Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[Ingmar]

I think you can typically only fire it every other mission or so just because of ammo use, too.

[Lantyssa]

You can get off two if you go in fully loaded and there are a couple of heavy weapon crates in the mission.  That's how I got the Thresher Maw.

[Shrike]

You can get two shots, but you'll need every heavy weapons upgrade and probably two heavy weapon ammo armor bits. Maybe one, depending which one(s) you choose. Generally, I don't think it's worth the effort.

Mostly I ran with the particle beam or the arc projector. If I knew I was going to be facing waves of clustered enemies (Shadowbroker...), I went with the grenade launcher. That thing is damned lethal if employed correctly. Consider this a second vote for a Blackstorm. I'd love one of those.

The Arrival, eh? Well, hell yeah, bring it on! I'm jonesing for more new ME fun. Presently working on a new hardcore renegade soldier that finally got around to kicking Ashley to the curb before Ilos. Probably won't end up much differently from the paragon soldier run with the same (more or less) parameters, but I'm having fun despite it being my seventh or eighth playthrough...maybe ninth, lost track some time ago.

[Jeff Kelly]

I tried Hardcore and Insanity and it's usually quite challanging but I always cave at one of the boss levels.

The two stages at Horizon's turret station (the Collector Husks and Harbinger) for example or the Reaper IFF mission always make we want to smash my controller.

The way the KI just keeps on rushing you and completely ignores your team mates is seriously frustrating in fights where you get no good cover (at Horizon the Husks will flank you) and running from cover to cover is useless because of the speed with which your shields and health are decimated.

The "the computer is s a cheating bastard" trope seriously frustrates me on those difficulty settings. The enemies just seem to have vastly better tech than me (I need a whole mag to kill just one Merc while they pound through my shields as if they weren't there) and their aim is godly.

[UnSub]

My ME2 play through was on Insanity. Early on LOKI mechs are a gigantic pain in the arse (my first Cain use was on that mission where you have to try and save 20 containers - the Cain rips up the LOKIs, but doesn't touch the crates!  ) but you get used to popping up, destroying someone's shield, then dropping to let yours recharge.

Boss fight were a touch annoying. Kasumi's especially. On the IFF mission I tried to just run past most of that part where you first see Legion - you can't do it because you need to open a door, but after you die you are reloaded with just one section to fight through. Saves some time taking on Scions, anyway.

EDIT: Lantyssa was right - I meant YMIR, not LOKI.

[Lantyssa]

I skipped the crate missions because of that!  I could take down two YMIR mechs with a good party composition, but by that time the third is in my face.  (I really hate how they lumber next to you instead of staying at range and firing their weapons.)  If I have enough heavy ammo left after beating the Collectors, I'm going to take it on with the Cain.

I'm expecting that missions to be a pain, too.  Scions I can handle.  Praetorians not so much.

[SnakeCharmer]

Hardcore and Insanity modes really reward headshots, Jeff.  That and alot of ammo switching on the fly.

e:  Has anyone found (or even looked) for a good custom mod forum or program for ME2?  A quick google search led to a couple that mostly dealt with getting Miranda to run around without pants and an anime...thing on her stomach

[Jeff Kelly]

Have now completed the whole game sans IFF and Omega 4 relay on Hardcore. Oh and the crashed Quarian is still unrescued. It was challenging but sometimes it ain't fun. I wish the KI of my squad were only half as good as that of my opponents. Being flanked by two YMIR Mechs after they have climbed over a few obstacles is

The squad system doesn't allow for even basic tactics so you either micromanage your team (head to cover there, shoot this, use power on that) or your daring Quarian tech takes on a Geth Prime head on toting a shotgun. You can't pin your opponents with suppression fire. You can't tell your squad to protect your sniper ass from being bull rushed or an injured Quarian from being eaten by Varren. You cannot even draw the attention of enemies away from their target. They singlemindedly rush you or the intended target. Doesn't matter that they are decimated by your assault rifles when there is a tasty Quarian around. They also magically seem to know where you are even though you were just cloaked for 8 seconds and covered a lot of ground unseen.

Seriously this is as hard as it gets for me. How anybody can enjoy Insanity is beyond me

Oh and the Cain is a godsend. There are a few fights were I can't imagine succeeding without it, like the boss fight of the Overtlord DLC. I wouldn't want to face a Praetorian without it.

[Lantyssa]

I didn't enjoy Insanity with any of the tougher enemies.  It turned into a game of how best to exploit the terrain and AI because all the really tough baddies (YMIR, Praetorian, etc.) all wanted to relentlessly stand on top of you rather than unload impressive displays of firepower from a distance.  That's a large part of why I had put it aside.

The lesser enemies weren't nearly as fun to fight on the easier difficulties though because the cover system was uninteresting if I could kill everything in the room in one shot without ducking.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I decided screw the insanity achievement, it's just not that fun. Hardcore is fun, though. <3

[Shrike]

Hardcore is a lot of fun, you just have to get used to it. A vet run is good preperation. Insane is just that. You're not doing insane because you enjoy it; you're enduring it for the achievement.

