First Impressions of Mass Effect 2

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**garret**

My team is grunt and subject zero. I never in my memery used samara or or drell in combat. even during there loyalty missions. but i wish zaeed have a dialogue option. Oh and cheese the bacherler party in the smae room is funnier. but have you cheacked out the video game store in the citadel? he says funny stuff too.
I dont know if im going to start again so soon. maybe maybe not. maybe this time with another group.

**Cheese Elemental**

Has anyone else noticed the large differences between the romances? I've watched all of the them except Jacob's, but with Miranda it's basically straight-out sex (in the engine room, FFS...), Subject Zero's is fairly nice (assuming it's the Paragon one where she totally breaks down), and the three alien ones are all a lot more romantic but don't have the same visible physical contact.

Tali's, once the mask is off, looks like it gets really wild (considering she basically pins Shepard to the bed, I also chose this one), Garrus' is lol-worthy because it's so awkward, and Thane's is really solemn and a bit sad.

**garret**

I really hope the geth make a bigger impact in me3 then in this one. There role was kinda downplayed in this one.

Spoiler:

I also hope reapers play a bigger part in the sequal. oh and hopefully we can see what the protheans really look like.
But the geth were a disappoint. But what i hated more were the fething husks. well atleast you only fight them during certain parts of the game.
although one thin bothers me

Spoiler:

**metallifan**

garret wrote:I really hope the geth make a bigger impact in me3 then in this one. There role was kinda downplayed in this one.

Because ME2 was never -about- the Geth. That was obvious from the day they announced "The Collectors" as the new enemy. I find it hard to believe you weren't expecting this also.

**garret**

No it wasnt from the day it was annpunced the trailer showed a geth. Besides during the enemies of mass effect 2 video if i remeber correctly the guy one there said "of course the geth are back. there a big part of the mass effect universe."
I just think the geth are awesome.

**Cheese Elemental**

garret: The geth in the first trailer was Legion.

**garret**

yes still we ddint know that. we all thought he was just a regulr geth. Besides the geth still needed a bigger role. There just awesome.

**Cheese Elemental**

They'll have a major role in the next game assuming you allow Legion to reverse the effects of their virus on his loyalty mission.

**Emperors Faithful**

I was watching my brother play the game for a while. I appreciated it, he was so excited and I was getting a kick just out of watching him. But I had school the next day, so I headed off.

3-4 hours later, in the middle of the night, he bursts into my room, shaking me awake and screams, eyes wide in amazement.

"Dude! You can DO Tali!"

I groggily respond "GTFO."

"Yeah, I know! Isn't it awesome?!"

"...No. What I meant was, 'GTFO of my room.' Go to bed. Fething xeno-lover..."

That basically sums up the whole damn thing.

**Cheese Elemental**

Emperors Faithful wrote:
3-4 hours later, in the middle of the night, he bursts into my room, shaking me awake and screams, eyes wide in amazement.

"Dude! You can DO Tali!"

I would have done the same thing. That's how awesome it is.

**Anung Un Rama**

Tali? Ewww....

Anyway, so I keep reading the Bioware support Forum and they keep screaming about bugs without end. Won't load the mission here, causes RROD there. It's scary.

**garret**

just started my second playthrough. on veteren. going to play it again. then when it comes out with episodic content ill play on higher difficulty.
BTW. does anyone know how to get the geth pulse rifle?

**Kanluwen**

Veteran?

You sissy.

Insane is for the second playthrough.

**garret**

i have to save the higher difficulty for the dlc.

**metallifan**

Hey cheese! remember that spoiler you put out against Kelly/ "Yeoman Hotpants"?

She didn't get mulched in mah game. Probably cause' I told that bish to feed mah fish good!

Well, time to see if you can bonk her too

**BrookM**

metallifan wrote:Hey cheese! remember that spoiler you put out against Kelly/ "Yeoman Hotpants"?

She didn't get mulched in mah game. Probably cause' I told that bish to feed mah fish good!

Well, time to see if you can bonk her too

How can you tell her to feed yer fish?

**metallifan**

BrookM wrote:
metallifan wrote:Hey cheese! remember that spoiler you put out against Kelly/ "Yeoman Hotpants"?

She didn't get mulched in mah game. Probably cause' I told that bish to feed mah fish good!

