I’ve just finished through my first play-through of Mass Effect 2 and now I can’t wait for Mass Effect 3!
I’ve cranked up the difficulty level all the way up to Insanity, skipping the Veteran and Hard Levels for my second play-through to add more of a challenge.
Boy, did I get it!
Second Play-through
I’ve set the difficulty level to Insanity and holy crap is it ever so much harder! I’m on Omega station right now, picking up Garrus and Mordin and Shep’s died a number of times already despite being Level 30 and carrying over skills from the first play-through.
No, I’m not that bad a player. 
Weapons hit harder, take bigger chunks out of you, shields go down much quicker. Enemies are now upgraded and triple-layered with shields and extra armour on top of their health. It definitely is harder.
I’m starting to find problems with the AI, especially when they attempt to go for cover on command. It wasn’t a problem in lower difficulty levels since enemies could be dispatched more easily. But on Insanity, cover is so much more important. If you don’t place the waypoint marker just right, your teammates won’t be in the proper position so they end up either not taking full cover so they get shot up, or they become unable to fire at enemies from around cover.
I wish the squad controls in Mass Effect 2 were just a little more comprehensive. Having a “script” system a la Dragon Age would be cool but simply having a few more tactical options would be nice.
My goals for this play-through:
Sleep with one of the female characters. 
I accidentally hit on Jacob on my first play-through! Really! It was an accident! 
Depending on how the option on the dialogue menu wheel is written it’s sometimes not entirely clear what the potential consequences are.
I think hitting on Jacob forever changed my romance paths. Just for kicks, at the end of my first play-through, I had my female Shepard start something with Garrus! Boy, those Turian scales must chafe something fierce!
No hanging sub-quests. I encountered some sub-quest glitches in the first play-through where following certain story paths prevented you from completing sub-quests that had already started. While it’s not a show-stopper, it does poke at the obsessive compulsive side of me. I’ll try to avoid having any sub-quests hanging this time around.
Try different classes. My first play-through used a female Shepard and the Sentinel class. I imported her into my second play-through because I got attached to the character but I think I’ll go with a new class this time.
Full Paragon. My previous Shepard was mostly Paragon and about 20%-25% Renegade. I’m going to try and shoot for a higher Paragon score so I can open up more dialogue options.
Trainer
This time around, I’m using a trainer/cheat but not because I want to make the game easier… Rather, it’s to get around this really annoying clipping bug where the character gets caught on terrain, props etc.
Once you get hung up, there’s no way you can free yourself at all. You’ve got no choice but to reload the game from your last save. Damn annoying! That happened to me twice on Tuchanka while doing the Krogan ritual combat trial.
The cheat I’m using has a “No clip” toggle that enables characters to pass through scenery props. If I get hung up again, I just turn on “no clip”, free the character, turn it back off and continue onward.
Another handy feature of the trainer/cheat is being able to speed up the game. There are some quests where you do a lot of running around so being able to crank up the game speed as needed can make up for the character’s oddly short sprint duration.
I’m not using any of the other cheat features, like God mode and infinite ammo (etc.). I like screwing around in games using cheats as much as the next player but on a legitimate play-through, no way. I like to really earn my victories. Perhaps after the third play-through, I’ll start screwing around.
‘Avatar’ of Video Games.
Time Magazine remarked that Mass Effect 2 is the Avatar (James Cameron’s) of this year’s video game releases. I’m not sure I’d go with that comparison. Avatar was definitely a technical accomplishment rather than an artistic one. The story in Mass Effect is actually more compelling than that of Avatar, in my opinion.
I do find the comparison ironic since in Mass Effect 2, you can basically strip mine a planet of all resources till it’s depleted while in Avatar, that was the source of conflict and the message was to respect nature, regardless of what planet you’re on. 
What trainer are you using? I’ve tried to find a noclip trainer, but I haven’t yet…. I’m stuck on a mission where a door won’t open when I bypass it.
Need help!
The one I’m using has no formal name but the archive name is “me2_h4x”. It was created by a user named “metronome22″
You can get “me2_h4x” from here.
Note that “me2_h4x” has an infinite ammo mode that’s permanently on.
If you don’t want to have infinite ammo, install “me2_h4x” first, and then use this add-on to switch off the infinite ammo mode.
Thanks, that saved my game!
You’re welcome. Glad I could be of some help.