First Day of ME2 - Expectations met?

[Alkestes]

Honestly, I love it. I loved the first one as well, I didn't really have any problems of any kind with the first, and the same is true for the second.

I especially love how damn badass they made the biotic powers. 3 second cooldown on Throw makes me a happy chappy. I mean, playing an Adept on this one is by no means easy, but it makes it feel so much more fun. :'D I haven't tried out any of the other classes yet though.

Also, Mordin Solus. That is all.

 

[Jolan_BG]

Heh, Bioware seem to have done everything much better this time.

No more elevators! Everything loads on the go.
A lot more cursing, not sure if this is good or bad, but there's a really cool line spoken by an Asari female called Aria.Nuff said.

The allies all have amazing pick-up missions, and their loyalty missions are even better.I seriously gasped when I found out who the Archangel was, so awesome!

The game is quite short though - I'm at the final mission after 24 hours of gameplay. And I've done every subquest I found. I need moar!
Overall, it's better than what I expected. Really good game. 9.5 / 10

 

[Jolan_BG]

Possibly. I might have missed some of the missions you get by scanning planets for Distress signals, but i think that's it.
AND I'm playing on Veteran, which is supposed to make the game harder and longer.
I hope the free DLC makes up for it, I heard there was going to be a vehicle update!

 

[syndicated44]

I am interested however not excited about it. I honestly cant think of anything in the game that I am really interested in doing. I wasnt a huge fan of Mass Effect however I didnt disliked it either. I guess I am in a very neutral position or you could call it a case of the mehs.

I think the ad campaign turned me off the most to this game. Really I never liked any of the characters from Mass Effect and the new characters come off as less likable then the first. Then again thats the impression I have been getting from the spam of ads. I guess when I eventually get around to getting it I shall see.

 

[Quad08]

So far, I'm loving it. When I first heard they got rid of the 'texture poping' problem I laughed, thinking 'Yeah right!' but when I played the game...holy wow....its true!

Everything so far, whether its overall changes or tiny modifications, just feels smoother. Its not Mass Effect 1. At all, this is a whole new ball game.

If anything, my biggest complaint has to be not crouching and the area maps that you can bring up look really cramped togethern.

Other than that, solid gold.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Everything is great except hacking system. It's the most boring thing I've ever done in any game. I actually loved hacking in ME1. It was a real mini game and I want it back in ME3.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Goddamn. Goddamn. I'm seething with jealousy here.

I haven't been this jealous of you American guys since... ever.

 

[Terrorist_school_drop-out]

As a man who doesn't like RPGs very much and for whom Fallout 3, Mass Effect 1 and DA:Origins are the only examples of RPGs I LIKED, I will say that Mass Effect 2 is THE BEST RPG I'VE EVER PLAYED(sorry Bioshock you're a shooter to me). And the reson for this is that beyond the great narrative, choises and gameplay that isn't nudered "because it's an RPG not an action game"(God I hate that excuse), it stays away from the crap that keeps people away from RPGs. The best example is the lack of any inventory and any kind of micro-managment, because no matter what anyone tells me stoping in the middle of the game to make sure I allways have the marginaly best armor/weapon is not only boring and tedious but also very immersion breaking. Instead of giving you a new weapon every now and again or finding it at a shop you get self-installing upgrades wich are esentially the same thing but without the adjacent bullshit.
Sure I'm certain there could have been a work-around the Mining mini-game but considering every RPG has a hacking mechanic It didn't really bother me.
Well here's to a 180 for JRPGs to, I hope my grandchildren get to see that.

 

[Jenova65]

25 hours? That sucks the big one, really! I can get considerably more than that from pretty much every other Bioware game. £55 for 25 hours seems a bit of a gip, tbh!

 

[Uszi]

Right, the navigating around systems thing is annoying because of the fuel requirement which seems unnecessary and doesn't add to the experience.

I would love to see their rationale for this.
Imposing arbitrary limits on players is never good game making. If it created a fun challenge that lead you to make tactical choices, then... maybe. But arguably just being able to roam the galaxy at will would still be more fun.

