Priority Rannoch: She's Commander Shepard

And here we have the target, the reaper base.

I can draw two guns, if you've noticed. If I put that thingie on the end of the target painter, then it magically becomes a third gun! Art.

I can't remember if the Normandy just lazers it or bombs it, but I love the visual of tossing that bomb-omb Mario Kart style, so the visual stays. ... damn, I should have drawn a banana peel.

You'll never guess what happens to Shepard next.

Okay, so there might have been a reaper inside the reaper base. Oops. This was a surprise to everyone who didn't see the E3 trailer for Mass Effect 3. Hell, this game's been out how many years? I realized, like, last week that Shepard didn't expect the reaper.

You know what solution Shepard comes up with to, "Oh fuck, Shepard's face to face with a real reaper right now?"

SHE PULLS OUT HER PISTOL. I love you, Shepard, don't you dare change.

That's cool, Legion's got our back.

Shepard climbs on top of the geth fighter to use the turret. I guess geth fighters have turrets now? Anyway, everyone knows how much reapers hate turret fire. I guess. She shoots ping pong balls at the reaper while yelling at the quarian fleet.

Finally, Han'Gerrel shoots first.

I'm not convinced he actually heard Shepard calling for help. I think he just takes pot shots at whatever target sounds good at the time. Look, the alternative is thinking that Han'Gerrel actually did a good, so.

Gerrel manages to stun the reaper, giving everyone a second to make a plan.

Welcome to my favorite character moment in the Mass Effect series, in any given game/book/comic, for any given character. Ever.

After all, what's the one thing that defines Shep?

Shepard hops down and tells Legion et all to get the hell out, because she's going to defeat the reaper on foot.

It's Shepard, of course this makes, like, perfect sense to her.

Well?

All right, welcome to the coolest boss fight in the game. That blinking headbit on the reaper? That's where the reaper fires out of. Shepard has to paint the target so that the quarian fleet knows where to shoot. But, it's got, you know, lasers coming out of it, and Shepard's on foot, so that's a thing.

So, what do you do? Die a lot. No, really, have you ever played a bullet hell shooter? You probably have, stuff like Ikaruga or Gradius or even Parodius. Hell, I'll count Cho Aniki.

In those games, you can guide the bullets by flying your little ship over to the part of the screen you don' want to be in, which tricks the CPU into shooting over there. You can then zip over to a safe part of the screen and be safe from all of the bullets. That's what you need to do to the reaper. Let's look at a map.

Bioware kindly put a rock on the right side of the screen, which would be fine in real life, but you can't see your peripheral, so you're going to wind up getting backed into that rock and dying a lot if you play over there. Start at the left.

Sit in the left corner, wait for the reaper to fire, and then zip to the middle of the screen. In the middle, you can move around (just in case the reaper starts changing directions on you), but you've got the lead time that you bought yourself by standing in the left corner. There comes a point when the laser will get so close that you can stand still and let it pass over your head, use that time to keep firing and painting the target.

When the quarians bomb the reaper, it moves up on you. After three bombs, it's pretty much right up in Shepard's shit.

She doesn't care. After all?

She's Commander Shepard.