Bubba's Mass Effect Adventures

[Bubba]

The Final Showdown

This is it. The big one. The pay-off. The shake-down. The...end. I'd started this mission on level 29 so I was hoping that my heroic final actions would push me up to 30. Let's see!

I was expecting a reasonably swift onslaught of cretins and unsurprisingly I was right. Drones and collectors were the order of the day. I found some suitably suitable cover on the left and took them all out with ease. Ooooohh, I'm excited!!

Tali was having no trouble with the shaft () but she did mention that it was getting quite hot in there. There were doors in the ventilation shaft that Shepard had to manually open other wise Tali would be roasted like chestnuts on an open fire. Yes, I'm excited for Christmas. Leave me alone.

The first terminal was easy to find but then we were under attack before getting to the second one. Tali was all "Hurry Shepard! I'm burning up!" Now I really like Tali so I felt the pressure a bit here. Hang on! The fifth and sixth terminals were close calls as we they were chucking everything at us. When Tali was down to like a quarter health, I bravely (and stupidly) kamikazi-ran over to the terminal. I barely survived but there was no way Tali is dying on me! NO-ONE DIES TODAY.

The last terminal was tricky too as those Harbingers (which are big f**king pains-in-the-arse) took a while to deal with. My sniper is a souped-up bad-ass at this stage though. All eight terminals were activated and Tali was safe! We had a cut-scene with all of us charging through some blast doors and Tali sealed it before we got swarmed with collectors. Good job, team!

A bit of a shock start to the next section as we find the rest of the Normandy crew suspended in pods. I stood and observed for a second. "Awww!", I thought. They actually look quite sweet and peacefuOHHHHHH MY GOD!!!! The woman in the first pod (who did look a bit peaky) suddenly turned into Dolmio's stir-in tomato pasta sauce.

We quickly got the rest of the crew (including Kelly and Dr Chaka Khan) out before they met the same grisly (but potentially tasty) fate. The doctor tells us that people are being turned into some genetic paste of some sort and sucked out in tubes. How delightful. Next I had some important decisions to make...

Our next section is swarming with Collector Seekers so we had the idea that someone creates a biotic barrier around our team in order for us to get through. Jack has been my go-to biotic team mate but I opted for Samara. I just felt her extra experience might be useful in this final section.

Next the Doctor requested that someone escort the weakened crew back to the Normandy. I mulled this over for quite a while as I didn't know who would be most effective. I seriously considered going with another biotic but I ended up choosing Thane for his sniper skills.

Finally, I had to assign someone to lead the diversionary team. Again, I wanted someone with experience so that ruled a few out straight away. I ended up choosing Miranda as I thought she'd have the authority to do a good job. With Samara generating the biotic field, I brought along Jack so she can actually use some biotic attacks. Grunt the tank was my third member.

OK, let's do this! It was really cool walking along in a floating snow globe. Great effort, Samara! My curiosity got the better of me and I ventured outside for a moment. Yeah, don't do this. Bad idea is bad. I was inundated with these bat-things so I ran back inside.

There were a few sections where Samara hunkered-down and Grunt, Jack and I had to deal with a wave of scumbags. I really liked the challenge in this section! Most of them were no match for my sniper but those fugging husks are irritating as f***. Though not quite as irritating as the suicide-bomber abominations. The fact that I survived this section without dying once I found remarkable.

As we neared the end, Samara's giant snow globe was rapidly changing into a regular-sized snow globe. Not wanting to be covered in collector bat-droppings, we hustled to the exit.

Miranda and her team joined us in this room and we rushed to seal the blast door. The collectors were banging on the other side like over-zealous Jehova's Witnesses and we had some decisions to make! We could either push on all together or leave someone behind to guard this blast door. No way am I leaving anyone here to die so we're all gonna push on together!

Firstly, Shepard gave a stirring speech to the rest of the crew. It was inspirational and emotional. Jack cheered, Jacob saluted, Grunt cried and Mordin shat himself. Epic stuff.

Memories of the Collector ship came flooding back as Shepard, Jack & Grunt went zooming out on one of those floaty-hexagonal platforms. Turns out it was a platform party as we were soon joined Harbingers, Guardians, Scions... a load of sh*tbags, basically. Cover was pretty decent though and we were soon across the other side relatively unscathed.

We activate the terminal here and... HO-LY SH*T. Hanging from the roof is a huge human/geth-thing looking a bit like the Terminator's disabled brother only, you know... a thousand times bigger. It turns out this thing is being fed by the human dolmio paste that the Collectors were extracting from thousands of humans. Man alive... though, man dead is probably more apt.

This thing presumably never learned to swim as it had a couple of inflatable orange armbands on each arm. All we had to do was pop these armbands and the things would fall to its death... if it is even alive. The armbands were covered by barriers until we'd dealt with a few easy cretins. We eventually popped them one at a time and the big bastard was down!

Crap, this update is taking forever and I've ran out of time at work. Last part to follow in an hour!