Insanity is the Best Way to Play Mass Effect 2

by Thomas Lin, COMMUNITY WRITER

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Insanity is the best way to play Mass Effect 2. No, I’m not full of male bravado and fist pumping, but I feel the insanity difficulty enhances everything about Mass Effect 2. Commander Shepard is described as the only soldier fit to successfully lead a suicide mission against an insurmountable enemy. On lower difficulty settings there is never a feeling of danger or risk. The enemies hardly put up a fight. Shepard becomes a school yard bully. The kid who follows the poor Blue Suns Mercenary to the bathroom, informs the entire school yard, and convinces everyone to throw wet toilet paper at him while he does his business in the stall. The insanity setting brings more to the Mass Effect 2 experience than roided enemies and a crippled protagonist.

Dangers of the Universe

The Mass Effect Universe plays up all of Shepard’s enemies. Blue Suns, Eclipses, Blood Pack, Geth, and Collectors, they are out to get me and I should always shoot first and ask questions later. On lower difficulty settings, it’s hard to sense real danger from any of these enemies. The Krogan are hyped up to be a race that is incredibly hard to kill. I ran up to Krogans and punched them in the face until they died. It was horrible; my Shepard was running around punching week old test tube babies in the face. These were the most durable race in the galaxy? Nothing feels dangerous, the Universe presented feels false.

The Harbinger

Mass Effect 2 feels like it is devoid of any primary antagonist. There was no Vegeta to my Shepard. The closest enemies are The Illusive Man and Harbinger. On lower difficulty settings, Harbinger is about as unstoppable as a road cone. Truth, I didn’t know Harbinger was an enemy on Normal and Veteran. He died as quick as the other Collectors, didn’t know he was there. The insanity Harbinger came down and reconstructed my Shepard into an unrecognizable mess. He takes over Collectors close to death saving them from the killing blow gives them full barriers and armor more than any other enemy. He could knock me out of cover, set me on fire, and shoot me with a collector particle beam, at the same time. He forced me to constantly out maneuver him and quickly kill all the Collectors so I could deal with him. When Harbinger came, he felt like a real threat to me and my party.

Tactical RPG

The Insanity difficulty debunks any theory Mass Effect 2 is not RPGy enough. On the lower difficulty settings I would run in and recreate scenes from the latest Rambo movie. Insanity enemies never stop firing and have a bucket of endless ammo. This forces me to take a tactical approach for each encounter. But the only situation that almost forced me to give up my insanity playthrough was a specific encounter with the Collectors. The part where the Collectors ambush you from incoming platforms backed with a Scion in the far back. Until this point, I rarely died, it seemed cheap and frustrating. I put the game down and tried it the next day. As an engineer I have the Combat Drone ability and the important mechanic about the drone is it can be summoned anywhere I point my crosshairs. So, I summoned my combat drone into an empty space that prevented the invading platforms from landing. This caused a glitch in the game where the Collectors could not hit me, but I could hit them. That’s right; I broke the game to get past a point on Insanity. Was it cheap? Probably, but I felt like my Shepard figured out an impossible situation and the insanity mode encouraged me to try extreme measures.

Give it a Try

bros My suggestion of everyone should try Mass Effect 2 on insanity is serious. When I finished an encounter and built my characters to specifically kill certain enemies I felt like the whole package had come together. The increase in difficulty gave me a real sense of danger and risk in the game. It made the suicide mission feel real. The Collectors and heavy mechs felt like imposing enemies that feel like there’s no way of winning. Trust me, it doesn’t take that long. My insanity playthrough was 12 hours, saved the entire crew, no one died, and I felt like a complete badass. This isn’t me pumping my fist, flashing the jersey, screaming, “EFF YEAH EFF YEAH!” I feel the insanity difficulty in Mass Effect 2 has given me a better appreciation for the game.

