Last game you finished, tell us about it

Yes, I would say it's replayability is close to zero. The game unlocks some second wave options upon finishing it, but I would be surprised if they threw the formula around heavily enough to warrant another playthrough. I finished this campaign with a few second wave options to make my soldiers a little interesting, but even though I loved it, I don't see myself replaying it.

I completed it without the expansion, and loved every minute of it. Well, except the very last mission - which I thought was undercooked.

It came close to that original X-Com feeling, which I didn't really expect.

I've been trying to replay with EW, but knowing what happens means I can't stay interested. I also find I'm not fully satisfied with the limited options during tactical play - and I feel the original had more a better arsenal of choice.

But a proper sequel would really do wonders :)

I long for a cooperative mode in X-Com. One can dream!
 
Yes, I would say it's replayability is close to zero. The game unlocks some second wave options upon finishing it, but I would be surprised if they threw the formula around heavily enough to warrant another playthrough. I finished this campaign with a few second wave options to make my soldiers a little interesting, but even though I loved it, I don't see myself replaying it.

Yeah, I think the game got a bit repetitive in the end. I also didn't like the enemy spawn mechanism.

I think that was badly implemented. Gameplay was fun other than that though.
 
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Oooops still no post from Maylander about TW3... I wonder if he is on gaming vacation ?
 
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Finished playing Shining Force for the umpteenth time, although this was the first time on my pc. It played just fine, and was perhaps even more fun on the pc vs a console. Now I'm onto Alpha Protocol! After AP, I believe I'll be heading straight into Shining Force Two.
 
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Playing the Mass Effect trilogy back to back for the first time, I finished Mass Effect 2 last night.

I enjoyed this considerably more than part 1 and spent almost twice as long playing the game at 33 hours on the Steam clock vs. 17 hours for the first part.
This was the Steam Digital Deluxe Edition which I bought during a Steam sale a few years back so I also had some of the DLC installed like the pretty fun Firewalker vehicle missions.
I imported my Shepard from a Mass Effect 1 save and once again went for the Infiltrator class. Finished the game at level 26.

To me, the game was better than part 1 in just about every regard. It had the better mechanics, the more interesting characters, a more interesting story, almost everything…. the only area where the game might have been a little weaker was the choices.
In part 1, you got to make some rather monumental choices like who was going to become the human councilor but there seemed to be nothing even close on that scale in Mass Effect 2.

Regarding the crew and characters, I really liked how BioWare finally deviated from their usual prototypes. I thought it was interesting how none of the crew members was really a shining flawless personality or real buddy types. They all had their quirks and their dark sides. I felt that this was perfect for the setting where you are the commanding officer on a paramilitary mission.
I also very much liked Shepard again. (Almost) no emo bullshit but a character who knows what he wants and who tells it like it is, a real commander and leader who gives clear and concise orders… thumbs up.

As far as the story goes, I found it to be pretty good overall but it became quite confusing towards the end. I'm not sure I have an idea anymore how the (heretic) Geth, the Proteans, the Reapers and the Collectors are related to each other. WTF?
Oh well, I guess it's good enough to know they're all out ta get ya, right?
I also partially enjoyed the part on the final leg where…

… you got to choose crew members for the "suicide mission".
The only lame part was that on a few of those choices there was no way to tell that particular crew member would die.
For example, I knew that assigning someone to a certain solo task might result in their death but I also thought that those characters you picked to go with you were "safe" or that you'd at least have a chance or choice to rescue them. That was obviously not the case. I lost Tali when she got dragged away by those swarms. That sucked a bit.

The good:

- Interesting story, (side) quests and characters
- Nicely done Normandy where crew members constantly comment on the mission or any other progress on the ship etc.
- Mostly interesting and diverse locations
- Visually pleasing
- Joker & EDI
- Great research and (ship) upgrade system
- Shepard's cabin with the fish and the ship models etc.

As for things I did not like very much in ME2:

- The resource gathering with the planet scanning was mind numbingly boring after a while. Great and motivating research and (ship) upgrade system but the resource gathering was just a boring timesink.
- Like in part 1, the levels were too predictable most of the time with the typical cover shooter design. If you saw a row of boxes, rocks or walls coming up, you knew that an enemy spawn was incoming in 3, 2, 1…
- Some parts could have been a little shorter. One word: Husks.
- Before I even began playing, it took a good hour (at least) of tweaking to mitigate the consolitis (adopt the FoV and stuff like that). Thanks to no plain text INI files, I had to download extra mod tools to achieve the changes I wanted. It was pretty annoying and time consuming. BioWare need to work harder on their PC ports. A lot harder.
- Some minor cheesy facepalm-worthy story moments and logical loopholes
- A few crashes that on two occasions dragged the whole system (had to reboot since CTRL+ALT+DEL did nothing) with them. Those crashes were mostly related to cutscenes and after extensive planet scanning.

On a whole, I'd rate the game somewhere between an 8 and 8.5. This is one of the cases where I would have to go with a 0 to 100 score system because 8 would seem slightly too low to me and 8.5 slightly too high so let's settle for an 82 :) .

