Mass Effect 2 Previews

BioWare’s presence at last week’s GamesCom event has prompted two more hands-on previews of Mass Effect 2.

We start things off at Kotaku:

Fortunately, Mass Effect 2’s combat system feels much improved from what I recall thanks in part to a more familiar control scheme. The game’s gunplay and combat just gives one the impression that they’re playing a mechanically sound third-person shooter, less of a role-playing game with some shooting action bolted on. Hopping in and out of cover, sticking to objects with A, felt natural and familiar.

Our squad felt a bit easier to control as well, with the Xbox 360 controller’s D-pad remapped to make a bit more sense in that particular situation. According the controller map presented on-screen before our demo, up was set to “group attack,” down set to “rally” and left and right set to squadmates one and two respectively, having them move or attack based on the current context.

And then move to IncGamers for some more previewage:

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.