I've seen Tali charge Primes (among other things) before--generally required charging yourownself under adrenaline rush and going cyclic on the revenent. Come to think of it, ymir mechs seem to bring out the inner berzerker in quarians as well. Go figure.

One thing that does help with enemies that like to close is using cryo ammo and the super-freeze-ray gun thingum (can't remember it's name). Having Mordin along with his cryo blast can help as well.

[Lantyssa]

Except on Insanity everything has fortified shields and barriers.  Most powers don't work if either of those are up.  Hardcore is much more pleasant.

[Ingmar]

Miranda seems almost required on the harder difficulties since she has a power for all the different armor/barrier/shield things.

[Jeff Kelly]

Zaeed and Miranda was a good combo for me, both have range which means that neither is inclined to get up close and personal with bosses and MIranda helps with any kind of protection. I also liked Grunt because of the incendiary ammo.

Don't get me wrong Hardcore is a lot of fun and I like the challenge but your opponents have to get close to you because it's the only way for them to kill you. If they stayed at range and you had cover then it would be easy for you to kill them. It also wouldn't be a problem if you could fall back or sprint to another cover. If I'm not playing an Infiltrator though I always get killed when I'm on the way from cover to cover. The opponent's aim and damage output is usually to high for me to survive it or you have a fight where you can't fall back. The last room of Tail's loyalty mission for example. The access door locks behind you and you are in a room with nearly no cover, two Geth hunters, one destroyer and a few troops or the end of the N7 mission abandoned dig site where the blue suns merc boss has two YMIR Mechs as support. You simply cannot kill the enemies fast enough before they are on top of you.

I'm not frustrated (Well, maybe a little) the opponents are just a little bit too clever on those difficulties. Fighting the Geth armature on Haelstrom was exhilarating, it was exactly the right mix of challenging because of the cleverness of your opponents and the difficulty of the terrain but the area was large enough so that you always had a way to fall back and regroup if the Geth kept on rushing you. I just don't like that Geth keep on respawning indefinitely unless you hit certain waypoints. Also the first time I saw a YMIR mech climbing barricades and flanking me put the fear of God into me.

When you can't even spring from cover for the 4 seconds it takes to charge the Cain or the arc projector though, because it would mean death, while you can unload entire mags unto your opponents I get a little frustrated. Killing a single YMIR as an infiltrator with all the relevant ammo powers at max takes nearly all of my ammo for the widow, even if I keep headshotting it from cloak.

It's a mixed bag, I enjoyed it most of the time with a few fights being entirely frustrating experiences.

Also, can anybody explain to me the purpose of warp ammo and when you should use it, according to the description it should make your hits more powerful when it can soak up biotic power so it should be good against barriers or opponents affected by your biotic powers, yet somehow I never noticed an effect so I always wondered especially since you can have only one ammo power active at a time even though two different squad members have two different squad ammo powers.

[Shrike]

Essentially, warp ammo is AP ammo but with an anti-regen component. It's a cool extra power for classes that don't normally have access to ammo powers (sentinal). Other than that, it has no additional effects.

[Lantyssa]

It always works.  The biotic bit is flavor text.

[UnSub]

I finished ME2 on insanity and yes, it required a lot of team micromanagement, screwing with the AI (usually "they are shooting at me, so take them out, team mates"), team sacrifice, running away and luck in some places. Typically tried to use assault / sniper characters like Garrus and Thane.

My next run will be on easy. 

[Jeff Kelly]

the Omega 4 mission was relatively easy compared to other missions I had to do on hardcore only died once.

[TripleDES]

So there's a teaser flyer about the bridge DLC in the DA2 box. I hope they won't be dragging their feet too long to release it.

[Shrike]

Teaser and little else. Just an N7 logo over a burning planet and The Arrival! in caps at the bottom. Damnit, where's a new trailer? I'm jonesing here!!

[Sjofn]

They should be firing up the Mass Effect hype machine soon, now that DA2 is out, I would think.

[MournelitheCalix]

I hated the second part of Tali's recruitment mission on insanity.  There were just so many ways to die and so many vulnerability points that I almost gave up.  To me that was the hardest part of my Insanity run.

Also in the final mission and the reaper IFF mission, I hated the husks.  Anyway I am looking forward to the new DLC for ME2 and am hoping its half as good as Lair of the Shadow Broker was.

[Jeff Kelly]

I liked the gauntlet to the Geth armature a lot. For me it was exactly the right kind of level design. Challenging, a clear goal, clever opponents that even try to flank you but lots of cover and terrain to fall back and regroup. I felt that it hit exactly the right balance between being challenging without being frustrating.

Exactly the opposite to Tali's loyalty mission. The Alerai had only small spaces, usually cut your escape routes off by doors that kept magically locking themselves so you usually had to fight lots of Geth in crowded spaces with few cover spots.

What I disliked about Haelstrom was that it felt like the Geth would be re-spawning indefinitely unless I reached a certain point. (If you get to the end of the gauntlet and close to the armature no new Geth show up).

