Mass Effect 2 gameplay thread

[Kekvit Irae]

The new mini games can get deleted now, please, All rubbish, all a pain to play, and all completely needless. I was sick to death of planet scanning before I'd finished my first one, and the other two aren't any better.

They are annoying, but are certainly more logical than playing Simon (360) or Frogger (PC).

No in-party banter while travelling.

It depends on where you're at and who you're with. Garrus and Tali have a really amusing conversation at the Citadel when walking up/down the stairs.

Garrus: Don't you miss our conversations in the elevators?
Tali: No.
Garrus: I could ask about your immunity, or what's under your mask.
Tali: I have a shotgun.
Garrus: Maybe some other time.

Oh goodie, I have some levels to spend at the beginning because I ported my game over. Let's see what we've got. Four abilities?! FOUR!? Each with four levels!? That's IT!? And some of those levels cost more points than I gain per level up so it appears that I'm going to spend a lot of time with the interface flashing and nagging at me to spend points when I can't because I need to save up.

Another thing I hated. I liked having a lot of skills, even if they were mostly weapons. It gave me a choice. You CAN, however, research a fifth skill of your choice once you get the research data, and you're not stuck with that skill if you don't like it.

Paragon and renegade points shower down on Shepard like confetti. My paragon bar is nearly 1/3 full already! Aligned dialogue options are everywhere and are always guaranteed and easy to get. Blergh. I got a discount in every single shop in that first major area simply by walking around and using the paragon option, and then waltzed around successfully charming people in situations where it made no sense whatsoever. Those options used to be a bit special, and had requirements before you could use them.

To be fair, the new Paragon/Renegade QTEs are pretty nice. But... you don't need any points to do them, and they will always work regardless of your Paragon/Renegade status.

What was the point of that dramatic beginning? Everything which is lost is handed right back 5 minutes later.

Convenient plot point to get rid of all the characters we loved and bring in others we don't. At least Tali is back.

Where are the side quests? I've been to and scoured the citadel, my ship and the first real planet/asteroid base thingy and I've turned up a bare handful.

There are actually quite a few sidequests in the game. Just not a lot in the first area. You can also find them by visiting uncharted worlds. You'll need to scan them to find them, but if EDI doesn't say anything about "Anomoly Detected", there's no sidequest there.

No mako? But some of the coolest moments from the first game involved the mako. :(

I enjoy the lack of the M35 "Drunken Monkey" Mako. I don't like how it was replaced by the new galaxy travel system.


EDIT: Oh, and another thing I'll add to the list of things I don't like about the game. The damn fish! You have to go up to your cabin to feed them every five minutes or they die. At least Kelly will feed them for you if you get her in the sack, but that's midway through the game. Fortunately, my hamster doesn't require feeding. I'm going to make a new ME2 character based off of Minsc and do nothing but look at my new space hamster.