Mass Effect 2

[Eric]

We have an early 2010 Game of the Year contender here folks.

[Imakeholesinu]

We have an early 2010 Game of the Year contender here folks.

Had I played the first one I might have picked this one up today. A friend of mine was telling me about it at work today.

[Lox]

I'm finally playing the first one since this one is out!

[SineSwiper]

I'm finally playing the first one since this one is out!

Don't forget the 2 hour love scene with an alien. Just keep pressing the X button to increase the gyrations.

[Lox]

I thought you could just access that scene from the start menu using a cheat code! Or was it once you gained enough points from killing people?

[Oracle]

I've put an evening into the game so far. Wen straight for Hardcore mode (whatever one is below insanity).

SPOILER (if you haven't played ME1)

Question:

Does the game always start with the council being killed off and humans ruling it? The only save files it would let me import were my Renegade characters.

So far, I love the action of the game, and the environments are spectacular, but am a bit disappointed at the watering down of the RPG elements and item system. Yes, it offers more streamlined gameplay and you dont have to worry about outfitting each and every character, but that is in part what made ME1 so much fun.

Oh well, I'll see how I feel after I get through a good chunk of the game.

[Eric]

I've put an evening into the game so far. Wen straight for Hardcore mode (whatever one is below insanity).

SPOILER (if you haven't played ME1)

Question:

Does the game always start with the council being killed off and humans ruling it? The only save files it would let me import were my Renegade characters.

So far, I love the action of the game, and the environments are spectacular, but am a bit disappointed at the watering down of the RPG elements and item system. Yes, it offers more streamlined gameplay and you dont have to worry about outfitting each and every character, but that is in part what made ME1 so much fun.

Oh well, I'll see how I feel after I get through a good chunk of the game.

Does the game always start with the council being killed off and humans ruling it? The only save files it would let me import were my Renegade characters.

Spoiler answer!

No, in fact if you don't import you should get the choice of choosing whether or not they live. In my game they're quite alive....and as worthless as ever, wish I let them DIE ARG.

[SineSwiper]

Can't stop playing this game. I forgot how fun it was to explore the planets and do side quests. The combat has improved greatly with the covering, and the AI for your characters doesn't suck at all. In fact, I find that I tend to get my guys killed more often if I direct them.

[Oracle]

In fact, I find that I tend to get my guys killed more often if I direct them.

You must not be playing on Hardcore, because my idiots will waltz into a cross-fire without thinking if I don't tell them to get behind the @#$@ing shipping crate :p

[SineSwiper]

In fact, I find that I tend to get my guys killed more often if I direct them.

You must not be playing on Hardcore, because my idiots will waltz into a cross-fire without thinking if I don't tell them to get behind the @#$@ing shipping crate :p

Yeah, I thought about Hardcore, but I remember playing that on the first game (second round through). I died multiple times from the most mundane shit at the beginning of the game.

Although, at this point, though, my techs are kicking ass and I wouldn't mind upping the difficulty, but I already do die enough times to be annoying, and the load times are spit in the face to remind you not to die.

[bovine]

I was very surprised with a lot of the changes they made. Some of them good, some of them strange.

- different feel to the combat
- the upgrade system
- ship navigation (fuel, the ship as an icon)
- the SUPER easy achievement list (save insane difficulty)
- combining biotics
- the level up system
- heat ammo
- heavy weapons
- worthwhile side missions
- wow graphics upgrade wow
- people on your team do not have to die
- appearance changes based on the decisions you make

The side characters felt much more deep this time around, obviously the returning characters did, but also the new ones. One super strange change from the last game was that new female party members had GIANT breasts.

Great game overall. I encountered some bugs (game crashed during the ending, warping to an area of the environment I could not escape from, certain events didn't trigger to open a door and I got stuck in a mission and had to restart it), but other than that the gameplay and presentation was immaculate. Jumping back into this game for a second time was not hard, and I hope that I will be able to last into finishing it on insanity after this playthrough.

Great game. Play it at all costs, but be sure to play the first one first.

