Mass effect 3
2007 was a fantastic year for gaming. We saw the PS2 still pull it’s might in Okami, Bioshock kindly asked is we would get rid of Andrew Ryan and Mass Effect gave us a new spin on the RPG genre. It’s focus on moral choice and the way it affects the overall storyline proved to be the series’ strongpoint’s. I think it says a lot that it took two extraordinary titles to stop it becoming number 1 that year.
2010 was another amazing year and there were 6 titles I gave 9/10 to (no 10/10’s that year). These were Super Street Fighter IV, Red Dead Redemption, Halo Reach, Bayonetta, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Mass Effect 2. ME2 took what was so great about ME1 and turned it up to 11. It refined the combat to make it more shooter like, but its best feature was how the choices you made in the first game ran into this one.
For example one of your party in ME1 gets consumed with rage and Lead Character Shepherd has to make a difficult choice. If you’ve done things right you get to save his life, otherwise you have to kill him. If that character dies then he can’t appear in the sequel and that role is given to someone else.
March 2012 saw the release of Mass Effect 3, the end of the trilogy and following on from even more choices from the first two games. Scenes play out very differently depending on the choices you made in the first two games. One scenario in particular involves choosing between two races, essentially killing one of them off for good. However make the right choices throughout the series and you get to save them both.
The level of writing and the multiple ways the whole story plays out is a phenomenal accomplishment, one Bioware can be really proud of. ME3 deals with pretty much every loose thread. You resolves huge conflicts that have been in the background throughout the series.
Very few of your squad throughout the series are certain of never dying. It is possible to kill all but four, and three of them are exclusive to this game only. Yet the story has to continue and for those who died someone has to take their place.
Gameplay wise it is a very well polished Third person shooter. Utilising cover, choosing the right weapons for you and using your powers effectively are all key to your success. When you start you get to pick one of the six standard classes (even if you’ve imported a character you can change their class). These are either pure Biotic, Technical or weapons based, or somewhere in between. Adepts for example have a long list of biotic attacks but no technical ones and no weapon based skills. Sentinels combine Biotics with Technical powers and so can combine basic biotics with combat drones.
Biotics are powers that affect an opponents mind and are generally effective against organics. They are used to push enemies around the screen and attacks can bend around cover. Technical powers attacks things like shields and barriers, Overload for example does a lot of damage to enemy shields but won’t do much damage to their health. Technical powers also cover setting up turrets. Weapons based powers include different types of ammo such as incendiary rounds for taking out organic enemies and armour, or Disruptor rounds for Synthetic enemies and shields.
This gives it a unique edge over other third person shooters that focus on weapons. Each power can be upgraded as you level up giving it an RPG like feel. Mass Effect has balanced the two genres admirably to form a unique experience. In ME3 the system is at its most balanced offering the skill of a shooter with the strategy of an RPG.
Outside of combat there have been some tweaks to. In ME2 you scanned planets to find materials to make better equipment. This proved to be a drawn out fairly dull process that lasted far too long than it needed to. In ME3 only certain planets have items worth scanning for and overall there is a lot less scanning to do this time round.
Instead of raw materials you are now looking for items that will help you win the war. The more War Assets you acquire the better the ending you get (well this was the idea, more on the ending later). This time however you can’t start scanning a planet for a war asset until you identify that planet as having something. Pressing LT sends a short pulse that scans the area for any war assets.
Often scanning for things alerts the Reapers to your presence and they will begin hunting you down pretty quickly as you investigate each system. If the Reapers get you it’s game over. The longer you stay in a system the quicker the Reapers move. Dodging the reapers adds tension to the otherwise boring planet scanning.
What is slightly disappointing is the lack of “towns”. The Citadel is the only location you can go to more than once, it’s the only place you can get side quests besides your in game E-mail terminal, and it’s the only place where you can buy equipment. Imagine Skyrim with just Whiterun and no Riften, Windhelm or Solitude.
The addition of Multiplayer could’ve been a timebomb waiting to go off but thankfully it is very well made and stays in context with the Single player. It’s essentially another Horde/Firefight style mode but with a couple of notable twists.
