I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel!

Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't want to read about Mass Effect 2, then don't bother going any further. It's just about all I've done this week, literally.

When I reported in last week, I had played for maybe two hours, and truth be told wasn't too impressed, but was putting on a brave face in hope that things can only get better. The RPG elements that I'd become accustomed to in my four play throughs of the first one had been neutered within an inch of their life, everything had got a bit sweary (which I've noticed has happened with a lot of sequels, Assassin's Creed II, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5 spring to mind), and the shooting mechanic has gone for the old copy-and-paste Gears of War method. Couple that with the still ridiculous reloading mechanic, and well, my first impressions were a bit testing, as much as I didn't want to admit it.

Things, however, did get better. 34 hours of gameplay better in fact. And I never once, in all of that time, actually wanted to set the controller down out of boredom. I actually scanned every planet, did every side-mission on said planets, all of the loyalty missions, everything.

For a bit of a story breakdown, after Shepard and his multicultural band of brothers saved the universe from a giant metal squid in 2007, they spent their days flying around the galaxy wiping out stragglers from the ranks of their enemies, the Geth. That is until their ship got ripped in two pieces by a mysterious new antagonist, and thanks to annoying pilot Jeff 'Joker' Moreau (who shows no sign of remorse throughout the game), things ended pretty badly for Shepard.

Then his body was recovered by Martin Sheen, who could rebuild him, He had the technology. He had the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Commander Shepard would be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. Sorry, lost myself a bit there. Anyway, after two years of being rebuilt, Shep wakes up to find out that humans everywhere are being abducted by crazy bug people, and naturally sets out to round up a bunch of hardasses and do some damage.

At first, as I was secretly not enjoying the game as much as I wanted to, I jumped headlong into the main story with little regard for anything else. I recruited the squaddies, of course, and when I first met Garrus, my joint favourite character (with Wrex) from the last game, and unlike all the other returning faces he actually wanted to join me, I could barely conceal a smile. But it wasn't until about half way through the story, when I was deep in enemy territory and the plot was beginning to unfold, that I got that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that I was in for something special.

And something special it was. I know there's a lot of people out there who are still knee deep in this, so I will go no further, but a special mention has to go out to my new hero, ME2's krogan, Grunt. He's bloodthirsty, wreckless and at times laugh-out-loud funny. And he's the only squaddie I used in the game that never once needed a medi-gel. I have a new Wrex.

I was a little annoyed that such a good game was out in January though, as I had very little hope of playing another game quite as good as that all year. That was until last night's teaser trailer of Fallout: New Vegas though, and it's ambitious predicted release date of Autumn 2010. The trailer opens with some bizarre TV-headed robot sifting through a mass grave in the Nevada desert, with a surprisingly well preserved Las Vegas in the background. As the camera pans out, a mysterious long-coated character with a New Californian Republic flag looks on. He then turns to the camera, revealing a mask that resembles that of one of Killzone's bad guys, the Helghast. It's going to be a long 7 months or so for me now. Well, I still have three achievements yet to get on Fallout 3 anyway, so I still have a bit of Fallout to keep me going. If they fire out a new Elder Scrolls this year too, I'll be happy as a pig in shit.

I'll try and have more to talk about next week, I'm in the process of trying to get my grubby hands on a Heavy Rain demo, and I'll hopefully get motivated enough to finish Hellboy and start on something else, more than likely PS2 survival horror ObsCure. Bye for now.