Mass Effect 2

[Maglok]

Am about halfway in ME2 and my opinion is that it is much better then Dragon Age already. It is just so polished, the writing is clever, the voice acting is top notch. Love it.

"Have ruled out intelligent virus. Unless it is very intelligent virus, and it is toying with me. Hmm..."

[Xelxiuz]

Can't be all that polished if I can't even reach the title screen when I can max settings DAO with 60 fps. But ME1 was like that too.

Hmmm.

[Xelxiuz]

Since my new computer came in, I played ME1/ME2 together =x which was kind of neat. I blame lack of CD-Key for SC2 for my boring marathon.

I believe this is one of those cases where because I took so long to play it, I find it incredibly stupid how people can rate this franchise so high. It's very fun by all means, at least the shooting part of it. The dialogue and story is inferior to that of DAO, let alone NWN2, let alone KOTOR1/2. I have not touched Planescape, so I can't say anything about that.

For it's time, I think KOTOR1 was Bioware's best game from the ones I've played/mentioned, but over the years they got really sloppy and lazy. KOTOR wasn't flawless, but it was definitely infinitely more stable than Obsidian's KOTOR 2, which actually complimented KOTOR 1 quite well imo from a non-SW fan boy view. When I look at DAO and ME, I see....really damn ghetto game play and polish.

But TL;DR short version is....chances are TOR will be this really crappy solo MMO game where your girl friend / boy friend (for AA7, Whiplash, and those who love the doack) npc will interact with you more than other players themselves. If the company somehow only learned how to streamline their game mechanics in the last 5 years without adding more elements beyond U CAN SHOOT NOW, then it's going to be hilarious.

Don't take any offense, but I don't think Desler is really objective in this, rather it seems he's been extremely casual, and likes Sci-Fi a lot more than fantasy thereby letting something that's average by Bioware's potential to make him give praise, which is totally acceptable. But it's pretty damn understandable why Mesk wouldn't like it. I mean you can't even mod the damn thing.

However, the biotic violus was executed quite well for a scene that's more generic than toilet paper.

[Maglok]

Oh finished it a while ago and everyone lived! /cheer!

[Xelxiuz]

Everyone can live? I thought for sure two people die at the least.

[Maglok]

Not for me. Do tell where.

[Marco]

Check YouTube. you can kill every single character in the game if you play recklessly enough, even the DLC ones.  Every character game can also live.  It's easy enough, just use common sense.  All my characters lived on my playthrough.

[Xelxiuz]

D= I think apparently it depends on who you choose for the vent guy and the decoy guy. Yet I found it strange that I picked Tali, yet she ended up dying and I had her on near full health opening vents.

Grunt is pretty sad if he couldn't even work as a decoy. He's like a ghetto Wrex that needed your help to kill a thresher maw despite being genetically perfect.

[Marco]

I used the Geth for the vent, but I think Tali should work too.  It may be dependant if you do their loyalty missions or not, but I don't know.  I finished all the missions I could before heading for Omega.

[Negi]

The geth always will die in the vent.  You need to use Tali if you want all your people to survive.

[Maglok]

Not true.

The survival of your engineer (Tali or Legion) is based on a few things. I read into this after I did the thing. First the chars involved must be loyal, or they die. Secondly you need to choose a primary engineer so Tali or Legion. Thirdly you must put a loyal 'leader' type in charge of the fire team. We know from background Garrus had led his own team, and Miranda and Jacob would also do. But Grunt is not a leader type, so putting him in charge will make your engineer die.

[Xelxiuz]

Not true.

The survival of your engineer (Tali or Legion) is based on a few things. I read into this after I did the thing. First the chars involved must be loyal, or they die. Secondly you need to choose a primary engineer so Tali or Legion. Thirdly you must put a loyal 'leader' type in charge of the fire team. We know from background Garrus had led his own team, and Miranda and Jacob would also do. But Grunt is not a leader type, so putting him in charge will make your engineer die.

I see, though it makes no damn sense how the fire team leader can impact the engineer who's sole survival is dependent on you opening valves, I can at least accept that. But then again the game makes so little sense at this point it doesn't matter. Good thing I still enjoy the gameplay aspect enough for now =X though if it had a console or a more mod friendly base longevity could be solved.

And on a completely off topic note, since I finished ME2, I'm looking for other games I never got to play over the years (preferably single player/one shot type games) due to having the same damn computer since I was posting here all those years back. I tried Fable 1 today, and my god, what in the blue hell is this? Is it because it's too damn old, or is the game so black and white it's supposed to be funny in a bad way? I want to know if this is worth playing the whole way through, since unfortunately it doesn't seem like F2 will come to PC.

[Marco]

Yeah, I sent Legion into the Vent, and had Garrus lead the alt team.  Then I sent Jacob to escort the survivors.  Garrus again lead the second alt team, and I used Jack as my biotic bubble girl.  I forgot what happened after that, but everyone lived.  Every character I had was loyal.  I assume you can only completely fail if you never upgrade loyalty or any of the optional Normandy upgrades, as well as choose all the wrong people for all of the jobs.

[Maglok]

If everyone dies, so does Sheppard.

[thebrowncloud]

@Xelxiuz
If you are one of the people who is eagerly awaiting D3, I found Titan Quest to be an acceptable substitute while I wait. Good price, fun gameplay that is even more player-friendly than D2, and is 3D. You pick two classes instead of one, you can buy back skill points if you don't like what you placed them in, and having a summoning build isn't nearly as difficult as it is in D2. There is also an editor that comes with it, but I never tried it. The only downside is that the "stash" feature is only available if you have the expansion pack, but you end up getting such an enormous inventory after a while that it's not entirely necessary to have one.

Edit: Forgot to address Fable. It's a decent game. Not particularly hard or complex. Or long. Or big. Idk. I just thought it had a certain charm to it. But if your still bored with it after 3 or 4 hours, you probably won't like the rest of it. It's about the same the rest of the way through after that point. Fable 2 was better, but not by much.