Anyone Play Mass Effect 2 Yet? Impressions?

[Spikey00]

Ah, okay--I wanted to know if any of you saw anything beyond that; would mean I didn't miss anything [important].

Sheesh, but what was with the final boss?  I don't think it was that creative--too cliche for me.

[Rod Serling]

You mean fighting a giant robot isn't something new? Especially one that looks almost exactly like the terminator?


I thought it was a brilliant work of creative thinking.

[/sarcasm]

It does pose an interesting question at least. If this thing is a reaper than why is it so small in comparison to all the others?

[Spikey00]

Precisely.

Why didn't they create a giant Saren that overheats your guns for a minute that jumps around propelling rockets from its seemingly skeletal body?  Afterwards, if the player succeeds in destroying this monstrosity and evading the Saren death music theme, spawn out Benezia to astonish the player, and have her summon her commandos via opening door in a useless moment of cinematic climax, then have them stop and nod at their queen whilst the player, whom was previously frozen in stasis for yet another useless moment before, is thrown off the boundaries of the walls by Benezia's singularity, resulting in a humiliating death because it is by law that anyone who is outside the railings be immediately, and brutally insta-killed.  The player then realizes this was a foreseen venture, and must repeat the dialog options, and yet again be questioned as to whether or not they "have faced an elite commando unit before" because "few humans have", before the commandos rush out from the doors to greet their idol of great parody once again (of course with the player being frozen because it wouldn't make any sense otherwise).

--

SPOILER:
Where is my Kaidan... ;_;

[Rod Serling]

Benezia to astonish the player, and have her summon her commandos via opening door in a useless moment of cinematic climax, then have them stop and nod at their queen whilst the player, whom was previously frozen in stasis for yet another useless moment before, is thrown off the boundaries of the walls by Benezia's singularity, resulting in a humiliating death because it is by law that anyone who is outside the railings be immediately, and brutally insta-killed.  The player then realizes this was a foreseen venture, and must repeat the dialog options, and yet again be questioned as to whether or not they "have faced an elite commando unit before" because "few humans have", before the commandos rush out from the doors to greet their idol of great parody once again (of course with the player being frozen because it wouldn't make any sense otherwise).

Actually that's not always accurate. I often was NOT thrown outside the railings and instakilled, quite a few times I was simply thrown on top of a box, or inside the railing itself, and my allies finished off the enemies, but I'm stuck and have to reload still! WOO!

Why did it take 1/4th of her energy to open the doors? She really sucked at the whole "Biotics" thing when you really look at her.

[Spikey00]

rofl, that sounds equally as wonderful!

--

Because Saren's indoctrination was too strong?  Because his teeth were at her ears, fingers on her spine, and you must, you must, oh you must--die--?

[Mánagarmr]

In spite of all the flaming here, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed both Mass Effect 1 and 2. The story was compelling, the characters were, in my opinion, the best I've yet to see in an RPG with actual actors and the combat was fluid and fast. Sure, it's not a hardcore RPG by any stretch, like Baldur's Gate and whatnot (and I hated those for some reason). It's more of a blend between RPG storytelling and FPS action.

I liked it a lot, and easily makes it to my top 5 list without breaking a sweat. I'm on my fourth playthrough on Mass Effect 2, and I think that says something. Dragon Age would probably had similar potential if it wasn't for the absolutely horrible combat system. And quite frankly, I don't understand what people see in Knights of the Old Republic. Sure the story was somewhat interesting, but the combat! Oh god the combat! It made my eyes bleed and fingers twitch. I hated the combat system, with a passion.

Argh, epic derail. Sorry.

[eRe4s3r]

I hate dragon ages combat nowadays as well, truth be told, i think Mass Effect 2 does it well, crew that you don't have in your squad is NOT IN YOUR SQUAD and thus you can't easily choose new crew while on mission.

Dragon Age commits the cardinal sin, it lets you swap team members whenever you want, meaning that lore wise the are traveling with you, which means... why are they not visibly traveling with me and fighting with me? Either they are there or they are not, but Dragon Age can't even decide how to handle it, sometimes events trigger only when a certain squad guy is in the party, sometimes they spawn randomly next to you in a quest sequence.

Then comes the party camp, which by itself is a retarded concept because its always in the same place - a good story writer would have come up with at least a pocket dimension to explain this. Dragon Age writers did nothing of the sort, at one point dark spawn attack the camp, but one has to wonder why don't besiege it, or lay ambushes given that its always in the same spot?

Lastly is something that really bugs me, but Dragon Ages story is in many places very, very illogical. For example, if you choose to make Loghain a Grey warden (its a curse, not a reward) Alistair leaves you. The player however has ABSOLUTELY 0 relation to the Grey Wardens, short of the initiation. Technically it is never even explained *why* the player character has to become a Grey warden (in any of the intro stories). To a pragmatist its obvious that we are not Grey Warden, we are just Tainted by dark-spawn blood and didn't die from it. That makes us better Ghouls.

In many ways Dragon Age has really dropped the ball on the logic side of things. Why do we have to side with the Grey Warden anyhow? We could *easily* defeat the arch-demon at the end, and taint some prisoner have him mate with morgain and tada, players would never have to be tainted, limited to 30 years life-span and cursed.

Wow, now who was derailing this topic...

[Rod Serling]

In spite of all the flaming here, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed both Mass Effect 1 and 2.

Oh yes, I completely agree. What I've been flaming are simply the worst aspects of an otherwise extremely entertaining game series. Cut out some of the bugs, and some unoriginal aspects that frankly, every game has a problem with, and your left with two games that quite simply, are extremely fun to play.

I recommend both of them.

[Mánagarmr]

I have, thankfully, not come across at all many bugs in the second game. The first however was rather riddled with them. Only annoying bugs I've come across were the "invisible character" bug during dialogues (very rare) and "popping" of characters that end up in the wrong place and the game forcibly moves them to the right place in a "popping" way. Otherwise I'm fairly free of bugs in the second one.