Margo Monday! Vanguards.

"Hey, Bean," you scream at the monitor, to great effect, "When you play Mass Effect Multiplayer, why the hell don't you play God's Class, also known as vanguard?"

I started to! I did. When you first start, you only have human characters unlocked, so I started myself a girl human vanguard.

... in purple. Everything must be purple. Always.

So anyway, there I am charging shit, right?

When the game first shipped, you could charge through walls and shit. Whoops.

Oh and hey, by the way, it would be a matter of time before you'd float up through the geometry (or possibly down through) and get stuck at the top (or bottom) of the map.

Husbando~ saw this picture and asked if this was a picture of the first level of Mario 3. Thank you, Husbando~, because Mario 3 fucking had asari in it.

Anyway, please enjoy this dramatic reenactment of playing vanguard in Mass Effect 3.

... I think they patched it, but I have Margo now.

Now Leaving Vancouver, Population: Reaped

Holy crap, you all, I had the worst time getting MSPaint to work. You want to talk about being shot in the knees.

When we last left our heroes, we'd just hit some bay in Vancouver. It may be Vancouver Bay. Is that a place?

Just in case you've forgotten, this shit is still going on:

Anderson is more concerned with getting in contact in the Normandy, which sort of backfires on him and Shepard.

... or front fires. Whatever it takes to make the pun.

Our Shepard falling off shit count is up to 2 by now.

All right, defend the guys. That shouldn't be a --

AWW HELL NAW.

The tutorial level wants you to shoot shit, I think, but damnit, that's not what we're about right now! Vanguard uses charge! We should be charging things!

Fine. I pulled all the husks out of the way, only to hear:

Thankfully, the game gives us back charge in this fight.

Here's the coolest thing about Mass Effect 3. Vanguards have a new ability. After they charge, they can, well --

Meet nova! Charge's best friend!

Nova causes Shepard to jump in the air and slam a bunch of biotic shit down, thus killing whatever charge didn't get. Nova drains your shields, but by the time it goes off, charge is recharged, and charge brings your shields back up once it hits, if you spec it right.

Leaving you free to be all,

Vanguards are literally invincible.

vanguard = best class

don't deny

Anyway, if you play Mass Effect 3 right, the screen looks like this:

Let's all take a moment to look at that photorealism. Let's just soak it in.

Anderson will then ask Shepard to hold some husks off until the Normandy can extract them. I've heard a few varying things about this fight. I don't know what the ending condition is. It's not on a timer. I've heard it lasts until Shepard runs out of ammo, that sort of feels right.

Anyway, once whatever it takes happens:

How the hell did the Normandy just fly past all the reapers, not to mention the buildings, and pull up that close to the bay? I mean, I know it's not a huge ship, but it's still got to be taking the top off a building or something.

"Hey, Bean, it doesn't get in that close!"

It gets in close enough for Shepard to jump on board!

Hey, next to Vega: everyone wave hello to Ashley's new character design! She let her hair out of her bun and got blue armor. The Internet got mad, of course it did, because the Internet always gets mad over everything. I don't know, I kind of like her blue armor, but I also like Ashley, which is like the least popular opinion a Mass Effect nerd can hold next to "Miranda is one of my favorite characters" and "Hey, let's all fuck Jacob!".

Shepard's tags have taken a weird path through the three games, do we all realize that? Some merc stole them off Shepard's dead body, Liara swiped them from there, and I guess Anderson pocketed them when he and Vega took Shepard off the Normandy.

... Liara and Anderson are creepy. Fuck.

Does that tie everyone up?

Oh, right! The little nameless kid! Welp, he's getting on a shuttle, he should be good.

Yup, totally --

Um. Okay, that's something.

Shepard's visibly upset by the little boy's shuttle, because she's killed piles of men before on her way to get a soda from the corner store. Wait, hold on, what?

Don't think too hard about this, this is obviously the last time we're going to talk about that kid. Instead, let us focus on the last scene of Mass Effect 3's opening, which is the reapers reaping the ever loving fuck out of Canada.

Well?! She's got a point! Anderson is the first NPC who lives through the tutorial level and doesn't become a squadmate.

