Introduction
And thus, the third installment of the great Mass Effect series has been released. The Chronicle of the human Shepard, Savior of the Galaxy, fighting against the seemingly invincible and incomprehensible Reapers comes to an end. Needless to say, if you care at all about the story of the previous two games, regardless of anything else you simply do need to play this game.
Gameplay
Mass Effect 2's passably decent third person shooter gameplay makes the transition to this game largely intact, though they've taken the criticisms of both previous games to heart and have amalgamated both games' core systems into the most refined of the three.
The control scheme is pretty much the same as ME2, down to hitting Shift to bring up the powers menu and to issue orders to squadmates. The skill trees look and behave the same as ME2, but the skills themselves are a mix of ME1 and ME2 abilities and a lot of the abilities themselves have been changed.
ME3 retains the cover system of ME2, but it adds helpful overlays of what Shepard will do if you hit the spacebar while holding down different directions. You'll still be frustrated while trying to get in and out of cover as the situation demands. I often find myself doing all sorts of undesired dodges and get sucked into the various crates and chest high walls while trying to sprint around. Still, it's usually not going to get you killed.
Instead of ME2's health mechanic, ME3 reaches back to ME1 and Halo, where you have a regenerating shield but under that you have a finite health bar, and only quasi-regenerating health in that each health pip can regenerate if it isn't fully depleted, but if it goes away you need to use some medi-gel to get it back (or just finish your mission).
Unlike the previous games, a lot of the missions end up playing out as just going to an area and surviving an onslaught of enemies until they're all dead then moving to the next check point. Unless there's some sort of external health bar (i.e.: your shuttle being shot up while you run for it), you can usually just find a good cover spot and shoot people and spam the applicable skills until all the enemies around you are dead. This becomes abundantly clear when you realize that many of them are the same as the multiplayer arenas. Unless you're playing a Vanguard, there is little incentive to run around because Shepard can be fairly delicate, especially against the middle-tier of bad guys. In effect, while the actual shooting and what not is the best of the series, it seems like a general step back in terms of the mission design.
Oh and hacking is just 100% completely stripped out. The doors labelled "Bypass" just take a few seconds to open instead of opening instantly. Disappointing that Bioware just gave up completely on this, as ME2's hacking mini-games weren't especially difficult and were fairly well thought out, though they could have used an introductory tutorial to tell you how they work.
Shepard gains equipment in a similar fashion as in ME2, but instead of just being stuck with the same stats and whatnot, they let you upgrade the equipment you have, giving better accuracy, damage, and ammo capacity. This is also a good middle ground between getting 30 trash weapons every 5 minutes in ME1 and the utter dearth of loot in ME2. You find weapon mods that are easy to equip as well, allowing you to customize your gear for how you like to play.
The dialog system is exactly the same as ME2, though I noticed far fewer opportunities to Persuade/Intimidate people. The prompts to perform Renegade and Paragon actions during dialog and cutscenes reappears from ME2 as well.
Making an appearance is a co-op wave based survival multiplayer mode, pitting up to 4 players against increasingly difficult waves of either Cerberus, Geth, or Reaper troops. Every few waves, some additional objectives are issued to the team, requiring the team to target and kill four specific enemies, activate four devices, or hold an area for a set amount of time to hack a computer. These objectives are timed, and failing one ends your round. The array of multiplayer characters are cool. Each one can be thought of as basically a squad member from the single player. You get the same number of skills to put points into, and each one has a unique set of skills. All the classes and main races are represented. Completing (successfully or not, surprisingly) a round of multiplayer will increase the galaxy's Readiness Rating, potentially having an effect on your single player game. The multiplayer is pretty fun and worth at least a go to check it out. Successfully completing a round is pretty satisfying.
Sights and Sounds
Graphically, ME3 is just ME2 but slightly prettier. The default male Shepard model & textures look really good, but many of the others don't compare favorably. It's decent but not anything near as good as the current gen of graphic beasts like Battlefield 3. I did get a pretty solid 60fps the whole time, which I'm assuming it's locked at like most console ports are these days.
Voice acting and music are generally excellent, as is expected by now. Clint Mansell's work seems surprisingly limited based on the soundtrack that came with my copy of the game (only two songs have his name on them) but it is still top notch work by all involved. Most of the characters you encounter have great voice acting as well, especially MaleShep, who has a generally cleaner performance.
Stuff that sucks
It seems like the writing team for Mass Effect 3 weren't all on the same page at times. Some parts of the game are brilliant, emotionally impactful, and just works really well (Mordin continues to be a show-stealing character, and I still tear up when I think about his role in ME3). Other times they go and do something really dumb like
Spoiler:
The ending itself is worth addressing on its own, considering the quite vocal outcry against it. I can sort of see what the writers were trying to do with it. Creating a deep, intelligent story certainly gives license to having dark or depressing endings where everything doesn't turn out perfectly, or even optimistically. The problems with it is that instead of a dark coda to Shepard's saga, you get something that just really doesn't make any sense. I can't explain why it's wrong without spoiling the ending, but suffice it to say that you probably won't be satisfied with the argument presented for the Reapers case of why they're killing everyone, nor will the choices you're given in the ending be very satisfying either. Honestly, up until the last minute before you make your final choice, they could have pulled off they ending they wanted to, but what the game ends up with feels like they really just didn't know what to really do once they got to the very end and had to do something.
Conclusion
In the overall scheme of things, I really enjoyed playing Mass Effect 3. Most of the good stuff you probably already know about going in. If you enjoyed the first two games, you pretty much MUST play this one. While Bioware stumbles in a few places in the story, most of it is pretty good, and in particular, the main mission on Tuchanka is incredible, at least as good as anything else in the Mass Effect series. I'd have a hard time recommending someone who isn't already a fan of the games to start here though. I can't imagine being able to know WTF is going on at all without playing the first two games. Mass Effect really should be played 1, 2, 3 or not at all. I know it seems like this review is a bit down on the game, but as someone who has really enjoyed the series, it may not be as close to the sheer brilliance of the first two, but it's still quite good. I think they should have gone back to the drawing board to come up with a better ending for the game but other than that I heartily recommend it. And hey, they put another song by Faunts in the credits. Brilliant.
Score : 9/10
God I hate banshees.
. But I like that. I like that some of the choices are not just Good/Bad, and I like the fact that you cant save everyone. I think if the ending was a lighter, "everyone gets home happy, everything is fine and good, Shep gets a ticker tape parade through smiling fans" I would have been rather disappointed. Maybe I'm weird, I dunno.