Actually, my favorite string of games were from Saturday night. The first was to be my "last" game of the night.
I joined up in a gold reapers lobby and met up with a group of 13 - 15 yr old kids, with N7 ranks of 68, 110something, and 130something. I asked them if they had completed the squad goal yet, and they said they hadn't, so I decided to help them, and they said they'd be really grateful if I could somehow.
They weren't terrible, but they weren't very good either. They at least listened to some advice when I had some to give. We did okay, but I had to either revive or solo a lot (I was using a Turian Sentinel, so magnet grabs were always on my mind). We wiped on wave 8 that game, and the next game. They said that wave 8 was "cursed" and that they had never gotten past it.
Every game we wiped, I told them, "Okay, let's try one more time." I decided to play GI, just in case I had to solo, just to make it easier. We chose Giant because it was one of the more easily defensible maps. As we started, one said, "OMG I'm so sleepy. It's 7:30 AM" They were obviously East Coasters.
I asked, "How long have you been playing for?"
Sounding like he was almost in tears, "We've been playing since 7:30, so we've been playing Reapers Gold for 12 hours...."
o m g
Well, everything went more smoothly that game. They defended inside the 2nd floor building against the intruding Banshees pretty well. I did my best to rape spawn and kill everything which was encroaching and assisting with the Banshees when needed.
At wave 9, they were pumped! They exclaimed "OMG we've never gotten to wave 9 before! This is the first time" Ahh so cute.
I just told them to keep on doing what they were doing and that they were kicking butt.
Wave 10 was kill targets, I believe. I was already celebrating. I used the last of my missiles because they could only carry 1 or 2 each, and we made it to the extraction wave!
Extraction was intense, and they were screaming "OMG OMG!" as the banshees and everything poured in, not unlike the other waves. And at 20 sec, we all made a dash to the extraction. They trucked through the middle, I ran around to the ladder. One of them and myself got to the extraction zone and survived, enough to get the commendation pack. What an sense of relief as the timer ticked down the last few intense seconds of cluster f'ing mayhem.
After the game, they were so exhausted and happy. I told them they did a great job and to enjoy their Eagles on Tuesday.
It was actually probably the most fun I've had playing the game for some reason.
Good times.