Mass Effect 2 Preview Page 2

24 Aug 2009 at 17:28:23 by Tim McDonald

While the demo playthrough was short, the implications this simple design upgrade has on tactics are wide-reaching, and the showcased mission took advantage of it in a number of areas. Sections had crates on either side of a choke point, with another, shorter one in the centre, allowing me to stack up a party member on either side and then duck behind the centre. If the rest of the combat zones are designed with these possibilities in mind, creating effective fire zones should be a matter of consummate ease. Which is a good thing, as while enemies in Mass Effect had various tactics – some charged towards you, some lurked behind cover – I don't recall them being mixed to the extent we saw here. Asari Commandos stayed back and took potshots from behind cover, while battle mechs slowly stomped forward, firing all the while. Ordering team members to focus on the mechs while I returned fire on the Commandos was one very simple strategy I employed.

If you don't fancy employing strategy, though, there's always blasting. As before you have four slots for weapons, which in this case were occupied by a sniper rifle, an assault rifle, a shotgun, and a heavy weapon which we'll get onto in a moment. Using the shotgun to blast the approaching mechs before taking on the Commandos with a weapon more suited for long-range combat was done just as simply as in the original Mass Effect, but here we've a new feature: location-specific damage.

Of particular note is the fact that headshots are now registered, which makes the sniper rifle far, far more viable an option. In the original game, it was powerful but slow and useless at close range, making it rather less useful in most situations than the other weapons. Here, however, it's devastating when put to good use. At this stage Shepard was clearly still a tad underpowered as the zoomed scope wasn't steady, instead weaving and bobbing like a championship boxer, but the sheer power of headshots made it worth a try anyway. While clipping an exposed shoulder or hip dropped most of an opponent's shields, it still required two or three shots to drop them. Waiting for them to pop out and fire a salvo meant that a blast to the head could be attempted, and success at this feat was rewarded by a satisfying (and surprisingly copious) spray of blood and, usefully, an instant kill.

And then there's the heat-seeking rocket launcher, of the new heavy weapon type. Unusually for Mass Effect this actually has limited ammo and there's no word on how ammunition for it is replenished, but with 40-odd shots it wouldn't entirely surprise me if it's limited on a mission-to-mission basis. That said, it's a devastating tool. One later part of the tower assault featured two gun turrets on raised platforms. The easiest way around it? To move back behind cover and fire shots wildly over the top. Four or five rockets later and the turrets were rubble.

This left only the meeting with Nassana, which – if you've followed our previous coverage – you'll know ends with our quarry Thane very literally dropping in, fluidly dispatching the guards, and executing her at point-blank range within the space of five seconds. Interestingly, during the conversation with Nassana, one of the new “interrupt” features showed up – a pull of the left trigger when these prompts appear results in Shepard interrupting the character and generally doing something drastic, judging by the way he shunted a guard out of a window in response to said trigger pull in a previous section. Here, however, the prompt flashed up for less than a second, which I sadly missed. It's vaguely reminiscent of a quick-time event but without the necessity of getting it right; the game will presumably proceed as planned without the button press, but it makes me wonder what I missed.

Mass Effect 2 is shaping up well. While we've still got a lot to see, the combat has vastly improved from what we've seen, the conversations are more interactive and more involving, and the engine fidelity is far stronger. If the plot, characters, and voice acting are up to the usual BioWare standards – and from what we've seen there's good reason to believe they'll be above and beyond – this could well be in the running for game of the year when it's released in 2010.

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