Mass Effect 3
Reviewed By: Kerry
Mass Effect 3 is, more than the other entries, a giant puzzle. If you took the time to seriously play the first two games you will see the fruit of all your labor. Choices made as far back as the first game play out in fragmenting and varying ways. If pressed for time, one could get away with playing just Mass Effect 2 since most of your actions in 2 directly translate in 3 whereas the effects of your actions in 1 aren’t as apparent. You could start in with Mass Effect 3 and probably pick things up, but be prepared to do a bit of reading to understand what’s really going on and why events are important. If you haven’t played the first two and are planning on it, know that not every quest is required to experience everything in 3, but the more you do the more callbacks there are. Also, if you haven’t done so already, pick up some of the Mass Effect 2 DLC. Not all of them are “worth it” in the financial payoff sense, but if there was a “required playing” list invest in Lair of the Shadow Broker and Overlord. Additionally from my playthroughs of the Mass Effect 3 Demo and full game it seems the game assumes you have played all the DLC weather you did so or not. So if you want to have the most control over the universe your Shepard lives in play as much DLC as you can.
Mass Effect 3 starts off about 6 months after the end of The Arrival DLC. You are grounded and stripped of your rank because of all the trouble you’ve caused, though mostly because of your actions during The Arrival. You are called in to the Alliance advisory board to help them on how to prepare for a Reaper invasion. As the meeting starts the Reapers show up and all hell starts breaking loose on Earth. You make a quick escape with the help of Captain Anderson as the Reapers begin their invasion; and it’s off to save the Galaxy once again.
Of all the games, Mass Effect 3 is the most visually stunning. Each level is filled with more detail than ever before. It’s all very pretty to look at. Facial animations are still a bit disconnected from body motions, but the fidelity of facial emotion is something to behold. Anger someone, break their heart, lift their spirits; you can see it in their faces. It’s something that Mass Effect has tried to do, and Mass Effect 2 nearly had it down, but they really took it to another level in 3. In addition to the characters, the worlds have received a visual upgrade as well. Locations are varied and unique; I never saw a recycled level during my playthrough (unless you count encountering the Multiplayer levels in Singleplayer). There are some points in the game where you really will want to just stop and take in the view.
You won’t have much time to stop in many of the levels as the gameplay is as fast paced as ever. Combat is a mix of 1 and 2, a happy medium. While 1 was more run and gun, and 2 was more strict cover based tactics, 3 requires a combination of both. All of the abilities and powers from 2 are back with a few helpful additions. One of these additions is the option to choose what weapons you carry. Granted in prior games you’ve been able to select weapons as well, but you were restricted by what class you played as. This resulted in Shepard carrying around a bunch of weapons on his back that he couldn’t use. This time around they have implemented a risk/reward system for weapon management. You can carry any weapon you want, but each weapon has a weight rating that slows your power cool-down speed. For more firepower oriented classes such as Soldier it’s fine to carry all five different types of weapons and not worry about the huge cool down penalty. However, for more power based classes (like Engineer, Adept, or Vanguard) it allows you to carry fewer weapons in favor of a faster power recharge speed. This does come at a risk. Thermal Clips are still the standard method of weapon cool-down so if you run out of thermal clips you can’t fire your weapon (It “overheats”). If you only carry one weapon going for that huge cool-down bonus, and you run out of ammo you have to rely on your powers alone to survive. This shouldn’t be much of a problem as enemies drop ammo with regularly, and there is normally an ammo crate before any major encounter. This also makes the new weapon system for classes such as Engineer, where you’ve been restricted to the Pistol and SMG for the last two games, a wonderfully freeing addition. The only drawback to this system is the lack of heavy weapons. You will find them scattered around some levels, but they cannot be carried beyond the level and typically can’t be reloaded. However, this is a more “traditional” form of Mass Effect combat as Mass Effect (1) did not have heavy weapons either.
