Mass Effect 2 Trailer and Class Breakdown

Although we didn’t talk about it much, Mass Effect was an ace game. An excellent blend of RPG and shooter and the first real outreach of Bioware’s ever-evolving and increasingly epic “conversation story system”.

The graphics were good, the voice acting was superb and in general the game play was really enjoyable. I played through twice to get a feel for both sides of combat and thus was a Soldier and a Sentinel, I think I enjoyed Sentinel the most, probably because it made things a little more tactical.

Anyway the story of Commander Shepard continues in the eagerly anticipated and soon to be released Mass Effect 2, take a look here for the official trailer (which features near Advent Children quality cut scenes) and a selection of mini-videos IGN did detailing changes to the classes in MS2 from their ME1 styling.

Soldier Class

Soldiers were only good in the first one because they were the only class that could use any weapon. I hear that restriction is largely gone in ME2 (which is a good step IMO) but the soldier class is still the basic “tank”. It can use all the special armour and weapons and gets more use out of customisations (which were a big part of the first game) and a couple of cool new abilities, the best of which appears to be the bullet time adrenaline boost one.

That will definitely come in handy in those “rush-into-a-trailer-and-kill-40-enemies” firefights.

I can’t see me playing soldier this time around but there is no doubt about the fact it looks ace and I think best class for new players.

Vanguard Class

The vanguard class is basically your standard magic melee. He is the short range, high damage but soon to peak dude who is loads of fun to play but needs a more experienced player’s edge for tactics. The trailers make the Vanguard look ace and it’s definitely one of the more appealing classes. That force charge-esque run will be very, very useful from my experience of ME and the basic biotic push and throw are always handy.

This may be a second play through class for me.

Infiltrator Class

Your basic rogue, the Infiltrator, is all about lock picking and sniping. Tech was one of my favourite things in ME1, picking locks and repairing shit was very useful. Obviously the Infiltrator only gets a selection of this but I have no doubt it will be handy as hell. You also get the fucktards favourite weapon, the sniper rifle. A huge, huge problem in ME1 was that you need sniper specialisation to zoom in with one, I hope to god this is gone now  but if its not this class is looking pretty hot.

Oh yeah your super ability is cloak, fun but probably not all that effective in the long run.

Engineer Class

Your basic status fighter, the Engineer, is all about manipulating enemies, that’s my kind of play. Other than all the cool advantages of tech we talked about from ME1 (which I guess we don’t 100% know are gonna be in but I am sure hacking lock picks etc will make a come back)  this class now gets one of the coolest special abilities, battle drone!

Distract people, suicide bomb or just get some breathing space, the drone is a cool touch to finally bring this class up to scratch. AI hacking was good before but it looks like this has gone up a notch too, this is definitely going to be a class I think about playing.

Adept Class

Maybe you didn’t get fucked off by her saying “adept” wrong but now this class is spoilt for me. OK maybe not. Adept is your Black Mage, he has explosions and control abilities meaning you won’t be hitting fire as much but you will be doing the damage. It looks like they have put effort into vamping biotics in ME2 and some of the new powers and combos look pretty devastating.

None the less I probably won’t play this class, especially if the voice cast all pronounce it as wrong as her. The main reason is just I like a bit more variation that just running in and press all my spells. I am sure this class will be great, its just not for me.

Sentinel Class

Last but not least is my favourite class from ME1, the Sentinel. I loved the Sentinel because it gave me a taste of all the games functions and it looks like this class is not going to disappoint me in ME2. The specialist ability tech armour will really come in handy versus the rocket drones and other big enemies and the continued combinations of tech and biotics will no doubt work really well in heavy combat.

The sentinel downside was weapons training and we know some of that is cleared up in ME2, there are still going to be a lot of weapon aspects locked away from you but this is one for the best looking classes, I’ve always loved Red Mages and I will probably stick with it for ME2.

OK that’s all of them, can’t wait to play ME2 and I really hope the story is up to scratch. What class do you guys think looks the best? Let me know which and why you have chosen your class for beating down the various enemies of the Milky Way!