@NeoRatt: Thanks.  Heh, I rushed to beat it before you pulled the data last night but got stuck on one of the few ridiculous parts of Insanity (there's about 6 or 7).

Insanity's definitely harder in ME2 than ME1 and unlike ME1, it's easier to start Insanity at lvl 1 than using a lvl 30 ME2 character.  I also recommend anyone attempting Insanity to be an Infiltrator (best class IMO).  A fully upgraded widow sniper rifle with a maxed Infiltator kills most normal enemies in 1 headshot.  Enemies are much smarter on Insanity, constantly flanking and charging, so being able to inflict massve damage from distance is huge.

@JPL78: Thanks.  The achievements are certainly easier in ME2, with the exception of Insanity.  The remainder of the achievements seemed to come naturally while playing the game.  No need to go out of the way to do anything.  The ally and counting achievements in ME1 were a pain.

While the RPG elements have been dumbed down, I found the game more enjoyable than ME1.  The sidequests in ME2, although fewer, are unique and more varied.  In ME1, from objective down to the area, 80% of the side quests were repetitve.  After a while it became a chore to drive around in the Mako, all the way across a world only to find the same sidequest.   The more fluid combat and smarter enemies are also huge improvements over ME1.  Two complaints I have, is the cities could've been larger and the planet scanning was a bit boring.

Congrats eNamrah...

I still have a lot of work to do

Yeah, it was kind of funny monitoring the tournament how people rolled quickly up to 940 GS and then everyone seemed to hit a brick wall.

I just noticed that the 75 GS achievement for insane nets you 634 True Achievement points...

I just think that a certain expansiveness is gone from Mass Effect 2. I'll be the first to admit that the misc. planetside missions in ME1 were bland looking, to say the least. But landing on a planet, driving around, mining, finding some banding installation and storming it, that was immersive game expanding fun.

Now you just start a mission, land pointed in a direction, tear through like its a linear FPS stage and then top if off with a mission successful screen. Almost like "stage done." Too me it just cheapens the whole thing. Upgrades are nice but in turn you collect a small handful of items and weapons throughout the game. Streamlined yes. But I don't want streamlined FPS with a hint of RPG. I want hardcore RPG with a FPS frame, like Fallout 3. So far the only heavy FPS, backup RPG i've liked was borderlands but in the end just like ME2 it just doesn't provide that expansive western feel I like. And both games can be maxed out in minimum time. That ain't gonna happen with all the true RPGs of this generation.

I don't know, if anything could change my mind about basing the gameplay on a shooter and subsiding it with role playing it would be Deus Ex 3. And now that I think of it, both the first two Deus Ex's are successful in that manner.  If Alien Vs. Predator had RPG elements that would be cool.

So I beat Mass Effect 2 on Insanity, and I definitely wont be doing that again (play on Insanity that is). For some reason though, Xbox.com shows the achievement unlocking on 2/6/2010 rather than 2/5/2010, which is when I got it (11:57 pm, haha). Oh well. Love this game so much!!

I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with myself while waiting for Mass Effect 3.

@JPL:  I can see how you'd be disappointed if you loaded up ME2 expecting a lot of ME1 gameplay.  At first I was disappointed with not being able to visit the terrain of planets.  Then I remembered too much of my ME1 time was spent in the Mako attempting to find a way over or around mountain ranges, lol.  Despite that, my full play of ME2 (33h) ended up being longer than my full play of ME1 (30h), so there's still much to do even though the game universe is streamlined and feels smaller.  I know they're releasing DLC with a Mako-like vehicle to explore planets.  It'll be interesting to see if Bioware alters the formula again for ME3.  I can't wait to find out.  Until then we'll have New Vegas to fulfill our true WRPG needs.

@adajio:  Congrats.  I saw you imported your lvl 30 soldier for your Insanity playthrough.  I did the same but couldn't get up the stairs in time to save Archangel, so I started a new character at lvl 1 and saved him on my third attempt.  That was, for me, probably the hardest recruitment mission on Insanity.  The end part of Horizon is also a bitch.  The ambush part the same.  And don't get me started on the infinite spawn husk battle.  Many deaths.  I finally beat it by using my infiltrator cloak to run away, turn around and snipe.  Rinse and repeat, hoping Grunt attracted the majority of the husks.  The final mission and boss battle might've been the easiest part of Insanity. I didn't die once.

Yeah, I started to regret using my soldier during Mordin's recruitment quest, since all the Vorcha respawn health and everyone has a second life bar of some sort. I would throw entire clips at one guy, and they would absorb it all and start to come back while reloading. Fortunately, I learned the trick you mentioned of the sniper rifle headshot (especially with that 50% damage upgrade), and was able to work my way through most of the quests like that.

