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Mass Effect 2
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I still have to wait two more days being out in eastern hemisphere (Asia)... Well, the good thing is I did manage to finish up my infil renegade run on insanity and about 1/3 through my vanguard paragon run in ME1.
So, quick poll out there: PC or console? And what are your thoughts on the game thus far?
I have the PC version and have been enjoying it immensely so far. Honestly, my biggest complaint is the size of the on-screen action buttons; I wish they were bigger and easier to select with the mouse. That said, I have some reservations about the new ammo system the game uses. I liked the first games infinite ammo/heat management setup a lot and while having actual ammo to keep track of doesn't detract from the fun it feels like a step backwards.Story and dialogue-wise, hey, it's Bioware. Those guys have made it an artform, and the new interrupt system is a sweet addition.
PC. Any game that requires first person aiming is better with a mouse in my opinion. (That and I don't have a 360). And I need a faster network connection to download the damn thing faster. *sigh*
I was slightly peeved to find out that the game doesn't recognize my Mass Effect 1 saves because I played them on a different XBOX. It's not a big deal, except the game assumes you got the renegade ending in Mass Effect 1 (or does it do that in any case?)
-- If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all.
If you create a new save, it assumes:
-you saved Kaidan as femShep and Ashley as maleShep -you killed Wrex -you killed the rachni -you killed the council and chose Udina I think those are the major decisions it auto chooses.
So I've gotten a few missions done... rescued a trio of assistants so far (I don't count zaeed among them since you don't rescue him, you freaking fall over him) and gotten about 8 hours under my belt.
Purty.. so so purty... This game is gorgeous. The revamped Normandy is fun to explore. The new planet mining thing is... different. Easier than ME1's finding random cache's of metals, but more time consuming in the end. I just got an upgrade to that though which will hopefully make it easier. The characters are amazing. Morton and SuZe are my favorites (note, so far I've only gotten those two plus Zaeed and Archangel). Morton because he's more ruthless than you'd expect, and SuZe because... well, she's a LOT more ruthless than you'd expect. And you set your ruthless bar pretty high to start with for her. But under all the tattoos and lack of hair, she's still human. Maybe. I think. It remains to be seen. The controls take a little getting used to, and if you played ME1 a couple times, you will die a lot in the first few missions. This scenario happened to me countless times: I'd get into a fight and behind cover, want to switch weapons, and by habit hit the spacebar. In ME1 this brings up your screen to change weapons and select your parties powers. In ME2, spacebar will put you behind cover. Or if you are already behind cover, you'll stand up and face your enemies, and they love you for it. All you'll hear is "zotzotzotTWOOM" and when the missle hits you, your screen goes red and you'll be taking a nice little dirt nap. However, stick with it, your mistakes and deaths will teach you soon enough what not to do. And once you've got the combat system under your belt, it is a whole heck of a lot smoother than ME1's. You can still map powers to your 1-8 keys, but the neat thing is you can also map your squadmates powers. If you want them to overload an enemy, you don't actually have to pause if you have their power mapped. Just hit the key it's mapped to with the target selected and they'll throw it off immediately. Very very handy. I'm still trying to pick out the 'loyalty' system, how to get your squadmates to open up and really like you. Haven't gotten to far into that yet, but knowing how Bioware RPGs work, they'll come in their own sweet time. The interrupt system works very well, and adds an interesting level to the whole cutscene. I find myself doing some renegade cutscenes even though I run a paragon Shepard, but it doesn't feel out of place. Everyone looses patience eventually, right? So all in all I'm really enjoying it and would recommend it to anybody who likes a good shooter, or a good RPG. It's well balanced, just when you're starting to get bored at all the chatting they throw in some 'ohshit' moment battles, and when you need to give your trigger finger a rest they put in some good exposition. A real epic and I can't wait to get back to it tomorrow. 
 Quote:http://www.annakie.com/me/home.html Wow, that's a great 404 page! "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies 
Nah, I've seen ones with far more style. Or at least, far more stylesheet.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
Try this:
http://www.annakie.com/me/home.htm Stupid extra "l"  --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs Quote:Nah, I've seen ones with far more style. Or at least, far more stylesheet. Hey, I _like_ spartan and plain. "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Sorry, there was supposed to be a at the end of that. I meant no real snark.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
no real snark?
welllll, the best ME2 Fake snark I've been able to find is on Livejournal, where there is over 1000 comments arguing heatedly about how the lack of a female/female love interest is discriminatory against homosexuals. (the best part of this snark is that there is a female/female love interest) "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
So, you don't want a list of saved games to save you from replaying ME1? Okay, forget I said anything
... Wait, it doesn't let you edit the keyboard commands as it does in ME1?
