f13.net

Yeah right. This is probably when they force you to regain all that XP and start from level 1 in a new game again. Come on, you spent all that time saving the world and vowing to put an end to the threat, then you die in the sequel without even playing through it.  :uhrr:

Just in case you were wondering what rk is talking about. Link (http://masseffect.bioware.com/teaser/index.html)

Man, I'm still hoping they remove the DRM so I can play the first one  :awesome_for_real:.

Did Bioware ever make good on that bullshit of making you keep your savegames to import into the sequel?

--edit: What am I to get from that teaser? That Shepard was turned into a Geth?

You are to accept that you are no longer rank 40 Specter Operative who had access to the best weapon that the alliance had to offer at the start of the sequel.
importing save game? sigh.

Hey, maybe this time each weapon type will have more than 3 models  :awesome_for_real:

Maybe they'll put out a patch that doesn't require drivers from two years ago to maybe kinda sorta work, too.

The Steam version doesn't have that shitty SecuROM, rite?

Correct.

Seeing Shepard killed in action in the teaser to the sequel after the "I'M GONNA SAVE THE FUCKING GALAXY" speech at the end of Mass Effect 1 is probably the biggest copout I've seen.

Nah, they're gonna pull the "IS SHEPARD REALLY DEAD?!? TAKE THIS NEW CHARACTER AND FIND OUT!" route because it fucking kills Bioware to let you actually play your previous character in a sequel since that makes for a lot of extra work bringing new players into the game since you have to explain a lot more backstory. Also, you have to figure out how to scale the game so it's challenging for both new players and people rolling in from the previous game with their save file full of demi-gods.

Don't discard your saved games.

That trailer didn't even make me want to play that game. Who's idea was it to have it say Shepherd was killed? It's either bad PR or bad writing - take your pick. And if it's a twist and you play as shepherd who is ASSUMED DEAD but now has her (or his) own mission of vengeance, /SNORE!

Seriously, why? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? :(

You could always wait for the game to come out.

Gotta agree with this. 

I really enjoyed the first one (outside of too many side quests and buggy driving/planet exploring crap), but that trailer did not make me want to play the second.  Shepherd was the only character I actually liked.  And he's presumed dead?  So either we'll start as him only we're pretending to be dead, or we'll find him along the way and add him to the party. 

Either way, I'm confused why they decided to go that route.  It doesn't make me want to play the game at all. 

But, it's soooo much harder to have knee-jerk reactions if you follow THAT crap advice.

I can't seem to find this trailer everyone is bitching about. Just a lame teaser.

It's not even a teaser, teasers are supposed to tease, this is more like, "lol stupid fans of the series with your hopes for a sequel, motherfucker MAY OR MAY NOT BE DEAD, HAHA AREN'T WE CLEVER HAHA."

Just for reference, the importing of characters worked fine in BG2, though the incoming character had been subject to a much lower level cap.

Well, isn't that teasing?  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously, we get it. You don't like Bioware.

I don't even get what the big deal with this is.  It's nothing. Move along.  Any discussion about this will likely be rendered moot 5 minutes into the game.

That's why I called it bad writing or bad PR.

And I don't like Bioware? No, I just don't like post-Black Isle Bioware. Once they reached the Obsidian-era, it all went downhill. I'm not willing to be revisionist and compare Mass Effect and KoToR to Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, etc. It's not fair to Bioware. :oh_i_see:

The only Bioware game I actively hate is NWN. All of their other stuff has been mediocre to great imo. NWN is just half-assed trash.

Just like this teaser.

Also, no, it's not teasing. A teaser is supposed to make you salivate. This made me Meh. Audibly.

A better teaser would to have been to have him listed as MIA or something, if they were going to go this general route. 

Either way, while I hope we get to continue as Shepherd, I'll likely end up playing the game either way. 

I liked female Shepard. Male Shepard seemed to have been put through an emotion and character removal device.

Wrex, on the other hand, was awesome. More Krogans, plz.

I'd take Mass Effect and KotoR over Icewind Dale any day.

 :nda:

Whoever's dead in our saves stays dead. This includes people who don't join your party (read: the last several decisions you make). That's what I imagine.

Bad marketing, but I have more faith in the storywriters than you lot do after what they delivered in part one.

Icewind games had their place.  It was mindless map exploration and shinies.  But it was kinda fun after having to make a bunch of choices in the BG series, and one helluva less headtrip than Torment. 


Wrex was a douche.  For such a badass he was complaining all the time.  And male Shepherd's lack of emotion was exactly what I liked about him.  It's how someone in his shoes would act. 

His whole people are dying out. He's entitled to be a bit pissy.

And Shepard wasn't "emotionaless hardass" so much as "bad voice actor".

Edit: Nevermind.  You guys didn't play along. :-P

Don't care, still buying it day 1.

Shepard's Male VA was really good IMO when delivering Paragon or Middle-of-the-road lines, but Renegade lines sounded like a good guy pretending to be a bad guy.

I've never played with a female character since I can't find a way to make them look less masculine than the male ones.

The female Shepherd's voice acting was good.

Yeah, but evil Shepard occasionally said some hilarious shit with his bad delivery.  Wanting to throw the crippled pilot off the ship for fear that his genetic disorder cripple legs could infect the crew was  :why_so_serious:

Which is interesting, considering that her voice acting of Bastila in KOTOR made me want to ram a screwdriver into my ear drums...

Hmm. I only just got Mass Effect off Steam yesterday. I'm guessing that it's not my imagination that so many of the voices are familiar.

The dialog helps that a lot.  She's much more direct and take charge than whiny and frustrated.

Not just the voices but the characters themselves are almost identical to many in KoTR.

Yeah I've noticed that too. I swear that the first regular party member I get sounds and acts exactly like Carth. All angsty about his headaches.

Yay for never finishing KOTOR.

It's too early to say. I'm going to assume that this teaser is a hint about something that happens and I'm in the camp that leads towards "the galaxy thinks you died, but you're just off the grid!"

Edit: Oh, and Schild? BG I'll give you. Easily the best CRPG I've played. (I even like it better than Torment.) But Icewind Dale? That's got to be the only RPG that is less...you know RPGish, than Diablo.

Mental note: Must go talk to Joker. (Doing a Renegade playthrough. I just got the game a month ago. I'm about two years behind everyone on games).

Did you ever play Icewind Dale 2? It actually had a very nice storyline.

Don't forget that the ME1 trailer/teaser/intro video and some other things I saw contained scenes that never even took place in the game, like the distress call from calistan or whatever.

No. I was so disappointed in Icewind Dale 1 that I never did. One thing I liked about the old Infinity Engine games was the party interaction and Icewind Dale took that away.

To me that teaser seems to say that the (Normandy?) ship has been transformed into a big geth, is in orbit around Earth, and is receiving a trasmission from the geth database with all the information they know about Shepard.

How on earth do you get that? It couldn't have been any more direct about saying Shepherd was killed in action. It looked like his Alliance records to me - although I really wish game designers would stop having their computers make teletype noises and use fonts from 1965.

Because plastering helvetica into everything is oh so much better.

That was made by a company in Hollywood that (IIRC) does nothing but trailers, not us.

Wow Bioware really paid out good money to an outside company for that? Did you guys pull an EA and lay off all of the artists between games or something?

Edit: I probably sound much more negative than I mean to.  I just finished playing Mass Effect this weekend and loved it. I even did all the silly side missions and enjoyed shooting stuff up in the Mako. But that teaser just did nothing for me at all.

It got people talking about the game I guess. Maybe that's all Bioware was going for...

I've stopped with the surprise on when it comes to finding out what companies pay for and what they do in-house. Trailers are easy, I'm not sure why they're farmed out. I can see why a company would farm out the sound (if they have no inhouse sound studio of any sort) and sometimes even the art (especially when a shop like Massive Black is better than like 90% of the industry).

It's idolatry, IMO. I chalk the trend up to this bizarre idea that's taken root in the games industry that Hollywood knows how to do what we do better than we do.

Hollywood knows how to make and market movies. They're good at that. Games? They just try to shove them into the same mold they use for everything else.

One effect of this idolatry is the trend of hiring Hollywood marketing companies to make elaborate CGI commercials that show events that never happen in the game, show no footage of the game, and often don't focus on the title of the game. It worked very well for Gears of War, but most of the time - again, in my opinion - it doesn't work at all.

So game trailers are like trailers for TV series in the future? Yay

Game advertising is going down a strange road. It's becoming less and less about the games, almost as if companies are embarrassed to sell their real products.

Remember when Sega showed shots of Mario Brothers and Mario Kart and compared them to shots of much faster Genesis games? That sort of advertising based on actual game content looks to be dying off. Now it's either vaguely related CG trailers or rambling talking heads.

Then it is just following the trend of most advertising today. How many commercials do you see that actually talk about the features of the product?

mentos, the freshmaker.  :grin:
I never get that ad at all.

You remember it from years ago - that was the point.

And after having been made aware of Mentos, did you buy some?

i was too young, but parents bought it for me and I liked it.  :grin: does that count?

You were beaten by a Mentos ad, then. How does that make you feel?  :-P

Now I want some Mentos... Damnit.

heheh, I don't know why they didn't advertise it with kids having a nice chew out of it. It's the best part of Mentos. You just chew and chew. Before you know it, the whole roll is gone. So I learn to savor it by just letting it stay on the tongue and not let my teeth chew it.

Mentos makes the most memorable commercials.

What else makes you drive up to your apartment, see the mailman down the street, notice he missed a letter and ran after him, then after successfully delivering it turn around to your roommate and make the Mentos smile while holding up your hand (pretending to hold the Mentos you wish you had) and flashing your thumb in your best Fonzie imitation?

Or is that just me?

No, that would be fucking hysterical.

Yup it says Alliance Records, I may have been wrong about that, but if you ignore all text and look at just the images, there's the planet (thus the point of view is "in orbit"), and then the close-ups look like a rifle's muzzle and parts but shrug, it could be a ship, and then the geth has the N7 logo on his shoulder, with blood next to it, so that's what I concluded.  It could just be a regular-size geth made with spare human armor and weapon parts (they all had the N7 logo on them too).

Anyway...

Obviously Shepherd has undergone a Bond-style You Only Live Twice fake death!

Hmm, I'll try watching it again at some point and see if I can see what you saw. I'm pretty much a strict "focus on the text" kinda guy.  :grin:

Of course, the Cerberus logo is displayed as the video loads, so maybe that Geth is their own version of one.  Who knows?

Vaguely related, the new nVidia 182 drivers seem to help those of us who were having excessive crashes, or couldn't start due to GPFs.

With the 169 drivers I could kind of play, but the graphics were messed up and things were iffy.  Was never able to save.  Later drivers made the game die upon launching, usually slowly and painfully.  These I was able to make a character, save games (!), talk to people, launch and quit easily.  When I finally crashed it was clean.  They are working on a patch, finally, but for anyone with an nVidia card who hasn't been able to play but wants to, give these a shot.  (Apparently 90% of people having trouble are using a 8xxx series card.)

Mass Effect 2 on PC to release same day as 360 revision. (http://www.vg247.com/2009/08/21/exclusive-vg247-talks-mass-effect-2-with-associate-producer-jesse-houston/)


Finally.  Know which version I'm buying.

It doesn't say that the controls are going to be the same.

As a sidenote, BioWare fucking SUCKS at UI design. GAH!

Yes, and now I need to buy/replay ME on PC.  I think I may die from the irony of it all.

Some new Mass Effect 1 DLC just got released today (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175755).  Not sure if it's out for the PC version yet.

It is (http://eastore.ea.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=ea&Locale=en_US&ThemeID=718200&Env=BASE&productID=152041300&resid=HUSgnwoBAkgAACMT154AAAAx&rests=1251240428116).

Is this the main ME2 thread? The game is in Alpha, will be playable at PAX, and allows individual import of characters.

Well, looks like the normandy eats some hot death there.

Supposedly the fixed the shit that was broken from the first game.

That's what everyone says about every game.

Of course, then we end up with the folks behind Assassin's Creed fixing "too much walking" by adding swimming and flying. Etc.

Bioware has lost it's fucking mind. (http://tgs.gamespot.com/video/6230520/mass-effect-2-character-reveal-subject-zero?hd=1&tag=topslot;thumb;4)

Not content to destroy any desire I had to play Dragon Age, now they've got to spread the contagion over to ME2 with a tattooed "badass" chick.  It's like she was tailor made to fulfill every 14 year old dork's fantasies.

I hope you can ignore her and stick her on toilet scrubbing duty on the Normandy. You gotta give some bones to the teens, as long as it doesn't bleed all over the game, whats the harm?

I just get this feeling that they've decided to go for the tween market and abandoned us old fuckers.  When every game video you release is some idiotic mix of sex and violence with a really cheesy nu-metal soundtrack what else am I supposed to think?

This character is only "interesting" if you've never seen a real boob.

I agree with you, I'm just a bit more cautiously optimistic. The video itself doesn't bode well, but its a marketing tool. Maybe they still know what made ME1 great, and it certainly wasn't obnoxous jerk-off material for lonely gamers that need to get laid.

They said this one is darker.

Either way, Subject Zero cause my member to shrink.

I'm sure someone out that thinks it's hot though.

Unless shit changes, my Shepard's Angels squad will remain Ashley and Liara.  Soldier and Biotic can take care of anything.

Fixed that for ya.

Big Gulp:

You think that character was marketed at horny boys or tweens? Were you ever a horny boy? She's bald, scarred, and dresses ugly. She's agressive and bitchy and if I'm guessing probably grew up on a world that was a gangland warzone. She is not marketed to them at all. She is marketed to the crowd that likes Tasha Yar though. (Minus the hair.)

That music wasn't nearly as bad as the Dragon Age music. You need to just get over the videos. Bioware has some new marketers and they aren't as good as the old ones. That has nothing to do with the game. Oh, and I like the sex and violence. I'm tired of games being white washed because people are afraid the kids play them.

Those videos are made for mouth breathing retards who think Mountain Dew=Extreme.  You know, the Ultimate Fighting douchebags of the world.  Goddamn, I hate humanity.

Complaining about advertising? Srsly. As long as Marilyn Manson isn't doing the actual in-game music, who gives a shit what crap they lay over a commercial?

As far as the nerd fantasy shit, you're kidding right? Blue alien lesbian scene in the original wasn't?

(AZ, I also played Shepard's Angels style :))

I really don't want to see anything about Mass Effect 2. I know I'm going to play it. Any new character or the such is introduced will lose a great deal of its appeal and impact if I don't meet them for the first time in the game. The genuine surprise of discovering something in the medium is significantly impacted by how much advertising they do about it.

Do yourself a favor. Just don't fucking read or see any media about Mass Effect 2. Play the game when it comes out. You already know you're going to get your money's worth; the question is how significant the experience is going to be to you if you already know the back story of most of the characters and aren't surprised to see them when they appear.

You've become way too bitter/jaded. It's a Character Reveal that focuses solely on the character and much like ME1, if you don't want to see much of a character, you don't have to. Quit being so bitchy.

Only way to play.  I toyed with Wrex replacing Ashley for a hot second, and had to use Kaiden in the beginning, but that whiny bitch was the sacrificial lamb the first chance I got.


I actually skipped their first character reveal.  This one just happened to pop up in my RSS feed.

An amusing dev post pulled from the Bioware forums:

Should've saved it for possible post-launch marketing. Or downloader bloopers attached to inevitable DLC. Though, they're probably busy making Day 1 DLC atm since it's too late to include it in the box :awesome_for_real:

 :facepalm:

I don't get it.

You should read the Dragon Age thread then.

Too much effort to read a thread about a bad game.

Oh, you've played Dragon Age? How was it?

Or are you being contrarian for no reason?

Oh settle down precious. I was merely being psychic.

I wasn't aware I was riled up.

Your sideburns curl when you get angry.

