I pre-ordered it, with a little help from a friend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIKBq9TeFlw

HOLY SHIT

that is one awesome launch trailer


http://www.gametrailers.com/video/launc ... fect/61043

Glad I took the week off when this comes out.

First reviews in for PC:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... asseffect2

Game seems to blow away reviewers

Continued:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... asseffect2

Can't wait until it's Friday...damn Americans get the game today!

hey, that's fine, it's just starting to sound less like an RPG and more like a squad based shooter or something. That doesn't mean it'll be bad, it just means I need to make sure I read reviews and know what to expect.

Doesn't matter yet anyhow, I need to finish my 3rd run of DA first.

Lol. I'll make sure to report on how good/bad ME2 really is. Should start preloading it later today. Of course, all you yanks are already playing it, which just sucks.

On the one hand I'd like to hit the ME2 steam forum to see if the general feeling (thread titles) is OMG BEST THING SINCE SLICED JESUS or WORST GAME EVAH, on the other I just know there'd be a ton with serious spoilers genre 'did you do X at X' or 'omg X is a X?' so I won't.

Two days and I'm off.

I was being pessimistic, it appears: I had a date yesterday but went home first to eat, and started the preload of ME2. I come back home at 00.20h or something and game is fully pre-loaded, so I'm pleased. But I also noticed that it said "game will unluck in approximately one hour". What the? So I stayed up until it started decrypting and tested: works! So today i'm slipping out of work at 4 (started at 9)

Two remarks:

- managed to import my final character save from ME1 very easily. As long as you know which folder it's in it's easy like goblin pie.

- the DLC...gah. Just to be clear, it's the "first buyer DLC" which you automatically get for free with every new copy of the game (and two small pre-order items but whatever), but you still need to download it manually. There was a sidequest one which was around 100 mb and an additional NPC which was a whopping 600 mb. Now, I can spare the bandwidth and it's free, so whatever. It's just that the system is so convoluted that less proficient users would seriously struggle.

First you gotta activate the "Cerberus Network" which is like a DLC channel. It's nicely integrated into the main screen of the game tho, so I'm ok with that. Then you clock something in there and it brings you to the EA account registration thingie (same as in Dragon Age, Red Alert 3, whatever - easy enough). You register, which links you through to the Bioware social site. Ugh. THERE you get a list with all the DLC you unlocked for all your games (DA and ME2 for me) and next to the newest DLC you get a 'download' link. There you can manually download the .exe's for the DLC and install them.

Jesus Christ. Either I missed something or that's a really messy way to get through it. I mean in DA at least downloading DLC happened in-game, no need to hop around links and manually install shit. All in all it didn't take that much time or effort, but it's not exactly user-friendly considering that this is all launch-day DLC.

Anyway, all's installed and ready to go. I didn't actually start a new game yet because it was 1.30h and I was tired. Probably tonight then.

I played the game for the first hour and a half or so yesterday. It looks simply amazing...especially the first 30 minutes are omgwtfbbq amazing. I'm getting back into the commands and options but it's pretty smooth.

The ammo system (universal ammo clips, no more overheating) is a fine change. Inventory...myeaah. It's a far, far cry from the DA old school inventory and rather limited. Can't say I'm happy with it, but then I didn't expect Mass Effect 2 to be a hardcore inventory management RPG anyway. I'll reserve judgement for the character development system until I progress further.

Other stuff:

- combat is smoother
- headshots and other body shots actually matter now, which makes a huge difference for experienced shooter players like us
- your ship has been optimized...you actually have a personal terminal with emails and your own 'loft' quarters. Neato.
- voice acting is pretty stellar so far. Martin Sheen in particular is amazing
- I don't like the 3rd-person over-the-shooter camera view. But it probably just needs to grow on me

Very much looking forward to playing some more tonight. Jean-Luc Shepard, allround space asshole and UGLY fucker rides again!!

I finished the game...and it's amazing. You should really buy it if you can, it completely blew me away - particularly in the final 2 hours. Goddamn!

I'll write more (non-spoiler) stuff on it later. But fuck that was an amazing game. Balls-clenching, emotionally charged, adrenaline-pumping sweepingly epic stuff.

And in case you're wondering...yes, Jean-Luc Shepard (pronounced 'Shipard') made it out alive. A lot of people died along the way, however.

Game of the year 2010. Unless jesus himself comes around in 2010 in the form of a game, that's a fact.

I'm hoping Alien Vs Predator owns your gay little space game.

Honestly, I'll probably pick it up when I finish run 3 of DA and get bored of Tropico.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/BioWare-Mas ... -5754.html

Apparently not all is rosey and fluffy for the console players who game on Standard Definiton TVs (SDTV). Apparently while optimizing the game experience for the rich and beatiful the poor and dirty peasant gamers (:D) were somewhat screwed over with text so small that one needs binoculars to read.

The following items will ship with the Limited Edition Dirty Peasant Mass Effect 2 package.