If you've got a PS4 or PS5 and haven't experienced the many joys of the Mass Effect trilogy, PS Plus has some good news for you: the remastered versions of the first three Mass Effect games are now available in their Legendary Edition bundle as one of December's monthly games. It's available for Essential, Extra and Premium members from Tuesday 6 December and you've got until the 2nd of January to download it.
(If you're an Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X owner with a Game Pass account, the same Legendary Edition is right there in Game Pass.)
All three games are great, but Mass Effect 2 is the real treat of the trilogy – especially if you play as the female version of the Shepard character, as she's voiced by the wonderful Jennifer Hale. But whichever gender you choose, you're in for a real treat. ME2 is one of the best games of all time, and the Legendary Edition version available now gives it a visual refresh without losing any of the fun.
Why Mass Effect 2 should be on your must-play list
Don't just take my word for it. ME2 has a whopping 9.5 out of 10 on IMDb – that's over 20,000 votes – and a 94% rating on MetaCritic. Reviewers such as The Guardian praised "the outstanding action, the compelling story, the huge depth of interaction" and said that "this is a game so coherent, you start to believe that you could actually live in it."
I've played all the Mass Effect games so far and liked most of them apart from Andromeda, but while I really liked one and three I *loved* Mass Effect 2. Everything about it was perfect: the story, the characterisation, the sense of scale, even the sense of humour. It's BioWare doing what BioWare does best: creating a living, breathing universe that's an absolute joy to spend time in.
It's an old game, but the Legendary Edition remaster looks great on today's best TVs and while some of the gameplay is rather clunky by today's standards it's a bit like watching the original Star Wars: A New Hope in 4K on really, really good home entertainment kit: sure it's a bit dated, but it's still an absolute thrill.