Well, time to see if you can bonk her too
How can you tell her to feed yer fish?

Gotta flirt her up, then ask her to have dinner with you. talk to her after and she'll offer to feed your fish.

**BrookM**

metallifan wrote:
BrookM wrote:
metallifan wrote:Hey cheese! remember that spoiler you put out against Kelly/ "Yeoman Hotpants"?

She didn't get mulched in mah game. Probably cause' I told that bish to feed mah fish good!

Well, time to see if you can bonk her too
How can you tell her to feed yer fish?

Gotta flirt her up, then ask her to have dinner with you. talk to her after and she'll offer to feed your fish.

Hrm, I guess she isn't for same-gender relations then.

**garret**

actually she is.

**dogma**

Anung Un Rama wrote:Tali? Ewww....

Anyway, so I keep reading the Bioware support Forum and they keep screaming about bugs without end. Won't load the mission here, causes RROD there. It's scary.

Bioware has had a lot of issues with bugs as of late. I still can't play Dragon Age because the game will not recognize my DLC authorizations.

**Cheese Elemental**

Anung Un Rama wrote:Tali? Ewww....

What?

Anung Un Rama wrote:Anyway, so I keep reading the Bioware support Forum and they keep screaming about bugs without end. Won't load the mission here, causes RROD there. It's scary.

I've had no issues with the game and I've been playing for around 50 hours now.

**Anung Un Rama**

Cheese Elemental wrote:
Anung Un Rama wrote:Tali? Ewww....

What?

Do I even want to know what's behind that helmet that every member of her race is wearing?

Cheese Elemental wrote:
Anung Un Rama wrote:Anyway, so I keep reading the Bioware support Forum and they keep screaming about bugs without end. Won't load the mission here, causes RROD there. It's scary.

I've had no issues with the game and I've been playing for around 50 hours now.

It's pretty weird. Then again, I suppose if it really would be that bad I would've heard complains from more sources than the official support Forum.

I still don't know which class to play. The Adept looks really cool, but if I play one, there is not much use in putting Subject Zero in my squad, is there? Because from the characters I've seen so far, I think I like her and keep her around.
I am of course going for multiple runs, but it is hard to choose what to beginn with.

**Cheese Elemental**

Anung Un Rama wrote:
Cheese Elemental wrote:
Anung Un Rama wrote:Tali? Ewww....

What?

Do I even want to know what's behind that helmet that every member of her race is wearing?

If you look at her mask up close or when there's no bright light nearby, you can clearly see a human-looking upper face, same with all the quarians you see.

Anung Un Rama wrote:
I still don't know which class to play. The Adept looks really cool, but if I play one, there is not much use in putting Subject Zero in my squad, is there? Because from the characters I've seen so far, I think I like her and keep her around.
I am of course going for multiple runs, but it is hard to choose what to beginn with.

I'm playing a Paragon Adept in my second playthrough, and it's a blast. Shockwave is ridiculously powerful and push/pull recharge really fast. If you're going to play as an Adept, I recommend specialising as a Bastion once you max your passive class skill.

Besides, Subject Zero is closer to a Vanguard than an Adept because she uses shotguns. The only thing missing is Charge.

**garret**

Good old fasioned soldier. gotta love assult rifles. if i ever play another character it will be one that can use sub machine guns.

**PistolWraithCaine**

avantgarde wrote:I've been playing straight for the last 10 hours. Here's what I got so far.

Story:
At this point I've assembled a decent size crew (6 outta 10). The storyline isn't as epic feeling so far, but it seems like I'm just scratching the surface and not even close to the end. The background stories for your teammates are actually interesting and I like this new batch far better than the old ones. Seriously though, stop with the cameos, they literally cameo every minor quest giving NPC from ME1.

Gameplay:
Less walking around towns. I nearly killed myself after spending 2 hours wandering around the Citadel doing quests in the first game. First town I walked into, I only had to talk to one person and they pointed me straight at the action.

The customization is awesome now, they dropped the massive inventory train wreck from the first game. Instead of swapping upgrades out of weapons, you swap weapons (which actually have noticeable differences) and research improvements for your team's equipment.

Combat: Wow, massive overhaul. The shooter elements, class limited weapons, improved level design and the new powers make a big difference; squad tactics and composition are actually important now. Seriously impressed.

