Mass Effect 2 Gameplay

[Ford Prefect]

So has anybody else gotten the Cain yet?

Because if not, you should. It is a GAME-BREAKINGLY powerful heavy weapon. The only downside is that it has a charge time associated to it, and it needs a shitload of heavy-weapon ammo.

I have to say it was useful in Grunt's loyalty quest; I completed the final stage in about one minute thanks to the Cain. However, it's basically not all that useful except if you know you have a super tough nut to crack (I only had the Cain on me at the time of that quest because it was brand new), so there are superior options. The Collector Particle Beam is probably the most widely useful heavy weapon. The way its ammo works means that you can actually justify using it one on stronger infantry like commanders, krogan warlords or even vanguards/sentinels.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Yeah, I'm partial to the Beam too... Although, it's DoT nature makes it's use in boss fights a little more hap hazard... (Though maxed out warp is my real nuke.)

[Agent Fisher]

Well, beat the game second playthrough, kept the base around. Now, to wander the galaxy, jumping from relay to relay, striving to put right what has gone wrong.




And to wait for DLC worth a damn.

[Xon]

Made it and used it just once. On Tuchanka, to kill a thresher maw in just about one hit. What can I say, my Shep's team was wiped out by a Maw, payback's a bitch.

I killed the thresher maw just using my pistol and SMG (both with fire ammo) cos the Collector Particle Beam sucked against armor . The beam spam is actually usefull at the supermajority of the heavy hitters in the game. The scan-hit nature makes it awesome against fast moving targets (A Collector posessed by Harbringer, it saps the shields in less than a second or 2), where as the missile or grenade launcher just takes to fucking long to get anywhere.

[Vendetta]

A Collector posessed by Harbringer, it saps the shields in less than a second

A burst of SMG then follow up with a Warp->Incinerate combo. Harbinger goes down in seconds. In fact, with Mordin around, pretty much everything wearing armour might as well be labelled "Boil in the bag".

[Vympel]

I've got to say the planet scanning minigame is fucking tedious. Luckily, they didn't make it terribly necessary given how easy it is to get a lot of resources, but the design of the entire thing seems purposefully keyed to be as agonising as possible.

WHY do I have to keep my hand on RMB to scan? Why can't it be a toggle?

[Ford Prefect]

You make it sound like you trawl across an entire planet with the scanner on the entire time. That is literally barmy.

[Gramzamber]

You know what I hate about the planet scanner? There's no back button in scan mode, so you have to hit esc to get out of it. Oh but you can't hit esc to go out of orbit, because now esc takes you out of the galaxy map.
I hate that, it feels clunky, I have to hit esc then remember there's now a back button to go back to the map.

[Vendetta]

You make it sound like you trawl across an entire planet with the scanner on the entire time. That is literally barmy.

If you throk the scanner button as you move you can keep a reasonable movement speed whilst scanning the entire planet along the gridlines. You can pick up anything up to a grid and a half away, so you'll spot the spikes easily enough.

[Vympel]

You make it sound like you trawl across an entire planet with the scanner on the entire time. That is literally barmy.

Well not the entire planet (i.e. grid by grid, more like half grid), but I am systematic and thorough (I never leave unless its gone down to 'Depleted') and that requires time. I don't see why they designed it so I have to hold my finger on the RMB. Its stupid.

[White Haven]

I love my mouse. It's got a hardware sensitivity toggle on the mouse itself, I just kick it up to 'oh jesus you twitched' sensitivity for planetary scanning, and it moves like a normal mouse pointer.

[adam_grif]

Yeah well, us 360 players have to make do with godawful speeds. It's by far the least enjoyable portion of the game. I just try to scan all the "rich" planets in a solar system every time I go to a brand new one and ignore the others. I don't want a repeat of the 3 hour mining grind when I first got the game.

P.S. heavy weapons are useless. I had no idea they shared ammo until I fired one shot of the Cain and suddenly my other heavy weapons had nothing left.

Also, how the frack does a missile or grenade launcher use "power cells"?

