Mass Effect 2

Quote from Taylor

I find the Mako exploration to be rather tedious to be honest. Bioware and Bethesda always do this stuff: Run across a (usually) height-mapped generated landscape for 20 minutes, enter a dungeon made of prefab parts you’ve seen a hundred times before, do 10 seconds of fighting or get your lockpick value tested, receive a quest log update and leave. Or, alternatively, you can run around aimlessly hoping something of interest pops up on the map so you can mark off one of the 80 pieces of special rock. I admit, some of these are well written but it’s hard to justify things like the Moon mission (where you clear 3 copies of the same station out in sequence) when the main story is so rich. You just know there was a big white board with a list of how many extra hours, planets and quests they needed, just in case they got called *gasp* linear.

i remember this as well. my guess would be that bioware wanted to created randomly generated 'dungeons' for the different side missions, but then i have no idea whether or not they at any given point change. another thing could be performance, but then the entire game is pretty much stripped for detail except for some large props. if god of war 1 and 2 could have more detail, why can't this game?

Okay, I brought Mass Effect 2 to continue from the first game because it was gnarly. I guess I’ve been technically playing it for an hour so far, or not depending on which what you look at it, because I’ve not progressed passed the title screen. For the sin of buying the game first hand I have to enter my super-elite Cerberus Network code for some extra content (well, I don’t have to but who isn't going to cash in their 'free' goodies?). But it’s not just a redeem code click from the dashboard like all other games, because EA wants me to make an account with them for whatever future reason.

I enter my e-mail address and password, but apparently that’s already in use and the game tells me nothing else. So I plod over to my PC and it becomes clear I do already have an account but it’s not any password I can seem to remember, so I decide to reset it and, oh, I can’t reset it because my account is inactive which was the problem all along - please contact customer support. How about no? I set up a new account on some random e-mail address and return to the 360 to punch in the details and access the DLC. Hurray! From the DLC menu I queue up every item individually but realise, of course, it isn’t going to download or activate with the game running. I must quit out of the game and wait half an hour for it to download while I revive an old thread on mapcore just to bitch about the whole thing.

Surely the whole attraction of console gaming was that you could just put the disc in the drive and play? I brought Tekken 6 a while ago, which was a port of an arcade game where the entire purpose is to throw people in and out of games as fast as possible, and it took me half an hour to punch someone in the face.

Ah, better.

Okay, so I went into this game pretty annoyed, but it didn't take long for me to start loving it again. I just finished it after playing it way too much over a few days...

Quote

I tried not to spoil any of it, but saw the achievement about nobody dying in the last mission. I decided no matter what happened when I got to the end that would be my Shepard and would be the one continuing into ME3. Although I did all the content I could before my crew were captured, and didn't do anything stupid like sent Grunt off to hack things, so everyone was okay.

When I got to the end it asked if I wanted to Continue or New Game+. I hit Continue but... I think I've done everything; All the systems are at 100% and there's nothing in my log. I'm only 28, should there be enough missions to max my level out? I don't want to hit NG+ to do it, because I'd have to do everything again.

Edit

Quote

I guess , to do this in one play-through you needed to be max level in ME1, thus starting at level 5 in ME2.

Yup, but I don't want to do everything again for the sake of getting +200 experience in ME3.

I just did the first mission for the achievement. Might continue to finish it on insanity but... wow, everything is stacked and I'm almost maxed. Certainly aren't going to be heavy charging everything with a shotgun and barrier.

Well, Mass Effect is one of my favorite game of the past decade. Despite its technical shortcomings, BioWare's first in what it promised to be a trilogy took the role-playing genre to new cinematic heights. Mass Effect 2 is a better game in near every way.

you might want to spoiler tag that.

maybe that was just shepard dreaming, and in the begining of ME3 you get the "real" me2 end...