Mass Effect 2 Gameplay

[Vendetta]

As an interesting related note: Zaeed's mission gives you either a Heavy Weapon Ammo Upgrade or an Assault Rifle Damage Upgrade.

It also gives you a flamethrower, which is the number one pest control device in the game. Anything that has designs on punching you or chewing on your toes, give it a bit of fire. Makes the husk swarms of the derelict reaper and collector base a cakewalk.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

The flamethrower's almost unmissable though.

You get the extra HWA for putting out the fire, while the ARD is for fighting through like Zaeed wants.

[Jaevric]

I've played through as a Soldier, Infiltrator, and Vanguard so far. I've tried Insanity playthroughs as a Soldier and a Vanguard and I'm at the point of banging my face against the desk in sheer frustration - Insanity seems to be more Retarded. I really enjoyed the Vanguard playstyle more than the Infiltrator but I'm making zero headway with the class at higher difficulties as anything but a Pull-bot for other people to combo off of...which totally defeats the point of playing a Vanguard I finally gave up when I died in towards the end of Mordin's mission and realized I was going to have to restart the fans part all over again, which meant another long series of killing everything one target at a time using the Pull -> Warp combo.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

The build I did that with:
Infiltrator
Barrier (Which I forgot about...)
Widow Sniper Rifle.

Maxed Incinerate, Disruptor Ammo, Cloak [Assassin].

Main Partners were Archangel & Miranda, for the Overloads. Which as 4/Heavy ripped the shields off of mooks, and togather could take half a leader mook, or about an 1/8th off a Heavy mech.
Spoiler

Early game: your weapons and skills all suck... and 90% of the enemies have a fairly high regen if you can't hit them with fire or warp...

Garrus Recruitment, final basement shutter: There is NO effective cover in that room, combine with the Krogan and Varren... and it's a recipe for pain. Not to mention the effective time-limit from Garrus' dwindling health... (When I got to the point where it no longer mattered, he only had a sliver left.)

Grunt Recruitment, tunnel immediately after krogan opens a path: On the path down, there is NO COVER AT ALL. THe enemies will spawn when you get near the bottom... so have your teammates cover behind the little L well before you head down.

Grunt Recruitment, final battle: I ended up winning this because the mech got stuck on one of the tanks, and never shot at me once... The Krogan here are a prime example of why a highly lethal combat style needs to be highly lethal for the enemies too...

Collector Ship, platform fight: Harbinger is at his most assholish here. He spams his biotics, and the large black ball can knock you out of all of the cover, which is almost guaranteed death. Not to even mention the two Scions...
It took me almost a dozen tries. [Got it on eleven...] Only advice I really have is kill the collectors ASAP, and leave the Scions for last... as Harbinger WILL be the death of you here...

After that, it was pretty smooth sailing... as I finally had enough research and money to buy more... Money is entirely too limited in this game... Even with the extra 200k, I couldn't afford all of the research by the point just before the Suicide Mission... Ended up not getting the last level of Damage reduction and Heavy Skin/bone weave...

But the early game is indeed excessively Face-Brick...

[Gramzamber]

Garrus Recruitment, final basement shutter: There is NO effective cover in that room, combine with the Krogan and Varren... and it's a recipe for pain. Not to mention the effective time-limit from Garrus' dwindling health... (When I got to the point where it no longer mattered, he only had a sliver left.)

Did you leave a henchman behind with Garrus?
I find it slows down his health loss a lot.

Not to even mention the two Scions...

Fucking Scions! And fuck all Husk related enemies for that matter. I hate them!
You know what's worse? ME3 is most likely going to have a lot more of them! Yay!

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Did you leave a henchman behind with Garrus?
I find it slows down his health loss a lot.

Yeah... I probably would have it outright if I hadn't...

Fucking Scions! And fuck all Husk related enemies for that matter. I hate them!
You know what's worse? ME3 is most likely going to have a lot more of them! Yay!

I despise the Husks and Varren... The Shotgunners aren't as bad, as they tend to waddle at you slowly... But the Melee Only enemies just keep getting worse... Especially since they can stun-lock you to death in this one.

The Scions are in a special class of annoying... since they can strip your shield and keep it gone for a stupidly long amount of time, AND tend to come mixed in with other enemies... Thankfully they fire slowly, predictibly, and can generally be ignored...

[adam_grif]

Scions are the infuriating combination of ungodly high HP, offensive ability that goes through cover (Unless you're in the cover, if you're just standing behind it you still get hit, which is super stupid) and also stops regeneration for far too long.

[TC Pilot]

I'm playing through a second time as female Shepard, and I'm noticing a lot of glitches in conversations/in-game cutscenes that weren't there the first time through. The camera will stick on Shepard when someone else is talking, objects (in cutscenes) will outright dissapear. There was even a weird instance of my character 'shifting' out into the open while in cover mode while reloading a gun after shooting from chest-high cover.

