Mass Effect 2 Gameplay

[fractalsponge1]

Tuchanka was pure Renegade interrupt win. If they do nothing else in ME3, they need to add interrupts like that to every conversation

[Havok]

I would seriously buy a Mordin Wrex team up buddy game. I'm just sayin'.

[Havok]

The best part about Tuchanka is that, even if you're otherwise playing a Paragon, you can do all the Renegade stuff you want without feeling guilty; since you're dealing with Krogan, you aren't being a dick, you're being culturally sensitive.

I'm certain Wrex would by no means be surprised to hear about Shepard headbutting a clan chief.

And then killing him 20 minutes later?

[adam_grif]

I would seriously buy a Mordin Wrex team up buddy game. I'm just sayin'.

Totally. Salarians in general need a whole lot more love.

Wait, so the default canon of the game is to be a complete cock in the first game and kill Wrex, destroy the genophage cure, let the Council die and cause the final extinction of the Rachni? Awesome.

It also assumes you ignored Conrad Verner. So the only unreasonable choice made was killing Wrex

Also, you can't actually save the genophage cure.

So the new council is human-ran and the major races aren't terribly happy with you for it.

Yep, except that it still manages to make these have no impact too. The human-run council refuses to see you (because making 3 human character models would have been so hard) and still doesn't help you. The same characters who get angry at you for being a human and taking over the citadel have largely the same dialogue with a few substitutions, so if you let the council live they're angry at humans for getting so much political influence in such a short space of time.

[Highlord Laan]

The best part about Tuchanka is that, even if you're otherwise playing a Paragon, you can do all the Renegade stuff you want without feeling guilty; since you're dealing with Krogan, you aren't being a dick, you're being culturally sensitive.

I'm certain Wrex would by no means be surprised to hear about Shepard headbutting a clan chief.

And then killing him 20 minutes later?

"Thanks, Shepard. I've been looking for a reason to kill that idiot for the last two years."

[adam_grif]

Here is some Hammerhead footage from GameTrailers TV.

Well, at least now the ground vehicles are firing slow moving fireballs from their main guns too so the Cruisers don't feel left out.

[Aaron]

There supposed to be missiles according to the wiki, but who knows. At least its free if your in the Cerberus Network.

Only five missions? I hope they open up some of the planets ala the first game then.

[adam_grif]

Oh, it must be one of those missile launchers that inexplicably generates missiles from a power cell like the heavy weapon you get. And I still have no idea why they're being fired out the main gun like that.

[Aaron]

Oh, it must be one of those missile launchers that inexplicably generates missiles from a power cell like the heavy weapon you get. And I still have no idea why they're being fired out the main gun like that.

Maybe Russians designed the main gun?

That power cell thing is comedy gold though, everything from flamer fuel to power for a particle beam. May as well just call it a replicator.

[Havok]

Oh, it must be one of those missile launchers that inexplicably generates missiles from a power cell like the heavy weapon you get. And I still have no idea why they're being fired out the main gun like that.

Jesus christ. Do you Fatty NerdsTM have to criticism every little gameplay mechanic. You are fucking pathetic.

[adam_grif]

Jesus christ. Do you Fatty NerdsTM have to criticism every little gameplay mechanic. You are fucking pathetic.

Yes. But keep in mind that criticize =/= hating on. I've finished ME2 3 times already. It's just that talking about how much you want to suck a games dick is boring.

In this case it just looks funny having missiles with a low relative speed being fired out of a main gun that telescopes (?). And you have to admit that the power cell mechanic was really strange for some of the heavy weapons. It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't tried to explain it, but in usual Bioware fashion we got a lengthy bit of text about how it's power cells that apparently can't be recharged or fabricated or purchased, and they can generate rockets, particle beams, bose-Einstein condensates and power a "nuke launcher" (which is just a railgun, but creates a mushroom cloud ).

[Havok]

Jesus christ. Do you Fatty NerdsTM have to criticism every little gameplay mechanic. You are fucking pathetic.

Yes. But keep in mind that criticize =/= hating on. I've finished ME2 3 times already.

As long as you can admit it.

Yeah, I am on my 3rd play through right now.

Just wait 'till Stark gets his little grubby thieving Aussie mitts on it. At least 5 times through. At least.

LOL @ 'have to criticism'. I sound like bad scam spam.

[adam_grif]

Gosh darn you, posting before my edit went through.

