[360] Mass Effect 2 - Skills would do a romance sub-plot but he has work in the morning

Originally Posted by Magi

I specific remember something like that where its like this:

[Paragon] Annoyed response
[Neutral] Punch him in the face
[Renegade] Shoot him in the foot

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

Spoiler:

Paragon option is shoving your gun in his face and bitching at him.

Dread to imagine what Renegade would lead to.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

Originally Posted by Magi

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.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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Originally Posted by Denicalis

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.

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Spoiler:

Miranda and Legion both fucking DIED.

Also, made some fucking stupid choices for the suicide mission. Chose that shield-draining shit for advanced training and brought the flamethrower with me instead of, you know, something sensible. Beat the human reaper without using any heavy weapons at all, though, so FUCK YEAH

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

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by LeHah

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.

I don't know, I think it worked really well — in ME1 you could find a nice chest-high wall to hide behind and spend ten minutes sitting there picking off wave after wave of enemies. ME2's ammo system actually forces you to move forward, and it's never that hard to find.

Quote:

And now we have to wait another... what, 3 years?

Nope. Bioware are hard at work on ME3, and it might be coming out in 2011. Plus, there's always DLC to keep us busy; I'm hoping they'll put out a full expansion pack à la Dragon Age.

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Well, if you're playing through Insanity with the Shepard from your first playthrough then you're in for a real fucking treat — all of the enemies start off tuned for whatever level you were at when you finished the game, and with no upgrades at first, you're in for a world of pain.

The main things I can advise are to conserve the hell out of ammunition and medi-gel. Don't use heavy weapons on anything other than boss encounters and YMIR mechs; you'll need as much of that shit as you can get (that said, I did beat the final boss without using any heavy weapons at all, seeing as I brought the flamethrower along like the dumbfuck I am). If you reckon you can get through a battle alone, then don't waste medi-gel on getting your assholes to stand up again. I don't know if resources like that are scarcer on Insanity than other difficulties, but until I learnt to conserve them I constantly felt like there wasn't nearly enough available.

Also, if you're playing an Infiltrator, Assassination Cloak is the best friend you'll ever have. I found the best way to deal with the sections of the game with husks and abominations — which are armoured on Insanity, by the way — was often to cloak, run the fuck away and find something to hide behind before spraying their legs with my SMG.

Basically just be prepared to spend most of the game in cover if you want to survive (unless you're playing a Vanguard or just enjoy getting up close and personal — in which case, good fucking luck).

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