Mass Alex: Mass Effect 2 - Part 10

Guess it finally happened, I'm skipping through combat now. Alex really should play on a higher difficulty, this unfortunately is a bit boring, no tension, always full medigel.

I always wondered why GB duders complained the combat was boring in the ME games, but this makes a little more sense now if you play these games on normal.

For one of my least favorite missions to play, it had my favorite combat music in the entire game. The music also made more sense on harder difficulties.

Cool, a new episode. Thank you!

@north6: 1. I'm going to do all the content eventually so it really doesn't matter what's interesting. I kind of like not knowing what I'm getting myself into.

2. I'm perfectly happy with the combat where it's at, thanks.

@alex: Yeah that's fair enough, didn't mean to pick at ya'll, I love this series, without a doubt my fav on GB. Keep it up guys.

Holy shit, is that Simon Templeman? Amazing. Love that guy. He's freakin' Kain. Vae Victus, woe to the conquered.

Which is the Geth in this instance.

YOU MISSED

@alex: thems good rules

I say do arrival post credits, i think it makes more sense for the narrative. Its a mass effect 2.5 to me, it has little to do with ME2 and more to do with ME3 (even if only slightly to explain where things are at at the top of ME3) But thats just me.

I would also suggest just finishing off recruitment missions before doing loyalty missions, just so you get everyone on board and get as much time with them to go through dialogue options as you can and get a few missions with everyone under your belt to see who's your fav and who's good at what. Eventually you start getting a sense of who you should bring on a mission - ie. a mission to go check out geth, bring someone with tech powers to use overload and other anti-robot powers... a mission against collectors, maybe a bit more biotic focused. Anyway, keep it going this is great.

Now that the mission is over I would be curious to know at what point Vinny remembered this mission or if he was lying the whole time about having no idea. I would lean toward him having to have been lying the whole time. I mean, you really just don't forget this no matter how long it's been!

Also I'm impressed and happy that Alex continues to play however he wants with regards to probing, recruiting, loyalty missions and in general just what to do when. We're here to see Mass Alex, not 'let's watch someone who has played it before and/or with a guide do everything logistically perfectly'. Also to me the conversations during probing make it fun! Please just keep doing what you want, love this series so much!

Oh man. Heights. I'm terrible with them. I lived in an apartment with a balcony once. Ninth floor. I went out on that thing a couple times, kept getting these flashes of imagination of myself sort of involuntarily jumping off for some reason. I had to move. Never again.

Once when visiting San Francisco I went up the hill to see the sutro tower. I couldn't get anywhere near it. I was certain it was going to fall on me. For some reason standing next to really tall spindly looking structures gets the same frame of mind going as heights for me.

remember during the last mission that if morden's not in your party there's a glich where he'll die for no reason

YO THAT ENDING WAS DARK

I never played this DLC...WTF

How have I never seen this

The body pillow is real is costs $30. (a web search will show you)

In case anyone wants to spoon with Garrus - https://www.jinx.com/p/mass_effect_garrus_body_pillow.html

"Geographic conditions indicate an aesthetically pleasing view nearby. Organic life forms may wish to take note" is suuuper cringy to me. If the view is nice, I'll look at it and think it's nice without your robot telling me to do so.

I enjoyed the story of Overlord, but I hate playing it. Controlling vehicles in Mass Effect has never been fun to me, and most of Overlord is that. I guess they didn't get the VA who did your squadmates back in the booth for it, because nobody says anything during it, and there's no exciting flavor text in the Illusive Man reports. And that part where Alex had to bait the laser to take out the shields isn't great either. Similar thoughts about the Firewalker DLC too, but at least they're easy to ignore.

That ending does get to me though. It's disgusting even if you don't have the familial attachments, but as someone with a special needs brother, it really grinds my gears.

Anyway, hey Alex, can we recruit the Assassin next? They're my favorite and I'd like to see them soon.

As always, thanks for the upload! Mass Alex is my favorite thing this website puts out nowadays.

Man Overlord is far creepier when you start to understand the VI's "unintelligible" dialog. Like how he keeps saying "Make it stop!"

Also, another vote for doing Arrival post suicide mission.

This was a good

Man Overlord really was a fantastic bit of DLC when it came out. Perhaps a bit grim (y'think?) but still, ME2 could certainly make you feel some things.

the way this dlc talks/thinks about autistic people is extremely 2010

in any case i support alex playing me2 whichever way he wants to. it's boring to watch someone play through a game under strict instructions in order to never experience something that doesn't go according to plan

@alex: just an idea, but how about a chill stream where you clear out all the planet scanning in one shot? I could listen to you and Vinny just shoot the breeze all day and having some soothing planet scanning in the background is an added bonus! Also means that folks that don't enjoy the scanning could skip the one episode instead of bitching in the comments every week.