The release date and preorder bonuses have now been announced. January 26th is the official U.S. release date with the 29th (?) I think as the EU date.





Edit: I put the images in spoilers because they were huge!

They made Shepard a Sith Trooper?

(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s183/ec1016/SithTroopers.jpg)

Like the Terminus Armor, prefer the bonuses the Inferno gives, and will probably buy it on Steam anyways.

Bit earlier than I was expecting.  I think MAG also comes out on that day.

Wait, what?

I don't know what that mechanic means and if we take it literally it means you only get X reserve ammo for every weapon.

Which is patently stupid.

I can run out of ammo now?  :ye_gods:

Limited Ammo + NPC Party Members = Fail.

Perhaps there's a reload now.  You don't actually lose ammo, but you have a certain size clip before you have to reload.  I'd be down with that.

That would be "Increased Clip Size." Unless they got an intern to write it who doesn't have a firm grasp on the nuances of space warfare.

I hope so.   Because it was bad enough when the fuckers used their cooldowns before I could.  You're all ready to execute your perfect plan only to find out Liara wasted Stasis or something on the first guy who died.

Or maybe only you yourself can run out of ammo, a la Fallout 3?

I'm pretty sure they've said that only Heavy Weapons have limited ammo.

That's my guess as to what they're referring to with the Terminus armor especially since it comes with a heavy weapon.

Fuck Ammo, just let me shoot my space gun!

No place for hidin' baby
No place to run
You pull the trigger of my
Spaaace Guuuun!
(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/5562/genesimmons219825a.jpg)

I think that they just replaced the overheating mechanic with a reloading one...

I don't read it as having X number of ammo, since in ME1 you could switch out different types of ammo for various effects and damage types.  Though it does sound like they're now going to limit the number of ammo types you can carry with a certain number of available slots.  Before you could 'carry' 20 different types of armors, 20 different guns, and 30 different ammo types.  So there's probably a storage box/bin on the Normandy (or whatever) that you store your gear then outfit your character before each mission.

The overheating mechanic is still in but now there is apparently an ejectable heatsink that can be used to instantly cooldown and get back into the fight. Of course, the question becomes are these ejectable heatsinks "ammo".

The impression I got was that some or all classes could switch ammo mid fight. They mention somewhere in one of the demos a Soldier switching his assault rifle to incindiary rounds with a single button press.

Just to say, there was ammo in ME1 -- grenades.

I don't know how things changed after I left, so I can't say more than that.

I only used grenades on Feros and then only if I was being a Paragon. In general they just didn't have enough bang. Literally. I could kill 1000X faster by using a gun, tech power, or biotic power every single time.

I didn't use them a lot, but there were a couple places in the game where the large aoe spread of grenades really came in handy. Mostly in certain indoor areas where you'd open a door and a half dozen things would come in after you.

Large spreads?  Like two feet?  I always missed with grenades.

I used them on Geth all the time.  Loved them.

Perhaps it was easier to use them on PC?

Grenades were rad. No better way to clear out a bunch of jackasses who thought they were so smart because they were behind crates. It was also fun to throw one towards a vortex a bunch of people were getting pulled into.

They were very good for big mobs of those cyber zombie guys too.

I used them when a bunch of guys were in cover close together. Wasn't there a weapon mod that made the grenades explosion radius larger? Instead of fiery or whatever.

Grenades are not that awesome for damage but they do have some tactical uses.  Plus they are hella fun.

Iirc, it was all about the grenade mods. I don't really remember using them, I guess that says something about the combat after all, even though I mostly liked it. But I remember having grenade mods in there, so I must've used them...

BioWare continues their fine tradition of marketing games by tossing out massive plot spoilers like Halloween candy. (http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14235013/mass-effect-2/videos/me2_trl_enemies_110409.html)

The character introduced at the end is mine. It was supposed to be a surprise, something you discover in the course of playing. Heck, when I left it was still highlighted in the IP guide as "do not mention this in PR presentations, ever."

EDITED BECAUSE EVERYONE'S A FUCKING CRITIC

I've stopped reading Mass Effect 2 preview content.  I know I will buy the game and Bioware has been just awful with the spoilers lately.

A spoiler like when  the Episode One trailer showing Darth's Maul's lightsaber was double-ended? Or a spoiler like showing Darth saying "I AM your father!" in an Empire Strikes Back trailer? (yes, that never happened, I know).

Because I still think that was a total fuck-up there. It added nothing to the trailer, yet having that as a surprise in the movie would have really upped the tension while watching it for the first time.

I am not looking.

Yeah, damnit...must...resist...the clicking!

Stopped watching anything ME2 related about half way through Normandy trailer... it's one of these games i really want to play as unspoiled as it's still possible :uhrr:

Wow...you know what? You spoiled it worse than the video did! And all because you said this 'person' is a party member and not an enemy as the video suggests! I figured it would end up going this way but thanks for confirming it!  :awesome_for_real:


PS. I don't care about spoilers I just find your revealing rant to be rather funny

We still :heart: you Stormwaltz.

That said, I don't mind spoilers in terms of what character to choose since I'm going to run to a wiki or FAQ anyway to figure out what party I want to go after.

Like most others, I was missing most videos before now, and now I'm semi-avoiding them.

It's Mass Effect, I don't need to know much more.

Yeah same policy, but I'm avoiding all videos from here on out.  I know I'm going to buy it.  Just.  Need.  Willpower.

For those who do want more, here's nine minutes of gameplay footage (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/06/nine-straight-minutes-of-mass-effect-2-gameplay/). First part is dialogue, second part is combat.

Spoilers aren't as atrocious as what the the previous one blew. You do see an ME1 character. And there's a pretty obvious bug with the background music playing too loudly over cutscene dialogue. :P

Ok, I was kinda expecting it, but hey, look who's back (of course, if you don't want to be spoiled, be a good guy/girl, and STAY AWAY from the link :P) :

http://kotaku.com/5413616/an-old-friend-returns-in-new-mass-effect-2-videos-screens
 
:heart: :awesome_for_real:

Sigh. I guess they wanted it to be screwable to make it memorable.  :why_so_serious:

"But Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills. You're from two different worlds! "

How did this get on page 3? sheesh... Only one week to go.

I can't wait.....and I saw 3 (although brief) commercials during 24 on Sunday for ME2.

And nice spoiler btw.....   :drill:

It got on page 3 because Bioware has been releasing tons of videos in the past few months, many of which contain spoilers.  Hell, there are games sites out there which apparently spoiled the entire first hour and a half of the game.  I'm guessing anyone who is interested in this game is actively trying to avoid discussions about it right now.

--edit: gah, forgot to spoiler to protect the innocent. i swear it was only for a second.  :awesome_for_real:

No. She was a very popular character and many players wanted her as a romance option.

I've been avoiding all news except for class changes.  I don't even know who's in the game other than the three they keep ramming into my head OVER AND OVER AND OVER on posters: Boob Jumpsuit, Green Dude, and Wrex 2.

They finally got around to announcing what the Cerberus Card that comes with every new copy of the game does:

If that just said 'more missions' I would be compelled to buy all the DLC they could ship. But happily because they imply it is really all about overpowered loot, my 'RMT and Horse Armour Indignation' talent gives me +5 willpower.

No, she's quite literally engineered to appeal to geek types -- a tech genius girl barely past her adolescence, with over-exaggerated female curves. Small wonder they fall for her in droves.

The first DLC is free.  It's essentially like the Shale DLC from Dragon Age.  It gives you a new character and a new quest as incentive to by the game new rather than used.

So are the other two.  Ashley's the tough but compassionate warrior-poet, Liara's the callow archeologist, and Tali's the adventurous and precocious engineering nerd.

This post had a decent chance of involving NGE with how similar the three female characters are.

I do not like the way this is phrased.  At the moment any game intentionally cockblocks content with the intention of making you pay later for it(insert mmo joke here) that's the last I'll pay for it.  Bioware seems to have a real hardon for DLC now and it's making me dislike the company more and more each time I see it.

It sounds like a replacement for the piece-of-crap handling APC in the original game.  I would assume you can still use the default APC to move around the planets if you don't have the DLC.

According to reviewers, the base game doesn't have any APC sections (they weren't exactly most peoples' favorite part of the original).  Any sort of planetary exploring missions would presumably part of the Hammerhead DLC.

I think it's phrased just like any other commercial/piece of PR that tries to sell you something you don't really need.

You have a point, but I was traveling down the road of "hey, I am playing a bad ass soldier (warrior) and need this engy (rogue) to open this box for the lootz!" rather than for any Kirk-like escapades. I didn't care for any of the people on my team save for Wrex. Tali was pure utility.

The first time I did the same, this time I used Garrus (and Ashley instead of Wrex because I wanted to switch it around this playthrough) and it worked out just as well (going Vanguard instead of Soldier I got the Bio angle covered myself).

I miss Wrex though, thats like playing Kotor without HK-47.

I didn't even know he was a gay romance option.

They're going to be crushed when it turns out Quarians are frog-people.  Not me though.  Tali's just that awesome.

I believe I am skating on the other side of the ice.

I liked Tali because she was the only one that didn't feel like she was bitching all the God damn time and that includes both men and women.

Tali was never in my party since my shepard was the thecy herself. Went with a sort of rogue/sniper character which suited my playstyle(plus i can't stand ever leaving a locked chest or door in any game)  so she just kind of stayed on the ship and stared at the engine.  If I'd had my preference than the human girl would have had a female romance option since she was in my party from day one and we generally got along.

Wrex....

Shepard: Oh tell me about mercenaries, there is no reason for me to ask this, but fuck I'll ask on the offchance.
Wrex : <20 minute cliche filled epic about betrayal and hey that guy across the room's army literally ripped off my balls but I don't care>
Shepard: Actually why are you here, you joined the team for absolutely no reason, and you're a merc who doesn't want paying, how's that working for ya?
Wrex: Just how I roll dawg.

Turian-guy was trying way too hard. The script read like Gene Hunt, the voice sounded like a whiny bitch.

Blue squid head chick.... jesus christ.

The forgettable male human is possibly the dullest character ever to grace a computer game since Bao-Dur, and not having to talk to him after he was first against the wall on <SPOILER> was a blessed relief.



That leaves Tali and Ashley.

They were both decent characters, but Tali was cooler than Ashley.


Also this.

You know, I'm with you on Bao-dur, he's like a walking yawn, but I remember seeing a many many pages long thread on the KOTOR2 forums that consisted mostly of female gamers swooning about how hot he and/or his character and/or his voice were. So maybe he just wasn't for us.

Bao-dur lost me on the very first conversation. You meet him on that remarkably dull brown/green planet, and given the slightest provocation he subjects you to a 4 hour treatise on an irrelevant war that then turns out to have no impact whatsoever on matters at hand. I was subscribed to SWG for almost a year, but meeting Bao-Dur remains that most soporific gaming experience of my entire misspent life.

Discovering that the Kotor2 team had decided they had time to fit in Bao-dur's Homeric backstory, but not the HK factory pretty much confirmed my suspicion that there is no God.

This may sound odd, but I never played Mass Effect because I didn't care much Jade Empire (I don't know why, it just left me cold). I thought I didn't care for Bioware rpgs anymore until I played DA:O. Now I plan on buying ME 1 and 2, but before I do I wanted to ask teh internets: while I realize ME is in a different setting, is it fair to say it's a BG/DA style game, or is it something completely different?

It's very, very Dragon Age in Space. Or rather Dragon Age was Horse Effect.

ME is a real shooter (though you can pause to give orders) as in you have to aim and you can dodge projectiles so it's not like the BioWare fantasy RPGs in that regard.

Though if you play with enough Biotic and Tech powers, it might as well be another BG/Kotor/DA game.



I need to play ME1 again to see what's the big deal with Tali. I am seemingly completely indifferent to her either way, so I obviously missed something on my first play through.

I didn't have her in my party but I liked her on-ship conversations best after Ashley's.  I can certainly see where the love comes from though just from those.

You didn't miss anything. I'm not sure why everybody else is so keen on her given she wears a mask the entire time.

I just thought she was nice and admirable as a person. Dutiful, self-sacrificing and optimistic, unlike the rest of the supernarcissistic crew.

The guy has four testicles; anything else including his backstory is really secondary.

edit: okay i lie. Suspect my fondness for him comes from character being pretty much a copy of Black Whirlwind from Jade Empire.

And it looks like ME2 goes further down that path with the way the classes have been changed.  The combat actually looks pretty fun judging by each of the class videos.

Well, I've played up to Vimire so far.

I would say the characters and story from DA:O are presented better than both JE and ME, but JE and ME kick in after awhile,and have much better gameplay. You should give em a shot.

JE is a goddamn mess I could not finish. ME I have finished 3 times. DA I finished once and will probably not play until the large expansion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS75LNeKbvc

Such a great trailer.

Hey, the artists remembered to put guns on the Normandy this time. Cool.

Needs more Elves. :why_so_serious:

I actually think the biggest problem with the characters in ME is that aside from Ashley and Bao-Dur II they have no reason at all to join you. You wander about citadel and they're all like 'oh hey a random human just asked me a simple question about where he can find some guy I WILL FOLLOW YOU FOREVER MY SPECTRE LEIGE'.

Then they have no reason to spout their life story. And then you have no reason except xp to be doing their trivial bullshit side-quests. The writing is probably no better or worse than DA:O, but it lacks any motivation for them to do what you say or for you to dream up the arbitrary dialogue choices.

Not being able to micromanage them in combat probably doesn't help with the bonding process either.

EDIT : btw, ME is good and if you haven't already done so you should play it, not least because it is practically being given away in cereal boxes in order to promote ME2. My suspicion is that the phoned in parts came out that way because the effort was redirected into building the shooty gameplay model (that and consoles, everything is always somehow the fault of  consoles). Hopefully ME2 will build on that and not have the same issues.

You can micro them on the PC version.

Do you just mean by pressing space?

When I play a normal Bioware RPGs I'm the pause-every-0.7-seconds-to-adjust-someone's-footing type of micromanager.

DA in particular I rarely let it run for a full second at a time.

ME space-bar tactics feel like playing Shepard and shouting vague instructions, rather than acting as a godlike puppet master holding the very soul of each party member in my vice like grip.

But better than nothing ofc.

There's a continuum in the NPCs and their reason to follow you. Wrex's continuing presence never made a ton of sense to me, but I think Garrus's presence and motivation is pretty clear, for example.

EA continues its record of having their games leak well before release.

His voice was hot, but his character was boring as shit. Considering the other dude was Creepy Mc I-Killed-Her-Because-I-Loved-Her, I'm not surprised the ladies prefered Bao-dur.

I'm pretty much the same but the ME spacebar micromanagement felt fine to me. The NPCs could be bit stupid when it came to decide just how exactly they'd try to take cover in designated spot, but otherwise executing their powers and such worked well enough.

Seems to be equal opportunity leak, too?

Well, that Cerberus network thing better be free blowjobs and kittens, this is going to be a long week to suffer through :uhrr:

I love the review numbers. They should start giving games like 10000000000 out of 1-5 stars.

Was the narrator the actor that plays John Locke in Lost? That's gonna be wierd.

Narrator is Martin Sheen.

Hah, ya, it clicked after a second viewing.

I was sorta hoping for new weapons and such, but it looks like they ported over most of the artwork from the original ME. Now to convince the SO to play ME before ME2. She's on her 3rd playthrough of DA:O. That damned Alister.

Have they released the PC Sys Req Specs yet? I'm looking at the game site, but I am apparently blind and/or retarded and can't find them.

Considering ole Martin Sheen plays a major character in the sequel it's not that surprising.

Check Steam, I know they're listed there.

Of course! Steam, is there any problem you can't solve?  :heart:


I think my 7900 GS will muddle through still. Well, I hope.

