WrathOfDeadguy

Episode 3?

I have to wonder just how folks expect a "better way to get into space" to be developed when the largest, most capable agency responsible for overseeing the development of said better way is in the process of being systematically stripped and castrated. Yes, there are independent corporate endeavors underway, but all of them are in their infant stages- NASA has not only the experience but also the infrastructure to undertake projects on a scale that no other organization can. I'm no fan of big government, but as of yet successful space programs command a resource base and workforce that no single private organization can offer- and by their very nature, private entities resist cooperation, and in many countries are limited in both scope and ability by law. Let's keep in mind that only three nations have ever had the capability to launch manned spacecraft, and only one private entity has succeeded in sending even a single human being into space in a sub-orbital flight only a few minutes long. That's with 21st century technology and some of the most innovative minds in the aerospace industry behind the project... NASA landed a dozen people on the moon in the late 60s and early 70s, and did so by bringing together many different and often competing private corporations. If government can do one thing well, it's organization. We've had the technology to put people on Mars since before Columbia's first flight in 1980. The mathematical calculations and timing of engine burns required were well within the capacity of 1960s-era computers- we've known how to grow plants in space since Skylab (which would take care of food for the trip), and the question of muscular atrophy is a mechanical problem... we could have built a big enough centrifuge before the USSR launched Soyuz 1. Once we proved the feasibility of orbital rendezvous (Gemini) between separately-launched spacecraft the point of overall size and mass became moot- we could have assembled an interplanetary craft in space. The Saturn V had more than enough payload capacity to launch any single component that could have been required... and once the Shuttle came along, we could have launched an entire disassembled Mars craft in prefabricated sections within a matter of weeks, then ferried up fuel and other provisions for the trip. Yes, it costs money- a bloody lot of it. Does every member of congress need dozens of support staffers at taxpayer expense? Heh. The money is there- we simply have our priorities somewhat *ahem* out of order. As a species, if we do not reach out into space, we are wasting our potential. The social and philosophical evolution of humanity has always been driven by exploration and expansion and the new ways of life developed to adapt to new environments. Just look at the vast array of different cultures which have arisen on this planet of ours... imagine the leap forward offered by the perspectives of Lunar or Martian colonists some centuries in the future! Scientific discovery is only one reason to explore, and a damn good one- but not the only one. A great many less tangible discoveries are waiting for us out there, and they simply cannot be found with probes and telescopes. We as a species will ultimately stagnate if we fail to explore- as our society on Earth becomes more and more interconnected, it will homogenize. Space exploration can throw something new in the pot again. I believe it is worth any price.

The absolute worst? Being blocked from repairing, making potions, and fast-traveling by an enemy that can't see me and is too far away for me to see it. I ran away (Speed 100) for a while and was still blocked by the usual "can't do that with an enemy nearby" line. So I stopped running and just sat there waiting to see what sort of enemy could possibly have managed to keep track of me for that long running that fast. What was it? . . . . . . . . . . ...wait for it... . . . . . . . . . . . . ...a freaking mudcrab. It took ten whole minutes (I timed it) to catch up and attack me.

