Mass Effect 3 Review
Mass Effect 3 is the latest entry in the Mass Effect series. It has a lot of expectations to meet as many people have considered Mass Effect 2 one of the best games for this generation. If you have played the first 2 games then there is no reason why you should not finish the trilogy, and even though it is a great game, you can not help but feel disappointed.
Mass Effect 3 takes cues from most modern shooters. They improve the shooting and introduce rolling, like you would in the Gears of War games. The shooting itself feels improved from the second Mass Effect but it still does not have that type of shooting that you would expect from Gears of War. There are many ways you can customize your guns by adding attachments to help by giving more damage or more ammo capacity and other types of typical shooting improvements. Along with the shooting, you can use biotic and tech powers. These are the magic-like powers where they do not require ammo, but they need to cool down. The amount of time needed to cool down corresponds by the amount of guns you carry so a soldier class requires more time to cool down than an adept. Overall, the combat is fun and there is enough differences between the 6 classes to keep the combat fresh.
The role playing aspect of Mass Effect 3 is weaker than it was in the pasts games. There are still the dialogue wheels but there are much less times you use them and whenever you do, the amount of dialogue options are less too. Along with the dialogue options being reduced, the outcomes of your dialogue choices do not make that much of a difference like it would during the past few games. There seems to be two big choices that you make during the campaign, and these two moments seem to be the highlight of the game as well. These actions though big in the Mass Effect universe may not make too much of an impact as it doesn’t provide a huge change to the story.
One of the biggest parts of the Mass Effect games is having your choices be relevant. You import your past Mass Effect games into Mass Effect 3 and when you do this, you see a huge checklist of every important action that you have done in the past two games. The disappointing thing about these choices is that most of the characters that you have from the past games are mostly cameos in the Citadel and have little interaction with them besides the “Hey Shepard!” It almost makes it seem like your choices didn’t really matter and even in the important characters that you didn’t import because they died, they fill in a not as deep character who doesn’t fulfill the emotional attachment that you could of had from your dead crew mates. And the weird thing is, Bioware/EA is selling this as the Mass Effect that anyone could get in but whoever gets into it would probably not get the emotional attachment between each character like they would if they played through the other games. Plus, when you create a new, non import character, it gives you the options of which crew member died as Ashley, Kaiden, and numerous which is odd because you can not select which characters out of the numerous to select.
Following many other EA games, Bioware included an online multiplayer mode. It is a survival, wave-based co-op mode where you play with 3 other players. Each wave there are Reapers, Husks, and Cerberus enemies who you have to fight off with the third, sixth and tenth waves being objective based. The incentive for players who only play single player games to play the multiplayer is that it increases your “War Readiness” meter in the war room of the single player game. The online mode is a fun challenge where doing the middle “Silver” mode is difficult if you do not have a good enough team. It also allows you to try other classes with ease which is a challenge in the single player without having to spend 10 hours with a class to decide if you like it or not. You level up your characters individually with experience and you get credits which you can use to buy packs in the store which is like buying a set of baseball cards where you have no idea which items you are going to get. Some people may or may not like this because it adds a random element in the progression of what items you get. I think that there should be a sure way in getting a weapon you want even if you have to pay for credits.
Although this Mass Effect is disappointing in the story beats, there is enough of a reason why you should play it. The combat is solid even if the role playing aspect is lacking from the other two games. The ending, as you can see by fans reactions, is definitely disappointing but maybe you shouldn’t think about it and think of the journey that took you there. If you have played the past two games you should play Mass Effect 3 and even if you haven’t played the first two, you should play those before playing the third (or at least the second one). All in all, this is a great game if not a little disappointing.