Loving the game so far. Particularly finding it amusing that Shepard occasionally gets spam on his super sekret email address. They even have the Batarian Prothean Artifact Scam.
--- Jon "And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"
Yes, you can change control settings.
I just started ME2 last night (after finishing my L50 Paragon run of ME1), and I'm going to call it an impressive disappointment so far. The game suffers from acute consoleitis, and I'm not really sure why, given how ME1 and ME2 were 360 games originally. Heck, ME2 got a simultaneous PC release- ME1 feels more PC-like than 2 does, and it was a delayed port (which is usually a Bad Thing). The skill system has been simplified to 3-7 options, each with 4 (technically 5) ranks possible. I like that there are options for the 5th rank, but really? Why does the 'bigger and better' sequel have half the options the original did, each with half the progression involved? Bad move. Interface is marginally worse, as well. As was said, the power buttons are too small. Your health gauge is smaller and less instantly readable, and forget about checking on your teammates in the heat of battle. The interact popup is much smaller as well, making it hard to tell you've even looked at something you can interact with. Also, whose bright idea was it to make my 'map' button temporarily bring up the radar, and make me go through a freakin' menu to find my map? There's no hotkey for the ME1-style map, which makes exploration far less fun. That's okay, though: because the levels are more linear, we don't need to explore. Brilliant! Battle is... mixed. How did every gun in the galaxy get switched over to an entirely different form of ammo management in only two years? I would think that the guns would use clips to essentially clear overheat status- let you (like ME1 did) fire as much as you wanted unless you overheated, which would require you to eject the clip and reload. But no, ME2 chopped out one of the unique aspects of ME1. I do like how they streamlined the ammo mod system, but special ammo should be a feature of the combat system, and not half the freakin' skill tree! The shield/armor/health setup is brilliant, as is the modular damage, and replacing grenades with heavy weapons earns the game points in my book. Inventory management? What inventory management? You don't have an inventory- you have guns. There aren't 11DB of them anymore, either, and you can't switch them anywhere. I suppose this makes more sense, but it's a frustrating change when you're coming off ME1's 'carry 100 guns around without an issue' system. The focus is on customization over replacement, and I haven't played enough to get into that system yet. Time will tell whether that's good or not. Graphics are better than the first ME in every conceivable way- better textures, better shadows, more polygons- everything. The graphics are truly impressive. Sound is great, too- the music is just as good as the original game had, which is impressive enough in my book. I love the hacking minigames, and I'm excited to see about research, mining, and gun/ship customization. They did a great job tying ME2 to ME1, at least in the time I've spent with it, though I worry that they put all the links between the games in the first few hours to wow returning players. I haven't seen much of the plot yet, though I'm familiar with much more of it. What I've seen has been incredibly well executed, especially everything connected to the Normandy. Losing the old one was actually painful, after 40 hours of flying it around the galaxy. Getting the new one (to an arrangement of the 'Spectre Induction' song from the first game, no less!) was awe-inspiring. I'm very impressed with a lot of the game, but disappointed that it lost so much of what made ME1 great- and not just great, but unique. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
The ME1 port was done by Demiurge Studios (sp?) and the ME2 port is done by Bioware. The port could definitely have been done better ... For one, Bioware seems to forget that mouses are more versatile rather than just point and click utilities.
The ammo system (okay, okay, the "thermal clip" system), at least in game, revolves around the fact that apparently the geth found that most engagements were decided by who could pump out the most amount of bullets faster. They invented the thermal clips and then, all the gun manufacturers liked it and incorporated it into their own system. Of course, there should still be SOME types of the old weapons floating around but they never seem to appear. Meta reason, Bioware tried to make this more shooter-y, a shooter with RPG elements, in order to appeal to the Modern Warfare crowd. Definitely a different feel to the game.
Honestly, I'm going to have to disagree with you on most of the points Bluemage. First, while ME2 is a bit consoley, it isn't that bad simply because you can rebind your keys to whatever you want. For example, I've got adrenaline rush bound to one of my mouse thumb keys. Basically, if you bind the skills you use most to keys that you're comfortable with, you don't ever really even have to look at the power icons, especially since cool-downs are indicated right on top of your targeting reticule. I do agree that they really could have made the interaction pop-up more distinct though.
