Hm, maybe video games kinda suck sometimes. This shit is so much duller than I remembered. 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 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 Broke DLC).

Why is slavery so fucking prevalent in an age with such prominent technological advances? How do governments not manage so many other acts of criminality yet they have such a tight clamp on other illegal activities, such as the creation and proliferation of AI? Again, not really smart or articulate enough to express my true frustrations at the core of this here (and some of it is just nitpicking). But 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 against the conservative backlash against the first game (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. Though Manshep can't have sex with Garrus though, so maybe it's bad actually. 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 actually hate these games a little bit now. Guess it depends how Whedon-esque the Citadel DLC feels this time around; we'll both just have to find out next time...

I'm fairly hesitant to label any sort of game as a "proof of concept" or "exists so better games can exist later", but in the case of Mass Effect, I don't feel too bad putting it down like that, at least a little bit. Especially since at the exact same time, it's a conceptually decadent and ambitious title; it's just those ambitions seem to mostly comprise of a) can BioWare make a cinematic RPG with meaningful decisions, b) can they build themselves out of their primarily CRPG branding, and c) can they make a Halo RPG out of that RPG framework they're largely familiar with? And did they succeed? No, kind of, and just barely (respectively). But it's kinda fuckin' awesome anyways? Like corny dialogue sputtered out by characters that barely scrape by in terms of likeability, nonsensical plot progression that was clearly smashed into the plot so that there were "big choices" to make (seriously, most of the big choices in the game don't even parse as natural dilemmas), and increasingly nasty post-9/11 politics aside, it somehow works.

Though from the outset, the presentational and narrative cracks are glaringly obvious: BioWare still hasn't quite figured out how to make humans in HD games not look like they're from the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World, none of the characters in the tutorial level act like actual humans (my favorite is the guy who dies two seconds into the story because he ran in front of a laser and then the characters are really sad about it later), AND we're introduced to the main attraction of the first Mass Effect game: extensive environmental asset reuse!!! The last one I suppose is a nitpick, but it's def pretty nauseating at times. Sometimes it gives off this charming early sixth gen console vibe (particularly in the "lower levels" of the Citadel with the mood lighting), but like, surely we can do better than Halo: Combat Evolved when it comes to natural corridoring...

And it's not even like the corridors necessarily benefit the combat, since 50% of the terrain is buggy as fuck and doesn't even effectively work as cover a lot of the time. Not to mention enemy attack patterns are either obnoxiously timid to the point you're better off running up to them behind their cover and punching them to death instead, or so aggressive that I'm genuinely not sure what you're supposed to do in some combat scenarios except hope you can kill all the big guys before they walk up to you and fatally bludgeon you, all while not being evaporated by one of the many one hit kill projectiles that exist in the game. The party member AI also makes Donald and Goofy seem genuinely well programmed, but I honestly don't even care I think it's funny watching Wrex and Garrus shoot at ceilings.

There was a point towards the end of the game where I just said fuck it and switched to casual mode because I was tired of the kitchen sink approach to combat design that made every encounter in the endgame a slog. It's not even like you haven't already fought these guys a billion times already; literally the only enemy types in the game are geth and zombie dudes. Even the shitty car levels that they forgot to put meaningful gameplay expression into have you fighting the geth almost exclusively. Which kinda makes sense when you finally realize that outside of the beginning and the end of the game, pretty much nothing happens. That sort of shortcoming isn't exactly unique to this entry of the series in particular, but every piece of content and setpiece fails to distinguish itself enough to overcome it. There isn't even what I'd consider meaningful character development outside of maybe Wrex and Garrus (does Ashley become not racist, I forget).

And really, it just never escapes that "elongated prologue" feeling, and maybe that's not fair to say, especially if you were to treat Mass Effect 1 as a sort of "lesser" A New Hope -- but even then in the same way A New Hope was a later retitling of the original Star Wars, the first Mass Effect only gains purpose through its sequels. I've played this game multiple times, and I still get Feros and Noveria's plotlines confused -- because they're mostly just the same thing (corporation fucks up and deadly lab experiments get loose and also the geth are there for some reason too. Though in Feros's defense, BioWare copied the Halo 2 bridge level to mix that one up). That isn't to say the planets in the main story don't have their standout moments, but they all kind of blur together into a frustrating mush of nouns and philosophical concepts and the worst Halo: Combat Evolved warthog levels you could ever imagine. The Rachni Queen part is pretty cool though, even if it's preceded by one of the flattest scenes in the game between Liara and her mom. Yeah, uh, totally feel the familial connection between these two (???). At least it makes me laugh every time?

