I strongly dislike Zaeed. Probably because on my first playthrough (Paragon) I didn't solve his loyalty quest to his satisfaction* (like Hell I was going to let him put his personal revenge ahead of saving the refinery employees) and then spent the rest of the game worrying if this would count against me saving my entire squad. Luckily, it doesn't.

* Though everyone else seems to have a degree more freedom

Also his character is an afterthought crappy free DLC thing.

This is the single bad thing about combat in ME2. Before, you had to wait for your pistol to cool down. Now, you have to wait for it to reload, AND you have to go hunt ammo. I thought they were trying to eliminate tediousness? What gives?

Then- you sit behind a rock
Now- you move around to collect ammo

Different, less tedious.

What? That's MORE tedious. Hunting for ammo takes MUCH more effort than waiting for your weapon to cool. Not to mention you STILL have to reload so the effect is the same!

And if you had certain biotic abilities in ME1, you could slow or even stop your weapon from ever overheating.

the only time ive ever thought of picking up ammo as tedious is this time on my infiltrator run. and thats probably just because im a bad shot :/

Oh come now, reloading takes less then half a second.
With ME1 alot of people would just hide behind a rock and wait for their weapons special to recharge, now you are forced to venture out of your cave every once and a while.

If you stick to a sniper rifle like I like to do, you run out of ammo very quickly, even if you land every shot.

Tibby's right in that it makes you run around more, but that's not a good thing, that's a bad thing.

Forcing a change in your tactics is a good thing, it forces you to learn new ones and thus the games difficulty curve works.
Otherwise it's either **** easy for anyone who already played ME1, or hard for those who didn't.

Two interesting things. I was looking up romance scenes on youtube to save myself the hassle of a third playthrough anytime soon, and found this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ja3EjKOqTU&feature=related

may not be SFW...

Also, anyone else have issues with Jack taking cover? She starts floating straight up on my game...

That is so not Kelly's color.

As for the ammo thing, ME2 has made use of cover so much more vital that by also forcing you to hunt for ammunition mid-combat, the game comes off as a little schizophrenic. I don't like it and think the combat system would have been better without it, even without considering the continuity issue it presents.

You don't have to worry about ammo if you use your powers and your teammates' powers well.

Sitting in one spot throughout the combat is both ridiculous and utterly boring. You're not playing a world war 2 sniper parked atop a church tower sniping enemy forces who show their face amongst the buildings below. You are playing the role of a field commander. You have to be mobile.

And the whole, ME2 making cover more crucial as an excuse to stay in one spot sure doesn't show off skill. You can sprint from cover to cover. As an infiltrator, you can cloak your self and sprint across the battlefield to flank your enemies from behind. You have plenty of shield and health to sprint from cover to cover smartly on insanity difficulty. Those of you playing on casual, normal or veteran should have no problem, and if you can't pull it off on insanity, then you're out of your league.

Again, the game is designed to be a mobile, tactical experience, not a sit pretty and snipe every head off one. Don't blame the game because you refuse to play properly. Its like trying to play soccer with a football. Two things meant for utterly different games.

Yeah, and so it should be, but it should be that way because the AI is challenging and will get too close and ruin your cover, or flank you and ruin your cover. You shouldn't have to stop what you're doing and go hunt for ammo, that's just an annoyance. Besides, I've never actually left combat to go find ammo. My main concern is that I have to go hunt for ammo after each wave in preparation for the next one. They removed other annoyances like tedious weapon upgrades and scouring for ore on the far reaches of planetary maps, but they added this rubbish.


And what if the way to "play properly" is crap? Stop trying to justify poor design decisions.

The uncanny valley is at its worst when characters interact close up. It's like they do all the animations with generic skeletons and everything ends up clipping together. I thought there were some good animation middleware solutions that were supposed to take care of this crap. Why aren't they being used yet?



No, but I've found many collision detection bugs. Sometimes I run into a crate or a desk and I pop up on top of it, and have a hard time getting down. In the side mission where you investigate the ship ruins on the cliff side, I was walking down a girder when suddenly I was floating 10 feet mid air and not able to get down...

While I agree the ammo system isn't perfect, I find its better than the easy peasy 'sky is the limit' overheating of the first game. Hell you could remove said overheating from almost any weapons later on in the game with the proper upgrade, allowing you to sit up and constantly fire blindly.

Could they have made the ammo/thermal clip system better? Yes.

Is it as terrible as most make it out to be? I don't think so.

You're given 2-3 guns (minimum), with different, proper uses, so change up and use them properly. The sniper rifle is overpowered from the get go, and makes things far too easy. Giving you more ammo, or worse, infinite ammo, would have made playing this game a snore fest.