[Shrinweck]

I love pretty much everything about this game except for the slim selection of weapons. After a while it's hard to notice since each one is well designed for what it does and once you got to level 40+ in the first one it's not like you were using anything but the HWMM or whatever weapons any way, but I'd still appreciate some kind of variety more.

The followers are well done, too, but the elimination of the elevator loads eliminates all of the follower banter. The most you get comments when you're walking around but they're all tailor made to be vague and not toward each other.

Also shotguns suck now so there's that. Vanguard was one of my favorite classes but with charge only working on locked enemies it's usually suicide. I've found that if there's any more than two or three enemies I'm charging into then even with the buffed up shields and time slowing it's suicide.

There's also a weird difference in tech armor which lasts until it's destroyed and barriers, fortification, and the geth shield boost which all perform the exact same function (until evolved) but only last for a minute.

Also I really wish there was a third weapon variation on the pistol and SMG.

Don't know how many of you have plowed through the end yet but the last mission sequences are very well done. In all a very impressive game, even dumbed down. Hopefully they learn from the mistakes in the first and second games for a very well done third game to close things out.

[SineSwiper]

I learned in the first game that Singularity was the best skill in the game. You know what's the best skill in this game? Singularity. As long as they are in the health bar range, Singularity will take any enemy (boss or no) and make them float around like a rag doll. (Hint: get the Wide version when you level it up.)

Thus, I chose Bionics and I'm glad I did. Although, I'm surprised just how well improved the other techs are. Overload is a requirement for most levels. The bullet modification techs are pretty handy, especially when it's upgraded to affect the whole party. Warp will fuck up any sort of Barrier or Armor, and a couple of Heavy Warps will kill most mid-bosses. I hardly ever shoot my weapon.

And yes, the graphics are improved. I'm amazing how well they can display faces, much better than that FF movie, which was kinda the gold standard for CGI. It seems like their version of FMV is basically upping the polygon count, since the processor isn't worried about the game mechanics at that point.

[Shrinweck]

Haha I guess we're different here - I find myself using my weapons a great deal. If you choose a combat class like infiltrator or soldier you get the skills that slow down time and if you time it right it lets you mow down enemies just as efficiently. Once you get the rapid fire sniper rifle and have evolved to heavy ammo types you can end bosses with a single clip. I still find myself switching to the Cain for the Geth Primes and that big floaty shieldy monster thing with the eyes.

My favorite biotic skill on my combat classes to choose as a bonus skill is probably reave since it stops enemies where they are and gives me a stationary target as opposed to the floating.

[Oracle]

Again, I'm playing on hardcore, so maybe that's where the difference is.

I also chose Biotic. I find that warp is great for shields, and damage, and hooking over cover to divebomb enemies. Singularity is ok, but I prefer shockwave. Just pull out the SMG, drop everything's shields with it, and shockwave, and everything goes flying.

I have a sniper rifle on my Biotic, as that is what I chose as a new weapon (when the time comes). I find it is pretty much the missing piece to the range game as a Biotic. Drop shields with warp, then headshot with sniper.

Bosses take a long time for me, at least until barriers/shields are down (Geth Primes, the Collector heavies, and the Collector floaty eye zapper things). Probably due to the difficulty. Anything with massive shields, I use the Collector heavy weapon laser if I happen to have it equipped. Otherwise, it's the SMG for barrier/shields and heavy pistol/sniper rifle for armor.

I never use overload, ever. The extra power I have right now is Reave, but I find the Warp/shockwave combo on RB and LB to be the best. I usually use Grunt as an ally, and then whoever else. I'll usually take Zaheed or Jacob vs. synthetics (gogo group concussive shot), whoever else for other mission types (Grunt is really all you need. Pop barrier, give him a shotgun, activate incindiary shot, and watch him play).

[SineSwiper]

Once you get the rapid fire sniper rifle and have evolved to heavy ammo types you can end bosses with a single clip. I still find myself switching to the Cain for the Geth Primes and that big floaty shieldy monster thing with the eyes.

