Mass Effect 3 - The Reblogening

[Preface] Look who came crawling back to the internet: Me. After an almost two year hiatus I have returned. I got lazy and stopped writing for a while (a year). Then my 42" plasma television blew up and I couldn't play anything at all. Then I moved. But now I'm settled in and ready to start this thing up again. And to help make sure I actually post this thing I will be writing this as I go instead of writing 3 weeks after I finish playing. As of writing this first installment I have yet to play one second of this game aside from the demo.

[Day 0] I've been wanting to play Mass Effect 3 for a while. It's been hard keeping away from all of the ME3 spoilers but I think I've done a pretty good job. I know about Javik but that's about it so far.

[Day 0.1] I've been doing some research on the DLC. Since I am playing this game after all of the DLC has been released I was worried about the cost of buying it all. Especially after buying the ME2 DLC on sale.

There are 9 DLC Packs available:
-From Ashes - 800 Microsoft Points
-Extended Cut - Free
-Firefight Pack - 160 Microsoft Points
-Leviathan - 800 Microsoft Points
-Groundside Resistance Pack - 160 Microsoft Points
-Alternate Appearance Pack 1 - 160 Microsoft Points
-Omega - 1200 Microsoft Points
-Citadel - 1200 Microsoft Points
-Online Pass - 800 Microsoft Points (because I'm renting from Gamefly)

That gives us a total of: 5280 Microsoft Points or $66 (more than the cost of the game at full price)
Removing the non-story DLC gives us: 5 DLC Packs for 4000 Microsoft Points or $50
Removing Omega (the least acclaimed DLC) gives us: 4 DLC Packs for 2800 Microsoft Points or $35
Removing Extended Cut & Leviathan (which make the ending better; I want to be mad like everyone else;
  I'll probably YouTube that stuff later) gives us: 2 DLC Packs for 2000 Microsoft Points or $25
Removing From Ashes (because I'm not paying $10 for a character that should have been in the game anyway)
  gives us: 1 DLC Pack for 1200 Microsoft Points or $15
Citadel I will probably get because I've heard it's amazing and is fine to play after the game is over.

[Day 1] So I mentioned earlier that my tv died. So I've been playing on my 20" SDTV. The text on this thing is virtually unreadable. That's awesome because I'm playing a game that's half third-person shooter and half text adventure. Trying to read emails or map locations is giving me cataracts. Is that even how cataracts work? I don't know but I have them now.

[Day 1.1] I had heard that Jessica Chobot was in this game but I didn't realize she made an appearance so early.

[Day 2] So I finally get into the game proper and I choose my first mission to go on. I choose the Cerberus Lab Mission. Then I get the prompt to "Insert Disc 2." Insert disc 2? On my first mission? How does that work. And of course I've only installed Disc 1 on my hard drive so the load times are insane. I thought that they were bad before. I wasn't even sure it was reading off of the hard drive. Now I'm sure it was. I have typed all of this (Day 1, Day 1.1, Day 2) while waiting for it to load. The xbox has gone into screensaver mode because it's been that long since I've touched the controller.

[Day 2.1] Okay something must be wrong because it's been about 20 minutes. I'm resetting the game to see what happens.

[Day 2.2] I took it out and tried it again. It still got stuck loading. I decided to delete some stuff and install it. The installation failed. Aha! Disc 2 is messed up. So now after waiting a week, give or take 13 months, to play this I have to send it back to Gamefly. Happy April Fools Day to me.