You looked hotter on Facebook.

I’m about 5-6 hours into Mass Effect 2 and I’m 1 part amazed and 1 part bewildered.

If you haven’t heard, ME2 is an “open sandbox” game that runs a lot like one of those “Choose Your Adventure” kind of books – You remember them as a teen: reading along, your character encounters a fork in the plot. Do you… “Go to page 23 if you want your character to pick the glowing fruit of STIs or choose page 45 if you want him to slay the dragon of apathy. Maybe.”

The game is Mass-ive (See? See that?) with controls and modifiers that affect the game outcome, popping out of the ying yang, controlled by multiple button mashing. Literally everything in this game can either be customized or upgraded as you play long ensuring OCD kids will keep their asses on couches during game play. As example you start the game by having your lead character undergo facial reconstruction after a vicious battle, effectively letting you off the hook for trying to remember the exact eyebrow arch you designed for your character in Mass Effect 1 (though it does let you import your construct if you’ve played the previous game). Regardless, things like this make me take notice as to how good the game design is.

Speaking of design, the characters are rendered so sharply your eyes will bleed. I can only describe the prop/alien design as being rather satisfying – when aliens are introduced, something inside me says “Wicked! That’s exactly how I’d render it!” (like I could operate 3D Studio Max…pffft). The look of the game resembles those 70s style impressionist science fiction artists, rendered in three dimensions.

However…

The game play is like watching paint dry after you blasted a wall with the coolest high pressure paint shooter, evar. I’ve never experienced more hurkeyjerky game play flow. One second you’re killing 6 eyed aliens with impunity and then suddenly you’re stopping to chat with survivors, choosing a multitude of story branches through real-time character conversation options. It’s like practicing yoga with a room full of really angry pitbulls effected with narcolepsy.

And what kills me the most while I’m trying to remember how to call up weapons menus (LT+A button, rotate Left stick, Press A to choose, and *PEW PEW*!! Oh CRAP!) is that you’re thrown so many story options at once, trying to remember to complete them all gets me stressed out a bit.

So I’m torn. Much like Borderlands, ME2 looks amazing but the game play has massive valleys of meh so deep it divides my geek-gasm in twain.