Having played all the major titles this generation, this and Fallout 3 are probably the best two, imho. Trust me, play through it, and then tell me a few other games that are in the same league, lol. It's got all the bells and whistles of a popcorn game, but it also has major depth, and that's why I can't believe it's so freakin' awesome! Seriously. It's one of the few games(along with RE4) that really mixes the best of both worlds. It's got the presentation and scripted action of a God of War game, along with the depth, versatility, and length of an epic RPG.

This, imho, is only eclipsed by Fallout 3, and most of you know how I fell about Fallout 3, so you know I'm not just making up an opinion here. I actually replayed Mass Effect 1 just to get a save data worthy of starting a new character.

That said, I'm not completely through the game just yet, so my opinion won't be cemented for a while, but that also means it could end up being BETTER than Fallout 3. I haven't had this much fun with a game since Fallout 3, I'll say that much.

To sum up, Mass Effect impresses you. Me too. You should play Falllout 3 though, if you want to really be impressed. Play it all the way though. Can't understand an infinite game in 10 hours, imho.

Maybe you rushed or played on easy. Try to enjoy the game and its not overrated at all.

I don't think the game itself is over rated because it isn't but I do question the 96 meta.

I agree that ME2 is overrated, but not for the reasons given. I'd give it an 85.

-Story. Exceptionally bad story. The only thing that actually happens in the story is learning who the collectors are. That's it. The game is carried solely on character development and that's it.

-Graphics. Played it on the PC, with max settings on everything that can be scaled. When talking to people, their armor still had pixels the size of my thumbnail. At least Garrus' markings weren't as pixelated as the 1st game's, his armor was still laughably pixelated.

-Gameplay had problems. Ammo for guns, too few guns to be a good shooter, too few armor pieces to be a good RPG. Missions are EXTREMELY linear and too short. Choices are always paragon or renegade, nothing in between. Little no no skills, a whole lot of repetition. If you have 10 chars with 4 skills each, at least give them all unique skills.... Also some of the skills themselves are copies of each other i.e. warp and slam. Then they actually dared to count ammo variety as skills. As an infiltrator 2 of my 6 skills were ammo skills.

-Miscellaneous problems. Zero exploration in the game, literally. Planet scanning is far worse than the Mako. Kind of retarded to have credits in the game at all. Since armor is quite useless in the game (played the game on hardest setting) it's basically just for finding upgrades, and then you need the special resources, very shitty implementation.


All this said I still give it an 85, that is if you assume ME1 was a 90 and Deus Ex was a 95.

Gametrailers has a spot on review of Mass Effect 2.. The guy did a good job.

Mass Effect is an RPG Franchise, shooting mechanics and graphics aren't where the most focus goes.

Hey I finished ME1 in 16 hours, with barely any sidequests done. When I tried again I got around 20 at the 2nd planet.

Definately not overated, The blog post lists a few things as bugs that clearly are not. The main one is how your enemy can knock you out of cover, that is not a bug. Different powers and weapons have the ability to knock you away from your position and on insanity they do it often and well. Time wise it's really not appropriate to to use a speed run as your " I finished the game time." A real gamer would play the game the way it is designed to be played and use that as your base time. For me it was 30 hours, with loyalty sidequests and some pretty heaving exploring.

I haven't noticed the AI glitches he is talking about either, but the game is damn hard on Insanity, and that's the way it should be.

The games preset mode should have been on Insanity with no choice on difficulty. The overall suicide concept would been alot cooler. Seeing this game being played on Normal was laughable.