Good games are a dime a dozen- only a few really great games show up every generation. IMHO, the importance of a game's story is related to the nature of the gameplay- if the game in question is a multiplayer-only game, then story is not going to be quite so important. Nobody has ever accused Counter-Strike or Super Smash Bros. of having fantastic stories, but both games were impressive accomplishments- the former being a mod that was so well-polished and successful that a major game studio acquired it and still supports it, the latter being one of the most entertaining party games ever made. Starsiege:Tribes was set in a universe with lots of history which barely reached into the gameplay at all, and yet stands as one of the most innovative online shooters of all time. Half a dozen MMOs across several generations of games have claimed to have the most players online at any single time of any other game on the market, and none of them are too heavy on the epic, deeply immersive story elements that we look for in singleplayer games. I'm an absolute story freak, a heavily addicted page-turner of the worst sort, but not every game was meant to have a great story and there have been many great games over the years that had no story at all. I'd refuse to buy an RPG or even a shooter that billed itself as a singleplayer game but had a weak or nonexistent story, but in a purely multiplayer title the story is just something to set the mood, and isn't even as important a part of the total package as the art style. When you play a singleplayer game, you are playing the story- in multiplayer, it's almost always in the background unless you're playing a co-op campaign. In order to stand apart from the rest, a game has to be unique in some significant way- either by doing something wildly different (successfully) and introducing something to gaming that has never been done before, or to take an existing concept and refine it to such a degree as to make that game a must-have in its genre. A great singleplayer game must have a solid, well-written story to make players want to see it through to the end; a great multiplayer game must be near-perfectly balanced so that the experience never grows stale or frustrating. There has to be a level of polish absent in most games- in attention to detail (take for example the miscellaneous clutter in Bethesda RPGs, or in the System Shock series), in gameplay (i.e. few or no controller-chucker moments), in performance if possible... a game can be great and still have a ton of bugs in it, but for the experience to really shine and endure well past its own generation, the entire package must be of bar-raising quality. I've played plenty of games that had great writing, but fell apart in other areas to the point where I just couldn't finish them- and I'm sure we can all agree that there are plenty of games out there which could have been improved if they were written by a five-year-old instead of the chimp who obviously had the pen. Bottom line, every relevant aspect of the game should be held to the same standard of quality. *edit*- there's also a difference between recognizing a game as the best of its breed and just plain loving it for one reason or another. I have a serious soft spot for Starsiege, but the Mechwarrior games had much higher production values... doesn't change the fact that I've been going back and 'Sieging for about a decade now, whereas I dig out all of the MW titles once in a while, play through the campaigns, and put them back in storage. Just because one is by far the "better" game doesn't automatically mean that everyone who plays it will like it better than the underdog competitor that never got the last patch or three that it desperately needed. ;)

I've always just kept a savegame from the very, very beginning- before the Emperor comes into your cell in the prison. However, there's also this handy tool which you can use to export a face from an existing save file and import it to another- allowing you to use the face of your character after starting a new game, even if you didn't have a save at the very beginning.

Well played.

More importantly, what sort of fool would pick the option of having more DRM in their game if they had an option with less of it? Games have had connect-and-update utilities for over a decade now... if that's what you mean. Yeah, they could have done that. Yeah, they should have done that. Unfortunately, they decided to go with more DRM instead. I guess they figured that everyone had forgotten about the Spore backlash already... or maybe they figured that, as long as it doesn't have activation limits, everyone's going to be fine with it. Screw 'em, I say. I hope every title they release with this crap in it flops horribly. Sadly, they're probably right about most of their consumers forgetting the last big DRM outrage; by and large consumers in any demographic have shown themselves to have really short memories. All you need to do is cook up a spiffy ad campaign and everyone forgets until after the next $60 is spent.

