Since the first disk swap I had on Tuchanka I have been doing just secondary missions and scanning to minimize swapping. Scanning is way too quick this time. They still haven't found a middle ground. My only other complaint is your squadmates are underwhelming compared to ME2.

I agree with you on the surrounds/ambience. It is definitely not as good as ME2. But on one side mission there were canon blasts from a distance coming out of the surrounds which sounded good.

Underwhelming? I just did a mission to save a [redacted] female. I took one squad mate that's been there since the first game, and the DLC character from 3. I was barely able to score any kills myself; these two are too effective.

I started off with a fresh character.

I also imported a maxed out Shepard which makes my Squatmates a two “woman” wrecking crew. Between Liara spamming singularities every 4-5 seconds and the other one a little slower with some sort of fireballs I can sit back and watch them take out about 75% of all baddies w/o hitting a button on normal difficulty. I’m the only shooter so there’s just some stuff I have to take on because their powers are ineffective. If I direct Liara she pretty much dominates the battlefield. Also, so far I think I’ve only had to heal squadmates about 3 times though I’m probably at about 10 times that for myself because of rushing into bad situations. Part of that might be that I maxed out their defensive capabilities sine I used to have to heal them all the time in the previous games.

However, the selection of squatmates seems limited, or I just can’t find the others, and I miss the banter between them which seems almost non-existent this time around.

I agree with you Jay that there have been a few good surround moments now, including some directional cues like where I’m receiving fire from or bad things sneaking up on me but nothing close to the quality of Skyrim, and it still seems something is lacking in the overall presentation compared to the first two.

Well crap, I can’t get out of going into work today for a 1st aid class that pretty much covers the same stuff I’ve been taught for the last 35 years. I might have to punch out early if no one else is.

Liara seems weak to me, but that's because my character is an Adept. I go with two light pistols, so I get a 200% speed boost in my cooldown, and I put a singularity out there, once a couple people get trapped I hit them with a warp, and boom! they explode causing damage to other surrounding foes.

As for squadmate selection, Bioware made the decision to slim it down this game. I think there are six permanent, plus one DLC.

Oh, you asked before, yes difficulty does ramp with level, but seems pretty well balanced so far.

Shepard accomplished a lot today. He got some cool armors, purchased a spectre sniper rifle, accumulated 3/4 of the war assets, decked out his aquarium, received the mail slot achievement and is now working on shagging the on-ship news reporter....

In contrast, in 'Star Wars - The Old Republic', my Sith Inquisitor character just killed his hot master (who turned out to be an old hag anyways) and is now shocking his partner into submission to force him to release her spirit for needed intel, since she possessed my partner's (OK he is really a slave) body upon death. All of this so I can find another ghost to absorb into my own self so I can grow my power in order to destroy yet another level of Sith leadership and claim it as my own.

It's true.... The dark side does have cookies!

I have six. What class is the DLC squadmate?

I took a break from ME3 to play through Journey (I'm a PS+ subscriber so I got it a week early). Wow, one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. Yes, it is short (took me about 90 minutes from beginning to end), but I loved every minute. There's a trophy for returning to the game after a week off, I don't know if I can wait that long before going back for another play-through.

As soon as I pass the PE exam in buying like 6 video games...