Drell Adept

• Reave is a lasting attack. It drains health, adds damage protection, can be buffed against armor and barriers and can set up or trigger biotic explosions.

• Pull is useful against health-only enemies. It can get them out of the fight and give you a chance to focus on bigger enemies. It will also strip Guardians of their shields and you can detonate it with Reave.

• Cluster grenades causes multiple explosions, cover a wide range and can detonate biotic explosions. Reaving a group of enemies and hitting them with grenades does huge damage and if very effective against tough enemies like Atlases, Primes and Brutes.

• The Drell are frail but they are quick and agile. You get movement speed bonuses and you get a very good encumbrance bonus that allows you to have fast cool downs with even heavy weapons. A Drell Adept might do well to take a sniper rifle or a scoped pistol.

Drell Vanguard

• A Vanguard’s most important attack is its charge. The Drell Vanguard is no different. With a fast cool down, you can charge every 3.5 seconds or so.

• Pull is useful against health-only enemies. It can get them out of the fight and give you a chance to focus on bigger enemies. It will also strip Guardians of their shields and you can detonate it with Biotic Charge.

• Cluster grenades causes multiple explosions, cover a wide range and can detonate biotic explosions. They are very effective against tough enemies like Atlases, Primes and Brutes. Helps if you have a Warp-capable squad mate to set up biotic detonations.

• The Drell are frail but they are quick and agile. You get movement speed bonuses and you get a very good encumbrance bonus that allows you to have fast cool downs with even heavy weapons. A Drell Vanguard can have over 150% cool down bonuses with decently upgraded shotguns. Charge → shotgun → Cluster Grenades can be very powerful against big enemies, especially if you’ve got a fast firing/high damage weapons and the 25% power bonus after a charge.

On this lost segment of URA, we listen in on a Japanese junior high English speaking test for “Alice in Wonderland” and a long lost friend makes one last appearance.

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They don’t call it “Insanity” for no reason. I was called crazy for doing it. Playing Mass Effect 3 on Insanity for my first play through, that is. It really wasn’t that bad. The thing about Insanity in Mass Effect 3 is that you just get a lot more enemies and their take a lot more damage before they go down. Some might say that I compounded my difficulties by going with Vanguard for my Shepard’s class, because the Vanguard has no long game. Vanguard is fast and up close. The only ranged biotic power that the Vanguard class has is Shockwave and Shockwave’s range is limited and it doesn’t track to enemies the way Warp or Throw does. It does however have the advantage of being able to pass through cover. You can position yourself behind a wall and send Shockwave through the wall and still be able to inflict damage on an Atlas. While the Shockwave is recharging, you can pop out from behind cover, fire off a couple shotgun blasts and then hide again and fire another Shockwave.

The Vanguard’s ability to zip across the field and hit a far off enemy is the game’s most bad ass ability for sure. Combine the Biotic Charge with Nova and you can easily take down a small group of Cannibals or even Marauders with ease. Phantoms, the second most vicious enemy in Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer (only behind Banshees) are nothing against Vanguards. A Vanguard with a level 6 Nova that has a 100% boost to barrier, armor and shield damage can charge a Phantom, Nova away its barrier and then either charge the Phantom or shotgun blast it almost instantly.

The bane of the Vanguard’s existence, especially on Insanity, is the Cerberus turret. The Biotic Charge has the added benefit of staggering enemies, but you can’t stagger a turret. Because of this, Cerberus Engineers should be your first target, after shield pylons, of course. If you don’t take them out, you’re asking for trouble. Because of this, areas with lots of Cerberus enemies in areas where you can be swarmed from multiple directions are extremely dangerous. The atrium at Grissom Academy is the most frustrating area in the game by far. It’s an almost endless stream of enemies, there are lots of turrets and Cerberus keeps pressing in on you from all sides. The requirement for getting the doors to open up so that you can proceed past the atrium is unclear and I was just thankful that I made it past it.

Banshees are also a big pain in the ass. Their ability to instantly kill you is a huge problem. If you get too close to a Banshee, it can 86 you, and Vanguard have to get close to do most of their damage. My tactic was to charge into the Banshee, use Nova while jumping away from the Banshee, fire a couple rounds with the shotgun and then charge into the Banshee again (because you probably got your barrier damaged while shooting at the Banshee). Horizon’s got a Banshee-heavy area towards the end that can be a problem.

Happy charging!

Mr. Takahashi is joined by his half-black/half-Japanese friend Breon and their “Scottish” friend Ian for a rip roaring good time down at the ol’ pub.