I love both. Were it not for a few critical flaws, however, I would have little trouble deciding on KotOR as the better game, and here's why: I like the character progression in KotOR II better- not only do your teammates talk to you, they talk to each other as well, and your actions influence how some of them develop throughout the game. However, there is a lot of wasted potential here- there is a lot that remains untold, unfinished, and agonizingly uncertain about almost every character, but especially with regards to the recurring party members from KotOR. I like the item upgrading and crafting in KotOR II also; whereas I would change out party weapons several times over the run of the first game, I tend to only do so once or twice in the second because of all the potential upgrades. I especially like the switchable weapon sets. It's a small change, but it makes a huge difference in combat when facing multiple types of enemies (especially since KotOR II has many more party-less sections than its predecessor). One click of a button and I can juggle between my lightsaber and a ranged weapon, or just between two lightsabers geared towards different foes. I'll just lump the combat forms in with this, because the function is similar- allowing a greater degree of flexibility in combat, which is good because... Rather than giving enemies unique and threatening abilities, KotOR II unfortunately often relies on dropping large numbers of carbon-copy enemies in an area with either stupidly strong attacks or stupidly high HP. The two worst offenders are the secret hideout/arena on Nar Shaddaa and the canyons on Malachor V. To be fair, you'll sometimes just get a single enemy with an even more stupidly strong primary attack (a possible one-hit-kill, which I'm pretty certain is the only one of its kind in the game) on top of even more HP, when you have no party members to place at strategic points around the inescapable battlefield... and I think you know which critter I'm talking about here. The point to the above is that there are only rarely alternate ways of defeating enemies; KotOR II forces you into direct combat no matter what your character build is. In the first game, it was frequently... no, usually possible to wipe out most of the mooks in a given area by either hacking a computer, or disabling some of their equipment, through dialogue, etc... if you happened to have rolled a tech-heavy or charisma-heavy character with weaker combat skills, you wouldn't always be completely shafted because you didn't have the HP to go toe-to-toe with the whole dungeon. I change up my class in KotOR; I am always a Guardian in KotOR II. I should add a footnote to all that- I really, really do not enjoy party-less sections in games that depend heavily on party-based gameplay. If the game is going to give me a party, then I want to be able to use a party through the whole game, and if there are any sections where I can't (like the intro or a brief "you've been captured" bit), they should be kept short and not feature a whole glut of powerful mooks. For that matter, if I'm going to be given a small army of followers to choose from, there should not be lengthy sections when I am forced into using specific followers- else there's no point to even developing anyone besides those "chosen few." Both games lose points for that, IMHO, but KotOR II moreso because it happens so damn much. Just offhand, you have no party through much of Peragus (even though you technically already have two or three teammates), a section of Nar Shaddaa, a section of Korriban, a brief sequence on Telos, and through all of Malachor V. Together, they add up to several hours of gameplay. Specific party members are forced on you when on Onderon (twice) and when you board the Ravager. In contrast, KotOR has only a handful of short sections (each taking up no more than 20 minutes IIRC) where you have no party, and only one dungeon which forces you to use specific party members (even then, it is possible to not have one of them because of an earlier decision). Developers of party-based RPGs need to stop doing this. Obviously, KotOR II also suffered greatly from a horrid case of Pushy Publisher. There isn't even a damn ending cutscene- it's a story-driven RPG; lacking a conclusion it loses a great deal of its luster. That's more or less why I regard both games equally. The game mechanics are better in KotOR II; the overall RPG experience is better in KotOR. The overall story is stronger in KotOR; the characters and party interactions are stronger in KotOR II. Both are among the best WRPGs and are definite must-plays.

Oh, it'll get here sooner or later. Half-Life is the franchise that made Valve; they won't just chuck it out the window. However, Valve being as notorious as they are for delays and postponements, trying to predict when it'll actually appear is an exercise in futility. I still think that it'll be a simultaneous release with Portal 2 and something else, ala Orange Box. Given the massive, gut-wrenching cliffhanger they left EP2 off with, though, I'd put money on there not being any substantial announcements until at least the next E3. Now that they've released details on another game in the same universe, they'll know that people are paying attention to Half-Life again and they are going to draw out the suspense until the fanbase is well and truly exploding with speculation.

It's more about not having my graphics card fry my computer. I've yet to have an ATi product do that. I also have several older nVidia cards that work perfectly after many years of use- it's their newer crap, and I do mean crap, that I take issue with. When they get their act together, then I'll start actually caring which company offers the best performance for the best price. That's exactly what I used to do. Right now, however, and for the forseeable future, I'm boycotting nVidia because they shipped defective components that were installed in millions of systems, including mine, and have yet to make it right. Not to mention apparent ongoing QC issues. If the day comes when nVidia sends out checks to all the consumers they screwed, and if after that day comes I'm still ragging on them, then you can call it fanboyism. They've got to make good before they are worthy of their market share... until they do, I'm perfectly okay with going around telling everyone I possibly can not to do business with 'em. "Forgive and forget" only applies when dealing with friends, family, and free giveaways- not expensive consumer electronics.