The enemies you face are more varied and segmented as well. Geth and Husks are the only returning enemy from the previous games, with the new enemies being more class based and each class requiring a different combination of tech/biotic abilities and weapons fire to take down effectively. It also creates a rock paper scissors battle system where each enemy has a player class that it’s weak against, and a player class it’s strong against. This makes for some battlefield prioritization to decide what you take down when. As a result, Squad selection is more important than ever. If you don’t pick a well rounded squad you could find yourself in a much harder spot than intended. As a rule, it’s a good idea to have one squadmate who is strong in one of the three main combat areas: Tech, Biotics, and Weapons.
Where all of this comes together is in the Co-op Multiplayer. Mass Effect 3 marks the first time multiplayer has been implemented in the Mass Effect universe. While there was much speculation about how multiplayer doesn’t fit with the Mass Effect universe, the implementation works wonderfully well. You play as a solider assigned to team of 4 to infiltrate and recover assets at various bases around the galaxy. It’s your basic wave based combat mode, with objective rounds occurring at rounds 5 and 10. Survive all 11 rounds and its mission accomplished. Successfully completing a mission adds to your military effectiveness in single player. This “effectiveness” isn’t directly felt, but helps keep all of your gathered forces in top condition. How much a multiplayer mission helps depends on how difficult the mission is. There are three difficulty levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Bronze is best for lower level players or for playing with randoms. Once you have a maxed out character it’s possible to solo a Bronze level with a little patience and some enemy prioritizing. Silver and Gold offer a much higher challenge and require a dedicated, balanced team to succeed (though there have been videos released of people soloing Gold with level 20 Salarian Infiltrators); but the payoffs are also much higher. Multiplayer offers the player a chance to just wail on waves of enemies without having to go back and replay a mission from the singleplayer campaign. It also is a great game to play with friends, teaming up to score awesome combos.
While combat is certainly a selling point for the Mass Effect series it is by no means the staple. Mass Effect has always been praised for having excellent writing for a game, 3 is no different. While some of the delivery feels paced a bit oddly, it’s still on par with what we’ve come to expect from the series. Well… mostly. There are some instances where the technical specs of the game seem to get in the way of line delivery. A lot of this goes away if you install both discs, but it’s still there at times. This means that some back and forth banter can feel a bit staggered and pacing suffers (actually in a couple cases sections of dialog were cut short). Regardless of these hiccups the dialog is still strong and some of the missions will have you more emotionally invested than you thought.
Technically the game is not without fault. There are some contextual problems with the cut scenes. One of the biggest surprises for me was when Shepard was shown holding my equipped weapon during some of the cut scenes. This was a welcome surprise after two games of Shep holding whatever the default gun was. However this was not the case all the time. Sometimes he would magically hold the default pistol, and other times the whole team was left holding the default assault rifle when none of them had it equipped. In addition to this there is no holstering of your weapon, a rather glaring omission since you’ve been able to draw/holster the entire time in the previous two games. Though this makes some sense since any time you are in your armor and in need of a weapon you’re basically fighting.
There isn’t the sense of exploration like there was in 1 and 2. While its omission is noted, it’s not unfitting. You are supposed to be rallying the species of the Galaxy after all, not faffing about on a newly discovered world. This does make the Galaxy feel a bit smaller than it used to. There are still several areas where you can spend lots of time looking around and exploring, but they are not the large swaths of unknown worlds as in Mass Effect 1, or the varied hallways of Omega. The Citadel, however, is larger than ever with more areas to explore. More than that, it’s more densely populated than in the previous games. One thing that stood out to me over the previous games was the number of on screen NPCs. Though many of them are not interactive, most offer up little vignettes into the life and times of the Milky Way Galaxy as the Reapers make their presence known. Walking around eavesdropping is also a good way to pick up side-quests. It’s a bit odd when you complete a quest since you basically walk by, listen in to a conversation and say, “Hey I have one of those” or, “Hey, I found this thing you were looking for”.
One of the largest flaws in the game is the “Journal”. In the past this has been your notebook for keeping track of what quests you have found, what you’ve done to complete it, and what you need to do next. For Mass Effect 3 they did away with the latter two points. This means that you, the player, have to remember what you’ve done for an assigned quest. Often times I found that I had already completed a quest, or struggled to find the location to start the quest. This makes the Journal largely useless. All it’s really good for is for tracking what quests you’ve started, and what quests you’ve completed. I don’t know if it was just for my game, but my journal also got stuck on a quest I completed early on in the game. This meant that each time I went to check the journal to see my active quests I had to scroll all the way back to the top of the list every time.
