Ghostface318

After getting Mordin set up in his new digs, getting some upgrades to medi-gel capacity and weapons, and talking to Kelly (Sure, I'll call you Kelly, if you call me Dadd- Shepard, call me Shepard), it's right back off the ship and onto Space New Jersey, otherwise known as Omega. We have someone else to pick up here, and I will be damned if we are going to go all the way across space to pick up someone else and then come all the way back here while he changes outfits again. There will be plenty of time for him to primp on the way to the suicide mission. 
 
Back into Afterlife, to talk to Aria some more, to initiate the Archangel mission. First we get asked to take care of a personal matter for Aria, involving her old mentor/enemy, Patriach the Krogan, which we pull off by telling the guy he's in danger, that we will fight his attackers on his behalf, and then running over to where they are and dispatching them with the power of dialogue options and a short animated gunfight, in which Mordin casually puts an SMG burst into the side of an aliens head at short range with little effort, and a placid, yet satisfied look on his face. I love this guy. 
 
Ok, so that;s done, and although we didn't pull the gig off the way Aria may have liked, we did it, and she's cool. I really enjoyed the Aria character, as she could have just been a Mob-boss archetype, but instead, she's built out with some finesse, some toughness, some mystery and a whole lot of attitude which contributes to her belief that she's operating on levels way above what you care about and understand. I hope her character is dropped in the series going forward. She was fun to interact with.  
 
Also, the music in Afterlife is the best in the game. Shepard can't help but dance. That you can go into any club or bar in the game and Shepard can flail around on the dance floor for a few minutes, in full armor, while his crew watches, is both horribly, stupidly goofy, and bizarrely awesome. We're dancing at every club we can from now own. This is a now a rule. 
 
Talked to some gangs who are recruiting freelancers to act as cannon fodder while they go, one group at a time, after the mysterious character who has been carving them up for months. Ooh! Ooh!, a job as bullet-bait? Where do we sign up? I'm perfect for this. Have you been watching this playthrough? I'm a bullet magnet! 
 
Grab the shuttle over to Archangel's hideout, where the idiot gangs are. Get the gist of their plan, then go about sabotaging parts of it on the way to the front line. Sabotage a heavy mech they are going to use so that it will turn on them, and murder a guy with an electro soldering-iron to the back so he doesn't fully fix their gunship. And then we're on the attack, crossing a narrow bridge to the building in which Archangel is sniping from the second story funneled right toward him, along with some other low-rent meat shields. Mordin, Miranda and I clean a few of them out on the way over and on the ground floor, and then head up to greet the mysterious murderer we hope to befriend. 
 
I have already given you one of my first (and every time since) playthrough moments that had me exclaiming "Oh, yeah!" or doing some totally doofy fist-pump-type gesture of excitement when it happened, which was the unveiling of the new Normandy, and this is another. When Archangel takes off the helmet and reveals himself to be Garrus, I got excited, and still do - my gesture of choice is reserved - as I'm getting older, I can express my excitement with a clench and shake of the fist. 
 
A quick reunion chat, and then we all realize that we have pissed off the bad guys even more, and now we're trapped with Garrus in this building. This mission lays out well, it's not just fight from point A to point B, and it's not even hold a position until a meter runs out - it's got several aspects, small cutscenes and time pressures, all within one mission. First we need to pick off the Blue Sun mercs as they try to storm across the bridge and into the building, with their mechs at the forefront. Since I sabotaged their best mech, and we have great cover, this goes bad for them. They barely make it to the end of the bridge before they are all dead, and no real damage taken my part. 
 
A little more talk with my old pal, and then the Blood Pack have breached the tunnels below the base, and Shepard and one of his teammates need to secure the area by closing the shutters to the tunnels, while someone stays with Garrus to help him. I left Mordin with Garrus and took Miranda with me down to the lower level (there's no sex joke there, that's where the mission is. Stop being so gross). Three shutters need to be closed, and the first one is dead ahead with no one coming through it as I run to it, hit the button, and watch it slam down. Piece of cake. 
 
 . . . 
 