[Vympel]

I love my mouse. It's got a hardware sensitivity toggle on the mouse itself, I just kick it up to 'oh jesus you twitched' sensitivity for planetary scanning, and it moves like a normal mouse pointer

I've got a Logitech G5 gaming mouse, has it too, but its still really frustrating.

[General Zod]

I've got to say the planet scanning minigame is fucking tedious. Luckily, they didn't make it terribly necessary given how easy it is to get a lot of resources, but the design of the entire thing seems purposefully keyed to be as agonising as possible.

WHY do I have to keep my hand on RMB to scan? Why can't it be a toggle?

Did you get the scanner upgrade? It's still tedious but it really helps cutting down the time it takes.

[Vympel]

Did you get the scanner upgrade? It's still tedious but it really helps cutting down the time it takes.

Yeah I got it ASAP. It still blows chunks.

[adam_grif]

The N7 missions blow. Oh, they're way better than the uncharted worlds crap in ME1, but better than horrifically bad does not make them good. The missions themselves aren't awful, but the characters are totally non-responsive to them. I had one where I had to chose between an infrastructure target and a civilian target, there was a missile heading to both and I could only activate the kill switch on one of them.

One of the monitors goes fuzzy, mission complete! Congratulations!

No comments by anybody.


Also, the armor customization was a missed opportunity. I have pretty much everything now, and there are never more than about 3 options for most things.

Looking forward to the hammerhead.

[neoolong]

You make it sound like you trawl across an entire planet with the scanner on the entire time. That is literally barmy.

Well not the entire planet (i.e. grid by grid, more like half grid), but I am systematic and thorough (I never leave unless its gone down to 'Depleted') and that requires time. I don't see why they designed it so I have to hold my finger on the RMB. Its stupid.

Is there an achievement for that? There are so many freaking worlds that it's more efficient to just go after the mineral rich or good planets and just hit the large spikes. You don't have to go through the trouble of depleting everything.

[Ford Prefect]

While the N7 missions are nowhere near as detailed as the main missions, the simple fact that there is a variety of objectives, actually different locations, a sense that you're doing something etc makes it majorly superior. Frankly I think they're fine. I wouldn't play the game just for them, but they're a decent enough diversion from the main missions.

[adam_grif]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PjTuSQNLI4

"Commander Shepard is still a jerk".

[Pulp Hero]

Related to the endgame:
Spoiler

I want to know what other people's experience with crew casualties was.

I had a fully upgraded Normandy, so I made it through the fly in without trouble. (What would have happened without all the upgrades?)

I used Legion as my hacker. He got head-shotted closing the door. I never did any of his sidequests, I don't know if that affected the outcome. I took Grunt and Dr. Solus through the bug swarm, with Jack as our psyker. Jack seemed to get super weak right at the end of the cutscene (I didn't upgrade her stuff enough?) and the bugs flew off with Grunt. I took Dr. Solus and Garret as my final boss team. The final cutscene showed Jack and Thane dead at the door defense site. In addition I didn't send an escort with the released crew, so they all died off screen.

AKA:
KIA- Legion
KIA- Grunt
KIA- Jack
KIA- Thane
KIA- Red-Shirt crew

Fucking messy mission.

Also, what is the deal with the sun behind the Illusive Man being blue in the final cutscene?

[Xon]

You didn't get all the personal weapons/armor/shield upgrades or failed to get all the loyalty quests, as well as delayed the final mission once it became avaliable.

[adam_grif]

Haha oh wow, that's a terrible result. But mine was only marginally better
Spoiler

My casualties were:
- Tali (killed in vent), not loyal.
- Jack (she was leading the distraction team if I recall correctly, loyal.
- Mordin (carried off by bugs when Samara's barrier failed), loyal.
- Legion (trapped under a rock at the end), not loyal.

If you don't upgrade the ship's barriers, you could potentially loose a crew member when rocks or w/e smash into your ship. If you don't upgrade armor, you'll lose a crew member when you get hit. If you don't upgrade the guns, I'm not sure, but I think you have to do an extra salvo and you'll get hit again (but I'm not sure on that).

In addition to those upgrades, you need the upgrades for each person to help them survive. So Legion's sniper rifle, Grunt's Shotgun...