I agree about Garrus, but I hear what eldaec is saying about the others too. It doesn't strike me as the same kind of character game their others have been. That said, still worth a play.

I always got the feeling Wrex was still under the shadow broker's influence and killing Saren was the ultimate goal with the best pay out... and it didn't hurt that he was a Turian. Tali was there for some self-fulfillment though I suspect something else was going on in her Flotilla. The rest are pretty self explanatory.  

It isn't that they don't get into the character motivations.. It's just that like eldaec said, it's written poorly where they just instantly start sucking your dick right away.

New weapons (even a new weapon class - Heavy Weapons), and new models for the weapons. 

But they've established their world already, and assault rifle is still going to look like an assault rifle.

This really pissed me off but then I just treated them as expendable and never interacted with them or listened to them and it all worked perfectly.

They didn't have sub-machineguns in ME1, did they? I don't recall them offhand, although they seem like they're just going to be a replacement for the soldier-restricted assault rifle.

Warning (unless this gets patched out): Avoid going up to the counter in the clinic on Omega. There's a clipping bug that will get you stuck in the ceiling.

Replaying ME1, I got reminded how much I squirm when listening to the dialogue. I don't really know why, it's not that it's atrociously acted or anything, there's just this feeling of slight embarrassment and discomfort that comes over me. It's like the uncanny valley of spoken dialogue, I guess.

Something else in ME that always confused me....

You're on an uncharted planet, bouncing around in the party bus having a great time, but you decide to head back up the Normandy to get on with your important space police shit. You press N and.....


HOW THE FUCK DID THE BUS GET BACK UP TO ORBITAL ALTITUDE?

I can only assume it can fly, but if so, why can't I fly my flying space bus directly to wherever I need to be for all my planetary side quest antics?

It doesn't fly; Normandy lands and you drive into the cargo bay.  They just don't show the cutscene. 

I suppose when Normandy drops off the Mako on a planet, it doesn't always have to toss it out midflight - it could actually land and let the Mako gently drive out of the cargo bay, but my guess is they didn't want to have two cutscenes for the same result.

I suppose that I should try installing the original game again and find out if I can make it stable enough that I can play for more than half an hour without becoming frustrated. If I have any installs left. That 'game' was one of the worst uses of $50 ever.

If the Normandy can land wherever the fuck without a space dock, why do I need the passion wagon to get around in the first place?

And why do we make landfall by hurling the space-pinto off the ship from low orbit?

Also it can be assumed that any landing spot for the mako is hostile to begin with so it's best to do a quick drop than try and land.  Then when an area is secure the normandy can take its sweet time picking you up.

Yeah, I always kind of imagined it as a scenario of "better to risk the SUV than the entire ship of a big Geth ambush is waiting."

Edit: IGN has reviewed the game and given it a 9.6/10.

Correct.

The Mako is dropped in hot LZs, because the Normandy can't land and drop a ramp with its kinetic barriers (shields) up. In the novel ME: Revelation, an Alliance frigate tries to land to pick up a vehicle, and gets one-shotted by a krogan merc with a man-portable hypervelocity missile launcher.

:drill:

Oh those wacky Krogans! Still sensitive about that whole genocide thing.

ME2 preloading now on Steam (you might need to check for Steam client updates first).

That part of the Book bothered me a lot. You would think a warship would be a slight more durable!

Well it seemed to me the Normandy was more a quick strike recon ship, with the stealth drives and all, rather than and all out battle cruiser... esp from the Citadel cut-scenes of the space fighting.

Game is good. Needed tutorial tool tips for the new stuff, lots of muddling to get used to stuff.

How are you playing ME2? If you are playing a pirated version stop talking about it until after it's officially released.

Lots of stores broke release date.

Is it my imagination, or is this happening far more often than it used it?

Incidentally; the game has no option to adjust mouse sensitivity, or even to turn off mouse smoothing/acceleration.  :awesome_for_real:

:facepalm:

I could've bought it the other night if I didn't already have it on Steam actually.

Ships are constructed a certain way in the ME milieu. The mass effect technology makes it trivially easy to repel kinetic projectiles using "shields," but those mass-repelling shields have no effect whatsoever on incoming directed energy weapons (lasers). Starship armor is therefore optimized to repel lasers through an ablative design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor). It "boils away" into a mist that scatters the striking beam and reduces damage. Ablative armor does little to stop kinetics. It just shatters.

So when the ship dropped its kinetic barriers, it effectively had no armor against projectiles. If the krogan had used a laser, it wouldn't have done much damage. And to make this more complex, if the krogan had been further away, the ship's GARDIAN CIWS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIWS) lasers could have intercepted his missile before it struck. But the krogan was very close and using a very fast missile. Canonically, despite the "cinematic liberties" the BioWare artists continually take, space combat occurs at ranges of hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Ships just aren't designed to defend against things less than a kilometer away. If they have to do so, the captain has fucked up.

tl;dr -- Shields work against projectiles, armor works against lasers. The shields were down and the krogan used a projectile from point-blank range.

Never ask a tech question around the guy who designed the IP's technical infrastructure. :P

Plus bear in mind that the whole 'mass effect' technology oogie-woogie hinges on playing with mass and velocity of things.  A missile with a mass drive wouldn't even need a warhead if it could propel itself to a sizable portion of the speed of light; the kinetic energy of the impact alone would exceed the power of a nuke.  Take something the size of an I-beam and shove it through one of those little frigates like a bullet going through an apple and yeah, you'll probably fuck it up.

But the hole in their defensive technology comes when you reach infantry combat.  Rather than trying to beat their way through kinetic barriers with kinetic projectiles that the kinetic barriers were explicitly designed to block, there should be a prevalence of energy weapons.  The grunts aren't running around with a meter of ablative armor on, so you should see people cooking each other with lasers, microwaves, anything that the shields can't block.

Instead everyone carries kinetic weapons that don't work for crap because everyone has anti-kinetic shields.  Not once but twice in ME do you see someone in a cutscene shoot Shepard point-blank, to absolutely no effect when the shot gets absorbed by his shield.  (Though whenever people need to conveniently die in one shot in cutscenes, their shields mysteriously vanish.  Hmm.)

I enjoyed Mass Effect.  It's not a timeless paragon of gaming, but it was fun and had a unique style.  My only fear for ME 2 is that they might be streamlining the game out of any unique features the first one had in the name of making the game simpler for people with short attention spans.  There's a fine line between elegant simplicity and too much simplicity, and a lot of game designers have crossed that line of late.

... If the energy is fully absorbed by the object.  People always forget that part.  Shoot a bullet at a car door, it just makes a hole:  handgun bullet or high velocity sniper / armor piercing bullet, still just a hole.  The door's thin sheet of metal doesn't absorb the extra kinetic energy, it just lets the bullet through.

This is my big concern about ME2.They're pulling overheating and replacing it with an ammo mechanic. I'm like... mmmm. Ok. I didn't mind the overheat mechanic at all. And I rather liked the Mako, but I guess few other people did.  :grin: I'm hoping the 'Better ground missions' puts more gameplay and less pointless blah blah blah stuff in the game, and the 'fixes' won't dumb it down even more than it already is.

Preloading is accessible on Steam now, you might have to restart Steam to make it work after doing that 3 window setup though.

FYI for those who can't wait for this title like me, the final trailer has been released for it and as usual it rocks.  Looks like Bioware has done it again, God I can't wait for my copy.  Its so nice to be able to buy this product the very first day it comes out.  Many thanks to Biowarej/EA who turned away from the DRM 3 install crap.  I can already tell its going to be a wonderul way to spend my $65.  Stormwaltz not to be a boot licker or anything but I just wanted to thank you and the rest of Bioware.  Honestly with the exeception of course of Jade Empire, everything I have bought from Bioware has been pure gold.  I think Bioware is the only developer right now that I would be willing to take off of work for to play their game the very first day it comes out.  Bioware is the only developer where I expect the game to be just as good as the trailer without question.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2O-0-fQOOs

Done what again? Released a spoiler-laden trailer?

Honestly I didn't think there was anything in it that people didn't already know if they were paying any kind of attention to the game.

I wouldn't know, I've yet to watch a trailer since the original teaser (which turned me off Bioware trailers forever). EA is hopeless about spoilers. They put fucking spoilers in the subject lines of their PR.

Gotcha, well you would know more about that then me.  You work in the games reporting industry if I am not mistaken, and i honestly made it a policy to ignore EA up until the time they bought out my favorite developer in Bioware.  I can tell you that the trailer that I posted probably will spoil alot of the game for you if you haven't kept up on the bioware trailers/forum stuff at Bioware's social site.

That had a lot to do with aesthetic decisions made by art (they wanted the weapon sounds to have weight and impact rather than phaser sizzle), but the IP rationale (originally) was that weapons-grade DEW required an assload of power. A ship's fusion plant could provide that, but a man couldn't pack more than a few dozens shots' worth in battery packs. Meanwhile, the mass accelerator technology made infinite ammo possible.

Then they went off and broke that explanation by adding ammo, again mostly for aesthetic reasons ("We want to see people cock their weapons!" "We want to give people a resource to manage!") and it was no longer my responsibility to rationalize their decisions. :P

When the CEO accidentally reveals that you're working on a Star Wars MMG in a speech to investors, then accidentally reveals its release date in another speech to investors, you know its a problem that starts at the top.

Man, the leads (and slaves) on that project were yammering about that shit so long before that happened that I couldn't do anything but lol when people got in an uproar about that.

The only reason SWTOR was kept in the bag for so long was because people were being nice.

Hey now, i liked Jade Empire. It did away with lot of the "must have in RPG" bullshit, the combat was fun if you could refrain from abusing the cheese, the story was on the usual Bioware level and the music was to die for.

I liked Jade Empire. However, the party mechanics in it weren't up to Bioware standards. Only 1 party member (NWN era I guess) and very little interaction.

I didn't even remember that so guess it was non-issue for me; probably because both KotOR and ME had just 2 party members so that wasn't much of difference, and the game just felt better without the usual cast of the AI clowns constantly in the view. The interaction (as long as that means conversations with the followers) also seemed on par with the other games or at least decent enough it left me satisfied with what it had to offer.

Well, I like to have a minimum of two AI party members. Partly for the gameplay but also because I dig the conversations they get into. Hell, in DA:O I'd say a big chunk of my fun in the first playthrough came from Alistair and Morrigan throwing insults at each other. In ME I actually liked the elevators because of some of the hilarious conversations you would sometimes get between AI cast members.

I know a lot of people <hate> spoilers but i dont think any of the trailers are overly guilty of it. you probably experience the extent of the trailers in the first couple hours.

All the more reason to experience it in said first few hours then.  :awesome_for_real: I've been avoiding any and all spoilers so far.

NSFW

       :facepalm:

Fox News complaining in 3-2-1...

I think I'm actually going to hold off on this purchase. If the way Dragon Age is being handled is an example, it'll probably be a better idea to just buy the gold edition a year down the line. Steam will probably have it on sale, too.

I look forward to bioware finally cutting out the middle man and turning their rpg's into much better versions of japanese dating/sex sims.

"Good sir knight, we need your help!" -busty tavern wench02

A. Slay dragon
B. Slay innocent villager
C. Run away
D. Stick it in

Is a lesbian version of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04NYTqYTpIs&feature=related) possible?

I see someone's watched Excel Saga.

EDIT:


AFAIK, no.

:cry2:

I've wondered that myself.

You'll never taste the forbidden canned fruit.  Shame.

As they've seemingly left my previous love interest (Liara) out of the game as far as I can tell from the trailers I've seen, I am honorbound to switch my affections to the other impressionable alien chick.

And if I can Dragon Age it (rock all possible love interests in a single game) then so be it.

I think i'm getting too old and jaded for this shit. See, i look at that and can only sigh. I mean, don't they... oh whatever.

Could those sex scenes be anymore AWKWARD? It's like they were written by geeks or something.

Also, why won't they show what Tali looks like under the armor?

They're trolling the SHIT out of the creepier segment of ME fans.

She'll be in it, I'm guessing, in one way or another.  They do have a voice acting credit for her on IMDB.

Because they're going to let them romance her hardcore and when they do the final reveal... space frog.

As Kildorn said, they're trolling the fans.

How much you want to bet it ends up being some kind of anthro shit.


Barely legal anthro shit. :pedobear:

That is exactly what I've been thinking. The scene I've seen seemed so manufactured and awkward.


I hate that bitch, she's like a fucking walking mannequin. Always with that stupid shit eating grin on her face, FUUU...


There are a few crew members from the previous game who, while they show up, don't join your group for reasons that become obvious when you meet them. The list is found easily enough on youtube suffice to say, I was slightly disappointed.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/963220/nomnombearsmall.png)

My understanding is that Tali is roughly 16. I doubt there'd be a romance because Bioware doesn't want to end up on Fox News accused of "Pedo videogame!"

Meh, time has passed since the last game.

Also, she's an alien.  The writers can claim she's mature at whatever age they want.  Voyager had the alien woman with the entire lifespan of what, 9 years?

Think bigger when you troll creepy fans.

Way bigger. A reveal of some anthro shit would just feed them, they may dig it. To troll, you have to just set them up for a massive fall.

Tali is apparently 24 at the time of ME2.

 :facepalm:

Re: tali without mask.



edit:fixed

She can't just be a red "x", I'm pretty sure there are eyes back there somewhere :P

Since it's out, or will be out, or might be out, or something -- couple of questions:

1) How does the character import from ME1 work? I have a Vanguard and an Adept I like, but neither have the builds I'd want (the Vanguard lacks Singularity, since it was my first character) and the Adept has shotguns, not assault rifles. Can you change those? Or did they scrap that totally?

Are there any other carryover effects from ME1 to ME2?

All the skill stuff from ME1 has essentially been scrapped from what I've read.  You can change your character's class from what you had in the previous game also if I'm not mistaken (since they seem to have completely reworked how each class plays).

I think the main stuff that carries over are various decisions you made in the first game, and you get some bonuses at the start depending on the level of the character you're importing, their paragon or renegade status, and a couple other things (I think the devs mentioned having the achievement for maxing out your cash in the first game gets you some bonus starting cash).

Builds are scrapped, so are looks.

You start at level 1 with any class you want (regardless of imported class), because the classes are completely redone and they didn't want to screw you over.

Essentially what is carried over are choices in your quests, and your level changes your starting level (something like brackets of 10 levels = 1 level in game, so a level 50 whatever would start as a level 5 whatever), and the Rich achievement gives you some starting money boost.

Well....crap. I guess it's not too bad. Does it have the same achievement system required to unlock the bonus talent (or did they do away with that?)? Or are the classes changed that radically?

I loved Vanguard, for instance, but it was at it's best (to my mind) if you took the Singularity bonus power. It'd be annoying to have to play through as Adept so I could get the bonus power to play through as the Vanguard I wanted. Or play through Soldier to unlock assault rifle for Adept, or whatnot.

My biggest gripe about ME1 was that I realized I needed to play through the game like 4 times for all the achievements, and that if you played the hybrid classes you got screwed on the achievements -- which gave you bonuses, so they were well worth getting.

The classes have been changed quite a bit.  I'd seriously recommend going to gametrailers and checking out each of the class videos, because it's going to have a large impact on how you play the game combat-wise.

There is a bonus power system. It's completely different. I can PM you details if you want, but don't want to wreck it for anyone else reading the thread.

I can wait. That more or less satisified my curiousity. I'll probably get it sooner rather than later (once I exhaust Dragon Age) now -- I've got a bunch of 50s and the like, and it's not worth it to get a 60 like that --- I was having visions of needing at least two more playthroughs to get the 'perfect' level 60 Vanguard to port over.

Thanks! Back to the topic -- I rather enjoyed the Martin Sheen voice-overed trailor, mostly because my brain boiled it down to: "Well, Sheppard's on another suicide mission. He seems to have scoured the galaxy for crazy people and jerkwads who might actually succeed, but if they fail -- hey, we got rid of some dangerous crazy people."