No, I am not. Note the use of italics. I was attempting to place emphasis on the sorry state of the company's recent affairs. The jab there is that many companies go several decades without the sort of issues that have plagued nVidia within a much shorter time frame. That's more or less exactly what I'm saying about an event that occurred less than three years ago. I rather doubt that the company has thrown out and replaced all of its management within that time. I am not dumb enough to believe that the software and hardware aspects are handled by the same part of the company... however, upper management should bloody well have set the bar a tad higher all around in the aftermath of what I would not hesitate to call one of the worst quality control screwups in recent computer-related history. No other issue has affected so many units at once without the company responsible issuing a widespread, publicly-announced recall. That another mishap (albeit a far less damaging one) should occur so soon on the heels of that episode leads me to believe that quality control is poor across the entire company- not just in the department which was directly responsible for the first event- since hardware and software are handled by different people, and there has been a failure in each area. Yes, it is probable that it's a coincidence and some poor dope put a 0 where there ought to have been a 1 without anyone noticing, but what I'm getting at here is that the larger corporate entity is still responsible for it getting through. Common sense would suggest that the most prudent move after a major quality control failure would be to step up the amount of testing done on any product before it is released to consumers. Just because the original issue was a hardware issue doesn't mean that not having enough man-hours spent on QC might not have been the root of the problem... and nVidia should have examined that possible fault across all of their operations. We aren't talking about a problem that takes a long time to manifest here; the moment the defective software patch was tested, given a sufficient number of test systems (at least one each of a laptop and desktop from every major manufacturer using an nVidia card- certainly within their means), somebody should have noticed that some of them were overheating. It is a software issue, but it is one that produces a physical effect that anybody with a thermometer could observe and record. I could understand if the issue were with the software degrading the card's processing power, or causing crashes with some applications since there are way too many to reliably test every one... but overheating is a very, very easy thing to notice, especially if one other symptoms can include one of the card's components (in this case the fan) not running. If a human being were physically present at the testing station and paying attention to their work, there is no reason I can imagine why they wouldn't have caught this. I'm just not finding much room for sympathy for nVidia here.

Hopefully, Portal 2 will tighten up some of the connections made between Portal and Half-Life. Truth be told, I'm more interested in the story aspect than I am in the gameplay- it'll be a blast, I'm sure (the first one was too), but I'd like to know more about where Aperture fits into the larger puzzle. I don't see Valve giving up that information without a double-release, at least not after certain revelations towards the end of Episode 2. I really wouldn't be surprised if they did pull another multiple release. It's just that, since they haven't posted much about EP3 yet (besides "we're working on it" and some concept art), all we poor gamers can do is wait and cross our fingers. We know it's coming; they won't abandon the franchise that made them famous. My money's on a "Insert Color Here Box" just like last time around. I'd hope, however, that the weapon progression this time involves a bit more kaboom a bit quicker. It's starting to feel silly having to go and re-gather the entire arsenal every time Gordon trips and knocks his head on something.

I don't mind a component that runs hot- if it was designed to run that way. If the materials can withstand the heat, it's all good. If they can't, own up and redesign the product. There's no excuse for having major system components fail within two years of installation. And back on the subject of software patches, can anyone seriously tell me that a company with nVidia's resources can't spare enough people to thoroughly test a driver patch? Things slip through the cracks, and I get that, but they've had about three decades' worth of crack-slippage in the past three years. One would expect that a company that's made such a major blunder in the recent past would at least make extra-double-sure to dot their i's and cross their t's to prevent further mishaps.

Mine fried itself along with the entire logic board back at the end of December. I sent it in for servicing, and man was I glad I'd bought the extended warranty- I usually don't, but it paid off double. Would have been a $600+ repair... and guess what they (Apple, that is; I dual-boot XP for gaming) dropped in as a replacement part? You guessed it... another 8600M GT which, despite being installed well after the entire foulup was revealed, still exhibits the same chronic overheating that the other one did. I'd buy a new computer, but that's just not in the budget. I run my laptop with a cooling base and a desk fan aimed under the case. I had the same setup when it cooked itself. To give the rest of you some idea of how hot these things run, before it had its meltdown mine averaged ~60C while idling on the desktop, with supplemental cooling. The replacement board so far idles at 57. Compare this to the HD at 42, and the processor at 37.