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I started another play through of Mass Effect 2 the other day for some reason. It’s not a save file I intend to carry over to Mass Effect 3 or anything, but I just wanted to play a real Mass Effect game while I wait for Mass Effect 3, I guess. Even more frustrating than the enemies being heavily shielded and armored, Shepard’s a lot frailer than he is on Normal. Maybe the Infiltrator class has less health than a Soldier or a Sentinel, but Shepard gets killed a lot more easily than I’m used to. I used my Lazarus Project power for Barrier. With a maxed out Barrier, it last for 60 seconds, gives you a 100% shield boost and the cooldown is shorter than the 60 second power duration. Unfortunately, using other powers like Tactical Cloak and Incinerate tend to get in the way of using Barrier again right away. After getting used to Mass Effect 3′s weight/cooldown system where I got pistol only, it’s hard getting used to long cooldown time’s again.

At the start of my play through, I cruised along nicely except for the third door on Garrus’ recruitment mission. Grunt’s and Jack’s were relatively easy. Then I got to Horizon. Jesus Christ. The Collectors’ barriers take forever to whittle down, but those Husks kept getting me. I don’t remember them having armor on Normal. It also didn’t help that I put all my talent points for me and my team into offense didn’t give any defensive buffs to my squad mates. I made the bold move of taking Mordin with me to Horizon and Miranda and he died a lot. After a few deaths in the final area of Horizon, I realized that once you take out the Husks, the Collectors tend to stay in their cover. (Also, they won’t come out of cover is Shepard is cloaked!) The fight would’ve gone a lot better if I had some tougher squad mates, but Mordin’s Incinerate was quite useful against the Husks’ armor. (I just wish he hadn’t died so much and so easily!)

After the rest of the world opened up, I went to Illium and bought some upgrades and talked to all the necessary people to get access to the next missions. I’ll probably take on the Shadow Broker mission next or soon so I can get the Insanity achievement for completing it. All that’s left achievement-wise is to finish Shadow Broker on Insanity, finish the story on Insanity and the Brawler (kill enemies while they’re knocked back by a punch) which is proving difficult on Insanity.

I’ve been playing a decent amount of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer lately and I finally maxed out my vanguard yesterday. The level cap is 20 and you accrue enough points to max out 4 of the 5 categories. If you leave one completely empty, you’re able to fully level up all three powers plus either the “Spectre”-like category or “Fitness”, which everyone has. So, my vanguard’s maxed out and is a killing machine. I can charge into almost any situation, Nova everyone around me, and charge into the next enemy before they have a chance to get their bearings. I’m tempted to go sans-weapon with the Vanguard because you wind up getting a 200% cooldown bonus if you’re unarmed. Most of the time, I don’t need anything other than my powers and my melee biotic punch. The only times I use my gun (heavy pistol-only) is when I’m thinning out a cluster of enemies before they get too close, when I’m fighting a Guardian, or when I’m defending the landing zone while waiting for extraction.

The Biotic Underground

Since I love my biotics (sorry infiltrator) I started building up the adepts. I maxed out my human male’s Singularity so that it detonates when it expires. The best thing the human adept has going for it is the singularity/warp bomb. Throw a singularity, catch some enemies in it, use warp, and BAM, everything gets rocketing into the sky. It’s the most impressive site in Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer that I’ve seen (so far). The human adept is stuck with Shockwave like its vanguard brethren, and I hate the shockwave. It’s the only thing human biotics have to deal with Guardians and it’s crap. Drell vanguards get Lift, which makes Guardians lose their shields and Asari have Stasis, which also causes Guardians to lose their shields. The Shockwave is lame.

The singularity warp bomb is really all you need as a human adept though. It’s fantastic. For some reason though, the Asari adept has Stasis instead. I figured singularity would be a bigger deal and require better biotic skills (which the Asari should have) but they get Stasis, not Singularity. Stasis can make warp bombs (or Throw bombs too!) The detonation doesn’t seem to be as large though. Maybe it’s because my warp isn’t leveled very high and the Throw detonation isn’t very good.

I’m really looking forward to eventually unlocking the the Drell characters and the Asari vanguard. I have a blast using biotics. I’ve seen Engineers and Infiltrators do fantastic things in multiplayer, but I’ve been only mildly effective with my human infiltrator and I only used my Quarian engineer once.

And One Last Thing…

If you’re a group of level 7′s, don’t try to play on Gold. I got lumped in with a group of low level players and they were trying Gold. My vanguard hung in there, but after all three of the other team members had been slaughtered, the whole of Cerberus came after me.

