Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[Lakov_Sanite]

FemShep voice actress is also 100x better than her male counterpart. To me, shepard IS female.

[Velorath]

FemShep voice actress is also 100x better than her male counterpart. To me, shepard IS female.

I've always thought that female Shepard's voice is a better renegade voice, while male Shepard makes a better Paragon.

[Lantyssa]

Probably just down to the fact that the sort of 'default' for most people is a 'good' runthrough as your own gender.

My default is so far 75% paragon, 60% renegade (of their own bars, not total).  What's that say about me?

[lesion]

Says you'll find love on Oct. 28, 2012.  You will also find a new appreciation for burgundy.  Your lucky number is a fraction and we don't have the character set for that.

[Lantyssa]

Awesome.

[Venkman]

Says you'll find love on Oct. 28, 2012. 

So his life ends in the bliss of new love less than two months later?

I suppose if you hafta to go out some way...

[tmp]

I've always thought that female Shepard's voice is a better renegade voice, while male Shepard makes a better Paragon.

Female Shepard is pretty widely believed to give better performance overall in ME1; in ME2 it seems Mark Meer put enough effort the opinions and preferences are split more even.

Personally can't hear the same range of emotions in male Shepard voice so i prefer to go with female no matter the alignment. Plus, headbutting the Krogan is twice as when Shepard is not a guy. For that matter about anything is 2x the with female Shepard since the male isn't really much more than the tough marine hero number 1001.

[Comstar]

I bought the game on Sunday and finished today. Goddamm that was a good experience.

It played a lot shorter than Dragon Age, and the most disappointing thing in ME2 is not having the party members riff off each other, the game missed that. It made up for it with Shepard actually having a personality and face expressions, as opposed to the dumb surprised look you get in Dragon Age. Though I really hope ME3 has the other party members bitch at each other more often.

The Moon Mining was horrible. It was like someone took the worst part of the planet exploration of Star Control II and removed all the fun. I very much hope it does not make a re-appeared in ME3: it was like someone took a crappy flash game and decided to put it in ME2 to do nothing but lengthen the play time.

The 2 starting NPC's were very boring, Miranda in particular. The assassin I didn't find too interesting
Did the romance with Tali  

I was very surprised that even though Legion comes in so close to the end, he was one of the best characters and I used him and Tali from then onwards. Archangel I thought had the best encounter mission and Tali's the most interesting (what with both the political choice to make and the action of exploring a empty AI filled ship). Apart from first the 1st 2 NPC's the rest of the cast was very good.

Loved the quick-time events to shut a boring conversation up and jam the gun in their face to make my point (or save someone from a sniper).

Now I have to go buy ME1, AND play through on hardcore AND play through as female Shepard.

[Fabricated]

The combat is way more intense this time around since I can't just take my assault rifle of face destruction with the max level special heat absorbing+accuracy and heat absorbing+damage mods + Cryo Ammo, hit my rifle skill, and just hold the button down until everything dies.

Weapon switching is irritatingly slow however. It feels slower than ME1 which was pretty annoyingly slow.

The areas sort of look better (Zaheed's loyalty mission is pretty impressive), but everything got smaller and more claustrophobic somehow. All we get on the citadel is a view from a presidium balcony, and a few floors of a cut and pasted shopping mall? REALLY? Gigantic Nar Shadaa station and all we get is a night club and some apartments? Small universe I guess.

[NowhereMan]

Yeah environments generally felt a lot smaller, there was just much less to the worlds. Though as Schild said there were also more worlds and involved less travelling time. It's a swings and roundabouts thing, pointless travelling can be annoying but it creates a sense of a much larger world. I got the general impression that everything about ME2 was more actiony and less worldy. ME1 created a great big world to learn about and explore, it focused on showing us how big and huge this place was and how much there is to it while ME2 was much more focused on a tight story with lots of action. The only exception to this is the Normandy that actually feels like a functioning ship that's home this time around. The first felt more like a large space with a few of your party members and some human shaped furniture.

Comparing combat 2 is definitely more polished, things feel like they fit better and happen more naturally. The heatsink ammo thing feels a bit more natural simply because that's what I'm used to in FPSes and it makes the whole thing feel much more like and FPS+ than an actiony RPG, something that the lack of inventory really hammers home too. I think I'd have preferred keeping a better done version of ME1's combat with the addition of a jump button for getting over cover things but I can see how the way they've done it would work better for consoles I guess. The inventory system in 1 is a pain, especially junking/selling all that crap and having to do so  so slowly but I'd rather have seen them try to improve it than junk it pretty much entirely.