Despite these technical and game-play issues Mass Effect 3 is still an amazing game. The plot is driving and at times the situation feels truly hopeless; your triumphs are great, and your failures staggering. There are two main missions in the middle of the game that are absolutely brilliant the way they play out. They are literally the result of all the work you did in Mass Effect 2, and the order of your actions in Mass Effect 3. Both require you to have succeeded in several different side missions, sub quests, and conversations in order to achieve a “good” result to the mission. Fail at any one point, and the losses are staggering, in one case an entire species can be wiped out. For me, the game was worth it for those two wonderfully designed and executed moments. When you manage to put a peaceful end a 300 year war, you know you’ve arrived.
Interactions between your crew provide some of the most endearing and lasting moments of the game. Some of them have been with you since the beginning and it shows. The banter between Tali, Garrus, or Joker are some of the best in the game. These interactions serve to make the Normandy feel more alive than ever before. Your crew actually feels like a crew, moving around the ship, talking with other characters, providing stories and anecdotes, commenting on your progress, even providing insight into galactic events.
If you have played the previous two games, Mass Effect 3 is a must play. It has some minor, non game breaking, glitches and hiccups, but is an otherwise wonderfully crafted game. The locations are large, varied, and detailed; the enemies are unique, challenging, and interesting; game-play is fast paced, flowing, and elegant; the plot is vast and can provide some of the best moments in gaming to date. You will travel from one end of the Galaxy to the other in search of a way to stop the Reapers. Along the way you will meet old friends, make new enemies, save whole civilizations, make new friends, and unite the Galaxy under one cause.
Ok ok ok. I’ll try and address the gorilla on the page that you no doubt have heard about: The Ending(s). If you don’t mind being mildly spoiled continue reading.
As it stands the final ending to Mass Effect is a bit of an enigma. On the one had it is the embodiment of the core Mass Effect gameplay system. On the other it’s an utter departure from every in game mechanic we’ve seen so far. Additionally the way it plays out, the ending could actually not be the actual ending at all. There is currently no confirmed news surrounding an additional ending, or an epilogue of some sorts. However, the game itself does state that DLC will be coming. Due to the point where the game drops you off after the credits roll suggests that an additional or alternate ending could be on the way or at some point available. Personally I found the “Green” ending to be fitting, but (as with the others) found the plot holes to be large and a bit glaring.
Mass Effect 3 starts off about 6 months after the end of The Arrival DLC. You are grounded and stripped of your rank because of all the trouble you’ve caused, though mostly because of your actions during The Arrival. You are called in to the Alliance advisory board to help them on how to prepare for a Reaper invasion. As the meeting starts the Reapers show up and all hell starts breaking loose on Earth. You make a quick escape with the help of Captain Anderson as the Reapers begin their invasion; and it’s off to save the Galaxy once again.
Of all the games, Mass Effect 3 is the most visually stunning. Each level is filled with more detail than ever before. It’s all very pretty to look at. Facial animations are still a bit disconnected from body motions, but the fidelity of facial emotion is something to behold. Anger someone, break their heart, lift their spirits; you can see it in their faces. It’s something that Mass Effect has tried to do, and Mass Effect 2 nearly had it down, but they really took it to another level in 3. In addition to the characters, the worlds have received a visual upgrade as well. Locations are varied and unique; I never saw a recycled level during my playthrough (unless you count encountering the Multiplayer levels in Singleplayer). There are some points in the game where you really will want to just stop and take in the view.
