I hope season two of Mass Alex changes it's time slot to monday. Always disappointing when you start a work week and then think you'll have a new episode to consume once you're back home, only to remember that it won't appear 'till tuesday.

...except it’s wednesday now? Argh!

Is anyone else updating the site every day, hoping to see Mass Alex 2 Episode 1 on the upcoming list, or is it just me?

.....yeah.

@wibblefish said:

Yup. To be fair, I visit this site every day regardless, to watch a video during dinner. I just hope Alex doesn't get frustrated with the probe mining too quickly. Actually, I don't know how much you actually have to do that stuff, because as a crazy completionist I'm incapable of not depleting all planets. I don't know how much you need to mine in order to get the critical ship upgrades. I just hope they don't forget that those are absolutely vital.

@loafofgame: I just replayed the game and I only did the planets from the systems I was going to for a quest and I had more than enough to get everything. I might have gone to a couple other systems at the very end when there were some weapon upgrades I still needed but I didn't spend a ton of time with the probing. With how exhaustive Alex was in ME1 when you had to go all the way down to the planet and drive around I think he'll be fine with the scanning.

I have a feeling that we'll be waiting 'till february for season 2 to arrive.

...of course, I'd be glad to be proven wrong!

Was really hoping it would be this week (selfishly, it's my week off). Hopefully next week or the week after, which would be the 9th anniversary of Mass Effect 2.

i need this.

i also need casey hudson to do special guest commentary over the first episode to offer a retrospective on that 'in-studio' interview gb did with him in 2010.

he could also talk about the making of ME2, i guess.

this is a good series. i like watching Alex and Vinny play through. i never finished ME3 back in the day, so i replayed me1, 2, and 3 september-november. such good games.

This series isn't dead...right? Like they haven't said anything on the Beastcast about it? I figured they would pick it up a couple weeks into January when everyone settled back in after the new year.

They've said "soon" on twitter. I don't think Vinny would let him skip ME2 after they finished 1.

@bizmarkiefader said:

Awesome, thanks. I haven't been keeping up with Twitter lately.

I'm like 99% sure that they said it'll happen soon on a recent Beastcast or during a live stream. I'd guess the first week of February.

Nice. Next week would be great. 3 days after the 9th anniversary of Mass Effect 2.

Oh look! :D

Yay! Miranda

Dat Accent Tho!

Again, very excited to see Alex forced to be aggressive as Vanguard. Charging dudes and shotgunning them in the face is lots of fun.

Hallelujah! Can't wait.

good golly ms. molly i'm stoked. ME2 might be my favourite game ever.

and that STRONG START- amirite? it'll be fun getting that contact high off of vinny getting a contact high off of alex stepping into afterlife for the first time.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! :D

Ah, man! I was really looking forward to him being Vanguard, that class is so much fun in ME2 and 3.

@gkhan: ah crap... Vanguard gets so fucking good... what did he change to?

Boo, Vinny. Boooo.

I love Vinny but I hope he gets like a notepad with important bits on it. I hope he doesn't forget everything like Dan did in Metal Gear Scanlon.

"Oh this is my favorite game ever."

"What's this do?"

"I dunno"

I also haven't played Mass Effect 2 in a long time but I remember everything way more. I just get a little frustrated that I have an answer Vinny doesn't have. To be clear, I'm not talking about choice and decision questions, but specifically in regards to how the game works and plays. I like that Vinny is taking a backseat to how Alex plays and makes decisions and that so far there hasn't been an equivalent of forcing Drew to use the Riot SMG. It just sucks that Vinny couldn't or didn't explain what the new class abilities were and how much they changed.

i can't wait to see alex's reaction to the absolutely ridiculous awful ending to this game. I feel like via Alex we should get a good spit take at the absolute drivel that is THE HUMAN REAPER WOOOOOOOOOO SCARED KIDS!?!? You can practically see the writers hoping no one tries to make sense of it because it makes absolutely none and is basically inconsequential to the major plot.

When I was playing alone I still caught myself looking around like is this really happening?

Yeah ME2 is one of my favorite games, but the ending is stupid. It's only saved by the fact that the whole "suicide mission" up to that point is awesome and very dramatic.

Also FWIW I also remember there being a "turn off helmet during cutscenes" option being in the standard (un-modded) game. I'm guessing after watching the video that it was in ME3 only.

If they sunk 4-5 months into the first game, then this will have to end up taking at least 7-8 or so, right? So at least half of 2019 won’t be completely miserable.

I bought ME2 for PS3 back in the day, because my computer at that time was so bad that it wouldn’t even run the first game properly. I had a decent time, but stopped playing a little while after Jack, because I made the mistake of buying Dead Space 2, which stole my attention completely.

I have since looked up the ending though, which...sure was something.

I thought Alex played ME2 with the group? Like the crew was all over that game for weeks before and after it’s release and it just felt like everyone played it! Definitely remember listening to their podcasts while playing the game! Good times!

