Mass Effect 2: More waxing goddamn nostalgic.

[Spacehost]

No, I think it had its own composer and was only used on that mission.

[Vaya.]

I'm at the

collector ship at the moment. Hate this level, creeps me out too much

[NickyDrinks]

Playing through Lair Of The Shadow Broker and holy shit, the mission is great but the surround sound is totally amazing. When I saw the loading screen I thought "what the hell is this?" but I wasn't really expecting *that*

"OK looking down was a bad idea..."

[Don Wiskerando]

ANN Earth is experiencing comm buoy difficulties. Please stand by.

It is ON.

[Mallet]

My biggest gripe with this game is probably the way they get you off the Normandy and onto the shuttle late in the game, they couldn't have come up with a better way of doing it?

Still, loving my replay and I'm just setting off on the suicide mission, then I'll have Arrival and Shadow Broker to wrap things up.

[Spacehost]

It is a bit "I HAVE TO GO NOW. MY PLANET NEEDS ME".

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Come on guys. Alex W (and others) are playing this for the first time right now.

Keep details of the ending spoilered.

[Mallet]

Leaving the Normandy some time during the game is a spoiler?

[Rudi von Starnberg]

More the second half of your post there. I might be over-sensitive but I'm fairly sure Alex's reactions and write-ups will be better if he knows as little as possible!

[Kevvy Metal]

Booted up my copy of ME2 to find that in a moment of madness, I had deleted all my saves inc. my original Me1 Femshep in order to wipe the slate clean and do a "canon" run.

So, I had finished ME1 and imported across and was now only 6 hours into ME2. I've totally forgotten about this! Why did I do it. Guess gotta ram in another run of ME2 before new Thursday!

[Mallet]

I just finished Shadow Broker.

It was good but not as good as I expected given all the praise it received, I enjoyed Overlord more if I'm honest, and the revelation of who the Shadow broker is was an anticlimax.

Only Arrival to go and I'm all set for Friday

[Mallet]

That's Arrival finished

Arrival wasn't terrible but I can certainly see why people didn't like it and I probably agree with them, it more or less committed the ultimate Mass effect sin as far as I'm concerned.

For me the ME series is all about my commander Shepard and the choices she has made, whether they are good or bad. Arrival gives you absolutely no choice at all, not even the illusion of a choice

[JoeK]

Anyone know if the missions you just happen to 'find' (as in by scanning a planet) are randomised at all in which one you get? I swear that on this play-through there have been a couple I haven't played before - and that's with going to all the systems. I love those extra missions - whilst there's not much in the way story, they are always short and sweet

[Spacehost]

Nah, they're standardised.

[JoeK]

Ah. I blame my dodgy memory then

In other news, I'd also forgotten just how darn brilliant

Samara is. Out of all the characters I think she's got the most detail lavished on her - she's just bloody cool

[Sprite Machine]

I quite enjoyed Overlord. It goes a bit freaky at the end, but it was something different. Well, as different as rooms full of robots and chest-high walls can be, I suppose. And how many times will there be

"rogue AI takes over facility" type missions?

I liked the outdoor vehicle bits inbetween - very pretty.

Being good, I let

the guy's brother go, got him away from Cerberus. That shit ain't right. Urgh.

Kasumi is underwhelming. The mission was okay but it's a bit short. I suppose the value is in having another character, but I probably won't use her now that the game is finished. Maybe on another run-through. I like the new casual costume I got, though.

Shadow Broker, I've only just started. I'll try to finish it this week, but having computer issues.

(Also, whenever I start ME2 now, it keeps telling me it can't log on and I have to log into EA Online manually. Every time! It used to be automatic. It's still set to automatic, it just gives me an unskippable error message first. Mildly annoying.)

[Rudi von Starnberg]

(Also, whenever I start ME2 now, it keeps telling me it can't log on and I have to log into EA Online manually. Every time! It used to be automatic. It's still set to automatic, it just gives me an unskippable error message first. Mildly annoying.)

This appears to be a thing for everyone right now. Maybe they've screwed up the servers for ME2 somewhat with the ME3 release imminent.

[Mallet]

Yep, it happened to me as well every single time. It's really annoying and why can't they have a 'remember me' box? This will sound really lazy but not being able to hit Tab to move from the email address to the password box is a pain in the ass as well.

[Vaya.]

They probably dialled down the servers after ME2 had been out a year. now everyone is playing it again before 3.

