[360, PS3] Mass Effect 2 *(Spoiler Warning)

heh !

Spoiler

I am playing a saint with full paragon and when I was with morinth I went on to the conversations, followed by selecting 2 paragon options couldn't select the paragon option the third time as I didn't had high enough mortality so I selected a neutral option, then samara entered the room & a conversation went on followed by Samara killing morinth....I never actaully got the choice to save Morinth lol

 

The IFF mission is the point of no return for the most part so do all your loyalty and other quests before then.

I'm almost done with all my loyalty quests. I love how diff they are. Some are heavy action based, some heavy conversation and some a good mix of both. I'm certainly looking forward to a new game+ after my playthrough.

Between this and Fable 3 later this year, this will easily be the best year for RPG's for me.

 

Here is the list of them. http://i48.tinypic.com/1zcmhe9.jpg See if your'e strong enough to not click it

 

Oh, I won't. It's pretty easy to fly around and check for them. It's the resource scanning that takes a long time. I'll have to do some of that as well because I have some upgrades to pay for. I've been able to buy the vast majority of the upgrades I've found/purchased without doing too much scanning. I just just scour a couple rich planets till they're depleted, and that goes a long way.

 

I cannot believe I have not purchased this game yet, thankfully, it looks like ME2 won't need the first week numbers. Probably grabbing this on Friday as my wife loved watching the first one, hopefully this is equally as intriguing.

 

This game is absolutely MASSIVE. The sidequests are just sprawling, and I absolutely love the diversity of the different environments as you complete the various loyalty missions.

Sure the environments themselves, are smaller, and more straight forward than the original. But the game as a whole is much larger and more diversified, each location has it's own character, and is polished to a shine.

Just finished a mission on the planet with a dying sun, where direct sunlight is so strong it destroy's your sheilds. Absolutely fuckin gorgeous! Then to go from that, to the gritty destroyed Krogan home-world creates such a great contrast, this game is an absolute treat.

Love this game, 10/10 so far as i'm only like 2/3's done.

 

Are the environments really smaller? It's been a while since I played the first one. I don't remember any areas that were all that big. Usually they were just segmented with a lot of loading screens. The Citadel seemed kind of big, but it was sparsely populated.

 

Ya..not really. It had like 2 large enviro's, Citadel and Noveria, but other than that everything was very underwhelming.

 

Tip:

Spoiler

If you buy a pet, don't forget to feed it

 

oh shit!

 

just started the game yesterday. I was wondering: does the game have fmv cutscenes, or is it just some picture filter, because sometimes it looks like there's some video compression, but at the same time i can see aliasing during the cutscene. One example is the first time you see the new Normady, in the bay, was that realtime ? Reflections on the ship look a bit too good. I love the first one and i did not want to read any info about the sequel until i tried it myself, so i was surprised to see 2 DVD in the box

 

Yes those are FMVs...you can have aliased edges in FMvs too
And I hate it that the game uses FMVs mixed with real time every now & then for cutscenes...breaks the immersion imo.

EDIT: So finally finished ME2 today....26hours in total

- did every side quest
- every loyalty mission
- upgraded 95% of things
- Saved everyone in my squad and finished as a Paragon Saint.

Spoiler

[Though I choose to let Cerebrus have the data, which is obviously renegade]

Now what can I say ?
Brilliant just Brilliant !! I want ME3 Naaaaawww !!!
Thank you Bioware...you are my fav developers alongside Naughty Dog & Insomniac games.

Though it feels less epic than ME1 due to the fact that the collector threat was less fearful than the Reaper threat from first game and in that game you had a curiosity to know what's going on compared to ME2 where its "This is your destination [Omega 4]...go prepare" story. Also ME1 had the advantage of having two main antagonist with interesting personality in the form of Saran & Sovereign in ME1.

Spoiler

[The reaper named Harbinger in ME2 is a wimp]

.But the end battle of ME2 is better presented even if somewhat less interesting than ME1.

 

The game was definitelly worth playing. Took me some 27 hours to beat it.

Compared to the first, the gameplay is more shooting less planning, at least at first glance. It follows the exact same mechanics most TPS games use nowadays, it gets the job done, sadly the enemies are not terribly interesting, there are also no elaborate boss fights, grand set pieces (though there are a couple of interesting moments which i'm not gonna spoil) or stuff like that. I found myself stuck in the scenery 3 times (twice in a wall, once in a dead zombie) and each time i had to reload...that's always annoying

The story flows ok, not very original but ultimatelly fairly entertaining, the dialogues and VA range from terrible to decent to 'almost' interesting, there were a couple of instances though where the choices were pretty interesting and it took me quite a few moments to decide, the cinematography, much like the first, mostly mediocre, full of amateurish camera placement and overall crude photography. Like someone already pointed out, the constant transition from pre-rendered to realtime cutscene was annoying and distracting at max.

The graphics and performance were definitelly better than the first, but that doesn't say much really. The textures and most models are great, but there are still framerate drops and stutterings in virtually every cutscene and dialogue and some incredibly odd facial movements completelly destroy the immersion in some scenes, i dunno, they could have really polished this one a little better. It also felt like the game, mostly in cutscenes, had missing audio, like footsteps, enviromental sounds, weapons fire, explosions and stuff like that. A better audio editor wouldn't have hurt that's for sure.

Overall definitelly worth playing, an applaudable effort in most areas, and i must confess i also had tons of fun with the probes and the uncharted planets (must have spent hours collecting materials) ^_^

 

wow... did you install to HDD? I have seen NO such issues... I had an old Xbox that performed like that and it was because the DVD drive or HDD was going out

 

Neither do I...and I had the game installed.
And I have seen how much judder the game gets when it's not installed.
Though I can CONFIRM you that the missing audio is totally due to the game not being installed on HDD.

Its horrible during the

Spoiler

Suicide mission, what it basically does is just play the various short FMVs one after another depending on the upgrades you have done to Normandy. Feels random & doesn't at all feels smooth

 

30hours in and I'm done with all the loyalty quests and ready for the IFF. I'm gonna try to squeeze out another 10hours doing the main missions and the rest of the planet anamolly things.

 

You won't get 10 hours out of main missions & anomalies once you are at the point where you get the mission to retrieve Reaper IFF.

 

I'll just scan planets then

 

Would you guys suggest this for non-skilled gamers who like shooters, but not the twitch part? My dad isn't much of a twitch gamer (although he enjoyed Doom in the day). He likes MMOs like Asheron's Call and the like and tends to be a "completionist." Do ME1 and ME2 have "Easy" settings to allow n00bs to play, especially more tactically with the RPG elements?

 

It has a "casual" mode which is one step below the default "normal" difficulty. From the little I've played so far I'd say he'd get on fine with it.