16th November: Is that the time?

I've just managed to lose about 12 hours of my life. Without realising. Sorry, no... 11 hours and 59 minutes. That's not so bad is it? Not quite half a day spent playing the same computer game with no breaks or rests. Excepting breakfast, lunch and tea that is. Yes, I started at about 8 in the morning, 3 or 4 hours before my breakfast. I got in a few good hours gaming, mostly burning my way through the exceptionally long tutorial mission that actually was useful for once. Then my little sister came and started leaning on me, hugging me and generally distracting me. So I fed her (and got a little food myself) and then ran back upstairs until lunch.

I think that, in total, I spent about 2 hours not on a computer of some description and unusually enough for me I didn't have windows media player in the background playing the wierdest selection of music that you could possibly have. None of it was rap. for the obvious reason that rap isn't music, but that's another story. So this game. This game that must be briliant because I spent so much of my life playing it and plan to spend 2 or 3 times that again replaying it so that I can experience the other half of gameplay before going back and replaying as a girl.

Might even play twice as a girl.. once to be a heterosexual, once to be a lesbian. I think that getting every single romance subplot sorted would be interesting, at least in terms of gamer cred, but not in any actual countable manner. I'm already beating Ali for achievements. Even though he's had the game longer than me. I'm half suspecting that the computer version is easier, but I've not yet tried it on hardcore (the 'medium' level difficulty which you need to play to unlock the hard and hardest difficulties) to see if there's any difference.

It probably also helps that I don't like creeping around and trying to snipe and sneak around behind people's back. You know how boring sneaking around gets? I'd much rather blast them in the face with the most powerful shotgun in the game, or throw the most powerful grenades in the game behind them into the fuel tank and watch the resulting explosion clear a room of enemies. Ali, as far as I know, doesn't have access to the most powerful weapons in the game. To be able to unlock them for sale, in theory, you need to have amassed more than 1 million credits (The ingame currency). In addition to this, to get the weapons at a reasonable price (so a mere 243700 credits each - remembering that the second most expensive gun is about half of that price - as opposed to well over the half million mark) you have to go and do some side quests that unlock lots and lots of gratitious suppliers that lower their prices dramatically.

Being charmful and intimidating helps as well, of course, as one of them lowers shop prices and one of them raises the price you get for selling stuff back. Can't remember which way round it is though.

What I don't understand is how the hell Ali failed to amass one million credits on his first playthrough. He kept Kaidan - the male marine with all the technology and bionic powers that let him blast people across rooms and unlock stuff - as opposed to Ashley - whose the female one, required for one of two possible romance subplots when playing as a male, who goes around toting the largest guns in the game. So he had someone whose ability was to be able to unlock storage crates with the higher level things in!

Admittedly, I took Garrus. Garrus is the Turian Infiltrator. Okay, not THE Turian infiltrator, but the only one which you get to use as a squad member. Turians are an alien race who have one of the three seats in the intergalactic council. They are basically humanoid, with only a strange mouth giving it away. The scaly skin that's an entirely different colour sort of helps as well. I normally mix up the Asari - who have massive amounts of Psi powers (mind control stuff... telekenisis, paralysing people with the power of min alone.. that sort of gobblygook. No wonder I killed my guy that had it.) - with the Turians - who hae massive amounts of firepower. They look sort of the same. The head shape is different though.

Garrus is the person who was investigating Saren - who is the protagonist's nemesis - but who was told to either 'drop his investigation or resign.' He resigned and joined my crew on the condition that he got to hunt down Saren. As he was an infiltrator I was only too happy to allow him to join, although it meant that I should most probably find some decent armour for him. He has a mere 400 shield. Disgraceful I tell you! It's only about ten times what is ever realistically taken off of him! He's the only member of my surface exploration team (me, Ashley and Garrus do this... I'm sure Garrus gets all embarresed by the conversations I have with Ash whilst I'm talking to her... I shamelessly fall in love with her ingame. Isn't that great?) that doesn't carrythe Spectre-only issue weaponry that I probably shouldn't give to Ash if I was properly roleplaying.

Garrus is also an infiltrator - like I mentioned above. Infiltrators are a combat/tech military class that mix up Assault Rifles with powerful technological powers that allow them to disable all enemy shields, all enemy weapons and stop robots from moving. They also get both the Electronics skill - which allows the hacking of computer consoles and the like to get hold of side missions (which are a major requirement in the game, as otherwise it's only a few hours long) - and the Decryption skill - whick allow the unlocking of crates and doors and basically gives you access to a whole bunch of cool weapons that are rendered basically useless by the Spectre-issue weaponry which most of my squad carries.

