MASS EFFECT 2

I don't THINK this post has spoilers.

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How could you cheat on your romantic intrest from the first ME, I'm appauled.

Actually I wound up being loyal to Ashley/striking out because my Paragon/Renegade was not high enough to unpiss-of Miranda after taking Jack's side when Jack was completely right but I didn't want to bang Jack cause of the whole crazy thing she had going on. I rerolled as a female character but was disappointed to learn that my ability to be a space lesbian was severely restricted.

So I got the sad cutscene where you just look at Ashley's picture.

After this my ending was very very disappointing because a lot of people died. Considering I did all but two loyalty missions, it really didn't seem fair!

Anyway, opinions of the game:

The gameplay is one of the most massive, leaps-and-bounds improvements I've ever seen in a sequel. All of the side-misisons were super interesting and fun. For the first time in any RPG ever I felt ALL of the characters were well done. There wasn't even one of them I had no interest in using (unlike in ME1, where there were several characters I didn't give a crap about). And "Scientist Salarian" is the best thing ever.

My only complaint swere that the main plot really felt like a rehash of the first one and didn't really capture me, and I really did not like the ending. Also some more enemy variety might have been nice.

Important Question:

I understand SIMON TEMPLEMAN, KING OF VOICE ACTING is hidden in this game somewhere. How do I find him?

And if you want to cheat a bit, then you can read what you must do to get a "perfect" ending:
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_2_Guide#Suicide_Mission
Mass Effect 2 wiki is a very imperessive database and has a very accurate game guide of both ME 1 and 2. Far better then the "official prima guidebook" which simply forgets to tell you how to keep your team alive.

Beat this last week, thoughts!

Better than Mass Effect 1 in surprising ways. You can FINALLY RUN PLACES (even if it is still slow and you're stamina sucks and slowly refils it is still better than holding shift for the placebo effect of moving a bit faster) and I hope they improve how fast Shepard can move in ME3 because it is still too slow when you are slowly running back to the Normandy on Illium. Being able to book it would help everything everywhere.

More important improvement: The combat! I haven't even tried playing as a not-soldier yet (who needs fancy power when you have GUNS) and just that part is better now. In ME1 my soldier would just whip out the assault rifle, shoot a lot, and if something strong showed up use the Assault Rifle power and shoot it a lot more. ME2 actually has interesting choices like finding the best cover, using the right gun and ammo for the job like overcoming barriers/armor, and proper spamming of Adrenaline Rush! Plus there was more variety than just the same four Geth and a Krogran that make up most of the enemies.

The area design has improved a lot. The ME2 citadel feels more like a shopping mall but everything else is done better. Fewer loading screens elevators and more content packed into smaller areas to cut down on the pointless running is a plus in my book. The locations are also designed to feel bigger like all the areas you can't get to filled with sprites people. Biggest improvement: There's more than the four molds for side quests! No more are you going through the same base/ship/cave like in ME1! There's next to no repetition in design as far as I could tell and this cuts down on how tedious ME1 could get.

The game content has improved a lot too. Especially side quests. Instead of having a bajillion of them there's a lot fewer but now they're much more interesting and with each area being it's own each side quest can get a bit of its own atmosphere.
Example (minor side quest spoilers):

The real missions are better too. Enemy variety gives more than "shoot geth -> drive mako shooting geth -> shoot more geth" and there's more happening during the missions too. Compare Noveria in ME1 to recruiting Thane in ME2 for an example. I'd rather take kicking a merc out of a window and feel good about it than fix a god damn gondola. Plus it's nice having some non-combat but important missions once in a while!

Writing wise is an improvement too. ME2 doesn't have the epic space adventure feel the original had but it does the darker side of the world without going into "being edgy" territory. With a few exceptions (get spaced Miranda) the crew is more interesting.

There's plenty of issues but most of them aren't very significant. Mineral scanning is boring busywork. After the first two planets I was tired of it already and asked google to give me a list of planets with tons of resources and shooting probes at spikes only. Even that got tedious, by the end game I was up to my ears in Element Zero and Palladium but I didn't have enough Iridium or Platinum for the rest of the upgrades and I wasn't too eager to do even more planet scanning. Thank god for the PC version; I downloaded a save game editor and gave myself a bajillion everything.

Point and click flying is unnecessary and boring and it just adds fuel which feels like a giant after thought. Why is it in this game? All it does is force you to go and refuel after you run out of probes. Yay. I prefer the ME1 way. It isn't like there's anything to see besides going straight to planets.

Had several clipping issues which resulted in a few reloads. Half the time it wasn't bad but the other half tended to happen in fire fights and suddenly appearing on top of cover trying to get back behind it tends to get me killed. Then there's that one time I clipped off a bridge and started walking on air and I couldn't get back to solid ground.

Miranda's face is the most thing ever. Whoever modeled that atrocity should be tossed into Zaeed's trash compactor (along with Miranda!)

The Suicide Mission


Final thought: It is impossible for me to take the Collectors seriously once I saw them. They look like anthropomorphic (and super-super-sized) Xchaggers from Star Control 3 and I imagined Harbinger taunting me "Die overly complicated life forms!" in the cute lil' Xchagger voice
I doubt it was a homage to them (SC3 sucked and I think I've seen what the Xchaggers were based off of but damned if I remember) but the Reapers do kind of look like Kohr-Ah.


tl;dr
Play this game (pc version 4 lyfe)

i tried playing me1, my computer kinda blows and i didnt like the game ):

edit: (tali is the only reason why im trying to get into ME)

I am pretty close to finishing this myself actually, playing on hardcore mode.

It's definitely a big improvement over the original, no doubt about that. I have a few reservations about how so many biotic/tech powers (except Warp/Overload/Tali's Energy Drain/Samara's Reave) are resisted by pretty much every armor type - the result is that very distinct tiers exist in the upper gameplay modes, where many armor types are common. I sometimes see enemies with Barriers, Shields and Armor at the same time. I would have liked to see more abilities be strong against a specific type of armor, and not just health, which pretty much immediately goes to zero on every enemy except Krogan and all but the hardiest Collectors (I have Disruption and Warp Ammo on a soldier Shephard with the badass special training assault rifle, health pretty much evaporates on all non-Krogan mercenaries and humanoids.) As a result, Jack is pretty much useless for me, because Shockwave and Pull are both terrible on hardcore, while characters like Miranda are pretty much a godsend, simply because she has two abilities that pierce specific defenses. Choosing who you like can be pretty difficult because of this. Thankfully my favorites are some of the best possible team members I can have. (<3 Tali/Garrus)

Also, I agree with GRS. I could do without mineral mining. Fuel/probes are also silly and the fact that upgrades exist for these things is even sillier.