... there've been a few that have lived and become a squadmate immediately for their trouble, such as Dawn Star, Kaidan, and Amy Rose. Amy Rose is a Bioware character, don't you kind of hate knowing that? Either way, Anderson just totally achieved a first, here.

Margo Monday!

The traditional method of playing asari adept is to level up stasis until you get stasis bubble, then fire that motherfucker indiscriminately. It freezes enemies and holds them still.

Then, you whack your target with pull or warp and cause a biotic explosion that kills what it touches.

One time, I was playing with three other salarian infiltrators. Infiltrators are a shitty boring class characters who like to take their time and snipe nicely.

I figured out what to do pretty quick.

Yup, Margo was a pretty popular lady that day.

(Hey, if you want to play with either me or husbando~, our XBL gamer tag is Jean Sibelius!)

Big Trouble in Little Vancouver

All right, if you're not too fucked off at me, let's go.

Take a brief moment and try and guess why before we go on!

Yeah, legit, ask Jenkins and Wilson how well this works out.

Jenkins, Wilson, Daveth, Jory, Bethany, Carver, Jing Woo, Gorion ...

Alright, so Anderson decides to risk it, I guess, and we're thrown out into the tutorial level.

You can put points into powers at this point! Hey, MSPixel Hivemind: help a sister out. When I first started up Mass Effect 3, I swear I could put points into powers for Anderson, but when I started the game up for my MSPixel playthough, I couldn't do anything vis a vie his powers. Did Bioware patch that out?

I wouldn't be surprised. The game will switch Vega into Anderson's party slot later, they probably occupy the same place in the code or something. Very 1990s RPG programming.

This conversation really truly happened in our living room the first time I played:

... I can't ever see the damn text on the screen, I have to stand up to look at the TV like a damn old person. I'm far sighted, damnit. I shouldn't have this problem!

iamstillabadperson.jpg

Husbando~ still to this day claims that he was in the right because weight reduction would reduce the recharge time on charge, and I still to this day claim that Husbando~ is being a dick.

All right, fine, let's tutorialize.

See, because we've played three games now, and still don't know "use the stick to move forward".

Hi! Please wave hello to Commander Shepard, our fat stupid protagonist who can't aim a gun!

This happens, Anderson stands around and taunts Shepard while husks creep up on their ass. You know you can't use pull here? Man, I was tossing pull around like a boss and Anderson was still yelling. Why? They were dying, weren't they?

Take a deep breath before you go to the next panel.

Sorry, didn't mean to kick you in the PTSD.

One of the criticisms of the Mass Effect series were that the NPCs all looked the same. Specifically, why didn't the galaxy have any children?

Oh hoh, said Bioware.

(Actually, they probably said "hoh hoh," since they're Canadian and that's sort of Frenchish.)

This is the third and last child in the series when we consider all the media, Gillian Grayson being the first and my best friend April being the second. You remember this little nameless bastard's face, he'll make you want to kick balls later.

Hi, everyone! Please wave hello to our protagonist, Commander Shepard. When that fat idiot isn't busy missing the broad side of the barn with her gun, she's sitting around talking to random duct work.

Anderson and Shepard continue through the debris out onto a ledge.

Ey yo, can I get a plot summary from one of you?

Perfect.

Just then, Shepard slips on some debris.

You get used to this shit, "Shepard falling down" is pretty much the plot of Mass Effect 3.

USELESS TRIVIA TIME: If you play as broshep, Anderson will grab Shepard by the chest. If you played as the correct Shepard, Bioware realized that that would way too much like Anderson trying to tittygrab Shep, and changed the animation so that Anderson grabs her by the waist instead. I would call him a gentlemen if only.

So this happens, actual dialogue:

What in the hell does that mean? Shepard owes Anderson for what, calling her a fatass who can't shoot? And what's this "more than one" shit? What is that, even, I don't get it. Let's try that again.

Tadaaaa.

I seriously thought I could tie this up in one entry, but sadly, no. Let's pick up next time.

NEXT TIME: Just sittin' on the dock of some famous bay. ... as famous as anything in Canada is.