Exploration: They got ride of the planet side exploration, which I'm glad. They replaced it with a manual scan for planets which is equally as tedious, but less time consuming. They also tied it into the upgrade system so at least it's worth exploring. They did add in some bs fuel system for god knows why.

Graphics:
It's really just the same engine with cosmetic improvements, but I didn't really expect more. There's way more attention to detail, which makes up for it.

Only one major disappointment, they didn't fix the load times. Instead of the stroke inducing elevator rides of awkwardness you get a load screen, which is faster by virtue of not forcing you to stare at a wall the whole time. Also the Normandy has four decks now, so you get four of those bad boys whenever you tour the ship. It almost makes seducing your crew not even worth the effort. The real icing though is the fact you can only change your armor in your personal quarters, which involves sitting through two load screens, the airlock and the elevator. Awesome.

They removed customization, there is no reason to use any weapon other than the most recent one you've found, which is generally the best one you've found. Did anyone find themselves switching their weapons out? Other than the heavies why would I use an auto sniper over the anti-material one-shot-kill AWP that I found on the collector ship, or the starter heavy pistol over the carnifex deagle? It is true that the inventory system on the 360 was a train wreck but at least there were different weapons to use, I found 1 heavy pistol, 1 submachine gun and 2 sniper rifles (I ported over my infiltrator from ME1 so no shotguns or assault rifles) in the course of my game.

The upgrades that you can buy basically lock you into set paths and honestly how much difference is there between a +30% heavy pistol and a +40%?
In ME1 you could at least find weapons that fired faster or overheated slower or whatever, they shot differently, in ME2 this isn't the case.

They removed armor customization, all of the extra pieces I found were trivial in the bonuses they provided.

But everything else was better, combat was so much more engaging, the enemy AI was actually a threat and the cover system works much better this time around.

There was less texture popping and although ME1 was a long time ago so my memory could be wrong here but I think I found less overall bugs. Loading time problems still there, they just replaced elevators with loading screens.

Also, I guess this is just a personal thing but it kind of bugged me that they send you to these great, interesting looking places and then the actual map of the place is really small. I mean, I would have really liked to be able to explore Illium and the Citadel more especially. This could again just be my memory but I feel like KOTOR did a much better job of this with places like Taris for example, much more random crap to do.

Did anyone else here have a problem resolving the Jack vs Miranda thing?

Spoiler:

Great experience all in all.

**garret**

there unless its a chracter specific gun there are only 2 guns of each type.
excludin heavys but sadly all heavys suck excluding the collecter rifle. all others required charge up or could take out a dang mech.

**avantgarde**

It seems like the Soldier is the only one with any level of choice (4 distinct assault rifles) and access to every weapon in the game. I was expecting more equipment as the game progressed, but no.

Did anyone else here have a problem resolving the Jack vs Miranda thing?

Spoiler:

I had a 95% paragon rating and I still couldn't convince Miranda to stop being a bitch and regain her loyalty so she ended up dying at the end.

Maybe you just suck? I got No One Left Behind with Miranda at normal. What were your team assignments?

Oh, another major complaint. The intro is long as hell and you can't skip it. So anytime I want to start a new character or test another class I got to sit through 30 minutes of cinematic. For a game that encourages multiple playthroughs, it does a good job of discouraging it.

**PistolWraithCaine**

Spoiler:

God I know about the intro, why isn't it skippable? I had the exact same problem, I wanted to test extra classes and what not but it took forever. Also, you can't change your class when you import your ME2 character but you can with your ME1 character.

Edited because I am afraid of pissing someone off even though it's pretty obvious...

**garret**

I may buy me1 and play through it with all the choices the exact opposite from what really happned. maybe this way i could see another version off mass effect 2.

**avantgarde**

PistolWraithCaine wrote:

Spoiler:

Tali as tech, Garrus to lead the fire teams, and the blue woman to do the biotic field, I did it right but she died for some reason wtf. Were you able to change her mind with the conversation choices? They were always greyed out now matter how high my stupid paragon level was. I checked other sites and they said that it didn't matter for miranda vs garrus leading the other teams so I have no idea. Some people said that they restarted the mission and did everything the same and some of the deaths changed.

I think you need 100% to fix it. Guess I just lucked out.