I still have a defective 8600M GT in my laptop. nVidia lost my business several years ago for that fiasco, and I can't say I'm terribly surprised to see their name associated with another overheating screwup. Let's remember that that last little 'oopsie' affected not just a few components, but an entire line of graphics cards, for the entire time they were manufacturing them, spread out across every major laptop builder. They never have offered to compensate the people that bought the lemons, either. IIRC there's a lawsuit whose outcome is pending, but if it takes litigation to make a company admit the blindingly obvious... Yeah, ATi is better. They have yet to screw millions of consumers by putting overpriced space heaters in their systems. It's amazing how quickly the market forgets about crap like that. :rolleyes: Thanks for the warning, OP. The last thing I need is for this thing to run any hotter than it already does.

I'm excited, but not half as excited as I'd be if they would kindly go ahead and start posting updates about HL2 Episode 3. Of course, maybe they intend to release both at the same time and pull another Orange Box type deal...

I wish that charm/intimidate were trainable skills. Having them fully tied to the Paragon/Renegade meter makes it very difficult to play a "Paragade" Shep without sacrificing a lot of late-game dialogue options, and possibly even several characters' loyalties. The first Shepard I imported had fully maxed out both Charm and intimidate over several ME1 playthroughs; it would have been nice if that had carried over. Were I playing on PC, I might consider a mod that removed the Paragon/Renegade check for conversation choices, at least for that character. I don't enjoy playing a total jerk enough to make a full Renegade playthrough just to investigate all the lines I've missed out on, though I might do one somewhere down the road anyway.

I can confirm this bug. It has so far happened to me on only one mission, so I figured it was a fluke- it was one of the few where Shepard lands alone, in this case exploring a shipwreck which is in the process of falling over a cliff. I was running down a beam to reach a lower level when it happened to me; the wreck shook and suddenly Shepard was stuck in the air about 3' above the beam, unable to move. I assumed at the time that it was caused by something I did; after all we gamers have a rather nasty habit of breaking physics completely by accident by doing things we were never meant to do. :whistling: Save early and often is a habit for me with RPGs and Shooters, and especially with hybrids of the two. I typically keep two to three savegames, two of which I leapfrog over each other during normal play (so that, at any time, even if one file gets messed up I can revert to the other a short while behind it) and the third which gets used when I see important happenings on the horizon. That pretty much covers all possible foulups, from me spontaneously eating a rocket to offending the Physics Gods to power failure or whatever. Sometimes I'll have a few more save slots ready if the game is really long and decision-heavy, so that I can explore different scenarios without having to start a whole new game, never more than 6 though. Having more than one save and constantly updating is just a good policy. If a game has a nondisruptive quicksave, I'll use it religiously.

BTW, the Geth rifle can be used on any difficulty. The only requirement for getting it is to play the specific mission where it is found on Hardcore or Insanity- turn up the difficulty before leaving the Normandy, and turn it back as soon as you've got the rifle. It helps greatly to have the Geth Shield Boost power (increases shield strength and provides an instant shield recharge when activated) before going for the rifle, if you don't normally play on the higher difficulties. It's a very specialized weapon, though- it does less damage to health and armor than other assault rifles, but gets a massive boost in effectiveness against shields and barriers. That's probably why the devs make you play on at least Hardcore to get it; only when you turn the difficulty up that far do you start encountering lots of enemies with shields and barriers. I'm pretty sure that almost all enemies have one or the other on Insanity. My game must have glitched somehow on the resource bonus- on my first playthrough, even though I imported a ME1 save, I did not get a bonus. Second time out, once I did get the bonus, I never ran short of Element Zero because there are so few upgrades that require it; Platinum is my problem child. Yes, it is true that there's more than enough of everything several times over- I only ever touched Rich planets, overlooking all others except to 'visit' them to chart all systems completely. Iridium seems to be the most plentiful; even though there are more upgrades that require it than for any of the other resources, I never once ran out. For a quick giggle, Launch a few probes.

