If you have played the original title from Bioware, you shall know exactly what I’m on about. If not, you might wanna check out this handy little video courtesy of IGN.

Mass Effect 2. Only 3 days until I lose another portion of my life to a game (Cheers World of Warcraft) We can just be thankful that it comes after the exam period. Think The Empire Strikes Back of gaming sequels. It’s gonna be epic, in the truest sense of the word.

So, set in 2183, action takes place  pretty much directly following  it’s predecessor, Mass Effect 2 brings back Commander Sheperd to zoom across galaxies in jamassive spaceships and go pew pew at aliens with big laser guns and sparkly visuals.

What has changed I hear you ask? Well, to be blunt, nothing groundbreaking or completely original, but, Bioware have built on the solid foundations of Mass Effect and made improvements all round. It’s like they have gotten their gaming amps and turned them all up to eleven. So y’know it’s gonna be good.

One notable improvement is that of the inventory and how the player can interact. No longer shall you spend tedious amounts of time on going through all your squad members, instead, once an item is discovered, it can be sent back to Normandy – Your uber cool spaceship – and it can then be cloned and made multiple copies of, thus allowing you to give it to all of your members. Neat, eh?

Apart from that minimal change, there are of course many others, some include;

• AI improvements – No more squad members getting stuck behind boxes and walls causing you to nerdrage at your screen.
• No more “overheating” of weapons. “Heat sinks” have been introduced, which is basically a fancy name for ammo.
• No more M35 Mako! My word, do you remember the controlling for that thing. Thank goodness Bioware listened to the players and decided to remove it entirely and replace it with a drop shuttle.
• New weapon types, now up to nineteen. Armour skills have been made away with, so no more class and restrictions.

With all the technical and tedious but interesting stuff outta the way, I can now state; I cannot wait for Mass Effect 2. If you’re like me, you’ll have spent the last week reliving the fun moments in ME1 and preparing your own personal Sheperd for the new sequel. Is anybody else annoyed that all the trailers have been a bit sexist, always portraying Sheperd as a big burly male? I have been. I want to see MY Sheperd in all her HD 1080p sexiness. God dammit Bioware!

Anywho, check out the proper official awesomeness of the Mass Effect 2 Cinematic Trailer found here; and I’ll see you g33ks shortly, hopefully with a review to boot.