Blastoff! Mass Effect 2 free on Origin

Mass Effect 2 [official site], the game I'd say mmmight be my favourite of BioWare's fab sci-fi RPG series, is currently free through Origin. Grab it now and it's yours for keepsies. If you've not played a Mass Effect before and are curious now that Mass Effect Andromeda is due in March, here you go! You'll miss out from not having played the first game--I think a lot of ME2's best points are built upon the first game or are interesting in juxtaposition--but I'm sure you'll pick up what's going on. I see that clever twinkle in your eye.

Yeah, go on then: Mass Effect 2 is my favourite of the series. What it loses in a sense of wonder and possibility from the first game, it gains in character and pulse. The over-arcing plot is wobbly guff that falls apart but the hour-to-hour stories are good stuff. I like my space friends. While I miss the less-constrained character-building, ME2 is streamlined into a far better shooter. I miss exploration but ME2 is past that groping-around, getting-a-sense-of-this-universe part. Luckily, those ME1 memories still exist within my head while playing ME2 so I can enjoy that sense of vastness without directly seeing it. A magical thing, the human mind!

And flip me, those first few minutes of Mass Effect 2 are quite something.

You might find a Mass Effect 2 save file useful in Glittermitten Grove too.

Mass Effect 3 is half-price now too, down to £3.99 on Origin. The Mass Effect Trilogy box set, which includes all three games but not all their DLC (you scamp, Ian Arts!), is half-price too but, uh, works out more expensive than getting ME2 free then buying the other two individually.

Hey, Ian Arts, if you want to drum up good will towards Mass Effect, try putting the old DLC on sale for once, wouldn't you? I'd pay £15 to pick up the rest for ME2 and ME3 and go round again before Andromeda arrives. Instead, I'm slightly put out that some individual DLC packs cost as much as the games themselves, especially as some of Mass Effect 3's shortcomings were addressed in DLC. Sort it out, yeah?