just got upgraded from ADSL 3 meg connection to Cable modem with 15 meg connection! 
 
and I likey very much!!!

   
Thats the conclusion I have come to It feels small. 
 
The two reasons for this are down to general space exploration and and the locations you can explore. 
 
Simply Put while many many many things about the mako were a pain in the behind it allowed you to traverse these large alien landscapes, admitedly 
They were quite uniform in appearence but they added hugely to the games sense of scale. 
 
This was also most definatly the case with the Citadel in ME 1 it's large open areas which you could run around to your hearts content plus large number of sub areas 
gave a real sense of huge scale. in comparison ME 2's citadel is tiny consisting of one 3 story Ward and a Presidium    that consists of one Room! 
 
It was initally my hope that omega station would turn out to be an effective replacement at least in providing a flow of quests but I had picked the place clean in no time at all.
  
The full open (explorable)area of omega is a fraction of the size of the Me 1's citadel. 
 
Illium and the Krogan Home world are no better. 
 
whats appears to have happened is that Me 2 has traded 1 huge hub (citadel) and a number of smaller ones (Novaria Feros) for four small ones 
(Omega Illium Tochanka mini citadel) and combined with the new and frankly awfull planet exploration (survey) system has in my mind killed Me 1's feeling 
scale almost entirely which by extention very badly effects the feeling the game tries to instill in you the player of a battle/story with huge intergalactic stakes. 
 
Somthing ME 1 does better then pretty much any game out there.   
 
This is made even worse by the the actual missions and story of ME 2 itself 
 
In ME 1 you spent alot more time fighting the geth and persuing Saren either in the game's missions or story then you do chasing the collectors in ME 2. 
 
If nothing else this means I had personaly built up alot more animosity towards Saren and the Geth by the end of the ME 1 then 
then I ever did with the collectors in ME 2. 
 
The recruitment and loyalty missions take a large chunk of game time and while they are a nice idea they are not properly implimented and clearly eat into the number of gameplay hours that could have been allocated to the main story involving the collectors. 
  
The problem with the recruitment and corisponding loyalty missions for your rag tag crew is down to the number and self contained nature of those missions. 
 
Because you can do those missions in mostly any order you choose they cannot be connected to each other in any meaningful way this isolates both a character's 
associated recruitment and loyalty missions from all the others turning them into glorified side quests and because there are so may charactors the amount 
development time and by extension gameplay and story time expended on each character is limited. 
Frankly each charactor gets two short stories and thats it, it makes getting attached to the charactors next to impossible in my mind the only two that stand out are the 
Salarian scientest (funny different) and Tali one two charactors back from ME 1. 
 
The fact is that there are simply to many team members to spread gameplay and story around for you to get attached to any of them which undermines  the later stages of the game hugely. effetively ME 2 is the Dirty Dozen in Space with no attachmnet to the characters one way or the other. 
which undermins the games whole  narrative. 
 
Quite frankly the story and by extension the game would have been much better if the number of characters had been cut down and there recruitment intergrated 
into the main collector mission/story 
 
Which would have allowed for a much larger main quest and given the player a better chance to become attached to the more limited cast. 
 
 
Another area were the games falls down hugely  is the invantory system which has been hugely cut down since the first game this is not a problem in itself because 
ME 1's invintory is a mess but two critical elaments associated with it are a huge problem. 
 
The first is that a major trope of RPG games has been excised completely e.g the loot drop. 
This means that the flow of new weapons and gear thats gives you a regular boost of endorphans in ME 1 the Diablo games and most notably last years  Border lands 
(a hit) is gone.  again you might think this is not that bad but when you realise what has in effect replaced it thats when you start to grate your teeth.

Upgrading your kit comes in three forms buying from vendors( not to bad)picking up the odd weapon placed in locations by the developers(not dropped by bad guys) 
in missons and doing research on the normandy (very very bad).   
 
The problem with picking up weapon upgrades in the missions is that since the weapons are not dropped as loot by dead bad guys but placed by the developers you 
can miss them and since the missions are not replayable  if you miss a weapon upgrade in a mission its gone forever. 
now this does not cut off weapon advancement at the knees as these weapons are upgrades are interchangeable and let you level up your weapons 
so If I miss one and find the next I can still upgrade my rifle from level 2 to level 3 but it does mean that missing one or more upgrades for a weapon has a glass ceiling 
effect on my firepower late game. I myself only managed to max out the sniper rifle be the end of the game. 
  