Screw these shutters, this was barbarically hard for me. After you close the easy first one, you head through the unlocked door to the right to the second, which is at the end of a long, narrow space with a bunch of boxes and pallets it it, with with three basic lanes down, in the center and on the sides. There are a few Varren and Vorcha inside, and coming down the tunnel through the shutter, and mostly I could manage them with Miranda's help.After that first group already inside, and the first wave through the door as backup, however, you get at least one Krogan, who soaks up a massive amount of damage, and even if he doesn't waste Miranda or me, or both, allows more Vorcha and Varren to sweep in to clean me out, or at least be in the way of the shutter control and door, keeping it from closing smoothly unitl I get them out, at which point i die. 
 
I played this one sequence for at least 2 hours, maybe 20 times, until I was able to keep the fire on while moving Miranda up the side enough to provide some useful support, without her becoming space-dog food. Really, we were almost done right here. I even began to convince myself that no one will read these, they are for my amusement. "I'll just quit this run here, and no one will be the wiser - hey, Giant Bomb has a "delete blog" function, doesn't it? " 
 
But I soldiered (in this case, Vanguarded) on.  
 
So, after that crapfest, the third shutter was actually easy. There are a bunch of waist-high barricades down an L-shaped hallway, and you can take cover, use powers and fir your way through the whole ordeal, the tricky part coming at the corner of the "L", as there is a barricade right around the turn, where a Vorcha with a flamethrower is waiting to BBQ you up. I sent Miranda in, had her mess with him, then swept in, Reaved him, which halted him a second, then blasted him in the head with my SMG and it's incendiary rounds. He melted, and I was just a little crispy. All good. The third shutter is nowhere near as tough to secure as the second, so it hit the button, waited out the short countdown and was out. 
 
We then had to track back to Garrus and Mordin, who were being assaulted by the rest of the Blood Pack. After getting the lay of the land with a quick death upon loading back up on the ground floor, I was fairly quickly able to take out the Varren and mercs on the first floor, deal with a surprise Krogan on thee second, and then hide from Garm, the Krogan Blood Pack leader, in the room with Garrus and Mordin. I was able to keep popping out from cover next to him to Reave his Armor, shoot him a little, then lift his ass across the room, allowing him to be shot by my crew like a slow, meaty skeet target. 
 
After this, there's a cutscene, Garrus catches a hot one, and you have to fight a goddamn Gunship, the space version of the evil helicopter. This didn't go super poorly, I did have to make a few runs at it, but only 3 or 4, dropping massive amounts of rounds into the thing (I had the stupid Cain launcher thing with me and can't get the thing to work), and then sweeping up the commandos. Compared to the second effing shutter, not to rough at all. Then we got G-rus back to the ship to get cleaned up, have some light surgery, and then prep for our next visit, which will be to the . . . . 
 
- Nick

Thanks for the comments guys (expect for Plague, you're a jerk, ha!). 
 
I had some knowledge going in that Vanguard was not useful, and in fact maybe made the whole thing harder. I accept that, but at the same time, this is my Shepard, this is how he is, and this is the Shepard that I'm going to bring forward into ME3, should I ever make it through this whole ordeal. 
 
As I said, I do appreciate the comments, and understand that I'm going to have to be very cautious going through, I've learned that much already. However with these kinds of shooter, such as HALO, my fatal weakness is the Rambo urge, which I will fight as much as I can.

After a side trip to the crash site of the Normandy 1, where Shepard reflected on old times, found his old helmet, some free element zero, and the Dog Tags of his old, dead crewmen, he headed to Omega, hive of crime, dirt and vorcha. It's basically space New York City, but nicer, and with less Yankee fans. 
 
Did the talking thing with some of the locals, including the enchantingly scary Aria, got a bartender iced for trying to poison me, intimidated an elcor into letting a Quarian earn his way off this rock, bought some stuff, and headed for the plague zone and everyone's favorite singing salarian, Mordin Solis. 
 
Brought along Miranda, for her overload and warp skills, and Zaeed, for the disruptor ammo. The trip through the slums went pretty smoothly, with two exceptions. The first, the encounter where you see the Blue Sun mercenaries fighting the Vorcha, in that big room, I had to make a few runs at it. Then, in the fan control room, where the Mordin recruitment mission ends, I got worked several times, especially by the Pyro enemies with the flamethrowers. 
 
