Previously, on
Lets Play Mass Effect: We went back to the Citadel to faff about some more, punched a reporter, racially vilified a jellyfish and tried our hand at psychotherapy.
What we didn't do was shoot anybody. That'll change this time out though (after a fashion), because we're off to the gun range! Before we can do that though, Admiral Hackett has to fill Grunka in on the fallout from Khalisah Al-Jilani's story:
"The brass isn't happy with the way you treated her. This comes straight from the Joint Military Command."
"Sir, she was going to make me look bad no matter what I said."
"Agreed, but I think you're missing my point. The brass aren't disappointed you hit her. They're just disappointed that you only went with a boring right cross, after all the time and money they've sunk into training you. They thought you could at least have got a bit of ground and pound in."
"Noted, Sir. Next time I'll go for a kimura if the opportunity presents itself."
"Attagirl! Hackett out."
We're headed to Pinnacle Station in the Argos Rho cluster now, to tackle one of the two DLC packs this game has to offer.
When we arrive in the cluster we get a high-priority message come in over the secure channel. It's Admiral Kahoku, who we spoke to in the Council chambers last update.
"It was a group called Cerberus. An Alliance black ops organisation. Top secret, highest-level security clearance. They vanished a few months ago. Dropped right off the grid. Nobody knew where they went to or what they were up to. They've gone completely rogue, Shepard. They're conducting illegal genetic experiments, trying to create some kind of super soldier. I don't have any proof, but I found the coordinates for one of their research worlds. I'm uploading them with this message. They're completely out of control. Somebody needs to stop them. I've done my part. Now it's up to you. This is... this is probably the last you'll hear from me. Cerberus is after me now. I need to disappear before they find me."
And that's it, our proper introduction to Cerberus. We'll catch up with that thread again a little later on - though we will pause to wonder why Kahoku is running and hiding when surely all he should have to do to ensure his safety is go back to standing around in the Council chambers like he has been for the first half of the game
Now back on track:
*mutters under breath* "Great - I've found a cliche military macho arsehole and I'm not even through the front door yet..."
The macho arsehole turian directs us to "go pester Ahern" because he has more important things to do. Like stand around guarding a door.
"How does the simulator work?"
"Talk to Tech Specialist Ochren if you want the technical explanation. Basically, it creates combat scenarios that allow our operatives to build their skills in a safe, but realistic, environment."
"So this whole update is going to focus on combat, what most people consider to be the worst aspect of this game?"
"That, macho military cliches and one-liners that would even make Schwarzenegger turn up his nose in disgust, yeah."
"Right, I guess we'll get to it then" *turns direct to camera* "You've all been warned!"
I think this is a bit of lazy writing because Alliance = humans and there's a whole heap of non-humans here competing. We've already met some turians, and we'll see asari, salarians and krogan too when we go into the next room.
Just to be complete, we go talk to Tech Specialist Ochren. But not before stopping to admire the view.
Asari, salarians and krogan, as promised...
"I'm tech specialist Alud Ochren, lead programmer on the combat simulator."
"And the single camera angle, now that I think about it?"
"I'm a technical genius on a station full of soldiers who only respect battlefield prowess. It's more than a little frustrating, and I live in constant fear of wedgies and wet willies. As for this unflattering camera angle, I think they just tried to make this whole DLC package on the cheap."
He goes on to explain that the simulator works using holograms and kinetic barriers to make stuff look and feel real.
Unfortunately he's joking. And with that, it's time to have a crack at one of these simulations. There are four modes: Capture, Time Trial, Surival and Hunt. Grunka opts for Survival first, where the goal is straightforward - just stay alive for as long as possible. To start with there are two courses to choose from, and we try tropical first.
Like a regular mission you get to choose two squadmates to train with you. I pick Ash and Wrex as my two biggest damage-soaks and we're dropped into the scenario:
The tropical course is a bunch of walkways and platforms over shallow water and rocks - recycled visual assets from a world we haven't been to yet. Anywho, there's two basic strategies to beating this mode. One is to pick a reasonably defensible position, bunker down and just hold out for as long as we can. There's a platform at the end of this walkway that offers that option:
The enemies eventually get harder - about the 2:30 mark we start to get swamped by Geth Destroyers and they eventually overrun us.
Huh - we beat the best previous time by more than a minute... on Hardcore combat difficulty, to boot.
"Oh good, the macho arsehole from the entryway..."
*laughs uproariously for five minutes straight*
"What's so damned funny, human?"