After driving all over the western hinterlands of greater Chicagoland for depressing court calls, I am highly tempted to attend the TWO HOUR ME2 launch event  at my local gamestop. I'm hoping that I can just show up at like 11:30 and leave with my damn game. I could use an hour or two of late-night shiny new game goodness.


Please dissuade me from going as I am sure it will have some cosplay types.

Take your camera. The funny picture thread is getting stale.

There has to be a link to confirm a full list of what ports over but I'm too scared of spoilers.

You say that now, but wait till you see all those 300 pound Liaras in formfitting catsuits, Morat!  :grin:

Just more alien to love, baby.

Sweet, that did it. Perhaps I will just cruise over and get it after work tomorrow. I did pre-order, so it's not like I have to worry about supply.

Otherwise, I wonder if I can convince the super-excited-about-ME2 employee if I can just come get it early on the QT.

...eternity embraces YOU.

Supposedly there's actually an achievement in ME2 for not dipping your body parts into other alien chicks if you romanced the blue one (and if you do then there's going to be consequences in ME3) so it seems she's still in. I think i saw a glimpse of her in the final trailer, though maybe it was just another blue alien.

Eternity wants to know if you're going to finish your steak.  And for you to pass the gravy.

Trouble?  From the blue chick who's a member of a species that believes it's gauche to *not* have inter-species sex?  I R confused...

In one of the interviews they mentioned that they would track if you sexed someone up in ME2 after having done so in the first game.  Theoretically to have that come back in your face in the last game, assuming everyone who got sexed-up survives to that point...

Yeah, about that blue chick...

 

The most interesting bit of that is

My copy on Steam is decrypting right now.  Any DLC (CE, pre-order, Cerberus Network DLC, Dr. Pepper promos) for the PC version needs to be redeemed on Bioware's social site and then you download an installer for it.  The Cerberus Network DLC for the character Zaeed has been delayed a day or two for the 360 version.

Hrm, I wonder if it'll integrate well if you've already started playing. I'm snagging my copy after work today and was thinking of starting tonight.

I guess I can live without the DLC 'till Thursday.

The Bioware social site is fucking horrible. I still only have it authorize me for my Dragon Age DLC content about every 2 out of 3 times I boot up the game. Its fucking annoying as hell.

For the purposes of downloading the DLC at least it's worked ok for me so far, but yeah that site is pretty much ass.

Oh how i hate this "you dirty europeans have to wait some more for the goods" practice.

I blame the UK, and their failure to keep the colony under the heel.

You know what is really painful? Sitting at work, staring at the box on my desk, with four hours left in my shift.

I feel your pain.

I count my blessing that its only 3 days. Still waiting for King Arthur.

But yes, thats real bullshit. I hope European distributors go out of business soon so they see protecting their markets didn't help!

I was hoping to be doing the same, but I guess GameStop doesn't open 'till 10 AM. I figured that an average retail establishment opens at like 8 or 9. I was wrong.

So now that everyone knows that  is back, I have to wonder; was the decision to bring back that character at all influenced by the 8000 posts on the Bioware forums about ?

The scariest thing, is that I'm pretty sure 8000 is a very conservative estimate.

Anyone with a 360 version want to tell me how it plays so far?  I'm not super confident my PC will handle it well, although I am at or slightly above the recommended specs. 

Input on how it runs on recommended spec level machines would also be appreciated.  Although it's looking like I won't be playing this title for a while if I go the PC route (out of town for a few days, then WKC releases, and I still haven't beaten ME1 on PC).

I braved the crowds to pick it up on 360 (played the first on 360 and wanted to use my save) at midnight, and played the first 2-3 hours or so.  So far, performance has been solid, with none of the texture pop-in or framerate issues of the first - it looks and plays great.  If your PC can run it and you didn't play the first on 360, I'd go with PC just for mouselook, but I'm perfectly happy with the 360 version.

Only issue so far was a full system lockup right after the intro - it's during a loading screen, and when the achievement for that section popped, the system hung, necessitating a replay of the first few minutes.  It didn't repeat the second time through, so it's just that particular confluence of events I guess.  I installed both discs to the 360 HDD to just to keep the DVD drive noise down, so that may have played a part too, but I doubt it.

I'll be getting it for the 360 in a month or two -- (I still have Dragon Age I'm playing, Fallout 3 I want to play, and Bioshock I'd like to finish -- not to mention Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones (the first one) and Half Life 2 I still haven't finished. Oh, and Assasin's Creed. Part of me wishes they'd stop making games for about 6 months so I can catch up).

I'd prefer to play it on the PC, but mine is a 7 year old single-core machine, and I'm not going to replace it until my job situation resolves itself. (My part of the contract is up end of August, and while supposedly there's plenty of work throughout the REST of the contract, until I have a job, I ain't buying a new computer).

Apparently my Steam copy of the DDE opened up early (or around the same time as the normal copy).  Yay.

Also:  Mass Effect 2 makes the first game look completely amateur hour (and I really liked the first one).  Refinement to every part of the game, and it actually plays like a shooter now.

Same here, gentlemen....AND my kid has baseball practice tonight and Lost is on tonight (even if it's a rerun - it's a religious experience in my household), so it's 8 more hours for me to crack it open.  Hell, I should have just waited until tomorrow to buy the damn thing! 

I can second that.  I didn't notice any slowdown when registering my game keys.  Being stuck downloading ~600 MB worth of DLC after I "preloaded" my game this weekend does suck though.

Damn I'm still trying to finish Dragon Age.  I figured I'd get ME2 if it gets cheaper. But damn, I may crack and pick it up. I  :heart: the first one.

I feel the same way. It doesn't help that a friend of mine is drooling over my copy of Dragon Age and hinting I should play ME2.

Space Background + EA logo + "Please wait..."

/rage

ME2 reminds me I never finished ME1 because it required 6 some odd playthroughs to "complete."

I really fucking hope they learned something from the first one, like how to design a fun game.

If by "complete" you mean get every achievement (which can actually be done in as few as three playthroughs if you plan ahead).  But really, who gives a fuck about that?

Nutjobs.

His second sentence makes less sense.   :oh_i_see:

 :uhrr:

Psycho.

I'm loving the game so far but one thing pisses me off.  You can't toggle helmets on and off in this one, and the DLC armor sets all have helmets.  Doesn't seem ideal for dialog situations.  The Inferno armor at least has a clear visor, but it still annoys me to the point where I'm just going to switch back to the regular armor next chance I get.

Not surprising since they took that feature out of DA forcing people to go through convoluted mod hacks to get that functionality back.

Oh, I beat this last night, it's neat.

Of course my roommate played it for 26 hours, and then I played the final mission. But I still beat it!

There isn't an option for it in-game (like in ME1) at least that I saw, but you can turn off Motion Blur in the Configuration Utility.

While that deal-breaker has been fixed, I've still given up on logging into EA Online/Cerberus Network for the day.  I know it's launch day and all that, but I don't want this kind of crap from a single player game.

For those on the fence about the PC version, the PC version runs amazingly well. Far, far better than the first game.

The only thing that really bugs me on the PC version is the omission of mouse options. Seriously, would it have killed them to add a mouse sensitivity option? Maybe an option to turn off mouse smoothing?

Yay, thanks.  Now I just have to decide on a quick good guy run or a quick bastard run. 

Good news on the PC playability. I guess there's a silver lining to all these games being made for both console and PC: the PC version isn't gonna go all Vanguard in the sys reqs dept since the 'base code' (forgive my horrible development illiteracy) has to work on a Xbox and PS3, which are, what, 3 years old now?

A note on alt-tabbing out to Windows if playing in fullscreen, do not do it when:

- There's a loading screen;
- The game is doing a background save, i.e. directly after or before a wave of mobs, at the start of a mission and after certain cutscenes;
- You've just made a manual save, even if the disc icon in the bottom corner has disappeared. Wait another 10 seconds.

Doing so will, atleast on my system (Vista 64), crash the game in a fairly annoying way. Playing in windowed mode has none of these issues because it doesn't freeze the game.

Otherwise you're *mostly* okay, but sometimes it still won't restore properly when you try to go back in. Yay PC gaming!

I gots this for PC. Lots of little frustrations, like hunting for my old save game through the configurator before getting to import my ME1 character, annoying as fuck hacker mini-game (The one where you match up lines of 'code'), being confused by the interupt system (IS IT LMB OR RMB?!?), and combat is deadly. Pop your head up to fire- dead. And they tightened up the field of vision, so you have less peripheral vision than ME1, which doesn't help when you're being flanked or have some alien dog biting on your ass. I like the damn game, but the control scheme and actual gameplay can be frustrating as hell at times.

Stormwaltz - please pass this on to anyone you still talk to in Edmonton: who ever designed the ME1 save importer needs a kick in the balls.

It lists my three save games - the top one in Green, then next two in yellow. Move the stick, won't let me select the yellow ones, as if they are invalid...

Multipage thread on the forums about this - turns out: they didn't bother making the menu respond to the Analog stick (found this on page 7 of the thread). Gee thanks, I really enjoyed reolading ME1 and rerunning the final fight again in an effort to fix my save.

Back in to ME2, hit down on the dpad, and now - finally - I'm about to play this fucking game.

If you mean the karmatic quicktime events - LMB for Renegade actions, RMB for Paragon, this is consistent AFAIK.

Wow, this waiting to connect game is fucking awesome. Oh, another reason why first day DLC can suck my sweaty nutsack. 

1. this proves to me i should never buy another EA game on day one.

2. I am fucking done with DLC bullshit.

I bought the game on steam and not only did I have to wait until days after, where people who bought it in best buy have already beaten the fucking thing but now I can't even play the game i paid for? Fuuuuuck you.

Minor Female Shepard spoiler?


This game is a relentless devourer of my free time. I'm paranoid so I'm doing every side quest for Paragon and trying to up my chances at survival. There are a bunch of optional upgradable ship parts you can attach to your ship that I'm assuming just affects your chances at the climax... Unfortunately, you need to do a prob minigame in order to get the necessary resources. It doesn't take too long and it's mildly amusing for a bit... Unless you want to get the 50,000 platinum to remove your scars. I did it anyway just in case.

The DLC stuff was fairly painless for me.  You go to social.bioware.com and register your various promo codes, you download the installers for each DLC and run them.  Between decrypting the game, downloading all the DLC and installing it, and importing my ME1 character, I was into the game in around 50 minutes.

I was confused when it first popped up. I didn't know if I should click whenever seeing the popup, or only when it was the one I wanted (Paragon or Renegade.) After it happened a few times I saw that the responses are color coded and appear on either side of the screen.

Still, the first few times I didn't know what the hell was going on, even after it was described in the game, so I had to skip them. Or click and pray.

Oh, and it's fun looking it up in the instruction booklet, which say LMB for Renegade, RMB for Paragon, and then the illustration shows the exact opposite.  :awesome_for_real:

currently social.bioware.com is just spitting out php errors at me. I sometimes get in, log on, then when I try to register, I get another php db crash on their end. I think their system must be getting hammered.

Yeah.  Decrypting took longer than getting the DLC for me.  Mostly painless.

I love DLC. I downloaded ALL of the game's content via a .torrent file. Anyone else try one of these? Was pretty simple.

Yarrrr! Hur-dur.

Did you pay for it?  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, the system for Dragon Age was a bit better if they didn't want the DLC floating around out there.

I will gladly throw 50 dollars to Bioware if the game seems worth multiple replays and the DLC/online stuff seems worth it. However, after buying a slew of Bioware games in the past I was a tad let down by the lack of replayability in DA:O after I eagerly pre-ordered it. Not to mention the junk DLC and upcoming 40 dollar x-pac.

I know you guys love Bioware to death, I do too. My original post was more of a joke than anything.

The only thing I'm sad I missed was the Terminus Armor.  Everything else came through fine on Steam DDE.

bioware social works fine.  its when you get in game and it tries to connect you to EA a LOT of people couldnt connect so even if they had dlc registered, if they didnt connect to ea they couldnt use it.  this was me for an hour.  it's a server side issue with ea, also wtf i have to register and re=register just for the content i paid for lame?

that said, the first 30min of the game are awesome.

I just re-completed Mass Effect 1 in time. I still have Assassin's Creed 2 and Uncharted 2 to play however.

Since I've had the game for a few days (thank you Webhallen.se), I think I can safely say that DA:O has nothing on ME2 in terms of polish, voice-acting and storytelling. Hell, I even like most of the crew/party, which is just extraordinary for me. My only real complaint is the loading screens. There are just too many of them for a PC game, especially when onboard the ship.

Where DA:O was campy fun, ME2 is serious business, in a good way. Two fat thumbs up here.

15 minutes in, this is one of the worst player experiences I've ever had the displeasure to play. The entire control scheme on the PC is a laughable fucking mess.

A BioWare game with a crappy UI? Say it isn't so! :awesome_for_real:

Lol, if it were only the UI.

Let's start with the ugliest armor on earth and make it too amazing not to use and then not give me an option to take the helmet off.

The entire game is a lack of fucking options.

Ammo.

Multi-Function Spacebar.

Inventory.

Is there anyway to skip through cut scenes? God damn it's a fucking pain in the ass to fix the look of your character.

Having to click a + mark to expand things.

Not being able to skip anything.

Not letting Strahovski talk like an American.

DLC procedure.

Life bars.

Armor Screen.

Lack of options.

Skillsets.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MISSION COMPLETE SCREEN

Schild: Hey, Bioware, is there any good streamlining left from the original game?

Bioware: Nah, it's all a fucking mess. Too many cooks in the kitchen, so many bad ideas we couldn't separate the good ones. It's all there. But hey, aiming is better.

Schild: DIE

Also what the AIDS are these resources?

God. Damnit.

At least Shepard talks (again) in this game. That's probably my biggest complaint of DA after the god awful combat system.

Between the two, I'm left with little faith of Bioware ever being able to make a cohesive experience. But hey, there's always Baustin there to pick up the slack. Amirite? Booyah, booyah. <supertroopers_german.gif>

Could you stop shitting up the thread and put all your thoughts coherently into one post?

I swear to fucking god I better not see crafting.


I'm a learning computer. Bioware taught me.

You do know Yvonne Strahovski is from Australia right?

Yes, and I wish they'd let her talk like an American. Much like if you get fucking Hugh Laurie, don't make him talk like a ponce.

Ok, game stuff.

I think it'll take Schild a few days to recover from this before he can make a properly expressive post.  But my own opinion is that there's no excuse for this awful PC port from a top tier developer.

How is it on the 360?

You can now afford the heavy ammo research project.
You can now afford ammo research .
You can now afford research.
You can now die a little bit inside.

And Donnelly in engineering is Irish. What's the big fucking deal? Has all of Earth become American in the Mass Effect universe?

As for the port, they should have left it to Demiurge. They did a pretty reasonable job with ME1.

Mass Effect 2: It's like ship cancer.

I'll agree with Schild's complaint on the endless "you have acheived this" popups. No other real issues on the 360. Love the control scheme, big improvements over 1 imo.

Did find being instantly recognized while wearing full Blood Dragon armor and Helmet kinda funny. Ditched using either preorder armors after a few minutes because of the helmet issue.

It's taking a little while to get used to, as the game has deffinately shifted more to the shooter with RPG elements side instead of the other way around. Standing in the open to shoot things is a very bad idea in this game. Therefore I'm very glad they upgraded the cover system.

Oh, and the DLC on the XBox was downloaded and installed before I finished copying the dvds to HD.

Glad to know it sounds like I went the right way with sticking to the console on this one.

Oooh, the 360 might get turned on this year.  WOO.

Same here, although after noticing that you can switch out parts on the default armor to upgrade stats (whereas you can't on the DLC stuff), it probably wouldn't have been long before I ditched the DLC armor anyway.