It's the worst thing I've found with the game so far, which is saying something. The only other thing is that I miss the "advanced" inventory of the first game. I think it's problems were caused by a very poor in-game UI rather than complexity of the system.

I found the worst issue was the health / shields system and hud. Its hard to read, and its a bit lame. I think they should have stuck to the original system, with free unity on a 3 minute cooldown, and given each character an automatic health-regen like the soldiers and krogans had in ME1.

I don't miss the annoying armor and ammo upgrade system. I used to just stick one or two specific upgrades on my guns and just forget about it. I should have made better use of it, but really, they never really made it premordial to use them. I beat the game on Hardcore without thoughtful use of that system (eg. didn't bother with shredder and tungsen rounds, etc.)

I think it would be neat to see a new, redesigned version of that system return in ME3, one that wasn't quite as troublesome to use.

While sometimes cumbersome, I really don't find the ammo issue to be that big of a deal really. It makes you think more strategically, and like a few have said, makes the game more of a challenge. I've never gotten to the point where'd I've completely run out. Utilizing team members and their biotics is a great way to avoid running dry too. Especially on the peons (loki's, blue suns, etc).

The only thing that slightly disappoints me is the scarcity of heave weapons ammo, and how it does not replenish after each mission. I'd like to utilize the M-92 alot more then I normally do.. heh.

Most people that complain about the ammo just want to sit pretty behind cover and shoot heads off without any threat or challenge.

Vaulting over cover and actually advancing through a room is much more thrilling, and lets you recover ammo as you go if need be. It's weird, though: I did struggle for ammo a bit on my first playthrough (except for the SMG), but I've found it much more plentiful the second time around. Must just need to adapt a little to the new system. Then again, I've also stuck with the Predator pistol rather than upgrading to the Carnifex as I've found the higher ammo count more than offsets the additional damage.

Bring on the cream, Matty!

Wrong. As Emon touched on, ammo should not be the reason you have to pop out of cover constantly, even as a sniper. You're the savior of the galaxy, you have a nigh-unlimited budget, and ridiculously advanced technology.

Are you trying to tell me that any sort of person in that situation would only bring ~10 shots with them?

If ME2's designers wanted people to move out of cover more often, they should give the enemies skills/AI capable of forcing me out of cover. There's an infinite number of ways they could have done this without ever needing to apply the tedious action of scavenging for ammo.

A. More/faster rushing units like the husks and krogan.
B. Grenades.
C. Enemy biotic use. Anyone notice how this was pretty much entirely missing from ME2? Try hiding behind cover while your *** is being pulled towards a group of asari commandos. The only thing you ever see is various energy balls flying around, which the AI does not even attempt to bankshot.
D. Less cover/more flanking positions.
E. More enemy snipers.

Besides, what really, really ticked me off, is that for half of the missions, I was given such little ammo that I not only ran out of sniper ammo, but heavy pistol as well. I was even getting close to running out of SMG.

The overheating issue giving way to unlimited firing was a bit silly in ME1, but that's something you adjust, not remove completely. Seriously, tweak a few numbers around, and suddenly that problem goes away. Hell, even going back to the original storyline issue with this: guns USED to self-cool, they should now! What the ammo should do, is act as quick cooldowns. Pick one up, and it removes, say, 25% of your overheat. Then simply make overheating cool down much slower (easily explained by having higher power equipment 2 years later), and the problem is solved. It helps people who rambo through the game, as they can easily pick up these cooldown containers. As for snipers, they can either take it slow and hope they don't get flanked, or move from position to position as you do now. At least then you have a choice, and no real threat of going "crap, I may run COMPLETELY OUT OF AMMO".

I honestly believe the only thing that should have been left with ammo was the heavy weapons. That made sense, and they give you just enough to be useful without being able to run through entire missions using it.

You make good points. I guess you're looking at it from the 'what could(should?) have been' perspective, while I'm looking at it from a 'this how it is, its not so bad, adjust your play style' perspective. In my opinion, the devs wanted players to play in a certain manner and tailored the mechanics around this vision. I can't say I approve of all the choices, and they could have researched these issues some more.

For one, as you point out, the changes make no sense from a technological stand point. That we can all agree on. Infinite ammo and overheating weapons vs thermal-clip juggling weapons is no improvement. The ONLY upgrade is that as long as you have ammo you have no lengthy down times, AND tech abilities cannot cause your weapon to overheat. On the other hand, run out of ammo and you're SOL.