I finished the third playthrough and was about 1/3 through my 4th as of early February, then I lent my 360+ games to a friend to stop me from wasting all my time playing it. 3.33 playthroughs in like 7 days. Fuuuu

[fractalsponge1]

I'm on my 5th, and of course my 360 RRODs on me. Stupid luck

Power cells are better than having to loot arrow types in Dragon Age, at the very least. I'm willing to hold my nose and accept the abstraction for this one; there are, after all, more blatant concessions to playability in ME.

[adam_grif]

I'm on my 5th, and of course my 360 RRODs on me. Stupid luck

... never happened to me. Yet.

[Instant Sunrise]

I'm on my 5th, and of course my 360 RRODs on me. Stupid luck

Ah yes, the so-called Red Ring of Death. We have dismissed that claim.

[Starglider]

I just spent a solid 40 hours playing through this game. Mostly with the sniper rifle / tactical cloaking combo which is almost abusively powerful.

I was expecting the locations to be more polished that the original, but I was pleasantly surprised that the writing was also improved. The plot was solid and the character interactions fun, touching or hillarious (Morden's response to you sleeping with Tali was my favourite - though Legion complaining about pathing errors was a pretty funny in joke). The main missions were very good, the quality of the filler side missions went up from 'horrible' to 'medicore'. It's annoying that the Citadel was so limited, or that the outdoor areas still didn't look as good as Halo 3 (a four year old game), but it's understandable that resources were allocated to the places where players would appreciate them most. Making new planets is preferable to revisting old ones.

The exception to that is the scanning for resources thing, and I'm honestly surprised that it got past playtest. The biggest problem with the game is the amount of time sunk on doing that completely unfun and uninteresting activity. I wonder if there was some kind of dev issue (schedule overrun, original idea that didn't work and had to be cut) that forced this to be included as a stopgap? The hacking/lockpick minigames were an improvement on the original button sequences, although not quite as engaging as Fallout 3's.

The thermal clips thing did cause a bit of a suspension of disbelief issue with me, but it wasn't the fact the whole galaxy switched over to them in two years, or the fact that you couldn't just let the weapons cool down. What got me was the fact that you could reload a partial clip and not waste anything. Even though this isn't actually much more plausible in a normal FPS, for some reason I just refused to accept it and subconsciously held off reloading until I'd used a whole clip.

I suspect gameplay would be significantly improved if you could switch which character you are controlling. Currently to get variety in gameplay style you have to do a whole new playthrough, and none of the missions actually require specific skills. Switching characters would let you combine and vary playstyles much more. I guess the writers think that would weaken the connection to the player character too much.

[Instant Sunrise]

Legion is easily one of the best characters in this game, and it's such a shame you don't get him until so late in the game.

Having said that, there is some extra bits of dialog if you leave Tali's recruitment and loyalty missions until after you get him, and bring him on those two missions. Interestingly enough, if you hack the post-Horizon characters into your game for the first few sets of recruitment missions, several of the characters have unique dialog. The rumor is that all of the party members were supposed to be recruitable from the get-go, but it would have meant much more disc-swapping for the 360 players, so Bioware split it up to reduce disc swaps.

With the thermal clips, I would have preferred a hybrid system where you can wait for the weapon to cool down, or you reload and instantly cool it down, but you would still have a limited number of thermal clips. I guess BW thought that a Spectre Assault Rifle with Frictionless Materials X being an unstoppable chaingun was slightly overpowered.

I wasn't a big fan of the resource scanning, and I wish that the long service achievement maxed more than your Element Zero. Since the 50,000 Ezo you get from that achievement negates the need to ever scan for Element Zero.

It felt like there were less sidequests than ME1, but the sidequests that were there were much better and more varied than the ones in ME1. In 1, all the sidequests were some variation of "go to this planet, drive the mako to a mercenary/pirate/cerberus/crazy biotic base, kill everyone inside, grab the quest item from the back room on the 2nd floor, turn it in for quest reward.

The biggest problem I had was the the DLC armors were useless at times, since the helmets didn't come off in dialog scenes. Which made them kinda useless, especially since most of them were some variation of "Shepard?! I thought you were dead!"

[open_sketchbook]

I thought thermal clips made a ton more sense than this air-cooling bullshit. The heat sinks come out of that thing red hot and trailing smoke; how fast do you expect that to cool in open air? Better to just dump the sink. Not only that, but now guns can work in vaccum so much more effectively!

