The moment you realize Seth Green is narrating as the sardonic pilot, and Martin Sheen is the voice actor for the Illusive Man, the sell is over.  Then again, if that doesn’t get you, Miranda will.  Jack won’t, but Miranda, oh yeah.

Mass Effect 2 has a quick draw-in time and an even quicker opening punch.  Sure, it’s prequel was a smash hit, but we’ve seen a lot of sequels fail over the years.  This one fails in the same way Inception did: not at all.  Sure, there are no dream sequences, but it’s really fun to thrash through a conversation, save, and then replay to see what other one-liners characters can come up with.  See the following:

Shepard: After being told to surrender his arms to a prison guard, “I’ll relinquish one bullet.  Where do you want it?”

Joker: After hearing about Garrus’ adventures during a mission, “Seems like Garrus has finally pulled that stick out of his ass, and is now beating people to death with it.”

Jacob: Describing the finer points of being a good samaritan, “A good deed is like pissing yourself in dark pants.  You get a warm feeling, but nobody notices.”

Bioware can write a story.  With ME2, they told us they can write a series.  From an archetypal stance, Bioware didn’t break the genre: kill bad things doing harm to existence and save the universe.  Halo and Final Fantasy both employ this basic plot structure.  However, Bioware stirs a serene empathy for its involved characters.  Helping Garrus out of a no-win hold out doesn’t run counter to one’s moral compass, even though he just sniped no less than 100 volunteers.  Watching Jacob’s catharsis about his father enslaving his crew out of malevolence bolsters your respect for him.  You may actually feel more pity for this than he does.

Gameplay is smooth.  Sometimes you want your powers to recharge a bit faster.  But if I’m bitching about this in the second sentence of this paragraph, then I’m reaching.

Weapons and powers enrich the experience.  Want to slow time down for the perfect headshot?  Doable.  Rather have the power to Darth Vader-esque throw a guy across a room from 50 feet away?  You can do it!  Although I wish they gave us the rapid shot sniper rifle about 5 hours earlier…

Diagnosis: Buy the game.  For $25 at Amazon, it’s a steal.  You can even make Shepard look however you want him/her to.  Just don’t try to make him look like Woody Harrelson.  It’s impossible.  I think I spent more time adjusting his face than I spent hitting on Miranda.