Mass Effect 3 Review

It's raining Reapers.

MASS EFFECT 3 - REVIEW

After a couple hours of slugging through banking and capital markets, I need some form of creative release. Therefore, here's a review of Mass Effect 3.

Pro's

Game play in Mass Effect 3 is a massive plus over it's two predecessors. Combat is smoother and more refined, with better enemy AI and variety of styles. If you've played the first two Mass Effect titles, you know that you can choose multiple 'classes' for your character - Soldier, Vanguard, Infiltrator, Adept, Engineer and Sentinel. Where Mass Effect 3 has improved is that all the classes have very clear advantages that, if used properly, can make the game easier (by contrast, in the first two games the classes had very obvious disadvantages).  

I'll use the Vanguard class as an example. Vanguard is a mix of an Adept and a Soldier - you have decent weapon proficiency and health, but you can also use a limited range of 'biotic' powers; the most notable (and fun) being the 'Charge', allowing Commander Shepard to instantaneously charge into an enemy from any distance. In Mass Effect 2, once you charged, you often found yourself exposed, surrounded by multiple enemies and running for cover/dieing. 

 In Mass Effect 3, however, a Vanguard comes with a variety of moves to counter this excessive drawback. To the left you can see the ability 'Nova', allowing Shepard to draw on their shields and release a tidal wave of energy surrounding him, either killing or throwing enemies asunder. There's also the much improved 'Shockwave' ability to go with it. The MOST improved combat feature, in my opinion, is the introduction heavy melee. Soldier Shepard has an 'omni-blade', a sword like contraption that appears from his arm and literally stabs the emeny in the face. 

Soldier Shepard overcompensating

How do I intend to kill you? With Magic. Motherfucker.

Vanguard Shepard, however, uses the heavy melee as another counter move, releasing a huge surge of powerful biotic energy from his/her fists and obliterating the enemy. It is a master stroke by Bioware and also makes combat a lot more enjoyable. 

On to the other stuff. The player mechanics are a lot smoother than other games, the introduction of the combat roll is a lot of fun to do and makes it possible to dodge those pesky homing missiles and bullets. There is now a much larger selection of weapons available for Shepard, and they can be customised and improved. There is also a knock on effect of carrying weapons: the more weight you carry, the more time it takes for your powers to recharge. If your anything like me, you'll want those powers, and thus will usually only carry around 1 weapon. Although this makes sense physically, it almost defeats the point of having so much choice in weapons. Playing as a soldier, I pretty much stick with the same assault rifle for 2/3 of the game, and as a vanguard I rarely even used weapons. 

Another decent pro of this game is the musical score. While there are several contributors, the biggest name was perhaps Clint Mansell, who is best known for his work scoring the movie Requiem for a Dream. Check out the title track for the game, it's rather good.

There is a wide variety of music that seems to fit almost perfectly to it's given situation. My actual favourite 'mission' music is the track 'Sur'Kesh' (it seems to fit perfectly to charging around as a Vanguard punching people!). The mission music is often quite electronic with varied paces, but the other tracks like the title track above and the romance theme are beautiful and melancholic, adding so much to the scenes and helping to invoke the player's emotions. This is really the end of the true 'pros' of the game.

Also, the big pros are the character relationships, especially if you carried on the same relationship through all three games (I have to say, playing as a Male Shepard I went with Liara all the way, and as a FemShep I started off with Kaiden, but want to Garrus, and Garrus is awesome). The friendships Shepard has made throughout all three games still hold true (as long as you haven't gotten them killed) and provide a sense of humanity and warmth to the game and to the downtime between missions. There is very decent character evolution - Liara has become Shepard's top Lieutenant, Garrus is a loyal and amusing as ever, whilst Ashley/Kaiden is older and more experienced, and it shows through their interactions with Shepard. The unsung hero of the game is, without a doubt, Mordin Solus, your favourite Gilbert and Sulliven singing Salarian Scientist. While not available in your party, he is a key character in the story and by far the deepest and most developed (the video is from ME2, and Mordin singing is awesome). 

On the Fence

The Story: Everything but the final 15 minutes (I'll get to that later) is, to a certain extent, a result of the character's action in the previous two games. HOWEVER. I feel like, although the story was decent, if Bioware had more time, better writers and a better sense of direction, the story could have been the greatest ever told. In it's most basic form, Commander Shepard's warning of the Reapers have finally been realised - they are invading the galaxy and seem intent on wiping out all advanced life. Sad Face.

