Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[Velorath]

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?

[caladein]

Bit of a tangent, but Thane's conversations on ship also provided some of the prettiest shots (like my current background) this side of Samara/Miranda and a space window..

[tmp]

and nearly everything on the Citadel Zakera Ward.

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

[Special J]

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   ME1 and so far this totally kills it.  I'll be on this one for a long time it seems.

[lesion]

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:

[Furiously]

best parts so far to me...

[Furiously]

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

[tmp]

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.

[Merusk]

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. 

[Tarami]

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

[Venkman]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[tmp]

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...

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

About Thane:

[Trippy]

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.

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.

[caladein]

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

[Ingmar]

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.

[tmp]

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

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.

[caladein]

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 Mass Effect 2, a lot.  Random quirks and all.

[tmp]

The other equipment related gripe I have is: whoever thought that the only two items with +Negotiation should be the Inferno Armor and Death Mask should be slapped.

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.

[kildorn]

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.

[caladein]

I can pretty much count on 12 deaths for 15 shots.

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 .

[tmp]

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.

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.

[Nightblade]

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.

[Xilren's Twin]

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

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.

[TripleDES]

Drink the mystery drink and talk to the bartender again.

Also, you can get shitfaced in the Citadel bar.

[caladein]

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.

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.

[NiX]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[Lum]

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

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

[schild]

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

[Shrike]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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.

[Khaldun]

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.