It all made sense as to why the Collectors were going around planets and star systems kidnapping the human population the moment I saw this. In Terminator Salvation, Skynet went around harvesting humans in order to skin them for their T-800 terminators. The Collectors were simply doing it on a much larger scale, for their supersized terminator.

The Alliance and/or Cerberus better have a plan for the security of Shepard’s mom.

In traditional RPGs, the amount of influence your character exerts over the rest of the party is usually represented by a numerical score. Not in Mass Effect 2. There isn’t an obvious way to tell how much a particular member of your crew likes you, although some might argue that not representing a quantifiable figure for a relationship might be more in the realm of reality.

As I advance in Mass Effect 2, I begin to find that the game draws multiple parallels to various Sci-Fi universes. An especially obvious one for me was that of Stargate. The Collectors seem to imitate that of the Wraith. Even the layout of one of the Collector ships mimics that of the Wraith’s Hive ships with the layout of captive pods along the entire interior hull. Similarly, when embarking on Tali’s personal mission and listening to her explaining about the Geth their history with the Quarians, it seemed exactly like that of the Asgard and their creations, the replicators. Additionally, the Geth also resembled the replicators in that they’re about to rebuild from splintered parts.

I brought the similarities up merely as an observation, and not as a stance against Mass Effect 2. On the contrary, I enjoyed the melding of various elements of Sci-fi seamlessly into the Mass Effect universe. I hardly think of it as a rip-off at all because if it were considered as such, every other Sci-Fi and fantasy game would be equally guilty. As Joseph Campbell documented in his book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, every heroic and epic story follows more or less similar curves.

Back to Mass Effect 2.

From the opening sequence of “press any key”, I knew I was in for disappointment. The game was largely designed for a console in mind, with the PC version was added on more as an afterthought,  made all too apparent by the menu all the way down to the movement and team interactions. I’ve great respect for BioWare and the quality games they have churned out over the years, but this feels like a slap in the face for an old time PC gamer such as myself when an excellent game title turns out pretty poorly on the PC.

The game lacks the free movement of elements which are staple to PC shooters such as crouching and peeking. Instead, it plays out more like an arcade game where you have to run up to a predetermined object and interact with it to duck behind and shoot. Instead of a having an enumerated list of dialog options accessible using the keyboard, the options are circled around a wheel for the usability of the D-pad or joystick on a controller. The simplistic commands that can be issued to AI teammates frequently have them running in the path of fire and to their doom too.

Although most games released on multiple platforms usually turn out pretty poorly on at least one of them, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3 did very well on both the PC and the console version. Perhaps there are points which BioWare can learn from Bethesda in the development of multi-platform games. As for team movement might I suggest a key that brings up map overlay and being able to path out simple waypoints?