I’m still enjoying the game a ton, but let me tell you about my least favorite mini-game:
Commander Shepard: Environmental Rapist
Scanning the planets gets exhausting. I mean really, AI that can pilot a ship, but you have to manually scan planets for elements? And despite all the warnings in the planet descriptions, honestly, no galactic mining company has ships with automated mineral scanners and probes…so everything there is left for Shep to get IF he wants to do it manually. Not the digging mind you, just the mindless left to right while holding down the right mouse button. And remember to always take the planet down to depleted…because you need loads of platinum to get the good upgrades.
In practical terms…really Bioware? You thought this would be fun for the kind of people who like your games? I don’t mind concentration or matching. Not great, but OK. Because it’s every once in a great while…it’s not hours of gameplay necessary to unlock upgrades. How about sending down and mining vehicle and having to kill some planet specific type steroidal pyjack in order to loot all the minerals on a specific planet. Or at least make the anomaly tracking a little difficult.
Ok, now that I’m done with that, back to what’s otherwise an awesome game. Thanks for letting me vent.
:smack:
For some reason the thought of using Wikipedia completely eluded me, which is weird because I read it quite a bit. Thanks guys.
Reading through the thread it was difficult to follow along with all the plot elements, character names, place and planet names and names of weapons I had never heard of having never played the game before.
I have to ask…the games I’ve played recently that I’ve really enjoyed are Crysis, Fallout 3, COD 4, Left For Dead 2 and I’ve just started the original Bioshock…so is it safe to assume that I will love this game if I really like these other ones?
Yeah, I’m playing through ME 1 on an Engineer just to see what that side of things is like. Probably best to wait to get ME 2 used anyways, the last few games I’ve bought were fun, but nowhere near cool enough to pay full price.
P.S. apropos of nothing in particular, I am reminded that when I first bought Diablo II and started a Necromancer, I named him Steven Deadalus.
No offense but… this is terrible advice. You only need about 200k (30k of Element Zero) of each resource to buy every upgrade in the game. That’s not particularly hard to get.
It’s more entertaining than the rescource-gathering in the first game, but not as much fun as, say, Ur-Quan Masters or Starflight. What I find odd is that the whole mechanic is independent of the given description of the planet. They went to so much trouble to write out planetological descriptions, but often worlds that have miners scraping by turn out to be rich with minerals I can just grab from space. And how the hell do you find, much less collect, minerals from a gas giant? Well, with a scanner and a probe, duh, but unfortunately that’s bullshit.
Out of wonder, does completing the mining/surveying quests in the first game have any consequence on the second? Because I’m really, really debating not doing them right now.
I might be talking out of my ass, but thus far it doesn’t appear to be the case. The only affects from the first game I’ve seen so far are story/quest/level related. You can receive a starting bonus to your mineral resources in the sequel, but I think it’s related to your overall finishing level in the first game, not to your specific surveying progress.
Agreeing with cckerberos here, the surveying only needs to be done a minimum amount. So far I’ve paid attention to what I needed for particular upgrades and I’ve only spent about 10 to 15 minutes occasionally mining for resources. I don’t like the mechanic because it does feel like an unnecessary time sink, but so far it hasn’t been unduly distracting.
Overall thoughts so far… (some minor story spoilers)
[Spoiler] i’ve completed the first set of dossiers and done the Citadel and Jacob’s sidequest, and I’m trying to recruit Tali right now.
It pains me to say it somewhat but Bioware truly has streamlined the game into
a third person shooter with heavy story and structured elements. I have a hard time describing it as a RPG at this point. Oddly enough, it doesn’t bother me. I’m not a huge fan of pure action games, but the mix seems to work extremely well for some reason.
Even with the heavy action elements they haven’t ignored the storytelling and universe building parts, which might explain it. I’m a huge fan of this franchise and it’s universe, and they’re continuing to build on it.
I’ve never played a game that felt quite like this before.
There seems to be a bit of a plot hole in Jacob’s special quest.
The codex says that the use of mechs came after so many forces were devastated by the Geth attack, and the adoption of heat clips came from an analysis of Geth tech – we certainly know they weren’t in use two years ago in game time. But Jacob’s father crash landed on a planet 10 years ago, and he’s got mechs and heat clips?
Any word on the classes? I’ve seen a lot of talk that Vanguard and Adept got hit by the nerf bat to the head, staggered in confusion, and then when they see you’ve chosen a difficulty above veteran, stumble off the catwalk into a pit of lava. Is it true that infiltrator is the new God Mode, with Sentinel being the new utility/take down class?