By the way.... how does the 'Cain' heavy weapon work? Every time I pull the trigger it just shoots out a little puff of smoke. Nearly screwed me over during the Collector ship mission.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

By the way.... how does the 'Cain' heavy weapon work? Every time I pull the trigger it just shoots out a little puff of smoke. Nearly screwed me over during the Collector ship mission.

You need at least 100% on the ammo indicator to begin with (it uses 100% each shot) and I believe the gun has some few seconds of charge time where you have to hold down the fire button before it launches.

[Ford Prefect]

You need to hold the trigger down for about four seconds before the Cain fires. I imagine this probably quite problematic on harder difficulty levels.

[fractalsponge1]

It's like the Halo 3 Spartan Laser, but without the tracking laser and warm-up animation to show you it's working... If you use the bullet time soldier ability or infiltrator's tac cloak, it's much easier to get to 4s without dying. Other than that, stick with the particle beam. The Cain also has a pretty huge AOE, so you can't use it everywhere.

Soldier insanity is pretty easy and fairly satisfying once you max adrenaline burst and some ammo skills, but Vanguard...well, props for patience there . Biotic classes I think should stick to veteran; it's just more fun to actually be able to kill things quickly with, you know, not Warp. If they had made powers work when armor is up, it'd be a whole lot better.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

The only time I used the Cain was on the Occulus... Which took two to kill... (Fortunately, the Power Cells crates refill.)

The first attempt at which, it flew toward me, and I ended up nuking myself. It is a satisfying boom though.

[White Haven]

It's a nice FUCK YOU when the game throws a pair of YMIRs at you. Just useless in cover, since you can't cook it while covering, so you just have to manually walk behind a tall crate or something to use it. I mostly stick with the C-beam, though.

[Vendetta]

I played Infiltrator on Insanity, so the only times I took anything other than the Flamethrower once I had it were when the Praetorians appeared, as the Collector Particle Beam is good at stripping their barriers, though it was back to my sniper rifle/AP ammo for the armour. Near the end, as soon as I'd taken the shields out I could kill a YMIR with three shots, and when there were two the nuclear explodo of it dying from a headshot would usually fuck the other one up hard.

I'd agree that biotics are just less good on Insanity because there are so many targets with armour, including all of the ones you would really want to use biotic attacks on, they really should work on armoured targets, though I agree with Barriers/Shields protecting against them.

[Mr. Coffee]

I'm digging the red right click options in the convos with people. I call it the "Shepard Dick Move Button". That shit is hilarious some times.

[Vendetta]

Yeah, the best ones are on Tuchanka, whether it's cutting short a ranting Krogan by shooting a gasline under his feet, or cutting short a ranting Krogan by headbutting him in the face.

Though there is at least one Paragon interrupt action which results in Shepard punching someone in the face to shut them up.

[Gramzamber]

I'm playing through a second time as female Shepard, and I'm noticing a lot of glitches in conversations/in-game cutscenes that weren't there the first time through. The camera will stick on Shepard when someone else is talking, objects (in cutscenes) will outright dissapear. There was even a weird instance of my character 'shifting' out into the open while in cover mode while reloading a gun after shooting from chest-high cover.

Maybe your game's flaking out? All I can say is I primarily play femShep and never encounter that kind of thing.

Though there is at least one Paragon interrupt action which results in Shepard punching someone in the face to shut them up.

And one where Shepard pushes a Volus around for being a dick.

[Vendetta]

Though there is at least one Paragon interrupt action which results in Shepard punching someone in the face to shut them up.

And one where Shepard pushes a Volus around for being a dick.

Well, you gives him a bit of a tap on the back to demonstrate that he isn't quite the Biotic God he claims to be.

"Sleep now. Destroy the universe later".

[Andrew_Fireborn]

I'm playing through a second time as female Shepard, and I'm noticing a lot of glitches in conversations/in-game cutscenes that weren't there the first time through. The camera will stick on Shepard when someone else is talking, objects (in cutscenes) will outright dissapear. There was even a weird instance of my character 'shifting' out into the open while in cover mode while reloading a gun after shooting from chest-high cover.

Maybe your game's flaking out? All I can say is I primarily play femShep and never encounter that kind of thing.

It only happened to me when I quickly skipped dialog, the models would continue any overall action they were doing, and this would often mess up the shot.

The most hilarious was the end of Thane's loyalty quest, in which skipping dialog quickly resulted in the officer shaking Thane's hand while still performing the "Get out of chair" animation with the rest of his body.

[Gramzamber]

Though there is at least one Paragon interrupt action which results in Shepard punching someone in the face to shut them up.

And one where Shepard pushes a Volus around for being a dick.

Well, you gives him a bit of a tap on the back to demonstrate that he isn't quite the Biotic God he claims to be.

"Sleep now. Destroy the universe later".

That one was good, but I mean the Volus in the Citadel who accuses that Quarian of stealing his credits.
The Paragon move has Shep give him a shove while yelling at him.

[Havok]

I can't believe people are still complaining about Insane. It is not THAT hard.

[Aaron]

Anyone else having trouble with the cover system?

