Chris, nice to see you back again. Thanks for the thoughts on Journey - I think I'll get it when available (I am not a PS+ member).

I've actually started back into GT5 again. My almost 9 y.o. son has recently gotten into it, and it's fun to start teaching him about different cars and driving techniques. He's also getting into the slow grind of winning races to make money so he can buy the cars he really wants. While this can be slow for a video game it's kind of neat to see him committed to this. He even tried a B-Spec race with a level zero driver. He put him in the old Cobra and it was looping on every other turn. So I stepped him through driver motivation, experience, car handling due to front engine rear wheel drive etc... So after losing he put the driver into a moderately powered front wheel drive car and placed in the top 3. It all made me re-appreciate how much detail they put into this game.

I finally found 6 squad members though I still only pick the hotties to “beam” down with me. Hey a renegade Shepard should always have a babe on each arm.

Liara finally dumped me when she found out I’d gotten back with Tali. That didn’t take much, just a conversation about getting back together and bang I get the paramour achievement without even getting a make out scene. I had already had to send the skanky reporter packing and unfortunately the best looking IMO option apparently only plays for the other team. So that makes a total of 4 (Liara, the consort, Jack and Tali) out of a theoretical 6-7 babes missing out on the Yeoman (no Kirk achievement for me), and one or two others here in ME3 depending on whether the skank is considered just a fling or a real LI. I’ve yet to take Tali and Liara on a mission together, not sure if I want to get caught in the crossfire.

I finally had a mission were the banter between my squatmates was well written, too bad they all haven’t been that way.

Right now I’m running around cleaning up as many of the side missions as I can since I’m getting a feeling if I progress the plot to much further I’m going to lose out on them. I know I’ve already blown a few through plot progression or missing a clue to pick something up.

Another thing I forgot to mention that I like about ME3 is the quick save. Although the game auto-saves pretty well I use the quick save button a lot since it doesn’t take you out of gameplay.

Finished ME3 with a renegade Infiltrator. I enjoyed this game a lot. Next run through will be on maxed out difficulty as a paragon Engineer.

I only had two disk swaps the entire game. The first one was from disk one to disk two when landing on Tuchanka and then switching back to disk one at

I think I’m up to the last priority mission. I’ve got 4 side missions that I just can’t clear and some of them still seem to be flagging systems or places on the Citadel for me to visit but can find a thing. I’ve even looked up walkthroughs but can’t find them for these mission yet. I’m guessing something timed out on them so I’m just out of luck. Although I’ve got time to finish tonight I’m going to wait so I can savor the last moments.

AFAIR I’ve had 6 disk swaps in this first run through probably because of the order I did the missions.

I did have trouble on one boss fight where Shepard has to fight alone in a non-standard way. I must have been killed and reloaded 50 times, looked up cheats and finally just had to lower the difficulty to “narrative” to get past it since at that point it was just pissing me off.

So far it’s been excellent. I love how they streamlined the weapons upgrades and scanning for that matter everything about the interface is outstanding. The plot has also been outstanding including things I’ve noticed that carried over from previous games despite not having played them in a while. There have even been some interesting reverences to movies like when Joker mentions that no one will detect them unless someone starts singing the Russian national anthem.

I have a handful of stuck quests too. I'm pretty sure I've got the items from scanning, but no one is there to take them off my hands. I think it is because I triggered the "change" at the Citadel too quickly.

I'm nearing the end now, just had the game lock up on me, so I figured that was a good place to stop for the weekend. (I've had about six previous lockups, almost always on a loading screen. So yeah, the PS3 version is buggier.)

Dean, I've been watching TheMediaCows ME3 walkthrough played by Dewey. Here's episode 1, but he's currently at 21. I don't know if Dewey is farther than you, so it might not help. I do know he's in the Citadel, as his last two or three episodes are of him walking around in it.

I ran into a few minor framerate issues on my first play through on the 360 but that's about it. Not a single crash. Load times were excellent. Overall a very fluid experience. The only complaint I have about the gameplay is the cover system. Gears of War 3 has perfected it and in comparison a bit clunky.

I miss being able to crouch as well. I loved sniping in the crouch position out of cover in the first one.

I also had occasional framerate issues which were always associated with loading a new area so they never affected combat. I agree that the cover system is still flawed. I lost count of how many times I ran up to a wall for cover and just stood there taking fire. I’m sure that on insane it would mean instant death.

I want to also be clear that the 6 disk swaps are total times I had to get up and walk to the machine not 6 times swapping back and forth.

I agree that the overall experience is very fluid with little taking you out of the game world. Most of my issues with it are really minor quibbles based on the overall excellence which tends to make the minor things stand out.

@ Cam – I haven’t check out that walkthrough and until recently avoided almost all spoilers unless I was just at wits end. I will however take advantage of hints and walkthroughs on subsequent plays to make sure I’m not missing anything interesting.

How many hours for a typical play through on ME3?

I clocked in around 46 hours. Not skipping dialogue, completing all side missions, earning reputation with squad mates whenever I could, completing all planet scanning and maxing out my war assets. The only thing I did not do was increase my Galactic Readiness (which you increase through MP apparently). Mine stayed at 50%.

Your War Assets and Galactic Readiness do have an impact from what I have read after I beat the game.