Oh Mass Effect...how I love thee.
Mass Effect 3 has been one of the long awaited titles early in the year. Why? Well other than the fact that there have been some major improvements to the game, the addition of multiplayer, and the return of old characters, there seems to be a general feeling of anticipation as to how it will measure up to the already colossal powerhouses that the first two games were.
The game really comes at you in three waves: story, gameplay, and multiplayer. Now I know some of you are like, "NO WAY! IT HAS THOSE THINGS?! I never would have known that, John!" Smart-mouths. I will explain each so you will understand, alright? It's not merely that these exist in the game so much as how they perform individually and work in tandem. I can hear the peanut-gallery talking now so I'll get going on this review.
Story
Okay, I'm not going to reveal any spoilers because I wouldn't want anyone to do that for me, but I will comment on the things that everyone knows about due to marketing campaigns and just sheer common sense.
Earth is under attack from the Reapers and it's a cornucopia of destruction and death for every species that's on their hit-list. Shepard is now tasked with, take a wild guess, killing the dirty robo-squids.
We all saw this coming and now that the universe is under siege, every other bad person is now deciding that this is the time to do bad stuff, kind of like how looters take advantage of a riot. So Cerberus and the Geth begin to make trouble and everybody is now fighting everyone and it's just...it's just a mess.They really went for drama and emotion in this game and they make it clear that nobody is safe in this time of crisis which, realistically, nobody would be. The deaths of certain people will tug at your heartstrings and the major planetary-wide destruction sequences will make your jaw-drop. It's kind of the "Shock and Awe" tactic that Activision went for in Modern Warfare 3, except done well, even if it does get a little "holy crap, another big ship blew up...again."
At first, it all might seem a little forced, what with all of the crazy missions you're being sent on to do everyone favors to get them to support you, but eventually it'll all become clear and relevant as you progress. This really is a little more of an RPG player's game this time around as there is a lot put on diplomacy and details.
Romance options return and others fade away. For those of you who were keeping score, there are same sex relationships in this game. Bioware doesn't beat you over the head with it either so it's pretty tastefully done and nice to see that equality being represented.
All-in-all I really liked the story from this game. It is different than the first one, finding out about and stopping Sovereign, and the second one where you destroyed the Collectors. Instead of going out and killing stuff, you're staying where you're familiar and protecting it. You revisit old planets, see old faces, and all the decisions you've made up until this point finally come back full circle.
Gameplay
So how is the gameplay? Pretty good. If you read Jesus's review of the demo, you know the gist of it. It's the same kind of gameplay with some added twists and flourishes.
The cover system seems to be more fine-tuned and I personally like it very much. Of course it does get annoying to have to press the spacebar every five seconds in a fight. It seems like they lowered the shield health and character health to force you into cover. I played as a Soldier and had problems in fights so, there's that.
One thing they brought back, for good or ill (who can say), was weapon customization. Now, I sort of liked this from ME1 but I didn't really miss it in the second game. It was a kind of, "Oh, this is back" moment. I just have an issue with taking the time to outfit and customize every character's loadout, cause if I don't my OCD-gaming self will think "Crap, Garrus might actually need that improved sniper rifle" and then the NPC will NEVER FREAKING USE IT. I do enjoy the ammo powers and I think those are customization enough.
Now...melee. Okay, here's the problem with this. I like being able to pistol whip easily and effectively. But these heavy attacks? Not so good. It's like, as soon as you do the attack, Shepard cannot move or pivot and will only attack in one direction. Sometimes he'll lock on, sometimes he'll move forward to his target, other times you have to be a freaking surgeon with this and it's a pain. This happens in multiplayer too, so buckle-up and practice for that crap.
The Galaxy at War mechanic is pretty neat. It's straight out of Fable 3 where you can do side-quests to help the races defend against the Reapers. For those hardcore gamers out there, you'll spend a lot of time trying to increase the galactic preparedness of everybody.
The guns seem to have lost some of their bite, but there's a way to upgrade all of them so they're more powerful and accurate. They also removed the "sniper wobble" from the sniper rifles so you can be more precise with your big stick. Question though: If everybody has shields that protect them from missiles and biotic powers and small arms fire in general, how does one sniper bullet blow a person's head off? I'm not complaining, but it just doesn't seem consistent to me. I dunno, maybe I'm over-analyzing it. Moving on.
You know what this franchise really needed? Weight management. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Guess what? All your guns? They're now realistically heavy! That's right folks! If you have a lot of guns on your Shep, he/she will actually move slower! Of all the crap in this franchise that we've suspended our disbelief for, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back in my opinion. What is the purpose of this? Why give us all these guns if not so we can have them all at one time? Oh, you're trying to make the game harder? Well you've already done that, we don't need heavy weapons. Thanks though.
The AI is much improved and utilizes tactics and flanks a lot of the time. Of course it can be stupid as a sack of bricks at times, but hey, nothing's perfect I suppose.
Multiplayer
AND NOW, THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! Well not all of you, but I assume you're at least curious.
Multipalyer is...fun. *sigh* There! I said it! I'm not one for playing multiplayer shooters (partially because I'm south of horsesh#$ when playing them) but I actually enjoy playing it on ME3. It's basically Survival, where you and a team of three others are put on a map and have to survive 10 waves of either Geth, Reapers or Cerberus troops. In between they'll give you little missions like eliminate specific enemies first, set up a communications array, hack something and whatnot.
You can customize your character as far as class, look and weapon mods (if you can buy them with in game credits made from matches). You even get to level them up to an extent. Here's the best part: If you get really far in a multiplayer match, or beat it with your team, your singleplayer campaign's Galaxy at War map will be affected and the preparedness of some of the systems will go up! I thought that was really clever. Giving a solo-artist like myself a reason to play with other people in a co-operative environment was a stroke of genius. I don't think I have anything to say that's negative about multiplayer other than the expected human error of your team and faults of the overall gameplay from the game as a whole.My advice? Do not ignore multipalyer. It's really satisfying. Like creme brulee.
Score
This game is great. It's in line with all of the other games and the consistency of quality hasn't differed at all. There are several audio bugs here and there during conversations and you may have difficulty getting up the ladders in multipalyer since they may bug out, but I haven't run into any major technical issues.
It's great, but it's not perfect. The weight system, the weakened weapons, the forced cover system and shoddy melee really hurt it for me. Oh! I forgot to mention that all the details about your missions and side-quests? Those are gone in the journal. Instead it'll just say something like this "Citadel: Batarian Codes" and then a summary of who gave you the mission and why, and that's it. No location in the Citadel, no just a planet name and not a system name for galactic quests. It's like the devs said "Hey! Do this for me. Have fun finding out where this is and scanning for it while the Reapers chase you through the system!" A little more specificity could have been given there.
Score: solid 9/10. Buy this game if you're a fan of the franchise. You have to! It's the end of it! If you haven't played this series yet, you need to just to experience this epic story. Well done to Bioware and EA and all the people involved. My hat is off to you.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to play the whole series over again to get different relationship interactions with all of these characters and see how the story differs each time.