[Cheyenne]

Overlord was utterly horrid on the PS3 version. The vehicle segments saw the graphical quality dip to a woeful level (the terrain downgraded to coloured squares!) and I generally wasn't a fan of the story it told. Probably because I was playing on Insanity, and anything to do with a vehicle on Insanity was an exercise in tedium and outright frustration at the bloody thing being unable to take mroe than three hits before bursting into flames.

[Corporal Flashback]

RIGHT, that's EVERY mission on ME2 done (Aside from the Zaeed, Kasumi and Arrival DLCs ). Massively hyped. The next three days need to hurry up and sod off. I wanna get to blasting space baddies, preferably with a pizza and with this triumphantly blasting out:

\o/

[revlob]

I need help with the PC save importer!

I have a level 60 Shepard from ME1, who turned 60 during the finale. I've used the ME2 config tool to point it at my ME1 saves, but when I try to start a new ME2 game with the "Import ME1 Character" option, it finds my Shep, but he's level 59. Is there some cut-off point at which the save importer checks the career for saves? Like, it only looks as far as Ilos or something? Because at this stage I'm just going to use the console and cheat my way to 60, but I'm not sure which save file I should be doing it with.

[Hexx]

There was a "design flaw" in ME1 - it doesn't save/auto save after the finale. (IIRC it's the final battle with Saren which is combat all the way to the end so you don't get chance to manually save either)

So when you import into ME2 it doesn't know, for example, who you picked to put on the council. That's why ME2 askes you (via some 'subtle' dialogue) what you did at the start.

[revlob]

Cheers. I managed to fix my particular problem by just completing the game again, the level 60 save showed up after that and re-running the import tool.

[Sprite Machine]

I really enjoyed Lair of the Shadow Broker. It didn't feel like pointless padding, it felt like a proper piece of the story, particularly with the 'endgame' references in the dialogue. The fights were good, and Illium is a great setting. It felt a bit StarWarsish in places. It was nice to see Liara again and bring her chapter to a close (for now!).

I can't criticise the content, but I still think DLC pricing should be more elastic. I got seven hours of additional gameplay out of my £12 for the DLC, whereas I got 40 hours of gameplay out of the £10 I paid for the rest of the game. But clearly the game was a bargain and they have to make their money from me somehow!

ME3 pre-ordered, anyway.

There was a "design flaw" in ME1 - it doesn't save/auto save after the finale. (IIRC it's the final battle with Saren which is combat all the way to the end so you don't get chance to manually save either)

So when you import into ME2 it doesn't know, for example, who you picked to put on the council. That's why ME2 askes you (via some 'subtle' dialogue) what you did at the start.

Holy merde, I did not know that!

What was the dialogue, I don't remember?

Is that why the fate of council members isn't really touched upon (rather, it's kept "unimportant") in ME2, because otherwise you could accidentally bring them back to life by saying the wrong thing?

EDIT: Actually, misunderstood. It's just who you pick that can change?

[Space Renegade Ulala]

It's literally just the Anderson/Udina choice. Though hilariously enough, it doesn't even matter by the time ME3 comes around because

(incredibly minor spoiler but one which will wind up a lot of people due to the removal of player agency)

they railroad Udina into being the human councillor no matter what, casually saying Anderson quit and went back to the military after a two-year stint banging his head against the wall of idiocy and indifference.

[A.C.R.O.N.Y.M]

Never played Mass Effect despite my friends telling me how great it is. However, do I have to play from 1 or could I jump into 2?

[JoeK]

Play 1 first - despite the fact it's got an inventory system plucked from Satan's anus, it's probably the better of the two games story-wise. Don't get me wrong, ME2 is amazing, but play 'em both to get the full-on experience. I would say that I always found Mass Effect to take a while to warm up - I think I had the game for the best part of a year after its original release without finishing the first bloody mission. And then all of a sudden I've now played the game four times straight through!

[Wiper]

Just be willing to dial the diffuculty to minimum if you don't enjoy the actual game part of Mass Effect 1. Personally, I really enjoyed that side of things - playing on the highest difficulty as an Engineer makes for a surprisingly tactical and challenging experience - but it's certainly not for everyone. If you dind the combat irritating just put the game on easy (and if you want an even easier time of it play through as a Soldier) and you can breeze through the game and just enjoy the story.

[A.C.R.O.N.Y.M]

Cheers, I get 1 to play then. How long is it though in general?.