Mass Effect 2
It’s been nearly 2 weeks since the release of Mass Effect 2 and thought that it was about time that I wrote something about it. I’ve already completed it and am now on a second play through.
I think that it is a good improvement on the original. I like the new combat system, it is good enough to rival other 3rd person shooters such as Gears of War and Army of Two. Having ammo is a little annoying since it wasn’t there before, they call them thermal clips to stop the weapon overheating but really it is just ammo. Ammo isn’t very rare though and only occasionally have I found myself a little short.
I imported my save from Mass Effect 1 and it seems to have worked well. I had completed it on hardcore difficulty and was level 57. I started at level 3 with 5,000 of each resource, 130,000 credits and 160 paragon points. It was a nice boost to start with although it won’t have made much difference if I hadn’t had it. The main benefit to the import was your decisions carrying over. A lot of them are just an extra side quest, or some dialogue with someone but I would like to see what is different. It seems that the default choices for not imported are all different to what I had so I will have to try it at some point. It seems there is more of an impact from your choices in this game. I would have to play it again being a renegade to find out how different but before it seemed a bit superficial.
By the time I had completed the game for the first time (on veteran difficulty) I was level 25. I then started again on insanity with a new game plus and it didn’t long to reach the level cap of 30. In this play through I want to try to do everything, find every side mission and get every upgrade so it is taking me a while longer. Insanity is a lot more difficult though, every enemy has armour or shields and there is more of them.
Having the mine resources for upgrades is a little tedious. It can take a long time to complete one planet and then there are dozens more. The new game plus gives 50,000 of each resource as a bonus which lasted me a while but now it has mostly gone and I’m having the mine again. Finding side missions along the way does help to break it up though.
Most of the games achievements are quite easy to get. By the end of my first play through I was missing about 5. Now the only one I don’t have is to complete the game on insanity which I should get soon and then I’ll have all 1015 points. If you played on insanity to start with on an imported character there is no reason you couldn’t get all of them on one play through. A little different to needing at least 3 before.
Overall I think that is a great game. I have already logged over 50 hours of gameplay from it and will get a lot more yet. As I said, I want to play as the bad guy once as well but I might leave that for a while to space it out since there aren’t many games I want now for about 6 months. I still have to play Assassin’s Creed 2. I have barely started it so far.