When we first played Mass Effect, the first one that is, we may, we admit, have gone on to give you, our loyal readers, the impression that it could be played purely as a shooter if you wanted it to be. Now, anyone who’s tried to do just that might not agree. For what it’s worth, though, we stand by this assertion. You could play Mass Effect as a shooter. It was just that it was a fairly clunky, fiddly awkward shooter – like a sort of sci-fi GRAW clone. If you thought we meant it was going to be exactly like Gears Of War or something, then that’s your fault for jumping to conclusions.

Now, here’s the thing though: Mass Effect 2 really can be played a lot like Gears Of War. Not exactly like it, no, but it has taken some very confident strides in Marcus Fenix’s direction and is all the better for it. For example, you now have a cover button, so you now have control over whether or not Shepherd takes cover, rather than just having to run him or her at solid objects in the hope that he or she will stick. The controls used to order your squad around have been similarly improved, as has their AI. Up on the D-pad tells them to advance together, down tells them to rally around you, and then left and right correspond to each of your buddies individually, so you can order them to attack two different enemies or move to two different points. It’s still nice and simple, but it works much better than before, and should make combat much more rewarding for those who like to adopt a more tactical style of play.

We got to put these new features to the test in a mission to recruit Thane, the Drell assassin. You’ve found out who Thane’s next target is and where she – and therefore he – can be found: at the top of a large skyscraper. The target is an Asari named Nassana Dantius, who you may have met during one of Mass Effect’s side missions. If you don’t remember her, that’s probably because Mass Effect’s side missions generally weren’t at all memorable – a problem that BioWare has promised to address – but if you did complete that mission, you’ll have killed her sister, making your encounter with her in Mass Effect 2 a prime example of a situation that will be affected by information stored in your Mass Effect save file.

But anyway, before you meet Dantius, you have to fight your way through her security systems and, given that she knows full well she’s a target for assassination, there are a lot of them. Fortunately, we have no real trouble getting through, partly because the combat is so much slicker and easier to control now, and partly because BioWare has spiced up this demo by providing us with a new heavy weapon: a homing missile launcher. It’s cheating really, but we’re having too much fun to care.

… continued