Mass Affection

The snow storm this morning gave me a great excuse to finish Mass Effect 2. After previously downloading and completing the Firewalker, Kasumi and Overlord expansions, I felt ready to take on the final mission.
It turned out to be a cakewalk, in fact, I was able to nab the "No One Left Behind" achievement for keeping my entire squad alive against all odds. Heir in lies the source of immense enjoyment and partial disappointment. Allow me to explain.
From the start, I chose to go with a female infiltrator version of "Shepard," granting me access to deadly invisibility and pinpoint accuracy with the sniper rifle. After playing roughly half the game, the floor of difficulty gave out completely. With the viper sniper rifle in hand, I destroyed everything in my path, whether I chose to use said invisibility or not. Add additional squad members, ammo/biotic powers and research upgrades and, well, forget about it. Head shot after head shot took down every foe, no matter what "type" of shield etc. I had to deal with. To that end, it became more about the story and less about the combat for the remainder of the game, which is fine.
The story was epic, however, not exactly the choose-your-own-adventure with difficult moral dilemmas as advertised. By choosing the renegade (evil) route, I basically gave everyone a hard time and/or occasionally shot them in the leg if I didn't want to hear what they had to say. This fact of Bioware games has been well-documented, so I realize I'm preaching to the choir. How ever flawed, the story was engrossing and the ability to craft your own ""Shepard" was absolutely vital to my overall enjoyment of the game as a whole.
Mass Effect 2 delivered a solid experience from beginning to end. The bite-sized mission structure, along with a rewarding single-player experience make it one of the best rpgs I've played in a long time. While not exactly a challenge, it delivered in a way that Japanese titles like Final Fantasy 13 could not, leaving me anxiously awaiting my next assignment as Commander Shepard.