Review by: Danielle Riendeau

One of the best games of 2010, Mass Effect 2 is late to the PlayStation party, but makes quite the entrance. With all of the DLC included, as well as an interactive motion comic that fills in the Mass Effect back-story for first-timers, this is the most complete package that PS3 gamers could hope for.

When ME2 came out last year, I had no idea what the buzz was about. I had missed the first game in 2007, and picked up the second on a whim – in fact, I borrowed it. It blew me away so completely – with incredible characters, a rich, fascinating sci-fi world and incredibly fun shooter/RPG gameplay – that I went back and played through the first title, then took a second turn through ME2, to get the full picture.

It’s unfortunate that PS3 gamers don’t have that luxury (as ME1 is unavailable on the system), since nearly every major decision made in the first game affects the characters and scenarios in the second. To remedy this, Bioware has included a Dark Horse-produced interactive comic that highlights the main story points and allows players to make all of those life-or-death (or love life-related) decisions, to carry over into their ME2 experience.

It’s actually a pretty well implemented fix (especially since you’ll be saved the pain of playing through the jank-tastic vehicle sections of the game proper), though a fifteen-minute highlight reel hardly does justice to the epic scope of the narrative.

The game itself is intact and as fantastic as ever. You play as Commander Shepard, a badass lady/dude who’s been around the galaxy and saved humanity’s ass a time or two. You begin the game by dying in a dramatic spaceship-downing event, only to be saved by the shadowy Cerberus Corporation, the only human group that knows just how nasty a threat the reapers (terrifying space monsters that can wipe out the galaxy) really are. It’s up to you to assemble a dream team of soldiers, scientists and mercenaries to go take the fight into reaper territory.

Gameplay is organized into recruiting missions, loyalty missions (one for each teammate) and story missions. You’ll spend most of your time dealing death to baddies in typical cover based shooter fashion, with a tasty layer of RPG on top. Upon starting up, you’ll pick a basic character type and earn experience points to level up your unique abilities – basically, the sci-fi version of spells that you’ll cast in battle. It’s fast and frenetic, with plenty of “hacking” mini-games, character interaction, and the occasional boss fight to keep things moving.