The game arrived yesterday, by some miracle of postal competence. I'm 5 hours in. The things I like are all to be expected because they're obvious. Things like how closely it ties in to the original game, the cinematic conversations, the little touches such as my Shepard having a picture of Kaiden in her quarters, etc.

The things I'm not liking, oh boy.

I hate the new interface. Tiny, hard to see, missing information that I relied on in the first game.

The new style area map. Again, tiny. It takes up less than 1/4 of my screen and can't be zoomed in on.

My squad seems to be hyperactive and loves to run off leaving me alone in combat while they stand behind a pillar on the far side of the area doing nothing.

I hate, hate, hate the new ammo system! It adds nothing and cramps my gameplay quite badly. "Oh look, a perfect situation for me to go sniper and support my team as they close in with biotics and tech powers. Oh look, 5 shots later and I'm out of ammo. Back to plugging away with the pistol it is, then. Weee!"

Gun balance so far is even worse than the first game. Sniper and pistol are useful, everything else either does fractional damage or is inaccurate as heck. The assault rifle takes an entire clip to drop a single weak enemy, assuming you burst fire and aim carefully. I used to rely on my assault rifle.

I miss customising my weapons.

[Oliver Twist] Please, sir, I want some loot.[/Oliver Twist]

What's with the waves of individual enemies coming out of a 'locked' door in the combat area to replace ones which died?

I despise the new galaxy map. it's rubbish, confusing, needless, and horrible to deal with.

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.

Can I turn the tutorial off now please? How about Now? Now? Please, shut up and stop spamming me with messages about how to breathe!

But they wont tell me about the things which could have used explanation. Like how the crappy new mini games work.

Speaking of messages, some flash up on screen for less than a second. These are the ones I want to read. Others in the same type of box sit there for ages. These are the ones I do not want to read.

No in-party banter while travelling.

I don't like any of the party members I've found so far. I've got 4.

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.

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.

Why does Shepard still move so slowly?

Observation: sticking several zeroes on the price of every item does not make the start of th game epic or high level. It makes it a pain to keep track of how much money you have because someone chose to use microfont 2.0 so my resource pool requires a magnifying glass to be readable.

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

And the big hairy deal which is destroying my enjoyment of the plot thus far: who I'm working with and how it was done. Shepard basically shrugs her shoulders and says "Ok." and that's it, I'm working for one of the major enemies in the first game. A corp which killed people Shepard liked, tried to kill her, which committed a bunch of completely hideous experiments, and was the space going equivalent to the nazis. I'm blaming it on brain damage during the reconstruction.

Which reminds me, the whole lazerus concept is ludicrous even for space opera.

Thought for the day: Why does the game wait until I put the controller down to relax during a cutscene before offering an interrupt? Does it have a sensor which checks if Im still holding the controller before triggering them?

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.

Why is Shepard and crew obsessed with drawing their weapons in certain designated areas? I'll clear all of the enemies out and then each time I talk to someone or interact with something they draw their weapons again. So I have to put them away again. For no reason.

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

And why is barely anyone surprised or pleased to see Shepard? They act like she was tagged with week long quarantine for a cold instead of KIA.