"It's just that's one of the stupidest propositions I've ever heard of! If I beat your records then I save this kid, who I've never met and don't particularly care about, from the stockade
and I get a trophy weapon. It's only a simulator so there's no physical danger, and you haven't even bothered to put a limit on the number of attempts I can have to beat your records. There's literally no downside to this for me."
"Oh c'mon, don't be so harsh! We needed to find some way to work some kind of story into this DLC and it's at least plausible, right? Soldiers make bets amongst themselves all the time, or so I've heard..."
*sighs* "Casey, one day when this is all over I'm taking you to a casino so you can learn a thing or two about gambling. Seriously, my mother could have come up with a dozen better ideas for implementing a 'beat the records, get a reward' scenario than this one, and she died years ago in a batarian slave raid."
*wanders off with a look of total confusion on face*
Right... the point of all that was the macho turian arsehole holds most of the records on the simulator and if we beat them, we get to take his gun. Most of them are pretty easy to beat. We'll continue on with the other Survival course, on the Volcanic level. Ash and Wrex join us again:
As you can probably see, this level recycles assets from Therum, where we recruited Liara. This DLC really was done on the cheap, methinks
Anywho, this time we'll try the other basic strategy for winning at Survival mode - running away from the enemy! Pretty much every level is set up so you can run a great big loop of the perimeter. I find this is best done while singing Yakety Sax to yourself:
After about five minutes I get bored, figure we've beaten the record and stop so the bad guys can kill us.
A full four minutes better than Macho Arsehole's time. LOL.
Oh, here's what you get after successfully completing a mission:
If you use any medi-gel or grenades, you get replenished when you exit. And the XP gain is a one-time thing, you only get it the first time you top the leaderboard on each level. So you can't use the simulator to grind XP and levels. You
can use it to grind achievements though, if you're interested in such things (this game had some obnoxious ones that did require grinding, like use X power so many times, or get Y sniper rifle kills).
Onto another mode - Capture. In this one there's various points on the map you need to stand in for a certain amount of time to 'capture' them. You have to capture all the points in the quickest time possible. Grunka opts for Volcanic first and chooses Ash and Wrex again because again, damage soaking is still the most useful attribute here.
That's the first capture point you can see through the window. Here it us up close:
When the bar fills, the point turns blue and you can move on to the next one.
Knock this one off and one more to go, on the top of the back walkway.
Tropical Capture is next.
There's really not much strategy to these, BTW. Just don't linger at a point any longer than you have to, and don't faff about on the way to the next point. Using the sprint function between points can help, though it's not 100% essential.
Next up we're doing Hunt mode. Again, this one has a simple premise - kill as many enemies as you can before the clock counts down to zero. Every kill you make adds time back onto the clock. Grunka starts with the Subterranean map because we haven't seen that yet:
Oh. It's more recycled Therum assets. We've got Kaidan and Liara along for the ride on this one, BTW, because high-level biotics (particularly Throw) can actually be handy as an insta-kill in these missions. The main key with these missions is just not running out of things to shoot at - occasionally you find a dead spot where no more enemies spawn so you've got to go running to find more of them. Fortunately, there's a platform in this level that just seems to spaw them endlessly in front of you:
Note this was one of the maps where a human had already beaten Macho Turian Arsehole. We more than tripled his score. The other Hunt mission is on the Volcanic map, same team as last time.
In this one I ended up just sitting halfway up this walkway to get the endless spawning happening right in front of my gunsights.
Huh. Pretty straightforward. That just leaves the Time Trial missions, where the objective is to kill all the enemies on the map in the shortest time possible. Tropical first:
Same team again. These are by far the most difficult missions... at first, anyway. You have to learn the correct route through them because the enemies only spawn in a set order, and you need to manage your sprinting between each point so you don't get fatigued. Also, biotics can be a double-edged sword because if they don't instantly kill the target, they can end up flinging them to some difficult-to-reach part of the map and hold you up for ages. Anywho, the route for this one is basically following the perimeter clockwise:
Not too shabby. Last up is the Warehouse Time Trial. Same deal as last time, except the correct path isn't an easy circle.
With that, we've broken all of the turian's records. He's waiting to confront us when we exit the last mission.
We can choose his pistol, shotgun, assault rifle or sniper rifle. We're short on decent shotguns at the moment, so we choose that. We get given a Tornado IX - OK, but not great.
Well that was an underwhelming response.