There are ten waves of enemies each getting progressively harder and based around a particular type of enemy. You could be fighting the Reaper horde in one set of 10 waves, and Cerberus enemies in the next. Every so often a wave will also give you a bonus objective, such as take out specified targets within a time limit, or activate beacons scattered across the area.
The classes also feature heavily in the multiplayer as does the different races. You can be an Asari Adept, Krogan Vanguard or a Geth Engineer to name a few. Each comes with their own powers and abilities. A Human Engineer can use Overload and Incinerate, whereas a Salarian Engineer loses Overload for Decoy. You can switch between characters in between matches to level them up separately. I have a Human Engineer, an Asari Vanguard and a Geth Infiltrator. Each plays differently and are at different stages of progression. There’s so much you can experiment with.
Play well and you’ll accumulate credits that can be spent on packs giving supplies, new weapons, new characters and new customisation options. What you get is random and buying these packs can get addictive. Playing the Multiplayer increases your “Galactic Readiness”, which in turn affects the ending you get in Multiplayer.
How it works is that your war asset total gives you your military strength and this is then multiplied by your Galactic Readiness to give your Effective Military Strength. The higher your “EMS” is the better ending you get. By Default your Galactic Readiness is 50% so without playing the multiplayer your EMS is always half your Total assets. So if you play a lot of the multiplayer you can skip some of the side quests and still get a good ending. It gives another dimension on how the game measures success.
Although the ending is one of the worst crashes in videogame history. On the face of it not a lot is wrong, but the more you dig the more you realise it is a mess. There are so many things out of place for the franchise that it doesn’t make sense. For example your teammates suddenly desert you, no explanation is given for this and it is completely out of character.
Your EMS gives you extra options at the end but these options all end up being the same anyway. Your choices have little effect on the ending beside the final choice. It just all feels rushed and wrong. Hopefully the upcoming DLC will fix this and there is a theory that if true will completely turn my opinion on the ending upside down.
When you think about it though a bad ending is not enough to ruin what is a fantastic well made final part of an incredible trilogy. Everything has been refined and new features have been added to make this the best Mass Effect yet, and the result leaves us with a strong contender for Game of the Year 2012.
10/10
2010 was another amazing year and there were 6 titles I gave 9/10 to (no 10/10’s that year). These were Super Street Fighter IV, Red Dead Redemption, Halo Reach, Bayonetta, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Mass Effect 2. ME2 took what was so great about ME1 and turned it up to 11. It refined the combat to make it more shooter like, but its best feature was how the choices you made in the first game ran into this one.
For example one of your party in ME1 gets consumed with rage and Lead Character Shepherd has to make a difficult choice. If you’ve done things right you get to save his life, otherwise you have to kill him. If that character dies then he can’t appear in the sequel and that role is given to someone else.
March 2012 saw the release of Mass Effect 3, the end of the trilogy and following on from even more choices from the first two games. Scenes play out very differently depending on the choices you made in the first two games. One scenario in particular involves choosing between two races, essentially killing one of them off for good. However make the right choices throughout the series and you get to save them both.
The level of writing and the multiple ways the whole story plays out is a phenomenal accomplishment, one Bioware can be really proud of. ME3 deals with pretty much every loose thread. You resolves huge conflicts that have been in the background throughout the series.
Very few of your squad throughout the series are certain of never dying. It is possible to kill all but four, and three of them are exclusive to this game only. Yet the story has to continue and for those who died someone has to take their place.
Gameplay wise it is a very well polished Third person shooter. Utilising cover, choosing the right weapons for you and using your powers effectively are all key to your success. When you start you get to pick one of the six standard classes (even if you’ve imported a character you can change their class). These are either pure Biotic, Technical or weapons based, or somewhere in between. Adepts for example have a long list of biotic attacks but no technical ones and no weapon based skills. Sentinels combine Biotics with Technical powers and so can combine basic biotics with combat drones.