Most people are playing a game like Mass Effect at least partially to escape their own reality for a moment. So it's jarring when something totally grounded in the hear and now thrusts its way into the game. Next thing you'll know, they'll patch it so the fuel depots offer different prices and players find themselves circling the galaxy, only fueling at the cheapest stations.

My only real problem, though, is that the text is far too small. I have to get right in front of the screen to read it. Other than that, though, ME2 exceeds ME1 by SOOOOO much.

Yea I noticed that. Luckily, I just recently got my new glasses, so I haven't really had any problems so far. Unless your vision is a perfect 20/20 and you have a 1080p HDTV, it would be much harder to read at a distance, though.

I keep hearing this and it makes me very sad. I've had the same giant box TV that I bought for like $250 4 years ago, and it hasn't failed me yet. I so far have been proud of myself for not being a consumer whore, immediately scraping a perfectly good, loyal TV in favor of the newest, greatest and best toy.

Now I have to consider investing in HD.

 

[carpathic]

I love it so far.

 

[Irridium]

It is very much a case of "be careful what you ask for"
People complained about the inventory system. So its gone. Now you have a choice of like 2 variations of each weapon with no customisations.
People hated the elevators, now we get immersion breaking loading screens.
The just scanning planets is boring, now you have to manually scour each inch of the fucking planet with a slow ass scanner looking for resources to upgrade your shit. And you have to constantly go back to your fuel depot which is only in one cluster per galaxy to buy probes wasting fuel in the process.
People hate fetch quests. Fine, your ship upgrades are now just a matter of talking to a crew member and buying it and instantly having it installed, no effort required.
The battle is too generic, now its the same except with limited ammo and horrible AI. If you do not control your team mates they run so far ahead of you its not funny and get slaughtered. If you do control them but position them wrong they just stand behind cover and do nothing until you reposition them 3 inches to the left, then they do something.
We want special armours! Fine, you get your collectors shit but guess what, we are going to fuck you over there too. All of the armours come as one piece, you can not change them in any way, can not customise and the helmets never come off. So even during emotional cut scenes all you will see is your stupid helmet. And to be a full slap in the face, when people complained about it on the bioware forums this is the responce they got "Chris Priestly wrote: Sorry, these armors are SETS of armor. The helmets do not remove. This is by design and not a bug." and theres nothing like seeing Shep downing a shot of something directly into his helmet or having a emotional responce while looking at a blank screen to take ya out of the game.

So yeah, I am impressed by a lot of things but for every "OMFG YAY" moment there is another that makes me realise some one dropped the ball.

This pretty much summed up my feeling entirely.

 

[Jandau]

Because that would remove the main reason for playing the first game as opposed to going onto the wiki and reading the plot section.

By that logic, playing ANY sequel would remove the need to play the previous game. And this way it punishes players who DID play the first game but didn't keep the saves...

 

[Haliwali]

A sexy Australian is on my crew. That's what I never knew I needed, but it makes the game so FREAKING great.

...I sort of have a thing for Australian girls.

But the five or so hours I've played have been fantastic. Would have preferred a deeper inventory, but other than that it's cool.

 

[Uszi]

My guess is that both the fuel and probe systems were put in place solely as money sinks. After all, I hit the maximum amount of possible credits in Mass Effect about halfway through the game, when I also already had all the best armor and weapons. So at that point there was absolutely nothing to spend money on.

I think your logic makes sense.

Still, there's got to be better money management systems. In ME1, For instance, if you notice they scaled the money you get for killing enemies based on level. Geth Troopers at level 1 give like 13 credits, and at level 60 they give like 10,000. The first step is to not do something like that, or at least not make it as ridiculous.

Then I think there should be enjoyable sinks... like gambling, or paying Asari dancers.

Therefore I don't really mind these things in ME2...it'll be a bit annoying for the first while when funds are limited, but after a bit I'm sure it won't even put a dent in my credit reserves.

Bah, but if that's true then it will no longer function properly as a money sink -- if you still are sitting on a montain of credits by end game, it clearly didn't work.

I wonder if it's purely intended to slow down the rate you acquire resources to upgrade your shit...