Reaper IFF was relatively easy exactly because you could basically fall back as far as the beginning so you could hit the Husks with a few powers, fall back and regroup and repeat it until they were all dead. This also kept you out of the reach of the scions with their shockwave because they move slower than the husks. Also any power that knocks opponents off their feet (like shockwave or concussive shot) instantly kills Husks and you can always punch them in the face if they manage to crowd you.

If you sidestep them when they charge they are usually not that big a deal. At the mass effect core my strategy was to run around like a frightened squirrel and use all of my powers like area incinerate as soon as they became available. Don't count on your squad because they die a lot there. The biggest asset was actually Grunt who regenerates a lot of health with Krogan vitality and has incendiary ammo.

The core also stays open as long as you don't shoot it, so you can take your time to collect thermo magazines and resurrect your squad after each wave.

[UnSub]

I'm not 100% sure, but with the IFF Core I thought it closed on a timer after you killed all the Husks, so I ended up running in a circle, chased by Husks, while shooting the core. My team was actually a liability here because they killed the Husks and started the timer.

... or so it seemed.

[Velorath]

So there's a teaser flyer about the bridge DLC in the DA2 box. I hope they won't be dragging their feet too long to release it.

March 29th, $7.

A deep cover agent is missing in Batarian space, after reporting evidence of an imminent Reaper invasion. Shepard must travel to the edge of the galaxy, rescue the agent, and discover the truth behind the Arrival. Uncover new research and 3 new achievements in this spectacular new adventure for Mass Effect 2.

There's also a few screenshots here.

[Shrike]

Holy cats!

I wasn't seriously expecting this until early summer or so. Ten days from now...hell yeah! Guess I"ll have to step away from DA2 long enough to finish and/or clean up all my renegade playthroughs in preparation.

[Sjofn]

I hope that deep cover agent is Ashley or Kaidan. Because I sort of miss them.

[Shrike]

After that shit on Horizon? Uh, yeah. 

I"m looking forward to the looming epic catfight on at least 5 of my playthroughs. Have to have the chief whip up some popcorn down in the galley. Good thing the medbay is only a few steps away. Although, I suppose that won't be until ME3, but still...possiblities. 

[Sjofn]

Most of my saves will be tremendously boring on that front. My engineer MANSHEP had no romance from ME1 to trouble him (Ashley ate it after I started that romance) so it's just him and Tali and PigShep stayed true to Liara, but maybe I'll start a new PigShep where he hits it with Miranda and Liara can burn with jealousy. My LadySheps were even less tempted to stray from their romance of Carth Kaidan because I am a racist against alien love for the most part and Jacob is cursed with his Jacobness (although I may yet hook him up with Sally Shepard, we'll see). Renegade LadyShep will get to see a Kaidan/Thane slapfight though, hopefully. She doesn't mind, and she might secretly be hoping they'll make out.

I really do have issues with the alien thing, though, I am this close to replaying Canon ManShep and having him romance no one in ME2 as well, because I like Tali but that whole situation bugs me, especially because she's just really more of a little sister to me. PLUS Kal'Reegar is clearly her soulmate. PigShep is only with Liara because it's someone else's save and I decided to just go with it.

[rk47]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqpyAlvyP3Y&

 

[tmp]

Oh gods, i'd so play Pony Effect.

(also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za9f1c93FHY )

[Shrike]

Cerberus network is back up and running--on the 360 at least. Let the countdown begin. Looking forward to this one a lot.

On the downside, it's a looonnngg ways to November. Although the EA hypemachine should be going into overdrive before too long, the longstanding fascination with trailer/spoilers always makes me reticient to look at this stuff. You can't resist, but...really don't want to see this stuff too earily either. I was able to resist most of this in ME2, only failing with the initial teaser, the cast interview trailer, and the actual launch trailer, but...well...jonesin' here!

[LK]

The commercials they use for television tend to feature the characters but not any in-game footage or scenarios. So I wasn't too spoiled when the game proper hit. Only spoiling potential I had was Penny Arcade Expo where they were showing game content. Otherwise you'd learn about as much of the game as you would from watching the cinematic trailers for Force Unleashed II.

[Shrike]

Well, from what I recall most of what was being shown was actually from the scripted action in the final mission. Spoilerific if you had a hint of what you were looking at. At the time, it was just like "cool", but only when you were playing it did you see what was actually going on, and by that time you didn't much care. "Oh, so that's what that was."

I also recall a slight amount of stuff that looked like it was done with the ingame engine, but never appeared in the game. I assumed cut content, or it was done specifically for the trailer, but who knows? I guess you have to use what you have, but I always get a twinge of "I might not want to see this...yet" when I see Bioware trailers.

[jakonovski]

Giantbomb just put up 20 minutes worth of Arrival video. I'm salivating here, and I'm even considering buying the stupid weapon pack.

http://www.giantbomb.com/ask-me-anything-mass-effect-2-arrival/17-3929/