Tags: Mass Effect 2, insanity, collectors, krogan

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Jonathan Betonio

February 16, 2010

@Thomas: One question, and one problem: Q) How exactly did you play Insanity, from level 1 on a fresh save (no bonuses from ME1 complete save or ME2 complete save), or did you start out with bonuses (gameplay spoiler: skill points/levels, weapons/armor)? I haven't checked myself, but I suspect that enemy levels are matched to these details. Personally, I played a Normal with an ME1 save, then used that completed ME2 save to play Insanity, and I was definitely challenged and wonder how playable ME2 would be if the gameplay was exactly the same but I started with a level 1 fresh save. P) ME2 is damn glitchy and exploit-ridden. AI is frustratingly stupid; even though I don't mind team members not knowing where to go without me telling them to, they break cover as soon as a battle is done (and I decided that the tactically sound decision is to milk a covered chokepoint as much as I can, so I ended up having to reposition the damn members every couple minutes). Worse, not every location is useable for cover, and you don't know unless you remember from an old play or if you try it yourself. So you send NPCs to what you think is cover, spend time to double check to make sure they're actually in cover, then back up so you can target an old cover point if the one you just tried doesn't work. Then there's the thing where after some movement or angle of targeting, NPCs that were in cover leave it even during a battle; your NPCs don't always go back to cover after popping up and firing. So you go micromanage them again if you want their infinite ammo and suppression/decoy role. In this regard I actually enjoyed the squad movement from Republic Commando and wished so many times ME2 had similar squad cover movement. Normally the AI limitation works against the enemies too, but at Insanity, the AI limitation works against your squadmates more than the enemy. It's possible to drop your mates completely, ignoring them, and going Jason Bourne on the enemies, but with highly limited ammo, you're going to need to rely on the grenade-like abilities that, at Insanity, have to deal with a lot of Armor, but also the common Shield and occasional Barrier, which means you'll want for at least 2 different damage abilities if you want to go at more than a crawl's speed. Then there are the cutscenes that force your team out of tactical positions and drop you into the middle of annoying positions simply because that's where the cutscene ended up. I'm sure Shepard's got confidence, but cockiness that borders on tactically stupid just bugged me for the immersion, not to mention the interruption to my carefully-set positioning. At least there's exploits here and there to "balance" that last point; fighting major battles from just outside the door, especially with enemies being unable to leave their rooms, and most of the time, the ability to set up ambushes and lead stupid enemy AI a long way into your trap. ===== I dunno, but I think my biggest issue is how the vision, the cohesion of the game seems to break up at higher difficulty. Sure I'll finish Insanity, it's definitely a different game especially with the New Game+, the chance to play a different personality, and the silly Achievement/medal, but the game design/programming seems to fall apart too often to not be unnecessarily frustrating. Presentation-wise, with battles becoming a lot more drawn out and about slow attrition and positioning, the cinematics don't seem to fit as well, either. Cinematics that fit a more action-movie-ish game instead of a war-is-hell experience, the difference between Rambo and, say, Hamburger Hill or Saving Private Ryan. Although I admit, there were definitely some intensely desperate-feeling situations that I never got from Normal difficulty, challenges that made sense even in the wider context of ME2, namely fights against melee enemies, especially husks. Tough as hell, and frustratingly difficult, but never broke the mood. But with fights against melee enemies, it really helped that cover and exact positioning was rarely important.

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Lance Darnell

February 16, 2010

Jonathan, you are awesome!

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Jonathan Betonio

February 16, 2010

@lance: Definitely not the response I ever expect anywhere, so I'm dubious, especially with my intensely naive understanding of sarcasm. Oh, holy crap, there's a comment points system. Um, thanks? In case I wasn't clear though, since I'm here, play ME2 on Insanity just as Thomas suggests, it definitely gives a different experience, and experienced gamers can work around any problem spots. At least Bioware labeled it appropriately. The experience almost makes me want to try Iron Man mode in Jagged Alliance 2. Or try and finish a roguelike. Almost; I can't bear to lose units forever, and ASCII is just so bleh...

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Lance Darnell

February 16, 2010

@Jonathan - At Bitmob, long comments that are filled with thoughtful ideas are always appreciated and respected. Or is that loathed and unwanted? ;)

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Brian Petro-Roy

February 16, 2010

I remember when I tried beating the original ME on Insanity with a fresh character, I needed a glitch to get past the krogan bouncer in Chora's Den. The only way I could survive an encounter with him was to spawn the enemies, take out a couple of the easy guys by the front door, and then hightail it back out into the corridor - yet he still killed me at least five or six times before he got stuck in the door on the way out and I was able to take him down. ME2 definitely changes very significantly when you increase the difficulty. I recently finished a Hardcore playthrough with an imported ME1 character, and that was already a major change from my first Veteran run, considering that *everybody* has shields/barriers. I gotta say, though, krogan are certainly not the most formidable foes in the galaxy. Neither are scions, harbingers, or even praetorians...I can handle just about anybody except a YMIR mech - those things are relentless, invincible death factories!

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Jonathan Betonio

February 16, 2010

@brian: Oh yeah, YMIR's man. Kind of a game tactic spoiler, but I figured out that you can get the enemy to prioritize you (as in pull/draw aggro to you). I got to a point where my usual tactic was to set up my snipers out of the way, then have Shepard be the badass/dumbass decoy running circles around the YMIR's. Having cloak might have been necessary though. Still, that one hangar bay side mission, with the two YMIR's, followed by a barrier/shielded attack squad, that was probably one of my favorite Insanity experiences once I worked out the kinks. Given that the YMIR's were non-AI droids I could forgive their dogged simplicity in chasing only me while the snipers took potshots, and there was plenty of cover to hide behind away from my snipers. Afterwards the Eclipse follow-up attack felt like a nice anticlimax and change of pace. Oh, one stupid, exciting, but fortunately not-very-frustrating glitch: as I kept a box between me and those YMIR's, somehow both got caught in the box and elevated so they were looking right down at Shepard. Fortunately there was enough cover that they still couldn't hit, but I worried that since I couldn't get Shepard out to redraw aggro as safely anymore the YMIRs might knock off the snipers. It worked out though, and I was able to remember that more like a relentless Terminator hunter scene instead.

