Raithe

Yeah, the whole conversation with the if you'd played Paragon and not exterminated them in ME1 does kind of hint they could play an important role in ME3 when it arrives..

Hey, at least Wrex is trying to be a bit cosntructive (if you got him to live through ME1) rather then the typical Krogan destroy, destroy, destroy rant.

Supposedly, there is a random selection of which characters will get killed off for each non-upgraded part.. If you play it several times, it shouldn't be the same person being killed at the same point.. It's not a direct "if you haven't upgraded this, this specific person will die".

Every character you recruit gives you an upgrade option. Sometimes it's one that just helps that character, other times its relevant to the ship.

Hm, I was a little disapointed with the CE... the shiny box was nice.. I did like the art book (but then I like concept art stuff)... but the Bonus DVD was fairly crappy. about 5 of the character trailers, and the "Behind the Scenes" stuff was more like a compilation of rehashed "interviews" with the usual suspects of Producers, Lead Designers, and a few of the voice actors gushing over ME2 rather then providing any serious behind the scenes look. And I think nearly all of those "interviews" had already been shown in some of the pre-release internet teasers and such.

Yeah, I researched the Nuke-Em Cain before heading to Purgatory.. thought Yeah, I'll give it a try for that.. then ended up running through the whole mission without being able to use the dang thing because it kept flashing 62% at me.. If I'd realised that I'd just have taken the missile launcher and had a few moments a bit easier...

Yup, I only used the nuke twice, right at the end of the game.. apart from that, I always found the other heavy weapons more useful. I think I ended up using either the missile launcher or the avalanche cryo blaster most.

I only used the nuke twice in the game.. both times during the final fight. Didn't quite get the mushroom cloud effect..but definitely lots of plenty flashing lights around

I found the two.. hm, Praetorians you face in the game a bit annoying. The first one on Horizon was the repeated bouncing around cover because it came close, and then the one on the Ghost Ship that's bouncing at you while the Husks swarm.. You'd take down it's shields.. have to reload to take down it's armor.. and during the reload it would hit the ground, do that squat, blast of energy, and it's shields would be back up 100%..

Yeah, getting "Inferno Ammo" evolution was fun.. why I kept Grunt with me for most of the Collector suicide run

Technically, the SMG is meant to be good against shields, but not so great against armor.. While the Assault Rifle is meant to be equally good against shields , armor, and health. Plus it works better to pick them off at longer range and is a bit more steady if you're ripping off long bursts at the enemy.

Maybe they're just spending so much time figuring out the whole.. choices and consequences from ME1 to ME2 to ME3 that they're keeping the character skill advancement streamlined... It's a random thought. I'm curious to see just how big a change it will be depending on if you carry on with the Illusive Man's request, or tell him to stick it in the final sequence..

There's some history there I first encounted Doc Smith when I found an aging boxed set of the Lensman series at an old church jumble sale when i was about 12. To be fair, not a lot of people still enjoy the literary style of the original pulp adventure / space opera stuff. It can be a bit hit or miss. But then I can say how while I can appreciate the technical aspects and history created by Tolkien for LoTR, I found his writing dreadful as a "good" read. Personal styles and flavours for what you like are all point of view. So I can't knock what you enjoy. But to bounce back, Heinlein joked that he half thought Smith was a superhuman in disguise for some of the things he got up to. My original thought was that just Smith's Lensman series inspired so much after the fact is impressive. George Lucas willingly admits how much of Star Wars and the Jedi were inspired by it. J. Michael Straczynski got a bunch of the Babylon 5 ideas from it. Vorlons were Arissians, and Eddore were the Shadows... For comic flavourdom, the Green Lantern Corp was basically The Lensman (and they even came out and used some names from Smiths work for some of the alien Green Lanters...) There are just so many sci-fi aspects and tropes that came about after, that writers used because Smith created them, that for a guy whose job is a literary critic to have said his writing was cliched without putting it into context was just....

Heh, I redid the ending and finally managed to get everyone through it alive.. Although I'm sort of amused by the way one of the cinematics changes...

You might call it sem-literate but that was the style of the 30's and 40's pulp stories. Triplanetary (which is the one with "Roger" in) was originally written for.. Amazing Stories as I seem to recall, it was only later the chapters were collected and done up as a single novel. You might not like the style yourself, but Smith was a very literate person. And frankly, how can you not love a chapter where he knowingly does the villain monologue intoduction, grand title after grand title, and then looks at the hero and goes with "and you may call me... Roger." It's done with intent. But it just might not be to your style. To go with the classic quote from a writer of the time :

It might be me, but I do find it slightly odd some of the twists of legality. If tv show is shown in England, I'm legally allowed to have my pc hooked up to record it.. and keep it to watch as I want from my pc. If the show happens to have been shown in America and doesn't get released in England for another 6 months.. it's illegal to download it across file share to my pc to watch it... Since I have to pay for cable/satellite/tv licence regardless it's always puzzled me exactly why there's that legal split..

I remember reading something about Robert Heinlein having been a good friend of Smiths. He was being interviewed and someone brought up Smiths constant use of these "unrealistic" characters for heros. Heinlein turned round and did a "Have you met Smith? He's tall, good looking, square-jawed, highly athletic, incredibly intelligent, extremely gallant.. and he's married to a red-head who's just as remarkably beautiful, intelligent and spirited to match him. He takes his inspiration from real life." Heh, not only did Smith create half the tropes that get used in modern sci-fi... The US Navy in the 40's based the CIC design used in their ships around the ideas Smith had written for displaying and controlling starship fleets in space...

No, the ruined starship that was perched on the edge of the cliff.. Only Shepard is active, and you have to make your way around the "scaffolding/superstructure" ruins to get to the main log at the front of the ship before it tips over... Then later there's the news report of the lost ships discovery, and bumf about historians looking over it.

The Normandy crash site was nice for what it was.. if you enjoyed the idea of the emotional resonance of going through the crashed ship and picking up on the key points of recognisable wreckage.. If you didn't like that, it would kind of suck. The other crash site was interesting in it's own odd way. It was one of those change of paces to the expected on-planet missions. Although more background would have been nice. Then again, the news story that could be heard about it afterwards on Galactic News added a little something.

Good points and flaws aside.. I'd say I had more fun with ME2 then I did with DragonAge. That I'm still inclined to play around with it and see what different things crop up when other choices are made after the first 44 hours of gameplay... That's quality for the money I paid for it. You can break it down on what bits are better then ME1, which bits are worse, how other games are better or worse, and whether they'll fix much for dlc or ME3... The final thought is just whether you had fun in the end and enjoyed what was there more then you disliked some of it.

They recently republished E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series again... and I saw a critic reviewing it and slamming it for all the "cliches" and "unrealistic" edges to his sci-fi. I so wanted to face-palm. A literary critic who didn't pick up that Smith created them back in the day when they were original.. and they've been copied so many times since he wrote them. Yeesh.

I got the same vibe. I got the vague feeling I saw something about forthcoming dlc expansion for ME2 opening up higher levels as well.. but that might just have been some fever dream

Ashley, Kaidan, or Liarra... there's a reason they were kept safe and alive in ME2.. you'll get to play as the jilted lover

Okay, I have to say, it's relevant to say that you got turned off a game by the first 5 minutes.. But if you didn't play more then that, you can't really make a sweeping statement that the whole game was bad if you didn't play that far beyond the opening sequence....

It was the classic, trope twist... but I thought it was a well-done take on the classic twist.