Mass Effect 3 - Report 4

I'm definitely zeroing in on the final moments of Mass Effect 3 -- I've finally returned to Earth, which amazingly has not been completely obliterated (for a pretty limp reason) -- and it makes me realize how badly I miss space combat games along the lines of Wing Commander and X-Wing/Tie-Fighter.

There's this great scene between two massive assemblies of ships above Earth that made my gamer heart pang for the days when Hobbes was revealed to be a traitor and when transport #7 was that one that needed to be disabled with ion fire.

And now that I'm zeroing in on the final push, I realize just how hard I pushed through the story of the game rather than meandering around the ship talking to my squad. It wasn't but two missions before that trek home that I figured out where I could upgrade my weapons! And, man, did that ever come in handy. Suddenly enemies were turned into tin cans and even the toughest enemies, the Atlas mech, were hardly any effort with a Claymore shotgun upgraded to level 5. It makes me wonder what else I missed along the way. What other bit of space weaponry did I miss? Extra powers? Side missions?