No, but they sure didn't focus-test that bit enough. I can't see a bunch of gamers sitting around talking about how great scanning is, anyway. Plus, after your first playthrough you get 50,000 of each resource to start your next game with- so you will never have to do as much scanning as you did the first time through. I don't know why they saw a need to grant that bonus at all unless they thought the minigame was so tedious that players would be glad to do it less on successive playthroughs- since, y'know, research doesn't carry over, just armor and weapons. Scanning would seem to be the game's only real flaw... the rest is personal taste. There are other things I'm unhappy with, but only scanning points back to a poor design choice. Truly, the Mako was less tedious- even if it was a pain to get it over mountains, the collection quests in ME1 were strictly optional and 9 times out of 10 you could just make a beeline for Planet X's objective then be done with it. I'd be happier if ME2 placed larger amounts of resources in pickup containers during missions, which would encourage players to do the sidequests. As is, the planet-scanning feels more necessary to the game than many of the sidequests do because research has such a large impact on combat (not to mention the endgame). It isn't game-breakingly bad, but coming from Bioware it should have been implemented in a much more intelligent fashion. Who knows, maybe the third time's the charm and ME3 will have the perfect fusion of vehicular action and resource gathering.

Well, Zaeed committed three out of three unforgivable sins (that'd be... #1: killing innocent people, #2: pointing a gun at Shepard, and #3: lying to Shepard) so he got marked for death pretty quickly. If it had been possible, I would have shot him at the end of his loyalty mission on general principle... instead he got to Chaotic Good Shepard doesn't like it when people point their rage in the wrong direction. He only survived the first playthrough because Shepard didn't want to trust him with anything important. Thane died the first time because but I found it a fittingly heroic end because Miranda bit it on playthrough #2 because I'm ok with that because she really was acting like a petulant child. I mean, Jack is a royal b****, I did feel a little sorry I'd worked so hard to kill her after she I'm not sure who I'd have future Shepards kill off. Losing some would be tragic, others redeeming. I'll have at least one playthrough where I lose some of the crew, and probably a "rocks fall, everyone dies" scenario too. Good, wholesome fun. :happy:

Now that's something I hadn't thought of yet. Did you Figuring out how all the bits and pieces fit together could make for some good RP possibilities... it certainly doesn't feel like the sort of mission where everyone would survive, but it'd also be nice when building a specific character for ME3 to know exactly how to pick and choose your casualties. Or avoid them entirely. I wonder if failing to save the crew has any effect on how likely your companions are to survive?

One more massive post... this one is all in spoilers. It's a fairly comprehensive rundown of how to keep your team, crew, and Shepard from dying at the end... or how to get everyone killed, if such is your desire. As near as I can figure from my own experience and what I've read, these are the factors which affect crew and team survival... and how to achieve the best possible result. I know I posted about this something like seven pages ago, but this will be much more in-depth: I hope none of you read that before beating the game. :whistling:

Entire post spoiler-tagged. Read at your own peril.

