Ended up playing half & half multi vs single player Blur.  Online is clearly king, but I enjoyed the single player and I found it the superior place to improve my driving skills and figure out Power-up management.  Nice to see when you beat a boss in single player that car becomes available online.  At least one connection!

Jumping into Blur and Red Dead in the same week - INSANE!  I'm a little aggravated that the multiplayer & single player are so separate.  When I pop in the disk I have an internal battle whether or not to go online or focus on the career mode.

Who was Shepard at the end of ME1?  Sure he had to make some big decisions, saving the council, deciding if Ashley of what's his name died for the mission.  But in between those few events Shapard had a litany of other choices - most of them dialogue based  I found those choices to be lackluster.  He was either a dick (which didn't fit the story as far as I could tell) or a boy scout which again didn't live up to my expectations I had for the character.  
 
In ME2 Shepard is dead.  He went down with his ship.  He died literally saving his crew.  That is the Shepard I wanted from the start.  The guy who put is crew through hell but knew that loyalty is a two-way street.  
 
Two years later Shepard is resurrected by the Cerberus group.  We know what they're about.  They're willing to do anything to advance human dominance in the galaxy.  Scientific experiments, cloning, genetic mutation, the creation of humanoid life forms to be used as a mindless enemy.  In ME1 - it was unclear why Cerberus was creating such abominations.  WHo was there enemy before Sarin and the Reapers showed themselves?  And in the unlikely event the Reapers are destroyed don't you think Cerberus will re-focus its energies on its old, unnamed foe?   
 
Cerberus created Jack (Subject Zero) - do we believe the old Illusive Man missed that one?  No, I don't think so.  Just look what  he did on Ascension - he is more than happy to experiment on children wiith untested drugs.  This is the man that created the new Shepard.  Is he the real Shepard?  Or was that his first trick to get Shepard on hi side?  What are those scars?  Why would they glow red?  Where did the smoking man get that tech?  Does Miranda know where it came from?  Oh yes, she is a piece of ass.  But I think back=k to the first encounter where she disappeared while Shepard fought off the Mechs.  In the end she reappeared and gunned down the only man who seemed to know more about her true motives than anyone else.   
 
The Collectors are a threat.  Sent by the Reapers or not, that is the first priority we need to deal with.  We have a ship.  Is it controlled by Shepard of EDI?  Hard to tell - we will know I suppose when this whole mission comes to conclusion.  The Illusive man gave me a list of names.  The best of the best?  The right people for the job?  Whatever the Illusive man's intentions for putting them on the Normandy.  I am making them mu crew.  A loyal crew.  A crew that I'd die for, again.   
 
There is a lot going on we don't know about.  But as we saw when the Illusive Man sent us into the Collector trap - we can take care of ourselves.  We're also collecting technology across the universe to argument our ship, our weapons, or armor, and our biotic and Tech abilities.  We had have been created by the Illusive man but just as Dr. Frankenstein discovered, sometimes you can't control your monster.  We're going after the Collectors now.  We're going to find a way to destroy the Reapers before they can re-awaken themselves.  In the end if the Illusive man gets a bullet in his head that only re-enforces the fact that we;re all expendable to the larger war.