You won’t have much time to stop in many of the levels as the gameplay is as fast paced as ever. Combat is a mix of 1 and 2, a happy medium. While 1 was more run and gun, and 2 was more strict cover based tactics, 3 requires a combination of both. All of the abilities and powers from 2 are back with a few helpful additions. One of these additions is the option to choose what weapons you carry. Granted in prior games you’ve been able to select weapons as well, but you were restricted by what class you played as. This resulted in Shepard carrying around a bunch of weapons on his back that he couldn’t use. This time around they have implemented a risk/reward system for weapon management. You can carry any weapon you want, but each weapon has a weight rating that slows your power cool-down speed. For more firepower oriented classes such as Soldier it’s fine to carry all five different types of weapons and not worry about the huge cool down penalty. However, for more power based classes (like Engineer, Adept, or Vanguard) it allows you to carry fewer weapons in favor of a faster power recharge speed. This does come at a risk. Thermal Clips are still the standard method of weapon cool-down so if you run out of thermal clips you can’t fire your weapon (It “overheats”). If you only carry one weapon going for that huge cool-down bonus, and you run out of ammo you have to rely on your powers alone to survive. This shouldn’t be much of a problem as enemies drop ammo with regularly, and there is normally an ammo crate before any major encounter. This also makes the new weapon system for classes such as Engineer, where you’ve been restricted to the Pistol and SMG for the last two games, a wonderfully freeing addition. The only drawback to this system is the lack of heavy weapons. You will find them scattered around some levels, but they cannot be carried beyond the level and typically can’t be reloaded. However, this is a more “traditional” form of Mass Effect combat as Mass Effect (1) did not have heavy weapons either.
The enemies you face are more varied and segmented as well. Geth and Husks are the only returning enemy from the previous games, with the new enemies being more class based and each class requiring a different combination of tech/biotic abilities and weapons fire to take down effectively. It also creates a rock paper scissors battle system where each enemy has a player class that it’s weak against, and a player class it’s strong against. This makes for some battlefield prioritization to decide what you take down when. As a result, Squad selection is more important than ever. If you don’t pick a well rounded squad you could find yourself in a much harder spot than intended. As a rule, it’s a good idea to have one squadmate who is strong in one of the three main combat areas: Tech, Biotics, and Weapons.
Where all of this comes together is in the Co-op Multiplayer. Mass Effect 3 marks the first time multiplayer has been implemented in the Mass Effect universe. While there was much speculation about how multiplayer doesn’t fit with the Mass Effect universe, the implementation works wonderfully well. You play as a solider assigned to team of 4 to infiltrate and recover assets at various bases around the galaxy. It’s your basic wave based combat mode, with objective rounds occurring at rounds 5 and 10. Survive all 11 rounds and its mission accomplished. Successfully completing a mission adds to your military effectiveness in single player. This “effectiveness” isn’t directly felt, but helps keep all of your gathered forces in top condition. How much a multiplayer mission helps depends on how difficult the mission is. There are three difficulty levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Bronze is best for lower level players or for playing with randoms. Once you have a maxed out character it’s possible to solo a Bronze level with a little patience and some enemy prioritizing. Silver and Gold offer a much higher challenge and require a dedicated, balanced team to succeed (though there have been videos released of people soloing Gold with level 20 Salarian Infiltrators); but the payoffs are also much higher. Multiplayer offers the player a chance to just wail on waves of enemies without having to go back and replay a mission from the singleplayer campaign. It also is a great game to play with friends, teaming up to score awesome combos.
While combat is certainly a selling point for the Mass Effect series it is by no means the staple. Mass Effect has always been praised for having excellent writing for a game, 3 is no different. While some of the delivery feels paced a bit oddly, it’s still on par with what we’ve come to expect from the series. Well… mostly. There are some instances where the technical specs of the game seem to get in the way of line delivery. A lot of this goes away if you install both discs, but it’s still there at times. This means that some back and forth banter can feel a bit staggered and pacing suffers (actually in a couple cases sections of dialog were cut short). Regardless of these hiccups the dialog is still strong and some of the missions will have you more emotionally invested than you thought.
Technically the game is not without fault. There are some contextual problems with the cut scenes. One of the biggest surprises for me was when Shepard was shown holding my equipped weapon during some of the cut scenes. This was a welcome surprise after two games of Shep holding whatever the default gun was. However this was not the case all the time. Sometimes he would magically hold the default pistol, and other times the whole team was left holding the default assault rifle when none of them had it equipped. In addition to this there is no holstering of your weapon, a rather glaring omission since you’ve been able to draw/holster the entire time in the previous two games. Though this makes some sense since any time you are in your armor and in need of a weapon you’re basically fighting.
