Mass Effect 2 Reviews: Game of the Year Chatter Starts Now

Mass Effect 2 is out today, and if the reviews are spot-on, Xbox 360 owners and PC gamers would be doing themselves a disservice by not picking it up. We’re not even through January, and some critics reckon they’ve got a game of the year on their hands. “So, Mass Effect 2 is easily my favorite game on 360, probably my game of the year, and in my top 5. Yep. In January,” Mitch Dyer, who writes for GamePro and Official Xbox Magazine, wrote on Twitter. My buddy Eddie Inzauto, director of GamerNode, has been raving about the game for days. Formal reviews are just as bubbly.

“It may only be January, but Mass Effect 2 is already a serious contender for game of the year,” Greg Howson writes in The Guardian. “Despite all of the ways Mass Effect 2 is more engaging to play and explore, after 35 remarkable hours it was the characters that stayed with us,” writes Games(TM). “Game of the year in January? Oh, go on then.”

The game wins on its combination of decision-based storytelling and straight-up action. Both of these aspects were refined from the original game, placing more emphasis on duck-and-cover shooting without sacrificing the character building you find in an RPG. What most impresses me is the separation of your “Paragon” and “Renegade” meters — measurements of morality — into two separate gauges rather than one slider. That means your decisions allow for a more complex character than in the first game.

So, is there anything wrong with Mass Effect 2, which has a score of 97 on Metacritic? Howson complains of some technical issues, such as long load times and hard-to-read text. GameSpot says scanning planets can be tedious, and notes that there are some glitches and bugs, but doesn’t get into specifics. But when a game spins a great yarn and provides lots of trigger-pumping action, those nags are easy to overlook.