As a long running fan of the series (I bought the original on Xbox in 2007) and of Bioware going back to the first Knights of the Old Republic game, I have come to expect top notch writing and storytelling from Bioware. Since selling out to EA, however, I noticed the early signs of decline of the integrity of Bioware's writing, starting with it's sub par title 'Dragon Age 2'. Mass Effect 3, I'm sad to say, has suffered the same fate. The storyline was tailored so as to cater both to newcomers to the series and to try and keep the existing fans happy. From a business perspective, I understand. From a gamer's, this is sacrilege and compromises the entire history of the story. The fans were promised that Mass Effect 3 would be decided solely from the outcome of your actions in the previous two games, but I saw very little, if any, effect the previous two games had on the outcome of the story. A prime example is in Mass Effect 2 there is a choice Shepard must make - to destroy or reprogramme the Geth 'Heretics'. Now, you'd think that taking the 'renegade' option of destruction would be the right option, since reprogramming would allow the existing Geth to inherit the memories of the heretics and thus be more likely to join the Reapers. BUT, later in Mass Effect 3, you find out that the Geth, and more specifically Legion, Shepard's friend and shipmate, have joined the Reapers anyway, regardless of your previous actions.

Legion is an absolute BADASS

There are parts of the story that make no sense because they are not addressed by the writers - for instance - why was Earth attacked first and hit the hardest? Now, in the previous title we know that the Reaper called 'Harbinger' (implied as their leader) has a personal feud with Shepard. It is also implied that the Reapers fear humanity the most because they are the only true race of individuals on the galaxy who can adapt to beat them. But, there is just no mention of Harbinger's feud with Shepard, nor any form of contact between them. This ties in very much to the Reaper's motivations and structure - we are lead to believe that they are a super-intelligent race of ancient AIs that come every 50,000 years to wipe out all intelligent life in the galaxy because without the 'cycle', as it is called, organic life will be wiped out by synthetic life. So, by killing everyone and restarting the technology tree, it re-sets organic life's extinction.

Harbinger does not like Shepard.

 .......WHAT? Come on Bioware. You can do better. And even though that story arc makes sense and we know why the Reapers are killing everyone, we don't know the real 'WHY' - their actions are paradoxical - machines serving organics to forstall other machines wiping out organics entirely. Who made them? Why are they programmed? Who leads them? Unanswered question after unanswered question. 

Even as I say all this, however, when the story is viewed by itself, it is still very very good and definitely gets the player involved in the fight for the galaxy (that is all I'll say, don't want to spoil it). Whilst the writer's failed to answer a lot of questions, one thing that the game does extremely well is to build up the player's hopes of winning against impossible odds. Shepard knows the situation is hopeless, but he also knows that everyone looks to him for hopes of victory, so he must make himself believe he can win.

This brings us to the Ending. Even if you haven't played this game, you may have heard about the controversy this ending has caused. Some are OK with it, most people hate it. Personally I was very disappointed with the ending, not least because it was unoriginal and vague, but because it DID NOT MAKE SENSE. There are just too many inconsistencies - Shepard getting up when Coats is proclaiming everyone dead over the radio, the mysterious appearance of trees and plant life found in the valley that was just straight up lasered by a Reaper Capital Ship, the infinite ammo in his pistol, how did Anderson make it up before Shepard, he's literally only 5 feet ahead of you when you talk to him over the radio, why can't you see him, how is your radio even working, how on earth has the Illusive Man become able to control you, who the hell is that child, why hasn't anyone ever discovered the GIANT CHAMBER filled with light and energy in the Citadel in the previous 37 million years.......I can't believe Bioware, of all developers, would fuck it up so badly. If they're smart, they will take this very smart and plausible explanation in the DLC they are releasing this summer: (the video is really good, well worth watching, but NOTE: it gives away the whole ending, so don't watch if you don't want to know)

The ending really is the game's biggest con. 

I know I have been quite negative throughout this review, but don't let it discourage you, because Mass Effect 3 really is a very cool game to play, and with the promise of further ending downloadable content the ending will hopefully be a little more clear come summer time. 

On a final note, Bioware put in a multiplayer element to the game. Although I was very sceptical at first, after trying it I got hooked very quickly. It is very fun and heart pumping, especially on the higher difficulties, and if your not careful you'll spend an entire day on it when you should be reading law textbooks (whoops). 

Final Rating: 8.5/10. If the ending had been better, it would have been a 10.

"NO! MY SUMMER HOUSE!!"