It’s been a while. Don’t worry, this will make up for it. I played the hands on full copy of Mass Effect 2 at the Microsoft booth today.
Speaking to the guys working the xbox systems, I spoke a bit about the game. They had played the game through to Omega, but the earlier areas were Cerberus, Freedom’s Hope? (on my phone now, will fix later), getting the Normany Mark 2, and Omega.
The first thing I noticed were the controls – they aren’t quite call of duty-like, but they definitely have a smooth feel that changes with the weapon. Shepherd is a soldier in today’s demo, Vanguard in tomorrow’s. Using the assault rifle felt heavier, in terms of controls, than the pistol, and the kickback was different from the shotgun. Grenades, as mentioned elsewhere are gone, but are replaced by a grenade launcher. I still felt a little slow while running out of combat, but the scenery had more activity.
Combat allows you to hop over more objects, enemies like varen regenterate quickly. You can take enemies by surprise, flank them or take high ground by using alternate paths, and the enemies themselves take far more tactics, even on the Easy mode offered, to avoid defeat. Use of cover and environment is key – there are more environment explosives, enemies using tactics and unique weapons (krogans are quite hard to kill now, and I saw flamethrowers and attempts to flank me).
There is a new method of hacking and opening devices. Rather than a pass/fail skill check, I saw two puzzles – one a timed matching game (which on easier modes has more time and is repeatable) and for hacking, a fill-in-the-blank where you try to match what phrase suits the text (pictures will follow!)
I will be back tomorrow, and see if I can get the boys to show me Normandy II. Feel free to ask any questions – I’ll answer from my experience. They didn’t seem to mind that I took over. :D



