Arrival, the final DLC for Mass Effect 2, was recently released and it is pretty darn nifty. It took me about an hour to play through and along with snagging a few credits during the game play, there were 3 new research projects: Heavy Weapon Ammo Increase Medi-Gel Capacity Increase Heavy Skin Weave (aka more health for Shepard) There was also some Element Zero, Palladium, and Iridium to be found during the mission; the handful of planets in the system also had some resources to offer as well, though nothing terribly exciting if you have already completed the game.

Last Monday (14 June 2010), BioWare released a demo for Mass Effect 2 (and yes this is a demo for a game that has been out for awhile) on both Xbox 360 and PC. Additionally, the price recently decreased from release day standard $60 to $40, so now if you haven’t played the game, you can try the demo and then only need $40 to get the full game. On Tuesday, they released their latest bit of DLC called Overlord. Being a Mass Effect 2 fanatic, I bought it immediately for 560 MS Points (at standard conversion rate that is $7).

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently beat Mass Effect 2. Today I wanted to talk about a few things, what I liked/disliked, my end game team, guns, and lastly what the “bonus” was for beating Mass Effect Galaxy (the iPod Touch/iPhone game). Liked: The improved combat system The upgrade system — no more pausing mid-fight to adjust ammo types as necessary, or installing an upgrade for one weapon and moving your upgrade into another, etc, etc The planet scanning instead of taking the Mako down to run around the planet The heavy weapons Three different versions of Barrier: Fortification (for more Armor), Geth Shield (for more Shield), and Barrier (for more… biotic Barrier).

Beat Mass Effect 2 recently and managed to get all but 3 achievements: Insanity — Beat the game on Insanity difficulty; Overload Specialist — Use Overload to destroy a shield 25 times (only did this 22 times); Warp Specialist — Use Warp to destroy a Barrier 25 times (only did this a few times). I probably could have gotten Overload and Warp, but didn’t realize that you actually had to finish off the Shield/Barrier with Overload/Warp in order for it to count.

Mass Effect 2 came out yesterday. Jon and I both preordered long ago and were quite happy to receive our release day deliveries from Amazon (Prime, FTW). I have only played an hour or two thus far but here’s what I think, and yes there will be spoilers.

Mass Effect: Revelation takes place before the video game. In it we mostly follow the adventurous David Anderson before he becomes Commander Shepard’s CO. There are a number of items inside the book that should remind readers of the game. For instance, in general when they mention someone’s weapon they mention the manufacturer (Alliance personnel generally use Hahne-Kedar weapons); and (almost) all the weapons mentioned are all found in the game (and are in fact likely weapons you picked up during the course of your play through).