The loyalty of each character is important, but the Bioware people have said that their record for least loyal crewmembers with 0 casualties was 4 , and that it's theoretically possible for it to happen with only 3 but nobody had done that. Upgrading squad stuff like tech/biotic powers could potentially have an impact but people aren't 100% on that.

The ideal candidates for the duct crawl w/ disabling shit is Legion followed by Tali. For the distraction team leader, team members with strong leadership are the best. Garrus is ideal, Miranda is good and so is Jacob. For guarding the crew back to the ship, I recommend Zaeed. I sent him and everybody survived that aspect of the job.

[Vendetta]

Spoiler

Everyone lived on my game. You have to have all the upgrades, personal and ship, and choose the right combination of people to do the various tasks. For instance, choose Miranda or Garrus for the leadership jobs, because they have experience doing it, whereas Grunt, Zaeed, Samara, etc are good at killing people but not leaders. Choose a primary biotic for the biotic shield, Jack or Samara, not a secondary one like Thane

On mine:

Sent Legion to do the hacking whilst Garrus led the second squad (Both loyal, and no crewmember has specific hate of Garrus)
Used Jack as my biotic barrier whilst Miranda led the second team (Both loyal, hate each other, so split up)
Told Jacob to lead the crew back to the Normandy (loyal)
Took Thane and Mordin with me for the final battle.

Given that everyone else seems to have undergone carnage, and I did it without looking up how to do it, I feel a bit shiny. (Although possibly everyone knew how much of a badass Shepherd was and didn't dare die.)

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

End game survival.

First time I did it: Spoiler

It forced me into the Collector abduction after doing Legion's loyalty and I hadn't finished exploring the galaxy yet, so I delayed not knowing it would kill off crew.

I had all loyalties and all upgrades I could find (and given I explored everything and did everything, it should be most of them).

Used Legion and Garrus as personal team throughout (personal team always seems to do just fine).

Vents: Thane, KIA, possibly due to
Team Leader 1: Zaeed
Bubble: Jack
Escort: Grunt
Team Leader 2: Zaeed, KIA
Mordin KIA off camera

Kelly, Gabby, and numerous redshirts also killed due to delay.

So I went back to my IFF save and redid it a second time due to unacceptable results: Spoiler

Did everything before doing Reaper IFF, then did Legion's loyalty, then went straight into final mission. No losses to crew or team this time.

Personal team: Zaeed and Mordin
Vents: Legion
Team Leader 1: Garrus (covers vent specialist better)
Bubble: Jack
Escort: don't remember
Team Leader 2: Garrus

Also, WRT Illusive Man and the star: Spoiler

In addition to being blue at the end, during one of the final mission conversations with him it can seen to be partially red and partially blue.

[adam_grif]

Spoiler

Everyone lived on my game. You have to have all the upgrades, personal and ship, and choose the right combination of people to do the various tasks. For instance, choose Miranda or Garrus for the leadership jobs, because they have experience doing it, whereas Grunt, Zaeed, Samara, etc are good at killing people but not leaders. Choose a primary biotic for the biotic shield, Jack or Samara, not a secondary one like Thane

On mine:

Sent Legion to do the hacking whilst Garrus led the second squad (Both loyal, and no crewmember has specific hate of Garrus)
Used Jack as my biotic barrier whilst Miranda led the second team (Both loyal, hate each other, so split up)
Told Jacob to lead the crew back to the Normandy (loyal)
Took Thane and Mordin with me for the final battle.

Given that everyone else seems to have undergone carnage, and I did it without looking up how to do it, I feel a bit shiny. (Although possibly everyone knew how much of a badass Shepherd was and didn't dare die.)

Spoiler

I had no idea there was a time limit after the IFF mission, so it took me by complete surprise and I wasn't prepared. I had to sacrifice my crew by delaying to do the final loyalty missions and get upgrades, or I had to sacrifice some of my squad by going in unprepared.

Oh btw people, what choice did you make at the end?
Spoiler

I used the pulse. The tech is too valuable to leave. Although that's just me roleplaying, I know in reality it doesn't mean jack shit which you choose, bioware isn't going to punish people for being a paragon...