Honestly... I miss the elevators. Personally, I never really had a problem with any of them because A) they could entertaining, and B) I would position the camera and examine Tali's butt at great lengths. Sure, they could go on for a little while, but then so do these load screens in ME2. The only elevators that was actually mind-destroying bad was that elevator back on the Normandy.
Yeah, this really seems like a forest-for-the-trees case. While I'll admit it was a little immersion-breaking to have minute-long-one-floor elevator trips in the 24th century, the problem was entirely with the load times and not the relatively clever mechanism they used to try and cover for them. I dislike having to tag a Galactic News Terminal.
First impressions ~6 hours in:
It's kind of nice to have the skill trees be just the special dots from ME1, and I appreciate being able to hit a large barn with a weapon without leveling a few times first.
Boy, some of the Renegade options are
really Renegade. Some conversation options could use a little more of a hint as to what you're actually going to do.
Quick-time conversations are okay, but some of the windows are awfully short and I've had to reload a few times from stretching or taking a drink or something while the spoken dialogue goes on and OH WAIT MOUSE BUTTON. I did really enjoy one sidequest where a Krogan was getting preachy and intimidating while standing near a flammable tank, with the QTE to shoot the tank, have him mock you for missing him, and then him burning to a crisp with your second shot.
Party-member quests are nice, but it's a little ham-fisted to have your secretary tell you to start them in lieu of having to build up character relationships.
Game is much harder than the first. Ammo feels just a mite too sparse, especially for pistol users. Some awkward interaction between Storming and taking cover, including a few deaths from trying valiantly to hammer the cover hotspot, followed by instantly vaulting over it. Bad console-PC transition.
LOADING SCREEN TIPS AND EVEN WORSE ON-SCREEN POP-UPS REFER TO HARD-CODED KEYS INSTEAD OF THE KEYBIND VARIABLE THIS IS FUCKING 2010 PEOPLE
Made especially bad by some arbitrary-feeling changes to ME1 controls. I like Q and E for squad directions but spacebar for Storm/cover is awful. Use/Storm need to be separated like this were an actual fucking PC game and we had a giant keyboard to use so I can use Left Shift like it were every other FPS in the world.
And am I missing something or is there no dedicated crouch button? It was pretty late when I was playing last night.