Announcement

Mass Effect 3 was officially announced. It is due out Holiday time 2011 - so it looks like Q4. I personally can not wait to finish the story.

Music

The music in Mass Effect 2 - and the sound effects really contributed to the game in a way not often seen. It's been a long time since the music and sound effects have caused me to quite literally jump out of my seat the first time only to land in a sprawl on the floor ... and watch my character get torn to shreds by the swarms of evil aliens ... but that's beside the point. On some levels you can get in game news broadcasts about things related to you or your mission. On other levels you get music that is pure creepiness. Imagine walking down a dimly lit "dead" alien ship that is lovecratian in it's history only for thing to turn out to still alive and not very happy. I died a lot during the first run through of that mission. Overall the music is one of the best scores I've heard up there with Halo 2 and Eternal Darkness.

Bad Aspects

The only aspect I personally found frustrating with the game was mining for resources. I wasted far to many hours of my life sitting there scanning planets in different solar systems looking for resources to upgrade my shit. Planets can have 4 different elements to mine, and planets range from stripped to rich with the elements. Out of my 19 hours of gameplay in my first run through ... at least 3 hours were solely me mining for elements. However after you beat a game and start a new one with the character used to beat it already - you get a nice bonus of 50K of each of the elements ... which is nice since the max needed for one of the elements is only 38,500 albeit it is the rarest and hardest to find element.

DLC

The DLC for Mass Effect 2 is rich. There is quite a bit of free dlc .. the rest is sadly purchasable. There are new levels, new weapons, new armour, and new characters. There is even a new ship for various planet side quests. Some of the new levels explore things mentioned in the game, and Bioware has announced that the continued release of DLC will explain the storyline between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

Modding

It's interesting to note not a lot of modding has taken place for Mass Effect. Various texture work and balance tweaks and things of that nature but no major mods. KOTOR 2 had levels that were never completed by the developer, completed by modders and made available for download - other games like the new Fallout's have tons of mod ranging for new weapons to brand new full stories .. or even altering the original genre of the game. Mass Effect 2 has none of that. It doesn't even had a mod site of it's own.

Culture and Mass Effect

This game has not really been out long enough nor have had the right kind of exposure for it to creep into culture yet. It's not like other Bioware games where it's something that culture can already relate to like the various Star Wars KOTOR games or a dystopian world as found in Bioshock. Mass Effect is more of a targeted game though I firmly hope everyone will eventually play it since the story line is so addicting. In a few years we may see things start to leak into our pop culture but theres nothing right now. The only thing that has happened are 3 books that have been written and several comics all of which expand the universe and the backstory.

Relationships

In both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, you form relationships with different characters. Some look at you as a leader ... some a lover ... and some just look at you as a mutual ally. None the less you build relationships. Both games operate in relatively the same way - as gametime progresses you may continue to speak to the other characters and eventually new dialogues and other options open up. The romance in the first game does not always carry over to the first game though. You either sacrifice your lover in the first one, have her become obsessed with killing another character in the second or the last option may carry over, I actually have not had a game continue with the first one with that particular option and I doubt I ever will since the first game is way to long. Though in the second, it is possible to form new sexual or "love based" relations with characters and it is again possible to have them die during the final mission.