I will admit, I cowboyed Vanguard pretty hard at first. I charged into everything, and on Bronze, that’s a viable option. On Silver and Gold, it’s suicidal. You need to hang back sometimes and be smart about when you’re charging. Also, shotgun-only is a bad idea once you get past the first few waves. A shotgun doesn’t help unless you’re up in the enemies’ faces. Going heavy pistol-only might be a better option. It’s lighter, which gives you a 170%~180% cooldown bonus and it’s much easier to headshot than a shotgun. If you level up your melee damage, you can get away with doing up-close damage with your biotic punch instead of shotguns. So far, I’ve focused on Biotic Charge and Nova, but I need to put more points into Fitness and I haven’t even opened up Shockwave. Shockwave (in MP) would be great for handling Guardians. As it stands, Vanguards aren’t great against those giant shields. A Shockwave (or a Pull in single-player) would do wonders.

I’ve also only been able to use a human Vanguard. The Drell and Asari versions have been unavailable to me so far. I watched a great video of a Drell run on YouTube and was impressed with the Drell. All Vanguards have the Charge but the Drell also has a Pull and Cluster Grenades. The person in the video never uses the Pull, but seeing a Vanguard with Cluster Grenades makes me wish the Shepard Vanguard had grenade abilities (he doesn’t). Pull is available in the single-player and since it creates a singularity-like biotic orb, you can charge into it and detonate it a la a Warp Bomb. (Bonus: if you have an Adept in your party, charging their Singularities will detonate them!)

Also, I’ve become painfully aware of the need to have a party that works together. After the first night of playing online, I’ve had trouble finding people that actually used their headsets or even worked as a team. A mid-level Vanguard (12, currently) is powerful, but still not powerful enough to last against large groups of Silver or Gold caliber Cerberus agents when they have no support from behind. Far too many people are playing Soldier, and very few people are playing Adept or Engineer. All the times I have done well in MP have been when the party was diverse and working together. In fact, the only time I made it through extraction was just a team of three, but the party was me (a Vanguard), an Adept and a Sentinel.

This past Friday, the Mass Effect 3 demo’s multiplayer mode opened up to everyone. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I do. Mass Effect has never had any sort of multiplayer before and I didn’t think it would be very good. The key thing to keep in mind is that Mass Effect 3‘s multiplayer is co-op, not competitive. The same night that I started playing ME3 multiplayer, I also played some competitive Halo: Reach as well. While Reach looks and handles great, getting your ass handed to you by a 13-year old kid with a gamer tag like, “Whompcha(1)” is…disheartening. However, teaming up with three other people and maybe getting your ass handed to you by the CPU is slightly less embarrassing.

The MP plays pretty much like the SP. You pick a class and race, and depending on the combination, you get three possible abilities. I started off with a Vanguard and my only choice was a human female (for that class). It gave me Shockwave, Nova, and Biotic Charge. The Asari Vanguard will give you the Charge, but your other two powers would be Lift Grenades and Stasis. Great thing is, you can maintain all combinations of classes and races. You can switch out your character at the start of every mission. So, depending on what kind of characters your party members bring to the mission, you could choose a character that compliments their abilities (if you have a worthy character available.) Also, I could see bringing a low-level character along with three high-level characters and getting serious amounts of experiments really fast.

If you haven’t played any of the MP demo, I suggest you do so. It’s a lot of fun, and even though I know the levels I build and items I earn in the demo won’t carry over to the retail game, I still keep wanting to jump back into the demo. And if nothing else, it’s a great chance to try out all the different classes before you decide which class to take into your first solo playthrough.

It’s been a long wait, but the Mass Effect 3 demo finally arrived a couple days ago. The second half of the demo is pretty much what I played at TGS 2011, but there were a couple new additions in the new demo and the first part on Earth was totally new to me.

Reaper Invasion of Earth

The demo opens on a kid flying a model of an SX3 spacecraft. Right away, I was surprised at how sharp the graphics in Mass Effect 3 are. When they show the faces of Shepard, Vega and Anderson, the awful looking shadows of the first two games were gone. Ashely’s face looked creepy, but that could just be because she’s a freak of nature and I hate her. Kaidan looked fine, but c’mon, he’s dead.

On your way to talk to the Alliance brass, you get a chance to do a little conversing with Anderson, and I got to use my new Kinect for the first time in Mass Effect. The Kinect performed fantastically, and as long as you’re not mumbling (a little mumbling seemed to be okay) then you’ll have great luck with the voice recognition stuff in Mass Effect 3.

