Mass Effect 2 Reviews
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ME2 manages to be a bad story well written. It improves on its predecessor (and the genre as a whole) in a number of ways. The individual elements like the characters or the dialogue are truly superlative: Comparisons with 'leading lights' like PS:T or VtmB would not be hyperbole. ME2 could have been one of the best story-driven games ever.
But it's not, and the reason why it's not is because the actual story is a poorly hashed together pretence to hang off a number of set pieces against an unnecessarily uninspiring antagonist. Given the mismatch by the painstaking efforts put into these elements and the shambolic nature of the central plot arc, I wonder if BioWare started making the central elements or party member plot arcs before really hammering out the central storyline. Because of this, ME2 is an opportunity squandered.
And then Spiderweb's Jeff Vogel joins the fray with a "quick late review":
I had a lot of fun playing the game. The zappy zappy was good. But that quest really put a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the game, and this isn't like God of War, where the story is only a vague backdrop for the hacking. Bioware is known for story, and they took a seriously wrong step here. If you want to cover this sort of material, fine. But treat it with respect, don't just make it a little side quest meant to make things all edgy, and certainly don't expect the player to continue to support the organization that created the horrors in the first place. As someone who sometimes takes games seriously as an art form, it's embarrassing.
Also, if you are forced to have these yahoos on your ship, "helping you", asking for favors, and bugging you with their issues, you should always have the option of feeding them into the mass-energy reactor. Hey, your ship has to be fueled somehow.
