Comic Con happened. Well, it's still happening, but after seeing the triple-whammy of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and Andy Serkis (some of my biggest heroes) I'm not sure anything could top that. So after I went through post seeing-famous-people-in-the-flesh depression, I wandered over to the Bioware booth in the Hilton Gaslamp and decided that, yea, Mass Effect 3 was worth waiting for. Plus, we all got sweet blow-up Omniblades! Hoorah for stabbing dudes in the face! 
 
Anyway, once I got past the lawn entrance we were ushered up to the main Bioware area, with a stage for events and a long, long, LONG line for ME3. Lucky for me, however, I arrived just in time for Casey Hudson, who's ME's creative director and all around cool dude, to give an onstage demo of the...demo and answer a few question. I got to ask him what his definition of an RPG was (on live TV, no less!) which elicited a pretty interesting answer. The rest of those Q&As are up on Bioware's website under Bioware TV, so check that out if you want some of your non-spoilerly questions answered. 
 
Anyway, after another 2 hours (no joke) I finally got ushered in to the ME3 area (after some Bioware guys were trying desperately to get people to play their Dragon Age 2 dlc demo, to, of course, no avail) and was led through 2 short briefing videos to catch us all up to speed. Interestingly enough, EDI, who presented them, did so in a dossier format a la ME2, which leads me to believe that the fractured dossier style of ME2 is making a return to ME3. Now, to the demo! 
 
One thing that struck me immediately was the new music. The composer on ME1 and 2 got replaced by Clint Mansell, who has did the famous Requiem for a Dream soundtrack, and it shows. The music is more epic, sweeping, and at the same time emotional, though it'll still have a hard time beating the Suicide Mission music from the second game. Beyond that, the demo encourages you to spec out your squad, returning to ME1 style upgrade screen and a few branching paths. It definitely seemed to remedy the problems in ME2, but I didn't have much time to mess around with it as I wanted to get along and start shooting. 
 
Initially when I first saw ME3 demoed, I was skeptical on the new emphasis on making the shooting great, while not really mentioning the story (my favorite part of the games). Well, let me tell you: the shooting in ME3 is leaps and bounds better than ME2, with incredibly satisfying implementation of rumble and a great new sound design. Bioware was working with DICE on the sounds of the guns, and damn it shows. Firing the default assault rifle had a real edge to it now (although I found the submachine gun to be a little whinny). Cover is now more easily gotten around, as handy-dandy holographic arrows now allow you to roll around from cover to cover.  And the new melee stuff looks AWESOME. I played as an adept, and my powered up punch move was a giant telekinetic-infused fist that disintegrated guys left and right (each class has its of special melee animation). 
 
The one detriment found was the much-talked-about gun customization. Now, there wasn't much to customize in the demo, but what was there had such a small impact on the gun I was firing that I wondered why it was even there as an option in the first place. Granted, it did remind me of ME1, but the worser aspects of that game, not the better. 
 
All in all, I came out of there happy and relieved that ME3 still looks, plays, and feels like the Mass Effect we all know and love. The delay looks also to hammer out some rough spots (the frame rate wasn't so hot), and the shooting is definitely better than the series has ever been; now it's just got to deliver in the story area.