Now playing Mass Effect 3, of course, which I've only just begun with an imported save after once again spending the better part of an hour exterminating the consolitis (as far as that is at all possible anyway). It was similarly annoying as with part 2 since you once again have to use extra mod tools and dig pretty deep to edit the config files.
Oh well, very impressive opening scene so far but also some confusion as far as the early story is concerned.
HUGE WTF moment for me: Why is Anderson no longer a councilor and why does he suggest that I as a former Spectre should go to the Citadel to speak with the council because I'd be more influential than him? WHAT?
I made Anderson (instead of Udina) the councilor in part 1. The last time I saw Anderson in ME2 he was the human councilor. He might not have been overly happy due to all the political bullshit and bickering but he seemed to cope. As the former (why former anyway?) councilor wouldn't the council be much more inclined to listen to Anderson than to me who is just an ex-operative?
Very weird. I hope that this is going to get cleared up within the next hour of gameplay or so…

Finally, here's some screenies from "my" Shepard's Mass Effect 2 adventures:
 

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Played and just finally finished Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup a rogue-like single player game. Took me many many tries, but finally did a 15 rune win with my deep dwarf fighter. Great game if you're not bothered by relatively poor graphics, LOTS of races and class backgrounds. Big game with many items, many monsters that have different attacks/abilities, lots of levels (about a 100 levels plus a few infinite levels), if you liked Dungeons of Dredmor, Tales of Maj'Eyal or Sword of the Stars: The Pit, you'll like this. Oh and btw its free…..
 
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Playing the Mass Effect trilogy back to back for the first time, I finished Mass Effect 2 last night.

Love that game. I tend to overlook the flaws in games that please me this much, so I'd probably score it higher.
 
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Seeing those screens reminds me of one of the reasons I didn't like ME2 as much as the first game. I thought the color pallet seemed somewhat limited, and most of the scenes in the game are very dark, as if the Gamma was turned way down or something. It drove me nuts.

In response to your first spoiler..

It's possible to finish with everyone alive, so you must have made a wrong choice at some point. Did you complete Tali's loyalty mission?

A far as your 2nd spoiler is concerned.. c'mon man it's Bioware. They've never exactly been known for story consistency or caring about all the player's choices. :)
 
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As for things I did not like very much in ME2:

- The resource gathering with the planet scanning was mind numbingly boring after a while. Great and motivating research and (ship) upgrade system but the resource gathering was just a boring timesink.
Sadly, someone at EA thought it's fantastic and returned that design crime ME2 grinding sonar into Dragon Age:Bears.
 
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Moriendor, looking at your screenies, I'm curious. Did you end up killing Jacob in his loyalty mission? I'm guessing you didn't end up saving every squad member by the time you finished the game? Aah, ME2, I loved that game as well. Maybe time for replay! :)
 
@JDR & purplebob: Guess I got to put the whole post in spoiler tags…

Whaaaattt? Scandalous! So it's actually possible to get everyone through there alive? Aaaawwww crap! :biggrin:

I got out with eight team members alive (including Jacob). Strange though. I did all of the crew missions. In fact, I first picked up everyone, then did their missions, went to the Citadel last and then followed up on the IFF Reaper thing before proceeding on to the "suicide mission".
You know, since it's called that, I thought it would be inevitable that some people would die and you just get to pick who. Guess not huh? O_O

Let's see… Jack and Geth died doing some solo stuff (I don't remember what I assigned them to do) but there was nothing I could do at that time about preventing their deaths.
I didn't mind though. As I said, I intentionally assigned "expendable" crew members to solo tasks because I had a hunch they might not return.
And Tali died when she was with me and Miranda. After that part where you had to stay close to Miranda with her biotic barrier up (kind of like that sorceress in The Witcher 2). Then there was a cutscene and some swarm attacked and dragged Tali away with no chance of interference. That was pretty surprising and slightly sad because I would have liked to keep Tali.

Oh well, with the exception of Tali where I really can not see what went wrong (Jack and Geth might not have been suitable for the tasks I assigned them to), no biggie. I actually like it when a game forces you to stick with certain choices.

EDIT: Ah, I found the solution to my "Tali problem" in this awesome post. This image explains it all…
capturewafbcj19lh.png


As I said, I assigned Jack to do something else so she wasn't available or dead already. So it was either Miranda or Samara (I chose to get rid of Morinth in favor of Samara) and I picked Miranda which resulted in the "Anyone else" casualty as pictured above. No way to see that one coming really...
So I should have picked Samara instead of Miranda to keep Tali alive. Too bad.
 
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Moriendor:
It's crucial who you've picked to do certain things (like biotic barrier or lead second group) and if they are loyal or not.

In my first playthrough, I've let Samara take the second group, which resulted in Legion's death because Samara doesn't have leader experience - I think right choices were Garrus, Miranda or Jacob. Likewise, for the biotic barrier thing, you have to choose either Jack or Samara/Morinth. Last one, you take the weakest members so the stronger members stay back to survive reaper/collector rush, if I remember correctly. I've made another mistake here in my playthrough - I took Thane and Garrus, which resulted in team members left behind being too weak to survive reaper/collector attack, end result, I lost Miranda who wasn't loyal to me (well, I did her loyalty mission, but then I didn't have high enough paragon point to persuade her during Jack vs Miranda fiasco).

