Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2: The Comparison

Mass Effect and its sequel are both amazing, but as someone who played the games one right after another it’s safe to say that they have some distracting differences. I wanted to take a look at the both of them, compare some major changes and the versions I like better. These are the biggest changes that affected me, and hey, maybe Bioware will incorporate the ones I prefer into the third game! A girl can dream.  

Battle System

It took me forever to get used to the battle system in the first game so jumping into a different one was pretty devastating for a gun rookie. I preferred the overheating to the bullets but after a while I stopped noticing. My one main concern was with the way Shepard would die. The whole veiny red screen as you get hit more addition was the most infuriating. I know this is a staple of many shooter games because it’s “more realistic” or whatever, but it really caused me to die a lot more than I would have without it. Plus I’m not looking for 100% realism in a game with aliens and space travel. Let me see the screen! Also I was really bad at pressing A twice, which would cause me to jump over whatever I was hiding behind which would mean I’d get shot a lot and my screen would go red and I’d die. This has caused me to say many bad words. I have made baby Jesus cry more than once.

Romance

Mass Effect 2 wins this one for sure. Not only because you have the ability to romance more than 1 male and 1 Asari, but because you can go after Garrus. If there is one solid awesome factor in the ME universe it’s Garrus. Though I’m sure ME3 will have an awkward Kaidan vs Garrus moment I’m not looking forward to. 

Uh 3 way?

Mako

All I can say is na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey goodbye.

Achievements

The original Mass Effect went a little overboard on replay when it came to their achievements. They had some great achievements like the weapons based ones and the ones you get for killing enemies, but there were also ones that made you replay the games three times(four for me because I didn’t get the ally achievements on the first go). In no way do I want to play with Ashley Williams, she annoys the hell out of me, but to get the gamerpoints I have to play the game with her. The entire game.

The second Mass Effect lightened up on the difficulty of receiving the achievements. You could get most achievements on your first game if you ported you character from the first Mass Effect. My only problem with the achievements in the 2^nd game is Tactician and the Specialist ones. I would use the same methods trying to incinerate armor and warp barriers but it only seemed to work once in a while. Pretty frustrating. This is probably my fault but I’ll blame the game.

My favorite change is the ending. You have the ability to actually continue your game after completing the story. My poor past self didn’t realize that the whole Citadel would get destroyed, thus making it pretty impossible to scan the Keepers. At the end of Mass Effect 2 no planets with assignments on them get destroyed thankfully, so I’m able to keep working on the achievements I need without starting a new game with the same character.