To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about our thinking about it in an editor's blog.
I count myself lucky to have played Mass Effect 2 prior to Mass Effect. As good a game as that was in its own right, had my first exposure to the Mass effect universe been elevator loading screens and Mako drives, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. But gosh, that Mass Effect 2 intro. As a Star Trek fan of several years, the elements of it were just immediately familiar - the hustle and bustle on a huge ship, people using tablets for everything, before suddenly a surprise attack shatters that tranquillity forever.
There aren't many other game intros I remember that clearly for their apparent love for their respective genre tropes - Uncharted, certainly, Far Cry, Until Dawn perhaps. But as you can see from that list, a bombastic intro gives you an idea of the lengths a game will go to pull all the stops and ensnare you. Epic is still the first word that comes to mind when I think of Mass Effect 2, and that goes both for how its action scenes made me gasp and how its power fantasy overshoots into cringe territory at times.