I really wish I could have changed to a sniper rifle. They just asked this question in the middle of a mission without giving me a chance to test the guns out. I thought an assault rifle meant that I could hold down the fire, not this 3 shot bullshit. I want an automatic gun. Not even the SMGs do that.

[bovine]

I am playing it on insanity. It is hard.

[SineSwiper]

Anybody else think that the two Bionic characters you get suck? Jack has Shockwave and Pull. The new blue titty chick has Pull and Throw. Pull and motherfucking Throw??!

If there is one thing I cannot stand, it's when I go to the action wheel to attack something and all of the skills are in red. Why? Because all of those damn Pull, Throw, Shockwave skills are only useful for guys with Health bars. Why the fuck would I even care about guys with Health bars when I can cause them to float around like useless rag dolls?

Mordin has one for Barrier and one for Armor.
The merc has one for Armor, and a great bullet skill for Shields and mechs.
Garrus has Overload, Concussive Shot (for Armor), and a good bullet skill.
Miranda has both Warp and Overload.
etc., etc.
But Jack and Samara have shitty skills.

I hate Health only skills. About the only one I like is Tali's AI Hacking skill. Though, it's more of a fun waste of time than an actual skill.

[Shrinweck]

Once you get the rapid fire sniper rifle and have evolved to heavy ammo types you can end bosses with a single clip. I still find myself switching to the Cain for the Geth Primes and that big floaty shieldy monster thing with the eyes.

I really wish I could have changed to a sniper rifle. They just asked this question in the middle of a mission without giving me a chance to test the guns out. I thought an assault rifle meant that I could hold down the fire, not this 3 shot bullshit. I want an automatic gun. Not even the SMGs do that.

The three round burst assault rifle gets decent once you upgrade the ever loving hell out of it. Once you get the accuracy upgrade it almost is a sniper rifle once you're behind cover. Also if you click fast enough they pretty much act like they're fully automatic at least.

[SineSwiper]

Some paramour spoilers, but worth it:

I knew this chick was a bi-sexual! Oh, and DAMN!
Very funny glitch with Tali
Morinth bonding scene (if you don't know who she is yet, you probably wouldn't understand)

[bovine]

Update: Insanity remains hard.

[SineSwiper]

Update: Insanity remains hard.

Hardcore is already hard. Hell, Normal isn't exactly hard, but I still get cocky and get myself killed. Which results in yet another loading screen...

[Eric]

Update: Insanity remains hard.

Pfft it's not that bad. Doing my second play through on Insanity as a Soldier.

Just don't let the pyros get to you, that = instant death.

[SineSwiper]

Just don't let the pyros get to you, that = instant death.

Yeah, they are already bad on Normal. I had a hard time with that merc loyality quest with the torchs spraying everywhere.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah the way I do that part of the Zaeed loyalty quest is I'm basically just constantly looking up to make sure they aren't moving yet and once they are I just unload a clip onto 'em. My only complaint about Zaeed is that there isn't enough of him. They could pretty much make a new trilogy just about him.

And yes fuck the pyros.

Just started a new playthrough with another infiltrator since that seems to be my favorite class.

[bovine]

news: Bovine beats game on insanity. Does little dance.

Update: Insanity remains hard.

Pfft it's not that bad. Doing my second play through on Insanity as a Soldier.

Just don't let the pyros get to you, that = instant death.

pyros are easy. If they do not have shields, armour, or barrier up, overload kills them in one hit and they explode to do damage to any of their friends who are nearby.

[Blotus]

Hey you, when you did your second playthrough with the same character for your Insanity run, did it give you the option to change classes?

[bovine]

Hey you, when you did your second playthrough with the same character for your Insanity run, did it give you the option to change classes?

Nope, it surely did not.

[Blotus]

Balls.

[SineSwiper]

Finally finished it. Too bad it didn't give you some credit for doing 100% of the quests, but at least I got through the game without any losses on the suicide mission (I cheated and looked it up first). I hate point of no return BS.

