Oblarg

Had pho for dinner. Was good.

Sure the council and the alliance don't like that Shepherd is working for Cerberus, but if he went to them and said, "hey I want to come back to you, I'm not gonna work for those terrorists anymore, blah blah blah, what can you do for me," what could they do? Give him his spectre status back? Okay, they did that, but it's like a Justicar trying to get by on reputation outside of Asari space. Everyone knows they're badasses but nobody really cares about spectres in the Terminus. Sure the alliance could re-instate him as a commander again. Then what? Give him a cruiser, send him into the terminus and make him a target for every pirate, smuggler, outlaw and who knows who else? Or with an army and start a war? No one in council space is willing to do that. Cerberus has the Normandy mk II ready to go. It's the only way Shepherd can get around the Terminus unmolested. I wouldn't say that Shepherd is taking everything that TIM says at face value. I just don't think there's much choice, and Shepherd knows it. I didn't find it to be that exactly. It was quite good at throwing bad guys over the edges of long drops. Probably why they don't. Besides, their operations have never been large scale enough for anyone to take notice before. Maybe the reapers thought a human reaper would have a better understanding of human behaviour, instincts, etc. The fact that reapers are modeled after organics itself is a bit contradictory to what was established in the first game (Sovereign detested organics, repeatedly stressed how they were inferior beings, etc.). In addition to this, it simply doesn't make any sense to model a reaper after a human - humans didn't evolve to make a good spacefaring machine entity. Ignoring the sci-fi goofiness, though, that's still a really weak reason to put so many resources towards making another reaper when the first one didn't work. As for staying in the terminus system, it's stated that the collectors would have to take Earth to complete the reaper, which simply couldn't have happened given how tremendously weak they were. Working for the Illusive man simply doesn't make sense. The Alliance could certainly supply Shepard with a ship, in fact, if he weren't working with Cerberus they probably would have supplied him with anything he needed. The alliance being worthless is a dumb plot device which makes absolutely no sense - after all, it was the alliance fleet that destroyed Sovereign. Add to this the fact that it's possible for a very traumatic experience in Shepard's past to have been caused by Cerberus, and that Cerberus did some pretty damn evil things in the first game for which no explanation is ever given, and it pretty much falls apart.

I need to go to New Zealand some day, I hear the rock climbing is superb...

Would that be the "most advanced warship in the alliance navy" that was destroyed in minutes at the beginning of the game? Or would it be the one that could only defeat the collector ship after having its shields, weapons and armor upgraded and was nearly destroyed anyway? I dunno, maybe you spacebar'd through the early conversations with TIM, and didn't realize that Cerberus was the only organization willing to go after the Collectors, let alone having the resources to do so. Whatever TIM's ultimate motives might have been, ie: wanting the Collector Base for himself, the explanations are there for why Shepherd should work for Cerberus. And you can play the entire game from the POV of not trusting Cerberus if you wish. And Cerberus is still seen as unambiguously evil by the council, by the alliance, by your old squadmates, and even some of the new ones. Meh, in the end it seems kind of silly to argue plot in either game. I just happened to like ME2 more. Oh yeah, shockwave was actually kinda cool. The only reason you couldn't get help from the alliance or the council is exactly because you were working with cerberus. Or did you spacebar through those conversations, too? It's kinda silly that you take everything TIM says at face value, the moment you meet him, too. Shockwave may have been cool, but it was ****ing useless on any difficulty other than easy. "the most advanced warship in the alliance navy" was not built for space combat, it was built for stealth. The new Normandy was built for stealth, too. In fact, it can destroy the collector cruiser even unupgraded, and upgraded it still only has "cruiser-class" firepower, according to the codex. Certainly, the alliance wouldn't have had a hard time dealing with the Collector's only cruiser if they ever tried to operate anywhere other than the Terminus systems. Also, it's not clear why making a human reaper would do any better than Sovereign did in the first game at opening the Citadel relay, especially now that they wouldn't have Saren inside the control room to keep the arms open and let it in, and now that the humans and turians are developing weapons based on technology from Sovereign.

Art direction was different in ME2? How so? It actually had art direction. ME was visually bland outside of Ilos and a few dramatic flying spaceship moments. ME 2 attempted to inject a bit of style into the environment. Compare Cora's Den to the part of Afterlife where Aria sits. ME certainly had art direction. Everything universally had a slick and smooth sci-fi look, and colors were light and pastel, maybe even to the point of being a bit washed out at times. There was also heavy use of bloom. I thought it worked marvelously to create a wondrous universe that the player was actually interested in - the atmosphere of the first game really drew me in and immersed me. Unfortunately, the second game just seemed bland and dark, because BioWare decided that the best way to create a dark second installment was not to create a dark, suspenseful plot (in fact, ME2's plot is so hilariously contrived that I find it hard to take the games attempts at being suspenseful seriously at all), but to literally make most of the environments black and ugly. This is a very common trend in gaming graphics, and one that I absolutely detest. Yes, ME2's graphics were technically more impressive, but the change in art direction makes me prefer the visuals from the first game. Also, I'd take the spandex-suit light armor of ME1 over ME2's armor any day.

I don't know, the fact that the collectors are supposedly some huge threat but have a total of one ship that is defeated in combat by a frigate designed for stealth? Or finding a reaper but not showing to to anyone and instead taking the IFF from it and hooking it directly up to the Normandy instead of studying and duplicating it? Or working for Cerberus when they were unambiguously evil in the first game without any explanation? The list goes on and on... And yeah, the art direction is very different. Nothing is bright in ME2, even on the well-lit levels, and the contrast is turned way up. They wanted a darker atmosphere, so they threw black paint over all the environments instead of writing a suspenseful plot, and the result wasn't too great. Compare a "light" environment in ME2: To a dark environment in ME1: Hell, even the sleek, futuristic look of the armor is gone in favor of a rough, angular, blocky alternative. And the inside of the new Normandy is terrible.