I didn't mind the ending of Mass Effect 2 at all. I'm sad Alex didn't look at the moon. Vanguard is the only class. I like having the helmets on in cutscenes; I'm playing Andromeda currently (whoops) and it really bugs me when all my guys have their helmets on but a bunch of NPCs can apparently breath whatever the air around us is...even though they're the same race as someone in my party wearing a mask. I don't remember if the older games shared this inconsistency but for me, if we're in space on alien planets, let's look like we're in space on alien planets am I right?

@nodima: You know watching these has given me a hankering to pick up Andromeda on some huge sale - is it alright? It can't possibly be as bad as the internet makes it out to be?

@humanity: I tried to give Andromeda an honest shot but I fell off after maybe 4-5 hours. The thing that bummed me out the most was that it felt like they were just re-telling the ME story in a different universe instead of trying something new. The first few hours were literally just: (1) hey, an unknown artifact from an ancient civilization; and (2) hey, a mysterious, malevolent force that is maybe related to said ancient civilization disappearing! I wonder how that will play out? The characters also seemed less interesting and the first world was large but kind of empty feeling.

I'd be interested to hear from someone that played further but man that first impression is a stinker.

@tds418: Hmm well I wonder. AC Origins was a game I beat but nothing about the world or characters was interesting to me. At the time it was a decent time filler but I can't say that any of the trappings were really drawing me in, and the changed gameplay was actually pushing me away at most times when enemies would be a grind to kill because of arbitrary level differences. Still, the act of moving around and collecting stuff was still fun in that Assassins Creed sort of way so I kept clearing the map in lieu of anything more interesting to play at the time.

At the moment there is nothing on the horizon like until March that is sparking my interest so I was wondering if Andromeda could similarly fill that gap of simply logging in each night and doing some quests here and there. From what I've heard the actual combat and movement is pretty good.

That's all it is for me. I'm usually pretty anti-subtitle but I regularly play Andromeda with a headphone in one ear listening to a podcast and reading the subtitles more than listening. There's a lot to be let down about regarding the game: the retread elements, the lack of imagination in a new galaxy, the lack of friction between species (it feels like a Pathfinder is a known, valued quantity across the races within two hours of gameplay) and more. The bugs are mostly minor at this point though, I haven't seen any of the wild shit Brad, Mike Mahardy and others went on about the year the game came out.

Unlike a lot of other people, I actually really enjoyed the sort of prologue chapter, it teased out a far more interesting and tense game where every decision made is an incredibly heavy one (and the decisions you make are small and personal while the galaxy is left to someone else). Sometimes I wonder if people talk lowly of the game's opening because almost immediately after it becomes an open world game it becomes overwhelmingly so and quickly eschews that more dire feeling in favor of a Whedon-esque take on gaining a foothold in a foreign galaxy. If you're able to look past that...I bought it for $8, the combat's alright (you'll miss being able to directly command your squad), the world is still very Mass Effecty if a bit of a carny version of it, and I'm really not mad at it. It probably helps that I only play a few games a year so they tend to be of a pretty high quality. It's not often I play something so average that I can comfortably divide my time with something else despite being so story focused. Between the familiar and the generic elements the plot's been pretty easy to follow while knocking out other media like I'm playing a sports game or Dead Cells or something. It's a nice reminder that most video games are pretty damn good these days.

This post isn't a recommendation, I guess, but as a checklist game it's perfectly fine. There's something to be said for some of the more bemusing moments when the Mass Effect façade fades away and you realize just how much that drapery is prettying everything up.

Does anyone recall how deep ME2 goes into power explosion combos? Detonating Incinerate with Overload dominates my memories of the ME franchise but I don't recall if that was a thing in 2.

I have so many other games to play, but this makes me just want to go through the series again.

Sounds familiar to me. But I think it's just Warp and Singularity/Pull from what I can find online. 3 is where the combos really started to come together.

I think the system was more developed in ME3, but ME2 definitely had power combos like that.

I have serious withdrawal. I need my Mass Alex.

@gkhan: me too - I checked the end of the Beastcast and they said there was an episode coming, but Vinny also said they nearly lost the audio and he hadn't processed it yet, which has me worried.

@wibblefish: ?

If they end up losing the audio, I hope they do a director’s commentary on a mute episode or dub the whole thing.

Noooo :(

EDIT: It's now coming at 9am EST

40 minutes! Mass Alex Tuesday is saved!

Yay, it's out in time for me to download on my phone and enjoy of my 2 hour commute home!

Wait where'd it go? :(

Welp.

It's up!

ME2 episode 6 was supposed to go up 20 minutes ago? That was the time scheduled in Upcoming at least.

Yeah, strange. It vanished from upcoming but wasn't posted. Let's hope it's just some scheduling issue.