In terms of the skill progression, yes it's true that there's less skills and less levels per character. On the other hand, each skill point/rank bought actually feels like it actually accomplished something, especially at the last rank where you get to pick one of two specializations. In ME1, most of the time for the points spent you get some percent damage increase, or some percent damage reduction increase... whoo. In reality, especially if you're not playing straight soldier (which is the only class where you get that many different ammo skills), the skill tree is just more concentrated into significant advancements rather than a whole lot of tiny incremental ones. In addition, every single one of your squad-mates has a unique skill ability in addition to their normal abilities, one of which you can choose to learn later on. All in all, the actual number of usable skills is at _least_ on par with ME1. And this isn't considering the upgrades to tech/biotic skills that can be researched. In terms of weapons, and battle, I don't mind the change very much, it did get more first person shootery, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. For one thing, it means that each of the weapons actually has a distinct feel to it in terms of how it fires and behaves(You do get more weapon options, just not a whole lot more). In ME1, the only real difference between weapons is accuracy and how fast it overheated. And by the end of the game, it was pretty much 'as accurate as everything else because your skill is high' and overheating was a non-issue because you could pretty much just hold down the button. Between that and how completely different each heavy weapon is from all the others, it actually feels that you've got more weapon choices rather than less. And hey, headshots matter now, which makes me happy. As for inventory management, frankly, it was a chore in ME1, good riddance as far as I'm concerned. I do agree to a certain extent on the mapping issue, I really wished you could still have the ME1 style maps. On the other hand, the levels aren't really that much more linear than in the first ME, simply because ME1 was pretty damned linear too. And on the plus side, each of the sidequests now actually have their own maps, with their own terrain which makes sense. Rather than the carbon copy 2 base maps and 2 starship maps that showed up everywhere in ME1. And frankly, the best part of the game is easily the NPCs, your interactions with them, and their associated plotlines. ME2 is really based more around them than anything else. And what you did, and who you helped in ME1 is reflected almost perfectly into ME2. In a word, I'm not disappointed at all, certain things have been streamline, but in my opinion, it just means there's more actual game and less busywork. (No more wandering for half a hour on an annoying hilly planet, searching for random pieces of rock and shiny things. amusing the first planet, not so much afterwards.).
I've put in another 15-20 hours since I wrote that, and there are a few things I need to amend.
-There are only 4 ranks to any power, not 5. Whoops. -I'm more annoyed by the way the interact popup works than it's size at this point. It loves to lock on to things I can't even see- some of them behind walls. -I do love not having inventory- all the guns work at least slightly differently, and there's a use for any/all of them you care to use. The anti-tank sniper rifle is absolutely brilliant, and I'd marry it if I could. Same with the nuclear explosion gun, if you could carry more than 2 shots for it (and that requires 5 upgrades, to boot)! -Mining. Dear gods, mining! Yes, it's easier to find resources than in ME1. Yes, there's no more wandering all over a planet looking for that symbol to show up on your radar. At least ME1 didn't link your combat performance directly to how much [CHOPPING] platinum the game feels like giving you! At least you didn't have to look at the same wavy line for an hour at a time while waving your mouse around, hoping that this time you'd find the resource you needed. At least ME1 didn't make it plot-crucial- not just for one game, but two! -ME2 alt-tabs in and out like a charm. This is SO MUCH better than ME1, where you had to wait 10-15 seconds at least for it to come back up. And now, to respond to s3yang: -All I'm saying that the power selection menu is badly implemented in ME2. It doesn't matter to me that you don't have to use it. It could've been implemented better with a relatively small amount of effort, so why didn't they? -As far as skills go, they actually did remove quite a bit of useful specialization. Weapon training was a nice feature in ME1- you could use any weapon, but how well was determined by skills. Why take that out? They lumped all the stat-boosting skills into one, which is good- the old system did have a few redundant skills. Singularity disappeared, too, which is not so nice. -The new skill system bothers me most because you don't get that feeling that every level accomplishes something that you had in ME1. Even when all you got was some slight boosts to your stats, you were just that much tougher or deadlier. By the ME2 midgame, I'll go through 3-4 levels before I gain any more combat effectiveness, because of that stupid 'spend more points for each rank of a skill' mechanic. Honestly! ME1 skills had 10 levels, each of which did something. ME2 also has 10 levels in each skill, but you have to buy levels 2-3, 4-6, and 7-10 at the same time.. -One thing I found out on maps is that if you tap the button, it'll bring up the old-style map... for port cities only. Otherwise, yeah. I do approve of the non-cookie-cutter destinations, though. -The plot is quite good, as is a lot of the game. On the whole, I actually like ME2- I just wish they could've done some things differently. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
It's a little more like late game before the points get really incremental. You get two per level until level 20. As for why the weapons aren't skill related anymore, it's probably once again to make the game play more like a shooter, which I personally like, but I can see why it upsets you if you prefer a more RPG oriented game. Frankly, the amount of points that you had to invest in the first game into sniper rifles before the drift was reduced to usable levels was really annoying.
