What really grinds my gears is combat in the Mako.
I've determined that the game is vastly more fun if you think of yourself as a sort of Space Berserker, with the Mako as your longboat. You don't want to fight in it, you want to drive it up to whatever it is you want to kill, possibly running a few of them over, and then start shooting people.
This has a few benefits:
- It's vastly more fun.
- It's vastly more suicidal, and will correspondingly give you a longer play experience.
- Despite the above, it's actually often easier too.
- You get three times the experience points.
- You apparently get more loot.
Alternately you can snipe people from long range. During one of the side quests I had fun taking out missile turrets from 400+ meters using explosive shells and Assassination. Hauling around a spare set of Thermal Armor or the lower environmental suits (they're all a kind of mustard yellow) is quite nice for letting you do this on hazardous planets, though the weak armor discourages aforementioned berserker run.
Generally, I don't know what the hell they were thinking with the Mako. I think the main problems are that its steering is context dependent, instead of absolute (like say,
Grand Theft Auto's). If they switched so that driving in a direction
always made you drive in that direction rather than changing depending on where you were looking, it'd be much more intuitive. Other problems are that the reticle sucks (why is it blue--the hardest possible color to see on most planets--and why doesn't it turn red when an enemy is highlighted?) and that so does the zoom function. If these issues were addressed it could actually be a decent vehicle.
Oh, and Thresher Maws. They could actually be fun if they didn't have a chance of insta-gibbing you.
Much like Armatures and Colossi, they're actually often easier to kill
on foot when you're a decent level (20ish+). I guess if you were ballsy you could do it earlier. Though it's not particularly difficult to do it in the Mako occasionally its stupid handling screws you and you get hit by acid spray (which, by the way, can sometimes teleport through hills
). As long as you circle strafe around out of their melee range you aren't likely to get hit--if you double back your party probably will though, but no big deal.
This bit is mostly from the other thread, but I figure it's prudent here anyway:
Weapons and armor are pretty much no-brainers (Spectre X and Colossus / Predator L/M/H), but weapons mods have some play. Who uses what? Personally, when possible later on, I go:
- Assault Rifle: Scram Rail, Scram Rail, Snowblind
- Shotgun: Scram Rail, Scram Rail, High Explosive
- Pistol: Frictionless Materials, Combat Optics, Cryo
- Sniper Rifle: Scram Rail, Scram Rail, Sledgehammer
Typically using weaker equivalents if not available. A Snowblind AR chews through big enemies (Armatures, Colossi, Threshers) and simultaneously really screws with their aim. An HE Shotgun is like a free "Throw" biotic ability (basically becomes a grenade launcher, and far more effective than the actual thing), and the Sniper can take most people out in one shot, even on Insanity. For clearing out troop positions HE is sometimes better in the Sniper. The Pistol is mostly backup unless you don't have Assaults or Shotties but is good damage if that's the case. I'm curious if anybody has come across any combinations they think work well.
Also, it seems to me like Electronics is one of the more useful skills you can equip on anybody once you've unlocked it for addition (mega-shields) and the same with the Shield Battery / Modulator / Interface. You can get well in excess of 750 Shields and it takes a whole squad to crack your battery. If it's paired with Shock Trooper on the Soldier or (I believe) Vanguard, Shepard becomes a tank that even Wrex absolutely pales in comparison to.
Lastly, on my rambling list of observations: melee is actually pretty damn useful. Especially against Husks and Creepers. Run up, knock'em down, run back. Repeat. Let your squad shoot them up in the meantime. If you don't have a "kill tunnel" you can lead them down, are really low level, have crappy equipment, or even if you're pretty kitted out, it's an extremely handy way of dealing with masses of them.
I got bit of frustrated when I engaged first Geth vehicles with just laser rifle gun (or whatever it is). After few deaths I realized there was a cannon.
