Review
Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2012
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.