Then the Reapers show up (huge surprise!) and you’re given a pistol and a couple rounds of ammo. The game starts you slowing by having you follow Anderson’s lead while you make your way back to the Normandy. I noticed that if you should happen to get ahead of Anderson, the game snaps Anderson forward in front of you again. You have to pop a couple husks with your pistol and then you must melee a couple more.

Then, there’s this awkward scene involving a child (not that kind of awkward) and no matter what you say to him, the result is the same. As you get closer to your destination, you find a radio to call for help, and then you have to defend your position until help arrives. I found out through multiple play-throughs of this demo, is that this defense of your position will not end until you’re out of ammo (or close to it).

Overall, the first part of the demo sets the stage for what should come later, but it’s not fun to play. I wish there was a way to just skip it, because after playing through it the first time, it’s a bother if you’re playing the demo multiple times to try out all the classes and their new abilities.

Krogan Rescue Mission

The second part of the demo (which is mostly what I played at TGS) is the real meat of the Mass Effect 3 demo. You’ve got lots of skill points to play with, and you have just enough to fully max out one skill plus add another skill in addition.

TGS Demo Differences

Not a lot has changed since the demo I played last year. The Cerberus agents have a portable turret that they can deploy, the “gap jump” is used in the newer demo and more classes are available. Back at TGS, only Soldier, Sentinel and maybe Engineer were available. All six are available now.

Vanguard

The first class I tried out was Vanguard. I had never used Vanguard before and was excited to try out the biotic charge. Essentially, you phase shift, passing through solid objects and slam into enemies. It’s very useful, but you often wind up in situations you can’t easily get out of. There are upgrades you can get that will sometimes let you auto-recharge your power and bounce off to another target right away, but when that doesn’t happen, you can be left open to attacks from enemies you didn’t finish off with your charge. The Vanguard has access to other biotic powers like Nova and Shockwave, but I had limited success using these powers. The Vanguard’s distanced attacks are pretty weak.

Infiltrator

The Infiltrator is a mix of combat and tech abilities. You get sticky grenades (which are great), sabotage and AI hacking, Overload and a tactical cloak. I think I may have been using tactical cloak wrong. I kept using it to get in close, but it may be better to use to attack, cloak, and then escape. Playing as an Infiltrator was pretty easy, but I really missed the sense of power you get from having biotic powers.

Adept

This was the first time I played as an Adept too. There is a tremendous sense of power that comes along with being an Adept. The Throw in ME3 gives you a final upgrade that can shoot two Throws at once and take out two targets. It’s pretty damn amazing. It’s my favorite power in the game by far. The Adepts also have cluster grenades that seem to let you toss grenades at more than one target. The Adepts can also get upgrades that make their power recharge in a matter of seconds. The only downside I found while playing as an Adept is that they’re kind of worthless against enemies with shields. However, if you keep someone in your party who can use Overload, you should be alright.

Sentinel

Ah, the Sentinel, my old standby. The Sentinels get a bad rap. The Tech Armor they have is sometimes a “Win” button. It lets you take a lot of damage and you can often just walk into enemy fire, use a throw and a warp, fire off a couple rounds and your shields are just fine. If you get surrounded, you can detonate your shields and do damage to all enemies around you. Sentinels have basic biotic powers and basic tech abilities. They can handle pretty much any situation. You can hang back and fire off biotics and tech abilities or charge in and shotgun enemies. It’s the most versatile of all the classes, but for that very reason, Sentinels get ragged on a lot. Sentinels don’t give you the sense of power like Adepts do, the combat isn’t as interesting as an Infiltrator’s, but overall, you’re the most prepared to handle a variety of encounters. The only bad thing I saw with the Sentinels’ abilities were the lift grenades, which are supposed to lift enemies off the ground and leave them vulnerable, but I had a lot of trouble making them effective.

Melee Combat

The omniblade has gotten a lot of coverage in Mass Effect 3‘s build-up. The omniblade doesn’t exist for Vanguards and Adepts. They have a small biotic blast that they do. Other classes have omniblades, but I found the biotic blast to be more effective and more likely to hit a target even if you’re not square to them.

Multiplayer

Since I didn’t buy Battlefield 3, I haven’t been able to try out the co-op multiplayer as of yet. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get in there Friday night and mess some fools up.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, have a (brief) peek into Mr. Takahashi’s love life.