So I have me, Ashley and Garrus in my normal squad (excepting one mission where Ashley gets left behind to guard a nuclear missile whilst you run off and try to save Kaidan. I didn't save Kaidan, instead choosing to rescue Ash and complete the romance subplot.)

Garrus, obviously, fulfils the support role. He has healing abilites that ensure that no one dies, tech abilities to stop enemies from firing and disables shields and still somehow manages to carry a fairly good gun in his other hand that has some cooldown reductions (he can fire lots and lots without his gun overheating basically.) He wears medium armour, which allows him an alright selection of armours. He does have the downside of being a Turian and therefore there not really being huge amounts of armour for me to choose from for him, but he seems to get by. The electronics skill helps a lot. Boosts his shields by something like 300.

The first skills he got to max were, in this order, Decryption, First Aid (to unlock Electronics), Electronics, Assault Training, Turian Training (increases basic firepower for all weapons, increases accuracy on all weapons, lots of other tasty benefits.) Obviously I got the ones that let me get the decent stuff first and THEN I got round to increasing his actual weapon skill. After all of those I got Assault Rifles to max. Sniper rifles are next. Then I can dump my Spectre-issue sniper rifle on someone that might actually bother to use it.

Ashley is basically a female version of my characters. She totes the best machine gun in the game, with the best damage increasing upgrades that I could find (not the best unforntunately. I'm hoping to get these on my second playthrough, which I'm starting tommorrow). She needs to learn how to use a shotgun though. She's useful as long as the enemies don't get that close. The moment they get close she lacks the needed skills to knock them over and shoot them in cold blood whilst they're lying on the floor wondering why they aren't getting up.

I think she got assault rifles to max first, although it might have been first aid or fitness (increases health.) She is very good, I think, but her one problem is in the fact that she gets all the second best stuff. I get the first pick, Ash the second pick and Garrus gets to be improved whilst on the surface of planets (whatever I find kicking around in lockers that he kindly unlocks for me basically.) So Ash is good, but not as good as me. She does actually do better damage with identical weapons with identical upgrades though. Or she did until I got my assault rifles to the same level as hers.

Then there's me. I fulfil the role of protagonist. The one that makes things happen. I was quite nice in my first playthrough. I got to the highest level possible of Paragon points possible (Paragon being the goody-two-shoes type person that does the right thing at the right time and therefore gets lots of brownie points from the council.) I have endless amounts of charm, being able to charm anyone to do anything.. whether it be walk away from fighting me to abandoning their entire species to extinction because I don't want their species to survive to run over the rest of the universe particulary. I am fully trained as a Spectre, able to revive my entire squad should the need occur (although if it should I'll be amazed at just how much damage the enemies weapons are doing.. everyone in my squad has ridiculously high amounts of shields and health) or simply just power through entire levels armed with nothing more than a shotgun or a pistol.

I am the Spectre. My only duty is to be the 'first and last line of defence for the galaxy.' In whatever way I see fit. So basically I can do whatever I want, presuming that the council don't take offence and send out the other Spectres to take me down for disobeying their orders. I'm also going to become a womanizer, rogue, cheat and everything else possible in the next runthrough (on the hardest possible difficulty I can get up to at this moment in time) so that I can access the full Intimidation bar so that I have both full intimidation and full charm. Then I'll make a fortune from selling stuff and spend next to nothing. Hopefully.

I'm also going to be a lot more ruthless this time through. I let quite a few people just escape justice last time for the fun of it. I thing that if I'm given instructions to bring someone in, I'll make sure that their corpse is still warm when I pass it on. I won't make many friends, and I might even let the Ambassador have the human spot in the council this time through. Maybe have sex with the Asari you pick up in one of the missions as well. As you do.

Scrap being nice... I'll start playing like I'm a bit more like me. Anything goes as long as it gets the job done, and as long as it involves lots of things blowing themselves to pieces just after I escape on the conveniantly positioned ship that is piloted by the best pilot in the Alliance (or the human) navy. It's also the best ship.

The game, if you haven't worked it out and if I haven't mentioned already, is called Mass Effect. I know for certain it's out on XBOX 360 and on PC. I don't know about PS3, but I'm betting it is somewhere. Go and buy Mass Effect. Play it three times through. First time be nice, keep Ashley alive (or Kaidan if you're playing as a girl) make sure you get the spectre issue weaponry and basically enjoy yourself. Second time through, be nasty. Keep the other one alive and try to be the complete opposite of what you were the first time. The third time, and the final time, try to aquire enough Spectre-issue weaponry and decent armour that all surviving members of your crew (anywhere from 1 of them to 5 of them depending on how many side-misisons you did and how good you are at charming/intimidating people) are fully equipped.

That's my plan anyway.

If I don't write for the next few days. Don't worry.

I'm in a much better place.

When I die I just reload see! No need to find out if there's an afterlife...