effect were just a series about wahoo space adventures yay, but it's not! It's trying to be more than that, and it's such an unimaginative conceptualization of a future space-faring civilization consisting of uncountable amounts of sapient species.

Anyways, the real issue is Femshep can't date Jack. I get it was a kneejerk reaction due to the conservative backlash the first game faced (the alien sex in Mass Effect 1 isn't even good or cool so who even cares), but that just makes it even lamer. Cowardly ass pussy shit. You cannot put a pansexual nonbinary woman this fucking cool into a video game, make it so she literally has a history with multiple genders, and then also make her not dateable by the woman main character when the man main character can. At the end of the day I probably don't actually care that much because dating in video games is rarely that interesting to me anyways (like I said in my BG3 review, I'd much rather see a carefully constructed romance over one with a player avatar), but I'm taking it personally anyways. Also, I wish Garrus was in a good video game because he's one of the coolest characters ever and one of the few men I'd almost considering dating (a list that is comprised entirely of fictional men), I'd treat him like the princess he deserves to be treated as. <3

Now, Thane I can get into as well. His whole backstory and personality is a lil on the corny side, but idk I like him. I'd say most of the rest of the cast gives me a headache cuz they talk like side characters from Firefly or something, and lemme just say, I fucking hate anything that reminds me of Firefly. Cowboy Bebop if you wanted it to be extra annoying. Anyways, not sure where this particular paragraph is going. Oh, I really like Legion too, but it's extremely hard to make me hate a robot (Mass Effect 3 does actually manage to make me hate a robot though). Also, The Illusive Man: down to his name, he feels like a 7 year old's idea of what an evil guy is; he's kinda just a nothing character -- as much as the game tries to convince you otherwise. The Collectors have cool designs, but much like the Geth and the Reapers, they're pretty much just sci-fi versions of Tolkien's orcs, just without the weird racist undertones. Finding the positives!

The suicide mission aspect is both the most compelling thing about the game and the most mundane. It really just comes down to doing all the loyalty missions and googling the best set up for the mission itself. It makes one of the most innovative aspects of the game's open-ended structure into a math problem. I don't even have a solution to share, but it would maybe feel less stupid if we didn't have a game after this where major characters dying has a pretty big impact on how enjoyable the narrative is. You really do not want characters like Garrus, Mordin, Legion, or Thane eating shit here! It makes the next game worse! It's also just tonally a little off; I don't think throwing a bunch of potential major character deaths into the endgame leads to a very compelling narrative. The final boss is pretty cool though, like it's stupid as fuck, but I enjoy looking at cool robot skeletons so I'm pretty biased.

I'm not sure if I'm feeling this one as much as I used to. Still a guilty pleasure of sorts, but it's way easier to see this for what it is nowadays, and I think how willing you are to overlook what it is is gonna largely depend on you as a person. And maybe also how much you want to fuck Garrus? Not many other games that let you have sex with cricket men, so it's got that going for it, I guess. At this point it's possible I'll end up liking Mass Effect 3 the most, but I'm not holding my breath, I probably just don't fuck with this series at all anymore if I had to guess. Depends how Whedon-esque the Citadel DLC feels this time around; we'll both just have to find out next time...