I don't think Mass Effect 2 was better than the first.

On the game of the year awards podcast the bombsquad talked about sequelitis and why Uncharted 3 made very little impact on them, but is there a way they can make a second sequel without this happening?

I feel once you get passed the first sequel of a game, unless the game is a hugely different game, it will never be as good. Uncharted was fun, Uncharted 2 was the perfection of Uncharted. There was nowhere else to go without completely changing the formula. The same happened with Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War 3 and so on. But this did not happen with Skyrim. Why? because with each iteration the elder scrolls games have been very different games in a completely new area of the world but still keeping the feel of an elder scroll game. Say what you will about the Final Fantasy series but the only reason they are up to such a high number is that each game is dramatically different.

Mass Effect was decent and Mass Effect 2 was the perfection of the formula so this has me and a lot of other people worried. It is possible that Mass Effect will still be a great game, but the odds are against it getting the praise of the original. What I would like to see is a simple yet deep character perk system or the return of loot. Something to freshen up the gameplay in a way that is not 'We made the shooting better' or 'we're making this more accessible for the mainstream'. You did all that last time round! I guess I'll have to wait and see.