While Vanguard is not quite what is was in the first game (that is, all-powerful ridiculously OP), it’s not exactly a sissy either. It’s a completely different combat game for all classes due to the ammo management alone. Vanguards trying to fight the same way they did in ME1 are going to have a rough time. Haven’t tried infiltrator yet, but sniper rifles are ridiculously powerful – but very limited in ammo (my vanguard picked up sniping as a bonus skill - rox!). Also, the charge ability is super fun.
I’ve also noticed that managing your squadmates at key times in a battle are a huge force multiplier, as well – I don’t remember this being quite the case in ME1 (they were very useful, to be sure, but you can set up some devastating combos with powers in ME2).
ME2 is a lot more difficult towards the late game than ME1 was. The whole “assembling a team of the best” thing isn’t just a way to drive the story. While for the most part, in the first game, you could solo the whole game and ignore what your squadmates were doing – this style of play is detrimental in ME2.
That’s all IMHO so far, of course – I’m probably only a little more than halfway through my first playthrough.
It’s so much better than the resource gathering in ME1. Good god, that got tedious. In the last game you’d have to deal with loading screen of going to dozens of pointless, nearly empty landscapes and try to figure out all elements were in the Mako.
Gah, that was definitely my least favorite element in the first one.
If you load up the Launcher, there will be a button for DLC – it’ll take you to Bioware’s social networking site where you have to create an account and register your game. Once you’ve done that, there’s a bonus content section where you enter the serial #s for all your bonus content, and then you can download them and install straight from the web page. They’re executables, so it’s pretty painless. Then, launch the game, go to Options or Extras or something like that, and make sure you’ve got the content installed. Next time you go customize your armor, you should have the option of using your extra goodies. I stopped using the bonus armor halfway through, when I got enough upgrades to make the default armor more effective.
That’s probably true. I’m playing through on normal my first time, and charging tends to leave me too exposed unless we’ve killed all the grunts and only have the boss left. I’ve evolved it to affect an area though, so charging a packed group of enemies is incredibly satisfying.
I’ve been playing Infiltrator (who was an Infiltrator in ME1 as well) on Normal, and I’ve been pretty much breezing through it paying very little attention to what my teammates are doing when they’re not in my line of fire. For the most part I squat down and set up cloaked head shots on whoever has the most defense. As much as I love the one-shot take-downs, I must say that the rapid fire sniper rifle is a hoot as well – not as much damage, but it aims like a sniper rifle and fires like a pistol. Woo-hoo!
I can see how you might consider the Sniper Rifle overpowered, but on the other hand it’s usually balanced so as to make it feel like a waste of time vs. an assault rifle (which in real life, if you are into such things, it probably is in a pitched battle).
I got like three kinds of armor from various deals – Collector’s Edition, Amazon pre-order, Dragon Age Synergy, ect. But on all of them you are denied the option to remove your helmet, meaning that the face I spent an hour crafting doesn’t show. So, I took pains to get a bunch of shit that I’m not going to be using. Thanks, Bioware.
Finished a paragon game using an Engineer. I think the use of biotics is much improved over the original game and being an Engineer was very fun this time around. I felt much more useful, largely in part to my Drone skill. The advanced training skills were a lot of fun, as were the heavy weapons. ME2 is much more action-y than the original, and the sandbox seems smaller, but the story feels more memorable and I don’t miss the diminished customization/management. I’d definitely like to replay as a renegade. My favorite part of the game? Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man.
Feelings on last level:
I remembered the decision I had to make in ME1 and figured the last level assignments would be as binary as that, but no one I expected to be chosen was and the assignments just kept coming. I felt a little cheated at first but I guess that’s the point. In retrospect, I’m very satisfied.
Two persistant complaints: Default, male Shepard looks absolutely goofy when having friendly conversations. Something about his eyes and smile remind me of Howdy Doody but with awkward facial hair. I also got tired of listening to his voice, especially when he would give speeches.
I’m fairly annoyed that certain retail stores got a special armor/heavy weapon code while digital distributors got a different set of gear. I’m actually annoyed at all this unlockable shit in general. I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe editions of ME2 and Dragon Age and feel like I should be able to play with any launch day content offered to owners of a single game. With that said, I had six files I had to download and install on launch day just so I could get all the extras already tied to my account. That process could stand to be easier.
Right click on ME2 in your Steam list and choose “view game CD key.” All the promo keys you got for preordering or deluxe edition or whatever should be there. There’s even a copy button so you don’t have to manually enter them
The game key itself is for registering the game on your bioware profile. The Cerberus key is for you to join the DLC network. Then there’s the promo key, which unlocks your goodies.