In terms of AI, I've found that on Veteran and above, enemies do attempt to flank you. This is particularly obvious in missions such as Archangel's Last Stand and Miranda's sister relocation.

In terms of enemy biotics, they will throw them, but seldom have it curve to hit you behind cover. When it does hit you, it'll be while your shields are still up which has no effect beond a little damage, just like you throwing biotics at a shielded enemy. I've had a few biotics hit me and send me flying when my shields were down but it was extremely rare. I have, however, not noticed any enemy overloading my armor, incinerate or cryo blast me.

So yes, from a what could have been standpoint, ammo was a mistake, trying to justify it as an upgrade in the lore was even worse. I don't, however, find that it hinders the gameplay to a point where it renders the Mass Effect experience a bad one. On my Vanguard or Sentinels (on Veteran, Hardcore or Insanity) I've had no issues with ammo. I don't think I can remember ever running entirely dry.

If I use the Carfax Hand Cannon, however, I will run out of heavy pistol ammo fast.

Through and through though, I agree its not a perfect system.

has anyone used morinth yet? i was hoping to get her instead of samara my last game but i didn't have enough renegade points to try

Usually, after defeating a group an enemies your ammo gets loaded back up. Near the end, with all the upgrades, I got low on ammo, but never ran out.

I've got her on my current Renegade play through. I didn't realise you had to pass any Paragon/Renegade checks to get her, just help Morinth in her fight against Samara. Doesn't seem to change much as far as I can tell, anyway. Kelly and Joker mention something about her being different, she gets one less power, but looks and talks the same. I think, anyway; she wasn't in Samara's room on the Normandy when I went looking for her after the mission, even though the elevator menu lists her as being on deck 3. But when you talk to her after helping her win, she adopts Samara's voice and clothes.

Edit: Heh, just found Morinth. She was sat in the corner of the same room Samara uses, on the couch. And she's even using her own voice. I guess it wasn't as shallow a change as I initially took it for.

There are a couple parts where the ammo is really an issue. Only due to it not being available like it should.

When you do the boss battle directly after meeting Okeer, (this is playing as an infiltrator) the mech, plus two krogan, plus the specialist with the rocket launcher. They usually clean our your squad pretty quickly. So either you're mowing through medigel or you're ammo becomes an issue taking out two armored krogan, a shielded/armored heavy mech, and a shielded/armored specialist.

I think it really depends on who's in your squad, it's the balancing factor for ammo. Taking down shields and armor with just bullets is not sensible. You need disrupt and fire techs or you WILL run out of ammo. (I don't even count heavy weapons most of the time, since I prefer to save the ammo for random "SHEPARD MAKE BOOM" moments that make me laugh.)

I bet the whole reason why ammo is like a sacred jem is because they want people to use biotics more.

I don't really like biotics. Techs are more useful...

Ammo hasn't been a problem for me; perhaps you guys are bad shots? Or you haven't upgraded your weapons properly? Or you're using the wrong ammo types on certain defenses?

I much prefer this system to the "wait and hide for 30 seconds while it cools" approach from the last game.

Yea, I hate to say anyone is lacking accuracy or skill... but really, I've had no issues with ammo even playing a Sentinel on Hardcore, a class who has access to only 2 guns (heavy pistol + smg), or a vanguard on Insanity (pistol, smg, shotgun(15 shots)). And on hardcore and insanity, *everything* has armor or shields or both, which requires more ammo to break through.

You really do have to make use of your companion's tech and biotic abilities. If you don't you're not playing right. You're trying to hit a homerun with a tennis racket.

That sounds like a challenge!

:hist101::hist101::hist101::hist101:
:hist101::hist101::hist101::hist101:

Okay, I have to bring this up. Why does everyone give ME1 so much **** for the long elevator rides on the citadel? Everyone knew they were for loading purposes, and instead of sitting infront of a boring *** useless loading screen, they think an elevator ride with news commentary on past missions is worse?? WTF???

Because the screens we have now showing a wireframe ME relay or SR2 is sooo much better.

they gotta have something to ***** about. i thought the elevator rides were fun, it added to the grandness and immersion of ME1 which i thought was somewhat lacking in ME2.

Because they caved to the popular (read: loud) opinion of various idiotic (read: Xbox) players.

Sometimes on the Xbox it would get stuck, also the sheer amount of them annoyed some people.
I agree though, better then looking at the Normandy start her engines over and over.

Didn't read through it all because of the spoilers, but so far I'm freaking loving this game.

Why is it that they can load huge, beautiful scenes in cities or outdoor environments but have to split the rather small Normandy in to 4 different loading zones? Does anyone have a real answer to this? It makes no damn sense at all.