You want to know the major culprit here, the reason for my deceasin'? My squad AI. I can set all the waypoints I want for my crew to take cover and to attack from safety, but they continually put themselves out in the open, get shot up a little, and then ragdoll to the floor until I revive them, or the battle ends. Then they pop back up, hopefully chagrined at their poor performance. We will see some of this again in our next mission here on Omega, and likely numerous more times as we proceed. It became far easier to just let them lie there while I whittled down the enemies until it was safe for them to stop playing dead, 
 
Reinitializing the environmental controls and starting the fans was rough for me on my initial playthrough, due to the vorcha that perch up high in the back and on the sides with the rocket launchers. This actually went better than that on Insane, firstly due to familiarity with the layout and combat system, and secondly, in that the layout, with the different terraces and ramps, allowed me to move about, and kite enemies around until they were coming at me in small groups. 
 
So, Mordin joins up, and immediately, he's in my posse. He's rolling with me for two reasons, A) Comedy and B) Incinerate - I want to see those vorcha burn, and I'm angling for that Incinerate 30 dudes achievement. He'll earn his keep on our next foray. We're staying on Omega and reuniting with an old friend who's doing work under a new name, like the Diddy of Mass Effect. 
 
edited for some clarity and grammar

" @Ghostface318: She's talking about time itself. That no matter what technology or such like they create, they still can't defeat time itself. "

I've thought about doing an ME2 Insanity playthrough for a while. I've even started. Twice, actually, I think, but a combination of my lack of 3rd person cover-based shooter skills, and my choice of Vanguard as my first playthrough class have conspired to make this hard. 
 
What is inspiring me to give it another go is all the DLC that was on-sale over Xmas. I played through both Overlord and Kasumi after buying them, but my save games were so bungled that I couldn't do a perfect playthrough, with all the crew members, all the DLC and the no-dead people ending in place for ME3. I had one save where I did the Overlord DLC, then the endgame began, then another clear save after the ending on which I played the Kasumi DLC - basically what happened is that I f'ed it all up. So, all  this, plus going for the S-Rank, seem to make it worth it. 
 
I also think that Jeff's love for Kelly during the GOTY podcasts made me want to have her around to "feed Shepard's fish" whenever he needs it. You know what I mean? 
 
You know what I mean. 
 
So, without ado, I am going to begin my playthrough on Insanity, likely dying millions of times, and it seemed like a good idea to write about it a little.  
 
Since I can;t not be good, I will be Paragon-ing again, and will be keeping my Vanguard character with the additional ability of Reave, because the consensus is that it;s awesome. 
 
 I will likely play through the intro today, and the first mission to the human colony. My commentary may bot be day-to-day, or mission to mission, but I hope to leave some impressions as I go. I love this universe and this game, and it's my Game of the Year, but I bet I find some stuff that's weird as hell the more I think about it. 
 
Here I go. 
 
- Nick

I have all the treasure chests on the main map, and haven't sold anything, and I still don't have the Aconite for the fast poison. Grr.

One part of the end game that I haven't seen addressed here: 
 
In the church, when Juno begins to speak to you, she makes reference to her and her kind not being able to live forever, that they are or have faded away. Along with this, is reference to another, a Him, that is attacking or chasing them, that they can parry his blows for only so long or some such thing. That stood out for me as an indicator of some individual overarching antagonist that I am surprised has not been mentioned.

Cowher has long been rumored for the Carolina job, and with John Fox a lame duck, I think he's allowed to leave to take one of these vacant jobs, and Cowher slides in there if he even wants to coach again. There he has the basis of a decent defense, a top pick to draft a QB, and a running back (Williams, Stewart or Goodson, whomever they keep). 

" Well it was a pretty good season for my raiders. Got our coach/running back/quarterback situation situated. Rolando McClain had a great rookie season. That dude is just fucken BEAST. We need to switch to zone defense. Im not sure what our problem is when it comes to play calling in our offense it just doesnt seem to click and plays are always called at wrong times except for when mcfadden just cuts n shits on'em. Next year afc west is ours. "

Meanwhile, the loser of Jets-Patriots will likely have to go on the road to Indy or KC/SD in the first round, although both those teams could go 13-3.