As regards to the genre, this article brings up a good point...

Not exactly earth-shattering, but a good way to describe the game to people who haven't played it and are on the fence after the first one.

Some of the options are a little weird like that. In Zaeed's loyalty mission, for instance:

Dread to imagine what Renegade would lead to.

Ha, Zaeed, I still gotta download that add on. >.>; Is the loyalty quest for that guy any good? From what I got from the reading he just seen to be an after thought design to prevent secondary market.

Does anyone have any estimate when Bioware was planning to release the Hammerhead add-on? Like, this year or next year or what.

So here's my question. Does this game actually fix all the problems from the first game? Because, for one reason or other, I didn't like the first game that much. I WANTED to because the story was pretty good (or at least what I played of it) but I remember being frustrated as hell with the leveling and shooting and I just gave up. Everyone has been playing it and I'm kinda jealous that I don't have a new game to play. (Still haven't picked up Bayonetta)

Levelling system is completely different. Planetary excursions are divided into "missions", at the end of which you receive XP and level up. Combat is a lot tighter these days, too; the enemy health meters at the top of the screen are far more intuitively designed — if an enemy has a barrier and armour on top of its health, for instance, then it'll show you the health remaining in the barrier before you break through to the armour and finally the base health.

It generally makes a lot more technical sense than the first game did.

Not bad, actually. Provides an interesting bit of backstory to one of the mercenary groups, gives you a (very useful) heavy weapon, and feels totally seamless with the rest of the game.

I'm glad your mom died now. That is how much I hate you. She'd be disappointed and I'm glad she's not here to see this day.

My favorite part about the clubs? It seems that future ones will be just as self-masturbatory and uselss as present day ones~

Just finished it on normal, about to go through again on Insanity. Gotta say, didn't enjoy it quite as much as ME1, but it was still a damn good time.

Who did you wind up with, Frankie boy?

So I just finished my first playthrough the other day and Kinda pissed me off a little, because I did everyone's loyalty quests and got all their upgrades.

Anyway, I started my second character on ME1 and chose the "Sole Survivor" backstory for him. In keeping with that,

Not possible to be the only survivor. There has to be someone besides Joker there to help him onto the Normandy. If nobody is there I'm pretty sure he dies.

Huh. I kinda figured all that stuff was pretty common knowledge, which is why I didn't spoiler tag it. I mean any magazine article about the game mentions it, and it even brings it up during loading screens. If you really feel it needs to be hidden though, I won't argue. My bad.

Anyway, bummer there's no way to do that. Thought it'd be pretty cool for that particular storyline.

I know, but I feel better safe than sorry, no worries. =o

Well,

I just got to the suicide mission bit this afternoon, on my first playthrough. On Insanity. While it's challenging, it doesn't really live up to its name. You do have to play a LOT more judiciously than you did on ME1's Insanity, though; shit, on my last playthrough I didn't use the cover system at all. Actually got through most of the game by sprinting past all the enemies.

Honestly, the difficulty curve is all over the place. First two hours of the game are pretty punishing, but the only genuinely hard bits afterwards are the ones where you're working against time or other factors—think the sidemission with the quarian and the packs of varren, or the bit where you have to defeat the hordes of mercs and not let Archangel get killed—and the bits of the game with husks/abominations. Apparently they don't have armour on the lower difficulties, which sounds ridiculously fucking easy to me.

Oh well, going to start a second (relaxed) playthrough on Hardcore afterwards.

edit: Praetorian battle on Horizon was FUCKING BRUTAL, too. As was the bit with the waves of collectors preceding it. That whole segment took me about three hours, I swear. Probably a lot easier without the armoured husks.

I find the only real trick you need to take down that Colossus on insanity is to stick to the left side, be patient, and rend him to pieces with the collector beam.

I did it by sitting back with the wounded quarian dude for a few minutes, eliminating all of the present geth, inching forwards to pick up ammo and activate the next wave of footsoldiers, wash, rinse, repeat. After that, I inched across the elevated bit to the far right, crouched behind the little bit of cover up there, and kept mauling it with a combination of Incinerate and the collector beam. Took about ten minutes and did it on my first attempt.

Watched my brother do it exactly the same way afterwards, but he cut out a lot of time by using the Cain to shave off most of the Colossus' health in a few seconds flat.

I didn't get the Cain until well after I had taken down the Colossus. I used it in a side mission inside a tiny, cramped little cruiser ship. 15 blue sun mercs became a lot of blue sun merc pieces.

But yeah, your approach would work. I guess I was just impatient. Sat back for the solid first wave, moved up and left and cut down the rest. Tons of cover up there. Sat to its left and let loose wif dat collectah beams. I attack the structure Wolvie Berzerk style, and knock out the fuckin' pin and bickety bam, the motherfucker is rubble. Hence, no game show.

http://imgur.com/lchI6.png

YEEEEEAHHHHH



Time to start a second playthrough, I think. Probably on Hardcore.

Beat it last night. Highly satisfying game in almost every respect. I think that this may be the first time a game sequel has delivered on the mantra of "bigger and better than the original" in every possible fashion. I'm a little iffy on the logic behind the characters from the original game showing up / not showing up but its still better than YOUR BIOTIC IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE shit.

I also don't care for the ammo update. I really liked that the first game only had you worrying about weapons overheating; looking for ammo seemed like such a lame 1998 FPS contrivance somehow.

LeHah --
I agree with it improving on the original. I always ended up stopping once I got full control of the Normandy in #1. I finally dragged myself through it, and the game only really shined when you got to storyline-focused joints. I did all the missions, but the worlds/planets were all horribly copy-and-pasted. Fuck the Mako. SPEED BUMP. TIME TO FLIP AND GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION :(

Going from #1 immediately in to #2 gave me a "whoa, holy fuck" reaction. It went from a shooter-ish RPG to a shooter with a tiny bit of RPG involved. Head shots being something I appreciated quite early on :V

I enjoy the ammo, but I would've loved to have more shots on some weapons. The shotgun only has, what, 10 or 15 total rounds? Please. And also, more weapons would be awesome. I don't know if I'm nearing the end or not, but I have only a few different weapons. Haven't found a different sniper rifle, and I only have the Collectors Shotgun aside from my vanilla one.

Last time I came across a game like this that improved on the predecessor so much was Uncharted 2.

I miss the Mako, despite its faults. I had hoped that the shuttle was going to be some kind of vicious fucking awesome Transformer type of hovercraft shit instead of just a deploying point.

And is it me or did ME1 have a LOT more side missions?