There isn’t the sense of exploration like there was in 1 and 2. While its omission is noted, it’s not unfitting. You are supposed to be rallying the species of the Galaxy after all, not faffing about on a newly discovered world. This does make the Galaxy feel a bit smaller than it used to. There are still several areas where you can spend lots of time looking around and exploring, but they are not the large swaths of unknown worlds as in Mass Effect 1, or the varied hallways of Omega. The Citadel, however, is larger than ever with more areas to explore. More than that, it’s more densely populated than in the previous games. One thing that stood out to me over the previous games was the number of on screen NPCs. Though many of them are not interactive, most offer up little vignettes into the life and times of the Milky Way Galaxy as the Reapers make their presence known. Walking around eavesdropping is also a good way to pick up side-quests. It’s a bit odd when you complete a quest since you basically walk by, listen in to a conversation and say, “Hey I have one of those” or, “Hey, I found this thing you were looking for”.
One of the largest flaws in the game is the “Journal”. In the past this has been your notebook for keeping track of what quests you have found, what you’ve done to complete it, and what you need to do next. For Mass Effect 3 they did away with the latter two points. This means that you, the player, have to remember what you’ve done for an assigned quest. Often times I found that I had already completed a quest, or struggled to find the location to start the quest. This makes the Journal largely useless. All it’s really good for is for tracking what quests you’ve started, and what quests you’ve completed. I don’t know if it was just for my game, but my journal also got stuck on a quest I completed early on in the game. This meant that each time I went to check the journal to see my active quests I had to scroll all the way back to the top of the list every time.
Despite these technical and game-play issues Mass Effect 3 is still an amazing game. The plot is driving and at times the situation feels truly hopeless; your triumphs are great, and your failures staggering. There are two main missions in the middle of the game that are absolutely brilliant the way they play out. They are literally the result of all the work you did in Mass Effect 2, and the order of your actions in Mass Effect 3. Both require you to have succeeded in several different side missions, sub quests, and conversations in order to achieve a “good” result to the mission. Fail at any one point, and the losses are staggering, in one case an entire species can be wiped out. For me, the game was worth it for those two wonderfully designed and executed moments. When you manage to put a peaceful end a 300 year war, you know you’ve arrived.
Interactions between your crew provide some of the most endearing and lasting moments of the game. Some of them have been with you since the beginning and it shows. The banter between Tali, Garrus, or Joker are some of the best in the game. These interactions serve to make the Normandy feel more alive than ever before. Your crew actually feels like a crew, moving around the ship, talking with other characters, providing stories and anecdotes, commenting on your progress, even providing insight into galactic events.
If you have played the previous two games, Mass Effect 3 is a must play. It has some minor, non game breaking, glitches and hiccups, but is an otherwise wonderfully crafted game. The locations are large, varied, and detailed; the enemies are unique, challenging, and interesting; game-play is fast paced, flowing, and elegant; the plot is vast and can provide some of the best moments in gaming to date. You will travel from one end of the Galaxy to the other in search of a way to stop the Reapers. Along the way you will meet old friends, make new enemies, save whole civilizations, make new friends, and unite the Galaxy under one cause.
Ok ok ok. I’ll try and address the gorilla on the page that you no doubt have heard about: The Ending(s). If you don’t mind being mildly spoiled continue reading.
As it stands the final ending to Mass Effect is a bit of an enigma. On the one had it is the embodiment of the core Mass Effect gameplay system. On the other it’s an utter departure from every in game mechanic we’ve seen so far. Additionally the way it plays out, the ending could actually not be the actual ending at all. There is currently no confirmed news surrounding an additional ending, or an epilogue of some sorts. However, the game itself does state that DLC will be coming. Due to the point where the game drops you off after the credits roll suggests that an additional or alternate ending could be on the way or at some point available. Personally I found the “Green” ending to be fitting, but (as with the others) found the plot holes to be large and a bit glaring.