Shepard for me regularly:

-Heads from one side of the cover to the other, without being told to.
-After popping out to shoot, he's miraculously out of cover with his back to the enemy.

Enemies can shoot through their cover.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

If you're playing on 360, the shifting along cover is incredibly sensitive. The controller I use to play at my brother's house doesn't center well and so when out of combat I'll walk about a step every four seconds if I let go of the stick, but if I'm on cover I'll just run full speed along it without touching the movement stick if I shift the camera into certain directions.

The only issue I have with randomly leaving cover is with low cover you pop over rather than stuff you pop out the side of. Are you having that, too?

[Aaron]

Sometimes, I think that happens more with my squad mates. They randomly break cover and stand around on boxes.

Edit: Yeah, 360.

[PeZook]

Just got this game on Friday. It coincided with me falling ill, so I've been playing it for a ridiculous amount of time while coughing, sneezing and generally feeling shit, so I might've missed some stuff.

I'm 28 hours in, right before the IFF mission on a derelict Reaper, done all loyalty quests except for Thane (probably won't bother, he's dying anyway. Though I liked his quip about how he found me ) and Samara (Jesus christ, can you get more nerd pandering than her giant space tits my species totally aren't women and Miranda's I-might-as-well-be-naked-but-pretend-I'm-not outfit?).

FYI, I play a female sheppard, renegade+soldier, imported from ME1.

Some random observations:

- Dialogue is overall much better than ME1, though it has some totally awkward and ridiculous moments. Whoever wrote romance with Jacob (I play a female Sheppard) was a total ass: I broke it up because of how painful it was to listen to both the characters talk.

- The story is...hit and miss. The beginning is completely ridiculous, with a contrived "investigation" into Freedom's Progress colony and Cerberus rebuilding Shepard for...uh, for some reason. Because he's apparently a superweapon or something. Also, the Alliance is so mired in bureaucracy that there is not a single marine present at a human settlement that disappeared into thin air days ago? That's beyond unbelievable, especially since in my playthrough, humans dominate galactic affairs. What, the Alliance can't spare ten guys to go and take a look/download security camera footage? For fuck's sake, the goddamn Quarians managed to realize one of their dudes on Pilgrimage was gone, and get a squad there!

On the other hand, the introduction of Garrus was just plain awesome, and there's dozens of little touches all around that are just brilliant.

- Mordin is a great character, and his sidequest is quite deep and compelling, exploring a difficult moral choice in a non-preachy way. The writing and voice acting is so much better than other loyalty quests it's not even a contest.

- It's kind of annoying that all loyalty quests are basically shooter missions with some dialogue in between: I kind of expected the Tali mission to be different, but no, it quicly got to "go shoot the geth".

- The Quarian "we spend our lives in enviro-suits" thing is getting ridiculous. Of course, it does neatly explain why they can't just settle any of the dozens of earthlike worlds you can discover during the game. Though with gene therapy commonplace and easy, I don't see why they need to bother and waste resources on building and maintaining the damn suits in the first place...

- The biggest thing: The game works incredibly well. In fact, it runs better than ME1 ever did, while having graphics that are lightyears ahead (I turned off most of the postprocessing effects, though, because I hate them on principle). And I don't really have a great rig: PIV 3.4 HT/1024 DDR1/Radeon HD4650 with 1GIG VRAM, which is rather on edge when it comes the system requirements. Loading times are also never a problem: most animations can't even finish before a zone loads.

- I like the facial scars/terminator eyes far more than I thought I would. It makes Jacob's romance lines even more ridiculous, though. "I like what I see" indeed...

- The Paragon/Renegade thing is way better than in ME1, thank God. You're no longer a complete asshole to your crew if you chose Renegade, you're just a hardass commander with no time for wallowing bullshit. Of course, other times Renegade gets totally over the top (Punching a reporter in the face? What? ), or just plain ridiculous. I especially liked when you got +5 Paragon for threatening you'll break an Elcor's legs if he doesn't leave somebody alone. Truly, that's stuff heroes are made of!

Also, the scores themselves are schizoprenic. Letting missiles strike civilian areas: +5 Renegade. Saving a wounded Quarian from killing himself with dumbass heroics: +15 Paragon.

Man, those actions are, like, totally the same

- Why can't Garrus just put on his goddamn helmet when going into Omega's plague areas? His suit is still airtight after getting fucked up, as evidenced later on the Collector ship.

- Hard vacuum areas? Fear not, all a naked woman needs is an oxygen mask!

- Because it has to be said:

Bad woman: Shepard! But...I thought you died!
Shepard: I got better.

Works especially well if you have fully developed facial scarring. Man

Also: Well, the Collectors killed you once, and all that did was piss you off.

Yeah, so it fellates the player and tells him what a badass he is. Call me vain.

- Normandy's crew is still furniture. Oh well.

- Endless MAKO driving is gone. Thank the Gods!

- OTOH, How come I've got key bindings for a ground vehicle in the menu, space in the cargo bay and EDI mentioning an embarked ground vehicle...and yet there's no ground vehicle present anywhere?