The game is awesome, but it does have some shortfalls. The combat starts to get boring after a while. Even if you up the difficulty, then it's just boring and hard. I wish there was some more variety. Also, while the loyalty quests were pretty good (I really liked Jacob's and Samara's), the extra quests came down to killing some mercs that took over a mining station. Mildly interesting, but I wanted some better stories there.

However, the story and character building over all was great. Most of the characters were highly interesting, especially Thane, Legion, and Mordin.

Oh, and the easter eggs are pretty cool:

Probing Uranus
Legion dancing (how the fuck...?)
Mordin singing
Drinking episodes
Or the Quarian Admiral Koris saying "Something with a nice respectable name, like the Defranz or the Iktomi." (Hint: vas)

Kinda wish there was a video of the suicide mission with all the wrong choices. I'd like to see just how many characters you can kill before reaching the end.

[Eric]

news: Bovine beats game on insanity. Does little dance.

Update: Insanity remains hard.

Pfft it's not that bad. Doing my second play through on Insanity as a Soldier.

Just don't let the pyros get to you, that = instant death.

pyros are easy. If they do not have shields, armour, or barrier up, overload kills them in one hit and they explode to do damage to any of their friends who are nearby.

Yeah but on Insanity they have all that shit up. rofl.

[Oracle]

Spoiler question:

If someone isn't loyal before the suicide mission, they will die for sure, right? I'm not 'renegadie' enough to make Tali loyal again after sticking up for Legion. Or is there another way to prevent her from dying?

[SineSwiper]

Spoiler question

Loyalty is a big part of it, but not everything.

If you pick non-loyal members, they will probably die. Even if you do pick loyal members, if you pick the wrong ones, they will probably die. If you don't buy ship upgrades, they will probably die. Sometimes they will screw up and get somebody else killed.

[bovine]

I continue to play through this game after I have s-ranked it. I have a desire to play dead space from time to time, but never actually play it because I've already gotten all the achievements for it.

I used to use achievements as an excuse to continue to play a game after I would otherwise be done with it, or to play it differently, to try the multiplayer that looked awful, try it on a harder difficulty, etc. I found it as a way to get outside of my preconceptions about games and how they should be. With Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space, I find myself with these two games that I love and how the achievements are keeping me away from them (or in mass effect 2's case, just making me feel guilty for continuing to play it). As I do not have an unlimited amount of time to play these games and new ones come out all the time (and I find it important to play a game when it comes out to catch it in its individual context), not playing a new or backburnered game (I'll get to you someday, No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2) feels like I am using my time incorrectly.

In super brief and unexpected closing (class starting), I now understand why some games put in seemingly unachievable achievements that require a ton of hours or repetition to complete. I kind of want some of those in Dead Space or Mass Effect 2 in order to get me to keep playing them long after I have beaten them. Mass Effect 2's achievements were too easy and Dead Space's were juuuuuust right, but that game is just too good and calls out to me from my shelf every once in a while for me to play it.

[Shrinweck]

I've found that there are specific moments that I just love to replay. Then there's all the small different choices you can make. Don't you want to have a different character that has done EVERYTHING differently for maximum effectiveness when ME3 comes out? haha

[bovine]

I've got 3 characters in my mass effect repertoire. The first one is the first character I played through the game with. That one is entirely devoted to doing what I want to do with the game. I like to approach these games with very little pre-release exposure so I can play it without any preconceptions, so I make my decisions based on what I would more realistically do, rather than what the game is trying to tell me is paragon or renegade.

The second character is my lady shepherd who benefits from my experience in the first playthrough, so I can make decisions and know their consequences and shape my experience based on the impact I want to have on the universe.

My third character is renegade shepherd, because I want to see how that plays out.

[SineSwiper]

I'm playing through my second playthrough with my same character on Insane. Previously, I was pretty much a paragon character in conversations, but I would sometimes hit the renegade option for real-time actions, since it's usually for enemies that you're talking to. Mostly paragon, though.

Now, I play through a second time, and I go through some renegade options, but I just feel bad about doing it, because it's not what I would do. I'm ending up building a neutral character, but I'm not sure if that's going to be a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. My higher level (with bonus Paragon/Renegade points) might make up for it, though. I do know certain choices, like the Morinth quest, require close to a full bar to work.

