In the very beginning of the game I'm up against some dead things that set off blue electricity, and I get a training instruction to throw grenades. There are grenades in my inventory, and I think I selected them, but when I went into combat, sure enough it was the crummy little pistol firing away to no effect.

How do I select an item in inventory? I mean, I can select it, all right, but whn I go back out of my inventory screen, the item isn't really selected, after all.

And just how am I supposed to kill those dead things, anyway? I can't even take one down, never mind three of them. And can I control my party members? There doesn't seem to be an option for that.

hagatha, ME 1? I don't remember very well but try the R button.

Again I don't remember but there should be a way to see the default controls from the main menu.

I assume you are playing the PC version if not probably pressing the Select button of the Controller gives them.

For ME 2 this should be more or less the same.

Hmm. I managed to squeak my way through the first mission, using up a lot of health in the process. Not bad, but I wish there was a Pause function. This game is pretty intense and fun.

I'm having some problems with it, though. Maybe just Vista issues, but there have been a couple of crashes and I couldn't even start the game without downloading a patch.

Anyway, farther along, I seem to have picked up some rather strange party members. The plot line is moving along a bit too fast for me to follow -- I'm just running around completing quests.

Right now I'm on a timed quest to rescue somebody, and I don't know who they are or where they are, but I've got three minutes to do it in.

Riiiiiight.

Maybe on the second playthrough it will all make sense This reminds me of the first time I played KOTOR -- didn't have a clue what I was doing for the first quarter of the game, but it sure was fun.

I picked up Mass Effect 2 yesterday, and then, rooting around in my games, found a whole stack of games I haven't played yet, including this one. I have no idea when I bought it.

Hagatha

I've just found my (old) copy of ME1 - there is a pause function. Like in all Bioware games, you'll need to use the space button to pause the game.

This will bring up a tactical screen; you can control your squad mates (a bit). The reason, I'm saying this is that the word over at the Bioware ME forums are that the AI for your squad mates aren't very good...

As for throwing grenades, yes, the R button should work.

Pausing the game by way of the spacebar should also make it so that you can change weapons, change to any team mate, give orders to your team mates and maybe much more...

Well I bought Mass Effect 2 and can't get it to run on my machine.
It won't start. I'm at a loss. This is a new computer with lots of ram, and everything else I've tried on it runs fine. Darn.
Andrea

Karsten, thanks for the tips. I see that the pause function isn't one you can use and walk away from the game; it's sort of a semi-pause. The AI is not very good and if you leave your characters up to their own devices they soon wind up dead.

After the initial few glitches the game seems pretty stable on my Vista laptop. I was thinking it wasn't as good as, say, KOTOR, but then I realized that it was midnight and I'd been playing all day, so it's obviously not bad, either!

luv2travel, have you tried disabling the virus protection?

After many problems I finally was able to play ME1, I have ME2 in the mail and hope for the best. ME1 and Sacred, which I was never able to play despite having better stats than the requirements, were the games that made me buy a PS3 last year when I had been always a PC only player.

Thanks, mcc!
How do I do that? I'm running Windows 7. Have McAfee. Don't know how to turn on or off anything.
Andrea

Normally, you can just right click the icon for say McAfee next to the clock. Then select exit.
This should close the anti virus program down. Remember to turn it on again after you've installed the game, though.

A lot of times one has to go in a different way to switch protection off, I guess it depends on the actual McAfee program.
If you don't have the exit option when right clicking the McAfee icon, click on the Open Security Center, check at the "very" bottom left, if it says Advanced Menu click on it (if it says Basic, you are already in the next step), click on Configure ,next at the top left click Computer and Files, now on the right you should see Virus Protection is Enabled, turn it off, it will give you options of time, choose it and you are done.

Well, I found out my video card isn't good enough for the game. It's an intel one, not an Nvidea or whatever. So I guess if I want to play this game, I'll have to use my desktop. Bye bye comfortable recliner. It'll go on my shelf to possibly play later on.
Andrea

Ah, I had a feeling you had an unsupported video chip in that laptop. So, just never mind my post in the Windows 7 and Games topic! Although I did post a list of the unsupported cards there.

Okay so back to the Beginner's Nlues, anyone have any tips on combat in that stupid Mako runabout?

It's almost impossible to control even on flat gound, yawing from side to side. You can't make it do anything in combat withut it flipping over. I've watched the same cutscene so may times on Feros that I'm about ready to give up. What were they thinking?

Thank you, Draclvr!
I appreciate the attempt.
Andrea
PS Sorry for hijacking your thread.