[adam_grif]

The plot was solid and the character interactions fun, touching or hillarious

If you mean individual missions and so on then sure, but I maintain that the plot was pretty ludicrous if you take a step back and think about things. The "reapers are harvesting organics to turn feed them into the reaper making machine" reveal was horrendous in my humble opinion.

Whenever I'm off doing side missions I love the story, but the main missions were lacking in retrospect. There are a lot of little strange things like how Mordin got the bug (omni tool scans = can build one from the ground up, apparently), the SR2 steamrolling the collector ship at the end (even without upgrades), Joker engaging in an oldschool dogfight trying to get a shot off at the occulus with mass accelerator guns instead of just letting the point defense handle it.

The exception to that is the scanning for resources thing, and I'm honestly surprised that it got past playtest. The biggest problem with the game is the amount of time sunk on doing that completely unfun and uninteresting activity. I wonder if there was some kind of dev issue (schedule overrun, original idea that didn't work and had to be cut) that forced this to be included as a stopgap? The hacking/lockpick minigames were an improvement on the original button sequences, although not quite as engaging as Fallout 3's.

It's filler in the extreme. The game would be significantly shorter without it, and in your NG+ when you get the bonus 50,000 resources it slashes like 90 minutes off your playtime. They needed some kind of economy to prevent you from just upgrading as soon as you got the researches, but in my opinion the real killer is that you can't hop into a trade port and swap out your excess Eezo for some platinum, or trade your minerals for credits. That functionality alone would have made it more tolerable.

From an in-universe perspective, the idea that you can just go and strip mine a planet like that is ludicrous. If you're just collecting small samples of the shit, then why couldn't cerberus just buy some and give it to you? How can you "exhaust" a planet of tiny samples of substances?

The thermal clips thing did cause a bit of a suspension of disbelief issue with me, but it wasn't the fact the whole galaxy switched over to them in two years, or the fact that you couldn't just let the weapons cool down.

How about Jacob's loyalty mission, where the stranded-for-eight-years crew is all running weapons that use them

What got me was the fact that you could reload a partial clip and not waste anything. Even though this isn't actually much more plausible in a normal FPS, for some reason I just refused to accept it and subconsciously held off reloading until I'd used a whole clip.

On an intillectual level, they both annoy me equally, but it's been beaten into my skull so much over the years of gaming that I just really don't care. Strangely, what did bug me was that you could pick up a heatsink, but only gain 2 rounds for your heavy pistol. This really bugged me since 1 heatsink is supposed to = 6 rounds.

I wasn't a big fan of the resource scanning, and I wish that the long service achievement maxed more than your Element Zero. Since the 50,000 Ezo you get from that achievement negates the need to ever scan for Element Zero.

I wish they would patch it so that the achievement netted you something more usefully split, like 25,000 Eezo, 50,000 Iridum, 75,000 Platinum, 50,000 Palladium. If you play renegade, the 50,000 platinum for your facial regenerator is a huge fucking platinum sink. But don't tell Garrus we have it, his pain amuses me!

The biggest problem I had was the the DLC armors were useless at times, since the helmets didn't come off in dialog scenes. Which made them kinda useless, especially since most of them were some variation of "Shepard?! I thought you were dead!"

For a good laugh, import your shepard then completely change the way they look so there's zero resemblance. SHEPARD, BUT, YOU DIED!

The uglier the better.

I thought thermal clips made a ton more sense than this air-cooling bullshit. The heat sinks come out of that thing red hot and trailing smoke; how fast do you expect that to cool in open air? Better to just dump the sink. Not only that, but now guns can work in vaccum so much more effectively!

The problem isn't that using heatsinks is unrealistic, it's that it was a huge fat retcon, then they acted like it wasn't. Personally, it would have been better if they hadn't tried to act as though the ME1 system was also cannon. Like everybody just acted like it had always been that way, with Shepard making some winks about it to the audience. But no, the codex explains that it is a recent innovation

[White Haven]

Ahem, let me put on my Writer's Cap.

'Oh no, Sheppard, recent advances in personal shielding technologies have made it very difficult for the weapons you are more familiar with to cope with even minimally-defended enemies. Weapon technology has advanced to defeat the new shields, but higher power requirements have rendered the old-school unending-ammo-brick to be replaced by a smaller number of heavier charges. On the plus side, the designers put disposable heat sinks in the clips, so you won't have to worry about overheating your guns anymore.'