Why are there so many guns on the ship I can't use?

And you can't color the DLC stuff.  Lame.

lol

This galaxy map is retarded to the MAXXX.

VROOOOOM LOOK AT MY MINIATURE VROOOOOOM

Edit:

IF YOU MOUSE OUT WHILE SHIT IS LOADING AND PUT ANOTHER WINDOW IN FRONT IN WINDOWS 7, THE MOTHERFUCKER CRASHES.

IT CRASHES.

AUTOSAVE IS ABYSMAL.

ABORT, ABORT.

It will become obvious as the game progresses. I was confused at first until the hints of...



Stare at the pretty pictures and don't alt tab while the game is loading for 30 seconds?  :uhrr:

I'm about to do walking breast mannequin's side mission and I still haven't found Legion. Is it possible to miss Legion?

Dragon Age hates ALT-TAB too so that's not surprising.

ME1 had issues with ALT-TAB during loading screens and elevators as well.

I had no issues with alt-tab in DA or ME.

In DA if I only ALT-TAB for a very short period of time it's okay. If I leave it like that for a bit it'll hang.

New 'mission' format a little weird to get used to. Combat is harder. Fewer shots to kill something, but way fewer shots to die, and no shield boost/mid combat medigel at least as a soldier. The collectible shit is more interesting... I think. Need more time to process. Not sure the new minigames for hacking/unlocking are really an improvement.

Game is mainly :drill: on the 360 so far otherwise, control scheme is good. Not bothered by achievement popups, they could maybe be a little smaller. Ammo adds a nice tactical element and good that I have reasons to use more than one weapon. Liking the party members so far. Salarian is hilarious. Inventory glut is gone. Money may matter more now, too soon to tell. Male Shepherd is less wooden, guess they told him to loosen up a bit.

22 hours and 27 minutes, 6am; game finished.

I have this unhealthy habit of catassing devouring a entire game I enjoy as quickly as possible.

Some weird things here and there but by and large a good step forward from the original. Mission structure is a bit odd; hacking minigames can be slightly annoying at times, planet farming - while amusing at first - seems like pointless busy work... Thankfully, you don't really have to do a whole lot of it to get the good ending.

Only played the game as a Vanguard, but the new powers and combat were really great once I adjusted to the new system. Amongst my favorite maneuvers, destroying a guys shield with a shotgun blast and then proceeding to toss numerous enemies off the side of a building with biotecs (Biotec Charge or...that other skill who's name I forget), or into some gears - instantly killing them. Didn't use the orders system much (never), but I'm sure some people could find a use for it.

While Im grateful I don't have to throw away Katana shotguns for medi-gel anymore, the weapon variety could have been a bit better... But that's just me looking for stuff to complain about. The ability to customize and upgrade via research helped mix things up a bit (like adding armor piercing to heavy pistols).

Dialogue could have been better at some spots; but I didn't find myself vomiting in rage like I did during the 15 seconds I watched the FF13 international trailer.

Kind of hoping my game doesn't get screwed up too much in Mass Effect 3 due to my Shepard's... unannounced dumping of Liara. Considered doing another Mass Effect 1 playthrough and ignoring the bland Asari and annoying racist cornball, but after that insane completion-ists ordeal; that wont be happening anytime soon... Thankfully, I have plenty of time should I decide to.

To close this rambling mess.

Most hated Character - Miranda - Stupid smug grin in every scene no matter the circumstance, walking cliché, impossibly giant ass.

Funniest Background noise - Everytime you enter Citadel customs you overhear the same Turian having an Altercation with the clerk, always ending with "YOU HUMANS ARE ALL RACIST!".

Surprised - Grunt wasn't nearly as terrible as I thought he'd be.

Biggest Disappointment
Maybe I'm not jaded enough, but I found the final area of the game to be really heart pounding due to both the decisions and hoping all that gathering I did to get was enough to make it through.

Imported my level 60 Soldier, but turned him into an Adept since the biotic gameplay looked more fun this time around.  With the difficulty set to Hardcore (which is the second highest I believe) the game is pretty challenging.  It's fun, although the long load times when I have to restart wear on me a bit.

I'm less annoyed with Miranda's behaviors as much as the fact that someone made that texture with glaringly obvious cameltoe and then proceeds to show off her various assets in every possible cut scene. Really guys? Really?

Overall, I love the game. Solider is definitely the harder class to start with this time around. Drops things fast, gets dropped fast. Tech Armor is both awesome and annoying to have glow at you 24/7. Ammo isn't bad, money's worth more. Resource gathering minigame on the 360 is agonizingly slow/annoying.

SMG is hilariously shitty. "hey guys, we made shields weak to rapid fire weak weapons. So uh, here's something you'll never use unless you're low on ammo, because if you can equip it, you probably have a button that demolishes shields!"

Biotic and tech powers + the new cooldown system make combat a ton of fun. I actually like what they did with the whole armor/shields/barriers thing and what abilities you can use on which.

I totally knew Ing would love the Salarian. Possibly the best character this time around.

Only minor plot spoiler gripe from 20 minutes into the game:

 

The galaxy map took a severe nosedive from ME1. Almost always destination arrows are going to be off screen, and with limited fuel, you can't drive around to reveal them.  :uhrr:

Oh, and I spend a lot of times where it looks like you can fire out of cover, but you really can't. So I'm clicking madly on the mouse buttons while crouching behind a low wall, and nothing happens.

That, and Shep takes a fuckton of knockback.

Really, they put more shooter pew pew in, which is good, but it's got tons of issues, which is bad.

I have the boxed CE edition and I seem to have the Cerberus Network content available to me for download (Zaeed and Normandy Crash Site) even though I never entered in the code on the CN card. Does the CE key or CE bonus content code give you access to that content?

You sure you didn't put in the code? The first thing you have to do upon playing is put in the Cerberus code. It also doubles as the registration key for install I believe.

Dude, that ending was so lined up to make a sequel.

Of course it is the second game of a trilogy so the ending better damn well be leading into the third game of the arc.

I know, there are even loading screen tips in-game that say "save your character for ME3!" :-P It was a silly remark on the rather over-the-top DUN DUN DUNNNNNN! ending.

My two biggest grumbles with the game so far are there should have been some middle ground between shit loads of useless weapons and a crappy inventory management screen and almost no different weapons no inventory screen.

I don't mind it to much though they maybe should have gone with something similar to how deadspace did their weapon upgrades if you are going to have so few weapons make their upgrading more impressive.

The second gripe is the helmets on the DLC armor. Seriously WTF the first game did it perfect all armor had a helmeted appearance and a non helmeted appearance that could be toggled on the fly. I did not go through that much effort making sheps face not an abomination to hide it under my terminus darth vader hat.

On the good side

The ammo thing took a bit to get used to but overall the combat works much better as a shooter than ME1 did. I still am to much in the habit of always going to the power wheel to fire things off when you don't need to since you can remap three of your powers to be easily accessible. The bank shot biotic powers are fucking hilarious and I can rapid fire my pull power pretty damn often.

Taking a bit of getting used to the tougher mobs where you have to beat down their defenses before you can rape them with all biotics but it does make the fights more tricky and it really makes you want to have a good balance of characters in your group. So far it looks like you really want somebody with tech powers and somebody with warp at very least for biotics.

I am playing an adept currently but while sentinels did not impress me at all in ME1 I think in ME2 they could be really freaking sweet. Sentinals have powers to hurt all enemies such as dropping shields and stripping armor very good all in one package and their tech armor makes them god damn tough.

Yes it did ask me about that but I never entered the code cause it wasn't with the game disc package contents so I didn't know where it was initially (it's part of the box that has the art book). The CE CD key is on the manual and there's a separate card with the CE bonus content code. Those two I entered.

I died a little bit inside when I saw "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE"

Oh, and did anyone else remap a few keys but notice the in-game tutorials continued to use the default key in the hints? There were a few times I had to go into options and figure out what I rebound the key to. Shouldn't happen.

I am trying not to read too many of the posts here, but is there a preferred version?  360 or PC?

I have saved files from ME1 on the 360, so I'm leaning that way.

Play this game on the 360, or at least with a 360 controller on the PC.  The menu navigation with a mouse and keyboard is awful.

Huh?  What menu navigation issues are you talking about?

Comparatively, the PC UI has a lot of unneeded button pressing.

On 360, squad selection is highlight and press button.

On PC, It's click character, move mouse down the screen, click add.

Same with weapon selection and power buying. It's essentially making you move the mouse to find a "buy/add" button instead of just letting me click the power like I would in the console version. It's goddamned annoying comparatively.

Is there not "Info" on the squad selection or is it just bound to a different face button?

It's A to add, Y to get info I think. Or X for info, Y to change outfits.

Essentially, it's just a lot less effort to do simple things like spend squad credits, add teammates, equip weapons. For no logical reason.

Im sure the benefits of mouse aiming and keyboard strafing are overshadowed by the fact that you have to make one extra click during the party selection menu.

This times a million, aiming with a stick is about as fun for me as fellating a powerdrill.

Don't think I could live without quick save either.

So far on the 360 the game is autosaving constantly whenever there's a risk of dying, I'm kind of impressed actually.

Wait, what, how are you aiming?

The thumbstick aiming isn't bad, there seems to be a lot of target assist going on.

It's actually one of the best 360 thumbstick aiming experiences I've had. They seemed to get the speed of the cursor just right when you are zoomed. I found I was easily able to target the heads of guys hiding behind barricades from across a warehouse with my heavy pistol.

Strafing is easy on the 360 controler. Anyways - strafing is death in this game, it's all about cover.

Not when you biotic charge into three enemies, incinerate two and crotch punch the last one.

So, twelve hours in and I have two observations I'd like to share:

- Zaeed + Jack + Renegade Shepard = :drill:
- Incisor Rifle + Sniper Scope Bullet Time = :drill:

I honestly like the DLC armour being ugly. Using it makes me feel no better than if I'd just summoned a set of Colossus X (or whatever) using console commands. The fact that the DLC stuff is ugly as fuck removes all temptation.

Nice game. Still, would have preferred a little less shooting and some more puzzle/exploration/RPG.

You played the wrong game, friend.

Some of the complaints here are very :uhrr:. The games not perfect, but shit you people are overly jaded these days.

My subjective feeling when comparing ME1 to ME2 is that latter has less exploration, puzzles and RPG. I guess it's the same complaint as before in this thread, streamlined too much for ADD riddled console faggots. Map design suffered a little of deusextworitis, graphically better, spacially cramped like shit.

I'm not sure why console "faggots" would have ADD. If anything, twitchy action games require more attention.

That's beside the point though. I would agree that there should be plenty of RPG trappings to go hand-in-hand with the shooter stuff. There aren't rules that say one can't.

Personally I thought it was a significant improvement over ME1 in pretty much every way. Yes, the UI and the controls are a bit sloppy on PC but this isn't a control-intensive game.

Now that you mention it, I did miss the puzzles, there weren't any at all.

I like the game though, I really enjoyed the new play style, and the story was, as before, really good.

It was kinda skimped down on armor, weapons, etc, but I can live without that, I just wanted the story.  Now to survive till 2012 for ME3.

Well, to be fair twenty or so of the complaints all come from one person.  Most people here seem to like the game overall.

I will still finish and enjoy the game.

The PC version is still dreadfully bad.

Why?

I don't want to upset Velorath, so I'm going to abstain from answering.  :awesome_for_real:

Ending related spoilers.

He can read your Twitter feed on the last couple pages.

Overall I like the game.  They have done great job continuing the space opera feel of the first one.

My gripe is this: the control scheme is crap.  I'm on a pc, let me use the mouse to click things to select what I want instead of arrows or plus to get there.  The multiuse spacebar drives me crazy when I go to cover then magically vault over the wall accidentally into a machine gun.

Fucking, fuck. Just beat it.

Ending-related spoilers below.

Do it over again, try doing just the final mission over again with a few tweaks to your mission selections, try to get through it quicker. If not, restart. I would never accept that ending.

This game has had an unhealthy effect on me. Now I want to go play through mass effect 1 again to close up any loose ends / problematic things I might had done and do those character sidequests I didn't do.

So finally they'll be making that full-on hentai game we've all been expecting since Mass Effect 1. The DLC add-on NPC will be Hfntul, the tentacle monster and the bonus suit of armour will be a school uniform.

School uniform would've been better than Chitin armor.

I'm just happy that they took the rotating circle minigame shit out back and shot it in the head.  The new hacking and mining minigames are vast improvements over ME1.  And some of the conversations are pure gold.  Some things are a little off, but by and large I'm very pleased.

I absolutely hate having to play a minigame every time I open this game's equivalent of treasure chests, and pretty much never get anything besides credits.  And the surveying minigame is a piece of shit, too.

surveying and hacking minigames are shit. The matchup minigame isn't bad, but it isn't very hard either.  :grin:
It might be that surveying on the PC is shit since the scan cursor moves so slow when active. Which just means I either shove my mouse around like a retard or go "bop bop bop" with the scanner, tapping the mouse button.
Dumb. Just lemme get in the Mako and drive around finding shit.

All you get is credits. That number at the top is how much you're getting.

God, surveying is terrible.

Every single meta bit about the game is vastly inferior to the original.

Fucking dialogue is the best to come out of the house that built Baldur's Gate though.

Surveying is crap (BTW Ratman, you might have missed the upgrade for the scanner that keeps the from moving slowly when you scan, but IIRC it's one of the upgrades you get access to from talking to one of your teammates) .  Don't mind the hacking mini-games much though.  That might just be because there doesn't seem to be as many chests as in the first game (and I always felt compelled to open locked chests for xp long after the items stopped being useful).

Kinda surprised people are complaining about the small selection of weapons and armor considering 99.9% of all weapons and armor in ME1 were filler items you'd never use.  As far as I'm concerned, what few options they have blows away ME1's selection.  Don't mind the streamlined skill sets either since they managed to give each class a unique playstyle.

I never said the game was bad, just that I'd liked it to be more RPG.

Anyway, ending spoilers I guess, or rather hints.

I've only gotten an hour or two in, but my reactions have been the same a schild's.  The PC controls suck ass and it really detracts from my enjoyment of the game.  Ammo isn't thrilling me, either, but I've got Shepard as an Infiltrator so playing sniper means I use up less of it.

I found out quite fast it was much more fun to use the SMG. After getting most of the DMG/Ammo upgrades, the gun becomes a death machine in your hands. Especially when you turn on the shield penetrating bullets and use the fire blast.

The thing that really irritates me the most is that they did away with passive skills almost completely.  I love passive skills, and ME1 had so many of them!

To sum up what others have said re: the endgame

I just got that upgrade this morning.


I like how I don't have to micromanage all my teammates equipment. Just do a research and everyone gets +20% shotguns. Done deal.

Please avoid quoting "Spoilered" lines.

I don't know why you people continue to get PC versions of games that are clearly console games at heart. Same with Borderlands.


Anyway just got the game last night, it's great all the things I'd forgotten about the first game are now all coming back to me. It still kinda baffles me that my favorite part of a space action game is just making my dude have conversations with people.

Thanks Sam,

Thread is much easier to read if I don't have to hold my hand in front of the screen to block out stuff I don't want to read.  :grin:

Sometimes I hate the fact that I play games like this so methodically. I have spent all my time since release day in this game out side of work, sleep, and one hockey game in fast forward - and I've only just finished recruiting Jack, Grunt, and crazy Doctor. Yet it appears that half the people here have finished it already.

Do you all not have jobs, or did you all pirate it two weeks ago?

I started a vanguard for fun.

Biotic Charge would be so much more useful if I could use it to get into cover, instead of only being for "charge the idiot away from his teammates or you're gonna get shot"

I will say giving them a shotgun was nice, giving them 15 rounds with it was kind of a dick move <3

Embrace the fact that you savor games and get a lot more mileage out of them. Saves a lot of money, too!

