Mass Effect 3 (sorta).

This isn't going to be like my usual reviews. I personally feel I've come a long way since I reviewed Mass Effect 2 back in early 2010 and I just think Mass Effect 3 is much too large a game to fit into the style of my modern reviews. It's also practically impossible to talk about without talking about the first two games in relation also. So think of this less a structured review and more a 'my reaction to Mass Effect now I have finished the trilogy'. Also, since this isn't really structured and more a string of consciousness there may well be stuff I miss. So if you think there is anything I haven't touched upon, let me know and I'll chew on it for a while and eventually add it to the review. Enjoy!
Okay so for those of you who don't know, the Reaper's have finally arrived on Earth, Anderson stays behind on Earth to wage war on the invaders and Shepard sets off across the galaxy to gather intel on the mysterious Crucible and build an army to take back to Earth and save it.

I think the Mass Effect franchise raises large questions around what exactly makes a game...a game. A film is a moving picture story but it's already proved it doesn't have to have a story. A game is fundamentally an interactive medium so in theory any input, whether it be tapping one button every few minutes would make it different to a film because you're interacting with it. It'd make it a game right? Well apparently so, Asura's Wrath proved that making an anime and adding quicktime events may make your anime into a game but that doesn't mean it'll be well received. Personally if Mass Effect's core gameplay mechanic was the conversation wheel and the removed the shooting entirely, you'd hear no complaints from me. Despite ME3 allowing you the chance to play this as primarily a third person shooter removing the RPG and story elements if you so choose, it doesn't change the fact that the shooting sections feel tacked on and truly ancient. They can be fucking hard too, funny thing is the game can be pretty frustrating even on normal but you turn it down to easy it literally becomes so easy it becomes a chore, there is no balance. I honestly groaned my way through each shooting section, just waiting for the next time I got to use the convo wheel. I don't know why the shooting mechanics are necessary if they're gonna be done in a half arsed way regardless.

Mass Effect 3 certainly did a lot more with the whole copying your save over gimmick thing, this time your choices are genuinely laid out in front of you and used against you with every step you take. Your experience can be changed quite dramatically depending on the experience you had in the first two games compared to someone else and it's just excellent, it's part of what makes Mass Effect 3 so compelling, you really feel a part of something, this is the first time ever a game has actually made me feel like the hero in the middle of the story even compared to the first two. Simply incredible immersion. It's just a shame that due to Mass Effect 3 trimming down the squad size and the fact that only three people survived in my version of Mass Effect 2 my squad was only four people for the entire game. A range of Mass Effect characters made cameos but one of my favourite aspects of the franchise was meeting great new characters and slowly building relationships with them, I really don't know why they took this out.

In many ways wish Mass Effect 3 was more linear, I know linear is like a dirty word in modern games but with the story being formulated over individual missions and them presenting you like ten missions at once (although this gets smaller and smaller as you go) the story can often feel fragmented and all over the place and a certain amount of tension is lost when you know everyone is fighting on Earth and ultimately dying but the game still gives you time to run around and shop and dance on the Citadel. Plus they don't really outline what the key side missions are, so some missions I overlooked just because of the amount on my plate, and then meant some key side characters died completely off screen and all I got was an email to tell me otherwise and it was like...oh, thanks.

And there are still issues with the conversation wheel, I often missed the Paragon Renegade triggers due to relaxing with my conversation wheel for them to be thrown at me and taken away within a second, normally bringing conversations to a halt - I really don't like this feature, I liked taking the time to choose each conversation choice carefully. Also, the conversation wheel still has the weird feature of allowing you to choose dialogue options that turn out to be nothing like what you clicked. The developers obviously had a much clearer idea for Shepard in mind this time, there are a lot less conversation wheel sections and even heavier than before, Paragon or Renegade Shepard says basically the same thing, just on the Renegade choice he frowns some more. I mean there is still freedom and your choices still have direct and vastly different impacts on the story but I just felt there was even less freedom this time than there was last time. And there was less freedom last time than in the first game.

Romance this time is pushed completely to the background, although you have the ability to rekindle an old relationship and you can explore your old friendships too but I had sex pretty suddenly with Miranda some half way through the game (while flirting with pretty much everyone for the lols). Then Miranda vanishes for most of the game and even when they do reunite it isn't like the reuniting of two lovers, they don't seem particularly interested in each other. And although Liara, my lady from the first game says, 'I know you slept with Miranda, Shepard, we'll talk about this later.' absolutely fuck all comes from it and I'm sure we'd agreed to be friends already by this point already, what a load of bullshit.

Mass Effect 3 is pretty ugly, although there are some incredible cutscenes and nice armour and weapon designs and so on. It just looks outdated in so many ways that are hard to pin down and explain. And it doesn't help that you spend most of the game fighting in small rooms or corridors, sometimes I wondered if I was playing a game released in 2012 or an original Xbox Game.

And I'm guessing you read this far to find out what I thought of the infamous ME3 ending. Personally? I don't get all the hatred, I play Mass Effect 3 to shape my story, so if I hadn't have read up on it, I'd've had no clue on the fact that the three endings all play out the same. I'm not the kind of person who plays these games, finishes them and then plays them all over again. I do have plans to replay the first and second games again, but that's due to the fact it's been about four years since I've played the first one and about two since I played the second.

About the actual ending itself, honestly I only started to have a problem with it once I started reading stuff about it. Yeah, where was the Normandy going? Yeah why were there so many cliffhangers? Will there be a forth game? Who died? Who lived? Who was the kid? All in all the ending is nowhere near as bad as people have told you, as long as you don't pick at it.

So do I recommend it? The entire franchise? Yes, I implore you to experience it I don't think there is a gaming experience that quite does what Mass Effect does with the whole 'interactive medium' thing. But be prepared for some rather awful shooting sections, wonky difficulty and a rather fragmented story. And do I recommend Mass Effect 3? Honestly, as the closing part of one of my most favourite game series in recent times I think this was completely disappointing. Although it is big and epic and sweeps you right up into it, immersing you unlike anything else, utilising your adventures through the first two games to the max it still manages to end up being somewhat superficial, once again only really at key scripted moments do your actions have any real resonance with most of the choices being simple fluff and the awful combat sections don't help the matter either if they had put in more resonance creating conversation segments, concentrated more heavily on your relationship with the crew and trimmed down all the shitty third person shooting this could have been a worthy closing chapter but as it stands, it's a fantastic game but only an average closing chapter for the superb Mass Effect franchise.

Think About It!

-Locke