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    Mass Effect 3

    Game » consists of 19 releases. Released Mar 06, 2012

    When Earth begins to fall in an ancient cycle of destruction, Commander Shepard must unite the forces of the galaxy to stop the Reapers in the final chapter of the original Mass Effect trilogy.

    dimsey's Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360) review

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    A rad game, regardless of your feelings on the ending.

    Will say right off the bat that I'm not going to cover story beats here.
    I will say that overall I enjoyed the narrative of Mass Effect 3.

    I will admit that I didn't get the ending I might've hoped for, but that doesn't mean it was BAD.
    And so much cool stuff happened along the way, there were so many neat little character moments, fan service-y call backs and whatnot that I find it hard to get too peeved about the last ten minutes. 
     
    Mass Effect 3 continues to streamline the series for easier accessibility.
    The combat feels more solid and more approachable for someone who just wants to shoot stuff but there's also depth there for those who seek it.

    As solid as the shooting is the stuff I play Mass Effect for - the story, the character conversations - all that feels a bit less... Interactive? It feels like more often than not when you go to talk to a crew member on the Normandy rather than go into that conversational/close-up camera and let you pick from a bunch of topics your crew member will just ramble on about something, typically whatever happened on the last mission. And you can talk to them again right after and maybe they'll have something else to say. Hell Shepard might even respond. But you don't pick responses.

    There's a lot of little things like that where it feels like Bioware have kind of stolen the steering wheel from you and they're making your Shepard into something he's not. Or hasn't been until that point at least. Just felt like in previous games you were choosing Shepard's  intent and feelings as much as his actions, but less so here.

    It's like they've stripped away a lot of the feeling of freedom and choice.
    It's kind of disappointing but it's also not hard to see this game as less about making choices that carry forward and more about the culmination of the choices you made in the previous games.
    That's not to say there's not things to decide here. There are. Important things too.
    It just doesn't feel like that's where the emphasis is.


    Visually the game is quite stunning, as the series has always been.
    I believe they removed that grainy filter, which is fine by me as I'd generally turn it off anyway.
    Didn't dig the look. Only real visual complaint I have is that upon importing my character I discovered I had to recreate his face, which was a bit of a bummer. Wish I knew the exact cause of this problem, because while I wasn't able to import my Shepard's appearance, my bro was able to import his no problem.

    And the game sounds great too.
    All the voice acting is solid and the soundtrack is as awesome as we've come to expect from the series, they use the score to great effect in many scenes.

    Regardless of how game ends like I said before, there's so much awesome stuff along the way that it's hard to get all huffy over the last ten minutes. It's still a pretty rad game regardless and a good end to the trilogy. I look forward to seeing what they can do in this universe - especially now that Shepard's story has concluded.

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    Other reviews for Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360)

      War, Death, and Mass Effect: When Past Meets Present 0

      I would say I’ve been salivating over the arrival of this game since I finished Mass Effect 2, but that would be false. In truth I’ve been clamoring for the epic conclusion of Commander Shepard’s journey ever since I first took down Saren and Sovereign in the first Mass Effect back in 2007. To say that Mass Effect 3 has big shoes to fill would be an understatement seeing as the shoes have become as large as BioWare’s ambition was back when they first set-out to make an epic sci-fi stor...

      12 out of 16 found this review helpful.

      Mass Effect 3 Review: Fight or Die 0

      Mass Effect 3 faces the impossible task of wrapping up a truly epic story arc, improving core gameplay mechanics and satisfying all the fan groups of the series, but it has a damn good go at doing just that. The game has a huge amount of considerations to make, and I do not envy Bioware having to develop this colossus, but the final product is one that has many nervous of the quality that the game can provide. Has Mass Effect fallen into a mainstream design that abandons its roots or has Bioware...

      2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

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