The only complaint I've got that's in both games (and ME2 is worse for it) is having some doors randomly require you to open them manually. Most open automatically and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of reason why they don't all do that. I can understand it in combat areas where you might not want to open them right away due to enemies on the other side but anywhere else? It's just annoying having to press the button and then wait for the door to open when the last two happily opened by themselves without requiring me to even slow down.

[TripleDES]

If you use the latest build of the savegame editor, you can enable Legion from the beginning by setting him as Revealed and Selectable in the henchmen tab of the application. He has dialogue and comments for missions he's not supposed to be available for.

[Shrike]

Even on the 360, you can take Legion into other missions he wouldn't technically be available for--you just seriously screw your final save game doing it.

Still, some of what you'll see is either very funny (Legion on the Citadel), informative (Legion at Tali's trial--Daro'Xen's reaction is particularly illuminating), or both (Legion meets Tali for the first time). It's interesting, but doesn't--in my opinion--reallly effect ME2 that much. It seems expounding on storyline we might be seeing in ME3, i.e. reconciliation between the quarians and the geth.

[taolurker]

Zero Punctuation review

[AcidCat]

FemShep voice actress is also 100x better than her male counterpart. To me, shepard IS female.

People get very personal about their Shepards. The male Shep is vastly superior IMO, I find I just can't take the female version seriously, even though I use her for my second Renegade playthrough.

[tmp]

Pretty interesting (if bit obvious) plot analysis.

[Venkman]

As a late comer to the ME franchise, and as someone who just bought ME1 to play it past the first hour of inventory management I hated, I got a kick out of that article. Particularly

[Lakov_Sanite]

Pftt, the ending was solidly awesome except for the terminator. it could have been anything else except it was a t-1000 and that sucked ass.

[Ingmar]

The core problem is that all the setup of Cerberus as not-so-bad-maybe-at-least-these-couple-characters was done, I believe, in Mass Effect Galaxy for the iPhone. I think with that in the mix most of the criticisms that guy can level at the setup of 2 get much weaker.

[MournelitheCalix]

I thought that was a terrible analysis.  That guys experience was the one he created, nothing more.  The Chackwas example was laughable.  


What I thought was interesting about the way Mass Effect 2 ended was that it almost perfectly set up 3 to be one hell of a roller coaster.  Consider this speculation if you have beaten it:

 

[Ingmar]

The thing about them not saying anything about the Reapers having biological servants in the first game was also just wrong, I remember clearly that the first game included 'enslaved' as one of the things that happened to the Protheans, not just all or nothing genoice.

[Venkman]

The core problem is that all the setup of Cerberus as not-so-bad-maybe-at-least-these-couple-characters was done, I believe, in Mass Effect Galaxy for the iPhone. I think with that in the mix most of the criticisms that guy can level at the setup of 2 get much weaker.

Yea, but you don't normally leave such a critical transition to a format so many people aren't going to see. It's one of the main reasons Star Wars/Trek books don't create defining moments for those franchises. The amount of people who will read those is so much narrower than the movie goer. At best you take some reference (the name "Coruscant" for example). But that's only if you think it's really cool. Any geek ego that is stroked along the way is entirely inconsequential.

Having said that, MournelitheCalix's analysis was a lot better.

Also, hating that the app tells the story doesn't mean I'm not off to buy it

[MournelitheCalix]

The thing about them not saying anything about the Reapers having biological servants in the first game was also just wrong, I remember clearly that the first game included 'enslaved' as one of the things that happened to the Protheans, not just all or nothing genoice.

Your 100% right, also those crazy visions seemed to make sense to me in light of the second game.  I will put the spoilers on the explanation though I am not 100% certain I am right.

[Ingmar]

The core problem is that all the setup of Cerberus as not-so-bad-maybe-at-least-these-couple-characters was done, I believe, in Mass Effect Galaxy for the iPhone. I think with that in the mix most of the criticisms that guy can level at the setup of 2 get much weaker.

Yea, but you don't normally leave such a critical transition to a format so many people aren't going to see. It's one of the main reasons Star Wars/Trek books don't create defining moments for those franchises. The amount of people who will read those is so much narrower than the movie goer. At best you take some reference (the name "Coruscant" for example). But that's only if you think it's really cool. Any geek ego that is stroked along the way is entirely inconsequential.