Singularity is still in the game, although no NPC's have it. It's only available to an adept Shepard. And man, you must really have had bad luck with planets for mining, I'm pretty much outright done with it and I don't think it ate up more than a hour of total game play time. If you really want to save time though, you can look at/torrent the strategy guide, it has a listing of which planets have what minerals. Also, get the scanner upgrade (from talking with Miranda I think.) it makes finding the minerals a bit easier. PS: Why do you like the sniper rifle so much? (I grabbed the LMG myself, so I haven't had a chance to use it).
I'm level 18 myself, and it's getting really incremental already. Part of that's because I'm focusing on a handful of skills, and totally ignoring others (like Cryo Ammo). Did I mention I'm a Soldier?
The FPS-like play upsets me because this is a Bioware RPG in a long line of Bioware RPGs. It's forgotten where its roots are. I have nearly all the ship upgrades. I don't have Legion yet- too busy going for the upgrades, loyalty quests, stuff like that- so I can't be sure I'm done with them. The sensor upgrade was the second one I got, and it's still that bad. I've looked at the guide, but I hate using PDFs for things like that, and I can't afford a dead tree copy at the moment, so it's not a handy reference for me. As for the sniper rifle, I like taking out enemies before they get into range in most games. In Borderlands, I play Mordecai. In Left 4 Dead, I specialize in 1-shot burst headshot attacks with the assault rifle. In Mass Effect 2... I usually use the assault rifle (I wish I could switch out my pistol and shotgun for another rifle-type weapon, because the assault rifle is all I need for close combat), but if I need POWER, I go for the anti-material sniper rifle. You can usually OHK most mooks with it, and one shot will at least take out shields/armor and 1/3 health for the better mooks (guys like Blood Pack krogan, or asari vanguards). On guys like the bigger mechs (the ones with shields, armor, and health), each shot takes out well over half a bar- more if you use the right ammo. On Praetorians, I use this gun with disruptor ammo to take down barriers, and switch to the Collector heavy weapon to drain the armor. The thresher maw died, if memory serves me right, well before I ran out of ammo. It only has a 13-shot capacity, and loads one shot at a time. It's powerful enough to forgive little quirks like that, though. EDIT: I just beat the game, at around level 26. The final sequence was fun, but it lacked the punch that the first game's ending had (along with the early parts of this game!) This was probably because the final boss went down in two shots to the face. There's a reason I love the Cain heavy weapon (the nuke gun). It kills things. It kills things dead. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
Yeah, the Cain is pretty awesome. I only really used it twice in the game though. To kill the last boss, and to kill the thresher maw.
I'm also getting the feeling that the ending is a little less awesome than the first game(in terms of scope) simply because there may be a shorter wait for ME3 than ME2 (Or at least that's what I'm hoping). Also, on a rather random note. apparently, you get a geth pulse rifle if you do Tali's recruitment mission on hardcore, the battle rifle annoys me with its cruddy ammo supply, yay for new game+. 
Just beat the game today, and I have to say that as "less epic" as the final mission was compared to ME1, I prefer to think that it's almost more epic. In ME1, you have the huge space battle going on outside the Citadel, whereas in 2, your team's on a solo run against who knows how many numbers. Between that and the fact that by then, my Adept was high enough that I was tossing Collectors left, right, and center about like rag dolls, and it was pretty freaking awesome.
The last boss was definitely a step up from Sovereign!Saren in the first game, both for being easier to aim at(no hopping about like a crack weasel) and more impressive visually(though I won't ruin that one for you). The characters, despite my worries, were all awesome in general. Even Subject Zero/Jack who I'd worried about given her trailers was actually a well-nuanced character worth exploring, as well as Grunt who was represented entirely wrong by his character trailer. On the Cain, I like to point out that the devs thought of everything: for a nuke gun, I killed myself with the blast wave once when I aimed it too close to myself. :lol --- "Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay waste."
I'm fairly sure everybody does that the first time . I did, too.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit. |
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