Meanwhile, since the reviews for the Arrival are a bit weak I guess i'll wait for a sale to buy it.

Oh. The way dvdjunkie32 worded his post made me think you had to swap discs back and forth on several ocassions. If it's just once, that's no big deal.

That's a bit disconcerting. I was hoping that if you installed the game to your HDD then you wouldn't have to suffer the disc swap. I'm aware that it would open the possibility for unscrupulous players to install the game to two consoles and play off each disc, but that could easily be remedied by making only Disc 1 "playable" off the HDD so the second disc would be useless.

I started playing Arrival yesterday and I'm not liking it so far. It actually inspired me to quit after the first action setpiece. It was the quite stale action setpiece of "handle waves of baddies while I pretend to do something in a corner and make no attempt to defend myself". Hopefully it gets better but that's not a good start.

Just finished Arrival. It wasn't bad just meh. I wont complain about the story since Lair Of The Shadow Broker was weak in that aspect as well. But the gameplay was rather redundant here. And I never encountered that stealth portion that MrX mentioned.

I did find it funny how obvious it was that they didn't even get Seth Green to voice any new dialogue.

It's the first part, where you are rescuing the doctor. You don't have to do it as a stealth mission, but you get an achievement if you make it to where she is being held without being seen.

Oh, okay. That's probably why I missed it. I thought there was to be some setup for it as a stealth mission.

On the PC..how do you get your squad mates to do their special powers?

On the pause button (I think it's the shift key but don't remember). It's the same button you use to access your different powers (assuming you didn't already asign them to hotkeys). The squad abilities should appear as well under each squadmate in your away team.

Thanks Roc.

Next question:

When trying to acquire Professor Mordin Solus, when I am entering the enviroment control facility..the blood pack are sitting up in these platforms, firing rockets at my squad. Problem is..I can't charge up there to fight them...any good stratergies?

I need to replay that section cos my memory is fuzzy. But I think I took them on at long range (behind cover) by doubling up whatever biotic abilites my squadmates had handy while I laid suppressing fire (my Shepard was a soldier class).

Sniper rifle will work wonders there

Once you have a leveled up Shepard (on a second playthrough) the sniper rifle makes short work of heavies and mechs.

Thanks guys. I died maybe like 20-25 times, and it was frustrating because I would survive a couple of waves..then die (Couldn't save once in the enviromental control room).

What happened was I was getting way overzealous with my Charging..I would charge in, without a escape path..then die easy.

Sniper rifle was my favorite in me2. You could use it like artillery by wounding enemies from far away and let your squad mates finish them off

Good time to pick up DLC for the 360 now.

-Arrival - 280 Microsoft Points - 50% off
-Lair of the Shadow Broker - 400 Microsoft Points - 50% off
-Kasumi's Stolen Memory - 280 Microsoft Points - 50% off

I'll finally grab Arrival.

Ditto. This will go real nice with all the DLC I got at the end of 2010 for next-to-nothing. Now to actually play through them sometime...

Those are some pretty good deals.

Kasumi's Stolen Memory isn't great (mainly because it's over far too soon) but Kasumi is such a loveable character that it was great to have her as part of the crew.

Lair of the Shadow Broker is DLC done right. It's varied and fun. The story (though not anything truly memorable) has a great vibe to it and I especially enjoyed the banter with Liara. It made me wish more in-mission banter had been added via DLC for other parts of the game since it made the characters feel more "real".

Arrival is the only one I wouldn't recommend. Not even on sale. It feels lazy and sloppy and is just downright crap.

Now that Mass Effect 3 is coming out so soon, I've finally revisited ME2 and am just having a blast.

I played through the entire game when it came out without any DLC but Zaeed, so I purchased all the DLC available and man oh man I forgot how amazing this game is.

I've read that I should hold off on Arrival and Shadow Broker until after I complete the main story since they chronologically make more sense that way.

Kasumi is a great partner. Her sneak attack is fantastic and incredibly strong. ME3 can't come soon enough. And on my birthday no less!

I would say Arrival should be played after the main story, as a sort of epilogue, but Shadow Broker can be played whenever.

That said, keep your expectations very low concerning Arrival.

Damn barely 10 hours into this game and it's already way better the the first one. So far I've gotten The Professor [he's to ] and Archangel [Garrus u rock!]. I love how the game just started off at an action pace. The Storytelling, conversations, interactions is just awesome. Paragon interruptions!
And Thank U better frequent checkpoints.

The graphics which were real good in the first and damn more impressive here. Just arriving on Omega and seeing the club was sweet, then getting the new Normandy was

The combat I'm enjoying more than before, love using cover which is simple. I hardly ever used in the first one now I do [Gear of War style]. Squad Commands are better this time which is a plus.

Customizing the armor and the new display information windows [exp, paragon, info] is ... mining and exploring is so much fum now, screw U Mako!

Only thing I don't like so far is the Data-pad hacking.

anyway it's already , hope it continues and it gets better.

Soldier Lvl 27 on Normal
100% Paragon 15% Renegade
55H 22M [fucking scanning planets!] 209 saves
All Crew Loyal/survived [Too many characters this time... always took Miranda with me and just cycled all others]
PG 13 Miranda [too damn F.I.N.E. fine too pass up]

Thug Liara

Tali=
Jack=awesome


This game was just too fucking awesome...



now I'm gonna read all post on this thread

damn that was a long read.

I am 24 hours into my 6th playthrough of this game. Decided to pick it up on the ps3 and started right into an insanity run. When I played Insanity before, I used the Infiltrator, and my bonus power was warp ammo (I also did a run with reave) I never messed with cryo ammo, since it seemed worthless on insanity with every enemy having layers of protection.

On this run I changed things up.

Squad Cryo Ammo=Godly. I was not thinking right when it came to the crowd control of cryo. While every enemy in this game has some form of protection on insanity, those layers are stripped away real easy. When you are fighting 5-6 guys, you can focus on taking out their protection and then move on. At that point your squad decimates them with cryo ammo. Enemies are frozen almost instantly if your team is using something like the tempest smg. No one shoots you and they all take bonus damage.

I took stasis just for the hell of it as a bonus power. This power is amazing. It will take anyone out of a fight, no matter their layers of protection. YMIR mechs that can make your life hell on insanity will freeze then fall down. When they are down they take 4X or more damage. On insanity with an smg, I can take one out in about 15 seconds and they never get a shot off. Works on Scion's just as well.

This game is just so good

In video games you really can't underestimate paralysis powers for crowd control and taking down the giant enemies. In Fallout 3 there's the Paralyzing Palm attack, which only works when unarmed (unarmed being extremely ineffective otherwise). But with that attack (and a high critical rate), the most difficult enemies are paralyzed and vulnerable for a full 30 seconds.

In the Mass Effect games, I immediately picked up the Stasis power. It's invaluable not only for taking the most dangerous enemy out of play for a period of time, but also (and this is where it shines) protecting NPCs during escort missions, or even members of your own team if they are near death and you are waiting for the medigel timer to refill. Mass Effect 2 was nice in that it worked even against armored enemies (invaluable for insanity), but ME3 was nice because enemies were vulnerable while in stasis. Combined with fewer armored enemies for ME3 insanity, it makes it useful for all ME games.