I aim to misbehave

I began Mass Effect 2 recently. Having only played fifteen hours of the first one (yes, only. the scope of it goes for dozens of hours more), I hadn't yet become attached to the game or its characters even though I was enjoying it well enough, as well as Jennifer Hale's performance. But I wasn't being drawn in. I think because the first game was slow to start in its story. Or maybe I was too busy trying to figure out the controls. Whatever it was, after fifteen hours of the RPG (over a period of a couple of months), I decided to take a break and move on to Mass Effect 2.

I'm glad I did. In a way, the second game is a stand alone adventure. There is of course an over-arching story about Commander Shepard and her crew aboard the Normandy, but this second tale is just that - a whole 'nother tale which happens to captivate you right at the beginning during the cold open, which manages to capture everything crucial in the telling of any dramatic tale involving humanity in a wide universe by putting you in the shoes of one woman at the helm of her ship and crew, then having her ship sunk, her crew gone in escape shuttles, and then meeting her own death. There will never be another Malcolm Reynolds, but when you captain your own ship, you are most likely going to be inspired to by Capt. Reynolds, and you know, do captainy things.

This was all in the first ten minutes, and everything leading up to her death made me feel all the warm and fuzzy feelings I felt on the Galactica and also aboard Serenity. The camera work was familiar and the slight use of zooms were brilliant. The beautiful score playing when the camera pans over the Normandy brought a goosebumpy feeling of nostalgia that made me want to re-watch Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. But, I wanted to continue Sora Shepard's tale even more. And that's where I'll be for the next couple of weeks: sailing aboard the Normandy, dealing with the Alliance, and Miranda, and spooling up the FTL drive while avoiding being attacked by sentient AI robots.