Also, I think it's strange the game didn't take in your choices made in ME1/2. Did you import the correct save?? Because my import worked fine and choices were carried through.
 
Moriendor:

It's crucial who you've picked to do certain things (like biotic barrier or lead second group) and if they are loyal or not.

In my first playthrough, I've let Samara take the second group, which resulted in Legion's death because Samara doesn't have leader experience - I think right choices were Garrus, Miranda or Jacob. Likewise, for the biotic barrier thing, you have to choose either Jack or Samara/Morinth. Last one, you take the weakest members so the stronger members stay back to survive reaper/collector rush, if I remember correctly. I've made another mistake here in my playthrough - I took Thane and Garrus, which resulted in team members left behind being too weak to survive reaper/collector attack, end result, I lost Miranda who wasn't loyal to me (well, I did her loyalty mission, but then I didn't have high enough paragon point to persuade her during Jack vs Miranda fiasco).

Also, I think it's strange the game didn't take in your choices made in ME1/2. Did you import the correct save?? Because my import worked fine and choices were carried through.

Thanks for the pointers :) . The picture in that post at the BW forums I linked to explains it really well, too.
The thing is when I had to make the choice who carries the biotic barrier, I had Miranda and Tali in my party. Then the game gave me the choice to pick between Miranda and Samara.
At that point there is absolutely no way to know that Samara would have been the "better" choice.
So I just picked Miranda since she was already in the party anyway and unfortunately that resulted in Tali's death.

A bit of a pity but no big deal in the end. I would not really call it "mistake" like you did either :) . It would be boring to read a guide beforehand and do it perfectly. I thought it was mostly well done by BioWare since it feels like you have to make tough choices and people will die.
But the game probably should have hinted a little stronger at Samara/Morinth being a better choice when Jack is not available at that time. If you play for the first time, how are you supposed to know you have to choose one of them and not Miranda? We're not Nostradamus ;) .

As for transferring the choices from ME1/2, that actually worked perfectly from ME1 to ME2. And when I imported my save to ME3 it showed me my ME2 options so I'm guessing that worked, too.
However, as I said, I was surprised to see Captain Anderson in the opening scene saying something like I should go talk to the council since I was an ex-Spectre and had good connections to the council.
In ME1, I installed Anderson on the council instead of Ambassador Udina. The last time I saw Anderson at the Citadel in ME2 he wasn't too happy but when we parted he said something like he'll hang in there and so on…
So I'm just very surprised that Anderson talks as if *I* have better connections to the council than *him*. Huh? He is (was?) the human councilor. He's a council member which is as close to the council as you can get. And yet he suggests I should go talk to the council because I'm an ex-Spectre and they would surely listen to me? What? Why doesn't he do it?
OK, I'm less than an hour into ME3 so maybe it all gets cleared up what happened between ME2 and ME3 but as someone who just finished ME2 (without the Arrival DLC by the way) it is a strange beginning because according to my last knowledge Anderson is the human councilor.


EDIT: Ah, the beauty of the Internet :) . Someone was wondering about the same thing with Captain Anderson and it is explained in the Codex that he stepped down as Councilor between ME2 and ME3.
 
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OK, I'm less than an hour into ME3

In that case, I'd consider redoing the end of ME2. Tali is one of your permanent companions in ME3 if she survives.

She also plays a fairly important role in some story elements. If she dies in ME2, another Quarian will take her place for the story bits. I thought Tali being there felt right though.

All in all, I guess it just boils down to how much you like her. :)
 
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In that case, I'd consider redoing the end of ME2. Tali is one of your permanent companions in ME3 if she survives.

She also plays a fairly important role in some story elements. If she dies in ME2, another Quarian will take her place for the story bits. I thought Tali being there felt right though.

All in all, I guess it just boils down to how much you like her. :)
Noooooooooo… I was hoping she'd only have a minor role. Bummer. Thanks for the info though :) . Now I might actually replay the final mission and restart ME3. Going to have to meditate on that….
 
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If you are going back to suicide mission, I would try to save Legion as well. I think having him there makes Tali mission more sense too... (I'm a fan of Legion!) :D
 
If you are going back to suicide mission, I would try to save Legion as well. I think having him there makes Tali mission more sense too… (I'm a fan of Legion!) :D

Hehe, to be honest, I consider Legion highly expendable and according to this diagram showing the structure of the final mission, I am afraid it is too late for my poor Legion :) .
Reason being that the final mission autosave starts at the squad selection screen with the two specialists (vents and fireteam) already assigned so I guess I'm locked into losing Legion because I chose Thane to lead the fireteam instead one of the others (my reasoning was Thane is sick and about to die anyway so if he would die on his solo mission then no big deal).
There is no way I'm going back to an even older save for Legion so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohXI3po8hK0

:biggrin:
 
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