Having said that, MournelitheCalix's analysis was a lot better.

Also, hating that the app tells the story doesn't mean I'm not off to buy it

I haven't played it myself but I get the impression a bunch of Jacob and Miranda's dialogue refers to it.

[Ratman_tf]

Pretty interesting (if bit obvious) plot analysis.

A humanoid Reaper is stupid but a space cuttlefish is somehow OK?   Fucking dumbass review. Oh, and Gannon called to say he'd captured princess Zelda again.

[Venkman]

I haven't played it myself but I get the impression a bunch of Jacob and Miranda's dialogue refers to it.

Just want to make sure I got the right thing here. There's a number of Mass Effect apps. The one I think I wanted was "Redemption: 1 of 4", which is a comic strip app wherein you'll be able to buy subsequent chapters as they become available. It's the full telling of the story Liari alludes to on Ilium.

Is there an actual playable game?

[tmp]

A spoiler Reaper is stupid but a space cuttlefish is somehow OK?  

In all fairness since one is supposed to be just result of mindless evolution and the other is construct by AI "species" supposedly much more intelligent than any organics yeah, that does make the latter relatively stupid idea, of the "all these big brains out there and that's the best you could come up with?" sort. Honestly, my first reaction to seeing a turian in ME1 was "whoa, cool". The ME1 reaper, same. The ME2 boss in contrast made me just laugh out loud.

edit: wait, by cuttlefish you meant the original Reaper shape? i got confused by remark Jacob makes at certain point referring to Garrus and thought it's about the turians. If it's about Reapers... well, can't help it really. I guess the original reapers just look alien enough overall to be scary/cool, the ME2 thing is the opposite given how overused that appearance is.

[Lakov_Sanite]

A spoiler Reaper is stupid but a space cuttlefish is somehow OK?  

In all fairness since one is supposed to be just result of mindless evolution and the other is construct by AI "species" supposedly much more intelligent than any organics yeah, that does make the latter relatively stupid idea, of the "all these big brains out there and that's the best you could come up with?" sort. Honestly, my first reaction to seeing a turian in ME1 was "whoa, cool". The ME1 reaper, same. The ME2 boss in contrast made me just laugh out loud.

This can't be said enough.  Reapers are supposed to be undying horrors from beyond the stars and then you get to the end and just...laugh

[tmp]

[MournelitheCalix]

Wow, played through the game now 5 times and I missed that....time to reload. Thanks for the tip.

[Ratman_tf]

edit: wait, by cuttlefish you meant the original Reaper shape? i got confused by remark Jacob makes at certain point referring to Garrus and thought it's about the turians. If it's about Reapers... well, can't help it really. I guess the original reapers just look alien enough overall to be scary/cool, the ME2 thing is the opposite given how overused that appearance is.

Yeah, Sovreign. I mean, the article whines about why a humaonid Reaper would need arms and legs, while Sovreign had spaceship tentacles, which serve no purpose other than to wiggle menacingly, and I suppose grab onto the Citadel, but again we have to freaking ask why it needs to fondle the Citadel in the first place.

And the article fails to mention that (and I forget which character says it) the Collectors were using the essence of humans to build the Reaper. It's no more or less silly than magical biotic powers and an element zero. Reapers are not robots.

Shit, I'm just glad the final boss fight was better than Saren the Radical Hoverboard Turian.

[Ingmar]

I haven't played it myself but I get the impression a bunch of Jacob and Miranda's dialogue refers to it.

Just want to make sure I got the right thing here. There's a number of Mass Effect apps. The one I think I wanted was "Redemption: 1 of 4", which is a comic strip app wherein you'll be able to buy subsequent chapters as they become available. It's the full telling of the story Liari alludes to on Ilium.

Is there an actual playable game?

Yeah, it is called Mass Effect Galaxy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect_Galaxy

[Venkman]

Ah thanks. Yea, didn't get that yet as I didn't like the art. But eh, I am addicted so might as well...

[Ingmar]

Reviews were poor apparently, but hey its an iPhone game.

[Nightblade]

Reviews were poor apparently, but hey its an iPhone game.

Maybe they should have chosen a real portable device as a platform instead of an overpriced chic piece of crap.

[Venkman]

Oh snap!

Nothing wrong with the iPhone except what people think it should/could be. Otherwise, feel free to rage over here or here.