Platform: PlayStation 3
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Mass Effect 2 is a science fiction third-person shooter with roleplaying elements, those being six character classes that all play differently, a variety of selectable powers as you level up, squad mates who follow you around and who also level up, and lots and lots of good interactive, talky plot in between the gunfights. The story revolves around Commander Shepard, the first human inducted into the mostly alien galactic government’s interstellar peacekeepers. He’s trying to counter the machinations of a race of sentient starships that, every 50,000 years, sweep in from the dark space between galaxies and harvest all sentient life (they have been repeating this cycle for at least 37 million years). You can choose Shepard’s gender and appearance, but I recommend playing a female Shepard because the voice acting is better.
This game came out for the Xbox 360 last year and won a ton of awards. Now it’s available on the PS3. I wrote a review of the Xbox 360 version for viceland.com that’s about 5,000 words long, which should give you an idea of how much I like this game. The PS3 version is basically the same thing, plus all the DLC scenarios so far. What it doesn’t include is the ability to import a saved file from the first Mass Effect, because that game never came out on the PS3. If you have Cerberus Network access, however, it provides you with an interactive motion comic that lets you make certain story choices from the first game that carry through and effect the plot of the second.
(Cerberus Network is a set of downloadable content unlocked by a one-time code that comes with new copies of the game. People who buy used copies can purchase Cerberus Network access for $10. It includes the motion comic, some guns, a new character, and a set of missions with a hovertank.)
The PS3 edition comes with three extra scenarios, all of which are sold as downloadable content on the Xbox 360 version too:
“Kasumi: Stolen Memory” introduces a new squadmate, the thief Kasumi Goto, and includes one mission specific to her, in which she and Shepard infiltrate the mansion of a rich arms dealer during a party. It’s very James Bond-ish, and puts you in situations where you’re mingling with guests and slipping in and out of secured areas unnoticed.
“Overlord” is about four missions worth of content in which you investiage a remote Cerberus research station where a hybrid artificial intelligence has gone crazy and killed everyone. It includes four locations spread across a big map that you navigate in the hovertank. A recent patch fixed the frame-rate issues the initial PS3 release suffered, but there’s still some bizarrely low-resolution textures that weren’t present in the Xbox 360 version. It’s probably the weakest of the three additional scenarios, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it.
“Lair of the Shadow Broker” is another three or four missions’ worth of content focusing on Liara, an optional love interest from the first game (the blue alien girl). She temporarily joins you to take down the Shadow Broker, an information dealer with ties to the sequel’s villains—one of the loose ends who is also from the previous game. This is the strongest of the new scenarios, with the best plot and most varied scenery.
The only downside to Mass Effect 2 on PS3 is that I don’t think it’s a perfect cross-platform conversion. It’s a bit buggier than the Xbox 360 version (it froze up on me completely once), some of the textures don’t seem as sharp, and the loading times are noticeably longer. If you only have a PS3, by all means get this because it’s fucking great. But if you own both systems, the Xbox 360 version is probably the one to grab, even if it costs extra money for all the DLC. Also, the motion comic isn’t available for the Xbox 360 version yet, but you can always go back and play the first one and import a saved file without it feeling like a chore because that game is also great.
Mass Effect 2
