Well, I say the night was given over to Mass Effect; most of that time was spent wrestling with the unwieldy beast that is Origin. I had to download the game, and for some reason Origin refused to acknowledge that Ashgar and Tam were friends, so they couldn't invite each other into a game. It took awhile but we finally got it straightened out and could actually play. It didn't enhance my opinion of Origin any, however.
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| It's not just me, right? You see it too? |
Once we were in I was presented with a bunch of classes. I figured Soldier would be a safe middle of the road bet and started out with that. The first mission went okay for the first waves, but then we let ourselves get a little too split up and died one by one on the sixth. I was trying to snipe, but I had trouble finding good sight lines. Still, it was fun, and I got enough experience to hit level 3.
Between missions I decided to see if I had enough credits to buy anything in the store. I didn't, but I did have some free boxes to open; presumably from DLC or something? From one I got a very nice assault rifle, and from the last I pulled a Cabal Vanguard unlock. That immediately raised my Vanguard class to 8, so I decided to try it out in the next mission. Skimming its powers gave me the impression it was meant to be a close range class, so I equipped a shotgun and my new assault rifle and off we went.
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The second mission went a lot more cleanly than the first. People went down a few times but got healed, and it started to look dodgy on the retrieval wave we got when two of us went down and stayed down. We made it through though and the remainder of the mission went nice and smooth. Between the Vanguard's teleport, the shotgun, and a paralyzing blade power I felt like it contributed a lot more the second time around.
Overall, it was a fun night that reminded me that multiplayer FPS games can be a lot fun with the right teammates. I'm looking forward to playing more.