• Join Us |
  • |
  • Sign in with:

Mass Effect 2 Launch Day Discussion

by Alice O'Connor, Jan 26, 2010 1:15am PST

Mass Effect 2 is out in North America today and a Shacknews tradition has returned in this handy post for you to discuss BioWare's sci-fi RPG with your fellow Shackers. Garnett has been beavering away and will have some thoughts of his own to share soon too.

Did you rush out for a copy at midnight? PC or Xbox 360? How are you enjoying the reworked combat? What surprises or pleases you most about Mass Effect 2 so far? Who did you decide to kill, save or lamp square in the chops when they asked too many awkward questions?

Please do bear in mind that not everyone is necessarily as far as you, so you should still spoiler tag where appropriate. Shacktags can be confusing but you simply need to open your spoiler with o[ and close it with ]o, like o[this, do you see?]o Then when you post, that'll automatically be converted into a hidden spoiler. Cheers!


Read all the News


Comments

34 Threads | 143 Comments
  • #36
    Refresh Thread
    By: JoeBoxr x
    Reply
    I have had the opportunity to play this game before it was released, and I have to say its a real improvement over the original. No more crazy pop-in! But most importantly this game rocks ur socks seriously. The story is good so far, the ship is cool, and you can even buy stuff for it. The only annoyance about that is that you have to feed your goldfish or they will die (you will see). The character acting is solid, and the graphics look great, and no more annoying driving around endlessly in a stupid golf cart .

    But as you can remember from the first game, you found minerals and marked them for mining, which gave you very little in return for hours of searching. This time around you park your ship in orbit, scan for the materials then suck them up using probes. This part is annoying but is mitigated by the fact you can use the elements you mine to purchase upgrades. I suggest using an elastic band to hold down the left trigger unless you want a sore finger after 20 mins.

    You have to spend credits to buy fuel and probes for mining as I mentioned before, but the fuel is used only when traveling between stars in a cluster. You use the mass relays to get between clusters. They are found at fuel depot ships located in systems with mass relays.

    Thats the other thing about this game, the inventory system has gone kaput! You get a very specific arsenal of weapons that increase in quality as the game progresses and you upgrade those weapons to make them better. Thats why you need those elements I talked about before. To get an upgrade, you either find them while on missions or buy them from shops for cash. Then you have to spend minerals to research them and add them to your armor or weapons. I don't really mind it as you have another revenue stream for getting credits and you use them a lot less this game.

    The first part of the game is spent looking for your former comrades, and meeting new ones who will become your squad members. You get missions in the form of emails from a character known as the elusive man who will be your boss throughout most of the game. You also do "face to face" talks with him through a neat 3D holographic communicator, which has been seen on some sci-fi TV shows.

    As for the leveling system, you start at level 1 regardless of what your imported save game had you at, and you have the chance to change classes at the beginning. You earn skill points which you then put into skills in blocks. So to get level 1 of a skill you need 1 skill point, level 2, you need 2 plus the 1 you already put in. So every skill goes 1+2+3+4 and only has 4 levels. At the 4th level you get to choose how you want to use your maxed out power. For example, on one of the powers it allows you to max out the damage it inflicts or add an area of effect which causes less damage. Its kind of cool that you get to chose and lets players adjust their skills to suit their play styles.

    Well, thats my mini-review of the game and I would rate it a "buy it on launch day" game! Have fun!
    Jan 26, 2010 7:07am PST

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 5 replies.

  • #110
    Refresh Thread
    By: two50six x
    Reply
    Wow...

    I just took a break to eat some food before I go back to ME2. I went and nabbed a copy from my local Gamestop (I didnt pre-order) came home and popped it in.

    Right from the get go this sequal is a massive (no pun intended) improvement over the first. I really enjoyed the first one, but this did I admit, require me to overlook some flaws.

    The menus, the upgrades system, the party management and combat is a massive improvement over the first. Even the cinematic story telling is a major improvement. Im really loving it so far. If any of you are on the fence, dont question it just get it.
    Jan 26, 2010 4:09pm PST