Art direction was different in ME2? How so? And the plot... as far as I'm concerned, the plot in both games is corny B quality crap that shouldn't be taken seriously The art direction in ME1 focused on bright, smooth, slick, bloom-filled environments. It was a really cool sci-fi look. The art direction in ME2 focused on much darker environments, with the contrast cranked up. Everything was ugly. As for the plots, ME1's plot may not have been superb, but it was coherent and kept me engaged. ME2's plot was absurd to the point of breaking immersion.

Maxed throw was quite awesome and fun to use in the first game. It was completely worthless in the second game, as was shockwave. That's not my main problem, though - my main gripes are twofold. The change in art direction is atrocious, and the plot is terrible. Other than that, I simply don't care for most of the gameplay changes. I enjoyed ME1 combat more, even if it was more clunky.

Can the mods just get rid of this bot/spammer/whathaveyou and be done with it?

DA:O was way buggier than Alpha Protocol was, at least on my machine. The graphics were also worse. Compare the reviews for each, draw your own conclusions.

How could a band named Fatal Violence not be awesome?

Don't encourage them! Connecting dots was tolerable exactly once. The three piece puzzle game was tolerable twice, maybe three times. Planet scanning was hate at first sight. None of them were ever fun, just time sinks to space out story points and prolong the game a bit. Obviously I both did not include planet scanning as a "mini game" (it's neither mini, nor really a game), and it was in comparison to ME1, and any other comparable mini games I've seen Also agree with Oblarg on the score, ME1 was a lot better (as was Kasumi, where they seemed to be returning to the synth/orchestral fusion), but disagree vehemently on the unified cooldowns, and less so with the rest. The result of unified cooldowns was using an uneventful power every 3-6 seconds instead of using a few awesome powers once a minute. It robbed biotics of all viscerality made made them completely pedestrian and boring. Yeah, they were overpowered in ME1, but there were other ways to fix that without neutering them. Plus, the unified cooldowns makes power synergy utterly worthless unless you have two biotics in the group. I suppose this isn't as big a problem as it could be seeing as seemingly every other person in ME2 has biotics (simply another symptom of them becoming pedestrian and boring).

Don't encourage them! Connecting dots was tolerable exactly once. The three piece puzzle game was tolerable twice, maybe three times. Planet scanning was hate at first sight. None of them were ever fun, just time sinks to space out story points and prolong the game a bit. The planet scanning was made even worse by the fact that all that remained of the gear progression and much of the end-game reactivity was directly linked to it. Terrible, terrible design. Bring back the ME1 inventory over that crap any day. My opinion is just the opposite, could you throw in a short list of things that you think became worse? The only things that were better in ME1 in my opinion: - I'd take the boring Mako over the brain damaging planet scanning any time - The hacking minigame was better in ME1, the minigames in ME2 got rather old rather quicly for me .. and that's it. Nothing else comes to mind. Minigames blew in both, but at least there was a skill-check in ME1, while they were pure tedium in ME2. On that note, the entire character progression system was gutted - ME2 was Gears of War in space with biotics, except the biotics were also gutted and lost the visceral, awesome feeling they had in ME1. The inventory was removed instead of streamlined. ME1's plot, while certainly not a masterpiece, was engaging and coherent. ME2's plot was, in addition to being completely absent from the majority of the game, paper-thin and full of holes and inconsistencies. The art direction was positively awful - they took the beautiful universe they had made in ME1 and threw black paint all over it while turning the contrast up, and topped it off with a bunch of ugly environments. This is compounded by the inferior soundtrack, which takes a notable move away from the really unique synth-driven direction of the original towards a generic Hollywood-esque orchestral "epic" score. Also, the ammo system and global cooldowns can **** off and die. The only things that really improved for me were the character writing and the cover system.

Well, I absolutely refuse to buy DLC, so I do hope none of the plot information in the ME2 DLC is going to be referenced in ME3 or I'll be lost. I replayed ME1 recently, and it became even more apparent just how much better of a game it is than ME2. Really, I can pretty much count on one hand the things that improved, but I could rant for pages about the things that became worse.

That's mean! What did your internal organs ever do to you? You should see the mess they make. Maybe that's because you're busy eating those cheap meat slices, eh? It's like a positive feedback loop!

That's mean! What did your internal organs ever do to you?

This is a bot. There's no explaining it otherwise.

I am confused. If this is a bot, it's a really odd one. If it's an actual person, it's even odder.

Pure, classy traditional metal.

Thinking "lefty" is a meaningful political description is even more hilarious.

Nah, they have to be able to **** everything of the opposite sex in the universe.

So it would seem, after a quick jaunt on their forums. It's as if they'd rather Mass Effect be a galactic dating sim rather than an epic space opera.

I wouldn't know, I didn't see any of the first game's advertisements - I bought it (unfortunately) on the recommendation of a friend. The problem with the first game is it starts out so promising - the origin stories and Ostagar are very good, if cheesy. It just falls apart after them, though.

Pretty sure Yahtzee also enjoyed ME2. EDIT: As for the bit-tech reviews, it's about the biggest backhanded compliment I've seen in sometime. His ME2 review wasn't exactly positive, other than praising the writing. It wasn't as negative as his ME1 review, I'll give you that.