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Jeffrey Sandlin

February 16, 2010

Honestly, I had enough trouble with normal. I'm not much of a gears fan so when I played mass effect 1 I wasn't constantly in cover. I played all of my playthroughs making more use of the tech classes super boosted shields, the biotic barrier, and the soldier's invulnerability to play more similar to the way I play halo, weaving in and out of an enemies line of sight while using cover in concept rather then in game mechanic. Every once in a while i'd take a normal cover position to snipe someone or outlast a heavily armed group but i had more opportunity to play fast and loose. In mass effect 2 you are made out of straw covered in gasoline. You have to be in cover constantly or you are dead. It sucked some of the fun out of the combat for me. In the original game I would die maybe...once every few missions and usually from a cheap one hit kill sniper or rocket that was hidden from me by luck. In mass effect 2 I didn't have a single mission on my first playthrough where the borked AI and my pathetic surviveability didn't get me killed multiple times. It didn't help that that the enemy seems to instantly focus all fire on you the instant you poke your head out from cover, as if they were all psychically linked to your joystick. After that I pretty much decided 'to hell with insanity. Normal pisses me off as it is. I assume that people who like insanity in this game serious just really really like being punished for every mistake in their games. I never really took to that mentality personally. It's more fun for me to have a little wiggle room to experiment.

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Jonathan Betonio

February 16, 2010

@jeffrey: I was reluctant to go for Insanity after tooling around in Normal and already noticing how annoying AI management was and how challenging some encounters already seemed (infiltrator), but a few good features on the devs part helped get me over the hump: 1) New Game+ that lets you keep levels and skills (for same build anyway) and gives you bonus resources to start 2) the curiosity about how the game will compensate for keeping your high levels 3) curiosity for how different Insanity is 4) curiosity about how the presentation changes playing the opposite personality 5) that one "complete Insanity" achievement/medal, along with other medals I hadn't gotten yet 6) and the realization that I could have skilled up and upgraded more on my first playthrough, since I didn't realize you could find side quests by visiting planets. I didn't visit planets unless I had to because that's how I kept track of planets I already farmed; on 2nd playthrough I just made a plain handwritten list. This last one isn't really a positive opinion on the design though. Once playing Insanity, I also realized I didn't use powers much at all or rely on teammates as much in first game. By 2nd game, even playing the same class, the game had become much much different. I focused on leaving the shooting to the squad, despite their AI shortcomings, doing my best to keep them in good positions while Shepard became the human target relying on Incinerate for all the armor, a level 1 AI hack for slowing mech waves down, and some SMG for shields. I did assign the shield-busting burst sniper handed out to my squad, so we were essentially a sniper team, except the rifles performed a bit more like long-range assault rifles. Occasionally Shepard would bring out the bullets if needed, but for the most part she was stingy as hell and managed squad ammo power instead. Battles still ran longer than Normal, but when micromanagement didn't get much in the way it actually felt more rewarding, and in a different way. Because of the slower pace from all the tactical pausing I got to think more and I learned more about the engine design... ...which led to noticing ways to exploit the game, which was rewarding in its own way, even if it broke the presentation a bit. Using enemy AI and its amazing aggro tracking/cover-break response to protect my dumb squadmates (which was in a way exciting too, being a runner), luring enemies into sniper alley ambushes, conducting room battles from just outside the room/from the doorway, that sort of thing. I don't think I ever thought of Insanity as punishing mistakes; at worst it was just AI frustration, but for the most part a long series of opportunities to understand how the game works instead of focusing only on the story and action. I do wonder how playtesting allowed the exploits to get through, because I figure playtesters playing Insanity were either super-duper good at playing it as intended, or they would have noticed and used exploits to get through some spots. Not to mention what playtesters thought of the squad AI and cover management. Definitely lots of room for improvement should BioWare want to patch this one or incorporate similar design features into ME3. Then again, if BioWare wanted to tweak ME2 gameplay so much, I wouldn't be surprised if they do it again and make ME3 more of an action strategy game. And with a likely super-epic trilogy ending, much like the progression from Fellowship of the Ring to Return of the King, I think the narrative could definitely support a more strategic game.