My take on the weapons I've tried so far... another big post. :) Pistols... M-3 Predator- Decent damage, good ammo reserve. Brilliant for popping mooks. I consider this gun to be the equal of the Hand Cannon; it simply has different strengths and is not as well-suited to my particular play style. Don't think that it is inferior just because you get it first; give it a chance later on. M-6 Carniflex Hand Cannon- Great damage, small ammo reserve. I carry it a lot but tend to only pull it out when my sniper rifle runs out of ammo; this baby is a great backup because of how much punch it packs. 'Hand Cannon' is not an exaggeration at all. One headshot dispatches most mooks, but I almost feel guilty wasting the ammo on anything less than an elite. SMGs... M-4 Shuriken Machine Pistol- Modest damage, modest ammo reserve. This is a panic weapon; something to pull out when an enemy is too close and you don't have time to aim carefully. Once you get the Tempest, you will forget this gun even exists. M-9 Tempest SMG- This became my standard crowd-control weapon the instant I acquired it. It is better in every way than the Shuriken; it fires longer bursts, has a larger magazine and a larger reserve, and is much more accurate. While not quite an assault rifle, it's damn close. Great weapon. Sniper Rifles... M-92 Mantis Sniper Rifle- The basic sniper rifle is no slouch. Though it has a small ammo reserve, a single shot is (as expected) plenty to deal with most enemies. There isn't much else to say; it's a good gun. M-97 Viper Sniper Rifle- The Viper is not an upgrade to the Mantis, it is more of a sidegrade. While the Mantis deals high per-shot damage in exchange for a slow reload time, the Viper deals comparable damage to the Handcannon pistol at a higher rate of fire. IMHO, with the Handcannon as an option, the Viper feels a bit redundant- sure, it has a scope and carries more ammo, but by using it you lose the reach-out-and-kill-something oomph that a sniper rifle is meant to provide. Great for crowds of faraway mooks, but severely lacking against more powerful enemies. M-98 Widow Anti-Material Rifle- The Widow is just plain better. In addition to a slightly larger ammo reserve than the Mantis, the Widow does more damage and takes the same amount of time to reload. This is the sniper uber-weapon- if you like sniping, you should grab it over all other options when you find it (for my Infiltrator, the other options were assault rifle or shotgun training). The Widow does more per-shot damage than any other standard weapon in the game. It actually does more per-shot damage than several of the heavy weapons. Having the Widow along is like having a second heavy weapon with a scope on it. It is just that good. Easily my favorite gun in the game. Heavy Weapons... M-100 Grenade Launcher- An all-around decent crowd-killer. While not overly punchy compared to some of the other options, there are few drawbacks to the M-100 as a weapon. With all of the upgrades, it carries a respectable ammo reserve, fires pretty quickly, and deals quite a bit of splash damage. A good fire-and-cover weapon for dealing with tougher critters. ML-77 Missile Launcher- I tried to love this weapon; I really did. However, despite its strengths, it has one crippling weakness that severely limits its usefulness: the missiles go wherever they please, not wherever you want them to. Unless you simply can't or don't want to aim, there is no reason at all to take the M-77 over the M-100. None at all. M-622 Avalanche- Haven't tried yet. I don't expect I'll be impressed. The Mass Effect Wiki describes it as more of a defensive support weapon, which IMHO is what powers are for. M-920 Cain- I'm in two minds over this one. On the downside, it gets you two shots at the very most even with every ammo upgrade and the heavy weapon ammo pack armor mod. On the upside, if you aim it well your trigger turns into an instant I-WIN button. It will take out absolutely anything short of the Thresher Maw and the final boss in the game with a direct hit... and even an indirect hit causes epic carnage. The biggest problem with the Cain is its charge-up time; it is very easy to get interrupted by enemy fire while aiming, which means the Cain is best paired with the Infiltrator class' cloaking ability. You can easily liquefy yourself if you aren't careful where you're aiming (or if a Husk runs across your line of fire just as the charge cycle finishes. Dammit). I don't use this weapon often because its utility is sharply limited; because you only get one shot you will want to save it for something that is really asking for it. Or, y'know, you could drop one on a Varren just because you can. Collector Particle Beam- Quite possibly the most useful of the heavy weapons. This beauty fills a lot of roles quite handily- it is pinpoint-accurate and cuts through shields, armor, and health bars like a hot knife through a cliche. The only downside is that it is very easy to get carried away with it against heftier foes; because it is a sustained-fire weapon you will want to keep it on target and firing until your target dies. This is not always the best idea when you are taking fire from several directions. It also grants the best ammo efficiency of any heavy weapon; since it is (again) a sustained-fire weapon, you can give each target exactly as much ouch as it wants, no more and no less. You might even decide that the Particle beam makes things too easy, which is exactly the conclusion I came to. An all-around fantastic weapon is this. M-451 Firestorm- A DLC-only weapon that comes bundled with the Zaeed pack. It's a flamethrower (and a cute little Ray Bradbury shout-out), obviously. It does what flamethrowers are known for; it burns things at short range. It's a great weapon... for short range fights. It lacks the reach of every other heavy weapon, and doesn't stack up well against the Particle Beam since (both being sustained-fire weapons) the Beam is not range-limited. Flamethrowers do not make the best fight-from-cover weapons, and since fighting from cover is what Mass Effect 2 combat is all about... the Firestorm comes up a bit short. I haven't gotten around to trying the Assault Rifles or the Shotguns yet, since my first two playthroughs were different Infiltrator builds both of whom chose the Widow rifle. I plan on playing a Soldier next.