The other two Options however are both problematic. 
 
Buying weapon upgrades can be extremely expensive I myself completed the game without buying all that was available  I had grinded every quest both minor and major in the game and still did not have enough cash this would not be a huge problem by it self if it were not for the last and sadly unavoidable method of upgrading your weapons. 
 
Research on the Normandy 
The problem with this is to do research you need raw materials and they only way to get those is to do the most god awfull aspect of the game again and again and again 
The Planet survey mini game is the only realy bad addition to the core gameplay and since it is the only way to get materials to use in weapon research you have to do it 
constantly. It and I kid you not is as bad a grinding in any MMO. 
 
What makes it even worse is that  these same pool of resources also are what you use to upgrade your ship and the ship upgrades can be extremely costly in resources. 
Unfortunaly the upgrade status of your ship has a very direct impact on the late game so are not realy avoidable.  
 
This results in the player having to do a large amount  of survey Grinding which is both very time consuming and boring. 
 
This brings us back to the invantory system. 
Most reviews of the game have excused the new invantory system and romoval of loot drops as a concession to the more mass market Gears of War/Modern Warfare 
gamers out there. 
 
Quite frankly this is nonsense for the simple reason that repeatedly grinding the planet survey mingame is a unavoidable part of upgrading your weapons. 
and the boring nature of the planet survey mini game and the raw amount of time that needs to be put into it is frankly anathama to your typical mass market gamer. 
rendering Bioware's attempts at appealing to the mass market in this respect a complete waste of time. 
 
The original messy invantory system would have have been less off putting to the mass market and could have been cut down in ways to make it alot simpler to understand. It is my deep seated suspision that Bioware engineered this aspect to the game to pad out the number of game play hours in a similar fashion as nintendo did  with the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on the Game Cube. 
 
What could have mitagated to a degree the problems with weapons and ship upgrades in ME 2 would have been the ability to sell surplus minerals to vendors for cash 
or other needed minerals and use surplus cash to buy minerals when needed.  
 
This however is not present, what is very odd about this is that there is a advertisment on one of the advertisment kiosks in the ward section of the citadel advertising 
effectivly a pawn shop that will "pay money for minerals" yet no vender exists in game. somone in Bioware clearly thought of this but it has not been implamented.   
This is particularly annyoing when you can end up with a large surplus of minerals that you don't need but can't do anyting with them yet are low on cash or another mineral.
 
 
The game's graphics have been updated resulting in a nicer looking game and the elimination of various glitches that affected  ME 1.
 
The main 3rd person combat has been markedly improved over the first game but is still mostly standerd by late 2009 early 2010 standards 
Both character clases and Biotics have been refined again this is evolution rather then revolution. 
These gamplay gains are effectly nagated by the very poor planet survey mini game and the amount of time the game forces you to spend on it.
 
 
Mass Effect 2 may come on two disks but it's story is simply not nearly as good as Mass Effect 1's and particularly as an rpg this hurts the game alot.
The game feels markedly smaller in scale then the first one resulting in a distinct lack of the first games epic feel. 
The attempt to fix the invantory system has resulted in a much worse overall alternative and the exact same goes for the mako. 
 
 
Anyone who has taken the time to read this review may be wondering why it differs so much from the Pro's point of view both on this site and else were. 
 
My view on this is that Mass Effect 2 has the advantage that most people reviewing this game played the first one and loved it and rightly so and this has bled over 
into their reviews of the game I too loved the first one and felt giddy playing ME 2 at the begining and thought it was fantastic and make no mistake dispite what I have said above its a good game the problem is even taking the good improvments into account Mass effect 2 simply is not as good a game as mass effect 1 
by any definition it is a solid 7 out of 10 game but it is most definatly not a 10 out of 10 contender for game of the year that the game press thinks it is and I beleive if they had the time to play the game in a more relaxed manner and then chew the cud on it for a day or two before reviewing it as I have  I beleive the reviews may have been quite different.