Miranda's getting antsy, so we should roll on her loyalty mission, which involves keeping her sister away from her dad - apparently Miranda's family is southern or something. She's needed on Ilium, and we will have bigger fish to fry there soon anyway, so here we go. 
 
Miranda ran away from he old man, who genetically altered and trained her as some perfect human, I guess for espionage or fighting, or some such dark enterprise. He apparently wanted more than one model, so he had another kid popped out. Miranda took Oriana with her when she ran, and placed her with a normal family on Ilium. She has stayed out of Oriana's life and tried to keep her isolated from any trace of her origin, but it now looks like Miranda and Oriana's father is on to them, and Oriana's family needs to be relocated. The only link between Miranda, Oriana's new life and her father, is a man named Niket, who Miranda trusts totally, and will no way be the source of information that makes everything go bad. This kind of thing hasn't happened at every turn here. Ever. 
 
Our party drops in to the transport area, right on top of a bunch or mercs hired to take Oriana back. Some great bad pontificating by the second-in-commando is interrupted by our pistol, and our party opens up on the mercs before they can fire on us, and thus begins another roll of a mission with Shepard, Miranda and Thane.  
 
Insanity difficulty or no, our party is just too powerful for most enemies here. We just hit guy over guy with two doses of Warp and then Reave, and then follow up with our new favorite toy, Squad Cryo Ammo. I had totally been sleeping on this power-up through all my plays of this game, thinking that it wasn't very effective in comparison to Incendiary's ability to burn up armor. I was wrong, so wrong. Using Cryo ammo, along with the Barrier and Shield-stripping biotics we're throwing out there, serves to keep any melee focused enemies or mechs up off us. Enemies that are aggressive, like the LOKI's featured here, or the Husks, have caused me issues throughout this playthrough, since they come so quick and are carrying armor on top of their health. This new tactic puts and end to this problem in many cases.  
 
The toughest piece of this mission was the endgame, after a confrontation between Miranda and Niket, who shockingly betrayed her to her father, and is subsequently killed by the merc leader. When the battle commences, I didn't have a good sense of the shape of the field, and chose to move forward into cover, bringing my team with me, focusing on enemies on our right, including the mercenary leader, an Asari. 
 
I made this much harder on myself by not realizing I had plowed down the middle lane of three possible in the room. When Miranda got picked off by fire coming from somewhere I thought wasn't in play that I realized that a whole other crew of dudes was now behind me and moving freely to either end of the lane I was in. Whoops. 
 
I'm just lucky, tricky and badass enough to survive, stubbornly not using medigel, and Thane and I hunker down, switch fire to closer enemies, and keep moving to the far end of the lane in front of us, then continued around, cleaned up the rocket-launcher lady and the Asasri leader in front of us, and then looped all the way around to catch up with the guys who had been coming from where we first started. A fun little exercise in murderous aggression. 
 
-  
 
Miranda says hi to her sister, and is now warming up to our cause. Her loyalty unlocks slam, which is a nice power, and will be something she tends to use when I'm not ordering her to constantly use Warp on Armor or Barriers. Through the rest of the game, all of a sudden, some enemy will get launched out from behind cover, causing me to pan toward them as a threat, and then get blasted to the ground. In our next long mission, she did this several times, sending people pinwheeling into the ether. Awesome.

Miranda's getting antsy, so we should roll on her loyalty mission, which involves keeping her sister away from her dad - apparently Miranda's family is southern or something. She's needed on Ilium, and we will have bigger fish to fry there soon anyway, so here we go. 
 
Miranda ran away from he old man, who genetically altered and trained her as some perfect human, I guess for espionage or fighting, or some such dark enterprise. He apparently wanted more than one model, so he had another kid popped out. Miranda took Oriana with her when she ran, and placed her with a normal family on Ilium. She has stayed out of Oriana's life and tried to keep her isolated from any trace of her origin, but it now looks like Miranda and Oriana's father is on to them, and Oriana's family needs to be relocated. The only link between Miranda, Oriana's new life and her father, is a man named Niket, who Miranda trusts totally, and will no way be the source of information that makes everything go bad. This kind of thing hasn't happened at every turn here. Ever. 
 
Our party drops in to the transport area, right on top of a bunch or mercs hired to take Oriana back. Some great bad pontificating by the second-in-commando is interrupted by our pistol, and our party opens up on the mercs before they can fire on us, and thus begins another roll of a mission with Shepard, Miranda and Thane.  
 
Insanity difficulty or no, our party is just too powerful for most enemies here. We just hit guy over guy with two doses of Warp and then Reave, and then follow up with our new favorite toy, Squad Cryo Ammo. I had totally been sleeping on this power-up through all my plays of this game, thinking that it wasn't very effective in comparison to Incendiary's ability to burn up armor. I was wrong, so wrong. Using Cryo ammo, along with the Barrier and Shield-stripping biotics we're throwing out there, serves to keep any melee focused enemies or mechs up off us. Enemies that are aggressive, like the LOKI's featured here, or the Husks, have caused me issues throughout this playthrough, since they come so quick and are carrying armor on top of their health. This new tactic puts and end to this problem in many cases.  
 
The toughest piece of this mission was the endgame, after a confrontation between Miranda and Niket, who shockingly betrayed her to her father, and is subsequently killed by the merc leader. When the battle commences, I didn't have a good sense of the shape of the field, and chose to move forward into cover, bringing my team with me, focusing on enemies on our right, including the mercenary leader, an Asari. 
 
I made this much harder on myself by not realizing I had plowed down the middle lane of three possible in the room. When Miranda got picked off by fire coming from somewhere I thought wasn't in play that I realized that a whole other crew of dudes was now behind me and moving freely to either end of the lane I was in. Whoops. 
 
I'm just lucky, tricky and badass enough to survive, stubbornly not using medigel, and Thane and I hunker down, switch fire to closer enemies, and keep moving to the far end of the lane in front of us, then continued around, cleaned up the rocket-launcher lady and the Asasri leader in front of us, and then looped all the way around to catch up with the guys who had been coming from where we first started. A fun little exercise in murderous aggression. 
 
-  
 
Miranda says hi to her sister, and is now warming up to our cause. Her loyalty unlocks slam, which is a nice power, and will be something she tends to use when I'm not ordering her to constantly use Warp on Armor or Barriers. Through the rest of the game, all of a sudden, some enemy will get launched out from behind cover, causing me to pan toward them as a threat, and then get blasted to the ground. In our next long mission, she did this several times, sending people pinwheeling into the ether. Awesome.

Insanity brings out all the glitches, at least half the time my squadmates didn't even do what I told them to.
When I did Kasumi's mission, I was pinned down and there was an explosion that kept sending bad guys hurtling into the air behind me.
Those bad guys would end up stuck in the air behind me on top of an invisible platform and snipe me, making everything more difficult.
Another regular glitch I got was the collectors would instead of running around barriers and walls, pop over them giving me no time to react.