Now there's no excuse (Mass Effect 2)

I should have stuck with that. Ah well, there's always the next save. Also, should I try to reach lv 30 after doing Project Overlord, or should I save it for the next save, which also has the comic, which I understand will boost me a couple?

Reaching lvl 30 doesn't make a great deal of difference, so other than unlocking a Trophy there's not much point in playing just to reach that level. Overlord's a fun (if a touch short) bit of DLC though, and the scenario ends up being so grim that even there's a Paragon interrupt where Shep loses his cools and pistol whips someone. Yes, thats right, pistol whipping someone is a Paragon interrupt.

The ending was the only interesting part of it. Overlord is the only mission in the game that I can't stand.

I played Arrival a few days ago. Not as good as the Shadow Broker, but I liked not having my teammates around.

I liked Overlord. Had it been three or four hours, I'd have got bored but an hour and a half was about right. LotSB was much better though, I'll give you that. Still not bought Arrival, I'm slogging through Dragon Age 2 again that they've patched it trying to get all those missed / glitched achievements.

Speaking of glitches, I read that the Arrival patch brought a new glitch that messes up the Genesis' choices. I hope they fix it soon, because I want to start again and pick a new class... or maybe I should complete my previous file (female Engineer, loyal to Kaidan, on Insanity). So far I've completed it with Adept (thrice I think), Soldier and Vanguard.

By "Genesis" choices, does that include a character imported through ME1 on 360? On the subject of ME, I've been doing a little bit of reading on ME3, and what I'm hearing restores every ounce of doubt inflicted by the slightly underwhelming DA2. The gameplay will be much like ME2s (which was excellent), but you'll have much more choice with regards to levelling up your abilities - there'll be more skill trees and they'll branch repeatedly (rather than just at Lvl4 like in ME2) meaning you'll have a lot more choice with your character build.

ME2 would likely top my list of all-time favourite games, and if ME3 really can give the trilogy the finale it deserves then it'll be a shoe-in for game of the year.

Yes, I'm well behind, but I've only just beaten Arrival. Not, it's not as good as LotSB, but it's an interesting bridge into ME3, and

Spoiler:

If you beat Arrival before the suicide mission,

Spoiler:

Pretty cool. Arrival actually feels like it's set a fair time after the events of ME2s main story, because the shot at the end of ME2 shows the Reapers are on the edge of the galaxy, yet Arrival says they're two days away.

I'd have said Arrival is meant to take place roughly a year after ME2, because that's the time that elapsed between the release of the main game and this DLC, at least on 360.

It was also interesting to note how rusty I am; playing as my uber-Paragon Vanguard, I died lots. My aim was all over the place, and I simply wasn't in tune with the Vanguard playstyle. Given I've spent over two hundred hours playing ME2, it felt odd behaving like a newcomer again.

Also...

Spoiler:

I got this and played a little yesterday. Even though the comic explained some things, I'm going to watch through this well done youtube playlist of the first game to get more into the universe and the story before I continue playing.

I had unbelieveably bad luck today.

I did Garrus' loyalty mission fairly quickly then I went on to do Thane's. When I went to talk to Mouse, i thought I skipped one conversation option(I actually didn't), so I just quickly reloaded my quick save and did it again, but for some messed up reason, when I got up to some other part in the conversation, it took out the Shepard VI option(I wanted to get one for myself) so I had to redo the convo AGAIN. Unfortunately, it auto saved randomly after it was over(even though it didn't the first time), so I had to redo all of Garrus' loyalty mission again since that was my last non-auto save file. Then i had to redo it again because I missed my sniper rifle damage upgrade in my haste to get it over with again. Good lord.

The one time I decide to not bother doing a proper save after a mission and I get screwed over and wasted my time. Remember, always save!



And yeah, as you've probably guessed, I'm taking my sweet time with this game. I've really got into it and I want to savour it as much as I can. I mostly do only two or three missions a day along with some probe grinding on planets here and there. For the past few days I'm just slowly finishing every side-quest and such before the IFF thing.

'Kay, I just went "screw it" and finished the game instead of only doing one or two things at a time(to make up for it as I didn't play for a bit a while back). My whole crew survived too, yay.

I'll tackle the Overlord DLC later(I saved it for post-game so can reach level 30 in this playthrough). Then I'll take a break from ME for a while and play through Arkham Asylum(which I haven't done so since its release) to psych me up for AC. After that I'll come back and do the Arrival DLC and then do my Insanity go around(on another new game, not new game+). Wish I just did it from the get go since Normal turned out to be such smooth sailing, but hey, a good excuse to do a renegade playthrough.

Which class did you use?

Infiltrator. I'll probably take a whack at Soldier or Vanguard for the Insanity run.

Ah yeah, Infiltrator is good, Vanguard is probably the exact opposite depending on the way you play. I'd recommend it though, despite dying a shit load Vanguard is probably the most fun class. Adept is good too.