End of a universal trilogy

Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2012

The Mass Effect series, from Bioware, has reached an end. It began its life on PC and Xbox 360 in 2007, continued its story of the universes Reaper attack in 2010, with one of the best games made this generation, Mass Effect 2. And now, we get the final part of the story.

ME2 is what you call a perfect sequel, it took the fantastic atmosphere and setting of the original game and fixed the weaker parts. It overhauled the gameplay and controls so much, it felt like a new game entirely. So well made was ME2, that I gave it deservedly 6 out of 6. ME3 then, does it match up to its nearly perfected predecessor?



ME3s story picks up pace quickly, it throws us right into a desperate time where Earth is on a full attack from the Reapers. This desperation, witnessing of innocent civilians getting destroyed, is a very strong introduction to the game. It kind of sets the mood for the whole story of ME3. It's a fight against time and the galaxy is indeed in its most desperate fight for survival.

It keeps you on your toes at all times and constantly puts you into challenging situations. You get to learn how bad the Reaper attacks truly are when you visit other planets and species. This fight will be a struggle for Shepard as she/he tries to make all the different alien races collaborate to defeat the Reapers together.

This time, there's a slightly different approach to ME2's open ended structure, the galaxy map is more controlled, it feels more dangerous and the exploring isn't quite as pleasant as in ME2. I found the galaxy map kind of annoying with the Reapers sending you away constantly, but it sets the mood of a full blown invasion.

Compared to ME2's overly thorough, scanning of each planet, it's a clearly a different approach and is fine considered you probably spent a lot time doing this in ME2 and don't feel the need to explore this over again. ME3 is in this regard more linear, you know where it is heading, but it throws a few twists along the way and each planet you visit contains surprises.



Although ME2 had its controls laid out perfectly, ME3 manages to pull off some small enhancements. You now have a roll button, so you can dodge away from attacks, it overall the controls feel slightly faster and the covering is even better than before. In fact, it feels very close to Gears of War, only a tad slower. The greatness of the gameplay, combined with it's even smoother layout in ME3 proves itself in the multiplayer mode.

Yes, ME3 has multiplayer, but not the traditional deathmatch style. It's horde mode, with up to four players. Believe it or not, it actually is excellent and really fun to play. You level up characters  and can send them into the singleplayer experience to heighten your galactic readiness against the Reapers. It's fun enough playing together with randoms and truly entertaining with friends. A fantastic addition to the series.

ME3 looks superb, it may overdo the contrast level for my liking, but the technical side of the game is excellent. The lighting looks fantastic and the character models are amazing. Bioware have really outdone themselves and have made the Mass Effect series into some of the most beautiful games around.

I love the variation and colour palette within its worlds. Every new location is a joy to visit and admire. It keeps the excitement of discovering new and incredible looking worlds at a high, throughout the game.



There are a couple of nit-picks though. I would have perhaps, after the huge decisions and very different outcomes of the Shepards fate in ME2 showed at its ending, preferred a possibility for making almost two separate stories in ME3. All the choices made in ME2 seem to send you down the same path in ME3, perhaps the magnitude of doing two vastly different stories was just to much work for Bioware?

The ending though, which met a lot of critics, didn't bother me at all. Sure, the different endings don't vary much, but I didn't feel like they needed to as ME3's story was more predetermined than I hoped it would be anyhow.

I also, would have preferred that some of the places you visit didn't look like multiplayer maps and the Asian ninja type of character was so bad it was annoying. Cocky ninjas with grumpy behaviour and completely outdated weaponry, who the hell uses a sword in a distant future against guns, should return to over the top Japanese anime. An audience that love that kind of stupidity. It just doesn't fit into the ME lore.

Mass Effect 3 sets the bar for many other games considering presentation, voice acting and cinematics. It ends a fantastic trilogy and shows a scale of a fight to survive and a galaxy at war, even Hollywood movies would be jealous of.

Finally reaching the end of the story, I have followed through three games, felt really epic and it was emotional seeing what happened to all the characters on my Normandie crew. A great game, that's somewhat overshadowed alongside it's bigger, groundbreaking brother ME2.