By the time I will even have gaming time to buy ME2, it'll be on a steam sale :)

Holy fuck do I hate the minigames.

I don't mind the circuitry one, but the hacking I have a lot of trouble with.  I take too long to process the matching text and it automatically scrolling completely fucks with my perception.

the wall safe hacks drive me crazy. I'm TERRIBLE at memory games and that's basically all it is. The scrolling one I find a little easier, but I'm already starting to think of reconsidering trying to hack things and I'm only like a hour in.

I had an earlier save game from just before the end of the game, and

If you don't do the hacking game you will never have enough money to buy upgrades.

Also, to follow up on my UI gripe on the PC, I just want to know why I can't navigate the Armor menu with the keyboard?  Why do I have to mouse over left and right arrows for absolutely everything?

Because you're playing a 360 game, mang.

Game play-wise this is a vast improvement over the original. In terms of story, I liked it, but I don't think it quite lived up to its predecessor... fighting off the Lovecraftian horror from beyond with my rag-tag crew was more compelling than squashing bugs with a band of intergalactic super heroes.

The ammo thing makes combat a lot more interesting, but it really doesn't make any sense. According to the Codex the Council races adopted the ammo design from the Geth after the first war when they realized that the higher volume of fire was more important than endless ammo.

Really? Two or three extra shots per minute is worth never needing to worry about logistics?

I finished it at the end with all my crew alive, after gaining their loyalty and snatching a few upgrades. I was sort of disappointed, actually - I was expecting Jack, to turn on me at any minute. I did manage to get Chakwas and Kelly killed, as a small consolation prize. It's a pity they couldn't put in any of those "hard choices" like on Virmire that made ME1 so good.

Also the final bad guy is a huge disappointment and seriously detracts from the hard science fiction angle that they seem to be going for in the game. I was reminded of  Or perhaps an end boss from Sonic the Hedgehog. It was never explained why
Oh, and why can't we romance all the NPCs? Simultaneously. Haven't these guys played the Witcher? Three out of five isn't bad, but come on...

Can't be 100% sure tho until I'm again at the endgame.

You remember correctly.

Yes, I heard the EDI explanation, but can you imagine how out of character for the series that would be?


It's still a very good title. But it makes the scene above that much more jarring when it's set against the other fantastically well thought-out material.

Regarding the end boss...

Sorry. I didn't think that really was a spoiler, but eh.


I am unemployed, and have been playing it pretty much nonstop except for pooping, eating and sleeping since tuesday, and haven't finished it. I'm wondering if other people are posting from some wierd time warp from a few days from now.  :ye_gods:

You've only played it for 12 hours. Your days must be shorter. Also, they're likely posting from a pirate ship.

Holy shit, and i thought the elevator in original ME Normandy was annoying... :uhrr:

I think it's hypersensitive to disk fragmentation - my load times at home are about a fourth of what they are when I play from work, and the difference was that my work computer was pretty fragmented. The work PC is faster in every respect.

I have practically no meaningful load time in this game. (Caviar Black drives / 8800GT / 4GB DDR2 800 / Q9450).

It runs flawlessly with everything at max. That's pretty much the only thing good about the PC port itself.

Perhaps I'm in the time warp?  :ye_gods:

I'd point out that X-Fire didn't record my first day, I  had to reboot before it detected ME2, but why spoil the fun?

Finished it tonight. Great game. Flaws and goony design decisions and all.

The loading screens are weird. Some disappear as soon loading is done, some play to the end, even if it's done loading (i.e. no disk activity anymore).

That's why it's Science FICTION. It doesn't have to make sense.

Hey, no problem. I don't even know what it said. I just realized it was something that Stormwalz had put in spoiler text, so I stopped reading and ran away.

Just finished a run through on PC (win 7, new rig).

Game was beautiful and was a major face lift to ME1 aesthetically. Performance was top notch with only a minor glitch/bug here and there. The new combat system felt much more tactical, but the addition of ammo became redundant as my team matured and I became less dependent on conserving it. Same can be said about hacking/bypassing in ME2, neat gimmick at first, but it does get tedious after 20+ hours into the game. Controls were weird at first but I got used to them and the menu UI needed less clicking involved.

The story/combat felt more fleshed out in terms of the bio-diversity of the galaxy that ME1 lacked.

So yeah, tell me a few things, since you're in the know, if you can:

Hmm tried defragmenting but it didn't seem to help much -- i'm getting 15-30 sec load times per deck, depending which one it is. This on 4gb dual core machine... the weird part is, it takes this long even on sub-sequent loads of the same areas which should cut down the load times since you'd expect at least part of the data sit still in the cache. Annoying.

edit: on subject of annoyances, arrrgh at the female Shepard's eyelashes. It's worse than DA and with the rest of gfx being quite high fidelity really stands out in a bad way. Can't focus on the dialogues when i expect Leliana with a jar pop up any second. :ye_gods:

Full disclosure: I played maybe 5 hours of ME1. In this game I just got to this early point:


They spent so much time with the camera porn that I assume this is supposed to be some sort of heart-wrenching big deal. But I don't get it. Can someone explain why it was so important?

Have a peeve with the jaggies so I used a program called nHancer to enable anti aliasing with my geforce card, much easier on the eyes now, love the visuals in this game.

For the same reason they spend a bunch of time orgasming over the new Enterprise every time one gets built in some version of Star Trek.

I'm good at the minigames, so they've never gone frustrating for me.  I can see where they'd get old in very short order if you had a problem completing them.  You can at least purchase a timer upgrade for the symbol matching game if you're slow at it, but having more time won't help you much in the other hack game, as losing that one is more likely a result of hitting a bad block or running out of attempts.

Combat's a lot trickier than ME1 in that it's pretty much out of the question to just wade into the middle of a room and start shooting.  But the downside of those changes is that most every fight is now 'run into the room, get behind something, and snipe people in the face until all dead'.  I know it isn't very realistic to expect to last very long if three people are all blazing away at you while you have no cover, but it was fun to be a juggernaut of death from time to time in ME1.

The dialogue is definitely a golden upgrade over the first game.  Shepard manages to be waaaaaay less tedious, with lots of his renegade options coming off as awesomely sarcastic instead of just rampagingly douchey.  A lot of the various interrupts and dialogue options are great fun.  The only places it really falls flat are where it connects back to ME1.  Pretty much everyone from ME1 acts weird.  Except for Conrad.   :awesome_for_real:

I do like that renegade shep is more violent/aggressive, less raging dick. I can't resist some of the renegade interrupts that make a cutscene so awesome.

Paragon Shep is also a lot more assertive/badass while still being nice. I've had a few options that are paragon and "well, you COULD be my enemy, but they tend to wind up dead a lot.. <Grunt> Yep."

"The Space Hamster gazes at you knowingly."

Fortunately it doesn't need to be fed, unlike those stupid fish.

In ME1, the Normandy was a prototype ship, and basically the pinnacle of human tech achievement at that time. It was Sheppard's first command, and it carried her throughout a war to save the galaxy. At one point she is driven to stealing the ship in order to continue the mission. And based on the extensiveness my particular playthrough, it was home to her and her crew for about 17 years of exploring the galaxy... She grows in to her role as a commander, learns about herself and the rest of the galaxy, finds love alien sex, etc, all on this ship.

Or just go with the whole Star Trek thing; big music in the back ground with a big camera pan = uber-Dramatic

After I went to all that trouble to spoiler it.  :oh_i_see:

Wow. Geez then...

More or less.

The nice seems to be optional, too -- had my Shepard suggest certain elcor he should either comply with a request or some legs were going to be broken. Technically it was out of nice intentions (or not even that as i was just trying to get a discount) still, my jaw did drop a bit at this display of Paragon virtue. :why_so_serious:

Made me wonder if it had something to do with the Renegade score being almost equal but i don't suppose the game is sophisticated enough to have multiple versions of these dialogues just for such case...

Stormwaltz, you wrote Thane's dialogue right?

Thane, Legion, EDI (except for N7 mission directions), and nearly everything on the Citadel Zakera Ward.

Thane is the most well-written character in the game.

Continue that work on [REDACTED].

Whoever decided Liara should be a useless bitchfist in this game deserves to be shot.

For some reason I figured you wrote the Zakera Ward stuff.

Some of the funniest dialog I've heard so far was the ambient conversation of the  Turian and Asari couple gift shopping in the Citadel.  Paraphrasing:

Turian:  Why would we get a fish?  They have nothing to do with the Citadel.  Besides they'll just die in a couple of years.

Asari:  The important thing is to embrace the time you have with the fish.

Turian:  Are we having the life-span talk?

Bit of a tangent, but Thane's conversations on ship also provided some of the prettiest shots (like my current background (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40252/meffect2-20100129-145422.png)) this side of Samara/Miranda and a space window..

Does it mean you're behind the "take a deep breath, citizen" bit?

Alright I cracked and picked it up.  Those other games are just going to take little longer to finish.

I have the 360 version and I ran into a bug on my ME1 import.  I imported, everything seems ok and got a couple levels and some cash.  Part way through the very first mission I decide to restart and just load the Mission Start save.  Well the game started and I was at level one, no cash or other stuff.  Something you may want to watch out for if you're importing.

Bugs and user interface be damned, I  :heart: ME1 and so far this totally kills it.  I'll be on this one for a long time it seems.

For the past few days this game has replaced my sleep time. Doing so enhances surly editor-ness so I will continue until my mind breaks.

My biggest complaint was with the ending:

best parts so far to me...

Also thought the length of this one was just about perfect. Maybe a bit too short even..

On the horrible loading times i had with the PC version. Found a band-aid solution on another forum; supposedly it's some issue with the UE3 engine, and it starts performing better when after the game is launched you use the Task Manager to set affinity to single processor then back to all available.

Seems to work; getting the Normandy load times cut from 30 secs down to 5 makes one hell of a difference.

Stormwaltz, the game counter guy was pretty damn hilarious to me.  I'm not sure if it was the quality of the material or knowing it was you.   The Gamestop reference was particularly amusing.

Also: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.  :grin:

Pull the trigger on this and you will ruin someone's day, somewhere and sometime.

Have run into two annoying bugs so far, one rare, one seems to be common (on the PC):

1. Trapped in the world. With no jump (dumb) nor crouch (dumber)*, nothing but a reload saves me.
2. Inability to exit the planetary Scanner UI. This happens if you press the ESC at the wrong time. It disables the ESC key. There being no other way to get out of that UI, nothing but a quit and reload saves me.

Aside from those annoyances though, this game has kept me up way too late. I think the pacing is a lot better than ME1, because by this many hours into it, I was already bored with that one.

* I appreciate what they are trying to do, but I'd have preferred they just give me crouch and jump. Oh, and running is retarded.

Re: "water chip" ending things:


Also, I think my favorite 'crowd' dialogue in the game has to be the quarian/turian in the Eternity lounge on Illium. Fantastic.

The upside of being part of official military rather than private organization:

you don't get the Nigerian Batarian scam extranet mails in your inbox...

About Thane:

Yup I run into this all the time on the PC when I make the "mistake" of bumping into some world objects (including NPCs). I end up on top of said object and usually can not move back down (in one place I was able to find the pixel that let me move back down again).

My Quick Bar is also totally fucked up. I can't properly drag and drop things to the bar or rearrange it properly.

35 hours and I'm done.  Now to read all these damn spoilers.

Not sure but i think what worked for me was grabbing the ability icons by thin strip on top of each rather than clicking anywhere on them. Could be just coincidence though and you're experiencing something else.

The thing I loved most about ME1 was the dialogue system.  It just felt completely different to sit back, provide intent, and hear an actual conversation happen.  It not only provided a more... cinematic experience, but also removed the largest annoyance I have in RPGs: that handful of conversations where all the dialogue options are awful.  Happening in quick succession, those can kill games for me (see: Fallout 3).  The downside of it was it turned exchanges into a more passive experience as I was just waiting for my next chance to nudge Shepard one way or another.

With the dialogue interrupts, I still get the advantage of not seeing every dialogue option in its entirety before choosing one, but I'm right back into the experience.  Choosing a Renegade action often made me feel like total a badass, while ignoring some Paragon ones felt like a silent assent to whatever horrible action I've just talked my party member into.  (This was also true in reverse, because hey, sometimes I have to save the day by pushing someone out of the way of a gunshot.)

Basically, I :heart: Mass Effect 2, a lot.  Random quirks and all.

Doesn't seem like that bonus is needed at all; there's a much larger bonus provided by Shepard's "main class skill" which boosts both the scores and the gains by up to 100% Running with regular armour and no helmet so far 30+ hours into game i've seen literally 2 instances where the persuasion options were greyed out, and that's with splitting my responses roughly 50:50 between Paragon and Renegade. A min-maxer pouring all into one route should have no issues whatsoever without these two items.

Ammo wise, I had no issues with ammo in normal, I was swimming in the stuff.

On hardcore, I definitely feel a pinch in some fights. So much more armor/barriers to burn through, so little ammo.

But I will disagree on the single shot sniper rifles: the things do absolute absurd damage, which is why they have so little ammo. I can pretty much count on 12 deaths for 15 shots. The SMG has a ton of ammo because it's supposed to be a constant use weapon, like the assault rifles. Sniper rifles/heavy pistols are the pinpoint killing machines.

All that said, Sentinels are possibly the most absurdly powerful class, and I appreciate the "you beat ME2" bonuses to new characters/imports.

And the only things that need high paragon/renegade scores enough to make you hate life/the bonuses are really, really important things.

I can agree with that, just that it sucked to only be able to whip them out on the nasty stuff as the "Sniper" class.

Right before the end I was just at four bars filled on Renegade as a fresh character.  I imagine as an imported Shepard you'd have an easier time because of the levels (earlier access to Class Skill ranks) and whatever carry-over scores you get.  I was able to hit the red option pretty much whenever I wanted, but when I wasn't... it was there... taunting me for not punching that damn puppy in the throat :angryfist:.

Ah that's a good point; iirc the import gave me just one extra level if that so it wasn't that much of advantage (skill takes 10 points to max out so you can get it fully done as soon as lvl.5) but the import did give me quite a few points to both scores, i didnt' consider that.

edit: about the sniper rifles, i settled for the regular ones with 60 bullets ammo clip; they still pack a punch with the upgrades but don't make me feel bad about any wasted shot, and can spit up to 12 shots worth of rapid fire when needed without a reload. With the maxed out bullet time skill can make some beautiful mess with that.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/106/index/761152

For anyone curious as to how to fix your mouse for mass effect 2. It's not as simple as editing an Ini file because the ini file is encrypted. However - if you keep the same exact amount of characters in the ini file; you can edit pretty much anything while only having to remove superfluous zeros to certain lines in the file. After turning off mouse dampening, mouse smoothing and lowering my acceleration to .16; the mouse feels perfect.

Kind of wonder why they didn't just let us configure the mouse settings from the options menu.

Agreed.  :)  Most of illium seems well done, talking a couple of times bartender was smile worthy and some of the shopper dialogue is also funny.  "I want it to say, 'I own the room.  I own you.'"

Like most here, loving the game despite the crappy pc interface and stuck-on-environment bugs that can happen.
My kingdom for double clicks and mouse wheel!

BTW, does anyone know how many side quests you can pick up just randomly scanning planets and buying maps?  I've gotten one so far but havent been exhaustively searching each system possible.

Drink the mystery drink and talk to the bartender again.

Also, you can get shitfaced in the Citadel bar.

It seems to average out to one anomaly per cluster although a few start chains of 2-3 missions so you actually can get a decent amount of side-quests out of anomaly hunting.

This seems to be what I've noticed too. There are some small clusters you won't find one in, but they typically only include 1 or 2 planets and often attached to a system that had a storyline quest. There's only 2 clusters I've been in so far that didn't have any. In total I've probably done close to 10 by now.

