While drawing attention to the art of reviewing – and indeed drawing attention to the fact that you’re drawing attention to it like some kind of self-referential möbius – is an admittedly cheesy waste of words, we can’t fathom how we can possibly bring this review to a close having made the points we need to make without first qualifying just how difficult some reviews can be.

Shepard squares up to... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it.

Sometimes, this is because the game sucks so badly that thoroughly justifying a harsh critique is in requirement of more pages than you might find in your average London phonebook. Sometimes it’s because a flawed masterpiece can be terribly tricky to score; does its overriding goodness outweigh a myriad of minor issues? And here, the reviewing of Mass Effect 2 is possibly the worst combination. It rides along on its story – something we can’t talk about in any detail for risk of spoilerising its many delights – while at the same time being as close to perfect as any game can conceivably come. There is little to nothing to criticise here.

And as if our own misgivings over the revelation of plot points were not enough to throttle the very existence out of this very review, EA has also included a handy list of specifics we’re not even allowed to mention, let alone put into any kind of narrative context. Major characters, enemies, squad members, the list goes on. Instead then, we’ll tell you what we can, and perhaps when you witness for yourself the limits of our remit, you will forgive us this somewhat lethargic preamble.

It has been two years since the events seen in the first Mass Effect. Shepard has had a minor injury, and while languishing lazily in the recovery room, he has little to no time to come to terms with his predicament. No longer a Spectre, nor sanctioned in any way by Earth’s military, he is shipless, friendless and at the mercy of shady human supremacist organisation Cerberus. And that’s pretty much all we can tell you.

Like the first game, the Sentinel class combines Tech skills with Biotic.

Those who played through the first game will be keen to discover just how much their actions have affected the narrative continuum. So different were its possible outcomes that even we were having trouble attempting to fathom just how the story could continue without creating three or four discreet versions, each dependant on both the fate you decided for the council and the exact balance of your good/bad ratio. Then, of course, there was the life and death choice between Kaidan and Ashley and whether or not you saved Wrex.

… continued