Probing planets is like scrubbing dirt and dead skin cells off my back: a necessity that feels good. Keep probing planets, Alex!

I don’t think that scientist is on the up and up.

i really dont mind the chatting and probing :) keep it up

I'd blocked that encounter with the shield generators out of my memory but now I remember hating how finicky it was. Good job powering through.

@hawkens: I'm not trying to see the perfect logistical playthrough, my advice about Miranda and Jack's loyalty mission was that so he doesn't get to the argument and go "wow it really sucks that I cant resolve this, I feel like I've been paragon this whole time" which is a very common complaint with the game, and it's avoidable if you know to delay it until later when it's much easier to pass the paragon check.

It's the same reason a few of us were telling him to do Zaeed's loyalty mission early. Just trying to steer him away from the (very few) bad systems in the game to make his experience more enjoyable.

@tevor_the_third said:

I can't not hear Loghain mac Tir

"it's not element 'a million'"

i love alex

Alex: "Yeah but the Geth are assholes, so I'm not really judging you."

Vinny: "Hmm..."

Not to be that guy, but I hope Alex starts recruiting the other party members. A lot of the really good dialogue sections in ME2 comes from talking to your party members between missions. By not having Tali and the other two recruits you can already have on your party, you are potentially missing out on learning more about them. The general pattern is 1) Talk to your crew 2) Go on a mission 3) Check to see if your crew has anything new to say. I generally recall finishing ME2 for the first time without hearing what everybody had to say, because I was ran out of missions and stuff to do.

I would strongly recommend Alex recruit Tali and the other two party members before doing anything else, including random DLC. (I would also recommend Lair of the Shadow Broker towards the end of the game for.....reasons)

Since Alex and Vinny is semi-active in the comment section, I'd like to remind them that you guys should drop by Omega when it's convenient.

There's a bunch of cheap upgrades for sales at the market which Alex skipped earlier in the series.

Some upgrades have prerequisites and this stuff might be one of them.

I wish all episodes were 2 hrs. I really want them to go back to Omega there is at least one big mission and one or two smaller side missions there. They should also do some of the tiny missions, like investigating the cargo coordinates that Krogran gave Alex on Omega.

I've seriously investigated image recognition APIs to try and figure out what percentage of this series is probing. My estimate is probably around 45%

He'll show up again later in this game.

"Ya missed...."

Love this series! Haven't played ME 2 since it came out but can't you bend your biotics to get round cover?? If an enemy has the red rectangle round it I thought you could aim away slightly to apply a bit of curve?

I'm surprised how much of this game is still fresh on my mind, considering how much stuff I've played since then!

Weirdly enough, me too. I loved doing the scanning when I was playing it, and I kinda love watching it. Maybe I'm broken?

Rarely get frustrated at videos here but cmon. Don't sit a mile away from the shield generator and get mad the laser doesn't hit it.

This series has made me appreciate ME1 more (which I didn't like) and dislike ME2 more (which I loved).

You can actually aim away more than slightly and then, yes, it'll bend beautifully around cover. Full adept build with one point into pull and max points into throw makes for a wonderful biotic ballet of floating enemies that will then blast off into the stratosphere.

It's kind of weird to see how the first game didn't teach them this pattern. The rate they are going now they'll almost surely run out of mission before being able to complete all the dialogue in the game.

Sadly, that is still happening. Most recently, I saw it in writer/director Shane Black's 2018 Predator movie. Spoilers below if you care about that movie (you shouldn't, it's awful).

An autistic kid, who is like 12 or so, is able to hack the Predator's tech and ship computers and then ends up working for the government at the end. There is even a super shitty joke in it about a soldier referring to the kid as "retarded."

This is a bit of a tangent, but there is also a really cringe worthy scene where a scientist, played by Olivia Munn (because that's believable) mistakenly thinks Thomas Jane is going to rape her because he has Tourette's Syndrome and says "Eat her pussy." Also, apparently Olivia Munn was ostracized by the cast and crew during filming because she complained to Fox that Shane Black cast a friend in the movie who was convicted in 2010 for attempted sexual assault of a 14 year old.

FUCK Shane Black and that terrible movie.

Love the probing ? Keep it up Alex and Vinny!

Project Overlord is an emotional rollercoaster and for some reason I thought there was more chatting at the end; I misremembered there being a long conversation. I enjoyed it but it's quite intense.