Gaming Mass Effect 3 review

It's time to take Earth back - but is the mission worth the wait?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2012/03/09/mass-effect-3-review/1

 

I....need....this game!!!....


I just loved the second one, the ending of it...Just made me think "**** yeah! I am the man!"..

 

Got my Xbox 360 copy delivered yesterday - well done, Amazon! I've been looking forward to this moment since finishing ME2, two years ago, so laying my hands on my copy of ME3 felt like a rather momentous occasion. I ended up playing it half way through the night, making getting up for work a challenge, but it was worth it.

I love the scale and grandeur of it all, I love the new tweaks to the combat and equipment modding, and I love how power cooldowns seem to be drastically reduced in some areas, making playing as an Adept of Engineer that much more exciting.

But most of all, I love how it makes me feel. I've been waiting five years to finally kick some Reaper butt, and now's my chance. And with Garrus at my side, who can stop me?

 

A very short review for such a massive title, but it's understandable given that it's difficult to review without spoilers.

My 2 pence:

-The characters, the story, imagery, the narrative, the soundtrack, and the depth are all fantastic and make this a top game.

-The controls are hideously poor console ports, 1 button for sprint, jump, cover, interact...is clunky and plain bad.

-The combat is still poor, but hey it's mass effect, you didn't really expect otherwise.

-The mini-games are still awful, but hey it's mass effect, you didn't really expect otherwise.

-Overall I love it! And the added depth to the environment is why: here's a early but brilliant example (I'll be vague so it isn't a spoiler):

Early on in the game you overhear as lady that hasn't heard from her son for an unusual amount of time. This lady frequently visits the same location throughout the game to enquire about her son,
Every time the situation gets more desperate and you feel more sorry for her.

There is no interaction in this, it's not a mission in anyway, it's simply an evolving background tale that took my interest. Now every time I'm in the location in question I seek out said women and listen to her conversations to see if she's had news of her son yet!

These little conversations are all over the place in the game, an impatient player will run past and not even notice, but for me they make the world real and add that elusive level of depth that keeps me hooked.

 

Idon't understand how much of the review seems to suggest it's an 'almost', or a 'not quite as good', or has other good but not great comments, and then suddenly whacks on a 90% score and a top grade award??? It reads like a significant portion of the review was just edited out - can we have the whole review, please, so we can put this all in to context?

 

Feel the same...Still, I think it deserved that 90. Taht's how I felt the game anyway. I believe hyep has something to do with it though...

 

Agreed. ME3 was always going to be brilliant, so it's understandable that Joe wouldn't spend a lot of time telling the Bit-tech audience what they already know, but still it comes off as rather negative. Perhaps an opening statement like this would have set a better tone: "This game is brilliant and we all know it. If you like ME2, you'll love this. I have a few gripes, but they don't spoil the experience. They are as follows..."

Then the 90% at the end wouldn't have looked so surprising.

 

I hope the boring, unimaginative corridore and crates level design has improved. And I hope the world feels more alive instead of the same few characters standing in the same place everytime you visit somewhere like the Citadel for example.

 

I think that the set design and combat has improved a bit, but at the end of the day it's pretty similar to ME2. If you didn't like that you are not going to like this game.

@Joe

My impression about that prothean weapon was that they had already been working on it, but then with the Reaper invasion of the Sol system and cerberus attacking it became a top priority to extract that data and pour more resources into the project. Since you weren't in the military for several months you don't find out about anything until the day the game starts.

 

The worlds are more interesting but the gameplay is still basically go from point A to B and make sure to kill all enemies on the way there.

I wish games would focus a little more on presentation. I just came from finishing the Uncharted series that had top notch voice acting and animations, to almost a complete lack of facial animation and dialogue written and acted out by robots. It just totally disconnected me from the world and made the game feel really dated.

7/10 before the ending. 0/10 after the ending.

 

I'm staggered at the 90%... given a) the tone of the view and b) the relative lack of improvements and c) the more numerous steps backwards....

Sounds like it's a game to get in the sales frankly.

 

Will I be punished for not going full paragon/ renegade like in me2?

 

That's basically the jist of what friends have been saying about it, too.

Agreed.

As much as I enjoyed Mass Effect, I bought it very late in the PC release product cycle - basically about a month before Mass Effect 2 was released. While I enjoyed it and was enthusiastic about ME2, I did not enjoy the sequel anywhere near as much. And going back to replay Mass Effect, I could not put my finger on what hooked me so much the first time through.

So I'm left with the attitude, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me..." (there won't be a third time - and ME3, from all non-review opinions, appears to be the third time)...

 

Well, the cynic in me would point out that the predecessor got 10/10, so 9/10, while an excellent score in its own right, does suggest the new game isn't quite as good as part 2

Personally I couldn't care less - cannot wait to get my hands on it \o/

 

This has arrived just in time as I finished ME2 just two days ago.
However, after finishing it I installed the DLCs, and then I realised I would probably have to go back to a previous save to make a few different choices to carry with me to ME3. I was a little unsatisfied by the ending I got and the choices I had made, but I will definitely pick up ME3 as soon as I am able to. Being hopelessly in love with this series I feel, though, that playing through ME3 will be something of an anti-climax in the sense that this marks and ending to the story (probably).

I read about to paragraphs into the review before realising that there were a few spoilers present, and at that point I stopped reading and skipped straight to the score. 9/10 is pretty much what I expected, and I look forward to playing it.

 

So in other words, game has lots of problems, 9/10.

 

Despite the high review score I doubt this will get me to play past ME1. Seems exactly as I hoped it wouldn't be: churned out to sell to existing fans without actually improving on flaws. Looking at various gameplay videos the very same problems I had with ME1 seem to be mostly present such as robotic acting and stale combat. If I wanted bland gameplay with a good story I'd play Heavy Rain.

 

Am surprised this was pegged as a further move away from the RPG side of things, with the return of weapon upgrades and weapon mods, as well as a vastly expanded set of skills I thought it was more of a happy marriage of the first and second games than a further drift into shooter territory.

Also surprised that the review reads like it's a lesser game than Mass Effect 2, having played both on and off over the last few days to get my save game up to speed I think the action in ME3 is a bit slicker and the character more agile and better to control. The improvements to melee combat, including the awesome grab-the-enemy-from-behind-cover move really help too because having enemies bimble up to you and shoot you in the face was a real bugbear in ME2.

Has to be said though, the Mass Effect trilogy is a masterpiece. Whole trilogy, end to end, about a hundred hours, probably one of the greatest artistic endeavour of this century. And that probably sounds like hyperbole but, in fairness, it's not been a great century so far.

 

13 hours in and I cannot get enough; even the multiplayer is great fun and that really did take me by surprise.

 

I completed the game.

So many glaring plot holes, awkward cover system which gets in the way in later on, incredibly bad animation and porting to the pc.

Remind me of how this is 90% again?