Dress to kill
Most weapons are familiar from Mass Effect 2 and can be upgraded at workbenches, and customisations can be bought and found. Due to weight restrictions, I can only carry so many weapons, which definitely made me think twice about my load out. Armour upgrades and character appearance add more individual touches – pink armour and having a fist fight in a rubber dress should never be frowned at.
You seem a bit blue, are you OK?
Also recognisable is how experience points are spent from Mass Effect 2. I started with points in Offensive Mastery, fitness and throw. The clean design and functionality of the Mass Effect UI make fiddling with my stats a pleasure. Mêlée attack is thrilling, as Mass Effect 3 introduces a new weapon, the omniblade, for when a husk creeps up behind me. As long as I use cover and keep my shield powered up, things don't get too hairy, even against the biggest mechs.
The gameplay could sometimes come across a little samey, but the depth of the storyline kept me connected. And when someone close to me died – and this happened a lot – I felt a genuine pang of sadness. All this emotional trauma is obviously getting to me, because I am haunted in my sleep – maybe I should lay off the Peruvian whisky?
Shot blocker
Selecting which combination of my teammates would be most useful for backup before I head into battle was important but more often than not I took along Liara. Having her throwing a singularity into enemies with shields made combat with multiple baddies a breeze. Overpowered, you say? Well, I'm not complaining. No flanking tactics needed, even with that improved enemy AI.
Truly epic cut scenes – often with impressively huge beasties – play out a narrative that, at its worst, is a pompous space soap opera, but at its best had me shouting, sighing and laughing. The seamless transition into the combat sequences kept me constantly at the edge of my seat waiting for the next husk to show up and feel the sting of my omniblade.
Got ship all over the screen
Mass Effect 3 features multiplayer for the first time with Galaxy at War. All I can think is: why? I have to admit it is fun and could be more so when my mates come on-line but honestly Mass Effect 3 isn't about the multiplayer. If I wanted multiplayer I would be fragging ass in Battlefield 3. Galaxy at War reminded me of Left 4 Dead but fighting waves of Reapers, instead of zombies. Call me paranoid, but it feels like Bioware is trying to prepare me for the imminent clusterfuck that will be the upcoming Mass Effect movie.
Verdict
Mass Effect 3 is about choice and that's what drives this immense narrative. Bioware has invited me to be part a story so nuanced with action so compelling that it raises the bar. Building and refining an adored franchise wasn't going to be easy but Mass Effect 3 is everything I wanted it to be and more. ®
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Mass Effect 3
COMMENTS
Of course, what you could do is buy ME1 and/or ME2, which you can now get for cheap, and thus learn the story from the start. Then, if you like them, you could buy ME3 at a later date - which, by that time, will also be available for cheap. Thus you will get the whole trilogy for less than the price of ME3 today. I'm too good to you people ;-)
Re: I completely agree
I know right, the build up to the end was amazingly well put together, except for the fact you somehow end up wearing clothes you never wore and your armour vanishes, go up, have a chat with the [spoiler] and then sit watching planet [spoiler] with [spoiler], that would have been the perfect place to end the game with a long CS, with the Catalyst firing off and doing it's thing as Shepherd and [spoiler] die together. Then they could have fast forwarded to a couple of years in the future and show the results of your hard work.
Tali on planet [spoiler] wearing a hat as a Geth tends to her garden.
Liara and the Prothean (if you have DLC) exploring old Prothean ruins together.
The 2 Krogans having military drills with Garius whilst Krogan women watch on holding babies
(or cutscenes depending on which chars are still alive and the choices you made through the series).
Since 2007 we have been investing ourselves in the "lives" of our character and his/her comrades, the ending we got was weak, weaker than weak, it's no longer a matter of "oh, I so want to try X in 1 to get Y in 2 so I get ending Z in 3" it's "meh, not even worth playing again, the endings are just so bad".
I've played and completed ME3 and the ending destroyed the entire series for me, totally and utterly ruined any replay experience through ME1-2 to try different scene endings for ME3. For instance, in ME1, don't save the council, in ME2, kill half your crew, does that have any effect on the ending for ME3? Nope, none of the choices you made in ME1-2 actually matter when it comes to the ending of ME3, you get the same 3 "options" all of which suck, it's almost as if BW couldn't think of a way to end the game.
It was supposed to be a final that answers all the questions and closes the story on what has been an epic adventure, it left a bad taste in my mouth and a "what the fuck?" as the only question answered.
Don't get me wrong, the game itself was fun, it's just the ending, that horrible ending that ruined everything I had done over 3 games, 5 minutes worth of gameplay totally screwing over hundreds of hours worth of gameplay, choices, hard decisions....
I had planned (after beating ME3) to work a new ME1>2>3 char going "renegade" to see the effect on how the story ends, now I'm just going to delete ME3 because it has NO replayability factor, none, zero, zilch.
Re: Not sure on this
> PC version suffers from Origin - I have Steam on it, been told you can't have both.
Whilst Origin is a steaming shit sandwich that EA has kindly rammed down our throats for no fathomable reason, it does co-exist with Steam without problems.