I think my hardest one on Insanity was either Archangel's or Grunt's. When you have to kill Jedore at the end, she has extra Krogan spawn to attack you and a large mech, in addition to her three life bars. I managed to using about 400 ammo on the Collector particle beam to kill her all at once, and then I ran like hell to get in a good position to kill the stupid mech.

Speaking of mechs, I wasn't even able to complete that mission where you save the 20 crates for Cerberus from the 3 mechs. No matter what I did, they would always double team me and kill me in less than 2 seconds of shooting.

I agree about the end of Horizon. What I managed to do was, when first entering, running straight up to the console and completing the hack before getting attacked, so I skipped the first wave entirely. Then, I bunkered down along one wall with my squadmates, and we just sniped them off. On Insanity, you basically need to kill every Collector before Harbinger, because if you kill him first, he will immediately go to another spawn, which is crazy.

Which infinite spawn Husk battle are you referring to? I can only think of the Reaper IFF one right now, and I managed to kinda cheat my way around that by using Geth shield boost and running past everyone to get to the next checkpoint. When I died, that save would load, skipping all the previous enemies. Then, when destroying the core (which is what I think you're referring to), I ran around in circles and let Grunt with Fortification take the hits like you did, haha.

I was surprised at how easy the suicide mission was, I only died once or twice which, when compared to other missions where I died dozens and dozens of times, was pretty good.

I think Insantiy is overall somewhat unbalanced, given the new ammo situation. I would use up ammo for several guns during one fight simply because I had to hack through everyone's armor and shields. I would try to bring other squadmates who could cut through them with biotics and tech, but this meant that they usually had little health, and would get killed every time they got out of cover to shoot, which is why I stuck with Grunt and a biotic (either Miranda or Samara usually).

I'm glad it's over though, so now I can do my renegade playthrough on normal, haha.

(By the way, did you try Zaeed's loyalty quest? I actually had to reload an old save and skip it. A large mech plus two flamethrower dudes is too much)

hah, with the Jadore fight I noticed that if you don't enter all the way in the room, the door won't close and lock behind you.  So I stayed near the door and sniped the first two krogans, directed my team to go in and focus on the heavy mech.  He killed both of them and came after me so I ran back through the door and up the stairs.  When the door closed in front of him, I revived my team so they drew his attention away, allowing me to open the door and snipe him.  Rinse and repeat.

I didn't attempt the crate, the mining husk (100 armored husks? no thanks.), or the smugling depot (100 mechs? again, no thanks.) assignments on Insanity.

For Horizon I left my team near the console and went back to the door and hid on the back of the truck to snipe. And yes, I was referring to the the Reaper IFF boss fight.  I did the same as you for the prior part, running past the husks and scions to the checkpoint (assassin cloak ftw!). 

The final mission was so easy.  1 headshot to each collector as soon as they appeared, limiting the appearance of harbinger to 1 per group.  Also I read about how much health the final boss has on Insanity, but 1 nuke and 8 widow shots while using assassin cloak took him down.  Maxed infiltrator + upgraded widow + warp ammo nearly breaks the game (too bad that gun only holds 13 shots).  I can only imagine how awesome it is on lesser difficulties (on my normal playthrough I selected the revenant mg).

And for Zaeed's loyalty fight, I died a few times.  Eventually I got fast enough to where I could mow down all of the blue suns guys with widow headshots before the heavy mech made it across the room to me.  Then I would kite him around the room and use the collector beam or widow on him when he got distracted by my teammates.

They do ship you the codes that come in the box if you use the keep it feature.  I used the keep it option on Gears of War 2, and two days later the retail box shows up with the free download code for one of the DLC maps.  Pull tab was still in place.

eNamrah, we can agree to disagree. I like the game a lot, I just think some of its expansive charm is gone. If it wasn't for the whole conversation and story aspect I probably wouldn't be as interested. I'm playing to advance the story at this point and that's pretty much it. I'll be the first to agree the Mako parts in part 1 could be tedious and boring but it was something you had never seen, that level of exploration in a sci-fi RPG. Now it's a freaking boring mini-game.

Also I expected more character growth for your previous squad, Garrus aside so far all you do is bump into them and go "hey, what's up?"

And while you talk about your play through being longer, I ask you how many hours of that was spent hacking things and scanning planets. So they didn't replace the game extending busy work, they just made it more boring.

Shooting, running, taking cover, ordering team mates around.. it's all good. I'm not saying its a bad game just more geared towards Gears fans.

In a completely unrelated matter, sweet ass gamefly has shipped me Bioshock 2 today!