Though probably the most dire aspect of the first Mass Effect's plot focus is how much it focuses on humans and the borderline phrenological differences between the other species in the galaxy. Like, I get it, the aliens in Mass Effect are effectively just BioWare's own amalgamation of space-flavored DnD and Star Trek races, but the characters are REALLY pigeonholed into their individual archetypes in this one. Krogans are stupid jocks, quarians are nerds who love bionicles (I'll give this one a pass), and asari were clearly designed by the type of dude who gets performatively horny when he sees two women kissing (my tummy hurts after typing that one out, but it's true I fear). Turians and salarians are really the only race to be given multiple facets, and those facets at least make some amount of sense within the setting since they feel largely cultural and not a preordained natural order of sorts. I know the future games do a lot to alleviate these complaints, but it's still super weird going back to the first game and seeing Wrex talk about how there aren't krogan scientists. Like, that makes no fuckin' sense for a relatively advanced species that requires its own modern needs to not have scientists!!! I'm not even like, mad, it's just goofy as hell. lol

And I guess that leads me into the politics of Mass Effect, which I know, fucking yawn. But it's so interesting how much of the 9/11-era zeitgeist is slathered all over this game. The funniest/saddest example is when terrorists (a specific race of aliens who are always terrorists/slavers) hijack an asteroid (lol), and Shepard has a philosophical debate with their leader where they talk down to them about how violence isn't the answer (there's also an option to blame them for their own oppression, wow!). And I mean, Shepard is technically right in the context of Mass Effect's universe, the batarians are seemingly biologically predisposed to be evil slavers! But like what does that even fucking say, it's so boring. How did they make an asteroid being hijacked boring. I don't know, I'm not smart enough to talk about the broader real world implications of mid-to-late 00s military video games' political inclinations, but I am a 32 year old woman from the Midwest, and I grew up in that era where entire countries of people in the Middle East and Asia were considered ontologically evil by the adults around me -- it's such a sickening way to view the world, and even the Bush-era liberals who probably made this game had their brains poisoned by that rhetoric (though it doesn't help that this was also the era where Halo was bigger than Mario, and Halo might actually be way worse about it from what I remember).

Okay, time for that obligatory part of my review where I talk about gay shit. It's disappointing that the remaster didn't find a way to implement more gay romance options, MLMs are completely fucked here, but honestly the romance options in this aren't great for anybody. I def know some women who are prolly into Kaiden, but even if I was feeling desperate enough for a het romance, he's just such a cold cheese sandwich of a person that I'm super turned off by him. Liara's romance is so unnatural and awkward, and it sucks that it's the only meaningful WLW option in the trilogy until the third title (I'm going to complain so much about Jack not being romanceable by femshep in the Mass Effect 2 review). I haven't actually talked to Ashley since my first playthrough in like 2012 or whatever, but I'm sure there's plenty of weird racist dudes who love that they can date a Fox News host in their space adventure game. Honestly like, I won't pretend Tali is much more interesting than Liara in Mass Effect 1, but I really would've been down to have her as a romantic option for femshep. Mostly unrelated, but is Tali transfemme-coded in anybody else's brain. She'd def be on twitter.com with "she/it" in her profile. Maybe I'm too far gone.

Though really, there ain't nothing quite like this game, or this series; at least until Baldur's Gate 3 came out last year and proved that AAA game devs can do this sorta thing again under the right conditions. Even if the game is a mess and its messaging is overwhelming problematic at times, and even if it's self-important in a grotesquely unearned manner, I can't bring myself to outright hate Mass Effect. Is it good? Nope! Is it bad? Yeah, a little bit, especially when you look at the abysmally implemented side quest content -- everything in this game feels like it's DLC, is the only way I can think to describe it. But, I don't know, it kinda rules. In my fucked up and terrible mind, this is a game I'd say people should play with an open mind, cuz they really ain't getting this sort of experience from any other series out there.

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i was originally gonna do the entire legendary edition in one review, but i have so much to say about these games that I'm opting to separate them. and like, even though i'd never consider them among my favorite games, there's so many ways in which they could've been among my favorites