What did you guys think of the side quests? I love that they're no longer in cut and paste environments. Some of them were kind of cheesy but I enjoyed them overall.

Citadel in general was great this time, even if it was far smaller.

"Hamlet, now with an all-Elcor cast!"

Well, the best thing they did was make the Citadel Smaller. This game has less walking, which was the right way to go.

Well, this game absolutely "owned" my life for a whole week. Beat it last night--well, this morning--at 7:00am. I'm happy with my ending, but, yeah, pretty much floored by how badly it can actually go.

I'll try and avoid spoilers, but I only lost one character in the forlorn hope and it was one that...mmmm...seemed appropriate, let us say. Some truly heartstopping moments, nevertheless (Cain, bitches!).

I'm still kinda worked up over the game and I do fear for my favorite characters in ME3. Guess we shall see. I finished ME1 with Garrus and Tali. I finished ME2 with Garrus and Tali (and, geezus palomino, what an ending). I'd like a trifecta, but not sure how they can work that with how this game is set up.

I actually didn't do many side quests. Couple of them are pretty good, some considerably less so. I was intent on seeing the good stuff, so I didn't spend too much time on exploration or the N7 missions.

I'm still in the early stages of the game, having recruited six or seven people and doing a couple of loyalty missions.

My only complaint is about the ammo, especially early on.  They have an armor/shield system in place to make switching weapons optimal.  Making my guns run out in the middle of a firefight is not fun.  Making me scramble into the open to pick up a clip with three bullets is not fun.  (Sure, now I know enough to make a build to get around this now, but it was extremely frustrating to start.)

If they wanted the 'awesomeness' of reloading a weapon, going with the heat dump is fine.  It even matches the Normandy's stealth system.  Let me vent it and fire again.  But no goddamn ammo.

I am really liking the basic tweaks to the Bioware formula that I see across Dragon Age and ME2 both. The integration of NPC interaction, quest unlocks and power-ups for party members is really just perfect now, one of the best combinations of making you want to play to see content while also rewarding your impulses to min-max.

My daughter really liked to watch me play ME1 (which I replayed at the end of last year) for the story and the characters. (I didn't sex up Liara this time, so that wasn't an issue.) She's been watching this one with me too but  the content kind of went more mature by a considerable notch. I am getting some very severe looks from my wife. I think any further conversations with Jack will have to wait for late night, that's for sure.

Sentinels are the tech/biotics, right? What sort of bonuses for new characters? ME1 had that "Hey, 10% bonus to life for using Kaidan" and "10% increase in X for using X 150 times" achievements, and bonus XP for finishing the game and such.

Any notable ones for ME2 for replays?

One of the loading screens mentioned the Mission Accomplished (?) achievement granting +25% experience.  There might be other bonuses as, unlike in ME1, the bonuses aren't listed with the achievement either before or after you get them.

That was actually a followup to an elevator ad in the first game.


What you get when you restart with a new character after beating the game:

- your choice of a free bonus power from any character you have the loyalty achievement for (just like the advanced training upgrade, basically). There's still space for another one on the power wheel so you can have 2 bonus powers eventually this way.
- +25% experience
- a whole bunch of money and materials (I think it was 300k credits and 50k of each material but not 100% sure). I think this supersedes the money you would have received from the Rich achievement from a game 1 import.

If you are starting the game over with the same character you just beat it with I believe you also get:

- all the heavy weapons you had for the first playthrough without having to unlock them again

I don't think you get two bonus powers, I tried getting a second via the upgrade option and it just replaced.

But yeah, that and the bonus minerals (50k of each) are the best bonuses ever. The bonus skill is pretty much key for the harder modes for me.

Aw, too bad.

The best 14 hours of your life!

That totally cracked me up - right of ME1.  Excellent!

Must say i found myself do the vault over obstacle and chase to the next cover bits frequently just for the heck of it and to break what's otherwise monotonous 'sit behind cover and shoot' routine. If i could grab the ammo clip while at it that was just a bonus  :why_so_serious:

My favorite environmental bit has to be the ad for Blasto, the first Hanar Spectre!

"It knows the criminal is wondering.  Has it used up all of its heat sinks? Does the criminal feel lucky?"

And of course the followup PR ad where the company apologizes for offending the Hanar.

Requiring ammo totally changed my play style. In ME1 I rarely relied on my team members to kill cannon fodder stuff (anybody they killed was simply a bonus). With ME2 I play it like a 3rd person RTS were I move them around and have them do all the work since they never run out of ammo. Typical setup is me in front to draw all the fire (since they tend to die pretty easily) and them in back and I just sit there twiddling my thumbs except to take out the occasional charging baddie and even then I usually just smack them in the face rather than fire a shot.

So which of the extra powers are you guys using?

"Enkindle this."

Barrier, on my soldier, adds quite a lot of survivability.


I think what makes the dialogue in 2 so  :awesome_for_real: is that they had all of ME1 to establish their 'defaults' for everything about the aliens, etc., and now they get to play around with stuff like that to a much greater degree. A lot of ME1 was in INFO DUMP mode that kind of got in the way of that sort of thing.

There's this and they also seem to practice "show, don't tell" more often in their world building which helps the atmosphere a ton. Some of my favourite background characters so far were the various Volus guys, how they're shown in range of everyday and not-so-everyday situations.

The Volus on Illium looking to get performance upgrades is pretty hilarious.

My sentinel used Warp Ammo

My Infiltrator uses <redacted> shielding, for the damage boost at level 4. After looking, it just seemed better than Fort or Barrier because of that one extra effect.

I'm tempted to start a vanguard on insanity (because I think I hate myself..), and I'm also tempted to throw reave into it, but vanguards seem like they need a barrier type ability AND something that actually hurts barriers/shields. Seriously, who made a close combat class with pretty much no offensive or defensive biotics?

Reave on a vanguard. Its ridiculous. Double damage to armor and shields, hp drain, massive damage and crowd control skill all in one.

I'm finding my teammates powers are of a greater use than their actual placement.  I typically let my team members wander around and shoot shit up on their own, like you.  Since I'm playing an infiltrator, they usually have wiped out most bad guys by the time I've been able to snipe 2-3 of the tougher ones down.  Just watching their CDs so I can kill/ soften up annoying guys (like anything with barriers.)

I make liberal use of my incendiary shot since it's an "instant kill" on anything that doesn't have armor or shields.  Rocket guy being a problem? Nope, one pop-up inferno shot and he's toast.   Bonus if I'm carrying Morlin around so he can burn armor off a tough one, then I can burn it to death.  My first 4th tier power is squad-wide disruptor shots for shields.


As far as bonus powers, I'm just using Incendiary grenade right now.  Level 12 and I've only done the clone and the merc's loyalty missions.  I'm debating rerunning the mercs just because I don't think the loss of Paragon points was worth the silly grenade.

My main power is Incinerate and ammo.  I switch between Disruptor and Cryo depending on what we're facing, but mostly Cryo.

That's my problem.  I don't want to play an RTS where I twiddle my thumbs, I want to shoot things.  While it has uses, Incinerating some enemies to death can take a while.

Fortification on my Infiltrator (Heavy Disrupter Ammo/Assassination Cloak/Incineration Blast/Agent).  It's the same power as Barrier and I picked it up for the same reason Ingmar did.

I didn't notice the +Weapon Damage on the Improved redacted Shield Boost... definitely going to pick that up instead on my second playthrough.

Yeah, I don't know why they're identical powers, but one happens to get +10% weapon damage at level 4.

I want tech armor on everything, though! :(

They're not identical powers really. One is a barrier one is a shield one is armor, with all the strengths/weakness vs. attack types that those imply, right?

It may be a UI limitation but when I hit Fortification, it looks like I just refilled my shields even though it's the "Armor" power.

I guess I'd have to pop it before going into combat and seeing if my "shields" die before the glowy effect goes away.

I will do some getting-shot-at-for-science later tonight.

I did notice when I use barrier when badly wounded, I get full shields but I *don't* lose the RED VEINS OF DEATH. If that means anything!

From what I can tell:

They do not help health, you can be near dead and shielded.

They don't do different shielding types (barrier/armor/shields), but your CLASS determines which of these protects you. Unless it's a UI bug when you use the wrong protection for your class.

Is there a screenshot key? Can't find it, even though I have a Screenshots folder :-)

Not that I know of, and I looked.  Even Print Screen returned a black screen for the monitor ME2 was running on.

All my screenshots have been taken via Xfire.

Jeezus what a pita. So many recent games. How hard is it to just map Print Screen to auto-write a JPG? MMOs have done this for years and those are still in their relative infancy. Print Screen has been working for me, but it's a pain and I lose some clarity on the paste.

Whee, finished. Spent literally like 5 minutes pacing up and down trying to make the final choice. Well done.


QA slip

On my soldier Shepard it's warp ammo. This stuff rocks on the Collectors--Harbinger in particular, who otherwise is a colossal pain in your ass if you don't have a biotic on your team (I usually didn't.). Warp ammo + Revenant MG = righteous asskicking on the final mission.

Everything else soldier Shepard might need comes from regular upgrades: hard shields and tons of health upgrades. Extra ammo sure is nice on the Rev, too, since it's a wicked bullet hose.

I'm using warp ammo also, although it feels like a waste of a power considering you already have the choice of three ammo types to start with.  But I'm not playing on a ridiculous difficulty so I have no need for extra barriers, and I hate that some biotic and tech abilities are unavailable against certain enemies.

Harbinger is pretty easy with combination of fire ammo + sniper rifle + bullet time, no biotics needed. If you catch him early (when he's not moving around yet) his barrier can be blown away before he manages to do anything and then the armour goes away in few next shots. Spawning a battle drone to attack him can ensure he'll spend few precious seconds trying to kill it rather than kill you, perfectly exposing him for some extra damage to the head. Regular Collectors... they die like flies to the revenant assault rifle with fire ammo. That's on the hardcore level, maybe harder on insanity.

I just completed Mass Effect 2, in my opinion this might be the very best game of all time.  From start to finish I was just in awe.  Time absolutely flew for me and I can bearly believe what Bioware pulled off.  The story was first class in my opinion with a few holes but still first class.   The combat system was amazing.  I think this is the first title to blend RPG and FPS since Deus Ex and in my opinion it was a flawless melding.  

This is why EA bought Bioware, I am convinced of this.  I can see the Mass Effect universe making money for them hand over fist for decades with writing/quality like this.   I am convinces that this is a game we will remember 10 years from now.  I think many of us will talk about it as reverently as i talk about Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate 2, Thief 2 and Fallout.  Bravo Bioware, you outdid yourself on this one.

ME2 sold 2 million copies in the first week, so I'd guess that EA is pretty happy with Bioware right now. (http://www.ea.com/news/biowares-mass-effect-2-hailed-1st-blockbuster-of-2010)  That press release also mentioned that Dragon Age was EA's best reviewed game last year (and I doubt they're putting out anything else this year that will top ME2 96% Metacritic rating either).

Dead Space 2 is the only thing they've publicly announced that could hit that Metacritic Rating.

Post Game spoiler:


You know, I liked Dragon Age. I loved the 1st Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 was so good that Dragon Age seems tarnished and I have little desire to ever play Mass Effect 1 again. The game was so cinematic and they even made me emotional at certain points. It's rare for a game to actually make me have an emotional reaction beyond anger.

Last night for the first time I got stuck on terrain twice, on the recruit Thane mission. Very annoying.

Walked slowly. Rose 4 meters above the ground. I'm in the ceiling. Breathing becomes heavy. Frustration sets in. I click load.

You have to use the laptop-looking thing RIGHT NEXT to your Private Terminal in the cabin.  I totally missed it the first couple times I was up there after I finished the game.

Oh doh; thanks i'll try that. I thought these laptop things are together "private terminal" item since the one on combat deck looks just like that too iirc.

Second mission on my vanguard. Shockwave threw a fenris, thought it was gone.

Door won't unlock, squad is shooting the ground. I'd tossed the fenris under the terrain, and had to load the game <3

At one point in the 'walk around the crumbling freighter' side mission I wandered off into the air; given that the entire point of the mission is 'find the safe path to walk' that was a little disconcerting.

Yeah this is kind of where I'm sitting except I think I liked DA better then the first ME. EVEN THOUGH the mining is totally annoying and stupid and I hate the fact that it is basically required, ME2 is really damn good. The writing is awesome in both DA and ME2 but I think the fact that your character actually talks out loud really raises the bar on the immersion/cinematic factor. To the point where I tried to play the game with a different looking Shepard and it was incredibly jarring to hear my original dude's voice coming out of the wrong face.

Also, insanity difficulty this time around is actually goddamn difficult, in ME1 it was mostly just a case of things taking forever to die. Not so now (although they do take forever to die, they're also more aggressive and use powers more, and the way they toughened them up is adding shields and armor to things that didn't have them before, so your own power use and the balance of who has what power among the people you bring along is really important.)

Scions on insanity are crazy. Jesus.

But yeah, even Lokis coming at you to soften you up requires some active response on insanity. I like it, as much as two scion fights irritate me.

Scions were probably hardest to deal with overall for me. Tons of armour to chew through and their long range attack hits like a truck and travels faster than regular biotic powers/rockets i think.

Husk swarms was the other type i found threatening, mostly because i didn't have biotics with me on the mission they appear. To the point where i'd break out the ice cannon, go for the freeze ammo and aim for the legs just to slow/stop them before getting overrun. And it'd still end in melee sometime.

Incidentally, being able to shoot the legs from under your opponent is  :awesome_for_real:

You can shoot the arms off of robots and stuff too. What's interesting about all that stuff is it is actually in the base difficulty too but you never see it happen because things don't live long enough. I see a lot more robots crawling after me like zombies on insanity.

Go for the legs, boo!

Husks are pretty much doomed with a solid hit to the legs, they're just mean in packs.

So does anyone know if singularity works on armor? I'm curious if it's a solution to the melee swarms.

Want some free DLC equipment?

Nothing major.  Some head pieces that give 5% damage or shield or something else I can't remember. But they are freebies.

Edit: Link is broken.  Here's a new one.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=205844

Free goodies are free, thanks. Those are some freaky headpieces, look forward to trying them on.

I'll probably hold off on doing a second playthrough until more of the DLC is released.  Apparently there are files in the PC version of the game that show evidence of another party member, named Kasumi.

Yea, you said it. My mute in DA always disappointed me, but now ME2 makes it really jarring. I need to finish ME2 and then come off the high before I can go back to DA :-)

Even after ME1 the standard should have been set for all future rpg's to have the main character speak. Sure it's a time/money investment but can you honestly think of any quality game in the last five years that has had a mute protagonist?

(the wolf in okami barks)
(halo is NOT a quality game)

Yes the lack of a "voiced" protagonist in DA is one of my main complaints. On the other hand the DA party conversations are far superior to what is in ME2, and ME1's were better as well. And whose bright idea was it to make your party members' "flavor" speech be explicit "hot spots" in the world that you have to explicitly trigger? It feels much more natural and organic to have it be movement trigger based like it is in earlier games.

Good question that. I first encountered that when I arrived on Ilium with Miranda (the vista conversation). I figured, eh, ok, so this is a neat trick. But then I've had it happen a few times since. I much prefer the random conversations of DA.

At the same time, I feel like theres a lot more downtime running in DA than ME2, so more time for those spontaneous conversations to fill.

A large portion of the games in the Shin Megami Tensai franchise have silent protaganists.  Last time I checked, for those that enjoy those types of rpgs, they're pretty highly rated.  Honestly, it's a valid style choice, and allows the player to act as their own voice in their head.  This obviously doesn't work so well in games that are heavily based on voice acting, but it's still an option.

Portal?

But more seriously the time/money issue means having the protagonist with voice is going to reduce choice when it comes to the nature of said protagonist. Games which tell story of 1-2 predefined characters are fine but i wouldn't want alll future rpg's to become limited in such manner.

