This is how I spent my rainy Spring Break, playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with my buddy old-school LAN style. 

Its unfortunate that games these days make you work so hard to do local multiplayer. Granted some games, like Mass Effect 3, would be awful split screen or cut into 4ths, but I enjoy playing games with people when they are physically near me. It also doesn’t help that party chat connections are so weak on Xbox Live, my friends are always telling me that my voice constantly cuts in and out while we play. 

Anyway, I’m addicted to Mass Effect 3. It took me a good week and a half to pull myself out of the multiplayer so that I could move the story along. I love playing as the Salarian Engineer, he has all the tools for the job with shield drain and incinerate complemented with the right gun. Using shield drain on Geth is the best, because since they are synthetic and take a little extra damage this power just shuts them down. I think shield drain is better than overload because shield drain does damage (like overload), replenishes your shield allowing more aggressive play styles, its an area of effect attack so it can hit multiple enemies, and most importantly it activates instantly so there is no travel time from you to your target. The multiplayer does an exceptional job of empowering the player. All I need is my M96 Mattock and a high power recharge time and Geth just melt before me, Cerberus mercs get plugged in the head, and Reapers fall by the dozens. I drop Brutes, Banshees, and Atlases almost as quickly as I kill their lesser support troops which is awesome. What I find even more empowering/amusing about the Salarian Engineer is that I’m decimating these forces with an alien species that is considered the nerds of the universe. But now I’ve dug back into the main campaign and am anxious to continue it. My war assets bar is already full, but I’m still running around the systems finding various lost things for people just to make sure we all survive the invasion. I’m just about to meet up with the Quarians and I’m sure they will have more errands for me to run, oh well, at least the game does a good job of showing how your actions are impacting the world.