Biotics are powers that affect an opponents mind and are generally effective against organics. They are used to push enemies around the screen and attacks can bend around cover. Technical powers attacks things like shields and barriers, Overload for example does a lot of damage to enemy shields but won’t do much damage to their health. Technical powers also cover setting up turrets. Weapons based powers include different types of ammo such as incendiary rounds for taking out organic enemies and armour, or Disruptor rounds for Synthetic enemies and shields.
This gives it a unique edge over other third person shooters that focus on weapons. Each power can be upgraded as you level up giving it an RPG like feel. Mass Effect has balanced the two genres admirably to form a unique experience. In ME3 the system is at its most balanced offering the skill of a shooter with the strategy of an RPG.
Outside of combat there have been some tweaks to. In ME2 you scanned planets to find materials to make better equipment. This proved to be a drawn out fairly dull process that lasted far too long than it needed to. In ME3 only certain planets have items worth scanning for and overall there is a lot less scanning to do this time round.
Instead of raw materials you are now looking for items that will help you win the war. The more War Assets you acquire the better the ending you get (well this was the idea, more on the ending later). This time however you can’t start scanning a planet for a war asset until you identify that planet as having something. Pressing LT sends a short pulse that scans the area for any war assets.
Often scanning for things alerts the Reapers to your presence and they will begin hunting you down pretty quickly as you investigate each system. If the Reapers get you it’s game over. The longer you stay in a system the quicker the Reapers move. Dodging the reapers adds tension to the otherwise boring planet scanning.
What is slightly disappointing is the lack of “towns”. The Citadel is the only location you can go to more than once, it’s the only place you can get side quests besides your in game E-mail terminal, and it’s the only place where you can buy equipment. Imagine Skyrim with just Whiterun and no Riften, Windhelm or Solitude.
The addition of Multiplayer could’ve been a timebomb waiting to go off but thankfully it is very well made and stays in context with the Single player. It’s essentially another Horde/Firefight style mode but with a couple of notable twists.
There are ten waves of enemies each getting progressively harder and based around a particular type of enemy. You could be fighting the Reaper horde in one set of 10 waves, and Cerberus enemies in the next. Every so often a wave will also give you a bonus objective, such as take out specified targets within a time limit, or activate beacons scattered across the area.
The classes also feature heavily in the multiplayer as does the different races. You can be an Asari Adept, Krogan Vanguard or a Geth Engineer to name a few. Each comes with their own powers and abilities. A Human Engineer can use Overload and Incinerate, whereas a Salarian Engineer loses Overload for Decoy. You can switch between characters in between matches to level them up separately. I have a Human Engineer, an Asari Vanguard and a Geth Infiltrator. Each plays differently and are at different stages of progression. There’s so much you can experiment with.
Play well and you’ll accumulate credits that can be spent on packs giving supplies, new weapons, new characters and new customisation options. What you get is random and buying these packs can get addictive. Playing the Multiplayer increases your “Galactic Readiness”, which in turn affects the ending you get in Multiplayer.
How it works is that your war asset total gives you your military strength and this is then multiplied by your Galactic Readiness to give your Effective Military Strength. The higher your “EMS” is the better ending you get. By Default your Galactic Readiness is 50% so without playing the multiplayer your EMS is always half your Total assets. So if you play a lot of the multiplayer you can skip some of the side quests and still get a good ending. It gives another dimension on how the game measures success.
Although the ending is one of the worst crashes in videogame history. On the face of it not a lot is wrong, but the more you dig the more you realise it is a mess. There are so many things out of place for the franchise that it doesn’t make sense. For example your teammates suddenly desert you, no explanation is given for this and it is completely out of character.
Your EMS gives you extra options at the end but these options all end up being the same anyway. Your choices have little effect on the ending beside the final choice. It just all feels rushed and wrong. Hopefully the upcoming DLC will fix this and there is a theory that if true will completely turn my opinion on the ending upside down.
When you think about it though a bad ending is not enough to ruin what is a fantastic well made final part of an incredible trilogy. Everything has been refined and new features have been added to make this the best Mass Effect yet, and the result leaves us with a strong contender for Game of the Year 2012.
10/10
posted by Master hunter at 1:54 pm
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