Garrus

I believe that you should certainly give Mass Effect 1 a go too, yes it may feel like you're downgrading heavily to an older feeling game but the influences of the first in the second are worth importing to the second, make it a better experience by importing someday.

Don't listen to what anyone says if it doesn't mention that you should play the first one first. Yes there is no broken citadel council room or anything but you will definately see references from the first and half of the big refs you won't have a clue who or what the hell they are if you didn't play the first and import.
 
Import, whatever you do, do it.

Single handedly became MVP on Arica Harbour from 3 shots.
 
Long range sniper shots. Yes I'm very much a team player realistically but this was a game where nobody was bothering to help me all the way through so I decided to go off on my own and do some damage myself. Headshotted 3 snipers from the furthest distance possible and became MVP.

I believe that Atacama desert didn't even need choppers. It'd be fine as a nice tank standoff map.
 
Another part of the problem is the players on the console version of the game. I'll list some. (I don't know what it's like on PC game version but this is mostly what happens every single time.)
 
A) General stupidity and over-panick about K/D "OH NEGATIVE KD WILL AFFECT MY CHANCES OF CHILDREN"
B) Chopper is too easy to spawn camp with, penalty regarding spawn kills is absent (BF 1943 anyone? I thought that was a great idea)
C) "Tracer Darts are useless, they get me no kills, they do no damage, they're hard to use, they only tag things, i can't lock on to a person with R.Launcher when I tag a person, they're annoying, takes more skill dude to hit a chopper without one, noobs use tracer darts only, chopper never gets hit when i aim straight at it when its moving"
D) "FUCK YOU NOOB IF I CAN'T HAVE CHOPPER YOU CAN'T, FUCK YOU" Behaviour on a team is crippling. No its not a case of greifing, its a case of people actually being THAT stupid.
 
Now not everyone or every Atacama Desert game is like this but generally this is what happens on that map. People get overly desperate for kills and the sense of ranking up and reward is too great for some people. Enough to the point where they just keep spawn camping and will do anything to get a chance at it. This combined with stupidity of the 'camped team and their supposed inability to acknowledge something called a "Tracer Dart Gun" means they rage quit and more idiots flow in who still have no clue wtf is going on.

I know that it probably isn't but that looks like an LMG at the back. Oh yeah.

I take film grain off because of my eyesight condition doesn't handle it very well. Basically I see with something that looks like film grain, all the time, adding film grain doubles the effect.

Damn, get hold of ME1 and replay that stuff.
 
But yeah the default storyline of ME2 is somehow more boring than if you imported a save which you tried to have those options appear in the second game anyway.

I believe Mass Effect 2 was a little dumbed down, yes they did away with allot of things but I feel it took away from the immersion for me. I believe what they're doing is immersion for the movie go-ers, people who want the straight up action "Wow that game was like some epic movie" where as there's immersion by "Good lord this armor was worth the price, I wouldn't have survived that last bla bla" immersion for gamer-gamers I guess. Since they did home in at Bioware on Mass Effect 2 being sequenced like a movie. Which yes is good but I believe there should have been more of an inventory and stuff for the people who wanted it.

I think the Blue was because of the Alliance User Interface on their computers. Cerberus used the orange but then the orange is also standard for Holo-tech like holo-keyboards, omni-tools and general information displays.
 
I don't think Bioware would go for red or green though because colourblind people may have difficulty. Hell with my eye condition I can barely read Mass Effect 2's interface, can't tell shades of orange from another very easily. I think Mass Effect 3 may have a blue one again, possibly yellow? I hope for a blue one. 
 
It sorta seems that the colour is determined by your organisation to me though, alliance was blue, cerberus was orange and in ME3 Shep could be with anyone really.

I was playing both games today, friend imports Mass Effect 1 shepard, ugly as hell. FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION --- Oh god my eyes, so ugly, so very ugly.
 
Yeah poster Shep or default male shep is best. Xbox Version isn't so easy to create brilliant faces on though. I have seen some nice ones on PC version.