[Shrinweck]

If you don't have a full bar you just can't end up making a decision between Samara and Morinth.

[SineSwiper]

Insanity: Thou has wasted thy fucking time. Fuck this shit.

[Shrinweck]

I've found veteran gives me what I want out of the game. The enemies aren't that much harder to kill but they're harder to shoot. In normal they stand around waiting to be shot in comparison.

I wanted to write this a while ago, but thanks for the tip to use overload on pyros. That's the kind of thing that would actually be useful during the 'tips' on the loading screen.

[SineSwiper]

I've finally got the Professor. Now, I'm just going to do subquests until they are gone and build up my tech. I found that in the later part of the game (on Normal) the enemies were really easy. I increased it to Veteran mid-way through because I was getting bored.

Hopefully, the same will happen with Insanity.

[bovine]

I did not do well in insanity until I beat the derelict collector's ship level.

[SineSwiper]

I'm finding that I cannot beat the large mechs. At all. I beat the one from Freedom's Pass out of sheer luck, and some obstacle buggy pathing.

However, I just had to bail out of the "kill three mechs before they destroy the boxes" mission. Not because the boxes were all destroyed. Not because all three mechs were attacking; they don't. Not because I couldn't kill the last mech. I could not kill a single mech. I would bring down the shields and get to the armor, and about halfway through the armor, it would maul me like a bear since it breached my cover. It's extremely annoying that it would fire above my head for like 10 seconds, pinning me down and making me useless.

My next mission was the one with the unlimited mechs. At that point, I just wasn't feeling it. It's no fun to play through 4 minutes of fighting in the span of two hours of reloading. I thought the sub-missions would be easier, but that isn't working, and the upgrades weren't coming through.

[SineSwiper]

Funny, I was watching Chuck for the first time (the series on NBC), and I saw the lady, thinking "Damn, she looks familiar". Then I realized that they used both her voice and a lot of her face to create Miranda.

Just goes to show how far they've come with CGI.

[Shrinweck]

You should check ME2 on IMDB there's a lot of interesting talent that's involved with the voice work.

[Eric]

Jennifer Hale doesn't get enough recognition as female shepherd.

[Blotus]

I really dislike some of the achievements in ME1&2. In order to get the level 30 achievement, I've got to start a new game with my existing level 29 Shep (there's nothing left to do!). Since I can't change the class in new game+ (in this case, from Engineer to something with biotics), I can't get some of the skill/talent-based achievements. I also assume you cannot change the sex of your character either, so that blows.

I should really finish Dragon Age before doing a second run of ME2 anyway.

[Shrinweck]

You get a +25% experience bonus for beating the game... just start a new character and get it to 30. You can get to 30 with tons of stuff left over to do. It actually kind of sucks.

[SineSwiper]

I really dislike some of the achievements in ME1&2. In order to get the level 30 achievement, I've got to start a new game with my existing level 29 Shep (there's nothing left to do!). Since I can't change the class in new game+ (in this case, from Engineer to something with biotics), I can't get some of the skill/talent-based achievements. I also assume you cannot change the sex of your character either, so that blows.

I should really finish Dragon Age before doing a second run of ME2 anyway.

In ME2, the skill-based achievements can be done with other characters. I completed all of my achievements except the Insanity one with ME2. It's a lot better compared to ME1, where some of them required you to constantly group with two members (lame!), or master a skill by using it over and over again, but from Shepard.

[Flip]

I beat ME 1 for the first time a few weeks ago and finally am playing ME 2 on the PC. The graphics in this game are ridiculous. Since i just got a new PC recently ive only been playing old old games i missed (and SC2) so this one is the first that puts my hardware to the test.

I liked the ME 1 story and am glad that some of my choices carried over, that is a neat concept. In spite the fact that i was mostly a paragon character in ME 1, i let the council die. I'm looking forward to giving this game a lot of time, it flows more quickly than ME 1 in dialoge, battles, and everything. Pacing matters to me, which is why Fallout:NV got boring at times.