Just discovered this by accident on my second playthrough whilst doing Garrus' loyalty mission.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a54Vm1ww8w

Wish there was more interaction between party members, or maybe there is and I haven't found it.

There's a difference when you are talking about games where your character doesn't actually "speak" (in game text or otherwise). Dragon Age is jarring because you "talk" a lot but it's not voiced like Mass Effect was.

Yeah, my friend said something similar. He came over to my house the other day and I said something like "How do you like my Shepard?" (On a sidenote, it's one of the first times I'm 100% happy with a Mass Effect male face. I don't know if the second game just does it better or what.)

His response was something like "He's good looking but it's weird seeing the wrong face on Shepard."

I totally got what he meant. I remember reading on the Mass Effect forums that a theory of why the Shepard statues didn't sell as well as anticipated was because most gamers said "Thats a Shepard. That's not my Shepard." I thought about it and that's exactly why I didn't buy it. It even carries over to the commercials to an extent for me. I see the commercials and my first thought is "that's not really Shepard!"

I restarted the fucking non-skippable "intro" 3 times just so I could get my ME2 Shepard to look as close to my ME1 Shepard as possible.

They changed the face settings enough between games that my "imported" Shepard face looked totally wrong in ME2 so I had to rebuild from scratch.

Yes, hence my second paragraph starts with "more seriously". Still, while DA's mute protagonist can be jarring i'm willing to accept this limitation if it allows for a wider range of race/gender/origin options for said protagonist. Sure, in the ideal world we could have both choices and the voice work, but as long as it's not possible i'd prefer different games to cover both options rather than all adhere to single model.

Yes but aside from your character origin and a few bits of flavor texts your characters race/gender almost never comes into play. The only exception being the human noble ending.  At least on all the chars i tried, my choice in race/class/gender seemed to matter only in the most minimal of ways.

That's true, but i was rather thinking along the lines, you'll probably want to have different VA for female dwarf and female human and female elf if the NPCs of these races are given different accents. Even if they all have to record mostly the same lines. Same for the males. Ideally, you'd also want different VA for a commoner and the noble even if they're of the same race etc and so on. Otherwise having everyone just run with the same voice based on the gender is likely to cause the problem people describe, the "Shepard's voice coming out of wrong face" thing along with the voice not matching what one would expect given the character's background.

"Go for the optics"

:awesome_for_real:

Okay that little Gilbert and Sullivan riff almost makes up for the lack of personality in party member dialog compared to ME1.

Yeah, that's probably my favorite party interaction in the game. "I am the very model of a Salarian Scientist!"

Modding my character the hard way!  :grin:

(http://www.storageserver.be/awful/lillyshep.jpg)

That is freaky.  I have a friend who is the spitting image of that if we gave her a bit of black lipstick. :-o

I just hit the derelict ship on insanity. As an adept. I think it's time to start over. :angryfist:

Ooh, semi-decent casual clothes.

... is there mod to put female Shepard in Miranda's pants already?

This is the only thing I have left to play for:

Video may contain spoilers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm6KL-v5Umo)

If it's the one i'm thinking of then backpedal backpedal backpedal and shoot all the way you can. Cover is useless for that part, both you and the squadmates can fire more frequent when they're in the open and you get swarmed less. And their powers can be damn useful depending who you bring.

My character uses Reave and can only survive out of cover for about 1.5 seconds unless sprinting like a jackass maniac on speed. I got through the ship doing a fair bit of that.
Also: the flamethrower is second only to the nuke. I remember using the latter at about 117% in the Normandy cargo bay. :drill:

Hm, disappointed with lackluster itemizations and dumbed down upgrading in terms of skills & equipment. Not really impressed with the 'combat improvements' at all. At least it runs like a dream.

Funny thing is, after playing through the game I wouldn't even consider the skill system dumbed down.  Streamlined sure, but there's more build variations there when you take into consideration your options whenever you max out an ability.

I'm personally enjoying not having to fuss with an inventory. Also, the combat engine is so much beter than the last that they could give me a stick to beat things with and I'd prefer it to ME1.

Ah i was thinking of the ship with the melee swarms. For that staying out of cover can work pretty well since as long as the husks aren't close to you, they can't really harm you. And as long as you keep moving/sprinting they stay out of range.

Well, I tried Insanity difficulty and all fights seem to boil down to spamming powers while behind cover. Since these 'magic missiles' can't miss, there's very little incentive to pop out of cover and take hits that would kill me very quickly as a Sentinel. Most of the time I end up just tanking with tech armor while my teammates grind them down with powers.

No powers here.. Just a soldier. Cover is useful, but the combat in general is not really all that fun (as an action game). If they're going to streamline to be more action heavy, I would have appreciated it just playing out like Red Faction or something. As it is,, it's halfassed action and halfassed RPG.

That said, it's generally a good game, for the story and such.

Soldiers get the concussive shot ability, although I seldom use it other than to trigger the explosive stuff scattered around.  You can also add an extra power of your choice with research.

I mostly use Reave, or bullet-time + sniping.

I use the hardened geth shield on my replay soldier. It's handy, but looking at other options. I might have to look into reave, though I heard this was relatively short ranged?

I used warp ammo on my first playthrough and was pretty happy with it. AP ammo is tempting to experiment with, though my main concern was burning down Collectors with shields. Just did Harvest again last night with incindiary only. Worked well enough, I suppose. Scions are still a royal pain. Going into Harvest and Haestrom with the Rev, though...that was satisfying.

I've been having good luck with Barrier as my Soldier's extra skill. He tears up stuff so well with guns, any other damaging power seems pointless, the extra survivability is more useful.

I don't get this at all - I find the combat more interesting than Red Faction's by far.

I'm just using that as one example of a "3rd person shooter/action game"... Although it's easy to compare because the art styles are somewhat similar.

My point though is that I don't find it nearly as fun as any strict action games in that style (3rd person/shooting). I disagree with you on Red Faction specifically.. I think it's more fun, but replace it with any number of 3rd person shooters if you wish. They're all better action games than ME2. Your character isn't very "physical" (no jumping or rolling), there's not much in the way of maneuvering within the environment besides cover, not much in the way of destroying said environment, and vehicular combat hardly leaves much in the way of daredeviling..

In ME1, that was all fine and good to me too, it's strength was in being a hybrid RPG/shooter. And perhaps, in some ways, more RPG than shooter. I didn't expect for it be an action game. In ME2's case though, I can't help but expect a little more. They chipped away at some of the RPG elements - A little less customization, items, stats, etc.. Except they didn't exactly make up for these exclusions on the action side of things. The storytelling is still in tact, and that's great - it's enough to keep me playing.. But I don't really understand why they streamlined it. Because to me, gameplay wise, it's very unremarkable.

I think I agree. ME2 is no Gears of War. It's not trying to be either, but the comparison is inevitable. I think the characters are physical enough, you just don't make the decisions in realtime. You can run up to cover, and depending how you doing it, the transition from running to cover will include sliding. You can run up to a platform, and depending how you do it, the transition to get onto the platform will include a crouch/jump sequence. Both cases (and others) are you hitting a button and watching an event unfold.

At first I expected to run and jump and crouch of my own accord. But because of the immersion of everything else, I soon didn't notice it. Even though when I'm not in the game I'm wishing it played more like Arkham Asylum :-)

Planetary scanning got less annoying with the speed-that-shit-up upgrade. And really, it's more annoying because of my mentality than the game. I don't like to just explore a system. I want to strip mine the whole thing to depleted  :evil:

Awesome story moments all along though. Not sure who my favorite characters are so far. I really like Justicar's and Thane's stories though.

And I'm still encountering things that'd mean a lot more to me had I bothered finishing ME1.

Question, not sure if this has been answered, based on how one chose to end ME1:


I could have waited for a second playthrough, but it's rare I survive through the end of a first playthrough :-)

Ah great thanks. So some strife remains, it's the flavor that changes. As expected.

TOTALLY agree on your edit. I remember talking to Sgt Bailey and for a while I'm wracking my brain over the familiarity of the voice. Then he said something I swear he said on the show and it clicked. I hope there's more interaction with him in the future.

Just the opposite experience for me.  I am really glad that there wasn't 500 suit options.  I am glad for two reasons.  First I don't have to constantly junk stuff I don't want and "omni-gel" it.  Second, I think that this allowed bioware to focus more on the story and less on the loot whoring.

Moreover I really like the idea that you improve the model suits you had.  In most games i have played, I never look at the "options."  Instead I look at the values.  This means all the time spent on making the armors look different were wasted on me as I just junked it and never looked at it.   When gamers do this, how much development time does that equate to wasting?  I bet its quite a bit.  That is time I would rather have the developers focus upon improving the game and enriching the experience that I find compelling and will experience.   

I think you crystalized my reaction to it as well.  Honestly I think Mass Effect 2 is revolutionary on so many levels.  I would even say groundbreaking.  There were times when it  really stirred up actual emotion beyond I am so frustrated at X.   

I don't think I see ME2 as revolutionary so much as it does what good science fiction has always done: let us ask philosophical questions "out there", hopefully unburdened thanks to it being all aliens and space travel.  (Which I guess might be revolutionary in a game.)

ME1 mostly asked the player questions about who or how or if someone/thing was going to die.  ME2 still, as a game revolving around shooting people in the face, asks questions about death (or not death), but when it does it, it does so more subtly.

It's rather disappointing there isn't any suit options for your team, though. (just choice between two textures didn't really cut it) Similar with the weapons, outside of the heavy weapon choices you just find one upgrade per weapon class and that's basically it, they could completely do away with gear selection screen* and no one would notice.

*) minus the heavy weapon for Shepard.

Well, keep in mind, alot of the weapon selection stuff is now really encapsulated in the upgrade screen. And I refuse to admit how much time I spent playing with colors for my armor and a few times I found myself wearing different pieces for looks more than for stats.

That said, I want an eyepiece identical to Garrus's in ME3.

There is one thing that has been bugging me from a meta-game standpoint though. Everything in the game makes sense in a sci-fi type of way except the ammo. In ME1 you found ammo types you could swap out. I was cool with that. But in ME2 it's a power and I never found an in-universe explanation for how my soldier could just "will" his ammo to be cryo rounds for instance.

Well, to comment on one of your moments

Yup, but the weapon things are just straight upgrades to everything you have; you never get to choose between this gun or another based on what mission you expect or your playstyle. You have 2(3) models per type, one is explicitly said to be upgrade for the other so the actual point of there even being gun selection screen... questionable. Not that ME1 was much better but there at least you got to pick between damage output, accuracy and heat generation. Both for the base weapon and for the upgrades you'd put on it.

Armour-wise i did spend a while on the selection screen but with 2-3 choices max for every piece --after you manage to find and buy them all-- it wasn't really much of choice again. And being unable to fix Garrus' armour was driving me bonkers because it makes so little sense to permanently keep him in that junk.

In ME1 i had lot of fun picking armour for my guys from vendors and drops based on both the looks and stats, to the point where i'd colour-coordinate them and then their weapons on top of that. I missed that in ME2 and being able to paint Shepard's armour did nothing to alleviate it since as far as i'm concerned Shepard wouldn't be wearing anything but his/her military gear, stock colours and all.

There's the Sentry Interface you can get from Dr. Pepper codes (guide here (http://www.destructoid.com/get-mass-effect-2-dr-pepper-promo-dlc-without-dr-pepper-162580.phtml)) which at least has that vibe:

(http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/masseffect/images/thumb/1/19/Sentry_interface.jpg/230px-Sentry_interface.jpg)

On the ammo powers, I mostly took them as using your expertise to tweak the weapon for one end or another.

I have the Dr. Pepper stuff. Honestly, if that visor was cut in half I'd use it more. This is where I make another admission. I almost exclusively use the head shot visor. Not for its stats but for the fact it gives me a little something and lets most of my face show during interactions. I like seeing my Shepard's expressions and such and even that Dr. Pepper visor hides some of the subtle eye and brow movements.

This is not actually true. They do say "upgrades the <blah>" but for example the second sniper rifle functions much differently than the first. The base sniper rifle does far more damage and is much better for take-a-guy-out-with-a-single-headshot; the other one does a lot less damage but has a big magazine and you can fire a bunch of times before having to reload. The other weapons have similar tradeoffs, they're not just straight up upgrades for the most part.

This is what really bothers me about the Dragon Armor. I actually like it, all except for it being all one piece. Shepard's head tilts are actually pretty expressive, but during any encounter off ship, I haven't seen his face almost ever.

It's not willing, it's a setting on your weapons.  Watch Shepard when you swap between two different ammos.  There's an animation involved with punching in keys on the side.

I'd recommend playing any class other than soldier then.

Uh....just finished a 15 minutes boss fight with my two partners dead. I think Bioware need to make the AI realize it's not gonna win a ranged exchange with a player. Cover = God Mode. This is on Insanity by the way, the boss did nothing but stood at cover, empty magazine, reload under cover, then get up again while I feed him shield shock until his shields are down then feed him magic missiles till he dropped. Once I learned his underlings kept respawning I just focused on him the whole time and watch my shield recharges. I was even considering using the grenade launcher to speed things up, but....why? I CANNOT die!

I meant mainly the research screen upgrades which just add static bonuses to all your gear. But the weapon selection... well, i found zero reason to keep using the original sniper rifle after i found the "upgrade" one -- the higher damage of original just didn't mean anything when i could instead fire 2-3 shots (up to 12 in constant stream) from the other one in the same time it'd take the original take one shot and reload, doing more damage overall and still having more ammo in the process. I believe it was Bioware's actual intention for these weapons to replace the ones you start with or at least be clearly more optimal choice... otherwise their description wouldn't go as far as to spell out they were upgrades. You don't normally read that kind of stuff in description of gear that's supposed to be just an option.

I haven't played insanity yet (playthrough #2 is hardcore) but I've run into at least one place where the single-shot sniper rifle would have been superior to the multi-shot.  I've also run into some situations where I'd prefer the limited ammo capacity but higher accuracy of the second assault rifle to the wildly-inaccurate bullet-hose revenant(?) rifle from the collector ship.  The problem is there aren't many missions that give you a convenient place to change your loadout.

I do consistently use the particle beam, but only because it's my favorite.  I've only used my shotgun once when I was out of ammo-couldn't begin to tell you what's different about them :P

I used the Particle beam on most bossfights, I cleared out everything else with Shockwave and Reave (Vanguard) plus the Single Shot Sniper once I could use snipers.

Shockwave seemed to be extremey convenient when you have platforms and enemies in front of ledges.

Finally finished my first playthrough. Really pleased at the dynamics of the endgame, how you really feel like you get to utilize your whole team, not just "you've spent a whole game assembling a team, now pick two to actually use" - which I was worried would happen.

Overall absolutely loved the game, can't wait to start another one with my evil Femshep.

Yes, I remember the animation. Still, if it's changing a setting shouldn't everybody be able to do all of them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-CDNLYZ0zA

I really like how the game is just packed with easter eggs. If you're feeling bored; go to where Legion is on your ship and just stand there and wait.

Ugh. It's hard to justify non biotics / techies into the party now. Without the quick skills to burn down shields and set armor on fire, Jack seems like a waste of time.

"Really, Commander?"  ;D

In fact, it's about a constant stream of inside jokes and easter eggs.

"I have a shotgun..." 

What about the video game store on the Citadel?  :grin:

It's the Mass Effect!  :grin:

Anyone ever read the Cerebus Network news feeds on the game menu screen? Today's is about Superbowl CCXIX  :grin:

I love this moment.

(http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/large/870d92c19ceb40e70431c565a5b1d0295a71a406.jpg) (http://www.xfire.com/profile/ratmantransform/screenshots/?ss_file=870d92c19ceb40e70431c565a5b1d0295a71a406.jpg)

 :why_so_serious: