That one renegade thing you always do, even as a Paragon (or vice versa)

My current Shep is Paragade.  That can get dicey in ME2 if I don't have enough points invested in either Paragon or Renegade to defuse Jack/Miranda and Tali/Legion situations.

Agreed. It shouldn't be a no-brainer, in principle the stakes are high enough that just one person suffering or perishing miserably would be a small price to pay if it might help with the greater conflict. But it's almost impossible to imagine someone actually leaving him there and being able to live with themselves, the prospect is so messed up. Ugh.

Maybe next time around I'll do it, and then that will be Shepards greatest regret. That, and having to gun down Wrex when he finds out about the sabotaged cure. That always stings.

I imported as Paragon, or mostly so.  It's just that in ME2 Shep is finding it easier to make Renegade decisions.  There are far more assholes in ME2 than ME1.  Which makes sense dealing with Cerberus and everyone on Omega.  Hell, I've specifically gone out of my way to not meet up with Aria just because she demanded it.  I decided to find Mordin first.  Maybe I'll leave afterward and head to Alchera, followed by the Citadel to recruit Kasumi and meet up with Anderson.  And maybe buy some fish and a space hamster.

I mostly play paragade Shepards (with a varying directions) and I use the savegame editor to give them extra P/R points at the beginning of ME2. That system is so bad I have no scruples about cheating it. It basically prevents you from role-playing properly and since that is the most importnat aspect of a trilogy run for me, I just go around it.

Always punch Admiral Gerrel. Always.

That's pretty much how I rolled during my first few playthroughs as well. Then I got bored with the perfect hero shtick, and resolved myself to play the series through making deliberate and truly uncomfortable moral compromises that I KNEW would sit with Shepard for the entire playthrough, so that by the time s/he finally returned to Earth in 3 she would have so many doubts and regrets about the things she had done that she would have to fight twice as hard at the end to justify it all.

That particular series playthrough outshone every other one I've done so thoroughly that I couldn't think of a reason to play the trilogy again for several years. It was beyond beautiful. It was poetic.

Turns out that having to gun Mordin down to stop him from fixing the cure and sabotaging the alliance with the Salarians that might save everyone, and first receiving Wrex' adulation for your help knowing you've utterly betrayed his trust and then having to execute him in self-defense and to keep him quiet when he learns the truth, are some of the heaviest and most well-written and dramatic and emotional moments in any RPG ever. I was blown away.

My Shepards have always truly admired both Mordin and Wrex as respectively the most brilliant physician they ever met, and the bravest and most determined and constructive visionary. None of that "you'll never be better than Commander Shepard" crap. Mordin is a true genius and ruthless man of action who has spent his entire life protecting people from the horrors of the galaxy tooth and nail, and Wrex browbeats his entire species into getting their act together and facing the future as one all by himself. Nothing Shepard, or anything any human in recorded history, has done even comes close to being as impressive as that.

And nothing else in the series is even half as heart-wrenching as pulling the trigger that ends them and undoes all their work for the greater good.

I didn't bother figuring out how to game the suicide mission until recently, and was irritated whenever I got through without casualties. Suicide missions have casualties, period. This time around I'm planning for Samara, Jacob, Kasumi, Zaeed and half the Normandy crew to die. And even then I feel like I'm being too soft on them all, not letting anyone who really matters die, mostly because Miranda, Legion, Mordin and Thane all have more interesting and dramatic deaths in 3.

Just shows what a legend Shepard truly is. He can punch a helmet with enough force to throw back the admiral, and it doesn't even hurt his hand.

Well I still do bad stuff like pushing that merc out the window in ME2 and I let zaeed do his thing in his loyalty mission. As well as a bunch of little stuff. Also if you have wrex alive then you get more war assets for doing the cure then if you don't do it. With wreav you get more for not doing the cure.  I do stuff like punch the assistant on eden prime and use the renegade dialouge to get that colonists on eden prime to tell me who is contact is. And yeah I always execute fist. Still I guess in the end I am always the good guy.

Punch of doom you say?

Doom Slayer: Hold my beer...