As an added bonus, that would make the new weapons phenomenally powerful against targets not wearing the new shields, so that Sheppard isn't constantly being nearly killed by space dogs, Rachni wannabes, or refugees from Arrakis. And Jacob's loyalty mission would be interesting, as they wouldn't be carrying usable ammo for him, BUT his weapons would be blowing them in half with a few shots.

[Starglider]

Joker engaging in an oldschool dogfight trying to get a shot off at the occulus with mass accelerator guns instead of just letting the point defense handle it.

I thought we'd already established that the cutscene people do not talk to the writers and do not give a shit about plausibility. They actually managed to top the slow moving fireballs in silliness; when the Normandy fires her main guns, the blue beam that comes out sloooowly crawls towards the Collector ship. Relativistic particle beam, right.

The exception to that is the scanning for resources thing, and I'm honestly surprised that it got past playtest.

It's filler in the extreme... From an in-universe perspective, the idea that you can just go and strip mine a planet like that is ludicrous. If you're just collecting small samples of the shit, then why couldn't cerberus just buy some and give it to you? How can you "exhaust" a planet of tiny samples of substances?

Yes, it makes no sense. In gameplay terms, even Star Control 2 did this better. Thus I suspect this was kludged together at the last minute.

I thought thermal clips made a ton more sense than this air-cooling bullshit. The heat sinks come out of that thing red hot and trailing smoke; how fast do you expect that to cool in open air? Better to just dump the sink. Not only that, but now guns can work in vaccum so much more effectively!

Technically true, but then in this game your armor automatically heals you from 'nearly dead' to 'fine' in about 10 seconds. Any number of times, in the same mission. As such I'd prefer a combination of 'reloading a half-used clip wastes the rest of the clip' combined with 'clip in the gun slowly loses heat, so that you can end one fight with a half-used clip and it will be unused by the time you get to the next fight'.

Did anyone actually use the nuke launcher? I gave it a try, but the ridiculous charge time and ammo consumption made it virtually useless. I think the only think I used it on was the derelict reaper drive core.

[Jaevric]

On the resource gathering thing...yeah, it sucks. I'm supposed to be saving the galaxy, and Cerberus can't be arsed to buy some resources off the markets and let me pick them up at the docks on the Citadel or Ilium? And if I am able to mine this stuff, and I'm going to be stuck doing it whether I want to or not, can I at least sell it for cash or trade it for other resources? I have eezo, which is supposed to be valuable as hell, coming out of my orifices and I could sure use some extra funds for gun upgrades...

In terms of the actual "mining," I always assumed that the scanner picked up "readily available" minerals for the probes to bring back; they aren't doing any real mining, just grabbing exposed resources and bringing them back.

I actually did use the nuke launcher a few times. Specifically, the one mission where you can get cash for keeping the 3 big 'mechs from blowing up the "fragile crates" is a LOT easier if you nuke them all, and they don't start shooting at you until you shoot at them so it's pretty easy to get the shot off. I suppose those crates aren't all THAT fragile after all.

Also, as I recall, I used the nuke launcher in Garrus' loyalty quest on the higher difficulty levels to wipe out the pairs of heavy 'mechs. I actually found it less useful, or at least less useable, on the harder difficulties; even with Adrenaline Rush on my soldier playthrough I'd get shot to hell while I was waiting for the thing to go off, and I blew myself up a couple of times because the target got too close before the gun fired.

[adam_grif]

You realize that on Garrus' loyalty mission you can hack the heavy mech right? Or are there extra ones I'm forgetting about?

Did anyone actually use the nuke launcher? I gave it a try, but the ridiculous charge time and ammo consumption made it virtually useless. I think the only think I used it on was the derelict reaper drive core.

I got tired of slowly chipping away at the final boss, so I fired, scored an incredibly lucky hit (landed right in its eye), killed it straight away.

They actually managed to top the slow moving fireballs in silliness; when the Normandy fires her main guns, the blue beam that comes out sloooowly crawls towards the Collector ship. Relativistic particle beam, right.

Nonono, it's not a particle beam, it's a slug made of molten metal fired at super-high speeds! That creates a blue beam. For some reason.

[Aaron]

The entry reads like it's a really fast HEAT cannon.